Into The Woods Review: Into The Padded Ending

I shouldn't be so negative about this.  There were things to like.  The acting was wonderful.  Everyone involved had amazing songs.  The story was engaging.  If the movie ended at the 90 minute mark, it would be great!  Except it didn't.

And then there's Johnny Depp.  Normally I like the guy.  He's quirky and generally fun to watch.  So, what do they do in this movie?  Why make him a pedophile!  Because why not?  I know.  I'm being unfair.  But I say listen to his song as the Big Bad Wolf.  He's singing about how wonderful her young flesh is.  Listen to the way he sings it.  I know he was singing about eating her.  But I dare you to listen to that song and not get just a little creeped out.  Because it is more than a little sexual.

Oh God the ending.  The entire story is driven by the Baker and his wife wanting to have a child.  One would think that once they have said child and everyone is happy, the movie should be over.  I mean this is a fairy tale story.  I know this because it has Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack and his Beanstalk.  So why didn't the movie end?  Why did this movie have to be so depressing?  If it had ended after Act II, I would've called it a cute little movie with some great music and memorable performances by all involved.  But since the movie continued and basically made everything pointless, I now have issues.

Here's where I spoil it so don't read further if you don't want it ruined.  If you want my conclusion, wait for the rental.  Save your money.

Red Riding Hood: It goes through her normal story.  She goes to grannie's house.  She's eaten.  She's saved.  The end.  Except here she has her family killed and she has no place to go.  So she goes to live with the Baker.

Jack: He gets the giant's gold.  He kills the giant by cutting down the beanstalk.  Happily ever after.  Except now with the giant's wife coming down a second beanstalk and killing everyone in the village, he now doesn't have his beloved cow and his mother was murdered.  So he goes to live with the Baker.  Because hey, why not?

Baker and his Wife: They got the mcguffins and broke the witch's curse.  The witch who we thought was just evil, turned out to not be so bad; overbearing and sociopathic to be sure, but still kinda likeable.  Baker and his wife had a baby.  The witch got to be young again.  And everything is right with the world.  More or less.  Except that isn't the end of the movie.  The wife cheats on the Baker with Cinderella's prince.  (more on that coming up)  And then she falls down a cliff and dies.  Uhm... symbolism?  Because the Baker has to raise a baby alone and that's what happened to his father and why his father ran away?  You know what?  No.  Stupid ending.  I hate it.

Cinderella:  She has the horrible step-sisters and terrible step-mother.  She meets her fairy godmother.  Ok that was changed to the ghost of her dead mother.  She gets a dress and gold slippers.  With high heels but whatever.  And yes gold and not glass.  She meets the prince and they fall in love and live happily ever after.  If ever after is about a week.  The prince is a philanderer.  She leaves the prince.  And goes back to being a simple cleaning lady living with the Baker because hey everyone else is! 

The Witch:  Yeah she kills herself.  I still don't know how.  She throws some magic beans around.  It creates a tar pit and she gets sucked in.  I still don't know how that happened.  I guess it's one of those "It's magic.  I don't have to explain it." type things.

The ending was horrible and it ruined the entire movie.  The entire story was around this quest to break the curse on the Baker so he can have a child.  Only to tack on this pointless and really depressing ending for no good reason.  It dragged the movie on and made it unnecessarily grim. 

And what is the lesson of the story?  Don't wish for things?  Don't try to be better than you are?  Just accept your lot in life and shut up about it? 

If you really want to see it, wait for the rental.

The Hobbit Battle of Five Armies Review: No False Advertising

The title says it all.  There was a Hobbit.  There were five armies and they were all fighting each other.  For about 2 1/2 hours.  There really isn't much to say about it.  It's a 2 1/2 hour climax to the previous two movies.  All the cliffhangers from Desolation of Smaug are tied up in a nice little bow and it comes to a satisfying conclusion.  If you took the journey from the beginning up to this point, you will leave satisfied.  If you haven't, then there's no point.  You won't know the characters.  You won't know why they are there.  You won't understand the development of the characters.  You won't understand what the conflict is about. 

I will say that the visuals are hit and miss.  Sometimes they are just wonderful.  Other times it's painfully obvious it's a green screen.  I don't see any point in seeing this in 3D.  Yeah it would be cool to see Smaug in 3D with all the fire.  It will be cool to see the diamonds flying around.  But it's two scenes in a 2 1/2 hour movie.  You tell me if it's worth the extra money. 

The ending basically follows the book.  I read the book.  And it's the worst ending to an adventure I've ever read.  Bilbo gets knocked in the head and when he wakes up, the fight is over.  At least in this we see the action.  So this is a rare time the movie is better than the book.  At least in this regard. 

Of course the padding gets tied up too.  And it ends as expected.  If you read the book it is even more obvious.  I didn't initially like all the padding but with some time to reflect on it, I won't say I like it, but I understand why it was added.  It gives depth to characters that in the book never got.  In the book, Bard is just a guy.  He has no story and we wouldn't ever know his name if he didn't kill Smaug.  At the very least in the movie we see him as a family man with a loving wife and great kids.  He has a family history with Smaug and his family's reputation is in the toilet because his grandfather failed to kill the dragon.  Is it believable, kinda.  Is it better than nothing?  Absolutely. 

The same can be said about Kili.  The dwarves in the book have very little characterization.  Fili and Kili are the youngest and they are Thorin's nephews.  That's the only real character they get.  Now Kili has a love triangle.  It gives him a chance to show a different side.  Was it what I would've done?  No.  But in hindsight, I understand why they wanted to give at least some of the other companions an arc. 

That's about all I can say.  It's a great conclusion to an epic tale.  It's not a stand alone movie.  You have to see the first two.

Nightcrawler Review: Yellow Journalism at is Yellowist

I have a lot of respect for Jake Gyllenhaal.  I can't spell his last name, but he's a great actor.  It's so rare he plays in cash grab movies.  I know he did Prince of Persia and Day After Tomorrow but still... My point being I really like his acting and I really liked this movie.

I'm a little at a loss for how to describe the movie because it's one of those movies where if I say anything about it, it could detract from the movie.  I'll try to be vague.  Louis Bloom (Gyllenhaal) is a hustler looking for a career.  One day he happens to see a horrible accident and meets Joe Loder (Bill Paxton) who is a freelance videographer, or "nightcrawler" who makes his living filming accidents and such to sell to local news outlets.  Feeling inspired, Louis decides this could be his calling.

That's all I can say about it without giving away integral parts of the movie. 

The movie is awesome.  The film work is great, there are some strong performances by Gyllenhaal and veterans Bill Paxton and Rene Russo. 

Movies like this are frustrating because I just can't talk about it.  It gives too much away.  And I'm dying to talk about it with someone.  There are some great themes and characterizations that should be discussed.

This is a movie worthy of your time and money.

The Judge Review: The Virdict Is In

Oh it's been a while since I've done a movie review.  Mostly because of a lack of any interest for the last few months.  There really hasn't been anything to get too excited over.  This one on the other hand had quite a good amount of buzz behind it.  Mostly for the stellar cast.  Unfortunately, the cast is the best part of the movie. 

The movie is just so.... average.  There's nothing wrong with it.  But there's nothing that really stands out either.  Unless you just have to see Robert Duvall pooping himself.  In way more detail than I ever wanted to see. 

The acting is top notch.  Robert Duvall steals the show and Robert Downey, Jr. is of course brilliant.  But that's really where the praise for the movie ends.  Everything else is just so vanilla.  It's not boring, but for what it could've been, it's just middle of the road.

The story is fairly simple but told in an overly dramatized manner.  An estranged, but successful lawyer in Chicago son returns to his simple Indiana town for his mom's funeral.  Shortly thereafter, his judge father is accused of murder.

