Rise of the Planet of the Apes - Movie Review

Okay, remember what I just said about how sometimes you get a sleeper hit in August? Well, here it is! I was not expecting Rise of the Planet of the Apes to be any good. I was actually very critical of this after seeing the trailers and was kind of dreading having to watch this.

Rise is another movie where the trailer kind of lied, but here it's a good thing. The trailer really plays up on the ape uprising, but that's really only the last 15 minutes or so.

The movie itself starts with the story of James Franco as a scientist that's trying to discover a cure for Alzheimer's disease. You find that his motivation for doing this is because his father, played by a great John Lithgow, suffers from Alzheimer's and is pretty far gone.

Franco's character has developed a genetic virus and the company he works for has been experimenting the virus on apes. The virus was actually genetically mutating the apes to be smarter. This was actually something I initially had an issue with when I first saw the trailer. How would the apes continue to evolve if there's nothing being passed genetically to their descendants? Fortunately, they did a good job of explaining that in the context of the movie, so I no longer have an issue with that.

Anyway, one of the apes that had been showing increased intelligence goes nuts and they have to put her down. However they find that the reason she went nuts was that she had secretly just had a baby and was just being protective of it. Because of a cosmetic side effect of the virus, it's clear that something has been passed on to the baby. Franco's company orders all of the other apes to be put down, but instead he takes the baby home rather than kill it. They name the ape Caesar and raise it like a son.

The movie then flashes forward over the next 8 years or so showing the development of Caesar. Caesar is played by Andy Serkis (Gollum from Lord of the Rings) in another motion-capture role mixed with computer graphics. He's the go to guy for this type of role and I think he's brilliant here. I don't see how you could watch this and not call it acting. He really carries the film and gives Caesar an emotional weight that's impossible to ignore.

I'm going to stop talking about the plot at this point, as part of my normal policy about not spoiling the plots of movies I really like. I'll just bring up a few general points.

The CG is pretty great for the most part. There are a few parts here and there that look a little off, but for the most part it's pretty great. The budget of the movie was about $90 million, so they really got a lot out of that money considering I've seen many movies recently with much larger budgets that didn't look half as good.

I like James Franco, but he really seemed to be phoning it in. I'd have to say he's probably the weakest part of the movie at least from a performance standpoint. The rest of the cast is good for the most part. There's a small role played by Tom Felton, who was Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies. It was funny to see him outside of a Harry Potter movie for a change.

You really get into the development of the characters. One of the reasons why I said the trailer lies is that this is heavily built up as an action film, but in reality this is much more of a character based, sci-fi drama. You get a lot of the relationship between the family of Caesar, James Franco and John Lithgow. If you saw Splice last Summer, it's actually all the things I wish Splice would have been.

I'm not hugely familiar with all of the movies in the Apes franchise, but I'm hearing this is closest to Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. I guess this is still both a little bit of a prequel and a reboot. I think it's a fresher take on the story that I feel is more in line with current science and where things could potentially be headed. It's a pretty smart sci-fi film as far as I'm concerned. I really have to credit the writing team and the direction of Rupert Wyatt for pulling this off.

Regardless of whether or not this a straight prequel or reboot, the movie actually works well as standalone film. It's kind of how I felt about X-Men: First Class where the movie worked so well, that I didn't really care about the liberties it took with the material or how it wasn't necessarily consistent with the other films.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a way better film than it had any right to be considering the marketing and it's release date. I was expecting a ridiculous action movie, but instead got a smart, character based drama that's probably one of the better sci-fi films I've seen in a while, and one of the best films of the Summer.

Anyway, I never thought I'd say this, but I recommend this highly.

The Change-Up - Movie Review

Sigh...for those of you that don't already know, August and early September are the months when the movie studios start dumping all their crap movies that they know weren't good enough to compete with the bigger releases. Every once in a while, you get a sleeper hit, but for most part, this is when the junk comes out.

The one exception to the rule is with comedies. Usually once every Summer, a pretty decent comedy gets released in August. So, when you see a movie starring Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman coming out first week of August, you are cautiously optimistic.

