Month: April 2012

“We’re going to watch the female Bourne Identity movie.”

“Err what?”

Apparently that is how some people are referring to Haywire. Not sure why, not like she is a secret weapon or anything. I think it is more based on the realistic fighting than anything. What I’m trying to say is, I had no idea what this movie was about.

Sexy fighting maybe?

Gina Carano is just hanging out in a diner, when Channing Tatum comes in, and eventually they fight! He wants her to leave, for some reason. This looks like legitimate fighting too, not what normally happens when a woman is involved. She gets punched in the face! A random diner patron, Michael Angarano, intervenes, allowing her to break Tatum’s arm and escape. With Michael, in his car. Woot!

She goes over the last week of events. Turns out Tatum and her used to work for a private covert firm. The firm is run by Ewan McGregor (also her former boyfriend?)! They get a job from an agent in DC, Michael Douglas, to rescue and Asian guy in Barcelona, who is being held hostage. Their Spanish contact is Antonio Banderas. Don’t worry, I am not done name dropping yet.

Well, despite it being hard, they succeed! Back in the US, she gets a second secret mission, that is also meant to be easy. She just has to pose as the wife of a British agent, Michael Fassbender, in Ireland. No sweat! But during the mission she finds out that the Asian guy they saved…has been killed! And made to look like she did it. Set up by her own firm! But why?

The rest of the film is her trying to figure that out, on the run with that random stranger. A lot of scenes involve her kicking peoples asses too, so that is fun. Also her dad is played by Bill Paxton! So many famous (men) in this movie.

Gina’s claim to fame is MMA fighting and being “Crush” on the American Gladiators reboot.

In terms of fighting, I tended to like those scenes a lot. The most, compared to the rest of the scenes. Definitely important for an action movie with a lame plot. I am surprised by how many famous actors are in this movie, despite how I barely even heard about it coming out in theaters.

Obviously I thought the acting was a bit weak, especially from Gina, who…hasn’t really acted in anything before. But thankfully they have a lot of the other people do most of the talking. Scenes in her flashback were kind of weird, like randomly switching to a slow motion black and white adventure when they were in Barcelona. Disrupted the flow for me and felt cheesy.

Although the plot isn’t too interesting, it is fun to see her kick a lot of peoples asses. Especially Ewan. I have no idea why that is so rewarding.

Confessions Of A Shopaholic looked like a fun romp through fashion and credit debt. Pretty much the funnest things ever, like, omg, am I right?

I don’t expect to find anything profound with this movie (like credit debt is bad? excessive shopping is bad?) but hopefully at least I will laugh a bit and not find every situation entirely avoidable. I mean, if the character is smart at least.

She looks like a fairy tale woman. Somehow in NYC she never gets mugged wearing stuff like this all day.

Anyways, the lesson you are supposed to learn is the difference between price and worth. But they say that a lot, don’t worry.

Isla Fisher likes to shop. She works at a garden magazine, but wants to do fashion! Loves credit cards, but has a problem paying them off. She even lives with her best friend, Krysten Ritter, and her boyfriend, and they all seem to help her avoid the creditors. Her parents (John Goodman, Joan Cusack) tried to teach her to value money and shop at thrift stores and saved up, but their hippie ways failed.

So she tries to work at a fashion magazine, but the only magazine owned by the corporation with an opening is the financing magazine, lead by Hugh Dancy. Despite a bad interview, she gets drunk and sends a letter to the fashion people with a sample article about worth, and hate mail to Hugh, but gets them mixed up. Congrats! She now has a job with a finance magazine, despite knowing close to nothing and being 15k in debt.

When she eventually gets an article published, it sky rockets as the next best thing. The owner of the corporation, John Lithgow, personally loves it, and so does the fashion people. Including some famous fashion person, played by Leslie Bibb. But she is a villain in the movie. So is Robert Stanton, a “mean old” debt collector who she is avoiding throughout the movie.

But will everyone realize she was lying the whole time, like he has been her whole life? What can she do to fuck up her friendships too? Can she bang the main editor, or will Bibb beat her to it?

