Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Pretty bad ass.  To sum it up real quick like.

The apes looked real.  Nearly seem-less CG.  Overall not the most visually stimulating film of the year, but the apes appear so realistic and lifelike it is quite amazing, really.

I liked the overall “humanity” of the apes.  It is interesting to note the evolution of the apes since they’ve had ten or so years to themselves.  The powerful ones have started to gain their speech.  They have developed a primitive tree dwelling type of society, kinda like the Ewoks.  They teach all the little baby apes sign language which is a really good idea.

I don’t buy the relationship between Caesar and Michael Clarke’s character.  All he ever did was say he was sorry, all the while death and destruction rain down upon Caesar and all he’s accomplished in the ten years the apes have been free of humanity’s cruel hand.

I suppose Caesar recognizes the impending clash between species and tries to delay it as long as possible….

…and they did gain trust with their medicine.  Sneaky Americans.

This is one of the better big budget films of the summer.  Better than Godzilla, Trans4mers, whatever Tom Cruise sci fi flick that wasn’t actually half bad…I guess this might be my favorite big budget popcorn muncher of the year.  Nicely done, Apes.

Fairly dark in tone, it’s Pg-13 and that’s about right.  Not for the little ones.

Go ahead and get ya the number two combo, Large Popcorn and two Large Drinks.  😉

 

SPOILER ALERT____________________________________

Ceasar saw Koba, his brother, commit mutiny against him and lead dozens of apes to their death…Ceasar has witnessed the true nature of man.  The sequels could get interesting.

Where the hell did all those apes come from?  They’ve been breeding like rabbits apparently!  I don’t think there are that many apes on the continent, much less rescued from animal clinics in the San Francisco area.

Edge of Tomorrow

It’s gonna be a big summer for sci-fi.

If I were to build a super soldier, I’d totally make it look like Emily Blunt too.

This film is kinda like Groundhog Day, The Matrix and Starship Troopers all got together and made a baby.

The aliens come from across the galaxy and apparently ride on meteors that they hurl towards earth, much like Starship Troopers.  Tom Cruise repeats the same day over and over and over again much like Groundhog Day, and the aliens they are fighting look like the sentinels from The Matrix.

And it doesn’t suck.  Just nothing we’ve not already seen before.

Why was Brendan Gleeson such a jerk as to make marketing guy soldier Tom Cruise go into battle in the first place?

I mean, I get it.  This is a summer sci-fi blockbuster so there has to be a place for the montage, so we can see wimpy little office officer turn into bad ass super soldier…but by the time we get to the montage he’s already fought his way though hundreds of battles….so it’s like…okay.

The battle scenes were pretty cool, just real CG heavy and again, nothing new.  The 3D isn’t worth the extra money.  It rarely is.

There are some good moments between Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, but you should expect that from these two actors.  In fact, there are really good actors all the way around.

You must realize the military of the future is a much more liberal outfit than what we’ve got these days…although they seem to be somewhat bloodthirsty.  But I guess that’s okay when your enemy are bugs, or whatever.

Bill Paxton has the best line in a movie I’ve heard this year!  All my fellow Kentuckians will appreciate it most.

The time travel thing is like, okay now, how does that work?  Eh, nevermind, it’s in the script.  And that’s really how they handle it.  Just one or two lines of dialog.  Oh ya see what happened is your blood got mixed with the aliens blood and that’s causing you to reset the day each time you die….okay.  Sure.

Emily Blunt, who is an engineered super soldier and hero of some epic battle states that she had the same thing Tom Cruise has during that her big famous battle, Full Metal Bitch, they call her.  Which is awesome.  She gets stuck in the time cycle and is able to defeat the enemy in this one particular battle because she has to live the day over and over until she finally figures it out.

Then she figures out Tom Cruise is caught in the same time loop so they work together to defeat the enemy.  Day after day.

