WALKING WITH DINOSAURS (2013)
Movie derived from the award winning BBC miniseries has some really nice CGI creations but, really hurts itself with an overly simplistic and cliche’ ‘runt of the litter saves the day’ story and some really juvenile dialog and toilet humor that even little kids might find tiresome. It’s a shame. A little more respect for it’s target audience and maybe a little sly humor to entertain the accompanying adults and this could have been a nice treat. I mean, who doesn’t love dinosaurs but, making them a bit disappointing actually takes effort. Moderately entertaining but, could have been some so much more without all the dumbing down for an audience that has proven, with the success of flicks like Frozen, to be more sophisticated then they are given credit for by the filmmakers here. Also stars Karl Urban in some of the live action footage that bookends the film as a paleontologist whose discovery sets the story in motion.
BARRICADE (2012)
Andrew Currie directs this horror for WWE Studios and while he gives it some nice atmosphere and a spooky visual style, the story, by author Michaelbrent Collings, ultimately doesn’t really go anywhere and doesn’t give you enough of an idea of what’s going on to give you something to fear. It starts out fine with a widower (Eric McCormack) bringing his two children to spend Christmas at a cabin that was special to his recently deceased wife. Once there, we get shadowy figures, strange noises and doors moving on their own. And while that is appropriately spooky, the film goes off on a tangent concerning an illness hitting the children and increasing paranoia hitting dad. It then becomes a bunch of vignettes that may be hallucinations or may not and the film can’t decide whether it is now a supernatural thriller or a film about delusions caused by a strong flu and some residual grief. It all gets rather jumbled and even at it’s end never quite makes clear what exactly was going on and what the story was ultimately about. Mystery is always effective, confusion is just annoying and the film sadly turns from promising supernatural thriller to jumbled mess and never recovers.
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