Month: May 2012

If you guys knew how many lesser known movies Kevin Spacey was making nowadays, you’d be shocked. Shocked!

Because everyone loves Kevin Spacey right? Even when he is in mediocre films, he is usually the best part and everyone is happy. Because yay Kevin Spacey. But why all these films that aren’t advertised? Today I watched Shrink, which came out in 2009. And well, I am sure its probably not something anyone really knows. Tomorrow I will watch Casino Jack, a 2010 movie with him. Heard of it? No. Probably not.

I am sure most would be willing to tell Kevin their darkest problems too.

Kevin Smith is a celebrity therapist in LA. Exclusive and famous clients, who all have problems. No cameos here, but Robin Williams does play an actor who is in therapy for alcoholism (but doesn’t believe he is an alcoholic, and thinks himself a sex addict instead). Unfortunately for him, his wife also recently committed suicide and he is kind of having a rough time with it. He starts drinking himself, avoiding his bed room, and hanging out with his pseudo-relative Jesus (Jesse Plemons) to get drugs and high with.

His dad was also a therapist and it is clear Kevin is having a hard time. After a failed intervention, he gets him to start therapy for a high school girl, Jemma (Keke Palmer) as Pro Bono work saying it would help. Why? Turns out her mom committed suicide too. She wants to be a filmmaker some day, but is having quite a rough time at the moment.

At the same time, he is handling a few other celebrities. Saffron Burrows is an actress, married to a narcissistic rock star husband, who makes her feel insecure about her age (joint therapy, husband the real problem). Dallas Roberts is a talent agent who is a germaphobe and has anxieties, who’s biggest client is Jack Huston, who is also addicted to drugs.

Finally, Mark Webber is his kind of related god son, who is a struggling writer who might finally get inspiration through Kevin’s clients. Also interested in romantically with the assistant to Dallas, Pell James.

Yeah, lots of plot lines going on here. Most importantly Kevin trying to handle his clients (who end up being way too connected for his liking) while also failing to take his own advice to deal with his own problems.

Jesus wears glasses.

As we learned from The Sopranos, sometimes even a Shrink might need a Shrink. Having to hear others problems for so long can drive a person mad and not feel as important. This isn’t the plot of the movie, just me free balling.

An interesting concept of a movie, but I definitely thought there was a lot of plots going on. I wasn’t sure why there was so many separate stories for awhile. They eventually became more and more connected (or they always were connected, just more and more revealed) but ehh. Still felt weird. Some of the client stories (Robin Williams / Saffron Burrows) seemed to go nowhere by the end. No where exciting at least, nor did they really end.

Everything else was neatly wrapped up in the movie though. Kevin Stacey does good. I thought each of his scenes were decent, but the flip out on TV scene didn’t feel natural at all. But yeah, wooo therapists.

I personally feel a bit British just saying the title of this movie.

Conversations With Other Women.

It feels so proper, and pretensions.

Yet at the same time, so adulterous.

While also potentially having a lot of talking.

And by that I mean tons of talking. That is all the movie is! But good dialogue is good.

Aaron Eckhart is at his sister’s wedding. He finds Helena Bonham Carter. one of the bridesmaids, and she is British!

Now is good time to note that this movie is “split screened” with a left and right side. Most of the time, each camera is focused on both of their faces. They happen to be near each other the whole movie too, so its good for their conversations.

They also have some sex that night, despite the fact that she has a husband (Ex husband) and two kids in London. He is in a lot of different relationships, random ones, even young girls. But maybe they also knew each other in this past and this is fate?

Oh hey, and Olivia Wilde has a role as drunk bridesmaid, and Thomas Lennon as weird video camera guy. And some quick flashbacks of the man and woman, played by different people in their yuoth.

What’s that? You said you wanted an example?

Well, as expected, this movie has a lot of dialogue. Like, aside from some strategic awkward silence, it is mostly a night long conversation with the two leads. Not a whole of lot of women, unless you consider Helena to be the other woman.

But was it interesting? Well kind of. But also slow.

I mean hey, give it a shot if you like banter.

Ah fuck.

The Woman In Black is based off of a book too. Seriously. I think that is at least 50% of my movies nowadays. Should I go back and tag all movies based off of books to figure this out? Just might have to.

Oh hey look, Harry Potter.

Set in some Olden part of ye Englande, it begins with three kids playing. Oh no! Wait that isn’t weird. It is weird when they all decide to jump out of the window and kill themselves. Huh. And then a woman in black.

Enter Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe), who is in no way a ghost buster. No, he is a lawyer. Lives with a four year old son, Joseph (Misha Handley) and the nanny (Jessica Raine). Wife died during child birth, and everyonce in awhile, Arthur likes to imagine her still alive. Weirdo.

