This week in DVD - October 30th

Captain America

You can read my original review here.

I don't have much to add to my review.  This was one of my favorite movies of the summer and is probably my favorite of all of the superhero movies that came out this year.  I've already purchased it and I recommend it highly.


Attack the Block

Here's another movie I really loved.  It wasn't in the theaters very long in the US, but it's a great, fun movie!  It's what I wish Super 8 would have been.  It's probably one of my favorite films of the year.  I think it might make my top 10 list.

The original review.


Synecdoche, New York

This is one that started off great, but then got too weird for me.  I only stuck with it because it stars the PSH and I can watch anything with him in it.  Overall, it's a good cast, but I think the story is going to lose most people.

It was written and directed by Charlie Kaufman.  I've loved Kaufman's work in the past, but normally someone else directs his movies and I think that needed to happen here.  This was Kaufman's directorial debut, but I think his strength is in his writing.  In the hands of another director, I think this would have worked much better.

I thought it was a tough movie to get through, so I can't really recommend it.  If you really like the PSH or Charlie Kaufman, then you'll probably get something out of it, but for anyone else it's probably going to be too hard to watch.


The Ledge

I watched this because of the strength of the cast (Patrick Wilson, Liv Tyler, Terrence Howard), but this wasn't good at all.  This is a good example of a movie that went straight-to-DVD for a reason.  I'm not even going to bother talking about it.  I've watched this movie, so I can tell you that you never have to.

Pass.


The People Vs George Lucas

This won't have much appeal to you if you're aren't a Star Wars nut like me, so most of you can stop reading now.

Based on the title of the documentary, you'd think this would be more of an attack of George Lucas.  However, it ends up being kind of a tribute to the guy, which I didn't mind.  I mean he did create Star Wars and turn himself into a hugely successful brand.  You can't deny that.  I'll always appreciate that he created this universe and it has meant a lot to me.

They do go into his tinkering with the films.  It's interesting because this documentary was made before the Blu-Rays had come out.  I'd be curious to see if the makers of the documentary, or the people being interviewed, would have felt the same or have gone into that further since there was such an uproar on the latest number of changes in the Blu-Rays.  Seems like a missed opportunity there.  Speaking of, I still need to finish my blog post about my thoughts on the new Blu-Rays.  It's still a work in progress.

Anyway, it's worth a rental for the Star Wars fans out there.


Faces in the Crowd

This was a stinker.  It stars Mila Jovovich as a woman that is injured in an attack and now suffers from 'face blindness'  Yes, face blindness.  First wrap your face around that premise.  Actually, I hear that 'face blindness' is actually a real thing, but this is the first I've heard of it.  I guess you can accept the premise if you know that.  Okay, well then try to get past terrible acting of Mila Jobobovovich.  I was on her case for her bad acting in The Three Musketeers, but I thought she was even worse here.  Then, you get to witness Julian McMahon playing one of the most inexplicably dickhead cops I've ever seen on film.

I could barely finish this.  It's awful.  Do not see it!


Father of Invention

This movie bummed me out a little.  It stars Kevin Spacey, and starts out as a movie making fun of late night infomercials.  I thought the opening sequence was kind of funny and thought that maybe I'd stumbled across a hidden gem.  Unfortunately, it devolves into just a piece of junk movie where he loses everything and spends the rest of the movie trying to get his life back together.  You've seen this all before.  After that opening sequence, it was just boring and unfunny.  This is the total definition of a movie that should have gone straight to DVD, and hey, look at that, it was!  Seriously though, Kevin Spacey deserves a better story and script than this.  Actually, there several people in this that deserve better.  I hope they at least got paid.

Pass.


The Set Up

This was really bad.  It's almost in that 'it's so bad, it's good' territory.  When a movie stars Ryan Phillippe and 50 Cent, you can be pretty sure you aren't in for a masterpiece.  I don't want to slam 50 Cent too much, but he's got a long way to go before he can be considered even an adequate actor.  I don't think Phillippe is all that good either.  He has that same weird, forced quality to his voice that Paul Walker has.  You know, like when someone is trying make their voice sound deeper than it naturally is?