The good part with The Change-Up is that you know what your getting into within the first five minutes. The bad part, is that it's not good. Once you see Jason Bateman get a stream of poop in the face, you know you aren't in for a smart comedy. This review is going to sound like a little bit of a rant, but the more I think about it, the more I'm irritated and disappointed by this movie.

The story in The Change-Up is pretty much exactly what you see in the trailer. It's yet another spin on the whole body swapping thing. The difference is here that they swapped Ryan Reynolds' single character with Jason Bateman's married with kids character. You aren't given a lot of information about these guys before the switch. Jason's character is envious of Ryan's single lifestyle, and for some reason Ryan is envious of Jason's. The switch happens shortly after.

One of the weak things about this movie, is that if Ryan was envious of the married with kids lifestyle, they never show a single scene of him liking it. Once he trades places, he seems to hate everything he's asked to do; sometimes outright refusing to help with the kids, forgetting his fatherly duties, being insensitive towards 'his' wife, etc. It seems like the only thing he was interested in was the possibility of having sex with his friend's wife. Classy...

There really isn't much to like about Ryan Reynolds' character. He's lazy, a man-child, has a poor relationship with his own father, and seems to be kind of a freak. His character is so over the top that you have to wonder why he's even friends with Jason Bateman's character, who is a serious, career-focused man. In fact, it's stated several times in the movie that Bateman's character is embarrassed for Reynolds' character. He's called out a few times in the movie for never sticking to anything or following through.

To be honest, while the movie seems to be more about Bateman's character, there's not a lot to like about him either. He's so career-focused that he neglects his wife and kids. At least they give a little bit of background for why this happens. After the switch happens, he doesn't really seize the opportunity to live Reynolds' single lifestyle.

The humor in the movie just crass and immature. I normally don't have an issue with language in a movie, but it's unnecessarily vulgar. There are lots of F-bombs thrown around at inappropriate times. A few here and there can be funny, but when it's F-this and mother effer that, it starts to get annoying. It really felt like every fifth word was the F-bomb.

The physical comedy is a lot of fake-poop and weird CG-baby nonsense that looked terrible. It wasn't funny and was more irritating than anything.

I never thought I'd see myself complaining about female nudity in a movie, but this way too much. There is a lot of bad nudity they attempted to use for comedic effect. The worse part is, it's all fake. All the nudity in the movie is either fake boobs or rubber suits. It looks awful and it was so unnecessary. There's even a scene where they had to CG a nipple on Olivia Wilde's boob. I just don't see the point.

Olivia Wilde is in this (she's in frigging everything lately and I couldn't tell you why) playing basically an adolescent male fantasy here. She drinks, likes sports and just offers up sex without having to work for it. It really felt like a kid wrote this just hoping this is how girls are when he gets older. Olivia looks great, but she doesn't do anything in this movie that any other young Hollywood starlet couldn't have done just as well.

It seemed like even the 'real' situations seemed more like fantasies of those things rather than how they really are. There are scenes where they are hanging out a sports bar and everyone is super into a baseball game. I just found the whole thing odd, because I've only see this kind of reaction in playoff games. If it's just a normal game, you don't see huge crowds in sports bars with everyone screaming throughout the game. It was more like how I see sports bars when watching football games, not baseball games. I don't know why that annoyed me so much.

Another thing is that I hate when characters are shown to be mostly unemployed or having difficulty keeping a job, but seem to have nice apartments and never have problems paying for things. Do these characters all have trust funds?

There actually are some sweet and real moments here, mainly involving Leslie Mann's character, but these parts of the movie felt like they were written by different people.

I did laugh out loud a few times, but not enough to overcome the overall silliness of The Change-Up. Again, it just felt like kids had written this or didn't expect much from their audience.

Part of the surprise for me is that it actually has a good cast and it's from writers of The Hangover. It was directed by David Dobkin, who directed Wedding Crashers, so I was just expecting a lot more out of this.

I'm just disappointed. The Change-Up is just lazy and uninspired, much like Ryan Reynolds character.

Save this one for rental. It's not worth seeing in the theater.

