Month: March 2015

I would like to think I have my finger on the pulse of the movie community, being pretty aware of when movies are coming out and what I need to see and when.

But I feel like Big Eyes was grossly under advertised. We have people who have been nominated for Academy Awards in the lead and winners as well! Our female, nominated five times, and our male, nominated, I dunno, two? But he won both of them. And it is directed by Tim Burton WITHOUT Johnny Depp. This seems like something people would talk wildly about.

I mean. Shit. It won a Golden Globe or two (I really just don’t remember).

But instead we get it as a sort of limited/secret/whatever Christmas release, all while my TV was filled with ads for Unbroken.

SHIT THAT CAT IS ON DRUGS!

Margaret Keane (Amy Adams) left her husband before it was cool. She just up and divorced and left with her daughter (Delaney Raye or Madeleine Arthur, you know, depends on when during the movie). She wasn’t Margaret Keane at this point, but I don’t remember her maiden/first marriage name.

She left to become an artist, and started doing quick sketches of kids or families at festivals for super cheap just to get by. She couldn’t sell her work for a lot because people didn’t care for women artists.

Well, there she met a man. A Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz) (psst, now you know they get married), who does mostly scenic landscape pictures from France. He is a skilled artist in his own right and really likes her work. Well, things get moving, and partially out of love of art and of each other (and a need to be secure financially or else she loses her daughter maybe), they get hitched!

They even sell work that they did. Well, Walter sells the work. He is a natural salesman, able to hype anything up. He accidentally claims that one of his wife’s paintings is his too! Because you know, he wanted to close the deal, and buyers always like to meet the artist. She isn’t a great seller herself. She hates this. Like. A lot. But goes along with it because it brings them money early on.

Oh and hey. Then he does it intentionally. And after they get to be super successful, he basically blackmails her into continuing along with it, taking no credit. Because hey, now they have committed fraud, and if she were to tell everyone, they’d lose everything. Sucks to be a sort of slave in your own home getting no credit.

Did I mention this is a true story?

And then, you know, also people like Jason Schwartzman, Danny Huston, and Krysten Ritter as Margaret’s best friend!

I think the main conflict in this picture is the war between big eyes and shifty eyes.

Big Eyes was such a quaint, nice feeling movie. I liked that it was set in the mid 1900s, but also, I wasn’t given some shitty filter over the whole thing so that I knew it was set in the past. No, it was just given nice regular camera work and the whole thing looked crisp. It wasn’t dark and broody, so it was something very un-Burton like, which was another nice surprise.

Another unexpected treat was Mr. Waltz. He didn’t have the same character as his Tarantino roles. And the only other role I can think of is Water for Elephants, which isn’t like this either. He was a villain, obviously, and a smooth talker, but a lot less stable than his past roles.

Amy Adams also did a solid job.

The thing is, this movie didn’t have enough plot for me. At one point it just felt like I was getting more of the same over and over again. She is still sad about her paintings and feels bad about lying. He still sucks and has schemes to keep her artwork being bought. On and on and on. The eventual court room scene was kind of fun. But still, I thought something was lacking throughout the whole film. Acting was fine, story wasn’t as exciting as I had hoped, but it was still a well shot and pretty movie.

I think Burton picked it accidentally. He saw the title Big Eyes and since he loves eyes so much, he assumed it would involve just giant floating eyeballs playing tricks on kids or something. Yeah, that makes sense in my head.

I wanted to see Top Five when it first came out to theaters, but I was busy that weekend, getting married and taking a vacation and all. Excuses, I know.

And with that, I have nothing left of an intro. I know nothing about this movie outside of who is in it and I am willing to be surprised.

Just a couple people on trains, goin’ places! Nothin’ to see here, move along!

Chris Rock is not playing Chris Rock, but Andre Allen. Totally different guy. This guy used to be a stand up comic, was super funny, then made a successful franchise of films about Hammy the bear, who was also a cop. People loved it. Hilarious.