The real surprise here was that they somehow got Bruce Willis to be in this.  He must have owned someone a favor.  He really phoned it in on this one.

Pass.


Winnie The Pooh

Yeah I actually watched this.  I'm not above watching kids movies. :P  There's lots to like about it though.  It's short, sweet and made me nostalgic for when I watched Winnie the Pooh cartoons as a kid.  It's good for the kids and even for adult fans of Winnie the Pooh.  The voice acting by the cast, and narration by John Cleese, was great and I got a kick out of the Huell Houser cameo at the end.

The only thing a little distracting was that most of the songs were performed by Zooey Deschanel.  It's not that she's a bad signer, but her voice is kind of distinctive, so when I'd hear her sing all I could think of was Zooey Deschanel.  This is a minor nitpick though.  Otherwise, I have nothing bad to say about this movie.

High rental recommendation if you have kids or are just nostalgic for Winnie the Pooh.

Margin Call - Movie Review

Margin Call is a movie that's loosely based on the events just at the beginning of our current financial crisis.  The events of the movie take place over the course of just a day.

The movie starts with an investment bank (reportedly based on Lehman Brothers) doing a round of layoffs.  The first casualty is Stanley Tucci, who works in the risk management department.  On his way out the door, he hands a file to one of his co-workers, played by Zachary Quinto, and asks him to look at it.  He warns Quinto to 'be careful'.

Quinto finishes the work and basically figures out that the company is in deep shit, like two weeks ago.  This causes the entire company to scramble with how they intend on dealing with it.  That's about as far as I can go without telling you the whole story.  As I stated before, the events of the movie take place over the course of a single day, so there aren't a lot of twists to this.

I would imagine that finance or investment geeks might understand what's going on in Margin Call more than the layperson. It's funny, because characters are constantly saying stuff like, "I don't know what those numbers/screens mean", or, "Just explain it to me like a normal person."  There's a great scene with Jeremy Irons where he asks Quinto to explain it to him like he's a 12-year-old or a golden retriever.  It just goes illustrate that some of the people involved understand this stuff about as much as anyone else.  The point is that Margin Call makes this all interesting even though you might not have a clue as to what is going on.

Margin Call is all about the actors and performances.  It has a great cast, maybe not as strong as say The Ides of March, but it's still very strong.  The main star is Kevin Spacey, and once again, I really liked him here.  Paul Bettany finally plays a role that doesn't involve him killing monters and reminded me that he's a pretty good actor in his own right.  Quinto, Tucci, Simon Baker and Demi Moore are also all good.  Finally, Jeremy Irons shows up and makes me wish he was more movies.  The second he shows up, you're like, "Here's the big boss!"

Again, I don't understand all of this stuff, so I don't know how accurate or real it is.  Margin Call felt very real though.  Hell, I thought I was going to get fired by the end of the movie.  One of the things I liked about it is that I didn't feel like it tried to assign blame to anyone in particular.  I didn't walk out of this angry like I did after watching something like Inside Job.  You're just watching these people deal with the crisis as it starts.  The movie manages to make the characters sympathetic despite that fact that you should probably hate a lot of these people.

You have to credit the writer and director, J.C. Chandor.  Here's another first time writer/director.  I don't know what it is, but I sure seem to be watching a lot of good movies this year that feature first time writers or directors.  It's a good sign for the future of movies that there are still people out there that aren't complete hacks.  Anyway, Chandor got great performances out of everyone and managed to tell a story that might have been boring in someone else's hands.

As this is a smaller, independent film, you may not have chance to watch this in the theaters.  It's only playing in a few locations.  However, it is currently available on Blockbuster streaming and a few other On-Demand carriers.  I highly recommend checking this out if you want to watch a smart, well-acted film.

On another note, I saw this at The Vine, so once the movie was over, I was able to walk over to their other screen and catch the last three quarters of the Niner game.  I ordered some food and had a few beers.  You can't beat that!  It turned into a pretty good Sunday!