Either way, he has to go to a different town and handle the the closing and purchase of a new house. Who use to live there? Some woman Alice, her husband, their son, and their sister, Jennet (Liz White). No one seems to like him, except for the wealthy landowner (Ciaran Hinds, possible the most British looking person ever) and his wife (Janet McTeer).

So guess what? He hears weird noises, and scares himself a bit. He sees a woman in black, outside, but she disappears. Next thing you know, some kids are all “ahh our sister is dying” because she drank something poisonous. Well he doesn’t save her. She dies. Rumor has it anytime someone sees the woman in black, the child closest to the scene will be driven to kill themselves. That makes sense.

Blah blah blah. Some people getting possessed. Some people in bad mental states. Some people raising children falsely. A very weird muddy graveyard. And a solution to the curse!

Seriously. Could anyone look more British?

The Butler did it!

Just kidding, there is no butler (with speaking lines).

But seriously, I thought this movie was lame. Even for a person who claims to get scared easily, I wasn’t ever really scared. This film seems to implore the “Lets just have normal things happen unexpectedly for fake tense moments to have the person jump but never really scare them” technique 9 out of 10 times. It kind of got annoying, and very predictable. Real normal unexpected surprising events for jump scaring don’t always come out with the music, but in this movie, they will.

The story wasn’t the worse. But how they figured out the “solution” to the curse seemed to come out of no where. That was the only scary-ish movie just because it looked a bit gross.

And the ending? Ugh, it was dumb. Very unsatisfying ending. Don’t worry, it is not “it’s all a dream”. I’d rather that be the ending than what happened.

I would definitely describe my feelings towards Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close as..”Wait, what?”.

Never heard of this movie when it came out. Just saw that it had a really long feeling title, and that it was nominated for best picture. I also heard the term Oscar bait being tossed around, but besides that I had no idea who was in it, nor did I remember it ever being in theaters.

So yeah. Blank slate watching indeed!

Okay, so its about a kid who is ashamed of his face. Who yells a lot?

Oh, there we go, its a 9/11 movie.

Oskar (Thomas Horn) is a kid with Aspergers living in New York City. His dad (Tom Hanks) seems to be the only one who ‘gets him’. They go on scavenger hunts, looking for clues of the missing sixth Burrow of NYC, and other seemingly useless items. They are designed by his dad to get him talking to others and branching out socially.

But then the towers are hit and his dad is killed in WTC. Lot of confusion. Lot of anger and denial. Mad at his mother (Sandra Bullock) who he has never been close to. But one day, while looking in his father’s closet he accidentally knocks over a vase, inside is a key. Huh.

He goes to a locksmith to figure out to what, and the locksmith says it can be anything, hard to say. But there is one clue, the word “Black”. Clearly that is a last name for someone and maybe they have the next clue. Time to find and talk to every Black in NYC (over 200) and hopefully one day find out where the key goes to, to solve one last mystery!

Also featuring his grandmother (Zoe Caldwell) who lives next door, her mysterious guest (Max von Sydow) and he lazy doorman (John Goodman).

They missed out not making this movie in 3D.

Don’t you dare quote me on this, but I have a feeling this might be one of the cases where the book is better than the movie. Ahh! Not that I read the book. But it must be.

The overall plot and what goes on is interesting. But what bugged me more would probably be how the story was told in the movie, and other decisions a director might decide. Having every other scene be a flash back to 9/11 got old quickly, instead of giving us the full story, and dragging it out longer.

Because I definitely found the search for the missing lock interesting, both his interactions with strangers and his weird relationship with old guy neighbor who doesn’t talk at all.

The kid did a pretty good job. Had a lot of quirks with the way he talked, and seemed like more than just a kid who talked a lot, and didn’t know manners. So he was pretty awesome.

Interesting story, but a lot of scenes edited in ways clearly as “oscar bait” which just made me mad.

Fifty Dead Men Walking, while a horribly titled movie, is a real life story involving the heroics of a man, undercover and infiltrating the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the 80s and 90s as a spy, and saving the lives of other men.

How many men? Apparently over fifty. Didn’t want to leave the reasoning of the name hanging for you.

You’re welcome.

How does he get in that situation though?!

Marty McGartland (Jim Sturgess) is just a street hustler in his early 20s, and living in Ireland. Pretty simple. The IRA wants to recruit him, but he doesn’t want to join them. They are a pretty violent group and he doesn’t like violence!

