Month: October 2012

From what I heard, The Words was in production for awhile. Not a pet project by Bradley Cooper, but something he believed in and fought for with the directors to get made and produced. One of those maybe artsy things.

I think that is what happened. Don’t even feel like looking it up. I am just gonna be spreading facts as if they are true. Boo yah.

Hey look, love. Maybe. Or just walking. People can walk right?

The story begins with famous author Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) doing some section reading from his new book The Words. People love him, and so does some grad student chick Daniella (Olivia Wilde). Yeah, but that’s enough about that. We get to watch his story!

In which we have another writer, Rory Jansen (Cooper) who is struggling. He has good words, but not the best story for a first time author to get his name out into the world. So it sucks to suck. Sucks also for his dad (J.K. Simmons) who is tired of loaning him money, and his wife Dora (Zoe Saldana) who knows her husband can write good words, just can’t get a book deal.

So they decide to do what every NYC couple who is struggling to survive does. Take a honeymoon to Paris. Fuck the police! They even visit some Ernest Hemingway shop, for inspiration. Turns out Paris has some weird gift shops, without logos or names on them, just things. So Dora spends some of their barely any money on a satchel for her husband. Later, in America, Rory finds a compartment in it with a story! The most beautiful story he has ever read. Everything he felt about his own life displayed in words, and it was magnificent. He couldn’t stop thinking about the words. So he eventually killed his family.

Okay that is a lie. But he does type up the story just to have the feeling of what it is like to write those words. But his wife reads it, cries and stuff, and it is amazing. He can’t even tell her they aren’t his words! But he runs with it, and hey look, everyone loves him as a writer.

Except for an old man (Jeremy Irons). Who tells his own story about a young man (Ben Barnes) and his French lover (Nora Arnezeder) after World War 2. Who wrote a story and lost it. And how he is that man. In case you got lost, that would make that a story, in a story, in a story.

Then you know, potential backlash from this knowledge. But not really. Obviously Rory knew the story wasn’t his, just kind of got swept in it all. But now that he knows the real story, what will happen? But that is a book, so who cares, what about the author and grad student huh?
.

Fucking layers man. Stories and shit.

Did you follow all of that? Well good. Because that is like, 4/5 of the story. Yep.

Technically we don’t even get to see the amazing story everyone talks about. Unless it is just the old guys life as is, and not based on it. But whatever.

This movie is slow, and tries to build up to this big reveal, but you know what? Everything that happens is obvious real quickly in the movie. But they take an incredible slow time to go through it. The old guy telling his story after the War takes forever, and isn’t until the second half either. Yet he tells it as if it isn’t obviously a younger version of himself, for some reason.

Arggh. It was frustrating. Everything kind of felt pretentious. The acting wasn’t really bad, it just also didn’t matter. Get this pointless story out of my movie.

Alright, turns out everything I thought I knew about Sparkle was a lie. A lie! When I first heard about it, I was told that it was about a Motown era girl group, like the Supremes. One of them being Sparkle, the daughter of Whitney Houston.

Personally, I had never heard of their group, didn’t know Whitney Houston had a singing daughter who was also famous, and didn’t know any songs by this person. But whatever.

Well, not even a spoiler, I was way off. Topic, sure, but it wasn’t Whitney Houston being a character, it was Whitney Houston just playing a mom character before she died. Oh. That explains why everyone called her Emma…and she never sang…and wasn’t famous in the movie. I seriously was confused the whole movie because of this.

Pictured: Actual Whitney Houston playing someone, not someone playing Whitney Houston.

Sparkle (Jordin Sparks. Okay, that is unintentional maybe. This movie is actually a remake of one in the 1970s. Still weird. Also still fake) is the youngest daughter to her now single mom Emma (Houston). She is 19, while her oldest sister Sister (yes. Carmen Ejogo) is 28 and had to recently move back home due to some issues, and the middle sister Dee (Tika Sumpter) is 24. Turns out Sparkle is a song writer, and great at it, but might have some singing issues. Thankfully Sister is not shy, and performed her song at a club like a star.

Guess who else is at the club? Stix (Derek Luke) an aspiring record executive spots them at the club and becomes interested. He learns that not only did Sparkle write the song, but they all have singing talent too. So he eventually convinces them all to join him and be a singing group, yay! And it takes awhile… But here is some other issues.

Emma doesn’t want her daughters getting involved. Dee is just going to do it until she has money to pay for medical school. Sparkle kind of has a thing for Stix. Sister kind of has a thing for everyone. Seriously, a potential serious mate in Levi (Omari Hardwick), and a more successful person in Satin (Mike Epps) who might also get her hooked on the drugs and beat her. Can they keep it together and get a real record deal by Larry (Curtis Armstrong)? Does CeeLo Green have more than one scene in this movie?

Feel free to guess on who looks like doctor, druggie, and writer.

Alright, so besides my initial confusion, I still felt like this film was a waste of time. I was incredibly bored, and this film kind of qualifies as a musical! Lots of songs in the movie. Some were nice, some were okay. But I couldn’t get over the rest of the movie to just enjoy them.

I don’t know how this compares to the original Sparkle, obviously, but its general description sounds like a better version of what I watched. “A girl group experiences turmoil after one of their members turns to drugs and another achieves their desired fame all by herself.” That makes it seem less like Sparkle, and more about them all. After all, middle sister doesn’t even care. Sparkle, by the end does succeed on her own as a solo artist (with a weird concert I also have issues with), but the other sisters don’t care. The only problems come from the mom not wanting them to be famous and stick with church choirs. Boring!

