Review of the epic movie day

So after the epic movie day that was yesterday, I thought I would do a briefly review what I watched without hopefully including any spoilers.

    First up I saw State of Play which I would definitely recommend and has made me want to watch the BBC original. A friend that I saw it with and who had seen the original version said that the two were not really all that similar but was impressed with the new version. The reason for the lack of similarities is probably due to the differences in our political system and this new version was tackling issues that are prevalent to what is occurring at this moment in history regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Other subplots also grounded in this moment in time, an example being that the newspaper that Russell Crowe’s character works for is suffering financially; this is definitely evident amongst print journalism in this economic downturn that we are currently in. The resentment that his character feels toward blogger Rachel McAdams is one that I am sure is also representative of old school journalists versus the instant writing of someone online.

    Next up was Star Trek which I thought was a fantastic and fun film. I would consider myself a little biased as I am such a huge JJ Abrams fan and, as I am not a Star Trek fan I wasn’t worried about changes that he might make to the Trek lineage and mythology. However the big group that I saw it with, which included smatterings of Abrams and Star Trek fans all, seemed to concur that it was an excellent film and the general buzz afterwards was very positive. There were nods to other Abrams related creations and some familiar faces from his other projects, I won’t say who or what so not to spoil but it was an all round super experience. The cast were great and the action was well paced and well executed. I was also impressed at how many Star Trek references I got considering how I have never seen an episode and demonstrates just how far these references have stretched down in to pop culture.

    The final film of the day was Wolverine, which after watching two such fantastic films felt like a bit of a let down. The performances were all pretty solid although it felt a bit like one of those films where all the best bits were in the trailer. It was good to see Taylor Kitsch in a different role; however as the film was central to Wolverine the other mutant characters felt at times to be a bit rushed and under used. I would say it is still worth a watch, especially if you are a fan of the series however don’t go in expecting it to be as good as the first two X-Men movies.

    So that rounds up my slight deviation away from a television, although as noted yesterday there are elements of television with all three. Something odd that made me think of TV whilst the trailers were on was that the Terminator Salvation trailer had in bold writing ‘This Season’ which made me think that it sounded like a television phrase rather than the usual movie related ‘This Summer’ one. Not sure whether this was just me that made the link to TV but it definitely stood out to me as an odd phrase on a film trailer.