A Million Ways To Die in the Westis the next Seth MacFarlane live action venture. It’s a western comedy with a large cast; Charlize Theron, Amanda Seyfried, Neil Patrick Harris, Giovanni Ribisi, Sarah Silverman and Liam Neeson.
It’s about a lowly sheep farmer/herder that learns some life lessons from a frontier woman. Throw in gags and some good ole fashion montages and that’s what you get.
The good; Charlize Theron is just beautiful. Other than being eye candy, she really carries the movie. I would’ve never thought that from those trailers.
The soundtrack is amazing. Joel McNeely really captures that distinctly western sound. Lots of horns coupled with grandeur and vastness. It’s a real homage to the western sound.
The bad; the marketing… those trailers gave a lot away. Even the scene with Doc Brown… why would they want to give that bit in the trailers? I mean, it’s was a delight to have Christopher Lloyd reprise his role as Doc Brown, but why include it in the trailer?
The runtime, it clocks in at 116 minutes… almost 2 whole hours. This should’ve been a 90 min movie. Get in, get out! Just when we get to the third act, the movie could’ve ended here.
Overall, worth renting. The marketing people are banking on the success of Ted to get audiences to watch A Million Ways to Die in the West, so if you’re looking for a repeat of Ted, this isn’t the movie for you.
Edge of Tomorrow is a sci-fi film starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, directed by Doug Liman and written by Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth. It’s about the United Defense Force waging war on an alien invasion in Europe, Major Cage (Cruise) gets plunged into combat, without adequate training he stumbles upon a time loop. Throw in some very hand held camera work, nice visuals and Tom Cruise, and… go!
The good; there’s nothing new here as far as story, but boy do I like it. The aliens are called Mimics, and they’ve got humanity beat, but our newest latest, best weapon is this Battle Suit. It gives the common soldier more fire power, strength and speed capable of combating these mimics. Whenever we have a superior alien force battling humanity, in films anyway, common bullets always seems to be the answer (Starship Troopers, Battle Los Angeles, Battleship…), this time we get a little more firepower, which makes it more believable, although the battle suit isn’t all encompassing/enclosed for protection…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, love or hate Tom Cruise, but the man is a movie star, he carries this film. When we first see him in his pseudo-Marine uniform I first thought… “that hair cut isn’t regulation sir… but this is a world they’ve created, plus we’re in war time so maybe hair cuts aren’t the biggest priority.” But then he’s not a combat soldier, so that makes sense.
If you’ve seen the trailers, then you know that Cage (Cruise) dies over and over again, the film does a great job in explaining how this happens, it’s actually very satisfying, and builds up to how Cage can do what he does.
The bad; the action sequence… why all the hand-held crappy, I mean, camera work?? Did Liman go to the Michael Bay school of crapulence? There’s some great stuff going on, it’s the D-Day invasion of Normandy, but with exo-suits, frikkin’ exo-suits! It looks awesome… yet, I can’t see things.
The trailers give a lot away.
Overall, check it out, go see it on the big screen and enjoy the visuals with a very satisfying story.
Reading up on the production of this film, there were problems with the third act, I like to credit McQuarrie for making the script great. All through the film I had this anime feel/notion, then I come to learn that it’s based on the Japanese light novel (young adult) entitled All You Need Is Kill.
Godzilla is about, well… Godzilla. But there’s much more to this movie, we start off in the Philippines (hurray?) then you get destruction, monsters, man thinking the nuclear option is always the last best hope, oh and did I mention monsters?
After 1998’s Godzilla: Final Wars,the Toho staple was done, Toho announced that they wouldn’t be making any more Godzilla movies. But it’s 2014… and we have a reboot helmed by Gareth Edwards and penned by Max Borenstein. Let the smashing begin!
The good; I’m going to start with Gareth Edwards. You may previously know him from his film Monsters, if you’ve seen Monsters you know that Edwards is a good choice for Godzilla. Even with the plot of this film, you can see similarities with Monsters, it’s a bit of a spoiler, so I won’t go into too much detail. But the similarities involved two monsters trying to obtain a similar goal.