Crazy, Stupid, Love - Movie Review

There's a saying that trailers lie. That's pretty much happens with Crazy, Stupid, Love. What you see in the trailer isn't the whole movie, but it would have been much better if it had been.

This is a tough movie to review. I actually enjoyed Crazy, Stupid, Love, but for everything there is to like about it, there's something that's off about it.

Steve Carell and Julianne Moore are a couple that have clearly lost their spark. The movie starts with Julianne Moore's character admitting she had an affair and she wants a divorce.

Steve Carell moves out and then starts hanging out at a local bar. He's a sad sack at this point, blabbing to anyone and everyone at the bar that he's going through a divorce and that his wife cheated on him. A young, ladykiller-type, played by Ryan Gosling, takes pity on him and decides to help him get his manhood back.

Their time together is what works best in the movie. However, my complaint is that the trailer advertises this aspect the most. There were long stretches of the movie where they weren't together or where Gosling isn't in the movie at all. I would have preferred the majority of the movie to be about the two of them.

Oh and please tell me where in the hell this magical bar they were hanging out is? It appears to be a local bar as you see many of the same people there over and over, but it's super hip and just filled with hot people. You see a montage of both of them picking up girl after girl in the same bar night after night. You'd think after a while, you'd have a bit of a reputation and have to hit up a different bar from time to time. It just seems like I never see places like this in reality. At least not out here in the burbs.

Anyway, back to the movie. There were too many subplots that could have just been eliminated. As much as I liked the actors, you could have taken these sequences out of this movie and it would have been a much better film. For example there's a whole subplot with the babysitter and her family that could have been removed. It wasn't that Analeigh Tipton's performance was bad, it just wasn't central enough to the main plot.

It seems like this movie wasn't edited very well. It would spend a bunch of time on one aspect of the story and then move to another, when you had just gotten invested in that part. They'd come back to threads later in the movie that you had almost completely forgotten about or just didn't care about.

I really liked the cast. The kid that plays Steve Carell's son, Jonah Bobo, was pretty good in parts. Julianne Moore was fine, as was Kevin Bacon. I actually thought Emma Stone's character felt a little underwritten. They tried to give her own subplot and that just kind of felt tacked on. She didn't really need it for you to like her character. In fact, the way she handled herself in one of the scenes, I thought she was a little nutty. It was just unnecessary.

There's something that happens towards the end that while I found it funny, it really seemed forced. You'll see what I'm talking about when you get around to watching this. Then, the ultimate end was just kind of sappy and felt cliched.

Overall, I still enjoyed Crazy, Stupid, Love, but again, all of these random subplots could have been removed and it would have been a much tighter film. It also could have allowed them to focus on the main characters more.

It's not a bad thing to see as a matinee, but if you rented this you'd probably be happier with the rental.

Cowboys & Aliens - Movie Review

As the previews have shown, Cowboys & Aliens stars Daniel Craig as a man who awakens in the desert with no memory of who is or how he got there. He's wearing a mysterious metal bracelet on his wrist that he cannot remove. When a few random thugs find him, he quickly dispatches them, so you understand that he's a badass. However, once he reaches a local town, it becomes clear that he's a wanted man. Harrison Ford's character originally arrives in town to either collect the gold that Craig's stolen from him or collect on the reward that has been offered.

As Ford's character is preparing to take Craig away, lights appear out of nowhere, and open fire on the town. They kidnap several people. The attack stops when Daniel Craig's mysterious wrist bracelet activates and they find it's a weapon that actually can harm the ships.

A group of the remaining town members leave to track down the aliens and find their kidnapped friends and family.

Cowboys & Aliens took a little too long to get going. Initially, I was actually digging this because it very much felt like a standard western, and I still like a good western. However, once the aliens get involved, it actually became less interesting to me. It's all very nice looking, but there just wasn't a lot going on. They really seemed to stretch this out needlessly. The movie is two hours long, but it felt like a good 20 minutes could have been cut from it.

I thought Daniel Craig was really great. Harrison Ford was just kind of cantankerous and old. It kind of felt like he was phoning it in. Sam Rockwell, Keith Carradine and Paul Dano were good, but underused. Olivia Wilde was okay, but I thought her character wasn't written all that well. It's just a waste of a great cast.

