In Time

In Time is a movie with a great science fiction plot, but going more the yay action movie route. This disappointed me, I will tell you up front. I think this movie could have been a LOT better had it focused more on some of the cool aspects of the world. Only thing we really know is that it is the future and somehow, the time stuff happened.

What time stuff? When people get 25 in this world, they stop aging physically…somehow. At that point they have a year on their time that counts down, they can accumulate the time, or spend it. No currency, people just spending and selling their own time. So some people who were born into wealth have thousands to millions of years available, so they can live forever. And stay young to boot.

Uncomfortable
Which is why this should make you uncomfortable. This is a rich guys mother in law, wife, and daughter, in that order.

Justin Timberlake is your everyday average guy. Living with his mom, because his dad died long ago, he is working with other people at the factories in a lesser time zone. His friend, Johnny Galecki (who they don’t even try to make look 25) is also struggling. Him and his mom, Olivia Wilde, are living day to day. That is until…

Some hot shot with a century of time hangs around the bar! JT saves him and, while he is asleep, the mysterious guy gives him most of his 100 years, except for the last 5 minutes. When he walks away to die, they assume it is JT’s fault. They being the time keepers, aka the police, and especially Cillian Murphy, who has been doing this for over 50 years.

Eventually, after some plot points, and questionable actions, JT decides its time to go all the way up to the big times. The best Time Zone. He is good at gambling, so he wins himself a lot more years. He also gets to meet Vincent Kartheiser, who is kind of the richest man ever, apparently. He also meets his daughter, Amanda Seyfried, if you know what I mean. It takes awhile to recognize that it is Seyfried too. In case you didn’t know, the chick on the right in the earlier picture is her.

So yeah. More stuff happens. Run from the law. Down with the man. Destroying the society. More people die. Questionable ending. And done!

RUNNING
Also running. Lots and lots of running.

I really wanted this movie to be awesome, but I had some issues with it. One was the lack of any real information to how this society could be formed. It also seems pretty unstable. For some reasons these people in the poor areas are just going to keep having kids, despite the fact that they will be pushing them into a life of poverty that they cannot climb out of, and early death, so to speak. So eventually the “workers” should all die out, and pretty quickly, leaving only the rich and no way for their society to work.

Also, the motives of JT were questionable. After an early “oh man, sad!” event, movie watchers couldn’t even dwell on the sadness. Because the next scene was already happening. The evidence the timekeepers have that makes them initially question JT is crap, because it also shows his innocence. Then every once in awhile, I didn’t know what was going on. The final “running scene” which also involved a very unwarranted death of a character, was confusing because we had no reason what they were running too.

Unless they were just running into confusion. So I think a lot of the film could have been better, but as it is, pretty disappointed.

2 out of 4.

Dear John

You can really learn a lot about the world with movies. Not the bull crap happy ending stuff, and many other lines. But simple things! Like expressions. I never heard of a Dear John Letter before (or I might have in Serious Moonlight, but can’t remember). Those are letters telling your lover your breaking up with them, usually for some other lover. That adds more meaning to this movie title (Dear John, no shit). I think about that expression and I think “Man…people do dear john texts now. Even less effort.”.

Dear John
“Now if only knew how to read…”

Let me just say that this is my favorite Nicholas Sparks movie based off one of his books. That being said, I still have only seen two, this one and The Last Song. Which I hated. So it didn’t have much to beat. The Notebook I own just…haven’t gotten around to watching it yet.

Channing Tatum starts off the movie being in the army and getting shot. He is narrating at this point, and tells of a story of him going to the US Mint when he was a child. He had a fascination for coins as a kid, and became a collector. Flash back time!

John starts off at a beach, meets Amanda Seyfried. She is in Wilmington, NC (whaaat) where he lives for spring break. In that small break, they “fall in love”. She even loves his dad (Richard Jenkins), who seems kind of crazy and invested most of their money into coins. Kind of obsessively.

