Wrath of the Titans

2.9DC
Wrath of the Titans is an enjoyable, gritty bit of mythological hokum with CGI effects on the epic scale of Lord of the Rings. This is an excellent conversion from Prime Focus with the standout 3D scenes being in the labyrinth of Tartarus. At times the conversion looks almost native but overall it doesn't quite hit the heights of conversions such as "Titanic" or "Alice in Wonderland". It's a valiant effort though and by all accounts, a huge improvement on their conversion of Clash of the Titans.

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Dredd

2.7DC
Set in a Dystopian future, Dredd is an ultra violent and bleak, movie adaptation of the 2000 AD comic book hero...a kind of Dirty Harry (specifically The Enforcer) meets Robocop, meets Escape from New York, with a sprinkle of Blade Runner (the music of the slow motion drug induced scenes even having a Vangelis quality). I know it's only a movie, but while watching the two leads constantly battle it out, I kept thinking to myself, if this was a typical day in the life of Dredd, no amount of money or job satisfaction would be worth going through all of that for..unless your as psychotic as the very criminals that you are fighting. With regards Dredd, the jury (no pun intended) is still out on that one.
How's the 3D though? In a word..."Dredd-ful". I went into this movie with reasonable expectations (having read several reviews) but boy was I disappointed. I was under the impression that Dredd was shot natively but on viewing the movie, apart from a few scenes here and there, to my eyes Dredd is an obvious conversion and a poor one at that. Very rarely is there any sense of depth and characters and objects have that tell tale flatness so evident in poor conversions. Throughout the film, scenes look flat but with just a bit of added layering to selective objects. There is little, if no sense of space (between the characters and walls for example) and the overall shallowness of the film betrays the movie's 2D origins to my eyes. Yes there are a few scenes here and there, splattered (pun intended) throughout, but overall this is a weak effort at 3D. To all you 3D fans who have yet to see this...take my advice...watch the 2D version instead. That way you want be disappointed and annoyed at the quality of the 3D throughout the movie.

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Madagascar 3 : Europe's Most Wanted

3D
 Madagascar 3 : Europe's Most Wanted is an inventive, madcap, sometimes over the top animation aimed squarely at children. Although I found it occasionally irritating (one set piece is followed by another with alarming regularity) the 3D is a total winner and has an amazing quality throughout.  As soon as I saw the 3D displayed in the Bluray menu, I realized that the 3D in this would be special and I wasn't disappointed. The only drawback with having this type of strong 3D is that, throughout the movie, from time to time, some ghosting is visible. Having said that, I will take strong 3D and some ghosting anytime over weak 3D with no ghosting.

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Frankenweenie

3DC

Frankenweenie is a kind of cross between Frankenstein (the story), Edward Scissorhands (the location design) and Ed Wood (the style and B&W photography). This movie could only come from the imagination of Tim Burton and in my opinion, it's one of his best movies of recent years and similarly, at times....genuinely sad and moving. The puppet animation is excellent and as you'd expect from Tim Burton, suitably quirky.  The story is a nice variation on Frankenstein and there are knowing winks to the kind of films that inspired Tim Burton as a kid....the television shows real footage from Hammer's Dracula (AKA Horror of Dracula) and the finale of the movie pays homage to 50's Monster movies such as The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms etc. Apparently, Frankenweenie was converted by Prime Focus and overall it is a sterling job with a nice sense of depth that is consistent throughout. The model puppets have a nice volume to them and we really get a sense that these are real, solid objects, rather than CGI. There's not much pop-out that I remember but that doesn't spoil the 3D, which is used very creatively to enhance the story.

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Hotel Transylvania

3DA 

While watching Hotel Transylvania, I was constantly reminded of Despicable Me. The style and presentation is very similar while Count Dracula's accent sounds a lot like Gru's. That's surprising especially when you consider that Despicable Me came from Universal Pictures while Hotel Transylvania is from Columbia and Sony.  Additionally, the 3D is also on a par with that movie...its consistently good with some stand out and pop out moments.


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ParaNorman

2.7D
Although ParaNorman is good fun, quirky and a bit different, overall I was disappointed with the 3D. Unlike Coraline (made by the same team) the 3D doesn't seem to improve much in the ghostly or "other worldly" moments. In Coraline, when she enters the alternative world, the 3D is really amped up to create lots of "wow" moments. In ParaNorman,, the 3D never really inspires or reaches the same level. Sure, there are a few nice moments (usually during scenes of confrontation) but overall the separation is quite narrow throughout the movie. Having said that, there is a definite volume to the excellent puppet characters even if it is only a shallow one. We never really get much sense of depth in most of the environments though.