Then he got off of drugs and alcohol. He didn’t feel as funny. He didn’t want to do those types of films anymore. He wants to make more serious pictures and branch out as an actor. Like his new film, where he is the star, about the Haitian revolution. It is coming out this weekend, and he is also getting married to reality TV star Erica Long (Gabrielle Union). Because of this, their wedding will also totally be live and aired on Bravo!

Yayyyy!…

His agent (Kevin Hart), who didn’t want him to do this movie, also set him up with a full day interview with The Times. The Times hates his movies, and their movie critic has been the meanest. But it isn’t that dude to interview him, it is Chelsea Brown (Rosario Dawson), who doesn’t want to do a full on fluff piece. She wants to find out real information, new things, she wants him to open up. He just wants people to accept him as a serious actor and person. Hah.

Also featuring Anders Holm, Cedric the Entertainer, Romany Malco and J.B. Smoove.

If I was a voice actor, I would try to imitate Chris Rock’s voice… I’d probably get fired.

As expected, this is a movie Chris Rock wrote and directed to speak from his heart. These are his thoughts and feelings on reality TV, the industry, drugs and alcohol, groupies, journalists and critics, you name it. It isn’t super about him of course, because Chris Rock isn’t known for some ridiculous comedy series where you only hear him and don’t see him. But you can really tell where he is coming from.

The best part of Top Five is the really real-ness of it all. It feels incredibly natural, as if it is actually just a few people or friends talking, depending on the scene. The scene where he went back to his old friend’s house and there was a tiny party is a great example of this.

But even more importantly, the film is also funny at times. I have probably always been a fan of Chris Rock’s work, whether it is his voice or delivery, I don’t know, but I would watch him in basically anything. Because of the realistic feel, Rock obviously fits the character pretty well and it doesn’t take too many leaps and bounds to consider these characters in their role. Shit, it really helps later in the bachelor party scene when we have other famous comedians just playing themselves.

At the same time, I am just a little bit disappointed with the ending. I wanted more. I know why it ended where it did, but I didn’t want my brain to have to do any of the work, I just wanted to be spoon fed.

Which, in a way, is the type of thing this movie was definitely against. Layers!

Due to the way my website works, I am now missing a lot more movies when they are in theaters. I have to decide every week what I want to watch, as I only let myself go to one pre-screening per week except for special circumstances. So some movies fall by the wayside. What did I see instead of John Wick? I don’t even remember. I know I didn’t see Nightcrawler to see Birdman, which was technically the right choice, but Nightcrawler ended up being pretty sexy on its own right.

But everyone already has over-hyped this movie for me. Is it cool to like Keanu again? Sweet! Because I actually liked his last two projects, Man of Tai Chi and 47 Ronin. But if everyone likes this one, then I might love it. Yay Keanu! Yay good publicity! Yay generic as fuck sounding action movies!

How bad ass could his character be, needing to use a sight and all?

John “Leave Me Alone” Wick (Keanu Reeves) has a mysterious past, like most movie characters that are new properties that aren’t based on real live people. But we know he used to be happy. He had a wife. A lover. A soul mate. But now she is gone. No foul play or anything, just a normal bitchy disease that took her life. They knew it was coming. It still hurts though.

And then John gets a package in the mail. A puppy. A fucking puppy?! Yes, a fucking puppy. This puppy, Daisy, was actually arranged to be sent to him from his now dead wife. She wanted to leave him something to help him cope and what better way to cope than A FUCKING PUPPY NAMED DAISY. Seriously guys.

Well, thanks to a small altercation, he ends up pissing up some Russian street thugs. Namely, Iosef (Alfie Allen) really liked his car and wanted to buy it. John tells him no and responds in Russian angering him. So they follow him home, break into his house, KILL HIS NEW PUPPY FROM HIS DEAD WIFE and steal his car. What in the fuck, Russia? What in the fuck?

Unfortunately for the Russians, literally everyone kind of recognizes his car in the car shops, including Iosef’s dad, Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist). Why? Oh, because John Fucking Wick used to be a hitman for them. Their own Boogieman, who could kill anyone or anything that they wanted. But he retired and got out of the business to be with his woman, promising never to kill again basically.

