Paul - Movie review and this week in DVD.

Paul - Movie Review

Today, I saw Paul. This is a total geek-fest! If you liked stuff like Fanboys, then this is like Fanboys, but with better writing and actors. It's not great, and the Pegg/Frost duo would have been helped by Edgar Wright, but it still was happy with this.

As much as I liked this, I actually recommend this as a rental. Rent this, get a 12 pack or two, a few pizzas and a collection of your best geek buddies and watch this together. Make a game out of all the movie references you catch. You'll have a blast if you watch it that way.

The Tourist

What a fucking bore! Before I saw this, I was wondering how you could fuck up a movie starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, but these guys found a way. I don't blame the actors. I blame the writer/director of this movie, who's essentially an unknown, and with movies like this is going to stay that way. This was just plain bad.

Hereafter

I really wanted to like this. Directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Matt Damon. What could go wrong? A boring ass story, that's what went wrong. This movie blows it's wad in the first 5 minutes. The tsunami scene you see in the commercials? That's a the beginning of the movie. The rest is people just wandering around. You really feel the length of this movie, which is only just a tad over two hours long, but feels like it's three hours plus. You can leave the room for 15-20 minutes and come back and not feel like you really missed anything. I was really disappointed in this.

Morning Glory

This movie kind of broke my heart. A perky Rachel McAdams (who I still love) and a cranky Harrison Ford (which would have worked here with a better script) and this movie just came up short. You get a glimpse of what this movie could have a been about halfway through when there's a pretty good scene of Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton going back and forth at each other. At the end of the day, I'm not sure what this movie wanted to be. At times, it seems like it's going to be a smart-assy movie making fun of morning news shows. Then, it feels like it's a story about a woman balancing her love life and career with a bit of romantic comedy thrown in. I don't think it committed to any of these themes and ultimately suffered for it.

Switch

I actually didn't mind this. It's another romantic comedy, so it's inherently predictable, but it's carried by the performances of Jason Bateman and Thomas Robinson, who plays the neurotic kid. This is also a movie where I actually felt Jennifer Aniston was not playing the typical romantic comedy role that she seemed doomed to play for eternity. It's pretty funny at times and I enjoyed it for what it was.

Faster

Don't expect much in the way of dialog, but if you want to watch a mindless, action flick, look no further. It's basically The Rock playing the Terminator for 90 minutes, which is kind of bad ass. This is the kind of stuff I was expecting The Rock to do when he first started acting, instead of shit like The Tooth Fairy and The Game Plan (I'm sure it helped pay the bills though, so whatever).

This isn't a great movie, but considering the alternative, I'd rather see The Rock make 10 more movies like this, than make one more The Tooth Fairy.

The Next Three Days

Man, another bore of a movie. You get Russell Crowe and have him do nothing for 90 minutes. Unfortunately, this is a two hour movie. The last 20 minutes is pretty much the only part worth watching. It's a waste of time otherwise.

Luther

This is an awesome, short BBC series starting Idris Elba. If you're a fan of Idris Elba, that's probably already enough information. I'm not going to spoil anything here, but this is just a bad-ass mini-series about Idris Elba playing a detective who forms a weird bond with a killer played by Ruth Wilson. The exchanges between the two are fascinating and kept me wanting more. This is fast paced and just a great show all around. I highly recommend this to everyone looking for a good, but short, mini-series to watch.