Matt Damon is yummy! And that may be all this movie really has going for it. It's not bad, it's not good, it's just kind of blah. And then there's Matt Damon. I mean Jodie Foster also plays her role well, she's plenty conniving and power hungry, and you really want her to die, but she just doesn't add enough to make the rest of the movie good
I couldn't make it through all of District 9, partially because the filming was a little nauseating, so I guess this is an improvement over that for the director. There just isn't much to say. It's pretty cliche/over done story, and the addition of the sci-fi element (meaning it's just set half in space) doesn't change or add anything to the story. We have a rich v. poor world. The rich have destroyed the world, and now they get to live in utter happiness/cleanliness on their new home in space while the poor are stuck in the rotting hole of earth. Matt Damon doesn't care, until he gets severe radiation poisoning and cannot accept the fact that he is going to die. But wait! In the end he decides it's worth dying for a good cause, and the rich/poor dynamic gets a little shaken up by his actions. Surprise!
To be fair, the technology and things in this are pretty cool, if sometimes a little gross (Matt Damon is turned into a weapon by having it literally attached to his bones). But, that might really be the only other thing that made this movie worth watching.
In the end, I give this a 6 out of 10, yes, I like Matt Damon that much!
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters
Rick Riordan has written some truly fantastic stories. Who knew you could make Greek mythology so accurately modern? And, even better, they're simple enough stories to adapt to the big screen! Or at least one would think, upon reading the books. What Disney has done has messed everything up. The first movie made it seem impossible to continue the series in any way, but this one does make up for that in some ways.
They bring back the prophesy that is the whole driving factor behind this first series, though they do have to edit the dates because the characters started the first movie at 15, they fix Annabeth to actually have blonde hair and not look like a 22 year old, they actually try to stick to the story a little bit! I was excited. It was already looking better than the first movie! The acting was fine, the story was progressing, they could turn this into a whole series after all! And then something changed.
Half way through the movie the acting turned vapid and removed. It seemed like they were doing nothing more than reading idiotic lines off the page when they were supposed to be in the middle of life or death situations to save the camp. And then came the CGI Kronos that looked eerily like This is the End's devil (minus the swinging male appendage). At that point, I just had to laugh. Disney had done it again! They teased me, got my hopes up, made me believe that I would like Rick Riordan's story in a movie, and then popped the balloon with a horrifically rueful smile.
It's still not as bad as the first movie, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, which was truly horrible, but it was still pretty bad. You could definitely skip the Lightning Thief, and you could probably skip this one too. In the end, I give this a 5 out of 10, maybe just stop watching half-way through and pick up the book to see how it ends!
They bring back the prophesy that is the whole driving factor behind this first series, though they do have to edit the dates because the characters started the first movie at 15, they fix Annabeth to actually have blonde hair and not look like a 22 year old, they actually try to stick to the story a little bit! I was excited. It was already looking better than the first movie! The acting was fine, the story was progressing, they could turn this into a whole series after all! And then something changed.
Half way through the movie the acting turned vapid and removed. It seemed like they were doing nothing more than reading idiotic lines off the page when they were supposed to be in the middle of life or death situations to save the camp. And then came the CGI Kronos that looked eerily like This is the End's devil (minus the swinging male appendage). At that point, I just had to laugh. Disney had done it again! They teased me, got my hopes up, made me believe that I would like Rick Riordan's story in a movie, and then popped the balloon with a horrifically rueful smile.
It's still not as bad as the first movie, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, which was truly horrible, but it was still pretty bad. You could definitely skip the Lightning Thief, and you could probably skip this one too. In the end, I give this a 5 out of 10, maybe just stop watching half-way through and pick up the book to see how it ends!
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones
There are too many things wrong with this movie to list them all here. This is another book turned movie that just flopped as a movie. The fact that it would have been so easy to make it good just increases my total disappointment. The acting was pretty bad, the plot line was horrendous, and the entire feel of the movie was just a joke. In a time where the world is not interested in another stupid teen, love, vampire movie (enough of the Twilight shit already!), this just adds to the pile.