In the ‘zine world, sleeping with your employees is fine.

Let me be detailed with why I dislike the movie now. Hooray!

1) All of her problems are easily fixable, and by never thinking they escalate. And yet still even after initial escalation, they are still easily fixable. By avoiding her debt collector, she sets up for him to go to drastic measures to catch her attention. By not telling her work, she sets up a big fall. Well, despite being a finance magazine, it didn’t mean she had to be good at paying bills.

2) Her friend got mad at her, because she lost the bridesmaids dress to a thrift store, and a homeless lady was wearing it. How? Because of the shopaholics meeting the friend made her attend, not from unwarranted spending. No reason for them to be mad at each other, as it wasnt Isla’s fault.

3) There was a tape to stop being a shopaholic, and involved throwing out all the excess. Well she didn’t. Guess how she raised her bill money?
By (gasp) selling a lot of her shit back. HOW IS THAT NOT THE MOST OBVIOUS THING EVER. You will be mad because that is clearly the right thing to do, and pays the bills, and good to go. But she keeps trying to throw it out, despite the debt? Dumb as shit.

4) Why the hell is the debt collector a villain? She pretty much stole from these companies for months and continuously lied to them. Yet she “gets him” at the end? That is some bullshit. Accept responsibility and pay your bills with class, please.

And you know, also weird messages about giving up on your dreams, and accepting the simpler things in life. Blah.

Why the hell is Channing Tatum in so many Romance based movies?

A guy who’s face that screams out “Big dumb strong man” doesn’t seem to be romance movie material. Or at least once every awhile. But damn. I feel like that is 2/3 of his movies.

In The Vow, not only is he the main male lead, he is kind of the only romantic character in the movie. So weird.

You can tell, because there are no pictures of anyone else out in the rain.

The movie begins with Tatum and Rachel McAdams, driving at night with lots of snow. Aw, they are married. How sweet. Rachel has to leave, so she unbuckles, but before getting out of that car, she gets her kiss on. And then a truck slams into the back of their car, and she goes out the window.

What the heck!

Yeah it sucks. Then she gets into a coma, and well, some amnesia happens. She forgets the last few years of her life, but not everything. Definitely everything involving her husband. What does she remember?

Going to law school, being close to her parents (Sam Neill and Jessica Lange), and being engaged to someone else. What?! Her old fiance, Scott Speedman, whom she left to move to the city and find her own way.

Tatum has a hard enough time providing evidence that she ever even loved him (in the form of a voice mail and their wedding video (and their vows!)). He is all weird and different, and she doesn’t like the idea of living with a stranger. She also finds it odd that he doesn’t seem to know her family well. What if he is just an intense stalker and going to kill her?

What she doesn’t know is why she ever left her home, her rich life style, law school, and fiance, to move to the city, become a sculptor, and you know, fall in love with Tatum and stuff. None of her family feel like bringing it up either, not even her sister , Jessica McNamee, who is also about to get married.

Will she ever remember her past? Or will she be all, whatever.

There is an amnesia clause in vows, right?

So, somehow this ended up being a decent romance movie. I’d imagine losing someone you loved (and who loved you back) would suck, especially if it was via amnesia. Especially if she used to be an entirely different person, who also was kind of a bitch. Understandably, at least. No one likes not knowing anyone around them.

This is based off of a real couple, and even given a factoid based off what happened at the end. The ending to the movie? Well, I thought it was kind of a let down. I guess they wanted to go away from a more obvious turn of events so we wouldn’t guess what happens. But still. Eh.

But the beginning, starting with the accident, and flash backs to when they met and their marriage? That was all very cute. But Tatum’s character is a total dumbass, who does a few things that are quite horrible in the movie, and that was also annoying to watch.

And then again? Some other things were not. Sooo….Yeah.

I definitively had Repo Men on the shelf for over a year before finally watching it. Why? Because I thought the plot would be obvious. I thought it would be lame action.

I also knew that the Repo! The Genetic Opera had also existed, even though I hadn’t seen it yet. Just didn’t like two movies having similar dystopian futures, despite their (now knowing) very different plots.