But then, you know. Dude’s Daisy is dead. So a revenge flick like any other, Wick has to take down the whole organization to feel at peace. Or will it really help?

Also featuring Willem Dafoe, Dean Winters, Adrianne Palicki, John Leguizamo, Ian McShane, and Lance Reddick.

“Iosef, Iosef, rhymes with …fuck, I dunno”

Action packed AND I actually feel sympathy for the main character. This is a great change in my mindset. I am used to getting shitty action movies with un-sympathetic anti-heroes, or just tough guys who have bullets bouncing off their chest, or just action movies without a plot. BUT THIS HAS PLOT AND ACTION. I was freaking out. Because the plot was pretty good, despite being something one could break down into “guy gets revenge on the mob” type of flick. I felt some fear for his life.

On TOP of that (more caps is better right?), the action was also interesting to watch. Some work went into the choreography. Work definitely went into the cinematography. Someone cared behind the helm of this movie and didn’t want just another forgettable movie. My mind is blown. When I first saw a picture for the movie, it was so generic and boring. Well, there might have been a turtle neck, which would have been the only odd thing (outside of Archer).

Keanu was a great man to carry this film. I don’t know if it is due to his own really sad life, or the sad Keanu meme, but his angst was apparent the whole movie. It looked like he carried the weight of the world on his manly shoulders.

John Wick is easily a nice recommendable action movie from 2014. I know it sounds like I am describing a 4 out of 4 movies, but I feel like The Raid 2‘s existence kind of makes it hard for me to elevate any other action movie up to its level. I bet John Wick had faults or things I disliked, I just can’t remember them right now. Shhh.

I came upon The Invisible War by accident. Just dashing through the Documentaries on Netflix.

But hey, I didn’t know when I watched it that it was nominated for Best Documentary. This is just a bonus!

I have been pretty bad at watching any of the movies nominated for the Best Documentary, let alone the winners. So this really was a nice surprise. I also now have to just remember to check the large list the next time I am hurting for a movie.

The Invisible War is about an uncomfortable subject. Rape and Sexual assault in the United States military.

It starts off with a happy message. Yay! Women in the Armed Forces! Equality and all! But based on the reports, the military is still almost entirely a boy’s game despite the decades.

There are pros and cons on going to war with actual invisible beings.
Con: You can’t see them.
Pro: You can spray fire your AK for a real reason finally.

Let’s start by saying, the beginning of this movie is rough. It starts with one woman telling her story of her own assault/rape case and how nothing was done about it. Then they throw in like, a dozen or more people telling various parts of their stories, all similar, all terrible. They immediately make you in a really shitty feeling mood and it was uncomfortable to watch.

But it doesn’t stop there. It examines why this happens. It examines how the the military treats problems from within, how it treats those that have left it, and what changes need to be done to fix it all.

And in all honesty, it is very powerful, hard to watch, and important documentary. It is one of those that might actually be able to make a difference in the world. Just give it a chance, unless it brings up past bad things in your life. Then you will probably already know about this one.

And it also made me want to go back and watch A Few Good Men. Or finally watch that JAG show.

I don’t even know what to say about Run All Night. This movie kind of came out of nowhere for me. I had at least heard about things like Non-Stop or A Walk Among The Tombstones

Like, months of notice. This one just in the last few weeks before coming out.

Is this guy even trying anymore? Does he do any serious drama anymore? Who keeps giving him these paychecks for these types of movie? Is it like…is he the next Mr. Cage? After all, he will take literally anything.

I think there must be a robot similar to AWESOME-O doing this. But instead of Adam Sandler movies, it keeps popping out generic Neeson movies. Has to be the only logical solution to what in the hell is going on.

Tag Teaming with pre-accident RoboCop.