I think they missed the mark by not going for camp and trying to treat this seriously. It's not as funny as it should have been. The movie was just way too serious.

The alien design was cool, but I didn't think there was enough to them as far as their motivation went. You just don't care all that much or feel the menace here. When you find out why the aliens are there, you just kind of go, "Um, okay."

One of the things that really bugged me was then when the final battle starts, the humans are just getting slaughtered , but the battle seemed to drag on. The aliens had superior weapons, and were faster and stronger. You wonder how the humans could have stood any chance at all, especially with how few of them there were and how quickly they seemed to die. Plus, it's annoying in a movie when weapons only seemed to have any effect when it was used for dramatic purposes, like when the script called for it. They are either vulnerable to our weapons, or not.

I'll say this, at least Favreau tried to do something a little different. When the Summer movie seasons are now filled with sequels and superhero movies, it was nice to see an attempt at something different. However, I'm such a big Favreau fan that I was expecting this to be a bit funnier and faster paced.

Cowboys & Aliens is not bad, but it's just not something I'd recommend rushing out to see. After I saw the movie with my friends, nobody really had anything to say about the movie one way or another. Just a few observations, but that's about it.

I don't see me buying this on Blu-Ray anytime soon. I don't even think I'd bother renting this again unless they came out with an extended, Director's cut. It's a matinee at best, but I think most of you can save this for a rental.

Last week in DVD through July 25th.

Man, I'm dragging my butt posting my DVD reviews. I probably didn't help that the reviews I posted for Captain America and Friends With Benefits needed to be edited heavily the day after. I really need to not post reviews when I am up late...and have been drinking heavily.

Anyway, on to the DVDs...

The Lincoln Lawyer

I'm always afraid of watching any movie with Matthew McConaughey, but I was pleasantly surprised by this one. This movie, and character, is based on a series of books by Michael Connelly. I would suspect that based on the reception of this movie, they might make more of these.

Basically, McConaughey plays kind of a douchey defense lawyer named Mickey Haller (the book series is known as the Mickey Haller series). He's asked to defend a rich, privileged kid, played by Ryan Phillippe, who's accused of assaulting a prostitute. Phillippe maintains his innocence and says that this is a setup by the girl to cash in on his family's fortune. He does a good job of convincing Haller, but...oh yes...there's more going on here than meets the eye.

I don't want to tell too much of the plot, because I don't want to spoil the movie for you. I really enjoyed this and I don't like to spoil a movie when I really think it's worth watching.

I thought the cast overall was great and it's a good story. There are some kind of standard courtroom movie elements here, and you can see the twists coming, but nothing felt too forced to me. It was still satisfying.

This was directed by Brad Furman, who's only other movie I can remember was The Take, which I thought was just okay. We'll see if Furman can direct some other good films in the future.

I give this one a strong rental recommendation.


Insidious

Wow! A movie that I actually found kind of scary.

This starts out as what appears to be a haunted house story. Insidious stars Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne as a couple that have just moved into a new house with their young son. Apparently, there were some issues with the previous house they had lived in, but now weird things seemed to have followed them here. Their son mysteriously falls into a coma and after it cannot be medically explained why this has happened, they start to look at other possible causes.

Unfortunately, this is kind of where the movie takes a turn for the worse. Once they start trying to give a 'real' explanation for what is happening to their son, it just kind loses it's edge and I thought the ending wasn't a very good payoff at all. I won't spoil it for you, but it's a shame cause the movie starts out with such a good setup and then just isn't effective in the second half.

It doesn't have any cheap, jump scares, nor is it gory. I actually got the chills a few times when watching this and I rarely get that kind of reaction to scary movies. It has a good overall, creepy vibe to it. If you have a good surround sound system, it'll help with the scares.

I think this was better and scarier than Paranormal Activity, which I'm sure this will draw some comparisons too.

Kuduos to everyone involved here though. This movie was made under the microbudget model and was made for just $1.5 million. They went for normal, practical effects, instead of overblown CG or anything like that. I think that's why it was more effective as far as being creepy. I hope they continue to make movies like this though. I would like everyone to keep supporting smaller budget films if they are even halfway decent.