The book is great. It's a little bit of a twist on the super natural stories, though it does still have that angsty teen love element to it, it is more well done than some others recently released. There's this whole angels and demons thing, but it's different than your typical story. The people saving the world are super humans because of angel blood, and the people trying to end the world are a new age version of Nazis. They use the demons to cleanse the world of all the unpure, subpar humans/demons/half-breeds that simply do not deserve to live. And the leader behind it all is pretty damn evil, and smart! In the movie, you get a little bit of that, but the evil element gets turned into more of a joke. I love Jonathan Reese Myers, and am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in that he was following a bad script/bad director instead of just acting crazy because he could not truly pull of evil. I've seen him be evil, I was excited about his Valentine, and then I was disgusted by his performance. In fact, I was pretty disgusted by this whole movie.
Again, there is a difference between a bastardization of a book that still works, and one that turns it into a Twilight wanna-be. This movie chose the latter, and truly succeeded at it's aim of being a piece of shit. In the end, I give this a 3 out of 10, maybe the tweens will like it.
The book is great. It's a little bit of a twist on the super natural stories, though it does still have that angsty teen love element to it, it is more well done than some others recently released. There's this whole angels and demons thing, but it's different than your typical story. The people saving the world are super humans because of angel blood, and the people trying to end the world are a new age version of Nazis. They use the demons to cleanse the world of all the unpure, subpar humans/demons/half-breeds that simply do not deserve to live. And the leader behind it all is pretty damn evil, and smart! In the movie, you get a little bit of that, but the evil element gets turned into more of a joke. I love Jonathan Reese Myers, and am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in that he was following a bad script/bad director instead of just acting crazy because he could not truly pull of evil. I've seen him be evil, I was excited about his Valentine, and then I was disgusted by his performance. In fact, I was pretty disgusted by this whole movie.
Again, there is a difference between a bastardization of a book that still works, and one that turns it into a Twilight wanna-be. This movie chose the latter, and truly succeeded at it's aim of being a piece of shit. In the end, I give this a 3 out of 10, maybe the tweens will like it.
Lee Daniel's: The Butler
I was really excited about this movie. The preview made me tear up, and that is a pretty hard thing to do, let alone in just a preview. I really want to read the book. I mean, how much more powerful can you get than the view of U.S. politics and history from inside the Whitehouse? O yea, make that view from a black man living through some of the most momentous racial events in our history. Add in powerhouse acting from Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, James Marsden, John Cusack, and David Oyelowo, just to name a few, and you have the formula for an amazing movie. However, this fell way short of expectations for me.
The acting was great, the story was there, the history was there, the power and emotion were not. Maybe it's because they tried to add too much. I mean, one movie trying to tackle the Civil Rights movement, JFK and his death, the Nixon triumphs and failures, Vietnam, etc. on top of the story of a man trying to raise young, thoughtful black men in all of that history, is just too much. Something is going to get lost. In this movie, it was the feeling that was lost. For example, you feel JFK's death (even though he was only a fraction of the movie), but you do not feel Forest Whitaker's son's death. They try, Oprah Winfrey falls to pieces, it's thrown in to mess up the climax of the husband and wife's improving relationship, it's even the kid you like the most! But you still just don't feel it. You don't feel it when the other son comes back into the fold and reconnects with his father. You don't even really feel it when Oprah dies at the end. There is just too much there for the depth, the content, and the accuracy.
On the other hand, my Aunt, who also lived through a lot of the events depicted, absolutely loved this movie. She felt it, but I think that was more because of her own experiences and memories and less because of the movie. Or, maybe I'm just heartless/have seen too many of these kinds of movies for this one to really resonate. Considering some of the other racially sensitive movies that have come out this year (Nelson Mandela, 12 Years a Slave), this falls short.
In the end, I give this a 7 out of 10. It was good, it just didn't pull at my heart strings like it was supposed to.