Good news! Jimmy Conlon (Liam Neeson) is an asshole and not an anti-hero! He was a hitman for many years, to his good friend Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris). Shawn ran the ports of NYC, a pretty big task, got stupid wealthy, and lives a nice life now. Jimmy the Grave Digger? Well, he is a drunk who has a bad relationship with his son, Mike (Joel Kinnaman). Mike knows of Jimmy’s past. He doesn’t want that around his wife (Genesis Rodriguez) and kids.

Fair enough.

Well, Mike gets into some trouble. Due to no fault of his own, while driving a limo, Shawn’s son, Danny (Boyd Holbrook) wants to kill him. Danny ignores everyone and tries it anywhere, forcing Jimmy to protect his own son. Well, now we got a dead son of a gangster. That isn’t allowed. So Jimmy and his son have to go into hiding. They have to Run All Night, until Jimmy can figure this whole mess out. How to protect his family, how to get rid of his guilt, and how to…well, not suck.

Including Vincent D’Onofrio as a detective who was never able to bring Jimmy Conlon to justice, and Common as a hitman hired to get Jimmy and Mike. Yes, you read that correctly. COMMON is playing a “bad guy”, not a cop on the good guy side. This is truly a historic moment.

Not as historic as this restaurant, that is clearly dedicating itself fully to the color red.

Run All Night has a terrible title. I feel like I should mention that, as titles I haven’t been bringing up as often. It sounds just super generic. Not Fighting generic, but real close.

Speaking of this movie, it wasn’t as terrible as I had thought. First of all, I am stoked again that Liam Neeson doesn’t play a good guy or an anti-hero. He plays definitely a bad guy who tries to redeem himself for his son. So he kills bad people, and has been a bad dude all his life, thus his alcohol/depression. Great. I prefer this.

The action wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great. The plot was pretty predictable, and it even started with a scene near the ending, just so you can make sure you know where the whole thing is going towards. Genesis Rodriguez was wasted in this movie, barely having any lines, and not even being able to freak out about her husbands sudden life of crime. She was passive as fuck.

I liked that they featured the NY Rangers and a hockey game pretty heavily, but as you will see from one of my FB posts here, they also butchered the whole thing up.

What I am getting at is that this movie could drag, but also entertain. It is a storybook 2 out of 4. I am mostly happy that it just wasn’t super terrible though.

First off, no, I still haven’t seen Primer. Stop asking me. I will get to it eventually. My mind is ready for a mind fucking this early in 2015.

Time travel. A fun subject and one that is ridiculously hard to get right. Again, I am not saying I understand time travel and know how it should be. No. I just hate seeing a time travel movie that features it, then has inconsistencies within its own version of time travel, making it a bit confusing. The last movie to do that was Project Almanac. So close.

So, fingers crossed. Because now I am going to tackle Predestination, which hit theaters earlier this year. I didn’t hear a lot about it when it came out, but recently it has been gathering steam. And I really want to see a good time travel movie that isn’t Primer. So, extreme fingers crossed.

What’s this? A woman? In a movie about time travel! How surprisingly rare! But they only showed us Ethan!

Here’s the issue. The Fizzle Bomber. That dude is the issue. He is an American terrorist living in the United States. He is hard to catch. He makes bombs. He blows the bombs up. People get hurt and he has been hard to catch.

In fact, he blew up maybe ten blocks in NYC. Yeah.

So we should stop him, before he blows up NYC. With time travel! And thus, the Temporal Bureau is born! These Temporal Agents travel through time, in a limited range, to prevent major disasters and make our timelines a better place. There are many issues and problems of course. Things might change a little bit.

They have been slowly getting closer and closer to the Fizzle Bomber too. Each time jump they get closer to finding his identity and hopefully stopping NYC from getting wrecked. This should be the final time jump they need for their best agent (Ethan Hawke), disguised as a barkeep. But first, everything has to be perfect…

Also featuring Sarah Snook and much less featuring Noah Taylor.

The second time traveling movie I have seen to mostly take place in a bar. Coincidence? Or alcohol?

