Archive for ‘movie review’
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Movie Review: The Muppets (2011)
Director: James Bobin
Cast: Jason Segel, Amy Adams, Chris Cooper
Plot: Walter and Gary (Segel) grew up watching the muppets (much like me). They loved them. In fact, Walter – a muppet himself – has always wanted to meet the muppets in person. When Gary and Mary (Adams) are celebrating their 10 year anniversary, Gary decides to bring Walter along to see the muppet studio. Upon arriving, however, they find out that oil monger Tex Richmond (Cooper) is planning to turn the muppet studio not into a museum, but instead drill for oil!
According to their contract, the muppets have to raise $10 million before the deadline, or else they’ll lose the studio forever. It’s up to Gary, Walter and Mary to get Kermit and the gang back together to save the studio.
I went home to Ann Arbor for the Thanksgiving weekend, and one of my goals of the weekend was to see this movie. I grew up watching the muppet movies with the neighbor girl on her laser disc player in the basement. We loved the muppets, and that love hasn’t dwindled in the years that followed. The last muppet flick I watched was Muppets in Space, which was a great celebrity romp through my childhood.
10 years later, this flick brings me back to those childhood days in the basement watching Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo and the gang going on wacky adventures and singing silly songs. I loved this movie. LOVED IT.
There were laughs throughout this movie for muppet lovers and people who have not seen the muppets ever before in their life. The songs were catchy, enjoyable, and silly in their own right. Beth wanted to go out and buy the soundtrack as soon as the credits started rolling. Kids and adults were laughing alike. It was the most fun I’ve had in theaters in a long time, and I can’t say enough about how much I enjoyed seeing the muppet gang get back together again. I’m eager for the next one.
Do yourself a favor, grab a friend or two (or more), and take them to go see this movie.
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Movie Review: Moneyball (2011)
Director: Bennett Miller
Cast: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman
Plot: Billy Beane (Pitt) is a baseball coach with dreams of making it to the world series. However, he always seems to fall short – and he keeps losing his top players to the larger teams, which have bigger budgets. Billy needs a plan that goes away from the norm. He needs something different.
Enter Peter Brand (Hill), a statistics nerd who looks at the game in a unique way. His approach to sports is to look at the number of times a player gets on base, which increases their ability to score points. This radical thinking catches Billy’s eye, and he starts putting together a team of under-dogs that follow this statistical model. Can this team of rag-tag players possibly win the world series, much less a single game?
For a sports movie about math and statistics, there’s a distinct lack of both in this movie. That isn’t to say it’s bad – it’s just not what you expect to see at all. Pitt’s performance is on par with his other roles, clearly trying to get an early nod for an Oscar.
Hill is surprisingly not annoying as hell in this movie, but still comes off as the awkward fat guy.
Overall I don’t mind having seen the movie, but could have missed it. The ending fizzles out, not quite sure how to stop the story that has been building steam to a climax that fails to deliver. But that’s where the emotional component that would involve the Oscar committee comes in.
Pitt’s character clearly goes on a journey throughout the flick, but there are a lot of parts where they elude to him being unlucky if he attends a game that never really gets fleshed out.
Moneyball is worth a watch, but don’t expect much in the way of sports or math. Mostly expect to see Pitt play a badass baseball manager and Hill play a nerd lacking self confidence.
So basically, more of what these two actors have done before.
Movie Review: Harry Potter 7: The Deathly Hallows (Part 2)
Director: David Yates
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes, Alan Rickman, Warwick Davis, Jason Isaacs, Helena Bonham Carter
Plot: Harry Potter (Radcliffe) is fighting Voldemort again – but this time, outside of the safety of Hogwarts school for young wizards.
Picking up right where the last flick left off (which, for me, was the most boring part of the book and probably should’ve been cut from the movie series all together), Harry finally gets a clue and starts tracking down the last Horcruxes to kill Voldemort’s soul and finish off the ugly bugger for good.
If none of that made sense to you, then you haven’t been watching the flicks or haven’t read the books – and you should skip this movie until you do.
