Dead Genre

Mary Shaw breathed life and unspeakable horror into inanimate ventriloquist's dolls. Dead Silence seeks, with the help of the long-dead Mary Shaw and her dolls of small-town Ravens fair, to breathe life into the near-dead horror genre. When wife Ella Ashen (Amber Valetta) is brutally murdered, husband Jamie Ashen (Ryan Kwanten) embarks on a fact-finding mission that delves into local lore, and is punctuated by much copybook horror sequences at motels, graveyards (!), and abandoned theatres. What could set this movie a bare notch above the mindless horror flick, is a few reasonably unexpected twists in the tale. A recommended movie only for those hellbent on picking on the last vestiges of an idea-starved genre

11.5/20

Game On

Never never never underestimate Gerard Butler. In terms of the most recent “good to great” finds of Hollywood that need to replace a galaxy of stars that are past their fifties, Gerard Butler does himself little discredit and delivers another great action performance. Not a great character actor in the mold of say Christian Bale, this actor is a perfect compromise between the latter and say an all out action hero like Jason Statham. The plot of Gamer is hackneyed – death row inmates in a live television fight to the finish, a certain (and impossible) number of wins for a pardon. The protagonist does not fail to realize that he is not getting out the easy way, that there is too much at stake if he does. So he gets out the hard way, and with the help of some counter-culturists, gets back his family and ends the TV regime of the aptly named Slayers. Have fun, till the next meaningful Gerard Butler movie

13.0/20