Instead he gets recruited by the British and agrees to infiltrate the IRA ranks and give the British nice information. Hooray! Mostly because he hates the IRA, not the British. His handler Fergus (Ben Kingsley, who looks nothing like Ben Kingsley) is the only one to know about his double agent status, which works well for protecting his family and loved ones. Like his girlfriend, Lara (Natalie Press) who greatly dislikes his involvement in the IRA (once she “finds out”).

He has to work his way up through the ranks, getting into worse and worse aspects of the IRA, despite his moral objections to committing these acts himself. But Fergus convinces him to keep on going. But what happens when the IRA find out he is a spy? Well shit. Torture.

Against all odds he is able to escape, and he realizes he will never be safe again. The end of the movie notes that he is still on the run today, and the IRA still hates him. There was an attempted assassination attempt in 1999 where he got 6 bullets, and well, still survived. But you know, cant see his family ever again. Film also has Kevin Zegers and Rose McGowan, but Ben and Jim are the main two that matter.

Okay, he kind of looks like Ben Kingsley. But not by much.

Although I thought the acting from Jim was top notch in this movie, and found him able to carry the movie on his own, I still felt extremely uninterested in a lot of the movie.

Parts were cool I give you that, but other parts, well you know. I know shit is stupid in Northern Ireland, and that the IRA is mean, but I don’t know if that was enough to firmly entrench me in the story that this movie wanted to tell. It is also one of those movies where you know how it is going to end, so aren’t surprised as much at his escape or what happens to him. That is what sucks about real life stories.

Somehow, when Steven Spielberg makes a movie, people take notice. But when I heard about War Horse? I thought meh. Whatever. Horse movie. Animal movies in general just seem weirder to me. And the last two Horse movies I saw (both racing) were incredibly boring to me.

That’s why for this movie, that I’ve had access to for a month, I am finally watching. Just never felt like the right time to watch it.

And you know, Horses a- aww look at it’s eyes.

The movie is about 140 minutes, and packs a lot in it. It starts from humble beginnings, the birth of the horse on the farm. Learning to walk and run. Once it is old enough it is taken to an auction in the city. Albert (Jeremy Irvine) convinces his dad (Peter Mullan) to bid on the horse, despite it being a colt and them really needing a nice plow horse. But when the landlord tries to drive up the price, the dad stubbornly out bids him, using all of their money (and making it hard to pay the landlord his rent). The mom (Emily Watson) is mad, but they agree to pay the full rent by autumn and want to plow an extra rocky field to make the money.

But first the horse needs training, and is trained to follow a call. Can’t jump well, but can run fast. If only he can teach it to PLOW though.

World War I comes about, and due to the rent circumstances, the horse is sold to the army. Albert is pissed, but the officer (Tom Hiddleston) claims he will protect it as if he did all the raising himself. In training with another officer, the horse meets another horse, a darker bigger horse, who might be going on the adventure with it.

The horses find themselves switching sides, to be cart bearers for the Germans (with Leonard Carow), an old man jam maker (Niels Arestrup) and his granddaughter (Celine Buckens), back to the German side to face the gruesome heavy artillery duty (under Nicolas Bro). Many close calls over the years.

But will he ever get to see Albert again as promised, who is now a soldier (with Robert Emms and Benedict Cumberbatch as other soldiers).

Horse BFFs.

This film is also based off of an old children’s book in the 80s, and a play that came out about 4-5 years prior. Not an original Spielberg picture.

But boy was it powerful.

The only thing I really knew about the tale was that it featured a “lot of different stories” and that made some people uninterested in it. Well, sure, quite a few plot points end up happening, but at least its all the same horse. Not a whole bunch of “War horse” stories (well, because it is in so many different horse positions, we get to see them all, but still one horse show). To me it felt like an entirely epic Homeward Bound, without talking, just how the horse changed so many lives.

I got way more into it than I would have guessed, even crying near the end. Sad things occur. Since you know, it is a war after all.

I do think that they could have put more effort into making sure we knew the many different characters, and how they related. I had to wiki some of the characters at the end, not knowing how they all mattered for the story. That was the landlord’s son? Oh okay.

If you haven’t heard of The Avengers, then fuck you.

In 2008 a great thing happened. Comic book movies kicked ass. The Dark Knight, Hellboy II, and Iron Man came out, in reverse order between May and July.

After the success of Iron Man, they quickly announced their three (turned into four) year plan. After Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk. Then another Iron Man movie. Then Thor. Then Captain America.

Then? The fucking Avengers. Each hero getting at least one movie before hand, bringing them together for an epic never before seen in film. It’d be like if the Lord of the Rings had a movie back story for Legolas, and the other people I don’t remember.