I’m honestly not so big of a fan of the HP flicks, and I thought the final book being split into two separate flicks was a silly and unnecessary choice. It was the first book, I felt, that could actually be cut down into a single movie and you wouldn’t miss much. Just cut out all those pages of Harry, Ron, and the girl running around blindly in the woods with no direction. Sadly, they somehow turned that into the previous flick….
So, why I don’t like the movies: I don’t like the actors. Radcliffe has never sold me as Harry, even though he looks the part. The guy can’t emote. And Harry has always been the least interesting character to me anyway, so it’s just a bit disappointing all around. What’s always fascinated me about the HP books is the world JK Rowling crafted – but you kind of get a diet version of that in the flicks.
That said, HP7p2 was a decent action flick. It’s very dark, and there’s lots of wand shooting (didn’t they use to have to say stuff to make that happen?). Lots of crap blows up, lots of characters die (whether you see it happen or not…which is, sadly, how it happened in the book, too), and there’s a definite ending to the thing. Albeit, a somewhat silly one. But I won’t spoil that for you here.
The acting is as good as it has been, and the “big reveal” at the end it handled better than it was in the book, I thought. You get some understanding of the characters and a deeper appreciation for some of them – while others (cough cough “Malfoy” cough cough) continue to be handled roughly as second-hand characters.
Overall, it’s a fun ending to the series of movies that have been a part of pop culture for the better part of a decade. Ultimately I find myself wanting to see more, though. More of the world, more of the minor characters, more of what makes HP fun. But I guess that’s what the books are for, right?
Movie Review: Captain America The First Avenger (2011)
Director: Joe Johnston
Cast: Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Tommy Lee Jones, Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Dominic Cooper, Stanley Tucci
Plot: Steve Rogers (Evans) wants to become the best solider possible. There’s just one problem: he’s a 90 pound kid with too many medical conditions to be accepted. However, when Dr. Abraham Erskine (Tucci) sees that he has the drive to be not only a good soldier, but a good man, he puts him into a secret Super Soldier program to create the ultimate soldier. And it works. However, the facility is attacked by the forces of Hydra, lead by a German who is obsessed with all things occult. Turns out this German also went through an earlier (less profected) version of the Super Soldier program and became the Red Skull (Weaving).
Can Steve Rogers defeat the Red Skull and save the world from total destruction?
In a word, this movie is awesome. It’s great to see Johnston behind the camera again, and he brings the fun and adventure of WWII that he brought to the screen with the Rocketeer, and translates a pulp adventure into a cinematic masterpiece. This flick is fun, action packed, and has some great performances. Another testament to the level of quality and entertainment that Marvel Studios are bringing to the cinematic counter-parts of their intellectual properties.
Evans does a great job as Steve Rogers, who as a wholesome character could be very easy to dislike or not identify with. However, Evans performance makes the character both likeable and relateable to the movie-going audience. Weaving does a good job playing a villain, and he does a great job of commanding the makeup once the Red Skull face is revealed. Tommy Lee Jones also steals every scene he’s in, and Hayley Atwell does such a great job of filling the role of the competent career woman and heartthrob.
As with the other Marvel flicks, there’s more of a lead in for the Avengers movie that comes out next year. Unfortunately it makes the ending of this movie more of a transition than an ending. But if you stay after the credits, there’s a teaser trailer for the Avengers flick that’s totally bad ass. But then again, that movie is going to be totally bad ass.
If you want a fun summer adventure flick, you need to go see this movie. Twice.
If you don’t have any desire to see this movie, then you’re a communist spy. Who steals candy from babies. And hates good movies.
Basically, go see this movie.
Movie Review: Cowboys and Aliens (2011)
Director: Jon Favreau
Cast: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell, Olivia Wilde
Plot: A man wakes up in the middle of the desert with no memories of his life. On his arm, he has a metal wrist band. Upon making it to town, he discovers he’s a wanted criminal named Jake Lonergan (Craig) and is arrested. On the night he’s to be taken to the federal marshal’s office, the town is attacked by flying machines that kidnap several townsfolk. Now, Jake and the remaining townsfolk must track the aliens to save the people they’ve taken.
Based on the comic book from Platinum Studios (Men in Black), this flick is closer to the dark westerns of old (with a mix of some scary alien moments) than any kind of adventure flick. Don’t expect Indiana Jones meets Iron Man – this flick is dark, gritty, violent, and scary throughout. That doesn’t mean it’s not entertaining, but I would think twice before bringing someone under the age of 13 to this movie.
