Tag: America Ferrera

Another installment of potentially the best Dreamworks franchise they have going for them. Shrek ended off poorly, Kung Fu Panda 3 ended up being a bit more lackluster than the first two. Will the dragon franchise have the same fate?

To catch us up on the series, The first How to Train Your Dragon I only thought was okay. I was annoyed a major plot point was the refusal of adult characters to listen, despite overwhelming evidence. The second one was a masterpiece in an already strong year for animated movies, I believe I barely put Big Hero 6 above it. I was excited for where the franchise was going and had great ideas and theories, and was willing to wait.

And honestly, from the look of the posters, and various screen grabs (I didn’t see the trailer), I don’t believe How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is going where it could have possibly gone.

I will also note the disappointing title, dropping the 3 and adding a subtitle, seems like a poor move. The Hidden World doesn’t draw me in at all, feeling generic. We shall see though!

Now if the dragons turn into clowns, we might have a real series!

Set about a year after the events of the second film, we have our new Chieftain Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) trying to do the right thing. The right thing is to find and rescue dragons, bring them back to their home, so they can be free and happy. Dragon raiders are real, and they are kidnapping the dragons and wanting to take them into a dragon army to kill things!

Hiccup still leads his band of youngish riders, all with the same personalities (America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Kristen Wiig, Kit Harrington, and Justin Rupple doing the best T.J. Miller impression ever) and his mom (Cate Blanchett) helping him figure out his way.

Their home is getting crowded. They need more space. Can he move his entire people and dragon population to find a suitable home? And if so, what about the potential Hidden World his dad (Gerard Butler) used to talk about, a place where only Dragons could go and live? His dad wanted to put up a wall to protect them, and he wants to just live near it to protect the dragons.

But of course, some other dragon raiders are angry. We got a new bad guy, who is better than the last bad guy, who wants to just kill Toothless, not capture him, and that will let them capture the rest of the dragons for you know, evil reasons. So they have that going against them.

Also starring the voice work of F. Murray Abraham and Craig Ferguson.

Ohhh, sparkly.

Alright, I can’t get this out of my head. Being a reviewer you are supposed to just judge on what was given, not always on what it could be. But I thought it was really clear what they were going to do with the third movie. I thought it would be darker and deal with harder questions.

Hiccup was gaining power. He had the new most-alpha Dragon, so every dragon would listen to them. He was getting a shit ton of power. They may have their boats and weapons, but they have dragons, nothing will stop them. This would unintentionally make them the new bad guy. Regular communities would probably naturally be frightened by them, since everyone is afraid of dragons, and maybe even rise up to try and bring them down. This would lead to a situation where they realize they need to protect the dragons, without holding them all at their homes, due to the misunderstandings, and let the dragons be free and teach everyone to let them be free. You know, something like that.

But! No, we got a world no one talked about before, barely in the future, and a girl Nightfury for Romance. To be fair, some of the elements were used, about realizing they cannot just live with this giant army of dragons, but in a much safer way.

The way they picked was still pretty good. Most of the characters felt unique and had decent plot elements, except for the Snotlout/Erek one. It was definitely gorgeous and had some pretty intense fight scenes throughout it. And hey, the ending was beautiful in its own right, putting us at a good “end point” to the series, and we got to see Hiccup with a beard. Very important stuff.

Overall, despite my bit of disappointment in some of the plot direction, this is a really solid film. This means this whole thing is a really solid franchise, and is going to be remembered as Dreamworks’ best animated franchise. Not monetarily maybe, but it definitely has surpassed Shrek and Kung Fu Panda in my book.

Cesar Chavez is one of those indie movies that kind of just never came out near where I lived, so I never really got a chance to watch it. It came out on DVD a few weeks ago (or if I delay this review by a few weeks, a month or more ago!) so at that point it just came down to finding a time to throw it up on my website. Only doing five reviews a week has its perks and its disadvantages. It is good that all of my free time isn’t looking for movies or writing reviews, yes. But those two reviews a week less than I am used to means a lot of indie or weird movies that my website is none for is pushed to the side if a week has a lot of big titles coming out.

Oh well. Cesar Chavez. A biographical movie with some subtitles and a comedic actor playing a serious role. My body is ready.

And I am sure they will do everything in their power to make sure they don’t make him look like Hitler.

Cesar Chavez (Michael Pena) is already a polarizing figure in the US. A farm worker in California, during the 1950s to the 1970s he became political, organizing the farm workers of California into labor groups to fight for better rates and conditions.

At this point, most of the farm workers were braceros, temporary workers from Mexico permitted to live in the US to work on these farms. Should they ever stop, they’d be forced back to Mexico. But the conditions were terrible and wages low, so it felt like a form of slavery.

With the help of others, Cesar organized boycotts, marches, and created a labor union, while also encouraging Mexican Americans to register and vote on elections to help swing results towards their side.