I really don't have much to say about it because it's just so unremarkable.  Expect to see this on free TV.

Guardians of the Galaxy Review: I Am Groot!

Wow.  This movie is fun.  Just a big ball of fun for about 2 hours.  Honestly, I was a little worried about this movie.  It's characters that aren't that well-known, with actors that I personally don't care for in most movies, and this is another one in a long line of Marvel movies that are starting to get a little formulaic.  Throw in the non-stop media barrage about this movie and it gave me some pause. 

But this movie is just so much fun. 

I enjoyed just about everything about it.  It's a total cheesefest, but that's why I liked it so much!  The Marvel Universe movies are about the big action.  Iron Man and Captain America does have that level of humor, but it's mostly about the drama.  Guardians of the Galaxy is all about the comedy.  That's not to say there isn't some great action, but it's secondary to the comedy.  Come on!  One of the characters is a gadgeteering anthropomorphic raccoon hauling around a BFG! 

What worked so well and what pushed this movie along is The Guardians.  Five colorful and well fleshed-out characters that you want to keep following.  They are hilarious.  They are fun.  We're rocking out with Starlord listening to classic rock.  Groot has his one sentence he repeats (I am Groot) that is a standard sentence that means just anything.  And the rest of the team seems to understand instinctively what he's really saying.  We got the sexy green assassin with a tragic past.  And then we have the brick of the team who his species is incapable of taking a joke or speaking with a filter.  If you're making Dave Bautista fun and interesting, you're doing MANY things right.

The biggest reason to see this movie is that it continues the overall story arc with the Infinity Gems.  This one is the purple "Space" gem.  The way they portray it is different from the comics.  This gem if slammed into the ground can destroy an entire planet's ecosystem and kill everything on it.  That is why Ronin wants it.  He's a genocidal religious terrorist who wants to wipe out all life defended by the Nova Corps.  (When are we going to see Nova by the way?)  All the while we have this story crossing in the path of Thanos.  So this is only going to get better.

Got to see this movie.  It's just a ton of fun.

Stay after the final credits for what could possibly be the funniest and best cameos so far.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Review: It's World War Ape!

This movie is so good.  Just so good.  I think it has just enough of everything I like.  It has the cheese factor when they have apes with guns riding horses into battle.  I've already sold you on the movie, haven't I?  But believe it or not, there's also a lot of heart in the movie too.  There's some genuine drama.  All the characters are balanced and their motivations are clear.  Even the felt a level of sympathy for the story's villain. 

This is also a movie that got me thinking.  I always love that.  It's enriching.  There's things the movie brings up that require discussion.  What is the nature of conflict?  What does it mean to be a human versus an animal?  At what point did humans stop being animals?  Did we ever stop being animals?  Can we stop conflicts before they get out of hand?  Can any society be built on utopian idealism?  How does one learn to stop hating?  What is it about human nature that yearns for peace but is compelled to war?  In one way this movie gives us an answer but it's not one many will like.  The answer might just be that conflict is unavoidable.  As long as people have differences, there will always be conflicts.  And is that such a bad thing? 

I have a bit of a soft spot for this series.  Rise of the Planet of the Apes was one of my first reviews for this site.  I absolutely loved that movie.  I called it the best movie I'd seen all year.  This one is in good running for that same honor.  The acting was brilliant.  The writing was again just top notch.  I just love a movie that can be a bit ambiguous and gives us some room to think for ourselves.  The villain of the movie is wonderful.  Just like Magneto in X-Men: First Class it's easy to understand why he thinks the way he thinks and does the things he does.  It's not just some character in a black hat reveling in his own evil.  It's a guy (ape) that was systematically tortured by humans and has a very rational distrust and hatred for humans because of it. 

Caesar's motivations are very understandable as well.  He's desperately trying to create a new society.  One built on peace, love, and understanding.  His society seems to only have one written law.  Apes don't kill apes.  He's not trying to be some gallant warrior.  He just wants his little piece of the world and to not be bothered by outsiders into his society.  I'm sure that has to ring a few bells in our own culture. 

I could go into spoilers here but I think it's clear where this is going.  Prejudice and hatred lead to conflict.  It's not hard to figure out what happens. 

But this movie is just so good.

Luckily they are already working on the third installment.  Expect me to gush over another Planet of the Apes movie in 2016.

Hope to see you then.

Transformers 4 Age of Extinction Review: How do you screw this up?

Bay.  What's wrong with you?  At first I thought you were just some meat-head man child acting out your own frustrating arrested development.  Now I think you are a man child with some kind of heroin addiction.  The entire movie is frantic!  It's like a junkie with an itchy finger on the morphine drip.  This isn't a movie.  I almost don't want to review it because... hey why bother.  Nobody made any real effort to making a coherent story, so why should I critique it? 

And who the flying f*** was the villain of the story?  There were about 6 or 7 antagonists.  Am I supposed to just take my pick?  What the hell did you do?  Ever see those magnetic poetry things?  You throw them at the fridge, see what sticks, and hilarity ensues because what usually comes out is just word salad.  That's this entire movie.  It's Michael Bay's free floating stream of consciousness.

How can a movie make less sense than the 1986 animated movie?  And they just keep getting worse.  I swear he can't help himself.  They just keep getting worse. 

And you know what?  You rak diseprin you racist c*** snake! 

The story is a mess.  And my first thought is this:  I do this as a hobby.  I watch movies and analyze the story.  I see what was good and what was bad.  I'm also a 33 year old man.  The target audience for this movie is what... 12 to 15 year old boys?  How are they supposed to know what the hell is happening?  I'll try my best to recap.

The Autobots have been labeled terrorists by the evil rogue agent of the CIA who is working with a private business contractor to sell Autobot and Decepticon bodies for scientific research.  They want to create their own robot army so they can have giant robot wars instead of using soldiers?  There's like one throw away line like that about 1 and a half hours in.  Unless you're really paying attention you might miss it.  I mean it's not like you just labeled all giant sentient robots terrorists and now you want to make an entire new race of them to serve as cannon fodder.  Really?  Slavery illusions in a Transformers movie?

But unknown to them, they are using the "soul" of Megatron to do it so the dead Megatron is actually manipulating all of it to create himself as Galvatron. 

Meanwhile in side plot #1 Mark Wahlberg is a Dad and a really crappy inventor.  He doesn't want his 17 year old daughter to date.  So naturally she does.  And we get insufferably overbearing Dad moments sprinkled through the whole movie.  Because nothing captures the earnestness of planet wide extinction quite like Daddy threatening to murder his daughter's statutory rapist boyfriend.  You see:  Marky Mark made a promise to his dead wife that he would get his daughter to graduate from high school without getting knocked up first.  Question: how did she die?  She died of reason never explained.  I like to think she died when she tripped over her own shoelaces and impaled herself on a garden gnome.

And in Side plot #2 we have mysterious alien giant robot who's named "No Name Given".  And he agrees to trade one of the "seeds" for Optimus Prime.  The seed is basically a tactical nuke that transforms all living matter into what this movie so lovingly called it, transformerite or Transformium.  Or something equally offensive.  I stopped listening after the 10th fight scene in the first hour. And naturally every evil human villain in the movie thinks detonating a weapon of mass destruction would just be dandy.

And don't bother looking at the promotional poster.  I know it has Optimus Prime riding Grimlock.  But you might as well just watch the last 20 minutes of the movie for that 3 minute waste of time.  It'll save you a lot of stress if you do.  And I just love how the Dinobots were included.  They are epic warriors of legend that just happened to be on no name dude's ship.  And of course they won't help until Optimus puts him in the camel clutch and makes him humble.

This movie is s**t.  And of course there's going to be another one.  So look forward to this whole thing just getting worse. 