Overall I enjoyed the flick, although I was very much expecting something different when I sat down in that theater and the lights went down. A lot of critics have commented on the pacing of the movie – I thought the pacing was just fine. It’s paced more like a western movie than an action flick. Additionally the acting was on par with the performances I expected. It was fun to see Harrison Ford play a more villainous character than his other roles, and he does it well.
There are a few moments in the editing where I feel the movie falls a bit. A large action set piece at the end never really gives you the sense of scale of the battle, nor really an idea of how well the humans are doing against the almost invincible aliens. Additionally, there’s a scene where Craig gets strapped down to a table and 3 seconds later is standing and firing a rifle – a scene where both Beth and I looked at each other and said, “How the hell did that happen?”
The music is top notch in this flick. Harry Gregson-Williams does such an amazing job with the soundtrack in this movie. I really enjoyed the music throughout, and it really helps set the tone of the movie.
If you go to this movie expecting a call back to the dark westerns and scary alien movies, you’re going to enjoy it. If you’re expecting a fun adventure movie with quirky one-liners and fun characters – you’re going to be disappointed.
Movie Review: Transformers 3 – Dark of the Moon (2011)
Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Tyrese Gibson, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro, Patrick Dempsey, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Alan Tudyk, Ken Jeong
Voice Cast: Peter Cullen, Leonard Nimoy, Hugo Weaving
Plot: Sam Witwicky (LaBeouf), after having worked with the Autobots twice before to save the world, is now out of college and is having some difficulty finding a job. Sure he’s friends with giant robots who work with the government. Sure he’s gotten a medal from the president. Sure he’s living with a hot English supermodel (Megan Fox’s character apparently broke up with him between the last flick and this one). However, life’s still tough for poor ol’ Sam.
Upon getting a job at a data analytics firm, Sam witnesses a Decepticon assassination of a human employee, and immediately seeks out the Autobots to let them know about it. Turns out the ol’ US of A allies haven’t been totally honest with the Autobots, and our space race was about getting to a spaceship on the moon – a spaceship that came from Cybertron with technology that could help the Autobots win the war. And along with it, their leader Sentinel Prime (Nimoy).
Sam and crew have to race against the clock to thwart the impending Decepticon invasion and save the world – again.
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Whatever you thought of the first two Transformers flicks, love ‘em or hate ‘em (personally, I wasn’t a fan of the live action movies), this is definitely more of the same. The best thing you can say about this movie is that it’s better than what’s come before. However, just because one piece of crap doesn’t smell as bad as another shouldn’t indicate that it’s anything other than a piece of crap. However, this piece of crap has everything you’d want in a flick: hot girls, fast cars, slow motion, sweaty dudes, and giant robots kicking the crap out of each other.
So why am I being so harsh on this movie? Mostly because it’s the kind of thing a 7 year old could understand, made PG-13 only because the robot violence is so graphic (seriously slow motion decapitations and parts spewing about) and adult language.
Gone are many of the things that made the second flick suck so much:
1) No more racist twins (instead we’ve got short little robot comic relief, which are less racists but still sound like they’re a little racist).
2) No more incomprehensible plot (instead we have a 30 minute kids cartoon plot extended to 2.5 hours by slow motion action scenes)
3) No more robot testicles, pee jokes, or John Turturro’s butt shots
4) No more Megan Fox (although, to be fair, the new chick doesn’t really have a lot of opportunity to show off her acting chops in this movie – she’s mostly there to look at)
However, there are a lot of problems with the movie:
1) Pacing. The Transformers movies have all suffered from an amount of pacing issues, where there’s action for like an hour and half of the movie…and it just starts to get boring. The guy sitting next to me at this pre-screening must have checked his phone like 8 times in the last 40 minutes of the movie because, well, it was past time for the movie to be over.
2) Equal screen time for characters. Basically, this movie proves once again that Optimus Prime is an ass-kicker…however, the rest of the Autobots can’t really finish a fight without him. They can barely hold their own until he shows up and wipes the floor with whoever he’s fighting. It was a little sad that they rely on him so much to finish a fight. No wonder the Autobots aren’t doing so well in this war.