This was directed by James Wan, who also directed the first Saw movie and has been involved with most of that series as a producer. It's nice to see that he can do more than just torture porn movies.

I really wish I had seen this one in the theater just so I could have heard everyone's reactions to this.

I've love to give this a higher recommendation, but the second half just drops it down a few pegs for me. Overall, I still give a rental recommendation.

A short rant:

The next two movies both claimed to be based on true stories or real events. Both movies also tell you this in the first 30 seconds as the opening credits start. This is starting to become a pet peeve of mine.

If it's based on a true story, doesn't telling me that up front kind of kill any suspense for the film and even sometimes eliminates the need to even watch it? If it's a survival-type film, which both of these are, the obviously someone survived or there'd be nobody left to tell the story.

Then, you read up on the real story and find that it's VERY loosely based on a true story or the details are sketchy at best. A different person survived, it was a different kind of shark, it was in a different location, etc. If they change everything about the supposedly 'true' story, then why even say it's a true story?

Wouldn't it make more sense to save telling me it's based on a true story for just before the end credits roll? I think that would be more effective. Well, here are the two reviews:


The Way Back

They tell you up front that 3 men survived an escape from a Siberian prison and walking 4000 miles to India. So, when like seven or eight people are part of the group, you already know half are going to die. See what I mean about that killing the suspense?

Anyway, so these guys all escape from prison and then it's just it's just people walking through snow and desert and then watching most of them die. It's not pretty to watch them, and it's not fun. Most of the time you don't even know who just died. Since they are all bundled up (in the snow) or chapped, sunburnt and bearded when they reach the desert, it's hard to know who is who.

This felt like watching Lord of the Rings, except there were no Hobbits, Dwarves, Elves, Orcs or anything else of interest happening around them.

I felt like I was enduring this movie as much as these guys were enduring this walk. At least the scenery was nice and the movie was shot well.

It's not that it's acted poorly. In fact, the cast features several actors I like, and I didn't think any of the performances were bad. Ed Harris was great, Jim Sturgess was good (who normally I haven't cared for) as was Saoirse Ronan. Colin Farrell gave a nice performance as well, but he actually goes his own way about halfway through the movie, never to be seen again.

The Way Back is just not a very interesting story. This movie kind of bums me out. I really wanted to like it. I like the director and most of the cast, but this just isn't anything I see people watching and enjoying on any level. I don't think it's a terrible movie, it's just not one worth recommending to anyone unless you want to torture yourself watching people struggle against the elements.

It's directed by Peter Weir. I think he really tried here, but given the subject matter, there was only so much he could do. Plus, when reading up on the 'true' story, you'll find that the entire guy's story has been debunked and now even the director now admits this is a work of fiction. That kind of kills any of the emotion you might have had towards the characters.

This is a pass for me.


The Reef

The second in my 'based on real events' double feature. This one is a bit more believable though. A group of friends pile in a boat and set sail for Indonesia, but shortly after the trip starts, the boat runs up on a reef and capsizes. The group decides that it's better to make a swim for it as the current is taking them further out to sea and they think the boat will sink before anyone is able to find them. One guy stays behind as he knows what is in the water and would rather take his chances staying with the boat.

The rest of the group swims for an island they think is a few miles away. I'm sure you can guess what happens next.

This is probably the most effective shark film I've seen since Jaws. One smart thing they did is not use a CG shark. What they did was film their own footage of a Great White, and then composite that in with the actors. It works surprisingly well here. I knew about this going in and there were many times where I felt like they actors really were swimming just a few feet away from a huge shark.

As someone that has both a pretty strong fear of deep water, being stranded at sea AND sharks, this movie was pretty terrifying at times.

It's only just about 88 minutes, so The Reef doesn't drag on, but can feel like it at times since they are just swimming for most of the film. However, I think that's what helps contribute to the helplessness and the eventual paranoia the characters feel.