Bah-weep-graaaaagnah wheep nini bong

Godzilla 2014 Review: Layeth the Smacketh Down

I love Godzilla.  I make no secret of it.  He's by far the coolest monster in the history of monsters.  I think the fact he has his own star on the Hollywood walk of fame is a good indication that I'm not alone in that sentiment. 

First off, I loved this movie.  This is a Godzilla movie that Americans have waited for since Godzilla 1984.  For some reason cheesy Godzilla movies don't get much play in the main stream in the USA.  Probably because to the average movie goer, these movies suck.  I'm saying that totally as a fan.  I get it.  Big beat 'em up monster movies are a dime a dozen and seeing a guy in a crappy rubber suit isn't anything special.  Except this is Godzilla.

The movie is pretty simple so even though I am going to go into spoilers, there really isn't anything to spoil.  A monster appears, Godzilla arrives from parts unknown to do battle.  That's it.  And yeah there's a bunch of humans running around losing their minds trying not to get squished.

In this one we have a new monster.  This one is named Muto.  It's supposed to be one of those military acronyms I swear they make up before figuring out what it means.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, go watch the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still.  Muto is supposed to be a prehistoric parasite that feeds on nuclear radiation.  I know.  It's Godzilla.  It's supposed to be silly.  In fairness, all the scenes of Muto literally eating nuclear bombs is awesome!

The history of Godzilla is long, confusing, and sometimes contradictory.  Maybe one of these days I'll do a Godzilla retrospective, but not tonight.  I'm soaking in the awesome. 

There were a few elements I thought needed to be fixed.  The first being the unacceptable amount of focus on the humans.  Humans have always been a part of Godzilla movies.  Mostly for squish fodder and cheap emotionalism, but the focus of the movie was always the battle.  This movie not so much.  It all builds up to the climax and then we get the awesome monster beat down.  But then it's spliced in with the humans mucking around.  It breaks up the flow of the fight and it's just a bad decision.

So is cock blocking us from the monster fight twice!!!!!  The first scene was the trailer scene.  We finally see Godzilla in all his monsterous regal beauty.  He roars with the intensity of a pride of lions, he squares off with Muto, and then... nothing.  They cut to something else.  Next thing we see is Godzilla swimming towards San Francisco.  I honestly thought Godzilla killed the first Muto off screen.  Luckily I was wrong.  (By the way there are 2 Mutos.  One male and one female.)  The second time was just as the fight is about to start, the humans close a door in our face and we don't see the fight for another few minutes as we watch the humans muck around some more. 

It got frustrating.  But once the action hit, it was beautiful.  Just as I'm about to scream at the movie, "use your atomic fire breath!" Godzilla uses his atomic fire breath.  The Mutos honestly felt like more of a threat to humans than to Godzilla.  Their EMP ability does reek havoc on the humans because planes are falling out of the sky and cars won't move, but what does Godzilla care if there aren't any lights on?  With movies like Godzilla: Total War we see monsters with unique abilities that are a serious threat to Godzilla because they all team up against him.  And that hilarious bit where Godzilla takes down that pretender, Zilla from the 1998 American Godzilla movie in about 2 seconds.  Priceless.  Anyway, Muto never really looked like a serious threat to Godzilla except when the two teamed up. 

Last thing I want to call BS on is them trying to play off that Godzilla almost died in the fight.  Really?  A building falling on Godzilla is going to kill him?  Really?  Come on, man!  That's not even close to believable.  There's only one thing that has ever killed Godzilla and that's when his own heart when into nuclear meltdown!  And even then death was only a minor inconvenience. 

Go see it.  It's awesome.  I put it up there with some of the best Godzilla movies out there.

Hail to the King, baby!

Amazing Spider-Man 2 review: A shock to the system

I'd say if I hadn't seen any other comic book movies for the last 10 years, this movie would be awesome.  Not to say I didn't like it.  Far from it.  But it does suffer just because comic book movies are in no short supply these days.  With the Avengers and all the movies tied in to that, it's a little harder for something like Spider-Man.  Not because it's a bad movie, but because it focuses on a smaller scale than the other Marvel movies out there.  But if it didn't, it wouldn't be Spider-Man.

Before I fanboy out about Spider-Man, let's talk about the movie.

The acting is amazing.  The cast I'd say is slumming it being in a comic book movie.  There's academy award winners in this!  Jamie Foxx brought an amazing amount of life into Electro.  I didn't know which direction they were going to go with him, but they managed to take something as silly as "turned into a giant energy battery by falling into a vat of mutated electric eels" into something I could at least take seriously enough to keep watching.  Emma Stone.  That's all I have to say.  I'm in love with Emma Stone.  She's brilliant.  She conveys emotions with even the slightest of gestures.  Future actors of the world, take notes.  Andrew Garfield is the perfect casting choice for Spider-Man.  He has a great face that really exudes pain.  When he's emotionally tortured, it's written all over his face.  He even throws in a New York accent when he gets worked up.  Sally Field.  She should be starring in dramas about the first female President of the United States.  She's totally slumming it to be in a cheesy comic book movie.  The only problem I had was the way they wasted Paul Giamatti.  The guy was barely in the movie!  But luckily with the teaser at the end of this one, I'm guessing we'll see more of him in Amazing Spider-Man 3.

The story is what it is.  It's Spider-Man.  It's a comic book movie.  Because there are so many of them out there these days, this one doesn't stand out to me.  It's not better or worse than other Marvel movies.  It does get cutesy on more than one occasion.  The little kid in the Spider-man costume was just dumb.

I can't say there was anything wrong with it.  I really liked it.  It's just a victim of there being better comic book movies out there.  I'd say Captain America 2 was just a better movie overall than this one.  And that is still out in theaters.  Maybe this should've been released in June.  

Honestly I really liked the movie.  But I can't say it was even the best comic book movie I've seen this month.  But it's still worth seeing.  

So now let me gush about Spider-Man for a few paragraphs:

What sets Spider-Man apart from other Marvel heroes is that his victories come with a very high and very personal cost.  Look at some of the other heroes in the Marvel Universe that are featured in movies lately.  Ironman, Captain America, Thor, and The Hulk.  Of these characters, which of them have ever lost?  I don't mean like lose a fight or something like that.  I'm talking about failure.  A situation that turns the sentiment against the hero.  Where he failed to save someone and that person died.  And that death haunts the hero for the rest of his life.  It's very common in comics to bring people back from the dead.  The most striking example I can give right now is Bucky Barnes from Captain America.  In the first Captain America movie, Bucky died.  But in the second movie he got better.  In the movies Thor has never had to mourn the loss of a comrade or love interest.  Neither has Iron Man.  The only one that can come close to it would be the Hulk and even then it's stretching it because he pushes people away so the monster within doesn't accidentally kill them. 

With Spider-Man it's different.  Spider-Man is a working Joe.  He isn't a soldier with the support of an army behind him.  He isn't a multi-billionaire playboy.  He's definitely not a God.  His problems are smaller scale.  He worries about making ends meet.  He worries about his family.  He has to deal with a newspaper that has it out for him no matter what he does.  And if that wasn't bad enough, he has to find a way to balance his love life with the problems of the city.  He doesn't have the luxury of sitting around wondering what Harry Osborne's latest evil scheme is going to be.  He has homework and the rent is due. 

Also Spider-Man is a product of New York City.  While other heroes are from there of course, he's still an average guy from the city.  He can't go off and deal with some giant threat over in Malawi or whatever.  He's in New York and New York has enough freak shows like Electro and the Green Goblin running around.

And Spider-Man's victories come with a huge burden.  He has people die around him.  He can't save everybody no matter how hard he tries.  He has self-doubt.  He sometimes wonders if he's doing more harm than good.  He has to sacrifice having friends and family in order to be the hero.  Even the best of us would crack under that kind of stress. 