And uh, you know, I guess that is all the movie is really about? America Ferrera plays Mrs. Chavez, and Rosario Dawson and Yancey Arias are also on their side. In terms of white people to get in the way / help, we have John Malkovich, Michael Cudlitz, Wes Bentley, and Gabriel Mann.

You can tell he is an activist based on the number of scarves he is wearing.

After watching this pseudo-biopic, I don’t think I have a lot to say about Cesar or the film itself. From what I remember, he went in a hunger strike that lasted a long time, did some marching, and did a nice boycott.

And well, that was it? The movie was kind of short for bio standards, only dealt with a few events and didn’t seem to show many sides to the character. I am sure Cesar was a complicated individual, since everyone is complicated. I just didn’t get any sense of that.

Besides the potential bias issue, I found the movie kind of…boring. I could never really get into it, despite any parallels that may exist in our own time. It lacked an entertainment quality that I would hope to see in a film about an activist. There were a few tense moments only in dealings with anti-protesters.

On top of that? Acting was only okay. Nothing great. One cool scene sticks out from America Ferrera, and the rest is forgettable.

For those with a lot of courage, you may have seen my review for How To Train Your Dragon. Why courage? because that review is old and weak and it certainly shows. It is weak because it was one of my first 100, which I made in like a month by adding words from my facebook status reviews that they came from. And because I tried really hard to avoid spoilers that basically didn’t exist.

Basically, parts near the end bugged me so much it lowered an overall fantastic movie to a meh movie. I still haven’t rewatched it for that reason.

But now we have the sequel, How To Train Your Dragon 2. This one perfectly allows for the crap that happened in the first to not happen again, because now we are based with the assumption that dragons are awesome, and we should train them.

Yeah. So you can stoically sit on top of them doing zero tricks. Good job, guy.

Set five years after the events of the first film, Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is still a god amongst mortals in his small Viking town. Although technically not immortal, he does have cyborg parts now and a flame sword. So I mean, basically. He has his dragon, and now he is exploring more and more areas outside of the small town. After all, with dragons they now have the ability to explore, because Vikings rarely explored on their own.

While exploring he finds…dragon nappers! And giant sheets of unnatural ice through a fort. The nappers are lead by Erit (Kit Harington), who is collecting dragons with his crew for the great and powerful Drago Bludvist (Djimon Hounsou). A mad man who claims to be able to control all of the dragons and wants to use them to take over the world. Your typical desires from an awkwardly darker skin character than everyone else in an animated movie.

Oh no!

It becomes up to Hiccup to use his excellent cyborg dragon abilities, and excellent sized human heart, to save the day. Especially if he can use the help of the mysterious dragon lady (Cate Blanchett), who you already know everything about if you watched the trailers. But in case you didn’t, you are welcome.

A lot of returning characters, such as his dad (Gerard Butler), the smithy (Craig Ferguson), his lady friend (America Ferrera) and his other friends (Jonah Hill, Kristen Wiig, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, T.J. Miller). And of course, dragons.

And that is how I met and trained your dragon master’s mother.

First off, after the success of the first movie, DreamWorks starting thinking long term about this as a new franchise. So they put into development this sequel and a third film, at the same time. Which is why there was a four year delay between 1 and 2 (heavy CGI movies take a long time if done right (meaning not Planes)), but only two years before the third movie comes out.

Speaking of DreamWorks, I have hated or thought meh towards their last six movies. That is insane. Literally haven’t had a winner since Kung Fu Panda 2. Thankfully, How To Train Your Dragon 2 turned that downward spiral around. And I don’t just mean clockwise to counterclockwise, I mean up. Like a daring dragon flying maneuver.

This sequel has a lot going on for it. The CGI is extraordinary, which is probably too fancy of a word to describe it, but it really is gorgeous. They spent a lot of time and detail on every character, every scene, every dragon. Speaking of detail, the backgrounds of scenes are rarely pointless. They either showcase great scenes, or have hidden jokes and tomfoolery going on in the background as other characters are talking. It was awesome.

To avoid this wall of text, here is a bonus picture. Just. No. Bonus. Joke.

There is a lot of humor, there is a lot of character growth, there are more than one touching moments, and there is a lot of daring fight scenes. In fact, there were some terrifying scenes, and some darker moments, including some potentially heavy material for a PG movie. One drowning scene in particular still makes me shudder.

I will say there are some issues I found in terms of messages they are trying to convey. I think some parts of the ending directly contradict information said earlier in the film, a similar message given to us by Pokemon: The First Movie – Mewtwo Strikes Back.

But overall? Shit, this thing is enjoyable. Minor moral issues aren’t a big problem. The 3D only seemed blurry in the first scene of the film, so that is good.

For those who have saw it, I made a theory halfway through the movie on how the third one might go, and the ending seemed to solidify it. I’d love to talk to anyone in private about my theory, but if it goes the way I hope, then yeah, it will be epic. But this is all jibberjabber at this point. Awesome flick, and probably going to be one of the top 3 animated movies this year (to go with The LEGO Movie, and The BoxTrolls, based on its fantastic trailers alone).