But it’s like, Emily Blunt, how did you figure out you no longer had the power to reset the day?  Since you reset the day by dying….if you no longer had the power and tried to reset the day…wouldn’t you be dead before you figured out you lost the power?

Whatever.  Don’t think too much and this is a nice little sci-fi action flick.  Nice dialog and good on screen chemistry between the main characters, all the characters really and I’ll give this a good three popcorn tubs out of five.

Nothing to write home to mom about, but a decent summer sci-fi flick.  Not as good as Tom’s last sci-fi film, Oblivion.  No where near Minority Report of Vanilla Sky or anything like that.  But better than say, After Earth from last summer.

I will say I’m looking forward to Guardians of the Galaxy!  Gonna be a big summer for sci-fi and that makes my geeky little heart happy.

oblivion

not Tom Cruise’s worst movie.

not near his best either.  it’s really a middle of the road sci-fi flick when ya get right down to it.

here’s where my faith in imdb waivers.  they rate this movie a mere .2 lower than The Place Beyond the Pines which is a far superior film in every regard, except maybe explosions and epic soundtrack.  rottentomatoes is more on target with a 62 from the viewer reviews.  i’ll go 67.5.

this isn’t a bad film, just pretty good.  i’m a sci-fi kinda dude so i dig flicks like this and will prob watch it if i’m flipping though and it’s on.  not gonna buy the dvd or anything though.

Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise.

Morgan Freeman does look cool in those glasses.

Andrea Riseborough is my current favorite red head in hollywood.  that’s my kinda lady.

Olga Kurylenko is also smokin’ hot.  she’s got a fairly limitted role but she certainly doens’t get in the way.

Melissa Leo is the obnoxious southern accented talking head that is their commander in the Tet which you’ll learn all about if you see this film, or if ya don’t, who cares?

if ya like Tom Cruise or sci-fi, check it out.  it doesn’t suck and there are some pretty cool visuals.

Rock of Ages

It ain’t bad if you like 80’s pop metal rock.  and let’s be honest, we all kinda do.

it does have some fairly risque material for pg13 but there no boobies nor uses of the ef word that i can recall.  and i generally look for it in pg13 movies just because apparently the ratings system allows you to use the ef word once and still keep the pg13 rating.

there is heavy drinking and lots of  USA Up All Night sex.  i’m pretty sure they used some of the positions cut from the marionette sex scene in Team America World Police.  and there are some extremely over the top skimpy 80’s wear.

some of the lip synching is bad, but lip synching is always bad.  it’s well choreographed, as far as i know anyway.  it was fun to watch.  makes me want to see the stage production.  also made me want to go to a rock club.

i also want to see an Alec Baldwin/Russell Brand spin off.  i’ve not cared for Russell Brand since Forgetting Sarah Marshall but he’s spot on funny in this one.  they are an hilarious team.  what are the chances i used “an” correctly just there?

the lead actors are good and good looking. Deigo Boneta and Julianne Hough being said lead actors.  they both come off as really  likable so you’re kinda invested in what’s going on.  as long as you don’t look too closely.  it’s no Chicago.

it’s a good flick.  in the vein of Hot Tub Time Machine.  fun and nostalgic trip for kids from the 80’s.

Tom Cruise is a pretty spaced out, sexed up, hard drinkin’ rocker.  what a life.  Paul Giamatti is the sleaziest dude ever as his manager.  Hey Man might be the best character in the film.  he most def needs more time.

who didn’t need more time was Bryan Cranston.  that dude is awesome, and he’s good in this too, it just didn’t need to be there.  why couldn’t Catherine Zeta-Jones been the mayor?  it’s not like he has a really great scene or anything.  he just didn’t really have anything to do with the plot and it got in the way a bit towards the end of the film and caused it to seem to drag a bit.  thinking back i’m not even sure he had a singing scene either.  and oh, by the way, this is a musical.

it’s a large two drink combo with milk duds.  if you want to see something fun, light hearted and entertaining this weekend but aren’t wowed by anything coming out this friday, this would be a good choice.  it’s been out a couple weeks now so unless all the new stuff sells out you should have plenty of room to stretch out in the theater if ya wanted.

featuring cameo’s by Kevin Nash, Eli Roth, Debbie Gibson, Sebastian Bach, Kevin Cronin and Kevin Cronin.