I really like Spider-Man.  Even if the comics get a little on the weird side.

Captain America The Winter Soldier Review: See you at the end of the line.

This is an awesome movie.  Some of the fight scenes are really good.  It's still a lot of close up shaky cam fighting, but they are so brilliantly choreographed that it makes up for a few headaches.  One of my favorites was early on in the movie between Captain America and Georges Batroc.  The whole thing amounted to a cameo by UFC mega-star Georges St.-Pierre but it is a perfect example of just how skilled and physical St.-Pierre really is. 

The story itself I struggle to find a way to talk about.  Because it's one of those things that if I say too much, it will give away the whole thing.  I'm even having a hard time coming up with a witty title for this article! 

I'll try to be generic: someone wants to attack S.H.I.E.L.D. and they hired Winter Soldier to do the job.  That really is about as generic I can be without going into spoilers. 

If I had any criticism for this movie it would be that it was too much story.  This felt to me like it could've been two movies.  A lot happens.  A lot.  I wish I could talk about it, but I just can't.

But this is what I mean by a smart action movie.  Forget that it's a comic movie for a while, this movie touches on some very strong themes that need to be discussed.  For example, how far are we willing to go for security?  How far is too far?  What would we do if we ever went too far?  Could we ever go back?  These are not easy questions and should be discussed. 

Once again the acting was just brilliant.  When a minor character like Brock Rumlow makes an impact on a jaded movie freak like me, you know they did something awesome.  Rumlow is played by Frank Grillo and he was wonderful.  The only person I felt delivered a better performance was Robert Redford as Alexander Pierce.  I don't know how much of his soul he sold to have such ungodly acting talent, but it was a steal. 

Another thing I really enjoy about the Captain America films is that there's so much more attention given to the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.  We get to see a lot more of Agent Maria Hill in time.  There's also a lot of Black Widow to go around.  With movies like Iron Man or Thor, the story is usually much more centered on the hero.  With Captain America, they really go that extra mile to say that the hero isn't Captain America but instead is Steve Rogers.  Cap might be a super soldier, but he's still the same good and decent man.  He's still an every man.  It's why I like him so much.

This is a must see.

Noah Review: Uhm... What's going on?

When I first heard about this movie, Christian fundamentalists were freaking out about it because it wasn't "biblically accurate".  I was all set to write this nice comparative essay about the biblical Noah's Ark story compared to this one and even pepper in some of my own thoughts on how we shouldn't take the Bible quite so literally.  After all it's the message that is the most important and not looking at it as 100% literal history.  That's before I saw just how awful the movie itself was!

Let me get the positives out of the way.  Because I am about to tear this movie a new one from a cinematic and storytelling point of view.  The acting is pretty strong, the story (changed from the original *rock monsters*) works but has it's flaws, and it still manages to stay true to the biblical message.  Kinda.

Before someone sees the movie and gets up me about calling them "rock monsters", I know they are angels imprisoned in rocks so they aren't technically "rock monsters".  To that I say, they are rock monsters.  They are rocks.  They have glowing eyes.  They walk.  They talk.  They are rock monsters.  There's biblical inaccuracies and then there's adding rock monsters.

This is an awful movie.  From a cinematic point of view, this movie is a disaster.  The CG effects are laughable.  And there's more than one time I wanted to run screaming from the theater F bombs akimbo because of just how crappy the movie looked and it's never ending search for ways to give me a seizure!  The shaky cam is bad enough.  I've said it before and I guess it bears repeating: if your actors can't do action scenes, don't hire them to be in an action movie!  F***ing speed lines don't make for good cinema!  I'm not kidding.  The camera work is so bad, there are speed lines.  Like we're watching a bad '80s cartoon from Japan!  We live in a world of High Definition cameras.  There is no reason for anyone to have to strain to see what the hell is going on!  Directors... you aren't being artsy.  You aren't adding energy to a tense situation at this point.  You are just pissing me off.  But then add in the strobe lighting effects and that's when I knew someone was on drugs.  But it gets worse.  There's at least two separate instances of this really weird slide show effect.  It's like watching one of those flip up books that looks like something is moving.  Only done really fast and for about 2 minutes.  This movie just hurts to look at it.  I had to really fight to stay in my seat.

I really expected much better.  The director is Darren Aronofsky!  This is the guy that did The Wrestler, Black Swan, and Pi.  These are three far better movies and deserve to be watched.  This on the other hand needs to be in the bargain bin at a Walmart somewhere because it's unwatchable.  I'm not saying it's a bad story and bad acting.  I'm saying the way it was filmed is unwatchable. 

The story on the other hand was really good.  They changed the story a lot.  *cough rock monsters cough* But not all the changes are ones that I don't like.  The big theme of the story was that humans had become too evil to be worth salvaging in the eyes of God.  Well... what does that mean? 

Here the movie goes to extraordinary lengths to show you.  Cain played by Ray Winstone was perfect.  No not Cain from the Cain and Abel story but Cain's descendant.  And if ever there was someone that sums up the hubris of mankind, it's this guy.  He took the idea of "man is made in God's image" and "God gave man dominion over the land" and took it to the most literal extreme.  If we are made in God's image, that means we are special.  We are better.  Because we are better it's okay to subjugate the world and have it bow down to our will.  Humans are above the laws of nature because we are in God's image.  Nature should worship us.  Human will is stronger than anything on Earth.  So anything we do on this Earth is fine.  We can take what we want and destroy whatever we want.  No consequences.

It's deceptively evil, isn't it?

Then this movie starts to go a little bit weird.

Consistent.  Tone.  If you want this to be a fantastical tale where flowers bloom from a drop of rain, stick with that.  If you want this to be a more grounded and dark version of the story, go with that.  You can't have both.  I don't think there's room in a serious story for rock monsters and humans eviscerating livestock with their hands and teeth.  Why should I take the movie seriously?  Well, that way I can feel the conflict and drama when Noah tries to kill his twin granddaughters in their mother's arms. 

Uhm...Wait... What?

Yeah.  I forgot to mention how this Noah is a complete nut job.  Because you know saving the world by the command of God wasn't enough drama for this movie.  No.  Let's make Noah a genocidal psychopath.  Basically he sees the evils of mankind where the people are selling women off to be raped in exchange for animals to eat. 

Excuse me a minute.  I think I lost my mind again.

Oh and FYI if the horrid cinematography and seizure inducing scenes weren't enough reason to not see this movie in IMAX and/or 3D, Russel Crowe's drunken naked man ass should be the cherry on top. 

Yeah big spoilers.  He doesn't kill his twin granddaughters and humanity flourishes.  But this is what I'm talking about in the jumps in logic we are expected to make in this story.  It's one thing to say that he needed his sons to help build the arc.  Except they never help.  The rock monsters build it.  Humans just kinda help a little.  They don't have to go and get the animals because God brings them all there.  So, exactly what did God need with Noah's family again?  And then there's Noah deciding that humanity just sucks and everyone should all just go to hell.  Literally.  So much so that he's already planned out the future for mankind and that is that he and his wife will die, his kids will bury them, and then they will die and the world will just go on without humans on it.  So, why get on the boat?  Why let your family on the boat?  Why not kill your family and yourself once you're on the boat?  It would've saved you from listening to the banshee like screaming from the entire world drowning!

It's an awful movie.  Some scenes are really good so it's not like this movie isn't fixable.  But towards the end it goes straight into Hollywood action movie cliche.  How could Cain stow away on the boat for the entire voyage and not have someone accidentally stumble upon him.  I know it's a big boat, but it's still a boat.  He's killing the animals trying to gain their power.  A guy like Cain isn't exactly Mr. Subtle.  They only have Shem's wife get pregnant and have children in the span of AT BEST five months.  Just so we can have the killing babies scene.  (Can't believe I had to write that)

This needed some serious re-writes.  Wait for rental or something.  

