There are only two major releases today so let’s get to it!

      

                                                                                                                   

Quantum of Solace

Recap: Bond must stop criminal organization Quantum from holding the world’s natural resources ransom.

Review: 7/10

Reflix: This film was actually a disappointment to me. I guess that is to be expected considering how incredible Casino Royale is. But I was hoping that with Daniel Craig back, as well as Marc Forster back directing, this could be a great film. Unfortunately, I think the script was lacking this time around. The overall story was quite disappointing – too political, not enough action. At least in the last Bond there was a good story arc which kept you interested. Here, it was pretty blasé – its like they pulled the story out of some 70s flick and tried to adapt it to Bond. This along drops it from infinite to boomerang. Then the film itself is pretty boring. The chase scenes are pretty poor, especially the speedboat chase. Water-based cases are not exciting in the least – see Live and Let Die as an example. There are really only two scenes worth rewatching in this film – the opera scene and the opening chase in the cars. That’s about it. The opera sequence is one of the better ones in a Bond film, so I could probably watch this scene many times – I love the chase scene near the end. The whole opera scene itself also demonstrates how smart Bond is – brains before  brawn.

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie could be thrown away.  The airplane scene is terrible – give me Tomorrow Never Dies or GoldenEye instead. I can’t stand Olga Kurylenko – her whole subplot was just dumb. Thank God for Gemma Arterton – one of the hottest Bond girls they’ve had yet. Even the bad guy was terrible. I want someone intimidating, not weaselly like Mathieu Amalric. Make it worth Bond’s effort already! And yet despite my misgivings about this film its still worth watching in the grand scheme of things at least once – I just wouldn’t say its a rewatchable film.  Reflixability – Frisbee.

 

Bolt

Recap – A TV superhero dog who believes he has real powers is separated from his co-star and tries to save her from a threat he believes is real.

Review – 6/10

Reflix – This was a decent film but not great overall. I’m usually a big fan of 3D animation, but I wasn’t so happy with this film. Don’t get me wrong, the actual animation itself is really well done, especially the scenes which are part of the TV show within the movie. But the story was unremarkable and I don’t think the characters were as well thought out as they could be. Is there anything worth rewatching? Yes. As I said, the TV-show scenes are great. And I really enjoyed the scenes with the pigeons in the film – they reminded me of the Animaniacs sketches with the Goodfeathers, so that bit of nostalgia was a welcome surprise. And the scenes with Rhino the hamster, played by Mark Walton were also pretty funny. But these scenes were still not good enough to get me to watch this film over again, especially when there are better animated films out there.

The voice acting is okay, but I’d much prefer the good ol’ days when the voice actors were mostly no-named stars or former stars who focused on voice acting, like Mark Hamill.  John Travolta and Miley Cyrus are fine in the film, but they don’t add anything special. What did have me rechecking parts of the film was when I found out that the part of the director was voiced by James Lipton. I love James Lipton, so I went back and rewatched that, but that’s about it. Overall, I would take a look at this film if you get it at the library or low down on your Netflix account, but I wouldn’t rent or purchase it for rewatching. Reflixability – Frisbee.