A lot of this movie takes place a long time ago, like late 90s, early 2000s. Once she goes back to school they decide to write letters to each other. Once he goes back into the army the letters keep coming, albeit at a lesser pace. John feels a sense of duty to remain in the army after the 9/11 attacks, and constantly reenlists, but possibly just to escape his home life. He also gets mad at Amanda for suggesting his dad has Autism, just was never treated as such because back then, what was Autism? Just weirdness.

Eventually she sends him a Dear John letter, breaking up with him for someone else she grew to love. Fuck that shit. He re-enlists again, despite getting shot. After some more years of not talking, he finds out that his dad had a stroke and is in serious condition.

Can he forgive his dad for the years of awkward growing up in poverty, due to his obsession? Will he ever find Seyfried again (and you know, win her back despite the fact that she is married)? When will he ever leave the army? What the hell is up with all these coins?

Dear John
“They’re mine! Mine I tells ya! (Hiss!)”

What surprised me about this movie is the layers. It is not very simple and obvious, like The Last Song (which also was pretty cheesy). It has a lot more serious stuff going on, and not everything is as peachy. The plot lines between JOhn and Seyfried, John and home (with his dad), John in the army, all interweave pretty snazzylike, and I thought that was great of writer.

Obviously the acting wasn’t that great. I think Tatum needs to learn how to make his big face show more emotion. Seyfried could have probably been any girl in this movie. Half of her lines were just narrating the letters they sent. Jenkins was great as “old man who is dying and confused and autistic” though. But ehh. Everything else could have been better.

2 out of 4.

The Thing

The Thing! Because prequels or sequels that share an identical name to the the movie they are supposed to be connected with is apparently okay. The reason I hated that movie was because as far as I knew, it wasn’t billed as a sequel, but a remake. But then it was actually a sequel. Fuck that.

The Thing has taken a different approach. I new the whole time this thing was a prequel of the 1982 movie. Great. No false hopes then!

thing thing
Here is a non descriptive picture of the movie.

Movie opens up in the arctic. Norwegian people are being Norwegian, it is 1982, and they are looking for a signal / spacecraft thing. But they die I guess. It is also assumed that you have seen that other Thing, so all the mystery and stuff is thrown out of the window in this movie. The viewers know. So fuck it. They turn that into a slasher flick kind of thing.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is brought to the arctic as a paleontologist or something. Why? Because Ulrich Thomsen found a life form, and for some reason picked her, damn it. Tissue samples, something new! Shit pops out and scares the shit out of Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje.

Oh well, lets all look for it! People end up dying, no one knows what is going on. Through like a couple of random clues, and some science, Mary pulls a Jeff Goldbloom out of her ass and figures out that “that thing!” can infect people and replicate the cells, and imitate a human or whatever perfectly. It wants to spread the disease, so it will infect others, but you know, while not trying to die itself.

Also involved are Eric Christian Olsen, who is actually wearing a shirt and playing a “scientist”, and Joel Edgerton, who is some sort of helicopter pilot.

Flame
Yes! Kill it with fire! Burn! Burn! Burn!

Here’s a fun fact. I never saw the 1982 movie. But I might. Yes, might. I might do it mostly because of this movie. But you know, I don’t like scary shit. But we will see. Apparently a lot of people who like the 1982 movie don’t like this version, because they are way different. Well, if it gets the “original” more exposure, then well done.

Despite the mostly cardboard characters (like Norwegian 1 and 2 and 3), I thought the CGI was kind of weak. I also mentioned the plot was kind of bad, especially in figuring out how the thing works. Just ridiculous. I feel ridiculous even typing that.

But even though I didn’t see the original or get any of their clues, I appreciate the hard work that went in to try and make it a real prequel. Lot of set up for the 1982 movie, and that was nice. The ending to this one was kind of meh though.

2 out of 4.

The Big Year

Apparently if I watched some of the trailers for The Big Year, you still wouldn’t really know what it is about. I will tell you right now. BIRDING. Or Bird Watching, if you want to be lame about it. Yes. The art of looking at birds and feeling good about yourself.

Mort importantly, A Big Year in the birding world is a competition to see who can see the most birds in a single calendar year. The competition can be state / province based, lower 48 states, or the biggest area of all states except Hawaii, and a bunch of other territories around the US. I didn’t learn these until I wiki’d that shit.