300 Rise of an Empire Review: It's for the Dude/Bro in us all.

I really don't have much to say about it.  It's ok.  It's just ok.  Other than one scene that I will talk about, there's nothing remarkable about it.  It's just like the first 300 movie.  They even added stock footage from 300.  It's just ok.  The acting was goofy, over the top, melodramatic, and silly as hell; but so was the rest of the movie so it's ok!  The same can be said for the action scenes!  It fits the overall tone of the movie as an over the top, macho celebration of all things manly so it's ok. 

This movie is about as historically accurate as Birth of a Nation.  But I'll get to that at the end.  I'll talk about the movie first and then bore whomever wants to know about ancient history.

The one scene that stands out to me at all is the sex scene between Themistocles and Artemista.  There they struck a nerve with me and no not just because Eva Green has the body of a goddess.  I really liked that scene because it was violent and sensual.  It mixed elements of love, hate, desire, greed, ambition, and politics.  It all came out like Cleopatra seducing Marc Antony.  And it was that love/hate relationship that came out in the climax of the movie that saved it from what would've been a very forgettable movie. 

Stylistically, there's not much to say.  It's exactly like 300.  Gruesome and over the top.  But there is a problem; at least from my point of view.  If you disagree with me on this, that's fine.  I'm not going to argue the point any... but I hate rape scenes.  I especially hate rape scenes that involve children.  I don't want to see it.  I don't want to think about kiddie rape.  Everyone has a line as far as what is acceptable and unacceptable in terms of what can be portrayed in a movie.  For me, it's rape.  Realities of the ugliness of rape aside, why have rape in this movie?  Why have rape in any movie?  Because rape is one of those things that is so basic and so repulsive to any civilized human being, that the presence of it in a movie is a cheap way to establish someone as a villain.  Rape is an animalistic act.  When we see a guy... usually a guy... rape a woman (sometimes a man but far less common aka Deliverance), it's hard for us to ever like that person because we don't see that person as a human anymore.  That person is now an animal.  He acts as an animal, therefore he is just an animal.  That character is now a way for us to feel morally superior and death is too good for him.  And on the other side, it's a cheap way to build sympathy for a character.  This woman Artemista had her family raped and murdered in front of her.  Then she as a kid was taken as a sex slave, and eventually discarded.  It's cheap sympathy for a character that is a mustache twirling villain.  She is so one note it's hard to really have any defining characteristic to her.  She kills and she hates Greeks because Greeks killed her parents and brutalized her.  Rape is added to make the audience uncomfortable and get some cheap heat.  I don't like it.  It's unnecessary and quite frankly I think it's lazy writing.

The movie review part I'll end here.  Basically it's ok.  It's a stupid action/popcorn movie.  There are better movies and there are worse in that genre.  If you enjoyed 300, you'll probably enjoy this.

**Here I start a long-winded history of the ancient world.  If you don't care, there's no need to read further**

This part I plan to talk about the history of the events presented in the movie.  Basically the Battle of Salamis.  See, I'm a history guy.  I got my bachelor's degree in history.  I've studied this stuff.  I hesitate to say I know more about the Greek/Persian war than the average American, but I did study this in college.  I'm guessing most Americans never studied ancient Greek history in high school, and if they did, it was just the highlights.  What rubs me the wrong way is the political messaging of this movie.  The whole idea of, "they hate us for our freedom" is such a simplistic view that I have to talk about it.  Especially when they got the history of this particular conflict so horribly wrong.  But this is a movie website so one need not read further to learn any more about the movie.  This is just my ranting on what I can only call the dude/bro revisionist history. 

The Battle of Salamis was a huge turning point in the Greco-Persian war.  Basically, this was the battle that forced Xerxes out of Greece.  There were other battles and I'm not saying this one battle ended the war, but much like Gettysburg changed the tide of the American Civil War, Salamis was such a victory for Greece.  The biggest problem Persia had was for a long time it's greatest strength, the numbers.  They had too many ships.  Where the battle took place was too small.  The Persian army crowded their side of the field and couldn't maneuver.  Greece just swept in and took them out. 

The best historian we have to talk about this battle comes from Herodotus.  And that's one of the biggest problems as well.  Herodotus is the father of modern history.  He's the one that started the idea of having corroborated fact as history and not just oral tradition.  Back in the day, history was basically decided by the winner.  Whoever won the battle, they get to say what happened.  And guess what?  Most of them portrayed themselves as glorious warriors fighting off a monster of an enemy.  Mostly because it made themselves look good, and it was good political propaganda.  Herodotus cared about why the conflict happened.  He wanted to know what built up to the conflict and not focus so much on the glory of who won.  So, why is this a bad thing?  Well, first off Herodotus was born in modern day Turkey.  About 4 years after the battle took place.  He had to go by documents to figure out what happened and as I said, historical records back then were about as useful as a bicycle to a fish.  While this was still recent history to him, he was writing his history roughly as about the same time as when the war was wrapping up. 

Herodotus was a controversial figure in his own time.  Fellow historians criticized his work basically for not being propaganda.  Another well-known and highly regarded historian named Plutarch even called him a barbarian lover because he didn't praise the glory of Greece enough. 

So, what caused this war in the first place?  The Ionian Revolt.  Despite what this movie wants you to think, Darius wasn't a mindless sadist.  Nor was Xerxes for that matter.  Darius I wasn't some iron handed dictator.  In fact he had a hell of a time holding the empire together at all.  The Ionian Revolt started in 499BC and ended 493BC.  And, if I can be simplistic for brevity's sake, basically it boiled down to the local governor in that area being threatened with removal from office so he incites a revolt against the king.  Long, bloody story short, Darius I manages to stop the revolt and instead of having some grand inquisition, he generally acts in a fair manner.  There weren't any serious consequences, there weren't any mountains of dead bodies.  Yes there were executions, but nothing like what you see in the movie.  I take offense because Darius did do a lot to bring order to the region.  He decreed that instead of bloodshed, all arguments would now be settled by arbitration.  It's basically the code of laws that we in the 21st century enjoy today.  If someone wrongs you, you sue, and an impartial judge settles the matter.  But because the local governor in a bit of propaganda of his own tried to declare Ionia a democracy and a free city-state, that led to Athens supporting the revolt and now there's conflict between Persia and Athens. 

And NO.  Darius was not killed at the Battle of Marathon.  He died 3 years later because he got sick.  Because there was yet another uprising.  This time it was in Egypt.  And another in Babylon.  Like I said.  The guy had a hell of a time keeping the "mighty" Persian empire in one piece.  Darius got sick and died at age 36.  Then in comes Xerxes I.

So long history lesson summary: Xerxes led a war against Greece after he quashed rebellions in Egypt and Babylon because Athens chose to side with the rebels in Ionia.  But even that standing, Sparta was the city Xerxes targeted.  Not Athens.  And I know there's reports about Xerxes burning Athens.  But really that's hard to say if that actually happened or not.  Some say it was propaganda, some say it was an accident and then blamed on the Persians, some others say it was just rumor meant to incite more hatred.  I don't know.  Nobody really knows. 

Another reason Xerxes left Greece was because yet another revolt started in Babylon.  Plus, he had become tired of war.  He wanted to build things in his country.  He built infrastructure.  He built the Gate of All Nations which still more or less stands in modern day Iran.  It was a project started by his father Darius that he felt would honor his father's legacy. 