Looking at my astrological charts, we are due for a great Ethan Hawke movie again, and, yes, this indeed gets to be the one! Hooray! Don’t let Sarah Snook confuse you either. She was in the not so great Jessabelle recently, and is much much better in this movie.

By nature of it being a mystery and a bit of a thriller, Predestination obviously has some twists and turns. Some you can see a mile away, some that blew my mind. I loved it. And I loved even more than this wasn’t an action cop movie. It was a straight up Sci-Fi Drama with some mystery aspects about time travel. Excellent.

And from what I can tell, it covered up all of the loose ends. Literally everything. It was super careful about what it said and did in every scene, and the level of attention that went into it is impressive.

On another note, Hawke wasn’t that great in it. Not bad, not great, just decent or expected. He was the lead though and his character didn’t have to do a lot to excel. Snook is the one with all the acting and development and she does a fantastic job.

And well, its a movie that is a mystery. Stop asking for more details and just watch the dang thing.

I checked my charts and calendars, and I am pretty certain I have this whole thing figured out.

Yes. Indeed, it looks like we are on my first musical review of 2015! Hooray!

I don’t know how many will come out this year, but dang it, we at least got one. I think The Last Five Years was supposed to come out in 2014, but delays or something occurred. I couldn’t see this one in theaters when it came out around Valentine’s Day weekend, but it was released on iTunes as well. Thanks iTunes! You should be able to buy musicals always on a music organizing program. It just makes sense.

Musicals! Keeping jazz hands in business since 1932.

The Last Five Years has a rather simple plot. It is about a couple, who dated, got married, and lasted a whole five years. We know it doesn’t end up well, since the first scene is our female lead, Cathy Hiatt (Anna Kendrick), crying over Jamie (Jeremy Jordan) being gone. Very sad.

But it wasn’t all sad. I mean, he was Jewish and stoked to be in love with someone who wasn’t Jewish for once! She was an actress who had a hard time finding gigs, but didn’t have a hard time with Jamie. He was a writer of moderate success, but in five years, hopefully he gets something published right?

Long distance, early love, dreams and aspirations. These are all real words, and filler words, because honestly, it is hard to talk about this movie outside of a relationship that lasted five years. Oh, and that it isn’t told in order. You see, everything in Jaime’s point of view is told chronologically, however Cathy’s POV in the story is told in reverse order. We get to see various wins and losses in their relationship, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to follow.

When you can’t even look at each other, you know there is a problem.

You may have noticed that I only tagged two people in this review. Sure, there are technically others in the movie. You saw a flower of actors in the first picture. But I think maybe at most, 2-3 other people have speaking lines. Definitely no singing lines. This is about two people, in and out of love, fighting and loving, singing and loving. A whole lot of love, really.

As they are the only two real characters, they are the only two singers. In fact, most of this movie is singing, very little talking dialogue, which is a nice surprise.

This is not the type of musical I can find myself ever singing along with. The songs are, for the most part, very wordy and emotional and don’t always have easy parts to sing with. It isn’t as hard as something like Sweeney Todd, but it still seemed really difficult at times. Despite that fact, right after I watched the movie, I went on youtube and listened to most of the album again. It was just that emotional and strong. I was really impressed with the lyrics and the story told here.

The acting for our two leads I could describe as phenomenol, but I did cry by the end and got close to it several toher times. And hell, the first two lines of the musical, I kind of figured I would already like it. They really have a “Hey, stop what you are doing and fucking pay attention to the screen, multi-tasking assmuncher!”

It is kind of cute if you read it in Anna’s voice. Speaking of Anna, the only other musical I know coming out this year is Pitch Perfect 2. Jeez, when did she become the singer for everything?

Alright, Neill Blomkamp, let’s do it.

You blew us away with District 9. Elysium had some mixed reviews, but clearly wasn’t as good as your first movie.

And now we have Chappie. Some part Short Circuit, some part robot apocalypse AI shit. But we are bound to get some Sharlto Copley. You guys are BFFs.

But listen here Neill. Should you let me down, we are done. Forget my number, give me back my spare key, and we will negotiate over Fido later.