The Reef is a little closer to the real story this was based on. It appears that two people really were killed by a shark as they were swimming back. Another difference was that it was a Tiger shark instead of a Great White, but those are the kind of changes they do for dramatic effect.

I actually recommend this one.


Arthur

I did not like this. I'm not even going to get into the lack of need for a remake of the original Arthur. This is a remake nobody asked for or even cared about.

The first 15 minutes of this movie are just awful. Russell Brand's Arthur is just so annoying that I almost turned the movie off. Fortunately, he tones his act down a bit,but then the movie just becomes what felt like a run of the mill romantic comedy. I'd get more into the plot, but it's just not interesting enough to talk about.

I'm sorry, but I don't find Russell Brand funny. He has that high pitched voice that just grates on you. I don't really think there's a lot of talent there. What exactly does he do? Act annoying? I do think he works in a small doses and in supporting roles, like in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. A little of him goes a long way. Give him a full movie and there's not enough there to keep your interest.

Greta Gerwig plays Arthur's love interest. I didn't think she was bad, but she kind of came across to me as a poor-man's Zooey Deschanel. I actually think some of the date scenes between her and Arthur were cute and a little charming. If they had gotten rid of a lot of the ridiculousness of this movie, it might have worked better as just a Rom-Com between these two.

I like Helen Mirren, but she felt totally out of place. I can't imagine why an actress of her caliber would have even agreed to be in this. It's like she lost a bet or the director must have naked pictures of her stashed away for blackmail.

Speaking of, this was directed by Jason Winer. This is actually a shock to me as he has directed many episodes of Modern Family, which is one of the funniest shows on TV. You'd think he would have known this wasn't a funny movie.

This movie is bad, but it wasn't quite as bad as I was expecting. That's still not saying much or a compliment. Saying a movie isn't as bad you were expecting it still saying it's bad. I just didn't think it was funny at all and I don't think this movie does anything to prove why Russell Brand should be in starring in movies. Overall, I can't find any reason why you need to watch it.

Ugh, don't watch this.


Thumbsucker

I rented this as this was written and directed by Mike Mills, who recently did Beginners, which I liked a lot. I wanted to see what else he had to offer. Thumbsucker isn't bad, but it wasn't as enjoyable as Beginners.

This is one of those quirky movies where every character is flawed in some way or seems to be a little off. The main character Justin, played by Lou Taylor Pucci, is a high school student that still has issues with sucking his thumb. He struggles in school and doesn't seem to be able to focus on anything. He has a unusual relationship with his parents, whom he both addresses by their first names. This actually at their request, because saying 'mom' or 'dad' makes them feel old. His Father, played by Vincent D'Onofrio, is a former jock that seems to be a little bugged by his son's awkwardness. His Mother, played by Tilda Swinton, is a nurse that doesn't seem to be happy in her marriage and has a weird crush on a TV-actor, played by Benjamin Bratt.

As a thumb sucker, Justin sees an orthodontist played by Keanu Reeves. He attempts to council Justin on his thumb sucking and tries a few methods of getting him to quit.

Justin eventually is diagnosed as ADHD and is given Ritalin, which actually allows him to start focusing on school. The debate team, which he originally only joined to get close to a girl he had a crush on, he is now excelling at. However, his new confidence and success has made him a bit arrogant, and this leads to a bit of a conflict with his debate coach, played by Vince Vaughn. He becomes confrontational with others as well and eventually quits taking the Ritalin.

It has a very good cast and they all perform well here. Even Keanu Reeves was interesting in his role and you see Vince Vaughn play a much different role than what you're used to seeing.

As I said earlier, it's on the quirky side and I thought it was a little uneven. It just felt a little slow and awkward, but the awkwardness is partially due to the subject matter and the flaws of the characters.

I thought it was worth the rental and if you like films on the awkward side, then you might enjoy this one as well.


Take Me Home Tonight

It's kind of tough to do an 80's nostalgia comedy when you already have The Wedding Singer, and more recently, Hot Tub Time Machine beating you to the punch. It's even tougher when both of those movies are far funnier than this.