3) Megatron. The dude is in this movie what Cobra Commander became in the animated GI Joe series once Serpentor entered the scene: redundant. A joke. Unnecessary. I want to see the leader of the Decepticons – the tyranny of the universe – actually do some cool stuff!
4) The ending. No spoilers, but after all’s said and done there’s no falling action. You get 30 seconds of camera panning around the heroes, 2 lines of dialogue, and credits. It’s like they got bored making the movie and just needed to cut it short after the fighting stopped. I was a little disappointed.
There are a lot of things that this movie does have going for it, which were certainly enjoyable:
1) Plot: While not stellar in any sense, the story was similar to what you would find in the animated series. Anyone 7 years old (or able to be in touch with their 7 year old self) will enjoy it well enough. Sure it’ll riddled with plot holes – but nothing like the previous flick. So long as you don’t ask “why” at any given point in the movie, you’ll be mindlessly entertained.
2) Special Effects: They are at the top they’ve been in the series. Despite my personal feelings on the design of the robots (ie: I hate them), they do look really good and they’ve done a good job of adding more color to the good guys – so it’s a little easier to understand what’s going on and who’s doing what during the action scenes.
3) Stunts: I was downtown about a block away while they were filming many of these in Chicago, and they are stellar. Guys jumping off the top of buildings, gliding through buildings – it’s intense! Some of the best stuff in the movie.
4) Explosions: There’s a lot of them.
5) Hot Women: There’s one of them. She does an okay job.
6) Sweaty dudes: If this is your thing, you’re in luck. Although, they are significantly less sweaty than the previous movies.
So here’s my summary of the flick: Transformers 3 is more of the same. If you liked the first two, you’re in luck. If you hated the first two, avoid this movie like the plague. I found myself hating it less than the previous flicks…but again, that’s not an endorsement. It just stinks less. The spectacle of the flick will certainly help you to forget it’s glaring flaws, and the kid in you will help you focus on the spectacle.
Movie Review: Super 8 (2011)
Director: JJ Abrams
Cast: Joel Courtney, Jessica Tuck, Joel McKinnon Miller, Kyle Chandler
Plot: A group of kids in the 1980s sneak out of their house to film a scene from a movie for a festival entry. However, they witness a train crash that leads to the release of a creature. Suddenly the town is experiencing black outs, people are being attacked, and soldiers invade looking for the creature. Can the kids find the creature and save the town before the soldiers do?
So what is this movie, you may be asking yourself? If you take the characters from Goonies (except instead of hunting for treasure, they film movies), the monster from Cloverfield, and the plot from E.T., then you have this movie in a nut shell. It’s E.T. for a modern audience. Except the monster’s not cute, and there are no Reese’s Pieces.
This doesn’t make the movie less enjoyable in any fashion. I for one loved all of the movies that inspired this flick, and JJ does a great job putting together enjoyable and realistic characters and a fun fanciful situation for them to play in. The acting in the flick is serviceable. The adults in particular are a bit on the stiff side, especially Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights), whose range goes from mad to pissed off. Seriously, the guy just plays an angry dude the whole time. And even when given the opportunity for closer and redemption, the guy just looks mad about that too.
The kids do a better job than any of the kids from the Harry Potter flicks. Pick any one of those flicks, and these kids do a better job. It’s still not great, and I of course rip those kids acting apart every chance I get, but those tend to be the modern standard of young actors – so I use it here as my basis of comparison. It’s stiff but serviceable.
Basically if you enjoyed those 80s flicks, you’ll probably like this flick – just understand this is quite a bit darker, and the kids swear a lot (I swear I heard the word “shit” in this flick more times in 5 minutes than I had in the last 4 Lethal Weapon movies combined).
It’s a fun flick to see in theaters, but I didn’t feel like it had to be seen in theaters. But certainly worth a watch.