But hey. Lets not judge it before we watch it. That’d be horrible.

But the action does look quite shocking.

Jude Law is a repo man! Not really too scary, but he does you know, go collect organs from people who are behind on their payments by a certain time. He is required to ask them if they want an ambulance, but normally doe when they are knocked out. Not that it matters. If they are losing their heart, an ambulance wont really be able to help. His wife, Carice van Houten, wants him to stop (because its kind of mean) and move to sales. Yes, switch to giving the organs (and bad contracts) versus taking them. Pay is worse, but at least hours are stable.

Either way, on his supposed last extract before he was going to switch, a crazy explosion happened and left him badly hurt. So something happens, can you guess? You can totally guess. He gets a new heart from the company. Yet has the same exact guidelines as a normal person, thanks to Liev Schreiber, his boss. This pisses him off, and thinks it is a death sentence. His partner, Forest Whitaker, tries to get him back on the job and collecting, but Jude can’t will himself to kill others anymore.

Knowing his time is up soon, Jude finds himself in a colony of people hiding out with organs. He meets John Leguizamo, who i a surgeon himself, but only takes away the organs from other people. He also meets Alice Braga, a girl who has been on the run forever, and has dozens of expired organs. Once his time is up, needless to say none of his former workmates want to go after him, but in the end it has to be Forest.

What then occurs is their attempts at both escape from the country and clearing their organs from their record book, so they can escape to a foreign beach and live carefree for the rest of their days.

Not to mention some intense ass-kickery.

Despite the kind of obvious turn of events, I was still thinking it was a pretty decent movie. But the last twenty or so minutes? That shit was amazing. The action was intense, the drama was intense. The ending? I was definitely surprised by it, and made the movie much better. It answered all of my questions, and was not at all what I was expecting.

Well done ending. Pretty sure its worthy enough to be the only reason to watch it.

Wooo, sequels!

A Game Of Shadows is the sequel to the very successful first Sherlock Holmes movie that came out two years prior. I remember the day it was released to theaters, they announced they would already o a sequel, unbeknowingst to Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey Jr. at the time, making them both cancel projects. Did you know that RDJ was supposed to be in Cowboys & Aliens originally? Me neither.

As far as I am concerned, from the trailers, this is the only thing that happened in the movie.

This time, the movie is narrated by Watson (Jude Law), as he appears to be typing up a story. What kind of story? Well one that begins with Holmes stalking Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) down the street. He sees that she is delivering a package, and has goons following her. Whoops, those are her bodyguards. Holmes is still narrowly able to catch up to her before she delivers the nice package, a bomb. Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris) is up to some shenanigans, has been for some time, and Holmes tends to always put a stop to him.

Some things happen, including the fact that Watson is getting married tomorrow, to the same Mary (Kelly Reilly), and Holmes forgot about the Stag party. He invites his older and equally annoying brother Mycroft Holmes (Stephen Fry), and they go out to a bar and gambling den (void of any of Watson’s friends). Mostly to see a gypsy Simza (Noomi Rapace) who Adler also had a letter to deliver to. Oh look, another assassination attempt.

Turns out that her brother is working for Moriarty as well, and they have no idea why. This leads them to Paris to try and stop another assassination attempt, then Germany and Switzerland. The battle of wits is played out between Holmes and the Professor, all the while other big spoilers happen, and a very unexpected honeymoon disaster.

Holmes was Mary the whole time! No wonder he hated the idea of marriage!

Woo, [rushed out] sequels!

They even said it themselves. Or at least when I hear “fast tracking” a sequel I think of them doing it as fast as possible, spending less time on the script and other areas in order to release it fast enough to ride off the popularity of the first. I mean, it makes sense, but usually means a movie isn’t as good as its predecessor (not that it matters, because the sequel will still make bank).

I did find parts of the movie entertaining, but it wasn’t the same as the first in all aspects. I thought the elements of thriller and mystery were lessened greatly, which took away part of the experience. Sure, I didn’t know what was going on, but not because of the mystery, mostly due to the confusing unraveling of the plot throughout.