Take Me Home Tonight isn't the worst movie, it just isn't very funny or all that original. It also suffers from some bad writing. There are a bunch of things that happen that don't make sense at all. Normally, you can forgive stuff like that in a comedy, but only of it's really funny. Plus, I really hate when the main character lies to a girl when there just isn't any reason to. It's the same issue I had with Just Go With It.

Topher Grace's character, is a recent MIT graduate who's back home and trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life. In an effort to impress a girl he's had a crush on since high school, tells her he has a job at Goldman Sachs, when he really works at a Suncoast Video. The girl is played by Teresa Palmer, appears to be the only actor in the movie playing her age. Anyway, as far as the lie goes, he just got out of college. It wouldn't have been a stretch to say, "I just moved back from college and I'm working here until I can get a job in my field." Granted, it's easier to say that now with the economy the way it is, but I still don't see any reason to lie like this. When the lie eventually gets revealed, you will look terrible. I'll give you one guess as to whether or not that happens here.

Plus, it's not even a well thought out lie. Several people in the movie immediately challenge him on the fact that Goldman Sachs doesn't have an office that's local. If you're gonna lie like that, at least do you homework first. You're supposed to be a math whiz, but I guess you didn't take Lying 101 at college. I guess MIT doesn't offer that as part of the curriculum.

Anyway, the plot of this all hinges around everyone meeting up at the big party. You've seen this a million times, and done much better in other films. Like I said, there's just nothing new or original here.

Having said that, I actually didn't mind it that much. It's harmless enough and the cast is likeable. It's just kind of meh. I like Anna Farris, but I felt like she was underused. Also, it seemed kind of weird to cast her as Topher's twin sister when that wasn't used for any comic effect. Why not just have her be his older sister by a year or two or just a good friend even?

Another interesting thing was that this movie was actually made in 2007, but was shelved until this year. I wonder if this movie might have been received better if it had been released a few years ago. It was directed by Michael Dowse, who really hasn't directed anything of note. I can only imagine if they had gotten a better comedy director and punched up the script a bit, this would have came off much better.

As you would guess by the title of the movie, it has a lot of 80's songs and references, so if you like that, then you'll at least get a kick out of some of that.

It wouldn't be the worse thing to rent this, just don't expect much.


Tekken

I have nothing to say about this other than it's just another bad film based on a video game. I was hoping that it would at least deliver on the martial arts action.

There's just no reason at all to watch this. I didn't think the fight scenes were all that good and the whole story is ridiculous. It's a shame because there are actually some good people in this movie, they are just all wasted here.

Pass.

Captain America - Movie Review

Captain America! F-Yeah, coming along to save the mother-effing Summer!

Okay, it's not that good, but it's still pretty damn good. Honestly, I think Captain America's biggest flaw is that it didn't come out sooner. They really messed up not bringing this out on 4th of July. So what if it was competing against Transformers 3. Transformers 3 sucked, and is anyone talking about that movie anymore. Nope!

I'm never been a Captain America comic reader. I always thought he was the cheesiest of the comic book characters. He just seemed goofy. Does he even have a super power? They actually explain that here, along with his motivation and character.

It starts with showing a sickly looking person, Steve Rogers, played by a I-don't-know-how-they-did-it Chris Evans. He shows, through his actions, that while he's not a physical guy at all, he's got all the heart in the world. It's this heart that gets him chosen to be the guinea pig for the original Super Solider serum.

However, after he's given the serum and transformed into a more physical presence, instead of just launching him into the role of hero, they put him into a war propaganda role that he actually wants nothing do with. He just wants to fight. That's Steve Rogers character in a nutshell; he's always just wanted a shot to do his part.

What the movie shows you is not that Captain America is the best superhero. It shows you that he's the best team player.  He doesn't want the all the credit or the glory.  He just wants to do his job.  It's like a star quarterback never taking credit for the victory, even though he threw for 600 yards, 5 TDs (with 2 more rushing) and no INTs.  Then he says after the game that it was 'a total team effort.'  If you combined Peyton Manning. Joe Montana and Tom Brady and then gave him super powers, he'd be Captain America. Something like that.

