If you ever wanted to go and watch a warm hearted family movie, then we think we’ve found 2010′s answer to Up. How to Train Your Dragon by Dreamworks Animation is a fantastic journey into the animated world of the Vikings. The story is surrounded by Vikings and Dragons battling a war of attrition with the Vikings battling to save their food from being taken. You meet the films main protagonist in the well named Hiccup whom isn’t really cut out for beast slaying in any shape or form. His father, who is the leader of the Viking camp is jaded that his son hasn’t turned out like him, until Hiccup manages to capture a Night Fury (a legendary dragon feared by the Vikings) where his whole life changes as he learns that the Dragons are not malicious at all. The film’s plot construction is well balanced and naturally we don’t want to give away the storyline, so as usual here we tend to give you a little information and then back off from spoilers.

The awesome Night Fury

Hiccup is played by Jay Baruchel (Milion Dollar Baby) and credit is where it is due to the casting director for the role. Not only is Baruchel perfect for this movie and puts in a stunning performance, the fact that his voice sounds unique and isn’t over used for film narration means that he cannot be addressed or compared to another actor, a problem which Dreamworks were known for in the past. How to Train Your Dragon actually started out as a 2003 book by Cressida Cowell. The mixture of love between Hicucp and the Night Fury and the on-going battle for admiration by his father played by Gerard Butler rebounds and compliments itself so well that the film will bring upon a mix of emotions ending on a real high for the audience.

Animation is once again superb, with Viking characters having realistic hair that could be passed off as real and the Dragons featured in the film also had a realness about them, whether it be the Teflon like skin of the Night Fury for instance. Some of the film runs at a frenetic pace and whilst we never saw it in 3D we could see how certain moments would of benefitted from paying the extra price, however an additional £7.00 simply isn’t worth any additional immersion. Another area we really loved about the film is the creation of the Dragons themselves, they are quirky, colourful and all have their strengths and weaknesses that Hiccup manages to utilise inside the Dragon Arena. You could see how this movie will transcend into a video game and hopefully we’ll get to review the game to round off our coverage. To celebrate the release of the game we were actually invited to a press event regarding the game released by Activision where we got to see Kimodo Dragons up close and personal. Whether you see the twin headed Zippleback or the sight of a Gronckle you are never left believing that the additional characters are a simple after thought.

The friendship shows

How to Train Your Dragon is a real surprise movie and isn’t done justice by it’s trailer. You are actually going to get not only an engaging plotline, but an entertaining experience from start to finish that warms your heart to its very core. Dreamworks and especially director Dean Deblois (Lilo & Stitch) has done a magnificent job and in many ways have surpassed last years animated blockbuster UP. Do yourself a favour and make sure you check this movie out before it finishes it’s run at the cinema, it is truely worth it!

War, War never changes…

This being my first movie review, I thought I would go for one of the slightly overshadowed movies of this year, with Avatar sweeping the box office audiences up by the thousands, quite a few films have been overlooked by the public, The Book Of Eli is the perfect example of one of these movies. This was a actually recommended to me by a mate of mine sometime ago, although I only got around to seeing it with a few people last night. Our choices were;

Invictus – Morgan Freeman and Sweaty south Africans, not perhaps the best combination, although it would probably make a very interesting reality show.

Avatar – The big one which incidentally I haven’t seen yet, the length was an issue here.

Astroboy! – Just kidding.

Anyway, The Book Of Eli is an interesting film with a setting similar to the legendary Fallout 3’s post nuclear wasteland, with vast deserts and self built towns reminiscent to the spaghetti western movies immediately you can tell how well made the sets are. The film stars Denzel Washington with a machete as Eli, Gary Oldman (FOR THE MOTHERLAND!*) with a town and an almost endless army of people in paintball masks and bad airsoft gear plays Carnegie, and the rather ‘phwoar’ Mila Kunis as Solara. The cast is fairly well picked and Denzel Washing  ton pulls off the mysterious albeit cool Eli rather well and adds quite a bit of depth to the character.

*Oldman is Reznov the lovable commie in Call of Duty: World at War.

'I DONT WANNA SET THE WORLLDDD OOONN FIREEEEE' Fallout's wasteland coming through in the movie, Add a dog and turn Denzel round, and you have the boxart.

The Book of Eli is a film that you get back what you put in concentration wise, the story is quite deep and can get fairly complicated if you aren’t paying attention or practically yelling in whisper form; ‘BOOM HEADSHOT’ or ‘UAV ready for deployment’ every time Eli kills some people. The deep story revolves around Eli’s book (obviously) which (MINOR SPOILERS) is a bible, the last in existence to be precise. Oldman’s character, Carnegie is trying to hunt down the bible, as he grew up with it before the nuclear war and is trying to expand his cities and rule the wastes, but has had no luck finding it, but then Eli comes along with an Ipod and empty battery that needs charging, he is given the offer to work with Carnegie on expanding, but refuses, Carnegie then sends Solara to ‘comfort’ Eli in his room, but he turns her down (Quoting one of my mates James: ‘Why the fuck not?!’) He has dinner with Solara in the average way, but, says grace before eating. After Eli has left, a guard gets a bullet in the face after Solara says grace and Carnegie recognises it, realising Eli has the book, the rest unfolds from there.

Eli, from the start of the film is simply travelling west, if you didn’t get the reference that to ‘go west’ means to die and go to heaven, then this is probably the point that you will lose the idea of the film until about three quarters of the way through, this is somewhat unfortunate, as the person next you will probably constantly be asking you ‘why’ that happened or he is saying stuff etc. Despite having quite a few action scenes, the point of this film is more ‘philosophical’ that just mindless violence, which is fine, but seeing somebody get owned with a giant axe or throwing knife never gets old, and the twists and turns in the plotline may be a bit too much for some people. In fact one person next to me walked out and didn’t come back when the film got all deep and philosophical, although there is a Nando’s right next to the cinema, and maybe he had a bad one.

At this point in the movie, I immediately did my caption price impression. "LETS DO THIS"

The film is not entirely serious, with a pretty hilarious part involving Michael Gambon and some big guns that I am not going to ruin for you, but you will probably find it on YouTube in a few weeks, along with about 18 remixes of it. The action scenes are pretty awesome too, with ‘OHOOOO’ moments throughout the fighting scenes, as well as little snippets of violence throughout. The plot twists I mentioned before, should keep you hooked and guessing, although occasionally the predictability of what is going to happen shows up a little bit towards the end, this isn’t too major though.

The soundtrack is fairly decent, although the first time Eli listens to his iPod is a pretty good part, which they could have easily reused the song in the end credits, but didn’t, If you have seen the film you may agree it would have rounded off the ending a little better.

The one problem I had with this film is how slowly it starts, it takes quite a long time for it to pick up enough, although, once it does, you are in for a good ride.

So overall The Book Of Eli is a film you have to understand, getting references and links back to the earlier parts of the film is an important part of watching this one, and it’s not quite a film you could go and see just for the action aspects of it. I would recommend picking this up on Blu-ray as a film to watch when you’re in the mood for something deep, but not boring.

-Dean Case