How many more nerd hits can I get before the actual review? Not sure. But needless to say, this movie has been something I have been waiting four years for, and it delivered in every way possible. May the Fourth be with us indeed.

Didn’t even tell Steve about casual Fridays.

The movie begins with the Tesseract (introduced at the end of Thor and in Captain America) going crazy. S.H.I.E.L.D. is going crazy, red alerts. Agent Coulson is trying to catch up Nick Fury on the cube, but unfortunately is is confusing. We also get to meet Agent Maria Hill (Robin from HIMYM). Because we need more than 1 woman character in this movie.

Either way, turns out it opens a portal from another part of the universe, and out pops Loki! He fucks shit up, takes the cube, and also takes Professor Selvig (From Thor) prisoner, along with some other members. And well, he is thinking about using that unlimited energy source to open up a permanent portal, bring up an army of space aliens, and you know take over/destroy Earth. He is mad at Thor and Asgard for kicking him out, so he wants vengeance on the world Thor loves so much.

Fighting demigods means you need to bring in the big guns. S.H.I.E.L.D. attempts to do just that. Getting in touch with Thor is hard, but not Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, or Hawkeye. They also need Bruce Banner (Hulk), but only to use his brains for finding the cube, definitely not for Hulking. (cough).

So what is the movie about? Stopping Loki before he takes over the world. Trying to not resort to nuclear bombs. Trying to see if a team made entirely of egos (and Captain America) can actually work together and not fight it out. Trying to control the Hulk. And so much destruction of Manhattan.

Hey, Pepper Potts is also in this movie.

Again, they first have to work out their own differences and motives.

OH MY GOODNESS THE AVENGERS.

GUYS THE AVENGERS. PLEASE READ THIS AS ME YELLING.

After Disney bought Marvel I didn’t even think this would be possible, but this is the first of the Marvel films to have the full Disney backing and they didn’t disappoint. The movie has everything. You will laugh and cry, be excited and maybe scared. You will laugh and be excited a lot though more than the others, and it feels like nonstop action too. A good feeling for a movie that clocks in over two hours.

The amount of extra nerd detail put into it, small moments watching the Avengers team up and use specific movies? It is amazing.

In case anyone is curious, next year we are supposed to get Iron Man 3 and Thor 2, and then 2014 a sequel to Captain America, probably taking place in WW2 still, before the frozen events.

A sequel to Avengers isn’t likely until 2016 or so, which is good them to not be rushed. They gave a middle of credits hint to the sequel too, and it looks great. Probably a Dr. Strange movie is in the works for 2014/15, and maybe even Ant-Man. With a Joss Whedon movie, I was surprised there was no Nathan Fillion cameo as Hank Pym.

I have a good feeling I will be seeing this movie in theaters again, and many times in the future on Blu-Ray. Just think, we also get The Dark Knight Rises, Prometheus, and Amazing Spider-Man this summer.

Daybreakers took me awhile to watch mostly because I assumed it was supposed to be some sort of horror film. There is no elements of that though, just straight up action.

Action, with some science talk and lots of vampires.

It also has crossbows. You know. Because bullets “don’t hurt”.

Ethan Hawke is a vampire! But most people are. The world is mostly vampire, and they can all think still. No worries. But, there are less and less humans out there. And they are running out of blood. He works for a company that extracts blood, and has blood farms in order to help sustain the population, but if they don’t solve their issue, they will run out within a month. He is a farmer, while his brother, Michael Dorman, is a hunter who goes out to collect humans.

He also doesn’t drink human blood. Guess he feels guilty. Well accidentally he finds a group of humans, including Claudia Karvan, and protects them from being caught. Somehow they trust him, and he is a scientist, so they bring him back to their hide out. BUT WHY. There he finds a really weird looking Willem Dafoe…with bite marks! Yet he is in the sunlight. Heck, he is a human again. Somehow he found a cure.

So now that he is on the run anyways, he works on developing a cure for vampirism. Hopefully no one finds out, and tries to use this knowledge to solve the blood shortage by turning prisoners into humans. Like his boss, Sam Neill. Or his scientist buddy, Vince Colosimo.

I don’t know how to insert Isabel Lucas into the plot summary but she is a human too, and a rather important one.

Also, some weird ass shit is going on here.

I can’t help but think that a lot of this is supposed to mirror oil and energy. But if it is…what? It sounds like it is supposed too, but in the metaphor of the vampire world, the solution to the oil crisis seems to be forgo technology and go back to the way we used to be before oil. Aka return to being humans. Which is a stupid solution to energy use.

Doesn’t help that “use less” energy/blood and “find alternative solutions” to energy/blood have already been explored by these vampires, and it looks like they are fucked. Are they saying our world is fucked, and nothing will work except for a trip back to the 19th century?