June 28

 

2011 in movies continued….

Cowboys and Aliens. So I love Westerns and Space movies so this shoulda been right up my alley.  Eh…

Brilliant concept that I think they just missed on.  And that’s a shame.  Steven Speilburg teaming up with Iron Man director Jon Favreau shoulda been awesome.  But it was only okay.  Maybe I was too hyped but I thought they missed on this one.

I mean it looks cool and there are some great visuals and some good lines and solid performances from Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford but… blah.  And why do all aliens now have to have exo-skeletons and be subterranean?

Did you know there were more sequels released in 2011 than in any other year?   Ever.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

This film didn’t suck.  It has some of the best action of the year and I really like the ensemble cast they’ve assembled.  Apparently Jeremy Renner is going to be the lead character for this series once Tom Cruise steps away and I don’t know how they could find a better replacement.  Love that dude.

The film is a little long and has a real big cheese ball ending.  I’ll not spoil it for ya.  It was good to see Ving Rhames in there for about 20 seconds.  And how much did he get for that?  13 mil?  My respect for Tom Cruise really did go up when I heard that.  Consider it back payment for all the money Cruise has made with those MI films.

Add it to the collection if your an MI fan.  This one is actually still in theaters but I’d recommend picking it up on DVD so you can pause it and go to the bathroom.  It’s long.

Let’s do another one still in theaters.  And also a sequel.  Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows.

Well, there really wasn’t much of a game of shadows.  There’s not really much of any kind of mystery either.  And somehow Sherlock has developed something similar to “Spidey Sense” as he simply knows the moves the bad guys are going to make without any deducing at all.  I found that to be a bit, tiresome.

Also tiresome was Downey Jr’s prissy British accent.  And boy, does he have lots of lines.

If you like watching Robert Downey Jr. run around with a serious man crush on Watson (and let’s be honest, who doesn’t have a serious man crush on Jude Law) then this film is for you.  Not as good as the first one and they kill Rachel McAdams off in the first 10 minutes.  I just didn’t believe any of it this time around.

But it made, and is making a boat load of cash so we’ll have Sherlock 3 probably Christmas time 2013.

And since I’m on recent films let me talk about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Now, this film has a mystery.  And should be considered for best picture in my opinion.  It’s also very long but moves along a lot better than say MI: Ghost Protocol.

There are some graphic scenes you should be aware of going in.  It’s intense, to be sure.  The opening credits do a great job of setting the mood of the film.  I really liked it.  Daniel Craig is good, Rooney Mara is out of this world.  I’m looking forward to the next couple of these films.  I’ll probably buy the books and read them.  I started to watch the original version of this film, which stars Noomi Rapace as the character Lisbeth Salander who co-stars in the above mentioned Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows.  But it’s subtitled and I fell asleep.

Alright, good for now.  More of the earlier 2011 films next.

skyline.

i’m sorry to all you suckers paid to see this pile of weak character development.  and i apologize for not having my blog up in time to warn you.  this thing was so bad.  and to top it off it might have been the worst movie experience of my life.  but at the same time makes it all that more memorable.  how epically bad it was.  and it just kept getting worse the longer the movie played.

it started 20 minutes late.  a belt broke on the projector.  that kinda thing happens from time to time.  there was a pretty decent crowd on hand.  40 people or so.  and everyone was pretty cool.  folks were just out for a fun movie night so everybody’s chatting among themselves.  having a good time.

then the movie was terrible.  imagine cloverfield, war of the worlds (the tom cruise war of the worlds) and george romero’s worst movie all spliced poorly together with random rip offs from everything from the matrix to star wars.  and that would still be better than this crappy film.