Xerxes himself never thought of himself as a God.  He was a Zoroastrian.  Basically, he believed there were only 2 Gods.  One of good and one of evil.  In the movie they try to claim that it was Artamista that put Xerxes on the throne.  No, actually the transition from Darius to Xerxes was actually very painless.  He was the eldest son of Darius.  His mother was Atossa, Darius' wife and she was a descendant of Cyrus the Great.  Cyrus being the guy that built the Persian Empire by defeating the Babylonians. 

So, yeah.  I'm just about tired of calling BS on this movie historically but I probably could continue.  I think I made my point though. 

Robocop Review: Dead or Alive You're Coming With Me

Okay people.  This is a remake.  Here's the thing about remakes.  They are just a no-win situation.  If you do a completely faithful remake of a old classic, you're accused of having no creativity.  If you make changes to same said classic, you're bastardizing the original for the sake of making money. 

Most of the time I hate remakes.  I don't see the need.  I just feel like it's a cash grab.  However there are times where a remake is actually much better than the original source material.  One of my favorite movies is John Carpenter's The Thing.  That was a remake of The Thing From Another World.  The Thing was very different from The Thing From Another World but it didn't betray the original movie and go hog wild.  Same can be said for Sleepless in Seattle which was a loose remake of An Affair To Remember.  That seems to be the key when it comes to remakes: change some details, but be true to the spirit of the original.  That's my review of Robocop.  The details have changed, sometimes quite a bit, but it stays true to the spirit of the original. 

The original Robocop movie was a very interesting film.  It was a brutal movie but it was also a dark comedy with some very amusing scenes.  And on top of that it was also a social commentary about the over reach of corporate America suppressing Constitutional freedom in a city overrun with crime.  Not only that, but you have Robocop himself where he starts out as a straight arrow cop gunned down in a drug bust, put inside a robot, had his humanity suppressed, and it's a fight against the machine inside him, and the corporate machine strangling Detroit. 

This movie is largely the same.  At least in terms of the broad strokes.  There were plenty of details changed.  Most of them I initially didn't like, but I saw the movie and I understand why they made them.  I'd love to talk about them, but so many of them go into spoiler territory so I can't.

But I will talk about the new look of Robocop.  This was the change I hated just on it's face.  He didn't look like Robocop anymore.  He looked like Tron from Tron Legacy.  I absolutely hated it.  He looked like a robot ninja and not a Robocop.  But they actually address that!  There's a great scene where they are discussing it and they initially have the original Robocop suit.  Then as a marketing decision they want it to look sexier, and more like a hot rod.  More "tactical" was the term they used.  And I'm okay with it.  Because the whole message of the movie is a satire of how corporations work and make decisions based on marketing!

If I had any negatives to say is that the building scenes take way too long and once Robocop hits the streets it tends to hit the fast forward button on the action.  The ending is a little rushed.  And then there are twists and reveals that come completely out of nowhere.  Those strike me as out of necessity because the movie is 2 hours long and it looks like a lot of the plot was cut to meet the run time.  It has me curious what the working script looked like.  I want to know what was cut.

 I think it's a great movie and a great remake.  It's worth watching for any superhero movie fans.  It's not as bloody or as edgy as the original with the mature language or the dark humor, but it does manage to stay true to the narrative.  Go see it.

Wolf of Wall Street Review: Fire it up! Fire it up!

Hilarious movie.  This movie can only be described as a comedy.  It's a comedy of excess.  But it's also written as a tragedy.  We follow the life, success, and eventual downfall of Wall Street stock broker Jordan Belfort played by Leo DiCaprio. 

From the beginning we see this world as being a little off.  We see these people with far more money than they know what to do with, and instead of being the "high society" types most professional people like this are portrayed as, instead they are sophomoric, crude, and generally unpleasant.  But man do they have a good time.  There's sex and drugs everywhere you look.  And they revel in it. 

The story almost becomes secondary to the debauchery.  But the story is specifically about Jordan.  His less than humble beginnings, to the far more humble beginnings, to becoming a weird mix of Gordon Gekko and Larry Flynt.  So what does a shady salesman do when he is broke, he skirts the law and makes huge amounts of money.  And there's your conflict.  The FBI and the SCC are out to get him and in the meantime he's doing enough drugs to kill a small city.  Like I said, the hilarity of excess.

And yes there are some really hilarious moments in this movie.  Most of them have to do with DiCaprio stoned off his butt, but still they were really funny. 

The sex scenes in this movie on the other hand I think went too far at times.  I mean it got clinical.  I think if they added another sex scene or another scene of Jonah Hill jerking off, this could've also qualified as porn.  So, allow the youngsters to view at your own risk.  LOTS of sex.  Full frontal.  LOTS!

While on Jordan's journey from titan of Wall Street, we also see him go from that financial titan to Tony Robbins, to one scene he acted like Tiger Woods.  I won't spoil any more but yeah, worth seeing.

Honestly, I had a great time watching.  It's a long movie.  It's 3 hours and there was that one fake out ending that led into the 3rd act,  but a marvelous job by a star studded cast and one of the greatest directors alive today, Martin Scorsese. 

The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug Review

Being a fan of the books is crippling.  I get it.  When something is converted from a novel to a movie, things get changed.  Some things need to be added, and some things need to be left out.  I totally understand that.  My problem with it wasn't so much things were changed, but that so much was needlessly added.

Here is where I go off a bit on the movie but I have to preface it a bit.  After re-reading everything I feel it necessary to come back to the beginning state that I thought it was a good movie.  But I felt it could've been better.  It doesn't need to be all action all the time.  There's room for drama and playfulness.

Also, let me say that I also understand the basic movie narrative.  You have to go out on a high note.  If it's an action movie, you have to have action in it.  In a story like this, you need to have action.  While I'm being so fair minded, I will concede the fact that The Hobbit novel has a really weak ending.  I'm a fan of the books.  I loved reading them as a kid.  I loved going back to them when the first movie came out.  And I have a great time remembering the story with each new movie released.  But re-read The Hobbit again.  Tell me if you think that ending is anti-climatic. 

Fan gushing aside, this movie is draining.  It is so long and despite director Peter Jackson and the army of writers involved in this movie's best efforts, it's just a bogged down and padded story with a lot of the elements I found intriguing about the novels ripped out to make room for unneeded cameos and action scenes that took way too long.

Splitting this movie up into three movies I feel was a mistake.  On my way home, it was all I could think about.  What would I do if I were in charge of this?  If I was trying to make The Hobbit into three movies, the first would end with the escape from the Goblin Cave, the second would end with them reaching the base of the mountain, and the third would take us to the end.  But even with that breakdown it would require a lot of padding.  Instead, what I thought would be better would be to split The Hobbit into two movies, and have a third where we follow Gandalf and his adventures with the Necromancer.

Think about this: This is supposed to be Bilbo's story.  What we saw in the beginning of An Unexpected Journey was us the audience being introduced to this story in the form of Frodo Baggins reading Bilbo's diary.  That means if we are being faithful to that narrative strategy, we can't have these long set-pieces involving dialogue he doesn't hear or people he doesn't meet.  And that happens a lot in The Desolation of Smaug. 

Some of them are very cool scenes.  Gandalf at Dol Guldur was an awesome scene.  I loved it.  But I think it would've been better served as an addendum.  Make the whole third movie about Gandalf confronting the Necromancer.  If it was done that way, you could have a really good scene of Gandalf telling the dwarves on the journey home about the destruction of Moria by the balrog.  Who wouldn't want to see the balrog being awesome again?

In this movie instead we get a really weird love triangle between Legolas, Kili, and Tauriel.  Legolas and Tauriel were never in The Hobbit novel.  Their presence is the very definition of fan service padding.  And they take up a lot of screen time.  Again I know Legolas is the son of the Grey King so his presence their is logical.  I would still argue he wasn't in The Hobbit novel so therefore he's superfluous.  He's there because the writers wanted extended fight sequences to pad the movie.  And since we are talking about superfluous characters, who the f*** is Tauriel?