I don’t know at all. Bad parallels. Bad acting. Weird cure and then additional way to cure at the very end. Not at all sensical.

Zombies!

And lawls?

Alright. It has been done before. But by the British, and no one likes the British. So an American version might be more crude, or at the very least, better graphics. I’m talking 3D stuff. Or at least flashy lights. It is a Zombieland after all.

Consider my dreams reached.

How did the zombie outbreak happen? Some bad meat or something, but it spread quickly like all zombie out breaks. And these get to be the weird ass fast zombies. Thankfully our hero, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) has a list of rules to keep him alive. Work out his cardio, be afraid of bathrooms, always wear a seatbelt, double tap to assure death, etc. Definitely don’t be a hero. This is a war! Because he was a nerdy shut in, he missed out a lot on the initial craziness, when his neighbor from 406 (Amber Heard) attacked him. Sucks, because she was hot too.

He meets Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a middle aged man who wasn’t good at much, but turns out is very good at killing zombies. They have code name in order to not get close to each other. Such as where they are from or where they are heading. He is a simple man, who just wants to survive, and really find a twinkie to eat.

They meet Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), who con them out of their vehicle and weapons. Shit is serious. Very rude. The rest of the movie involves them working to get their car back, possibly trusting strangers, and maybe even breaking a rule or two.

Oh, and there is a cameo by Bill Murray, which is great. Especially since I only like Murray when he is in cameo form.

\
Home run right there.

Good things tend to happen when you take an already outrageous accepted genre and do outrageous things during it. Most of the jokes don’t come from dialogue, they come from the few actors in this movie behaving to real zombie situations. Turns out it can be amusing to watch a bunch of fat zombies in a grocery store getting their heads knocked off with a bat. Or riding in a roller coaster with a shotgun. Or hitting a zombie by driving by with the door open, for shits and giggles.

The plot of the movie pretty much boils down to “The world has zombie now, it sucks, try to survive”. Really the only plot I could give was just back story that we learn throughout the movie, since I don’t want to actually say the entire story. That’d be bad for the four of you who haven’t seen Zombieland.

Its a very enjoyable movie with a budget big enough to put on some pretty over the top awesome scenes.

Uh oh, The Squid And The Whale? You know that means it will be a quirky movie.

An autobiographical, quirky movie too.

Jeff Daniels looking like a hobo? Must be artsy too.

This is supposed to be a story about the youth of Noah Baumbach. Who is that? He is a writer, who works on a lot of Wes Anderson movies. I mean, hey, if you want to make a movie about your life, go for it.

Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney are going to get divorced! Jeff is a pseudo famous writer, who used to be a big shot. Now he just works at a university, having a hard time writing about great work. Laura got better at writing thanks to him, and is even about to get a nice book deal! But that isn’t the cause for concern. They argue a lot, so it is divorce time.

Their two sons, Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline, obviously don’t like this. They have joint custody (without lawyers) so have figured out the schedule for the two to go between their home with the mom, and the dads new home.

Jesse is pissed off at the situation, and blames his mom, thinking she is mad at the father for not being as successful any more, and even more mad when he finds out she cheated. Owen sides more with his mother, as he only really knows his father as teh stay at home / teacher guy who has never really been a success and drinks a lot. The mom begins to see Owen’s tennis coach (William Baldwin) and the father pursues a current student of his (Anna Paquin).

Jesse also starts dating Halley Feiffer, who is someone he is interested in, but thinks he can do better. (Yeahhh). He also claims to have written the song “Hey You” by Pink Floyd, playing it at a school talent show (this is the 80s). Eventually he has to see a school counselor (Ken Leung, from Lost!). By the end, when he is able to conquer his own fears and see the Squid/Whale exhibit at the Natural Museum, he realizes the truth of his situation, and how blinded he had been the whole time.

ALSO look at that head!

So one thing to note is all the characters do a really good job in this movie. But most notably the different kids reaction to the divorce, and the eventual realization of why they take the sides that they take. But more importantly, Eisenberg’s character acts a HELL of a lot like his later portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. The level of assholery it is there, and he is an intelligent character, just not as intelligent. But the way he talks to his girlfriend? His reaction towards others?

Sure he is a bit more emotional, but besides that, I would not be surprised if they saw this film and gave him Zuckerberg because of it. It is weirdly similar.

The character’s have different names from the director, which I guess is him making it less of a biography and more of a story, but I have to assume Jesse plays the director, and not the little kid.

It is a pretty touching movie that doesn’t hold itself back at all, and really relies mostly on the actors and emotions.