the characters were all d-bags so when one of them get’s snatched up you’re feelings aren’t too hurt about it.  you’re like ah, that’s kinda sad.  but really, they kinda deserved it.  i didn’t care about any of those people.  i’m gonna go ahead and tell ya how it ends ’cause it’s retarded.  they are getting snatched up and the aliens are pulling their brains straight out of they heads and putting the human brain into some weird cloney things reminded me of the orcs from lord of the rings.  it’s like they are creating this spawn to overrun the earth but they need the human brains to power them or something.  who knows.  but the main couple are snatched up by this thing and he gets his brain put into one of these spawny things and when it hears her screaming, it comes to her aid and touches her face with its horrible giant slimy claws all caressing like.  and she’s like, jared?  then it turns to fight off the alien horde of human brain powered orc zombies.

you’re serious?  freaking zombies?  this movie offends every genre.  the most interesting thing that happened was inside the last 15 minutes the automatic inbetween movie interlude video came up, right on top of the movie.  so this scene supposed to be the big dramatic, emotional climax has the inbetween movie trivia on top of it.  everybody knew the answer was yogi bear.

it’s movies like this make me confident i could script a decent screenplay.

by far the worst movie of the year.

knight and day.

this is a pretty good flick.  so i’m way behind in my reviews and finally got to see this yesterday and was pleasantly surprised.

it’s full of action and humor and even a little romance.  tom cruise can still make a good picture.  and that’s why it’s still in the theater.  it didn’t blow up the box office right out of the gate.  in fact, i believe it was the lowest opening weekend for a tom cruise film since legend or something crazy like that.  but it’s survived week after week because people are slowly getting around to coming to see it.

that’s because it’s good.

i highly recommend it for a date this weekend if it’s still playing in your area.  it’s been out long enough that even though you may have to stand in line to get your ticket because of the expendables out this weekend, you’ll have a nice, quiet, romantic theater to watch it in.

four out of five overpriced soda drinks.

i mean, i’m prob not gonna rush out and buy it on dvd, but it’s really good and i’d tots pick it up in the blockbuster five for twenty rack.

salt.

this movie doesn’t suck.  initial reviews had been bad by some of the other movie geeks, but nah, they are just being geeks.  this film ain’t so bad.

according to imdb.com, the role was initially pitched to tom cruise but he decided it was too similar to his mission:impossible franchise.  and i can see where he’s coming from.

it’s a good old fashioned action flick.  russians trying to pull some covert BS, trying to get at our nukes and all that noise.  some killer fight sequences, intense action movie soundtrack and we get to watch angelina jolie kick some serious tail for an hour and a half.

i can think of worse ways to spend an afternoon.  now i’m not gonna run right out and buy the dvd.  and i might be hard pressed to even pick it up in the 5 for 20 bin at the blockbuster.  but i wouldn’t pick up mission:impossible out of that bin either…

kinda reminds me of from paris with love starring john travolta and that dude plays henry the viii.  jonathan rhys meyers.  just some fun action.  fairly simple spy flick.

in real life i’m taking liev schreiber over angelina jolie in a fist fight.  he’s twice her size.  but she does know all the right places to hit….

the box.

if i presented you with the proposition to press a button that would kill someone, somewhere in the world that you did not know for one million dollars, what would you do?

i’d press the button and be on my way.

it is that question of morality that the film the box plays on.  and i have to say through about three quarters of the film it is a well acted, well produced and well directed   unfortunatly it had a fourth quarter to go.

let me discuss the things about this movie i liked.  it is set in the late 70’s and looks, sounds and feels like a film out of that era.  the wall paper is terrible, the wide men’s ties are atrocious and the soundtrack is killer.  any time you can fit “bell bottom blues” by eric clapton into a film, i’m a happy camper.  the original score is excellent as well.  it could very easily have been lifted from a 1976 film noir.