This film basically put me to sleep. A lot of nothing kept happening, disguised as things happening. That is all I can really describe it as.

If you wanna have a good time, every time you say Looper, you should pronounce it as “Loopah”. Reminds me of Zelda a bit.

It is a good idea to laugh. Especially when you see Looper, and feel all sorts of weird feelings during it.

The year, 2044. The setting, Kansas, because why the fuck not? Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a Looper. Probably want to know about that, eh? Well, in the future, time travel is invented and immediately banned. Naturally then, only criminals have time travel at that point. So they sent a representative back to 2044 (Jeff Daniels) to set up a system to their advantage. Bodies are hard to dispose of in the future, so they send back the people they kill at predetermined times and locations! The loopers job is to kill them right when they appear. They get paid with silver bars strapped to the back.

They work until their loop is closed. How does a loop close? That is when the mob sends back the future version of yourself. They are always bagged, so you don’t realize it until you see that you received gold bars instead of silver. Then they know they have 30 years left of their life, and to take their huge wealth and enjoy it. But things start to hit the fan for the Loopers. Loops start closing quickly. Joe’s good friend, Seth (Paul Dano) ends up letting his future self go, causing problems! Apparently the future is scary. Some new guy is taking over and closing up shop.

But what happens when Future Joe (Bruce Willis) gets sent back. Will Joe do his job, kill his future self? Or will he help him figure out how to change the future for the better, with every action they take changing it in some way? And what does the future have to do with a local single mom (Emily Blunt) and her kid (Pierce Gagnon)?

Tell me I am not the only one who immediately thinks of Bangkok Dangerous when I see this?

Shocked. Shocked is basically how I felt after watching that movie. Not at the ending. No, I could see it coming, just still didn’t expect it. Hell, there was many options the ending could have chose. The film did a nice job of keeping you guessing, and leaving you with a feeling of wonder.

I know what you want to know. Time travel? Does that mean this movie will be confusing? Does their time travel make sense? Hard to say really. I’d say there is some confusing elements. Comes with the territory. Is their time travel without paradoxes? No, not really. Especially when dealing with loops and stuff. I would say their metaphysics isn’t perfect, but it is good enough for the movie.

The science in the movie isn’t the main feature though. It is the characters involved. Lot of serious questions get asked when dealing with your future self and the implications of it, of which I think the film handled wonderfully. Everyone acted pretty amazingly, and I was on the edge of my seat wondering what was next. They also did great job with the makeup work to have Levitt look like a younger Willis.

Finally the movie does a few things that few films outside of horror ever do. Have the potential death of multiple children, and the use silence in the music and action to convey feelings of isolation/being alone. I love it when a film steps out of a normal comfort zone. It is great when a film makes you think too, and focuses a lot of energy into character development in arguably a short time. Just don’t go in expecting some action heavy flick, and you will be set.

Oh heck yeah, it is October now! That means we get some Halloween themed movies, and of course, an increase in horror films. I am not as excited about those, but it comes with the territory.

I was a bit apprehensive about Hotel Transylvania at first. Is this just another quickly made CGI movie with a group of characters going on a journey? They have a lot of those. But then I found out it was being made by Genndy Tartakovsky, who brought us Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack. This can only lead to good things.

Like in real life, diversity in friendships is expected, with only one of each type of creature/race allowed.

Dracula (Adam Sandler) is a pretty big deal. But now he finds himself a single father, with his wife being killed by those gross mean humans in the 1800s. Well, he vowed to never let the mean old humans mess with his daughter or friends ever again. So he decides to build an enormous fortress, hidden from society. Heck, if he can also scare his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) into staying there forever, it’d be perfect. He also decides to run this place as a hotel, a premier destination that has never seen the likes of a human since its creation!

The movie takes place in modern times, the eve of Mavis’ 118th birthday! She was told she could go out and see the world at that time, which Dracula lets happen. But he sets up a fake village to scare her into believing him about the horrors of humans, which works very successfully! Unfortunately, it also gets the eye of Jonny (Andy Samberg), a human hiker (stoner?) who is able to stumble upon the Hotel and ruin its perfect streak.

Dracula has to go into a panic! He can’t just go and kill him, that would set back monsters hundreds of years, they are over that stuff. Instead he has to hide him, eventually in plain sight as a Frankenstein like monster. Too bad he is also the only one “around Mavis’ age”, and she kind of falls for him. Whoops. Can he hide the human and protect his hotel’s record, while lying to his daughter and guests? Huge cast of people at the hotel, including his friends the Mummy (CeeLo Green), the Wolfman, wife and kids (Steve Buscemi, Molly Shannon), Frankenstein and wife (Kevin James, Fran Drescher), the Invisible Man (David Spade), and Quasimodo (Jon Lovitz).

You can’t even handle the amount of celebrity voice actors!

Goods news, adults who read this (because I clearly have a large child readership base), you won’t be bored by this family movie! That is always a plus. It also isn’t full of fart jokes, only about one, which is strange for something with Sandler involved.

It had a lot of things working for it. The quick Dracula explosions, the voice acting (most characters you couldn’t identify right away their actor, except for Invisible Man), the animation, the plot. All pretty decent. I didn’t like the Jonny character at all, his voice annoyed me and his actions. I was kind of hoping Dracula would just hide him in a dungeon the whole time and be good to go, but eh, it happens. Was just a bad stereotypical modern hippie traveler.

The only other issue for me is that I just know I never really want to see it again. I don’t think it will be interesting a second viewing. Very strange, I know. But I think its just a one and done type of deal. So if you are going to go see it, might as well wait til closer to Halloween. Worth a gander, but not a buy.