Anonymous - Movie Review

I've always been a sucker for period pieces.  It's one of my favorite genres and I can usually sit through them regardless of the subject matter or quality.  The early reviews of Anonymous seemed to be kind of down on this one, but I'm wondering if this was just more directed at Roland Emmerich.  I don't really have a problem with Emmerich.  His movies can be silly and ridiculous, but I usually find myself entertained by them.

Anonymous is a movie that runs with the theory that Shakespeare didn't write the plays and poems he's credited with.  While I'm aware that these theories exist, I don't have a dog in that fight.  I really don't care one way or another.  I've read some Shakespeare in school and didn't hate it, but what I really care about is if this movie is any good.

The basic story is that Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, played by Rhys Ifans, is a aristocrat that because of his station is basically forbidden to write or publish his work.  According to Queen Elizabeth's advisors, writing and creative work is the devil's work and not honorable.  The Queen herself though seems to enjoy the arts, so I'm not sure why this is an issue.  She's the Queen.  Tell your advisers to shut it!

The Queen is getting up there in age and soon she will be naming her successor and there are different factions who are scheming to get their guy to be named King.  The Earl of Oxford sees how words and plays effect the viewers and then sees this as a way to cause political change and ultimately affect who Elizabeth will name as her successor.  He contacts a writer, Ben Johnson (Sebastian Armesto), to publish his works under Johnson's name.  However, Johnson is reluctant to do this as he's also a writer that wants to succeed on his own merits. An opportunistic William Shakespeare (Rafe Spall) decides to take credit for the work once he sees the crowd's response to one of the plays after it is peformed.

That's about as far as I can get into it without spoiling too much of the plot.  Anonymous is not a great movie.  At times, I thought Anonymous  was kind of all over the place.  It relies heavily on flashbacks in time to tell the story and I thought it jumped around in time too much.  Just when I'd get into a particular sequence, they change times on me again and it would kind of take me out of it.

The look of the movie is great!  You can see where the budget went into making the customes and sets look real and the use of CG for the landscapes  It's done really well and you never feel like you're looking at too much CG or special effects.

The best thing about Anonymous are the performances, Rhys Ifans kills it here as the 'Earl of Oxford'.  This is his film as far as I'm concerned.  Vanessa Redgrage plays Queen Elizabeth I in the 'current' time and she walks that line of regality and senility.  One interesting thing they did with the casting was that they had Redgrave's real life daughter, Joely Richardson, play her younger self in the flashback sequences.  I thought it was a cool casting choice and Richardson was sexy as hell..  Sebastian Armesto was good as 'Ben Johnson' and I didn't even recognize David Thewlis as 'William Cecil'.

John Orloff wrote Anonymous, and I think this would have been a better movie with a more experienced writer.  There are so many characters and names that it's really hard to keep it all straight.  There's too much going on at times.  The movie is a little long due to all of the flashbacks and plot threads and I don't see how they could have made it shorter without leaving you hanging in several areas or not cleaning up certain threads.

If you really love Shakespeare, this movie might really piss you off as they portray him as basically an illiterate baffoon.  It's also not very historically accurrate, so that may bug the history buffs.  I'm not a history buff myself, but I know enough about movies like this to know that there are always multiple inaccuracies when it comes to historical drama.  That just goes with the territory.  Also, considering the whole Shakespeare authorship thing is a theory, you'd have to treat this as a work of fiction.  I would call it an historical soap opera, along the line of something like The Tudors.

Again, I don't really have an issue with Roland Emmerich.  He's done some really bad movies (10,000 BC, Godzilla), movies I've really liked (The Patriot) and then movies that are dumb fun in the guilty pleasure category (2012, Independence Day).  I think this is his second best film behind The Patriot and I guess you can give him credit for trying something somewhat serious again.

I didn't think Anonymous was a bad movie.  I didn't feel bored or like I was wasting my time through it.  At times I found it very entertaining, albeit a little silly.  It's well acted and I really liked the look of the movie overall.  However, if you don't see this in the theater, I don't think you'll be missing out at all.  I think this is something that's better suited for a rental.