What finally did it for me was the interaction between Bilbo and Smaug.  This was one of the scenes I was looking forward to the most.  Because this was a true battle of wits.  Except in this movie.  Now it's an extended fight scene.  I like action movies.  Watching guys like Jackie Chan and Jason Statham do what they do is the only reason I ever watch a Jackie Chan or Jason Statham movie.  But when we are talking about an epic adventure like The Hobbit, there's more to it than just action.  I'm totally willing to take the criticism that it's just me.  It's my preference and my opinion and it might be a minority opinion.  But for me, all the action added looked and felt like a crutch.  As if the movie just couldn't get going unless there's more action.  As if the casual fan wouldn't understand the drama of Bilbo having to bluff his way out of being roasted alive by Smaug. 

The movie is 2 hours and 40 minutes with tacked on action scenes.  In fairness they are great action scenes.  If that's what you like, you'll enjoy the movie.  I just wanted more story.  Because the story is pretty good too.  I won't go so far as to say I was disappointed, but I wasn't satisfied either.  Perhaps in the third movie.

Hunger Games: Catching Fire Review: Get Your Game On

I'm so glad I saw this movie.  This might be the first movie this year I want to see a second time. 

I think the first place I want to start is the scenario as a whole.  This movie really had far less to do with the Hunger Games and was more of a political drama.  Honestly, I appreciate that more!  After the first movie, I thought the political intrigue of it all was far more interesting than the actual Games. 

I appreciate it because it breaks the standard action movie mold.  If the whole story was The Hunger Games I don't know if it would be enough to capture my interest.  The idea of the games is interesting, but if it were in an isolated world where people one day decided they wanted to just send children off to die for the entertainment of the masses, it wouldn't be nearly as interesting as a world where the government re-enacts a cruel crackdown on subversives forcing the descendants of that uprising to put their children on an altar and sacrifice them to the state.  All the while the rich live like kings, wallow in their own self-importance, and gleefully cheer the slaughter of fellow human beings.

Now that we've been introduced to this world in the first movie, the veil of this guilded age has come off.  This is all about the politics of this world.  It's all about how can the state spin Katness' fame away from the rebellion brewing in the districts and use it for their own propaganda. 

And boy are we along for the ride.  I just love how every act of 'subversion' by Katness is what anyone else would call an act of humanity; and I think that's the point.  Right down to the "peacekeepers" dressing like Stormtroopers for the Galactic Empire to the citizens in the capital who are really just as duped as everyone else. 

I heard someone say that everybody is the hero in their own story.  And I really believe that as well.  Unless someone is just categorically insane, nobody sees themselves as the 'bad guy.'  I clearly understand the motives of everyone involved in this story.  The president is a ruthless dictator, but why does he do it?  He does it to save the country from being swallowed up in another civil war.  If he has to do it through sacrificing kids for the sake of entertainment, then that's what he is going to do.  A few will die so the majority will live.  Feel free to disagree with him and his methods, but that is where he is coming from.  Katness on the other hand has no interest in being a leader, a martyr, or anything else.  She survived the Hunger Games and now she just wants to be left alone.  If the crowd wasn't gaga for fame, or If her struggle didn't inspire others, perhaps she would've had her wish.  The problem is of course that the districts are unhappy by the inequality of their society.  It's hard not to feel their anger and frustration when you see the capital literally making themselves throw up so they can keep stuffing their faces at these over-the-top parties celebrating their obliviousness. 

If you have the opportunity, see this movie.  By far the best one I've seen all year.  But go in informed.  If you haven't seen the first Hunger Games, watch that one first.  This isn't a movie that will even try to catch you up.  But good news!  The first movie is awesome too!

Thor The Dark World Review: Dogs and Cats Living Together... Mass Hysteria!

Once again a huge nerd like me saw a comic book movie and now it's my time to talk about it on the internet.  If I were to give this an honest opinion, I'd say it's not my favorite of the "Avengers" movies, but I liked it a lot more than I did the first Thor movie. 

The plot is interesting enough.  Thor has to stop the dark elves from erasing all reality.  So far, you have my attention.  This mystical energy "Ether" was fun to watch.  It's a lot like the Cosmic Cube from the earlier movie and that actually ties into the stinger at the end.  So, if you go to see this movie, stay through the credits to see the stinger scene. 

Sometimes I wonder if Thor is just not my kind of character.  On one hand, it gives us a great chance to see colorful characters in exotic locations that you just can't do with characters like Iron Man or Captain America.  Thor is just as heroic as any other Marvel superhero if not more so.  But there's just something about how Thor is portrayed that I just don't find intriguing.  This movie was intriguing as we see Thor fight across the 9 realms.  But at no time did I feel like Thor could lose.  Perhaps that is my problem.  I never feel like Thor isn't going to pull through. 

It's kind of like watching Superman take on someone like Toyman.  And that's I guess another problem I had with Malakith: he's not a well-developed character.  We have our exposition dump at the beginning of the movie so we know why he wants to erase the universe.  He feels the universe is a cancer upon the darkness that existed before the creation of the universe.  The darkness was his kingdom and he wants it back.  But in terms of characterization, that's all we get.  He has no defining characteristics other than his single pursuit.  He never interested me as much as Loki.  But we do get lots of Loki in this movie.

The one character I thought we saw too much of was Dr. Erik Selvig played by Stellan Skarsgard.  And when I say "we see too much of him" I'm not referring to his amount of screen time.  Call me a prude all you want, but seeing a 60-year-old man naked as a jaybird wasn't on my bucket list.  And we see it more than once.

The music is good, the action is good, the cinematography is good, the acting is good, it looks good... but for a movie dealing with the possible erasing of all existence, it wasn't as interesting as it should've been.  Would I recommend it... yes.  It's a pretty good movie.  And it does what it sets out to do: it's a perfect lead into the next Avengers movie involving the Infinity Gems and the Infinity Gauntlet. 

It's a good movie.  Just don't have really high expectations.

Why did they make the Collector look like that?

Gravity Review: FOD Kills

I'm just shaking my head right now.  I swear that this was done by the same guy that did Buried.  But it's not the same guy.  This movie is note-for-note exactly like Buried.  Gravity is a very standard story about things going bad in space.

I'll get into why I didn't like this movie in a minute but let's start with the positives.  The visuals are stunning.  Everything in how it looks feels genuine.  It really looks like it was filmed in outer space.  This is a movie that deserves an award for visuals.  Another thing I liked was the realism they tried to have.  While I didn't think it worked, I applaud the effort.  This was really trying to grasp the horror of being marooned in space.  More on this later.  The acting was superb.  Again, while I thought the writing was subpar, Sandra Bullock and George Clooney made every effort to make it work.  More on the story later.  The movie was absolutely intended for 3D.  I don't know how you can enjoy this movie without the 3D.  There's so much flying at the camera I'm sure it would look terrible in 2D.  Luckily I saw it in 3D and it looks awesome.

There are some positives to take away.

Now here's why I didn't like it.

Let's start with the most obvious: the musical score.  Every single note was loud and filled with tension and it just artificially enhanced the drama of the scene.  And after a while it just became too much. 

It's a 90 minute movie and nothing ever goes well for our heroes.  Because it's a 90 minute movie the pacing is always frantic.  Even when she's allowed a few moments of peace, there is no peace.  The goal post for safety keeps getting moved back.  While that might not sound bad a first, it is when you are a viewer.  There was enough material here for a two hour movie and it was all crammed into an hour and a half. There's never enough time to digest what just happened.  When that happens, the atmosphere they are trying to go for just becomes a series of "oh s***" moments.  That's the movie: Pretty stuff, "oh s***", phew, "oh s***", phew, "oh s***"... lather, rinse, repeat.  And those 'phew' moments really are just that.  They are not very long pauses. 

