A Hot Tub Time Machine!!

I do hope you didn't miss last night's post regarding the Apple TV announcements from Mr Apple.  If you did, you can go back and read it here.

So just to help you through the day, here's a couple of movies for you to catch up with....

Hot Tub Time Machine....  WoW!!! With a title like that you just can't not want to watch that film. Better yet, it's set in the 80's, which for obvious reasons is time that's close to my heart. The preise of the story is that a group of 3 friends who took regular trips to a ski resort together in the 1980's find themselves returning in 2010 due to one of their number almost accidentally committing suicide and being in need of cheering up.

This time, they have one of their nephews with them who's too young to have ever been with them before, and makes up the foursome. There's a great start for you.  The place has become very sad and forlorn and run down. In fact, it's awful. But they persevere and even get a guy (in the form of 80's comedy icon Chevy Chase) to come and fix their hotel suite's hot tub....  chaos and frivolity ensues...

I particularly liked the realisation moment when they figured out that they'd actually gone back to the 1980's by asking someone "What colour is Michael Jackson?"... response: "Black"... "response: "AGGGAAAHHHHH!!!"... Genius.   It's a lot of fun, but not for the whole family.  Will definitely appeal more if you lived through the 80's with some great 80's soundtrack.  There's a wonderful time travel reference when you figure out who the bell hop has been in a previous life, and it's crude enough to appeal to the yob youth, which while I generally find a little off putting, was bearable. Sad that it seems to be a pre-requisite in US comedy caper type movies since "American Pie"

Overall, 7 out of 10. Good if you're of that era.

Next up, Case 39. Horrible. Plodding and predictable horror movie. Started off well, and then just got very slow and boring and unimaginative. A Shame really, because Renee Zellweger usually does some interesting work, but this time I just wasn't captivated.

You know how you can go and see a two and half hour epic movie and feel like you've only been in the cinema for an hour ?....  Well this has the inverse effect.  It's an hour and forty minutes long, but feels like it's about 3 hours. Hard work I'm afraid. I did manage to sit through the whole thing, because you have to if you want to be able to comment on it, but to be honest, it was a close call.

Overall, 3 out of 10 and that's only because it had a strong start.

"Four Lions" next.  This had a great premise and was very well recieved by the critics.  It did dissapoint slightly, but still managed to get me chuckling on a couple of occasions. The idea is a small group of radical muslim's have a "terrorist cell" in the suburbs of Halifax. Thankfully they are bumbling fools, so many bumbling terrorist jokes follow, some of which are quite entertaining.  Two of the group go of to a training camp in Pakistan only to last a couple of days before being sent home in disgrace.  Ultimatley they decide upon a UK based target - a Mosque.....  I told you they were bumbling fools....

Entertaining stuff, if a little slow in places. Was nice to see a cameo appearance from "Sherlock" (Benedict long-name with a "ct" in it.) towards the end. 5 out of 10.

Still to come: "The Eiger Sanction" - 1975 (I've been promising myself this one for weeks now), "From Paris with Love" - 2010 and "Perrier's Bounty" - 2009

Might even get to see them on my New Apple TV.