With regards the 3D then, for a kid's movie that happily touches on subjects of death, suicide, homosexuality, alludes to the F-word and is full of creepy ghouls and zombies with frequently missing limbs, is it too much to ask for a decent and strong 3D throughout the movie too?
 
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Resident Evil: Retribution

2.8D

I loved the first Resident Evil movie, disliked the 2nd one with its fast editing and confused storyline, enjoyed the 3rd again while the 4th movie was just OK. Unfortunately, I was totally bored with the 5th movie of the franchise. Maybe its a generational thing, but 90 minutes of watching people shoot and fight does not for me, a good film make. Agreed, visually the film is excellent and creates a great Sci-Fi environment but the plot and character development is so poor, even non-existent that I didn't care much what happened within that world. As well as this failing, there was no suspense or fear throughout the movie...the zombies just seemed to exist purely as cannon-fodder for Alice and her cohorts to show off their fighting skills. Personally, I didn't feel any connection with any of the characters (unlike the first movie) for me, they were all just too two dimensional and seemed to exist just to make up the numbers for the aforementioned incessant fight sequences. An example would be in the relationship between Alice and the little girl. Just because she hugs her and shows a maternal instinct doesn't necessarily mean that the audience will automatically be drawn in emotionally to their supposed relationship. It's not enough. More interaction is needed to develop their relationship and make the audience really care. This was true of all the characters in Resident Evil: Retribution and, if anything the movie needed to be slightly longer (or have less fights) in order to explore more of the human bonds between the characters. Otherwise we just feel as though we are watching a Video game with computerized characters.
With regards the 3D, it was a slight improvement on the 4th installment but there were few "wow" moments and the 3D is least successful in the type of fast paced fight sequence that is so prevalent in the movie. Overall, another disappointment in the franchise.

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Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter

2.8DC

A pretty good conversion with a mixed bag of 3D. The 3D is amped up for the action scenes and is usually flatter during moments of dialogue

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Dr Seuss' The Lorax

3D

Universal Picture's adaptation of Dr. Seuss' children's book from 1971 centering around a cautionary tale of Corporate greed and the natural environment. Featuring the voices of Danny DeVito and Zac Efron, the 3D is excellent and consistent throughout
 
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The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists

2.8D
The Pirates is a fun family film from Aardman Animations (of Wallace and Gromit fame). The animation combines a mixture of stop motion and CGI and is breathtaking in its attention to detail. As the film is aimed mainly at children, it looks as though the producers have gone with an overall mild approach to the 3D. It is at least consistent throughout though, there are no issues with misaligned parallax or ghosting etc and occasionally, very occasionally, the 3D is boosted up...sadly, not enough to boost its score up any higher though.


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The Amazing Spider-Man

2.8D
"The Amazing Spider-Man" is an interesting update on the franchise and one that this reviewer enjoyed. Although the move has a slightly
different, even quirky approach to the characters, the action scenes are still presented in a stylish, comic book manner, not too indifferent to what we have seen before in the Tobey Maguire movies.
The 3D is problematic though and is presented in the following manner...

Normal scenes =  weak to average 3D
Action scenes = Amazing 3D

See the discrepancy? The 3D in the action scenes is breathtaking, having a depth and feeling of spaciousness unseen in most other 3D movies. At times I got a feeling of vertigo watching Spiderman climbing up or falling off a skyscraper. The final battle has the best sustained 3D in the whole movie with an "amazing" 3D shot of Spidey swinging through a crane's arm. The problem with saving the best 3D for just the action scenes though is that, not only is the 3D inconsistent, but it's often difficult to really take in and enjoy the 3D effect.  3D tends to work better for scenes with slower edits and so doesn't always work best when used just in the action scenes. The film would have been much more successful, in the 3D department, if the non-action scenes had displayed a better quality 3D too. Not only would the consistency have been better, but the 3D would also helped to draw us into the intimate moments too. I look forward to improvements to the overall 3D in the sequel coming in 2014.

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Brave

3D

With their animation "Brave", Pixar have created an instant 3D classic on a par with Dreamwork's "How to Train your Dragon" and Disney's "Tangled". The animation is exceptional and the 3D consistently good throughout the movie. Add to these positives the voice talents of the likes of Billy Connolly,  Emma Thompson, Robbie Coltrane and Julie Walters and "Brave" comes over as a hugely enjoyable fairly tale for both children and adults.


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Spy Kids 4 : All the Time in the World

2.5D
In recent years Robert Rodriquez has given us two of the best looking 3D films...Spy kids 3-D : Game Over and The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl. The fact that this latest outing of the franchise is a conversion then comes as a big surprise. The only reason I can think of is because the film has a lot of special effects it was felt that all the 3D should be done in post production. Whatever the reasons, as a conversion it gets a rating of 2.5D.