Movie Review: Bridesmaids (2011)
Director: Paul Feig
Cast: Kristen Wiig, Terry Crews, Jessica St. Clair, Maya Rudolph, Chris O’Dowd
Plot: Annie (Wiig) is a failed baker (her store went out of business), is in a failed relationship (the dude wants her to leave right after being intimate), and has roommates that are…less than desirable. The only thing she’s been good at is being best friends with Lillian (Rudolph). So when Lillian announces that she’s getting married and wants Annie to be her maid of honor, Annie sets out to not fail at this.
But of course, the movie wouldn’t be funny if she didn’t keep failing throughout. And in truth, it’s pretty funny to watch. Can Annie give her best friend the best wedding ever?
The trailer for this movie is a little misleading. The flick looks like a chick flick movie, but I found it to be pretty funny “guy humor.” Scenes do seem to drag a bit longer than they should, however, so by the end it feels like the joke has been beaten to death. The movie also introduces things, like the traffic cop (O’Dowd), points them out as being strange (since he has a Welsh accent), and then drops it completely. These situations stuck out a bit to me as a bit of a negative, but let’s focus on the positive.
The movie is funny. Pretty damn funny. In fact, I found myself laughing much more during this movie than during The Hangover 2. Maybe it’s because the humor in this movie is over-the-top male humor. Fart jokes, Wiig doing hilarious facial expressions, and ridiculous situations that these characters get into – and how they don’t exactly get themselves out of them.
I’d say the movie’s worth watching if someone’s rented it and you want to get drunk. But is it worth seeing in theaters? Probably not. I will say that I laughed throughout and enjoyed myself watching it, but wouldn’t buy it and probably wouldn’t rent it except to maybe rewatch a few parts.
Movie Review: Hangover 2 (2011)
Director: Todd Phillips
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Paul Giamatti
Plot: “The Wolfpack is back,” or so the posters say, for this “comedy” about three semi-friends post-drinking adventures. In a very similar story to the first movie, the group go to Thailand for Stu’s (Helms) wedding and, of course, forget the entire evening. They wake up in Bangkok, and have to piece together their night before the big wedding day. Of course there are all kinds of shenanigans, and a particularly darker tone to the flick that I didn’t find particularly funny – but I’m sure it’ll still make $80 million+ at the box office.
***SPOILERS***
This movie is far too similar to the first, which I admit I just watched on Monday and then saw a pre-screening of this flick on Wednesday. Instead of a baby, in this flick they have a monkey. Instead of missing a tooth, Stu’s got a tattoo on his face. Mike Tyson shows up. I could go on, but I’ll try to keep it on track.
If you liked the first movie, you’ll probably dig this one. Although I found this movie to be better than the first, since the situations are much more intense and the group goes through a lot more trials and tribulations than the first. Unfortunately, this also translated into the flick being less funny than the first.
The probably I have with this (and the first) movie is that there are no consequences to the group’s actions. Stu gets a tattoo in this flick, but at the end when he shows up to the wedding (late) she’s like, “Well, I could learn to like it.” When her dad, who’s hated Stu the entire movie, see Stu stand up for himself for 5 minutes he’s like, “I’ve hated you for years, but now I approve of you marrying my daughter because you had balls for 5 seconds.”
I’m paraphrasing, of course, but the point is this: my suspension of disbelief needed to be left in the car to enjoy this movie, and I made the mistake of bringing it with me into the theater.
Basically, if you go in looking for more of the same from the first movie and don’t have a problem with the fact that characters aren’t going to act realistically, then you’ll enjoy this flick. I’ve always found my favorite comedy flicks to have characters react eccentrically or in an exaggerated manner, but in a way that was fitting for the character’s motivations and that moved the plot forward. This movie just seemed to ignore these things.
For example, one of the characters loses a finger. This character plays an instrument and is also going to school to be a surgeon, but when they wake up from their hang over (after 2 days stuck without water, dehydrated, and probably starving), they just ask, “Hey, where’s my finger?”
Nevermind the fact that your life and career are over at this point, dude. Everything you’ve been prepping for your entire life has ended because you’re missing a finger. But does the character care about this? No. They’re actually happy because they had a fun night that they can’t remember.
Next time you wake up not remembering the night before and you’re missing a finger, let me know if you react the same way.
Anyway, I recommend skipping the flick – but again, I’m probably not the target audience for this movie and I’m sure it’ll make more money in it’s opening weekend than I’ll make in my lifetime.