Other than that, Edwards knows how to build up to a scene, we only get glimpses of Godzilla in the first two acts of the film, but we see the massive destruction left in the wake of the battle. It really reminded me of the rolling hook for Close Encounters of The Third Kind, just marvelous the way the film builds up to the climactic battle, making it truly climatic.
There’s a whole lotta destruction going on here, but it’s not the complainy kind like in Man of Steel, Goyer and company helming the new DC film world should take a page from Godzilla, buildings are demolished with little more than a walk or a sway… yet the civilians are evacuated, as best that can be done that is.
This brings to mind Godzilla himself… he’s seen as this threat, but yet he saves people, there’s a scene where some missiles are accidentally (I think) shot at the Golden Gate Bridge as a bus load of children (and probably nuns) is caught in the cross fire, Godzilla deflects those missiles.?!?! All the while he’s being shot at by the military.
Moving on to the writing, Borenstein does a great job having our main character focus shift several times during the film, I mean, it’s really handled beautifully. Most movies do their darnedest to pull off one main character, but you open with Ken Watanabe, then Bryan Cranston, then Aaron Taylor-Johnson, all the meanwhile peppering in Godzilla. It’s sounds like a lot to juggle, King Kongcertainly couldn’t, but you don’t miss a beat here with the shifts. You can really tell that Edwards and Borenstein are fans of the Godzilla mythos, they managed to update the character and yet keep the spirit intact in the telling of the origin, and what’s even more is that they keep Godzilla, well… Godzilla.
I have to mention the soundtrack and sound effects, this is a case where both work perfectly. That over used bellowing droning works well with the monsters and their sound design. It adds this weight that you already get with the amazing CG rendering, but the sound effects are massive and booming. Then the soundtrack itself, it’s dark and haunting! Just like the trailer has it, but it works so well to amplify the dire situation that’s facing mankind.
The bad; if I have to put anything here… let’s start with the trailer. The trailer portrays a different movie, but the movie you actually get is an awesome surprise.
I liked the twist where the monsters fight on American soil… while we do get some Japanese destruction, I just wanted more in say Tokyo or something in Japan.
That aside, this is much better than the 1998 attempt… but I just wanted more with Asia. I mean, that’s Godzilla right?
Overall, this is the summer movie for me. We get a summer tentpole, cause it’s got; monsters, explosions, tidal waves, mass destruction, the army, plane crashes, a hero, a love interest, and awesome fight scenes. It’s definitely not the blockbuster fluff that Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin churn out;
There’s destruction without that Man of Steel survivor’s guilt going on, things blow up, and they blow up well! But with a purpose, no thanks Michael Bay…
I’m just really impressed with the shift in main characters, one in particular, but to expand on this thought would be a spoiler, when you see what I’m talking about, it’ll come as a shocker.
Go see Godzilla in the theatres, 3D is not needed, but a good time is required. If you don’t like this movie, then you don’t know squat.
Oh did you catch Optimus Prime? Garry Chalk? After Peter Cullen, Chalk has voice Prime more often ,and there’s a little Mothra “east egg,” did you catch it?
The Lego Movie is about your favorite building toy. We’re in a world on interconnecting colored bricks. Our protagonist is Emmet, a lonely mini figure construction worker in a Lego City. Emmet then has the prophecy of the “special” thrusted upon him, he meets a collection of characters on his way to thwart our antagonist, President Business. Can they defeat the bad guy and build a bigger, better, brighter future?
The good; the animation is great. While being entirely computer generated, the animators found a great mid-ground between the stop motion quality of fan-made Lego movies, and totally fluid cg. The limitations in the articulation of mini figs was used amazingly well for comedic effect, while the action scenes could rival that of any live action movie today. It was nice to transition from the rigidness to the completely fluid, great choice!
The writing is amazing. The writers did a bang up job in capturing how I imagine the Lego world would be. This utopia of timeless yellow smiley faces atop perfectly placed bricks mirroring our own world, a “what if” type of reality frozen in time.
Then we get to explore other worlds/realms in the Lego land, granted we didn’t get all the world but we got enough. We get to visit these worlds; western, castle, pirate and a crazy colorful Cloud Cuckoo Land.