It made sense during the beginning, but most of it seemed kind of unrelated, a problem I usually have with stories that span “all across Europe.”. Usually not enough time I feel is spent at the new location to accurately get the appropriate emotions I should get form each scene, and then we are whisked away to a new location.

Although not a bad movie by any means, I just felt that it lacked a lot of what I liked from the first.

Sherlock Holmes is one of those characters that everyone knows. Like Robin Hood, but with Asperger’s Syndrome. and nothing like Robin Hood.

The movie tries to create a Holmes that is closer to the actual source material, and not like the more famous “pipe and hat, smart guy” that some other show popularized. Because apparently Holmes can fight too!

He also is trusting of such silly things, like jail cells.

At the beginning of the movie, Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and John Watson (Jude Law) are trying to stop Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) from killing a woman, and attempting to summon a demon.

Well they catch him, and successfully put him in jail. Later, he is successfully hanged for his crimes and the movie is over, yay!

Or not? A few days later Holmes is visited by Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), a former adversary, and still current thief. She needs his help to find a man, and is working for a mysterious professor. Oh yeah, and Lord Blackwood’s body cannot be found, and it makes it seem like he escaped from the inside. Especially when other people start dying, and you know, see him.

This causes the Temple of the Four Orders to get involved, a secret society dealing with magic and the dark arts, and want to put a stop to Blackwood, so they try to hire Holmes. Long story short, bad things happen, where Blackwood puts the entire British parliament in danger, with plans on then taking over the US and the world.

Oh yeah, and we get the bumbling Inspector Lestrade (Eddie Marsan) and Mary (Kelly Reilly) the potential fiance to Watson in here as well.

It should be noted that most of her outfits look out of place, even in old-timey England.

This movie probably gets the distinction for being the easiest to understand Guy Ritchie movie. They are all British, but since it is helmed by RBJ, it is the least British. Not saying that all American actors are easy to understand, because Brad Pitt in Snatch was definitely the least understandable character.

Much like how my paragraph probably made no sense just then.

But still! Its hard for me to to give the genre “Adventure” to most movies, but I find it entirely suitable. With action, drama, and comedy, the first Holmes movie was entertaining in all aspects.

The second one? Well, we will see. I heard it had Thor in it.

Gran Torino was meant to be Clint Eastwood‘s last movie as an actor!

But now that I see his imdb, he is supposed to be acting in something called Trouble With The Curve later this year. Huh. Looks good too. My definition of good is “sad”, by the way.

Turns out a Gran Torino is a muscle car from Ford. From AMERICA!

The movie opens with the loss of Eastwood’s wife.. There is a gathering at his house, with “Friend” and “family”. The friends being mostly superficial, and his family thinking he is a curmudgeon who doesn’t care about anyone. Not really true. He cared about his wife! And his car. He fought in the Korean war, and used to live in a community of hard working class (White) citizens.

But this is Detroit, and the jobs have left and it has become poor. Now his entire neighborhood is poor Asian people, more specifically Hmong. He also has to deal with a young Catholic priest (Christopher Carley) who really really wants him to be all religious like his wife, but he hates that some young guy is trying to make him do anything.

His neighbors have a son and daughter, played by Bee Vang and Ahney Her. Bee is pressured to join a local gang by his cousin, and his initiation is to steal the Gran Torino from his neighbor. Fortunately for him, he gets caught. The gang pressures him to do more bad things, but Clint chases him off, which makes the neighbors love him.. To make up for the almost crime, he is sent over to work for Clint around his yard and house. He eventually makes it so that Bee must do yard work elsewhere and help his neighbors, making the overall community better.

Escalation continues between the gang and Bee, until Clint tries to intervene and beats up a gang member. They don’t like that at all, so they perform a drive by on the house on the neighbors house, and hit Bee and kidnap his sister. Needless to say, this makes him very angry and wants real revenge. Real hate demands real killing. But Clint knows what it is like to kill a man and doesn’t think he should have to live his life knowing that too. Can he put an end to the gang violence and redeem himself to all parties at the same time?

What kind of dick would try and bring violence to an old man too?

