Day: October 5, 2011

Matttttt damonnnnnn

Anyways, Hereafter is a story about three different people who have experienced death ad how their lives become intertwined at the end. Directed by Clint Eastwood. This movie is NOT about Matt Damon and his dealings with others, despite what any preview or poster would make you believe. One story involves a young pair of twins in London, more or less raising their drunk mum. And of course one of them dies unexpectedly.

In France, we have a news reporter who while on vacationing technically dies during a tsunami but is CPR’d to full. Damon has the power of douchery, and can apparently speak with those who have passed on. We are told it is real in the movie, but even he feels like a douche when he does it. Penn and Teller would not approve of him using these powers to help the grievers.

The movie does go into the fake communicators of the dead, and how douchie they are. Unfortunately it also has Matt Damon being real. I don’t like that. The Damon story line was the best, but the other two were pretty uninteresting. The kids is better than the french womans, because she is French and thus speaks French. The movie would have made more money, guaranteed, if the woman was just an English speaking reporter. No reason to add subtitles to a movie unless it actually adds something. Just make everyone American, Clint Eastwood. Damn it!

The movie tries to be super realistic, minus the speak with the dead part. But it was a big disappointment.

Whoops! I may have accidentally watched two “indie” movies on the same day. Whoops! Both of them happened to have Kate Mara in them! Maybe it was an accident, or maybe I did it on purpose.

Or maybe I did it for this face.

I actually thought that this movie had something with heavy metal and medieval knights. Turns out, Ironclad is actually a very historical based film. This is the “True” story of post Magna Carta signing England. It involves siege stuff! According to other people, most of it is is correct, including how the fights happened and the armor used. Even though I am a ancient history major, I tend to dislike medieval based history or films. They always seem so full of themselves. This kind of did that as well. It had some larger boring parts, because parts of history are boring. Also it became a bit hard to follow at certain parts, as I continued to forget where they were at that point.

Paul Giamatti plays King John. Big shoes to fill, but also means he gets to play an asshole, which is 95% of his roles anyways. Similarly James Purefoy was a great protagonist. Lots of blood and fighting in this. Kate Mara plays the Purefoy crush, which is understandable. Apparently she sings the anthem some times are NY Giants games. Her grandparents founded the Giants and the Steelers, but fuck the Steelers.

And fuck the Penguins too.

I was super tired during the first half. So I may have missed a few things. It is surprisingly well done for a smaller budget, but unless you are a fan of the times probably won’t enjoy many rewatches.

The only reason this movie caught my eye is thanks to accidentally seeing its trailer in another movie. Oh great, another sitcom star trying to do a big indie movie that is kind of comedic that he wrote and directed, with some low name actress who has been in fantasy related movie who will probably become big later on.

Not going to lie. That comparison was way too easy to make. This time the sitcom star who wrote/directed the movie is Josh Radnor of How I Met Your Mother, the woman is Malin Akerman who was previously in Watchmen. Saying she is going to be a big star later on though I can’t prove yet.

“I wear my sunglasses inside, so I can, so I can…

As of course this being an indie comedy, I was expecting to enjoy most of it and have a bad ending. By bad I mean one that just stopped. Indie movies love not having that “Hollywood everything wrap up” ending, when they don’t realize that having no ending at all makes the last minutes spent watching it just feel kind of pointless. I kind of lied up there too, Akerman is actually not the love interest, but the bald best friend (gross). Kate Mara, my new favorite ginger crush is though.

Thankfully this movie actually did end, because Josh Radnor said I deserve it!

The story is a bunch of 20somethings in NYC and their love lives, more or less. All of the storylines complete themselves by the end (but one. That is kind of up in the air), so that is good. People can be happy it turns out! The storyline involving subway kid was all unexpected and sufficiently awkward for me to watch. So yeah, this movie was better than I thought it would be, and I laughed out loud some times. Which is a weird thing to do alone!