i was on imdb.com today and everyone seems to have a good time bashing cameron diaz’ accent.  which may not be the best virginia accent in the world but it beats the hell out of tom cruise’s german in valkyrie.  i’m not a big cameron diaz fan, but i thought she did a pretty good job considering the script she had to work with.  james marsden is pretty spot on too.  and i can never get enough frank langella.  that old dude just rocks.

the film is based on a short story by richard matheson called “button, button.”  matheson also wrote the story the film i am legend was based on.  and that movie pretty much rocked up until the final quarter too.  i need to read some of his work to see who i need to blame for the ending of his movies sucking.  but on this one i’m gonna go ahead and blame richard kelly.

richard kelly was the dude that directed donnie darko, so he’s a little out there anyway.  but come on dude.  just because you think you are so smart don’t mean you are.  just leave him as the mysterious man with the box.  that would have been much more better than that thin attempt to explain what’s going on.  sometimes we don’t need to know.  our imagination fills in the holes in your otherwise weak screenplay.

but whatever, that’s why i work at a movie theater and review movies on my blog.  because i’m so smart….

i don’t think this is going to be the movie to see this weekend.  i’ve not had the chance to screen the men who stare at goats or the fourth kind or disney’s a christmas carol.  thought i’m pretty sure how that last one goes.  it should still be fun to watch jim carrey’s animated old scrooge in 3D.

i did find it interesting that the button was only pushed by women…

one and a half cameron diazes out of five.

defiance.

Defiance.

 

This is a pretty good war flick.  Once again a WWII movie with no concentration camps but there are some starving Jews.  This is the true story about some Russian Jews that escape into the forest when the Germans invade.

 

It starts with a group of brothers.  Daniel Craig being the oldest brother and Liev Schreiber being the next oldest.  As they journey in the forest they come across other Russian Jews escaping the Nazis.  And they don’t really want to take responsibility for them, they do anyway.

 

At first the pull some old school Wolverines stuff.  You know, acting like bandits raiding villages and killing Nazis and Nazi collaborators and what not.  I mean, who wouldn’t?  But then they start to take a more humanitarian tact and start to build temporary villages in the forest.

 

As you can imagine, life in the forest is not easy.  I was complaining about not having an auto start on my car last night it was so cold.  Then I realized, at least I’m not really freezing my toes off in the forest of Belarusky while trying to hide from the Germans.

 

It is somewhat of a predictable plot.  I mean, other than the fact it is based on actually historic events…but you know what I mean.  They fall in love and take forest wives, the two brothers fight, one gets delusions of grandeur and thinks he’s like king of the forest Jews, the other leaves the community to go fight the Germans with the Russian army that is also holed up in the forest.

 

You can pretty much figure the ending out from there unless you didn’t know that 1200 hundred Russian Jews survived in the forest until the end of the war.  And well, now you know.

 

I thought the two main actors were pretty good.  Everyone else was a little underdeveloped I think.  Especially the women characters.  And there was one scene that bothers me the most.  Daniel Craig comes to the Russian army after he and Liev have had their scuffle to ask for medicine.  There is a police base where there is medicine and also a Nazi transmitter.  But the Russians won’t go there because they say there are Germans everywhere. 

 

So Liev and Daniel volunteer to go into this village, destroy the transmitter and take the medicine.  With three guys.  Three guys.  The Russians are afraid to send a unit of army soldiers into this town because there are Germans all over and yet three Hebrew Warriors roll in and kick some ass?

 

What?

 

I think my favorite part of the movie was their cool Russian accents.  Tom Cruise should watch this movie, then watch his Valkyrie and figure out the difference.  Tom Cruises plot to kill Hitler in Valkyrie was no good because the Furor was unsettled by one of his colonel’s American accent….come on Tom Cruise.

 

All in all this is a pretty good war flick.  Lots of good fighting sequences.  Some pretty good acting by the main characters.

 

Defiance gets two and a half starving Jews out of five.