Big Year
Can you tell who each of these three big actors are by just this picture alone?

So the story tells of three different “birders” who are attempting the big year. Owen Wilson plays an expert birder. In 2003 he reached a new record for A Big Year, reaching 723, putting him into instant celebrity status. Well, pseudo celebrity. Dude can find a bird like no other. He hasn’t attempted another big year since, but this year he is just going to do it for a few months, set the pace, make sure no one is getting close to his record. But will his dedication and drive break apart another marriage?

Steve Martin is a CEO who is retiring finally. Super rich, he wants to try a big year, full support with his wife, JoBeth Williams. But his job constantly is bugging him to return to the game, to fix problems, to even take another job. Joel McHale and Kevin Pollak are the corporate D-bags who continue to harass him throughout the year, warning him that after retirement, comes death.

Jack Black is the narrator and also attempting for the first time. He has trained to recognize any bird by a few notes only. He isn’t rich though, kind of poor, disapproving dad, and working a full time job to help pay for this during the year. But he is inspired to finally do something with his life. If he could also woo over Rashida Jones (who can do hundreds of bird noises on her own (I think in real life too?)), double win. Bird love. All that shit.

The movie shows the three men and their journey across America, just doing the things they love. They don’t travel together, but they run into each other enough to build a rivalry. Of course they don’t want others to know they are doing a big year, will make them no longer help them out. The movie probably sounds super boring. Bird watching. Wtf?

ACTION
But look, there is some action!

Of course this whole thing is based on the honor system. Don’t have to take pictures, because hearing the bird counts as well. So it sounds like cheating may happen, and obviously it is dealt with in the movie. Not to mention Jim Parsons of Big Bang Theory slinks about in the movie as well.

But overall? The story was definitely done pretty nicely. By the end, you don’t hate Owen’s character like you’d expect. Everyone has their own appeal and their own “happy ending” so to speak. Had some chuckles, and hey, good for the whole family.

2 out of 4.

Dream House

Dream House? I never saw a preview for this movie. Just new it was “thriller/horror” based, had james bond, and the poster involved two girls wearing outfits that looked like wall paper.

Alright. Sounds like nothing new, but lets see what happens!

Images!
Something religious, maybe?

Daniel Craig is a writer, but he is done with that shit! He wants to move with his wife (Rachel Weisz) and two kids to a non city area, and write! Oh yeah, he isn’t done with writing, just wants to help raise his family better. Suburbs are good for that. Write novels at home and stuff.

Well, his daughters start to see things. A man in a window? And there is someone they sometimes see outside? Turns out five years prior, a MURDER happened in their house. The wife and kids were killed by the dad who was taken to a mental institution. After further research, he was released not too long ago! He tries to get more information out his neighbors, Naomi Watts and her husband Marton Csokas, but they seem uneasy, and unwilling to help.

At this point have you figured the whole movie out yet?

Well yeah that is true. But then there is more. After all “Dream House”. The things that happen in the house, how much of it is real, and how much of it is fake? Thankfully every question is answered in the movie. Whether or not you accept the answers as good enough is the bigger question.

Dream House
There goes the wallpaper clothes. Is that supposed to be scary? Just seems like they’re poor.

The movie is only about 90 minutes and can easily be broken up into about three parts. The first part is the boring set up, possible weird stuff going on, without anything actually being scary. Second part is the investigation and realization. Third part is the confusion of what is real, what is fake, and the wondering of why any of it matters. The ending of the movie is a complete mess. Confusion is what they were going for, but even when you should know what is going on, you will be confused because of poor design.

So what am I left with? A thriller that isn’t thrilling, and a lame conclusion / obvious plot line (that they try really hard to muck up). Blah.

1 out of 4.

Finding Amanda

I decided to watch this movie ahead of schedule in honor of this. Unfortunately, it is all a lie and a tease for a car commercial. Join me in never buying whatever car it happens to be. WHY PLAY WITH OUR EMOTIONS, WHY?

there she is
Wait, what is the movie called again? I think I found her.