The humor is jammed packed in to this movie, I couldn’t believe how many funny lines there were in the first ten minutes, and it kept going till the end.
We also get one of my personal favorite theme lines from Lego, ClassicSpace. An unnamed Blue Astronaut that just wants to build space ships represents that era.
There’s also bits from other inherently Lego brands; Octan, Blacktron, Forestmen… it’s nice to see these childhood staples of mine being utilized in a movie made for this generation.
The bad; if I have to put anything here… it’d be the nature of film itself. There’s a lot going on in this movie, it felt like a feast for my eyeballs, I wanted to take it all in, but the nature of film and camera movement doesn’t all of that at times. This is especially true for the action scenes, so many moving pieces, and not in the bad way like king crap Michael Bay’s craptacular Transformers movies, that I missed out on the details.
Overall, a lot of fun. At first I thought… this movie is ten years too late (if not more), but after watching it I am glad to admit that my initial thoughts were wrong, this is one for the ages. Especially anyone who’s played with Legos and built imaginary worlds of adventure.
The Raid 2 is the sequel to The Raid: Redemption. We pick up almost right after the events of the first movie, Rama’s just gotten back from surviving that apartment complex, he then meets up with this other older cop who’s trying to find other dirty cops. So they send Rama on this deep undercover mission to infiltrate a criminal organization. Sounds simple enough right? Like the first one?
The good; as always, the (Indonesian) martial arts is top notch. Iko Uwais is great, his level of skill is fabulously displayed in this film. And they add more artists to battle him, unlike the previous movie where we basically just had Iko fighting everyone, only to lead up to a “boss,” played superbly by Yayan Ruhian. Yayan appears in this movie too, but he’s playing a different character. Still, good to see him here.
The color palate of the film is great. The colors are very muted, not just with the color correction of the film, but with the set design and the costume design. There are a lot of black suits worn in this film, along with dark colored clothing, like in the prison where everyone is wearing a grey jumpsuit or a black police uniform. Another thing to note about the prison are the grey walls, especially in the bathroom fight scene. Then there’s Rama’s apartment, even the walls are grey, not the typical white, but grey. Most of the vehicles used in the movie are also black sedans or black SUVs.
I just love the absence of color, makes the blood pop more, and emphasizes the grey area that Rama’s got himself into.
There are wide shots, lovely lovely wide shots! thank you for including these. This is a shot choice that goes underutilized today.
The bad; this movie is way too long. It clocks in at 2.5 hours… wow. It totally did not need to be this long. I get it though, you want to show case the exceptional martial arts and artists, but you have so many to service here. I hate to say it, but Yayan’s character in the film was sort of unnecessary. The “boss” fight with the bat boy and the hammer lady was cool, but the stuff in-between with them could’ve been shortened.
The story is way too complicated for a film to showcase action. The whole undercover thing is a true macguffin in the sense that it served to move the story along to get to other parts of the movie… namely the action.
This film really needed to be shorter, I haven’t fidgeted this much in movie in a while…
Overall, if you like martial arts, you’ll enjoy this movie. If you like action, you’ll enjoy this movie. They cover the action very well, much better than most America movies. The last action scene comes to mind, well the beginning of the last action scene. Rama shows up at the bad guy’s headquarters, a restaurant, and enters guns blazing. Think TheMatrix‘s lobby shoot out scene, but with out firearms, Rama goes in with his “guns” and just beats the crap out of everyone that tries to stop him. It’s a real sight to behold.
So we have good action and great coverage, but the story and the film length need to compliment them. It really feels like a missed opportunity at a great movie.
Bad Words is story of a man driven to win a spelling bee championship by exploiting contest loopholes and using ruthless competitive tactics against competing kids. The movie has been rolling out as a limited release, hoping to gain momentum through buzz among those daring enough to witness Bateman’s directorial debut.
While the movie isn’t actually written by Jason Bateman, Bad Words is essentially his baby. Howard Stern show fans will recall Jason discussing the challenges of pitching the script to other leads in Hollywood after finally settling on putting himself in front and behind camera
The good; If you loved Bateman in all his other comedic roles, you’ll love him here. Just like his contrived character in Arrested Development, we get to see the Guy weasel his way to a goal we patiently wait to understand the motives for.