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UPDATE: I watched this recently and am saddened to say that the conversion job on this was done very poorly. Not only are rotoscope halos viewable around the main characters throughout the film, but object placement within the stereo window is all over the place. Quite often, objects that are behind other ones, appear as though they are in front. Also, the overall 3D effect adds only a bit of roundness to characters and objects without giving much sense of depth and perspective. Sure, there are the occasional good moments, usually during the CGI effect scenes (which may have been rendered differently) but when I think that this movie was made by Robert Rodriquez, who gave us "Spy Kids 3-D : Game Over" (which has incredible demo quality 3D) its even more unfathomable as to why he would go down the conversion route and then accept this poor attempt at a conversion. My advice would be to let the kids watch it in 2D so that they don't grow up with low 3D standards.(v)

Step Up 3D

2.8D
Although I'm not a fan of Hip Hop or Rap music, overall, I quite enjoyed Step Up 3D. It was lively, had likeable characters and of course, the choreography was top notch. As this type of film is aimed squarely at children and teenagers the story is pretty predictable ...couples fall in and out of love and there is some major problem to be overcome with the rival gang before the status quo can be resumed. Also, as is quite usual in this type of musical film, the characters  inhabit a Universe far removed from the normal everyday reality that you and I know and so on that front, it is pure escapism. My favourite scene was a Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger's tribute number (all shot in one take) accompanied by a modern recording of "I Won't Dance".  It is beautifully shot and choreographed on location in New York and credit must go to the producers for having the nerve to put an old-fashioned dance routine number like this one in such a modern dance movie.

How is the 3D though? Well the key word is "inconsistent". It varies between stunning, demo quality 3D, shallow 3D, suspiciously looking converted scenes to the obligatory 2D moments. All the dance numbers have a very deep 3D and look like they were carefully staged by a professional stereographer. In fact the parallax is so wide in these numbers that the 3D verges on "Hyper stereo" at times, where dancer's limbs stretch out in a too long and unnatural way. Having said that the 3D does look great during these dance numbers. Unfortunately, the dance numbers tend to stand apart from the rest of the movie and only illustrates further how mixed the quality of the rest of the 3D is.(v) 


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Titanic

3DC
James Cameron really went to town converting Titanic to 3D and it shows. It's a stunning conversion that can even occasionally fool you into believing that it was shot natively. The 3D depth is pretty consistent throughout although, of course, there are a few flatter moments as well as the obligatory 2D scene. The 3D really shines in those moments when Rose and Jack are navigating the corridors or the engine room but there are many standout moments. Titanic is destined to become a classic example in how to do a 3D conversion properly.(v)


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Kung Fu Panda 2

3D
Kung Fu Panda 2 is an energetic and inventive animation aimed squarely at the kids. There's are excellent voice-overs from the likes of Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Gary Oldman and Dustin Hoffman and the animation, as you'd expect from Dreamworks, is fantastic. I particularly enjoyed the changed of style from modern to retro animation as Po reminisces about his past. The 3D is top notch throughout too. There is a constant negative and positive parallax on display (I even found myself ducking on several occasions) and the objects have a roundness and solidity to them as you'd expect from the best 3D CGI animation.(v)

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2

2.7 DC
The picture quality in this final installment is outstanding and there are a few nice 3D moments with a decent sense of depth. Sadly though, overall, most of the 3D is shallow and only adds a little bit of an enhancement to the already excellent 2D image. Also, there are some anomalies with the conversion....rotoscoping halos are occasionally evident and objects sometimes look unnatural within the 3D space.(v) 

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Silent Hill: Revelation 3D

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D is the long awaited sequel to the 2006 movie Silent Hill starring Radha Mitchell.. The good news is that the movie was shot natively in 3D. The movie opens on 26th October.

More info at the IMDB and Here

Shrek the Third

3DC

Although Shrek the Third is a top notch conversion, with a nice level of depth throughout, the movie itself is the weakest of the franchise.(v)
The conversion was done by  Legend3D

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Prometheus

3D

As I have yet to see the Blu-ray 3D of Prometheus, this review is based on my cinema experience of the film.
Although I came out of my viewing of Prometheus feeling a little bit muddled with the storyline, overall I enjoyed this Sci-Fi spectacular. Prometheus, is one of those movies (similarly to other Scott films like Blade Runner) that requires multiple viewings in order to fully appreciate its multi-layered themes. Having said that, the film also does not lose its B- Movie origins....Alien, after all, was really just a glorified sci-fi/horror B-Movie. Just like the rest of the franchise, the effects and production design are spectacular and the 3D, although not exactly demo worthy material, manages to find a nice balance with the visuals. Most of the 3D is of the positive parallax (depth) variety and at times you really do feel like you are looking through a window and into another world. Prometheus, although not the greatest example of 3D, still gets the 3D logo for its tidy and well balanced use of the technology.

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