Finding Amanda, despite being the name of the movie, is actually not that hard of a task. He finds her pretty quickly. Who is he?

Matthew Broderick plays a “succesful comedy writer” for a “hit TV show”. But his stuff hasn’t been as good lately. He also used to be addicted to smoking and alcohol. But that is all behind him. Gambling is his thing now. He is seeing therapy for it, and cant carry around a checkbook or a credit/debit card, despite it being his money. His wife Maura Tierney would be upset, you see, if he wasted it all.

So after another argument (damn Horse races!) he decides he can prove that he is over gambling. He is going to Las Vegas to find their niece Amanda, Brittany Snow, who is hooking. He will find her, convince her to go into the rehab that they already paid for and he wont gamble at all. But thats a lie. He gambles a shit ton before even looking for her.

Besides, how bad could her life be? She has a nice home, living with her boyfriend Peter Facinelli, and makes bank. Sure, creepy people, might have been raped when she was younger, and rude people. That part might not be good. Broderick also has to worry about Steve Coogan, one of the head guys in the in the casino/hotel he is staying at, who helped loan him some money to get him on his feet. But he is getting very angry.

So can Broderick convince his niece to go into rehab? Can he change his lying ways to his own wife, or will he strike it big first. Also, will anyone believe that Amanda is his actual niece when they are hanging out in Vegas?

Snow
Nope

So I gave this a dark comedy, because it wasn’t really laugh out loud funny. What you get to see is the tailspin of Broderick’s character as he is going through a huge mid-life crisis. It reminds me of the role he played in Election, but this time his downfall is pretty much his own fault and not of some young girl. The beginning started off pretty slow, but it really started hitting its stride once he found Amanda. The ending was pretty great, and makes sense overall.

Kind of also sends a positive message. What you’d expect in a movie about hookin’ and gamblin’.

2 out of 4.

Adventures Of Power

POWER!

Good word to have in a movie title. Adventures Of Power? Sounds EPIC. Oh, the main character is named Power? I see what they did there. Okay. Less Epic though.

boom boom POWER
Needs more explosions.

Power is played by Ari Gold, and …wait. Ari Gold? Like, Entourage big shot, foul mouthed Ari Gold? No, that guys name is Jeremy Piven. So there actually IS an Ari Gold out there? That seems weird to me. Ari Gold is a stand up comic apparently, and also wrote and directed this movie. Alright. Maybe its a fake name? Lets assume so and move on. Just in case, I will only call him Power.

Anyways, Power lives in Lode, NM, where they get that copper. His dad (Michael McKean) is leading a strike! So times are tough, he has to live with his aunt (Jane Lynch, hippie) because of the whole no income thing. Unfortunately for the dad, Power (who has always been poor) is addicted to the horrible activity of…air drumming. It embarrasses him, and the whole town laughs at him, except for one Mexican boy who believes him.

Power decides one day to leave the town, because there is nothing for him here! There is a big air drumming competition in NYC, but he needs a team, and finds himself in Newark (After some illegal Mexican air drumming tournaments). Somehow he impresses people with his skills, and finds a team (a low member, but a team nonetheless). His dream is the win the tournament, and give his part of the earnings to his dad to help the strike team last until they can have their demands rightfully met!

While this happens, he also falls in lough with a kind of deaf girl (Shoshannah Stern, who if you ever seen a kind of deaf girl on a show/movie, it is probably her). She can feel the music, but not hear it, and with his air drumming, she can really start to “understand it”.

Unfortunately a “real drummer” has entered the tournament, and is likely to win it just by being a celebrity. Cowby Dallas Houston is played by Adrian Grenier wh…wait. Wait again. Adrian Grenier? The “main” famous Vincent Chase character from Entourage? That’s odd.. Um. Kind of freaking out. I guess its just another coincidence.

Well, the first round of the tournament is weird, but they make it to stage 2, where the entire team has to work together to play the entire drum set, each being a different drum/cymbol. They show three teams do that, and they are pretty damn epic. The final round is the endurance challenge, in which Power goes head to head against Dallas and some Chick.