“You wot, Robo-mate? I’ll cap ur fookin’ head in I swear on me maker!”

Chappie is set in the ridiculously far future of 2016. And it is set in South Africa again, because why not. Director likes it there.

Somehow, South Africa is the leading front on robotics now. They have a huge weapons company, and they have developed a police robot! Yay! Now humans don’t have to worry about getting hurt as a police officer. Instead, indestructible robots, unhackable, perfect, are running the streets with a few cops. Crime is down, life is good, but the criminals that exist seem to be hyper crazy criminals. I guess.

Their creator, Deon Wilson (Dev Patel) seems to still be pretty poor and not even an executive in his company. He has developed an AI software to represent “consciousness” and give a robot the ability to learn and become even greater than a normal robot! It will make him real! Company head (Sigourney Weaver) doesn’t care, so he takes a broken robot about to get scrapped (has an unchargable battery) to do his own secret testing, damn it!

Then he gets kidnapped, van and all, after leaving the facility. Huh, so much for lesser crime rate. He is captured by some people named Ninja (Ninja), Yolandi (Yo-Landi Visser), and Yankie/Amerika (Jose Pablo Cantillo). These guys owe 20 million to some criminal lord, Hippo (Brandon Auret), and it is all their fault. They wanted to take Deon’s money, but he is broke. So instead they want to get a robot to do some crimes.

Well, thanks to gun violence and his own desires, he activates the robot with his program, and Chappie (Sharlto Copley) is born! Anyways. Shenanigans, theft, guns, violence, and a jealous coworker (Hugh Jackman) who wanted to really create the ED-209’s from RoboCop.

What is this? A scene from Far Cry: Robo?

Damn it Neill. What did I tell you. What did I tell you like, 2 hours and 15 minutes ago? I said don’t let me down, Neill. I said I trusted you, Neill. I thought you were supposed to be the chosen one, Neill.

I should start with the good, before I start ranting accidentally. Chappie was delightful. The robot, not the movie. He was a beauty to watch, the CGI was really top notch and it fit so well in the real world. His voice got on my nerves early on, but it got better. Of course most of the jokes and great scenes involved him just learning and being a “kid” robot, ever trusting.

And that’s all I got.

Every single human in this movie is poorly written. Weaver is barely in the movie. Jackman is some polo wearing dude who tucks it into shorts, running around with a gun in an office, that no one gives a single fuck about for some reason. He is a bad villain annoyance with no great motivation, outside of maybe some psychopathic tendencies.

Deon is our smart character, so he is the most infuriating person everytime he does something stupid. Like, you know, not doing something about getting his robot back or stolen property or anything when it would be the easiest thing in the world. So many bad things happen, almost all of them his fault and he doesn’t seem to get it. None of this is addressed in the movie either, he is just very badly written as a plot device.

The trio of thugs? Well, first of all, they are violent criminals, rough enough to still be doing crime despite the robots. Ninja, a character played by a guy actually named Ninja, is insufferable on purpose, so I don’t have any sympathy despite any changes of heart he might have later. The other two are more sympathetic, but at the same time, still dicks.

The ending is super rushed, and kind of awkward. The big robots end up being a piece of shit, that just stall out some of the final action scenes.

And as a side note, the Hippo dude? Subtitles the entire film, outside of like three lines. And of all his lines, maybe 2 are in not-English, so I don’t get it.

And also the sound editing early on in the film was shit. And also again, I am really fucking disappointed this film wasn’t a masterpiece.

Watch out, this is one of those creepy documentaries. I have watched a couple of these before, most relevant is Killer Legends. It talked about four urban legends, where they came from, the truth behind them, the real trials, and movies that they inspired.

It was fantastic and a bit scary.

Cropsey is very similar, but instead of four, we are given the full length to talk about just one. This Cropsey story is something that may have spread lots of places, but was focused mainly in New York and the Staten Island area. This was your standard tale. Don’t play alone in the woods as a kid, or Cropsey will grab you, especially if you are naughty, and you won’t be seen again.