In Time - Movie Review

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This week in DVD - October 23rd

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

As I stated in my original review, I'm not a huge fan of the franchise.  I liked this more than the third one, but it's still not a good film.  I wanted more mermaids and Ian McShane's "Blackbeard", but I'm of the believe that almost any movie would benefit from more Ian McShane.  I guess there are already talking about making a fifth one, so there's no escaping this I guess.  If they made it a prequel about Blackbeard, then I'd be all over it.

Anyway, if you're a fan of the franchise, you'll probably enjoy this enough.  I guess there are worse things to rent, but it's loud and not a few good story.


Bad Teacher

Read my original review here.

I thought this was okay.  It was pretty funny in parts, but not up there with some of the better comedies that came out over the summer.  It just wasn't good enough to be put in the instant classic category or demands repeat watching.  One of my requirments for a classic comedy is to be quotable and I don't think there's a lot here that you'll hear your friends quoting back to each other.

It is an unrated cut, so of course, I'll give it another watch.  It's worth a rental if you haven't seen it, but there are better comedies from this summer that are already out on DVD.  Horrible Bosses beat this to DVD despite coming in the theater out two weeks after Bad Teacher.


Beautiful Boy

The basic story is that you're following a family after the aftermath of a tragedy.  In this case, a couple's college age son goes on a killing rampage at his schoool.  Intially they believe he's one of the victims, only to find that he's the shooter.  They had just talked to their son the day before and he really gave them no indication that anything that serious was wrong with him.  The rest of the movie are the parents dealing with that.

It's hard to watch at times because of the emotions involved and the situation and I found it kind of frustrating, because you never get much of an explanation as to why it happened.

The good part is that the partents, played by Michael Sheen and Maria Bello, really bring it.  This is an actor's vehicle more than it's about the story.  I feel bad in a way for Maria Bello, she's a much better actress than a lot of the movies she's been in.  Small roles from Alan Tudyk (Firefly) and Moon Bloodgood (Falling Skies) round out the cast.  You even get a little Meat Loaf.

Pretty good direction from first timer Shawn Ku.  He also co-wrote the film, but I think he was stronger with the direction.  He got a lot out of the performances with not much of a story.

I think it's worth a rent for the performances alone.


Red State





This is another movie that I almost feel like I should write as a standalone review, as it was barely in the theaters and Kevin Smith caused quite a buzz with how it was promoted.  However, since it came out on DVD this week, I'll keep this in the DVD section.

The basic premise is that a group of friends, led by Kyle Gallner, go out to hook up with a cougar that he's been talking to online.  The promise of sex rallies his friends to go out.  Shortly before this you are shown that there is a religious cult in town that is protesting the suicide/death (I can't remember which) of a homosexual.

From there, it jumps into what almost seems to be a religious horror film, but then it turns into a gun fight with the ATF where politics and PR come into play.  It's actually a pretty interesting story when you think about it.  I'm not going to go into details, since this is a newer movie and most of you haven't heard of this or seen it.  My spoiler rules come into play anytime I like a movie.  This is no exception.

I really liked the performances.  They made this on a small budget, but managed to get a great cast.  Kevin Smith somehow rallied actors like Melissa Leo, John Goodman and Michael Parks, who is great as 'Pastor Abin Cooper'.

I really liked Kerry Bishe (she belongs to the body in the poster...HOT!) as 'Cheyenne', but I'm a little biased as I've had a crush on her since she was on Scrubs.  She shows some emotional range here though and now I take her a little more serioiusly as an actress.

The main kid was played by Kyle Gallner, who was just in Beautiful Boy.  It was kind of weird to watch two movies back to back with the same kid actor not knowing he was in either film.

Red State is a thought provoking movie.  You can look at it as a shot against religious fundamentalism and you can look at it as a shot against the government.  If you want to dumb it down, you can just look at it as horror/action movie.  I think there's a little something for everyone here, except nudity.  There's no nudity.

Red State was written and directed by Kevin Smith. It's a totally different movie from him, but I think it's is best movie since Clerks.  That's saying a lot for me, since I'm a huge Kevin Smith fanboy and I've pretty much liked everything he's done.  I think the only two Kevin Smith movies I don't own are Jersey Girl and Cop Out.

