Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes gets a new lease of life in Guy Ritchie’s, em, Sherlock Holmes….

Holmes is on the case of a serial murderer and breaks in on the last stages of a sacrificial ritual. Capturing the criminal he kick starts a series of black magic events that could shake the foundation of the British Empire.

Both RDJ and Law give good performances as the leads; both close enough to my preferred takes on their characters, thought Holmes is a tad scrappy for my liking.

The plot is quiet a good Holmes plot and fits with many of the stories I remember in previous incarnations, such as the ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ and ‘Murder by Decree’ – the Ripper case. In many ways a reasonably standard Holmes plot. Something unexplainable and unstoppable happens, then Holmes explains and stops it, but now with the sharp humour one has come to expect from both RDJ and Ritchie.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The whole Victorian thing looks lovely, and there are plenty of fancy looking techniques to represent Holmes’ super sleuth skills. A lovely looking film all around.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Quite thrilling in parts. Plenty of action sequences and lots of whodunnits*. The biggest flaw is that with whodunnits it can be nice to try figure out whodunnit. And since they want Sherlock to appear to be Mr Supersleuth, they don’t give you any clues to anything so that he can overwhelm you by flashbacking to ‘clues’.

*in this case mysteries, since you know whodunnit.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Well worth a watch. Glad to hear they’ve signed on to do a sequel. Nice to see the Holmes franchise on the go again.

Overall Rating: 3.67 out of 5 stars

Overview

Mankind has found another world hosting life – Pandora. Pandora is

1. poisonous to Humans,
2. filled with alien life – one race of which is sentient, the Na’vi and
3. has some mineral man wants.

Enter the Avatars; synthesised Na’vi bodies controlled by humans in pods. They can breath in, and interact with, this world. Our hero, Jake Sully is an ex-military cripple, given the chance to walk again in one of these Avatars. He enters their world and learns about it for scientific and military purposes…

Substance

The story is nothing new. In fact it’s FernGully or The Last of the Mohicans in space. But the performances are solid.
There are a few clangers, such as the name of the hard to get substance, ‘Unobtainium’, or the heavy handed foreshadowing, for example:

Style

It’s well lovely, it is. The world looks great and interesting. The alien race is cool. I love how it all ties in together and feels real.
The bio-luminescence night world stuff looks great too.
The helicopter-salamanders seem like an odd, vomit-inducing, evolution, but I’m no Darwin, so maybe it’s possible….
I saw it in 3D. Don’t know if it matters if you don’t.
My only real criticism was:

Entertainment

Very entertaining. I was caught up in the story fairly early into it, and found the survival stuff very tense and the action stuff very engaging. I cared about the characters and their various plights.
Again, my criticism stems from the predictability of the story and the character’s actions which, for me, always hinders my enjoyment.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Summary

Well worth the watch. Not sure if 3D makes a difference or not, some folk liked it, others not so much, others still didn’t really care. I think the film is good enough all around to survive without the gimmick.
Looking forward to seeing how it survives rewatching and the translation to the smaller screen.
Overall Rating: 3.83 out of 5 stars

For reference, this is the system I will be using.

Hope you enjoy!