The acting was great, the story was there, the history was there, the power and emotion were not. Maybe it's because they tried to add too much. I mean, one movie trying to tackle the Civil Rights movement, JFK and his death, the Nixon triumphs and failures, Vietnam, etc. on top of the story of a man trying to raise young, thoughtful black men in all of that history, is just too much. Something is going to get lost. In this movie, it was the feeling that was lost. For example, you feel JFK's death (even though he was only a fraction of the movie), but you do not feel Forest Whitaker's son's death. They try, Oprah Winfrey falls to pieces, it's thrown in to mess up the climax of the husband and wife's improving relationship, it's even the kid you like the most! But you still just don't feel it. You don't feel it when the other son comes back into the fold and reconnects with his father. You don't even really feel it when Oprah dies at the end. There is just too much there for the depth, the content, and the accuracy.
On the other hand, my Aunt, who also lived through a lot of the events depicted, absolutely loved this movie. She felt it, but I think that was more because of her own experiences and memories and less because of the movie. Or, maybe I'm just heartless/have seen too many of these kinds of movies for this one to really resonate. Considering some of the other racially sensitive movies that have come out this year (Nelson Mandela, 12 Years a Slave), this falls short.
In the end, I give this a 7 out of 10. It was good, it just didn't pull at my heart strings like it was supposed to.
At the World's End
Now, do NOT get this confused with This is the End. Yes, they both have some apocalyptic elements, yes they both involve best friends taking on evil to survive, and yes, they are both ridiculous, but the key point to remember is that one is Simon Pegg and one is Seth Rogen. And I, for one, simply love Simon Pegg and pretty much everything he and his crew do: Run Fatboy Run, Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead (my personal favorite), etc.
This starts off with a dysfunctional Simon Pegg who never got out of the glory days of highschool. He knows he needs to move on, but doesn't seem to think he can get over his problems until he finishes the one thing he felt he failed in high school: a night visiting all of the pubs in his home town. He convinces all of his friends to go with him, to mend old bridges, and start anew, but they quickly discover that the town has both changed and not, but not in the way any of them thought. Enter the robots who are trying to take over the world, one dinky English town at a time!
The one liners are funny, the ridiculousness is reeled in just enough to be hilarious, the acting is excellent, and the chemistry between all of the people involved makes it all come together. Yes, there is a huge computer that turns everyone into robots and tries to take away free-will, but details! It's funny. And does have a message: you cannot take away people's free will for their own good, they'd rather nuke than world than live in perpetual peace and happiness!
In the end, I give his an 8 out of 10. It's no Shaun of the Dead, but it is pretty damn funny nonetheless!
This starts off with a dysfunctional Simon Pegg who never got out of the glory days of highschool. He knows he needs to move on, but doesn't seem to think he can get over his problems until he finishes the one thing he felt he failed in high school: a night visiting all of the pubs in his home town. He convinces all of his friends to go with him, to mend old bridges, and start anew, but they quickly discover that the town has both changed and not, but not in the way any of them thought. Enter the robots who are trying to take over the world, one dinky English town at a time!
The one liners are funny, the ridiculousness is reeled in just enough to be hilarious, the acting is excellent, and the chemistry between all of the people involved makes it all come together. Yes, there is a huge computer that turns everyone into robots and tries to take away free-will, but details! It's funny. And does have a message: you cannot take away people's free will for their own good, they'd rather nuke than world than live in perpetual peace and happiness!
In the end, I give his an 8 out of 10. It's no Shaun of the Dead, but it is pretty damn funny nonetheless!
This is the End
This movie is utterly ridiculous. It is Jonah Hill, Seth Rogan, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, James Franco, and Craig Robinson being their own pot-head selves in an apocalyptic L.A. plot. There is even an huge scary devil, with an equally large penis that goes around and eats people in the end! The best part? The Back Street Boys closing out the whole thing in heaven!