Kathryn Hahn does a good job as Jenny. The chemistry between them is believable (just like “This Is Where I Leave You”) and I doubt this is the last time we’ll see those two together.
Rohan Chand is charming and sweet and provides both contrast and parallels to the ruthless Guy Trilby.
The bad; needless to say this movie isn’t for everyone. It probably falls under the same category as Bad Santa but doesn’t quite have the same potency.
While we come to closure at the end, the motive we discover may not resonate with most viewers. To an extent, Batemen leaves us with more questions, pondering what an alternative ending might have looked like. At nearly 90 minutes, however, we must conclude the focus of Bad Words is a comedy and not intended to be a drama based on greater character development.
Overall; the movie has its moments but never quite reaches the heights of an instant cult classic I was hoping for.
Silicon Valleypremiered on HBO this weekend past. It’s about 6 programmers who live in, you guessed it, Silicon Valley. For those of you who don’t know, that’s located in the south portion of the San Francisco Bay area. Those 6 programmers try to make it big in the wake of start up companies that are now staples of modern culture; Facebook, Google, Yahoo, eBay, Netflix and Apple Inc.
Thomas Middleditch plays Richard, who comes up with a compression algorithm that the big wigs want. When Richard’s faced with the decision of; to sell to a big corporation, or to go with a tech guru? He’s got to step out of his comfort zone and be the center of attention. And suprise, surprise… Richard’s an introvert. Silicon Valley deals with the high tech bubble of the tech world, where people who are qualified for the most success, can’t deal with it.
This show is brought to us by Mike Judge, we’ve all been looking forward for his next project, and this one does not disappoint. It points out and makes fun of the “innovative” things that corporations do to stand out, and make them appear to be un-corporations…
Having experience in the industry before, we can see Mike Judge is still in tune with much of the obnoxious behavior still prevalent in the tech world. As with his other works (think Idiocracy), Judge plants these details in our peripheral vision as gifts for us to laugh at with him. Such bits include questionable practices like meetings on bikes, cafeterias offering excessive free food, CEOs with narrow eco-friendly cars, spiritual advisor-consulting executives wearing finger shoes, and brogramers… despicable brogramers.
Richard’s journey is what I’m looking forward to the most, this quiet like-able guy has to make some tough decisions, I’ll be watching to see how he emerges out of season 1.
There are only 8 episodes this season, I can’t wait to see where we’re going.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger.Much like Thor: The Dark World, this film directly follows events that took place in The Avengers, more fondly referred to as the “Battle of New York.” Cap is still getting used to the modern world and how he fits in it. We throw in S.H.I.E.L.D., some covert plotting, and sprinkle in some action, that’s what we have here.
The good; we get the same cast back. That’s always a pleasure because it’s the same world, it’s consistent with what we’ve seen, makes it more believable.
The action is great in this movie. We really get to see Cap move and fight in ways that we’ve only really seen in the comics and the animated tv shows. They perfected Cap’s movements from The Avengers, he leaps, jumps and throws his shield more and more like he does in the comic books.
Speaking more to the action, they utilized a lot of practical stunts, I really appreciate that. The combination of CG and practicals worked really well in this film. I know the shield is computer generated at times, but how else would they have done it? Very good job with how the shield behaves. There’s also a car chase scene with Nick Fury that was previewed on tv, but the entirety of the scene is great. His vehicle is a SHIELD vehicle and has all the gadgets and gizmos that would make James Bond jealous.
And this film is a direct sequel to the first movie, without ignoring The Avengers, I wasn’t expecting it to be as much of a sequel as it was, bravo for that.