This is a strong rental recommendation.


I watched a few other movies this week, but I'm running out of time and they were older movies, so I'll save them for next week's post.


Oh yeah, click on my Amazon link or buy me something off my wish list, will ya?

Paranormal Activity 3 - Movie Review

I'd like to apologize in advance for the vulgarity and rant that you're about to read.  This movie irritated me and I needed to vent.

Yay for free movies!  It's always good when I can see a movie for free.  Okay, enough on the positive.  Fuck this movie!  What a waste of time!

I've never been a big fan of the series. I thought the first was laughably bad. It's long stretches of watching people sleep, and then a door blows shut! Oooooh!  Scary!

The second wasn't any better.  It was still just a bunch of doors blowing shut, off screen noise, and pots falling down.  At least they tried to tie it into the first film.

So how was the third?  It's more of the same.  It's boring and pointless.  At just a one hour and 24 minute run time, you managed to bore me to tears and make me feel like I've been watching a movie for more than two hours.

I don't really even understand how it's related to the first two films.  Are you telling me it's the same two girls from the other films?  How would I know?  You've barely established any of them as characters.  I defy any of you, right now, to tell me the names of either of the two girls involved in this 'trilogy'.  Come on...I can wait...it's the third film  You should know who the characters are by now.

Based on the trailer, I actually liked the premise. Even for a prequel, I thought it might be an interesting twist.  However, the scene from the trailer, doesn't EVEN OCCUR IN THE MOVIE!  If you're going to make a prequel movie to explain why this is happening, but then remove that scene from the actual movie, then what's the fucking point?  Let me clarify, a similar scene does occur about halfway through, but done from a different angle than the trailer and with different people.  The trailer makes this look like the 'Bloody Mary' scene is the source or origin of whatever is happening to them.  However, whatever it is that's happening to these girls, they show that it's already happening well before that scene, so again, what's the point?

So the movie takes place in 1988.  You wouldn't know it though, based on the quality of the movie.  It looked like it was filmed in HD.  If you want me to buy into your 'found footage' premise, you could at least make it look like you filmed it with the equipment that was available at the time.  Hell, at one point you see the camera in the footage!  So you're telling me that you filmed being filmed?

I get that the Dad was some kind of videographer, but even for 1988 they seemed to have too much video and camera footage.  I think the makers of the film kept forgetting what year it was.  At one point they are looking over a box of VHS tapes and someone says, "I don't even think we have a VCR."  Um...it's 1988, pretty much everyone had a VCR at that time.  What else would you have had?  A DVD player?  Maybe they were early Betamax adopters or something.

The movie itself is full of cheap jump scares and that's just lame at this point.  The climax is the ineffectual father being afraid of his old mother-in-law and a bunch of old people slowly creeping up on him.  Fight, you bitch!  I'm sorry, but if you were afraid for your life and protecting your young daughters, you would have fought until the end, not ran away and hid in closet like a scared little kid. There's nothing compelling about that.

This was directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Shulman, and they should both be beaten senseless.  They are also responsible for directing Catfish, which they now dare to list as a documentary.  If you saw the advertisement for Catfish and then saw the movie, you'd understand why that's insulting.  These guys are scam artists as far as I'm concerned.

This is a terrible movie!  It's not scary and it's a complete waste of time.  It's scary only if you're afraid of invisible, imaginary things.  If that's what passes for scary, then I think you need to grow a pair.  What are you going to do when something actually threatening happens to you?  Skip this movie.  I don't even think it's worth a rental.

The Three Musketeers - Movie Review

Okay, before any of you give me shit for even watching this, I was able to see this one for free for a change.  Like I'm going to pass up a free movie.  Duh!

Look at the poster to the left.  See what a mess it is?  How many people can they cram into a poster?  It's like a bad Star Wars poster.  Oh, on a related note, they showed the trailer for The Phantom Menace in 3D, but as this wasn't a 3D screening, the trailer's benefits were pointless.  Good job Lucasfilm!  I'm getting off track...