This is one of the movies that when compared with the other three X-Men movies and Wolverine movie, it just doesn’t make much sense. It is called First Class because it is a prequel, and showing how the x-men came to be (in movie form). How can blah blah happen when in blah, blah happened? I did that a lot of times while watching. (Normally I’d complain about not being like the comics at all, but they are a different source, so they are allowed to be. But comparing the related movies all made by Fox seems like it should be plausible, right?). Example being Beast. Beast turns Blue in XM:FC, and is Blue in X3, yet in his cameo in X2, is not blue.

No! Because this isn’t actually related. It is more of a reboot. (So any attempts to complain about continuity can now be ignored :/).

I used to LOVE ReBoot!

After the disastrous X-Men: The Last Stand, Fox stated they were going to take the series in new directions, with some origin stories. At the time they said they would do a Wolverine Origin (which I thought was bad. Seriously. X2 already noted his origin, why do they need another? And then they made a whole movie that doesn’t make sense) and a Magneto Stand Alone film. This was changed to a Magneto Origin. Then canned. I was sad! Magneto is way awesome and deserves a movie. I didn’t like First Class when I first heard of it, but thankfully it is also kind of a Xavier and Magneto Origin story. Also, in terms of Reboots, this is nicely done.

It has a wider range of mutants than I am used to (not just Storm/Cyclops/Jean Grey. Finally. Branch out guys). I’ve always liked Emma Frost (As anyone who likes females should) played by January Jones of Mad Men. Xavier is played by James McAvoy, the lead of The Conspirator. Magneto is played by Michael Fassbender, who was in Inglourious Basterds.

Kinda messed up the black mutants gotta be the one who dies first. But the tension between Magneto / Xavier was pretty well played throughout the movie. The ending may have felt a little forced (and “Angels” reason for being bad) but overall it was enjoyable. I also have to ignore that Havok is actually Cyclops’ younger brother in the comics, as in this movie he would be much older and apparently not related. Maybe he was a creepy uncle?

Also it was nice to see Sebastian Shaw not dressed up like some creepy Victorian gentleman, but instead dressed up like Kevin Bacon.

Maybe the Hellfire Club forces its members to dress this way in the comics/cartoons? But then again, Sebastian Shaw is their leader.

3 out of 4.

This will probably be my only political based documentary I ever review. Why? Because I can handle stuff like Justin Bieber, they are obvious at what they want to show, and don’t only tell half truths. I assume all other documentaries just tell one side. But it seems they always convince me too. I really just have to see two documentaries, one arguing each side, then maybe my fragile mind will be able to decide what is right!

But after watching Hot Coffee, of course I agree with it. Screw all these sensationalists who always talk about the McDonalds Coffee case without knowing the facts! It also had more examples, which also made me mad. I was already angry at the coffee case because it made everyone want to be a comedian. Anytime someone brings up suing because of hot coffee, I already got mad, because as a joke it got old in the first month, but still people mention it and demand laughs. Also, I have heard tort more than I want to now forever. But Torte on the other hand…

Mmmm…Torte….

If anything, it will teach me to stop just assuming without finding out info on my own. Because knowledge is power! Knowing is half the battle! And something with a shooting star!

When I first saw this movie, something crazy happened. It has zero ratings on Rotten Tomatoes (a site I never check, by the way. Who cares about other people’s opinions on movies? (Outside of you lovely people.)). IMDB was very similar. So as far as I could see, my first review of this movie may have been one of the…first reviews of this movie. It also lets me realize that most likely no one has heard of it!

This must be what Buzz Lightyear and Lance Armstrong felt when they first landed on the moon.

This movie is about an underprivileged college student, Kevin Zegers (of AIR BUD fame. Bit more sinister in this movie) who teams up with two anarchists to kidnap the kids of three rich people (aka The Entitled). One kid each! Oh very exciting, I know. The three kids were on the way to meet their dads in a cabin for the weekend, before the kidnapping takes place. So throughout the movie it switches between the different groups, and we learn that not everything is as great as it appears to be. Two of the dads are also Ray Liotta and Victor Garber.

I will admit the beginning of the movie was kind of slow. It had a bunch of set up that didn’t make as much sense until the end. Kind of felt patchy and confusing. But about 30 minutes in, shit. got. real.

From then on I could only describe myself as being at the edge of my seat. I didn’t know what would happen, and couldn’t guess anything right. It was well paced at that point and had a lot of great conflict between the characters. And yes some people. Great movie.