Oh and this is definitely the comic book fan boy in me, but we get to see Cap’s ears with his mask. That’s just how it’s been in the comics, with the first movie they were covered and I couldn’t put my finger on what bugged me, but it was the ears. We see his EARS! Hahaha. In line with the comics, the way they dealt with The Falcon was great. I was worried when they first announced that he would be in this film, but they updated him to fit the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The bad; this is just me being nitpicky, but it feels too soon to see Steve Rogers in the Commander Rogers outfit. But at the same time, I’m glad that we got to see him in the original costume too, but his ears are covered… hahaha
The action, I know I mentioned this above, but it was too hand held at times. Why have all these practical stunts and not see everything? They worked hard and I want to see the stunts.
The reveal of The Winter Soldier was… well, revealed earlier on in some tv content. It kinda took away from the reveal in the film, it seems like the whole audience already knew who he was, nary was a gasp to be heard.*POSSIBLE SPOILER* and to title this film The Winter Soldier is a bit misleading… it’s not the Winter Soldier story at all, the end of this movie does set it up so that the next sequel will be the Winter Soldier’s story. I really found that odd. *END POSSIBLE SPOILER*
Oh, and people… people really make it hard to enjoy a movie in the theatres these days. With the assigned seating and higher price point you’d think it would eliminate some of the riff raff… but that time period has gone, back in full force is the lack of common courtesy.
Overall I enjoyed it. So did everyone else, it made $96.2 million this weekend.
We get a very solid action movie with an evil plot to take over the world thrown in there. The way the Captain America movies have been are great, it reminds me of Superman. How Cap is a product of his time but yet relevant in the present, DC Comics should take a page (pun intended) from how Marvel has treated Captain America in their films. You can take a character has “old world” values and still make him interesting.
Captain America is one of my favorite Marvel superheroes, it’s probably all that patriotism drilled in to me as a kid, and I’m glad that we’re getting these movies.
The new trailer for our latest iteration of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is out… I won’t link you to the video itself, because it would just drive up the number of views. But Michael Bay has managed to do it again, take something from my childhood and completely ruin it for the new generation, and me as well.
2014 has two Michael Bay “films” in it. I think the Mayans were wrong and 2014 is the end of the world as we know it.
We’re getting a new live action Ninja Turtles movie and the Dinobots are going to be introduced to Marky Mark and the Funkie Bunch, and by the Funkie Bunch I mean the Autobots. While Mikey Mike has already ruined the Transformers for a whole new generation, why must he continue his rampage?
The Ninja Turtles have gone through many different versions over the years, some better than others, but they’ve survived. The same will happen with this version, we just have to wait it out.
Knowing that… why am I ragging on this new film? Cause “haters be hatin’,” and “I’m a professional cynic, but my heart’s not in it,” and other cliches. Don’t get me wrong, I want to be wrong, I hope I’m wrong… but the evidence points to being horrid.
Previously it was rumored that the Turtles would be aliens, now they’re not? but they have nostrils… all of these things I’m ok with, even the new look of what they’re wearing. But with Bay behind the helm, we’re going to get something with no substance and no soul, which is probably why he cast Megan Fox as news reporter April O’Neil, it’s all going to be just flash and explosions.
The trailer proves all of this, it’s got Michael Bay written all over it, just like he put his stank on the Transformers. Take a look for yourselves, can you tell what goes to Turtles and what goes to Transformers?
Not even this moron knows, and he’s in one of the movies!
Why are we entrusting the legacy to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Transformers to this guy? Someone who goes mental because a teleprompter breaks down?
Muppets Most Wantedis the sequel to 2011 The Muppets.It’s about… you guessed it, the Muppets. This time they go on a world tour, but little do they know that there’s more to it than that. Friends become enemies, enemies become friends, friends become lovers, all that and a lot more songs with a lot more guest appearances, and you get Muppets Most Wanted.
The good; the film takes place immediately where the last film left off, amazing! And right away there’s a musical number about how this movie is a sequel, love it. The music in this film is just great, Bret McKenzie‘s back and boy does he deliver with the music. McKenzie’s lyrical sensibility gels well with the Muppets, it’s uncanny how this union never took place earlier. Along with McKenzie, we have Christophe Beck back again, who comes hot off the tails of Frozen.Music and Muppets just belong together.
We get a lot of guest stars in this movie, one in particular is the build up to the man in the box.