Drum OFF
Where ACCURACY matters.

Can he beat a real drummer? Did you know that air drumming is actually more difficult than real drumming? After all, with real drumming, you only have to push the sticks down, they will bounce off the drums. But air drumming you have to bounce the sticks off of AIR. That’s up and down!

The biggest problem with this movie is excepting the its reality. In this world. Air drumming is a thing, that can be shunned. It is way more popular than normal, and kind of underground, but not illegal. Unfortunately a lot of the training in Newark, the middle third of the movie, wasn’t that interesting. Beginning and ending way more interesting. Final tournament definitely epic.

But one that you might love a lot more if inebriated.

2 out of 4.

The Messenger

The Messenger is a movie by those Oscilliscope people. If you know anything about bad DVD cases (And Blu-Ray) you know these are some of the worst. Complicated fold out mazes, and in the middle you put the disk in a sleeve. Gross. And different. I hate different. Also some of their other movies I have loathed (Meek’s Cutoff), thought were Okay (Howl) or thought they were wildly original (Rare Exports).

The Messenger
Don’t act too surprised. Yes that last paragraph sentence was pointless.

Ben Foster (Who you may remember as that annoying character in Six Feet Under or the lame character in the Worst X-men Movie) is in the army. But he got injured in the war! He is young and only has a few months left on his original enlistment, where he plans on probably leaving. But hey, since he is back home, time to get back with his old fling Jena Malone!

Oh. She found someone else during it and is getting married. Well shit. Oh well, he is leaving the army soon. Not like they will put him in a high pressure job like killing people right?

Right! Its the opposite! He gets assigned to the Casualty Notification Unity for his area. Aka the guys who get to go to the house and tell someone their loved one died in combat. Well. Damn.

Not his ideal position. He has to work with Woody Harrelson who has been doing it for a long time and is in the AA. Easy enough rules to follow. No contact with the people they are talking to. Have to make sure the word killed or deceased are used, to avoid confusion, and can only speak with the assigned person. No neighbors, no friends. No dawdling/waiting. No midnight calls. Etc.

So by now you will realize, man, this is going to be a sad movie. And it definitely is. We get to see them make quite a few calls to quite a few different types of family members, spouses, parents, etc. We get to experience their reaction to all of the civilian reactions. One visit they go to is Steve Buscemi, who does not take that news well. They also meet Samantha Morton, who is now a single mother. And for some reason (probably losing his ex), Ben Foster seems to develop feelings for.

If you think that is fucked up, that is because it is. Starting to like someone after telling them their husband died? Yeahhh. No way it works out.

Ben ben ben
But hey, free temporary taxi is part of the service?

Besides the sad, its obviously pretty emotional. Just watching the reactions from the parents and loved ones at the news, and en route to receiving the news is probably worth the price of admission. Receiving the news sucks, but being the guy to tell the news can’t be the best job in the world, and this movie gives an interesting perspective that is pretty widely overlooked.

Foster is the main guy, but I think Harrelson’s performance overshadows him. You can tell that the years of the job have really wore the character down, along with the guilt that other people put their lives on the line, while he is the guy who tells others, his life never in danger himself. Surprisingly very well done piece. Glad I bought it, too bad the Blu-Ray case sucks.

3 out of 4.

Extraordinary Measures

Extraordinary is one of my favorite words. Especially if you say it for real, and not the shortened way (Extrordinary). Extra. Ordinary. That means beyond ordinary. It means AWESOME.

Well, for Extraordinary Measures, I figured it would be about spies or secrets or government or something. I mean. Look at the cast! Nope. It is a feel good movie about curing diseases. Damn it!

Extraordinary Measures
Well, at least we might get some hxc science.

Brendan Fraser plays high up not CEO but business guy who does something. What does he do? Not important. He leaves that job in the movie. But it has nice health insurance. That is good, because out of 3 children, the last two have Pompe disease. Which means something, but just picture kids in electrical wheelchairs, with a fatal disease that means they probably wont make it to 10.