But this Staten Island area also had an abandoned mental facility. That was still there. That was reported on by Geraldo Fucking Rivera, so you know it is serious. It was shut down. That building plus some tunnels in the area were said to be home to some homeless and leftover mental people.

And hey, there was also missing kids!

The most famous story was Jennifer, a girl with Down syndrome, who went missing in 1987. The whole community came together to find the missing girl, with their only facts pointing to Andre Rand, an older homeless man who used to be a janitor at the mental institution and was kind of awkward.

We assume they searched out of the goodness of the heart. No other reason.

So, a lot of people didn’t trust him, and because he was reported being with the girl, a witch hunt began. He was put on trial and of course found guilty. However, there was more than just that girl missing. There were quite a few missing children from that area, and four were notable in that the Law people figured that maybe Rand had something to do with them too.

And with that, we get rushed into modern day. A trial, a re-opening of Rand’s case, and seeing if they can incorporate evidence for a few other disappearing kids. Murder or who knows what. Maybe they can find out where the fuck they are or why they are gone or anything?

Because rumors are rampant. Cults, satanists, sadistic people with disabilities, who knows.

And I think the trial stuff is where this documentary starts to lose it. Early on it was exciting and scary. When they go into theories, it is a lot more interesting. The truth seems a lot less exciting, especially when we realize how little we know. I was a bit disappointed with the ending of the documentary.

Maybe I just wanted it to be a bit more creepier. Yeah, probably.

I am probably just angry with a lack of answers and am left with implied reality. But that is on me. It is an interesting documentary, just one that seemed to flicker out by the end.

Hyping up these things is getting hard. But mostly because the next few are pretty meh, until I hit 1500.

What? Yes, what I am saying is welcome to my 1300th review, bitches. Time for a Milestone Review.

I think I have the next few figured out too. I am continuing with my theme of mid-2000s movies that I heard were terrible, never saw before, and want to give them a chance.

I remember seeing trailers for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Even my 10-12 year ago self thought the film looked too CGI and weird. But now it is a decade later. Maybe it was one of those films ahead of its time, like Speed Racer?

Or, maybe it is just terribad and perfect for the mid 2000’s.

One man’s CGI fest explosion is another mans CGI fest explosion.

Alternative history. And not just a history where I watched this movie 11 years ago. I’m talkin’ 1930’s. I don’t know the exact differences, but technology is a lot better in this timeline. We got Zeppelins. We got scientists. We got shenanigans.

Specifically, some famous scientists are disappearing and and no one knows why. Also not a lot of people care. So there is that. Some dude disappears at the start of the film even!

It’s amazing they could land (perch? float next to?) so well in that weather (snow storm? smog gas? volcano explosion?).

Wait, one person might care! Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) who is playing another character with the initials PP. She is a journalist and she just so happens to be looking into the missing scientists! Crazy! She is the one who cares.

She gets a secret message to meet up for information on who the next scientist to go missing will be. After heading out, she is surprised to find Dr. Walter Jennings (Trevor Baxter)! Some Dr. Totenkopf is getting all of the scientists, and Walter thinks he is next because he is the last of the group who worked on a secret project. SUDDENLY! GIANT ROBOTS ATTACK THE CITY.

Marching two by two, just like Moses said they would.

The robots seem to be indestructible. I don’t think they are technically attacking, they are more just walking the streets and looking like an army. The police collectively shrug and realize they can’t win, so they call on “Sky Captain,” a dude who owns his own private air force in New York called the Flying Legion. The Sky Captain is just Joe Sullivan (Jude Law). He is able to take out one of the robots using a bomb and making it fall down. I guess that is good enough for them.

The rest of the robots GTFO of town, back to outer space or who knows what. Joe saves Polly and takes the broken robot back to his base. Turns out Joe and Polly have a past together. They used to date, but Joe blames Polly for interfering too much and almost getting him killed. But she has information, so she can tag a long for now.