There's one particular scene I have to talk about just because I felt like the director tried to get too cute for his own good.  That would be the starchild scene.  Yes you read that part right.  They took the starchild from 2001: A Space Odyssey and put it in this movie.  The theme of Gravity is heavily on the idea of rebirth after a traumatic incident.  How adversity gives us new appreciation for life.  It's a nice theme to explore but it has to have the time to develop.  I don't feel like this movie was given that proper pacing.  And then this scene happened.  I won't get too critical about it because it does fit in terms of theme, but invoking a movie like 2001: A Space Odyssey like this doesn't do anyone any favors.  The starchild in 2001 was about more than a personal rebirth.  It was about a whole new beginning for the human race.  It was such a metaphysical concept that (I feel) when invoked detracts from the argument you are trying to make. 

While I didn't enjoy the movie I can see that I might be in the minority on this one.  There's lots of action, a lot of drama, and it's just a visually pleasing movie.  I just became overwhelmed by the kinetic energy of it all.  I felt like it needed a break in the action.  It needed more time for the symbolic imagery to develop naturally.  Instead everything feels forced as it rushes to it's finale. 

Perhaps you will enjoy it.  There are things to enjoy.

Runner, Runner Review: It's just shy of greatness.

I went into this movie with a negative attitude.  I originally didn't want to see it and I feel a need to explain why.  The problem I had with this movie from the beginning was Justin Timberlake.  Now, before I get crucified for hating on Justin Timberlake, let me make my case. 

Honestly, he's won me over as an actor.  I like the guy.  I know he got his stardom in a boy band.  And then he switched over into acting.  I don't begrudge the guy.  You can't be a 30 year old man trying to catch the tween demographic.  I'm not complaining he branched out.  He's a very talented guy and he's not a bad actor.  My problem with Justin Timberlake is that, for whatever reason, I think he chooses really bad movies.  I wasn't a fan of Friends With Benefits, I HATED In time, and the less I think about Yogi Bear the better.  The movies of his I liked were The Social Network and Trouble With the Curve.  And both of those movies had Timberlake in a supporting role.  And I didn't really like Trouble With the Curve all that much. 

So when I saw that Timberlake was the lead actor, I just felt like this movie was going to suck.  Not because he's a bad actor, but just because he chooses the worst movies.  Seriously, if Justin Timberlake ever reads this, you are better than this.

What did I think of the movie?  It's good.  It's not bad, it's not great.  It's good.  It's just a very generic movie.  It's a paint by numbers corporate intrigue movie.  On the way home I was honestly trying to distinguish this from other movies just like it.  In The Devil's Advocate it's about a lawyer who gets in over his head.  Except in that movie there is the Devil.  This movie doesn't have the Devil.

In Wallstreet it's about an ambitious guy who gets a taste of the high life and gets in over his head when the guy he works for turns out to be dirty.  In this movie there's a lot more overt corruption. 

So I guess as far as these movies go I liked this one more than Wallstreet but less than The Devil's Advocate.

The other thing I was thinking about on the way home was how I would change it.  And I thought about what if Block, Ben Affleck's character, was actually on the level?  Think about this: the vehicle of the movie was that Richie (Timberlake) had all his money stolen on an online gambling website that he worked for.  He would be like a recruiter where he would find people at Princeton who wanted to gamble.  The entire movie was about how everyone feels that gambling is wrong.  The opening narration really spells it out: why is it okay to "invest" in the stock market or real estate, but playing poker or going to a casino is somehow immoral? 

In a twist of fate that everyone sees coming, Block turns out to be a criminal.  But what if he wasn't?  What if he was a legitimate businessman who just has to do a lot of shady things because he's in Costa Rica and all the officials in Costa Rica are corrupt.  And because all the officials in Costa Rica are corrupt and racist, the FBI is all over him because they think he's doing something illegal.  So we really have all that happens in the movie, but we would have to change the ending.  And now instead of a generic corporate intrigue movie, we have a movie talking about a topic that is really interesting.  Now it's a movie about the cost of business, the double standard between blue collar gambling and white collar gambling.  In 2013, where we see the richest people in the world gamble millions every day in the stock market, is it really any different than the working joe having a bit of fun in Las Vegas?  But here in this movie we have a guy literally run out of the USA because he's running an online casino.  And then we can talk about the excesses of it all.  Drugs, women, rival gangs trying to muscle in, politics with corrupt officials, etc.  All because this one guy wants to run a business and live the high life in paradise.  Not because he wants to rob people blind in some kind of strange ponzi scheme.

I don't know.  Maybe I'm wrong and what I'm proposing would be a less interesting movie.  But it would be different.  And when you stop to think about the laundry list of movies exactly like this one, I don't think different would be a bad thing.

Jobs Review: History or Biopic?

I should start by saying that this movie is okay.  It's not great but it's not bad either.  It got me to think about the world I live in and reflect a little on my life. 

I'm 32 years old now and I've seen innovations in computers in my lifetime that boggle the mind.  When I was a kid, the first computer I ever saw was in school and we were using those giant floppy disks.  The ones that really were "floppy" and held about 1.2 megabytes on it.  The computer was monochrome and really the only thing we did on it was learn to type and play Oregon Trail.  I had better learning sessions playing educational games on the Atari 2600.  Next thing I know, I'm in 4th grade and now were using the hard 'floppy' disks and they had even more memory on them.  Those we actually used to write documents because we had a full 2 megabytes of space now!  Nowadays were talking gigabytes and even terabytes of memory on computers.  We walk around with portable computers every day of our lives. 

The cellphone was a new invention in my lifetime.  The first one I ever saw was bigger than my head and had exactly one function, making phone calls.  Now we have smart phones that do everything except cook breakfast in the morning.

That is ultimately what this movie is about.  The innovation of the last 30 years.  And that's the biggest problem this movie has.  The movie really can't decide if this is a biopic about Steve Jobs or a history of Apple Computers.  It tries to do both and it becomes unsatisfactory either way.  There are plenty of movies dealing with the Apple/Microsoft/IBM wars... this movie glances past it.  It never really digged into the life of Steve Jobs enough to say it's a biopic.  What did we learn about Steve Jobs after watching this movie?  He's brilliant, driven, and a world class jackass.  Throughout the movie we see him abandon his first-born child.  His daughter Lisa.  Then we fast forward to her as a teenager and they are all one big happy family?  I felt like I fell asleep during the movie and missed about a half hour.  But no the pacing really is that quick.  And for a movie that is over 2 hours long, that tells me they had way too much material to be doing this kind of movie.  Because there clearly was a lot cut out!

This really should've been more like The Social Network.  That movie had a clever vehicle for telling the story.  It is interspliced with the lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg.  As the hearing goes on, we learn about the backstory of Facebook.  As the characters hear the story, we the audience hear the story.  Jobs never goes deep enough and focuses way too much on the Apple products being designed by Steve Jobs to ever tell us about the man.  We never really get to know him.  We don't understand how or why he's such a womanizer or his relationship with his parents, or why he doesn't believe his daughter really is his, or where all his trust issues come from.  I never understood why he couldn't keep his damn shoes on!  Quirky I guess but just something would've been nice. 

If this was meant to be a history of Apple Computers, it never digs into the drama of the competition it had with IBM and Microsoft.  Major events in the history of the company are glanced over.  Once Jobs left Apple, the company took a nosedive and quickly.  But we never see that.  It just fast forwards through about 10 years of history so we can see Steve Jobs become CEO. 

The lack of focus leads to bad pacing for the movie.  It's guilty of just trying to do too much.  It's worth seeing but probably only once.