But when the doctor tells him that his two children will both probably die within a year, him and his wife, Keri Russell, freak out. But Brendan freaks out more, leaves working during an “important meeting” and flies out to Nebraska to find Harrison Ford, MD. Ford is a better theorist than he is a scientist, and he believes he knows how to help cure Pompe disease. But he’d need money, and it will take awhile. Brendan says he an get him that money in a month (half a million dollars!).

Well, he only gets $90k. But that is way better than expected. So Ford, grumpy old Ford, says they will have to start their own business and lab, get money from investors, to work on this. But he needs a CEO to do it, and even though there are plenty more people qualified than Brendan, none of them would have the same drive that he has (You know. Trying to save TWO kids). So he quits his job on a gamble. Alan Ruck (who has one scene) tells him it is crazy, but you know one, you have to be crazy sometimes.

So the movie tells of the tale of them trying to get funds, trying to rush science, and do whatever it takes, even if it means their pride have to take a bashing, to find and develop a cure. For added guilt, Coutney B. Vance is a friend of theirs, who also has two children with the disease.

Extraordanary Measures
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” “Alive.”

So, this is a feel good movie, based off of the real story. So here are some spoilers. Yes, they find a “cure”. Or at least one one that if administered to infants can get rid of it, but one given to older children can get rid of the dying thing (not the whole, cant walk and etc thing). Yes, the children are still alive today (Posted Jan 26, 2012, for anyone reading this in the 2030s or whenever in the future). Yes, pharmaceutical companies are bitches. Also, no cows were harmed in this movie.

I wasn’t sure if Ford was the best choice to play scientists looking to start his own biotech company. Because he just seems super old. But hey, its Fords movie, so he will be a big role if he wants to! Fraser didn’t entirely mess up the movie either. His goofiness was appropriate, and it seemed like he really cared for these fake, not really Pompe looking kids of his. But everything is expected, and really, nothing too different about this movie and other extraordinary measure like movies.

2 out of 4.

Brotherhood

Brotherhood. Are you in or out? That is the tagline. I didn’t even notice that the “e” in brotherhood was the greek E. But hey. Frat related movie. Not gang related. My bad.

Gang frat
Well, technically you can probably call fraternities gangs. Right?

Lou Taylor Pucci plays Kevin, pictured above. He is a normal white privileged member of society. So of course he wants to be in a frat! Well first he has to pass initiation. They take a van full of initiates on the road, in a dark van. Their goal? To stop at different gas stations, give them a gun and a ski mask, and have them steal $19.10 from the store. That being the year they were founded. Well the first two go off without a hitch.

Trevor Morgan, or Adam Buckley (the only character with a last name. You know what that means) even does it successfully. Because there is another frat guy at the door stopping them and giving them the change. You know, they are just testing to see how willing they are to go with it!

Well as you can see above. Something goes wrong. They go to the wrong store, so a hold up actually happens. The clerk (Arlen Escarpeta) doesn’t like this, and shoots back. He also knew Adam from high school. Adam and Frank (Jon Foster) try and stop it before things go badly, but they don’t. Someone gets shot. Oh well, cover up time.

This happens in the first 5-6 minutes of the film. What occurs after that is a serious of actions that just escalate further. They obviously don’t want to go to the cops/hospital, because they are in the wrong here. But will their other frat shenanigans accidentally push this issue a lot further?

Brotherhood
Yes. Yes it will.

From fires, to car accidents, to police, to kidnapping, to trunks, to rape, to actual robbery, to beer. Pretty much everything keeps going wrong. Adam Buckley from the start doesn’t care about the consequences, he wants to help Kevin. Frank, the fratleader, wants to do everything else. Can Adam turn his back on his frat, to do the right thing? Maybe.

I liked this movie a lot more than I thought. It was pretty damn intense from the first robbery scene on. Some may argue that the main characters are kind of dumb. I like to assume they are mostly kind of drunk, and young college students. Of course they are dumb. Thinking mostly of themselves. There is elements of “Action” in the movie, but the dramatic parts take the cake. Once the final scene happens, you can tell collectively everyone gave up the lies. They knew they were fucked. It was great.

3 out of 4.