Yes, it is absolutely ridiculous, and if that is your thing, then this is your movie. My pot-head brother, and wanna-be pot-head best friend loved it. There were some really funny moments (D-bag Michael Cera getting impaled and being too high to notice, Emma Watson being a badass with a chain saw), and there were some really gross moments (d-bag Michael Cera getting impaled, Johan Hill puking his brains out upon being possessed). There was even a plot: there's some form of the rapture, he group of Hollywood friends try to survive the apocalypse, and some of them get saved and end up in heaven by doing good deeds! Bonus? It all seems real because the actor's just play themselves, the only fake thing is, well, the entire story, but who's really paying attention to that.
There really isn't much more to say. It is worth the watch on Redbox or Netflix (as in do not pay more than $1.20 to see this movie), if ridiculous, nonsensical penis/gory humor is your thing, otherwise you can definitely skip it. In the end, I give this a 5 out of 10
Yes, it is absolutely ridiculous, and if that is your thing, then this is your movie. My pot-head brother, and wanna-be pot-head best friend loved it. There were some really funny moments (D-bag Michael Cera getting impaled and being too high to notice, Emma Watson being a badass with a chain saw), and there were some really gross moments (d-bag Michael Cera getting impaled, Johan Hill puking his brains out upon being possessed). There was even a plot: there's some form of the rapture, he group of Hollywood friends try to survive the apocalypse, and some of them get saved and end up in heaven by doing good deeds! Bonus? It all seems real because the actor's just play themselves, the only fake thing is, well, the entire story, but who's really paying attention to that.
There really isn't much more to say. It is worth the watch on Redbox or Netflix (as in do not pay more than $1.20 to see this movie), if ridiculous, nonsensical penis/gory humor is your thing, otherwise you can definitely skip it. In the end, I give this a 5 out of 10
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Star Trek: Into Darkness
Ahhhhh, Chris Pine!!! I am in love with him and everything he does! So, needless to say, I loved this movie. The first one was excellent, and this one was equally excellent. I grew up with trekkie parents, so I have seen a lot of every version of Star Trek. I mean I watched the show, I watched the movies, I watched New Generation, Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, all of them. I did not watch them as much as my parents, not did I watch them in order like they did. But still, this was part of my life growing up, and I am glad that I get to add new things to it. The new timeline is great because it allows J.J. Abrams and his cast to pay appropriate tribute to the old Star Trek and start a new version that is all their own without making too many people upset.
This second installment continues along the broken timeline from the first movie so that J.J. Abram's Khan story can play out the way he likes. Kirk, though seemingly found in Star Trek, appears to still be struggling with some issues that are brought to the forefront with Colonel Pike's death and a new threat that changes and develops in the course of the movie. Benedict Cumberbatch was excellent as Khan and played a perfect unknown element that kept the suspense in the movie high throughout the whole 2.5 hours!
Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, and the rest of the Star Trek crew were also as equally excellent as they were in the first movie as well. I love them all individually, and I love what they bring to these movies. Add them, to Chris Pine, to J.J. Abrams, and you have a truly fantastic combination that could continue for years (much like the originals). It is nice to have this for my generation to call its own and to share with our trekkie predecessors.
In the end, I give this a 10 out of 10. It may not be perfection, but man is it good.
This second installment continues along the broken timeline from the first movie so that J.J. Abram's Khan story can play out the way he likes. Kirk, though seemingly found in Star Trek, appears to still be struggling with some issues that are brought to the forefront with Colonel Pike's death and a new threat that changes and develops in the course of the movie. Benedict Cumberbatch was excellent as Khan and played a perfect unknown element that kept the suspense in the movie high throughout the whole 2.5 hours!
Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, and the rest of the Star Trek crew were also as equally excellent as they were in the first movie as well. I love them all individually, and I love what they bring to these movies. Add them, to Chris Pine, to J.J. Abrams, and you have a truly fantastic combination that could continue for years (much like the originals). It is nice to have this for my generation to call its own and to share with our trekkie predecessors.
In the end, I give this a 10 out of 10. It may not be perfection, but man is it good.
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