Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is the latest Tom Cruise spy action adventure installment in the Mission Impossible franchise. This time around it involves Ethan Hunt uncovering anti-IMF Syndicate bent on world chaos. Christopher McQuarrie writes and directs this fifth installment.
Ant-Man is the latest installment into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s about Scott Lang as he becomes the new Ant-Man, but his troubled past catches up with him when he plots a heist with an older inventor bent on saving the world from certain destruction, so this time his criminal skills are put to good use.
This film is directed by Peyton Reed with a screenplay from Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish and Adam McKay & Paul Rudd. The film stars Rudd (as Scott Lang), Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Pena, Tip Harris, Anthony Mackie, Wood Harris, Judy Greer, David Dastmalchian, and Michael Douglas.
Terminator Genisys is the fifth installment in the Terminator franchise, and the first of the films distributed by Paramount. The film is written by Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier, it stars; Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Clark, Emilia Clarke (no relation), Jai Courtney, J.K. Simmons, Matt Smith and Lee Byung-hun.
What we know from the previous films has changed, because there’s always the time travel element, Genisys pulls a Back to the Future Part II and returns to the distant past of 1984 Los Angeles, where the events of the first film took place.
Inside Out is the latest Pixar film, it’s mostly set in the mind of a young girl named Riley, and how emotions lead her through life as she handles a move from Minnesota to San Francisco. These emotions are; Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear and Anger. Inside Out is directed by Pete Docter, with the writing credits going to Docter, again, and Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley, with story by Docter and Ronnie del Carmen.
The film stars; Amy Poehler, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Bill Hader and Phyllis Smith.
Tomorrowland is about a place that only a select few are allowed to go to, Frank Walker (George Clooney) went and was kicked out, now Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) gets her chance to go there. In Tomorrowland, events affect our world and vice-versa, but as to the extent… that’s up to our main characters. The film is co-written and directed by Brad Bird.
Mad Max: Fury Road is a post apocalyptic action ride through Australia. This is the fourth Mad Max film and serves as a reboot, but also not really. The story and the characters stay the same, only the actors have changed. Max gets dragged into the middle of an uprising against a tyrannical leader in the midst of a vast desert. George Miller once again helms this film serving as the director and one of the writers (and yes he did direct Babe and Happy Feet). The film stars; Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron and Nicholas Hoult.
Avengers: Age of Ultron is about our favorite superhero team venturing out on another mission to save the world, in this case, it’s a mechanized creation that that’s highly intelligent, highly resourceful, and highly charismatic. The film is written and directed by the great Joss Wheadon, and stars an all-star cast; Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Cobie Smulders, Anthony Mackie, Hayley Atwell, Idris Elba, Stellan Skarsgård, James Spader, and Samuel L. Jackson. It opened at $187.7 million this weekend.
Ex Machina is about a guy who’s working on creating the most advance artificial intelligence out there. He brings in an outsider to “test” his newest creation. The film is written and directed by Alex Garland, you may know him from 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Never Let Me Go.
Finally got around to seeing Chappie. After the critics panned it, and those great trailers, and the poor opening weekend, I waited and I waited, and waited…
Chappie is about a robotic police force in South Africa, but one of these robots gains sentience. Throw in a pair of rap/pop artists who play gangsters and Wolverine as the antagonist and that’s what you get.
Daredevil premiered on Netflix last week. Took me a while to get more than one episode in, but I’m liking it. For those who don’t know, Daredevil is about a blind lawyer named Matt Murdock (played by Charlie Cox) who lives in Hell’s Kitchen in New York. When he’s not practicing law he’s keeping the city safe by beating up bad guys.
McFarland, USA is a sports drama that based on the true story of the McFarland high school cross country team. The team is made up of Mexican-Americans and they’re the underdogs in a more privileged sporting event. The film is directed by Niki Caro and stars Kevin Costner as Jim White, the white coach that brings this Mexican-American team together.
Kingsman: The Secret Service is about a super secret spy group comprised of gentleman whose codenames are that of the Knights of the Roundtable. They’re on a mission to stop Samuel L. Jackson as he lisps his way to mass genocide, throw in slick action sequences and over the top violence with an underdog recruit, and that’s what we have here.
The good; the movie is just fun, it knows what it is and goes with it, meaning, it self references itself and almost winks at the audience. From the opening credits, you know what you’re getting.
The movie is rated R and it really earned a hard R rating. But back to being fun, it’s everything we’ve grown to know about Mark Millar (who wrote the graphic novel the film is based on), he takes a teenage boys’ angst and cathartically channels it through media. Gary “Eggsy” Unwin is recruited by agent Harry Hart to be a Kingsman, Eggsy is the typical teenage male with a chip on his shoulder, but through this training he learns to shot guns and kill the bad guys, what boy doesn’t want that??
Eggsy is played by Taron Egerton, and he does a great job carrying this movie. I’ve never seen Egerton in anything else, to me he’s an unknown, Matthew Vaughn took a gamble casting him in the lead role for this movie, and it paid off.
Harry Hart is played by Colin Firth, a job well done playing the gentleman spy/agent/killer. Mark Strong as a mentor is a nice change of pace, really compliments the who group.
The bad; other than Mark Millar’s creative works being made by the devil spawn that is 20th century fox international distribution management…
There were some bad effects shots. They probably had to trim the budget in certain areas, but it was the small stuff that stuck out. Put aside the over the top violence, I’m talking stuff that you don’t normally take a second glance at, but when done hap-hazardly sticks out. The example that comes to mind is the brick wall in the elevator in to the secret chamber, obvious green screen. And some of the shots when the private plane lands in the mountain headquarters… just odd.
*SPOILERS* Oh and there’s a thing that happens with President Obama in this movie that felt… wrong. I get it that all the world leaders are in on the devious plot, but we should’ve seen some of the others suffering from the same fate. It just didn’t sit with me very well, hahaha, I guess I am patriotic. *END SPOILERS*
I haven’t read the source material, but I was hoping that the movie would be about a group of gentleman secret agents fighting the bad guys in tailored suits, oh well.
Overall, very fun, there hasn’t been a fun secret agent movie in a while. Kingsman does a great job in being meta and calling out that “this isn’t that type of movie,” where villains spout off their entire plan while they have the hero captured. The casting is brilliant. The action is sublime. The suits are tailored.
Oh and there’s a scene at a Kentucky church where things go extremely wrong and agent Hart is in the middle of it, he does something very irredeemable and pays the price. It’s shocking but yet justified, bravo for that.
Kingsman: The Secret Service is a cover to a song we all know, but it’s a great cover.