For the first time in a long time, I have done the NZ-Europe trip in one hit instead of stopping over for a night en route – definitely something that I do not intend making a habit of as I am not feeling like the Energiser Bunny at this moment. Still as always, international air travel offers a great opportunity for this rural dweller to catch up with recently released movies…so here we go…

MIB III. Loved this – the first two movies haven’t, in my ever so humble opinion, quite got ‘it’ – no such worries with this third crack at the franchise: I found it thoroughly enjoyable and much more complete and consistent than the previous two iterations. Definitely one for the permanent library.

A few people whined that Thor and Captain America were somewhat unfulfilling and incomplete…while I am not one of those whinynanas, The Avengers certainly grips up and draws together all the strands from Ironman, Hulk (who keeps changing lead actors), Captain America and Thor into a thoroughly entertaining and satisfying action roller-coast. As above, another for the permanent library. The classic line that titles this post comes from The Avengers after Loki attempts to assert his godliness upon the Hulk – short conversation…!

I really enjoyed the Toby Maguire Spiderman trilogy but sorry, dude, this new kid, The Amazing Spiderman, in town knocks you off your perch as the consumate ‘Spidey’ – the best Spiderman movie by far and I’m really pleased to see the hints that there will be sequels to carry on the character development.

I always suspected that there was more to than ‘Honest Abe’ story that met the eye and now the truth all comes out out in a perhaps timely manner in Abe Lincoln: Vampire Killer as the White House is again threatened by the undead (although that’s zombies from eith r the left or the right). Personally I think that this is a story that deserved to be told sooner, if only to add to the genral popular awareness of the vampire threat…

This was a bit of a slow burner that I was prepared to kill if it looked like bollocks – instead I found a gripping thriller with an alternate taken on the last days of Edgar Allen Poe. Very well done and very much recommended. On a personal note I was intrigued to see Richard Sharkey‘s name in the credits as co-producer: I worked with Richard for a period when he was the lead location manager for the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the consummate problem-solver for any and all of the practical logistic and support issues that arose everyday during filming. If I had not decided to stick with what I was doing at the time, he would have been my inspiration to jump ship into a similar career…

This was another sleeper that I took a bit of a punt on and found myself thoroughly enjoying…nothing stellar so far as story-lines or plots are concerned but just a good solid action movie…

So there you go, watched six movies and scored all six quite highly…in fact there was only one major disappointment and that was #7…

Prometheus. What a load of old bollocks and a blatant attempt to try to screw some more money from the Alien franchise….it was boring and nothing more than a remake of Alien without the terror, suspense or gripping storyline. It starts badly with a scene where an alien Engineer drinks what looks like passion-fruit seeds and flies all to bits – an action and scene totally irrelevant to the rest of the movie; it is never clear where all these civilisations across human history would note down in cave drawings the location of an obscure planet was not (SPOILER ALERT!!) the home world but just a cast-off wasteland world, and what was really happening on that planet. Even a little time spent on character development would not have gone astray: take out the standard Alien ploys like the facehuggers, acid for blood, etc, etc…and you could not have a movie that is more hohum…