I probably owned this movie for over a year before I finally watched it. Was never in the mood for a serious race relations movie. Because all I really knew about it was the racial thing. After all, half of the dialogue seems to be full of racial slurs.

I also liked it a lot. Made what is a weird small occurrence seem like the grandest of causes for someone to fight for. I think most of the time, a gang wouldn’t care that much that a cousin doesn’t join them, they care more if they decide to leave the gang afterwards. But man, I really wanted them to be punished, and was stoked to see Clint Eastwood be the punisher. Kind of.

Really well acted, and if you don’t get emotional by the end, then you just probably weren’t paying attention.

Honestly, I feel like half of my movie reviews involve me admitting something that I previously didn’t know. It may come as a surprise to you, but my musical knowledge isn’t focused in the hip hop/rap movement/wars of the early 90s.

Believe it. The first Tupac song I heard was Changes? Maybe? Its music video seemed like a screensaver slide show, and came out years after he “died”, so not sure. Similarly, the first Notorious B.I.G. song I heard was that Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems song, and then I’ll Be Missing You. All made popular after death, and not really his stuff.

Clearly, I have been missing out. But yay for the chance to learn some things!

I am well aware though that Tupac isn’t dead, but the Ivory Coast goal keeper.

Did you know Notorious B.I.G. had a son? It’s true. And his son, Christopher Wallace, plays his dad in this movie. His dad when he was 10-12 year range at the beginning. That is both awesome and weird at the same time. He was also the kid in Everything Must Go.

Either way, he was also born Christopher Wallace, to a single mother (Angela Bassett) who tried to raise her boy right. Morals, Christian, you know, all of that. But he likes to rap. He starts of dealing drugs, lots of crack, and when his girlfriend is pregnant, he has to raise the stakes for his crack dealing. But also, still rap battles.

He also meets (who will later become) Lil’ Kim (Naturi Naughton) at this time, who’s real purpose in this movie is to be naked a lot. So he is cheating on his girl, and drug dealing, causing him to get kicked out of house. Eventually he is caught with drugs and guns, and put in jail for awhile until bail happens, and he vows to turn his life around. He makes his first big hit, and get signed by Sean Combs (Derek Luke) as long as he gives up the crime. But the album still takes awhile to happen…

He eventually starts his album when Puff Daddy makes his own company, and meets Faith Evans (Antonique Smith), a singer, and marries her. You know, ignoring his old gf/kid, and Lil’ Kim. Can you see this is setting up to be bad? He also meets and befriends Tupac! (Anthony Mackie), but when he gets shot (and doesn’t die) he blames Biggie, P. Diddy, and the label. They start to feud with the tracks and records. East Coast / West Coast. Very bad things.

You know how this ends. Tupac dies, Biggie feels like he is to blame for it (no shit kind of), and tries to quit rapping. Still being bad with all three of his women. Eventually shot and killed himself. Then everyone listens to Hypnotize for the rest of time!

Bad Boy Records really just wants peace.

Guess what! I’ve learned something today. And that shit can get complicated when you add in drugs, weapons, and dirty hos.

I’m looking at you Lil’ Kim. But then again, she is a real person, and apparently hated her portrayal in the movie. I wonder why.

I thought parts of the movie were entirely cheesy. Despite a supposed biography, it just felt, weird at times. The narrator changed too, mostly Notorious throughout, until the end when it was his mom talking about his legacy.

But it was also interesting at the same time. Again, I really didn’t know most of the songs, but I recognized Hypnotize every time they played it (four? Maybe I am counting the menu too). So hey, want to know about Biggie Smalls? Watch the movie. Don’t? Ignore it. Easy.

FIIIIIGHTINNNG!

Another movie where the subject and plot are all summed up with a verb. “What’s the movie about?” Fighting. “Well what happens in it?” Fighting. “Is it any good?” Fighting.

Fighting.

In this movie, Channing Tatum plays a, you guessed it, con-man. He sells some counterfit items on the street for quick bucks, hoping to scam people and quickly leave. He quickly gets in a scrum with some guys, after Zulay Henao realizes that the Harry Potter book is no where close to being legit. Terrence Howard sees this and eventually finds Tatum and gives him a proposition.

