Thursday 8 July 2010

Four stars? Really Empire...?



I remember my first ever issue of Empire...It was the release of the first of Sam Rami's Spider-man's, Back in 2002. I was just a pubescent boy with acne and terrible hair at the time. Ever since, Empire has been a kind of hero to me. Not Total Film, not Sight and Sound and not Film two-Thousand and whatever... it was always Empire.
I always agreed with any criticism or praise Empire dished out on default. Since, in my early years of high school I had few friends, Empire became a kind of imaginary friend to me:
SCREAM IS GAY’
‘Well Empire gave it four stars!’
Or
Date Movie is fockin’ bangin’ mate’
‘Uh, Empire gave it one star...’
Recently, cracks began to form between me and the movie magazine that I once loved so dearly. When, last week my father kindly purchased me a cinema ‘Unlimited Card’ (My last one expired in 2005) I went online to have a gander on what to watch and Empire nudged me towards two films:
Brooklyn’s Finest
Empire – Four stars
Me - Two Stars.
Looked shit in the trailer, so I should have trusted my instincts. Nevertheless, my ‘yes lord Empire, I’ll see it’ auto-response pushed through. Total rubbish. Boring characters. Recycled plot. Gratuitous violence. It was lucky I had the Facebook phone application to get me through.
Shrek 4 – Four stars. Me - 3 Stars Thank fuck for that - the last installment of the quadrilogy was total shit - glad to see the friendly geen ogre is back on top! However, apart from some nice 3-D, it was total ogre-shite, I didn’t even snigger. Not once.
A week later I felt I had to see the latest Twilight effort. I had seen the last two and given it has become such an iconic franchise, I thought I may as well. I don’t quite know why, since I thought the first two were pretty crap...Either way, I still somehow ended up munching on my starburst in the opening day-advanced screening of the film. And yes, I was surrounded, of course, by the ritual horde of screaming 14 year old girls.
The good thing about the first two films in the “saga” was that however badly acted or poorly written they were, they remained entertaining throughout. This time I was actually bored throughout the entirety of Eclipse . Even the climax was as dull as my grandma’s stroodle. It was an overly-sappy, badly put together and rushed MESS... Worst of all, Dekota Fanning’s only intriguing character - though plastered all over Eclipse posters - barely had one line throughout.
“Empire is going to tear this summer turkey apart,” I thought when leaving the screening. But to my horror I came home and checked the review and it read – “By far the best Twilight film to date.” – Four stars. (Me? ... 1 star)
And that was the moment I lost all faith in Empire...
...I am willing to be fickle on the matter though, considering I still have a subscription...

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