Sherlock Holmes
                                   
Director: Rachel Lee Goldenberg
Year: 2010
Rating: 5.0
Sherlock Holmes meets Kaiju in a steampunk London in this rather absurd but not entirely bad tale. It is made by Asylum Productions who have over 500 films to their credit - all as obscure as one's fleeting dreams - but this is better than their Abraham Lincoln vs Zombies which I saw last year. There is some imagination at work here and some ok CGI. The main weaknesses are the two actors who play Holmes and Watson and the dialogue the script saddles them with. Holmes (Ben Syder) has the presence of a rhubarb and Watson (Gareth David-Lloyd - the quiet one on Torchwood) is fine but never feels like a Watson should. The director is Rachel Lee Goldenberg who shows some talent in keeping this going at a good steady pace and particularly keeps the nutty finale pumping with fine editing. There are a few lengthy scenes such as Watson climbing a sheer cliff and Watson running through the woods that serve no purpose but get the film to 90-minutes.
 

Watson is in the sunset of his years - it is 1940 and London is being bombed. It reminds him of a case that has never been told when London was fire bombed years previously. By a dragon. He decides to narrate it to a young woman taking care of him. A giant octopus pulls a ship to the bottom of the ocean and Holmes is brought in by Lestrade (William Huw). The one survivor describes a monster with tentacles. Put down to delusion of course. But then a dinosaur does its imitation of Jack the Ripper by killing people in Whitechapel. Again, put down to mass hysteria. Till a dinosaur chases Holmes and Watson through the woods. The investigation leads them to a mad technological genius who has created these creatures plus a dragon and a female robot that Watson takes a liking to before she tries to kill him. Poor Watson. She looks like Wednesday as a grown-up. Sherlock tries to save the day in a white balloon with navigation controls. Fortunately, the US military did not shoot it down. Ambitious for a film of this type and better I think than the 2,000 people on IMDB who rated this on average as 3.4. But mainly I am shocked that 2,000 people have seen this.