Fighting? For money? Sure! In fact he even used to pseudo-box for a college team, meaning he knows his way around a fight. Double win!

This is bare knuckled, illegal fighting stuff going on, where people can bet a lot of money on the outcome. Also means it is very dangerous with little to no rules involved. Shit. Tatum is living the big life, and winning against all odds. This makes Luis Guzman and other investors pleased. They do what anyone would do in that situation.

Set up a fight between him and Brian White, another legitimate boxer from the same college as Tatum. And they want Tatum to lose the fight. If he wins, he gets $100,000, but if he loses, he will get a lot more from the bets of Terrence Howard and his associates. At the same time, Tatum has begun seeing Zulay, the single mother waitress, who might also have a thing going on with Howard.

Is she a cheating ho? Will he lose the fight for the monies, or win and make dangerous people mad at him? Fighting???

Fighting.

For a movie named Fighting, I thought there would be more of it going on. I think overall he is in four street fights, and not a single training/montage sequence. The first is quick, the second is weird, the third is verses an asian man, and the fourth the finale. Just seems like there isn’t enough fighting in Fighting.

Terrence Howard also felt pretty bad to me in this movie. I feel as if his character mumbled the entire time, making it just annoying. He also was bad at being a “fighting pimp”. Just none of it made any sense. Much like Tatum’s relationship with Zulay (who is the character name and actress name. How weird!).

Obviously none of the characters really had any growth or development, so I guess the only saving grace is: Was the fighting decent?

Yeah. It was okay. But okay fighting in a movie called Fighting is probably a fail.

Everyone knows about The Social Network.

Everyone. I mean, come on. You do. You all probably saw it. But damn it, I wanted to write about it anyways.

Because sometimes you just want to write about a greatm ovie.

And it’s all because of some BU girl.

Also I should note that I recognize that this is mostly a work of fiction, and based on true events. But you know, might as well write about it as if it is real.

Mark Zuckerberg got dumped by Erica Albright. He also talks, a lot. He goes to Harvard and can’t understand why he got dumped. So he did what any reasonable guy doe, gets drunk and makes a website to compare all of the women in college to one another, and crash the Harvard network.

This gets him noticed by the Winklevoss twins, two olympic rowers. They have the idea of making a Harvard based social networking site, and by making it a lot more exclusive than something like Mypace. You have to get invited, have to have the harvard.edu, no weird band people etc. They want Zuckerberg to fix the site and make it live for them. But he is inspired by it. And kind of takes their idea.

Getting one of his roommates, Eduardo, to invest in his project and have a third stake in the company, he eventually makes The Facebook and becomes instantly “popular” on campus. The decide to expand to local colleges and hire some other people to work for them. Eduardo wants to get advertisement for their site to make money, while Mark just wants the site to be cool and grow. Advertisements aren’t cool.

They also eventually meet Sean Parker, the founder of Napster, who immediately befriends Mark and pisses off Eduardo. He convinces them to move to LA to set up a company, and weasels his way in. Despite being broke at that point, he now knows a lot of people helping facebook get into the door. Lots of conflict, and lots of people get pissed off.

The movie is told with the twins and Eduardo currently suing Mark for different reasons, and their pre court hearings are used as the device for telling the story, up until Eduardo gets tricked out of the company. Rashida Jones is also in this movie as “Random lawyer helpful person” who preps people before they go in front a jury.

No idea why he is seen as a bad influence.

I realize how ridiculous going over the plot actually is. I mean, its about the invention of facebook. That sounds very uninteresting in itself. Whod have thought there was lots of drama behind it? Intense drama at that.

When I first heard about it, I thought it was dumb, but the previews were so well made and epic looking, I just had to watch it. And it did not disappoint. Despite being two hours, I feel as if the movie goes very fast and flies by for me, which I think is a sign of a great movie. The acting is great, the dialogue is great, but that is expected when Aaron Sorkin is writing the dialogue.

If for some reason you still haven’t seen TSN, you need to. But I am pretty sure there doesn’t exist anyone in that category.