There's really not a lot I can say about the movie without spoiling anything. Hugo Weaving is great as he always is, but a bit underused. Tommy Lee Jones has a short, but good role. Hayley Atwell is capable, but I didn't think she was anything special as far has her performance. I think she could have been interchanged with just about any other actress and it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference.

It has plenty of great action sequences and I felt like it was paced pretty well. I liked the whole retro vibe of it and I think that really helped sell the movie.

Oh, this has the best post-credits sequence of all of the Marvel movies! Stay until the end and you'll get The Avengers teaser trailer and you don't even need to go to ComicCon.

Anyway, I really enjoyed Captain America this is a total full price movie for me. I didn't see this one in 3D, but this is something that might have worked in 3D. Once again, the 3D was done it post, which usually looks bad, but there were a few times he throws his shield around that probably would have looked pretty cool in 3D.

Otherwise, just go see this. If you liked Thor or X-Men: First Class, you'll like this just as much, if not more.

Friends With Benefits - Movie Review

If you know me, you know that it takes a lot to make me like a romantic comedy. I usually go in with the bias that they are going to be the same old hackneyed bullshit and suck hard. So, if you can make a romantic comedy that I actually enjoy, then that's saying something.

Friends With Benefits, is actually my favorite romantic comedy of the year. Yeah, I said it. They did it!

I went in wanting to hate this. Seriously, from the previews how were they going to sell me on two hot people having a hard time finding someone to have sex with them? Really, people that look like Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake are having a hard time finding someone to hook up with them? Cry me a frigging river. Thankfully, that's not the actual plot of this movie, but that's what the previews made it look like.

I know this will draw comparisons to No Strings Attached, but let me stop that now. Friends With Benefits, is better in almost every way. Apparently, both of these movies were actually made at the same time, but they decided to release Friends With Benefits later in the year. Smart decision, as this is clearly the better movie.

If you can make me laugh out loud when I'm not expecting to, then you've already won me. Friends With Benefits did that here. I was surprised at how funny this was. It's actually kind of raunchy in parts, which I just wasn't expecting, but it was a welcome surprise.

There's not a helluva lot to the plot, so I'm not even going to get into that here. It's pretty standard romantic comedy stuff. In fact, I'll give you one guess as to how it ends...

(...do you need a hint?)

I'll just talk about what I like. Here it is:

One of the things I really liked here is that neither of the main characters had that stereotypical group of friends that follows them around, like you saw in No Strings Attached or Going the Distance. This made the movie much easier for me to relate to. When it comes to my dating life, I feel like I'm flying solo most of the time. I don't have a quirky group of friends always willing to be my wingmen. As much as I'd like that, it's not the case. Anyway...

Woody Harrelson is great as an over-the-top gay sports writer. He's probably the only thing close to the bullshit friends from other romantic comedies. He's used well here though, so it didn't feel like it was too much.

Richard Jenkins as Justin's Dad is also good here. He usually good in any movie he's in. Here he teeters the line between funny and emotional. That's all I'll say.

Even Jenna Elfman has a nice role here, which I found kind of a shock cause they take a shot at Scientology in the movie and she's a known worshiper of Xenu. Maybe that changed.

Sure, this is a little cliched at points. Actually, this movie pokes fun of the whole genre in a very meta-sense, which makes me forgive that (at one point Kunis' character even gives a f-you to Katherine Heigl. Bravo!). In a way, it's a total setup, because you know what's coming at the end. Still, you don't mind and actually would have been mad if it ended any other way.

This movie gets by on it's charm and the chemistry of Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. Oh man, does the chemistry pop between those two. If they had cast this differently, it just wouldn't have worked. You know, I never thought I'd say this, but I think Timberlake really does have a future in acting. Even after The Social Network, I thought he was a flash in the pan, but he pretty good. While there are scenes where he sings, it's only done for laughs. I was actually expecting them to run that into the ground and make it annoying, (like say...Jack Black) but again, they used that without making you roll your eyes at it.

I credit this to Will Gluck who also directed Easy A, which was my surprise fun movie of last Summer. It seems he has really figured out a formula that works and hopefully he can keep this up.

Anyway, I highly recommend seeing this. It's a great date movie.