The Flying Legion head of science expert (Giovanni Ribisi) starts looking into the robot, while Joe and Polly go to investigate Dr. Jennings again!

If you came here for this like everyone else, then I have some disappointing news.

So, Jennings is almost dead. Damn. Too late. But before he croaks, he gives Polly two vials. Very secret these vials. They are apparently what Dr. Totenkopf is after. Joe don’t know ’bout the vials either, how sneaky. So that sucks, scientist is dead. Oh well, YOLO, back to the base, they find out science guy has found out secret information!

Oh no, the base is also now under attack, but by drone robots! But that means the scientist might not be able to tell us the news he found out! Yep, he gets taken during the defense. Oh noes!

Turns out he found out the origin of the robot control signal, so they know where to go to stop them. And it is on Earth! And hey, before he was taken he left them a map. Pretty sweet. So they head down to Tibet and the Himalayas!

What a relaxing plane ride!

Over in the mountains, Joe meets up with his old friend Kaji (Omid Djalili) and they all laugh and have good times. They get double crossed by some peeps, and almost blow up! Next thing they know, they are in Shangri-La. The evil doctor used monks to mine uranium. K. But the doctor is in another castle, so they have to go find him again.

And nowwwwwwww we finally get to meet Commander Franky Cook (Angelina Jolie), who commands her own Royal Navy flying force thing. They help Joe find the secret island of Dr. Totenkopf. Using submarine boats, they break in and find it inhabited with weird dinosaur like creatures. Shit, they also find robots hoarding animals into capsules. Two by two, a whole lot of different species.

Oh shit, they are going to Noah the Earth!

Did you guys notice me say Moses earlier?

Looks like the evil Dr. wants to reset the world. He is loading all the animals into a rocket. The rocket will blast off, blow up a lot of the world, then eventually return and repopulate. The World Of Tomorrow. In case you are wondering about the vials, as you should be, they actually contain the “perfect human” DNA. A new Adam and Eve.

So does that mean the doctor wants to kill himself? Not at all. He died twenty years ago. OHHHH SNAP.

That’s right. But the robots he made have been continuing with the plan, doing shenanigans, killing people, and all that jazz. Fucking robots.

Look at them. Always fucking shit up.

Needless to say, our heroes get stuck on the rocket going up into outer space. Full of animals, angry robots, and dead scientists. Oh no!

So Joe figures, hey, he is a captain of the SKIES. He should save everyone and blow up the rocket alone on the ship. Well, Polly doesn’t listen. Again. They free all the animals and also fuck up the ship. Thankfully, there is just one escape pod left.

And do they reach it? Do they?

Not if Zordon’s son has anything to say about it.

Mannnnnn. I can’t believe this movie got so many great reviews.

SCatWoT was one of the first movies ever to use CGI like this. To give us an old timey, futuristic, retro feel. Everything was intentionally done with a specific style in mind. And that style could have not felt more boring to me.

Fuck. This movie dragged on. First of all, it was only rated PG. So the action was only PG levels of exciting. This probably a false complaint.

The real issue is they were going for this super old feel. Maybe specifically a 60s/70s sci-fi b-movie feel. But it was incredibly dull the entire time. I just wanted it to end. Paltrow was down right terrible in this movie. I don’t know if it was her or the director, but there was close to zero emotion the entire film.

Angelina Jolie is obviously barely in this movie, despite most of the advertisements featuring her and her eye patch. I really assumed she was the sky captain.

BUT IT WAS JUST SO SLOW. Which obviously is my main complaint. The entire movie just felt brown and grey, very unexciting colors. I was hoping with that much CGI it would be a bit flashier and exciting, especially on Blu-Ray. But no. Slow. Dreadfully boring. And fuck, this is one of the worst movies I have had to review for a milestone review.

Which is the issue here. I found it hard to be funny, because I had to type out the whole plot outline, and found it a struggle just to remember what in the fuck happened.

I dunno if anyone ever watched this movie. But re-watch it. If you liked it, let me know why. If you still like it and can ignore nostalgia, I just. Just help me out here.