The story is typical of a Muppet movie, we have to travel and sing our way through things, but in this film we get a little more with how this group is a family. There’s more separation in this one, but it allows us to explore the relationships among these characters. One moment I found particularly wonderful was when Fozzy, Animal and Walter come to aide Kermit in the gulag. It felt right that Fozzy would come to his best friend’s aid, that might just be me being sentimental, but it’s hard not to be that way about characters I grew up with.
The bad; it seems like everyone is doing an accent in this movie, but I guess that goes with the international feel of the film.
This goes more with the movie going experience… but kids in a theatre are very distracting, especially when they’re pointing out everything that’s going on in the movie. Parents, I implore you to not rely on tv or the movies as your babysitter, please teach them common courtesy.
Overall this sequel was very entertaining. I love that they amped up the number of songs. We even get to see Robin, remember Robin? If you grew up with the Muppets, you’ll love this sequel.
The Grand Budapest Hotelis Wes Anderson‘s latest cinematic endeavor. You guessed it, it’s about a hotel, a hotel in a fictional European mountainous area and the people that inhabit the hotel and it’s surrounding areas. The story takes place in the present, the sixties, and the war ravaged thirties… throw in wonderful music, awkward moments, intense short amounts of violence and colorful sets and that’s it.
The good; it’s a Wes Anderson movie, you either know what you’re going to get or you don’t. But here’s something new, in a similar fashion to good Tarantino movies, we’re taken through this story in “parts” and different time periods, what works here is that Anderson’s able to make it fresh. How does he do this? He uses different aspect ratios to represent the different time periods. It’s subtle.
This movie is a love letter to old style architecture and more importantly, grand lavish hotels. Much like The Darjeeling Limitedwas his love letter to India, we get The Grand Budapest Hotel. It makes me want to visit old hotels, and how things used to be, everything that the sixties rejected and covered up.
There’s a chase scene in the snow… it’s ultra staged (fake), yet I found it increasingly enjoyable as the thrill of the pursuit continued. I don’t know why I liked this sequence so much.
Tony Revolori, as young Zero, does a great job. Bravo in finding this young talent. And there’s a lot of familiar actors in this film, simply stunning.
The bad; if I have to put anything here… I’d put there’s more swearing in this film than in previous Anderson films.
There’s also a lack of marketing, might be because this movie is in limited release at the moment.
Overall I had a lot of fun. It was a ride for sure, and through all the emotions I was invested from start to finish. The symmetry wasn’t as overt as Moonrise Kingdom,yet it was still a feast for the visual arts in a different way. The Grand Budapest Hotel is neck and neck with Moonrise Kingdom for my favorite of Anderson’s body of work.
Non-Stopis a French-American thriller, it’s about Air Marshall Liam Neeson who gets threatening texts from someone inside the house, hummmph, I mean plane.
This is the first film by Silver Pictures to be distributed by Universal.
The good; I went in to this film with nothing, I only knew of the trailer, but when the production logos appear at the head of the film I was pleasantly surprised to see the Silver Pictures logo, wooohooo! The stage had been set. If you don’t know what I’m referring too, then you didn’t grow up in the 80s
So Liam Neeson is playing Air Marshall Bill Marks, he’s got a checkered past, but he’s still in the air to protect and to serve – classic. Neeson is what really carries this movie. You watch him throughout, while you let logic fall by the wayside.
The bad; this doesn’t feel right being released today, it’s almost like it was ten years too late. But I’m still glad it’s here.
People probably won’t see this in the theatres, let’s hope it gets a good life on the DVD home market.
The bad guy’s motivation wasn’t very clear, why were they doing what they were doing? I was left wanting more in this portion of the film.
It feels like an 80s movie, it smells like an 80s movie, it even tastes like an 80s movie… but what makes it not an 80s movie? The airplane is CG… not that it’s bad CG, but I wonder what it would’ve been like if it was a practical airplane model doing the moves that they were doing?
Overall not a bad time, it’s a great throwback to what films used to be, and a lot of the ones I grew up loving were produced by Joel Silver. So pop that popcorn, bring your tray tables to the full and upright position, and enjoy the ride that is Non-Stop.