So the poster is a mess, right?  Well, so is The Three Musketeers!  Look at it!  Who's the lead?  Orlando Bloom at the top?  The girl in the middle?  Oh wait, that's a dude.  Sorry about that.  Mila Jobovovavich, or whatever her name is?  Nope.  That's part of why this is a mess: There's no lead character as far as I'm concerned.  

I was close to walking out of this within the first 15 minutes of this.  Let me chronicle why:

• You have French characters speaking with English accents.
• In the first three minutes, there's a blatant ripoff of a line from The Princess Bride.  Fortunately, it did not get a laugh.
• Mila Jovovich speaking with neither a English or French accent.  She really is a terrible actress, but you can blame this on the director, Paul W.S. Anderson, who's her husband, so of course he shoehorns her into this.
• An ineffectual villian yelling, "I want them dead!"  Let's get more cliched!
• Mila Jovovich's plays "Milady" and she apparently has superpowers.  She's basically playing 'Alice' from Resident Evil in the opening scene. You could argue that I'm nitpicking, but then she does it again later in the movie.
• There's a really bad effects sequence in the beginning that was likely meant for 3D audiences, but again, I didn't see this in 3D.  Even if I had seen this in 3D, I imagine it still would have looked like shit.
• A miscast Logan Lerman playing D'Artagnan, also apparently incapable of speaking with any kind of accent.  His character was raised in France, so the lack of accent really made it hard for me to take him seriously.  A stronger actor would have helped here.
• D'Artagnan's horse is named 'Buttercup'.  The Princess Bride strikes again.  There were one or two more references to The Princess Bride, but at this point, I'm too buzzed to remember them.
• D'Artagnan inexplicably picking fights with at least 4 different people despite only training with his father.  He was an arrogant shit, but at least the other characters called him out for being cocky or it would have been much more annoying.

Okay, so that's the first 15 minutes.  Do you understand why I almost walked out?

The good news is that it's not all bad.  There are several action sequences that are well done.  The fight scenes  don't feature lots of quick cuts, so you can actually tell what's going on.  There was a lot of Zack Snyder-ish slo-mo though.  Overall, the effects after the opening sequence looked good.

The cast was actually pretty strong.  The "Musketeers" were played by Matthew Macfadyen (Athos), Luke Evans (Aramis), and Ray Stevenson (Porthos).  I thought they worked pretty well together.  I think the movie would have been better if it had focused on them more or been more of a story about their earlier adventures or something.  Stevenson, in particular, I thought was really enjoying himself, but 'Titus Pullo' is always awesome in any movie.  Christolph Waltz I thought was good as the Cardinal.  Even Orlando Bloom as the Duke of Buckingham wasn't a block of wood for a change.  Bloom seemed to be enjoying playing a bad guy.

The Three Musketeers seems like a movie that they wanted to turn into a franchise.  They even hinted at a totally implausible sequel at the end, but I don't think it's going to happen.  You never know with sequels these days though.  Anyway, it looks like they tried to attract the same audience that enjoys the "Pirates" franchise.  It has a similar look and feel to those movies and they even got Orlando Bloom to be in it.  The big difference between The Three Musketeers and Pirates is that you don't have an interesting character that grabbed you like 'Jack Sparrow' and you certainly didn't have anyone with the on-screen charisma of Johnny Depp.

As I said at the beginning of the review, this is a mess of a movie as far as the story.  The writers (I'm not even going to mention them by name) just didn't seem to know what to do with the material.  They also appear to have been watching The Princess Bride while they wrote the screenplay.  A good share of the blame falls on director Paul W.S. Anderson.  Anderson is probably one of the biggest hack directors working today.  He's basically Uwe Boll with a bigger budget and slightly more style. I'll give him credit for making movies that usually look nice, but they are all essentially the same film.

I'd say The Three Musketeers is on par with the last Pirates movie as far as overall quality, which is to say that it's bad.  There were some things I liked about it, but not enough to really recommend it to anyone.  The action sequences are entertaining and the movie looks nice, so I didn't feel like I completely wasted my time here though.  I think that if you rented this you'd probably enjoy it enough, but it's a waste of money to see in the theater.