Hmm, a movie about a girl who is good at killing people? That sounds pretty Kick-Ass.

The eye slits are bigger for when she gets older. Because your eyes widen with age.

So all I knew about this was that some girl was a super powered assassin, for some reason, and people had to die. Great concept right? Super swedish looking killer, killing some things, and maybe a plot too? Speaking of plot, I heard it was a smart action movie too. Great! I could use an action movie that doesn’t make me rage from simplicity. Hanna is played by Saoirse Ronan, who has been in some things. Cate Blanchett has also been in a few things, I guess. Also Eric Bana, who plays a lot better in this role as grizzled former CIA, as opposed to Hulk.

Some things I enjoyed? The soundtrack. It was pretty spot on in terms of the whole movie. Ronan acted like a confused little girl pretty well.

But overall I really didn’t enjoy the movie. The plot was super weak. Exactly as I expected from an action movie nowadays. Not sure where the smart aspect of it came from. Was hoping for a new Bourne like movie and was all, ehhh. The camera work seemed like the director just wanted to try out a whole bunch of different artsy ways of showing a scene and could never settle on one. The rotating camera for the escape out of the facility was just ridiculous. The plot really didn’t consist more than “lololDNAtesting”, which also isn’t a spoiler. To me, it seemed like an action movie, with a bad plot, and not much action. It is probably just over-hyped because people are interested in a young girl killing people.

Who needs DNA enhancing in the womb when you are the daughter of the Hulk?

1 out of 4.

Wow. The Perfect Host movie comes completely out of nowhere and just, wow. It is kind of a psychological thriller, kind of a dark comedy. Kind of WTF?? Definitely surprising.

“Well… uh… properly speaking, madam, we are surprised. You are taken aback. Though I do acknowledge that the sense that you intend is gaining increasing currency through its use, yes.“

The story tells of a con man (played by Clayne Crawford) who, after recently robbing a bank (kind of a straight forward con there), is looking for a place to hide out. He goes around to a bunch of rich houses, and finally finds one who will let him in. Sure, he read the mail in the box and pretended to be friends with a friend of his in Sydney. BUT LITTLE DID HE KNOW that David Hyde Pierce (NILES!!) is actually kind of a weird guy. Not a perfect host. Just a weird guy.

If I had to split this movie into 7 parts, I would say part 1 was slow, part 2 was interesting, parts 3-5 were WHOA OH MAN, part 6 was dumb, and part 7 was interesting. The last scene makes you question what is really going on. If certain people are going to change. This is all pretty vague. It is just such a weird movie that telling you what happens gives away a lot of the surprise. I heard watching the trailer spoils everything in the movie, so you better not watch it. Niles is just so fucking crazy.

The movie almost reminded me of the movie The Last Supper, which, well, no one here has probably seen.

The movie has nothing to do with this random picture.

2 out of 4.

You may remember this as the movie that won Best Foreign Language film, of which finally came out last week on the DVDs and the Blurays. It is in Swedish/Danish/American, with the English parts actually taking place in a Sudan refugee camp. Go figure. This movie deals with a lot of troubling issues, on both parents, and on their kids.

Okay, so far it pretty much sounds like every American drama. Kids and parents having troubling issues? Oh, please DO go on.

For the main two kids, one has just lost his mother to cancer and moved to Denmark with his dad from London, and the other is a Swedish born family in Denmark whose parents are separated. In case you couldn’t tell, this takes place in Denmark. Thankfully, London kid befriends the Ratface kid, and stands up for him, but he ends up being a bad influence too.

Bullies, Sudan warlords, divorce, cancer, bombs, suicide, near death experiences, and conflicts are all hugely part of this movie. Some of those are pretty different than normal American dramas.

I guess morally it questions what is the right thing to do. Is it good to do bad things to bad people? Great movie though. But you knew that, it won things after all. The Swedish dad who was also a doctor in the movie is going to be in the Hobbit movies too, if you wanted to see how he was at acting. Damn it, just saying Hobbit “movies” sounds wrong.

There Can Be Only One!

3 out of 4.