End of Watch (I hate that there is no ‘the’ there) is another of those movies that I felt bombarded by trailers for. Unfortunately they only made a single trailer for this movie, so I saw the same two minutes over and over again. But from that trailer, I was definitely curious about this movie. Filming style was different, might have been a buddy cop movie, but at the time with very serious overtones. I do love genre bending movies!

Oh man, look how happy they are! If only they knew…

Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Peña) are partners working the hard streets of South Central LA. They are great at their job, if not a bit reckless. Brian is slowly taking classes, working on a Pre-law degree, with high aspirations. Mike is happily married (Natalie Martinez) with a child on the way.  The beginning of the film opens with a chase scene and subsequent shootout, causing the two to be suspended for a month while they make sure it was a legitimate shooting.

But no worries! They make sure they follow the book, mostly. Brian is also taking an ‘art’ class, where he has to make a movie so he decides to document his life. Why not? Cops are exciting! So he has his normal hand held camera, and some ‘spy cameras’ on their shirts, along with other footage from police scanners to make up the majority of the film.

They are like most stereotypical cop units, there is a hardass equal who always gives them crap (David Harbour), a lieutenant who only cares about results (Frank Grillo), and some other friendly cops who actually appreciate what they do (America Ferrera, Cody Horn). Heck, even Brian has started to see someone, a smart girl who is more than just a booty call (Anna Kendrick).

But when the two start an investigation on a Hispanic gang shooting, they soon find themselves deeper and deeper in the dealings with the drug cartel, who have expanded their operations out of Mexico.  Discovering mass murders, cocaine, golden guns, cash, and human trafficking have put them as the number 1 priority for the cartel to deal with. What they just assumed was a normal shift will turn into a fight for survival to just make it to the end of (the) watch.

Yes, the same Cody Horn who helped ruin Magic Mike is a cop in this. Same disgruntled face.

I know my description of the plot made it seem like a pretty serious action movie, but surprisingly I would instead describe it as a “Comedy Drama Action Thriller” film. It is seriously all of the above. I laughed, quite often, I cried once, there was the obvious action, and I felt scared more than once.

The film isn’t a typical ‘found footage’ film. I believe the director originally wanted the whole thing to be in police camera / hidden camera footage, but there is plenty of actual camera work thrown in as well. So that means we have a movie that fits multiple genres, and doesn’t even keep its camera use constant, but yet it works really really well.

Frankly I thought the movie would be stupid, but I ended up loving every minute of it. Gyllenhaal and Peña had excellent chemistry together, and it shows that they spent months shadowing LA cops and hanging out for inspiration.  My only suggestion for watching this movie is to be prepared to have scenes change suddenly. It may go from hilarious banter to scary cop moments in an instant. This form of ‘genre shock’ is pretty rare, and now something I hope to see more often in movies after this. End of Watch is a definite must see.

How To Train Your Dragon? Dumb title. Just saying. Let’s have some creativity dreamworks. Good luck making an evil baby dragon look cute also.

Oh shit.

Awww, look at that cute evil glare.

In this story we have Viking like people! Hooray! They are at war with the dragons because…uhh they are dragons and dragons are evil. Our main character (Jay Baruchel) sucks at fighting, and would rather just learn. He ends up hitting the dangerous Nightwing dragon DOWN FROM THE SKY! But no one sees him do it, and it is at night, and for whatever reason no one will go into the woods with him to get it later. Their loss. Cute dragon he finds, and he can’t kill him. But aww, its wing is broken.

Eventually he gains the dragon trust, all in secret of course. Adults don’t believe kids. While he is training with his dragon, he is also getting trained how to fight and kill dragons with the other kids. Through his dragon, he learns little secrets to subdue them without weapons, that no one else knew about. Shit, dude is a genius! He thinks that there is nothing evil about the dragons, and maybe something else is evil forcing the dragons to be “bad”. Just saying, of course. He even makes a book eventually. About how to train a dragon. Oh okay. got it now.

Lot of voice actors in this one, including Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, America Ferrera, and T.J. Miller.

Your heroes, ladies and gentlemen.

And here is what pissed me off. Family movies (or movies for kids) love to do this shit. Make adults unable to change and accept the word of a child. All the time, and use it as a main plot point. It is stupid, and bullshit, and makes me so mad.

Once they find out about his trained dragon, guess what? Everyone flips their shit. They stop from killing him because, well, if they let him go, he can lead them to the lair and kill them all. Obviously that is the best advice! Because this kid, who has surprised everyone for months over his tactics that he learned from a dragon, on how to subdue them, on how they are not bad, and on the fact that a dragon listens to him? That is all hogwash. The fact that any of them would constantly interrupt him and ignore him is the bullshittiest bullshit at that point.

Even if they were at war their whole life, their first reaction would be more confusion and panic and a willingness to listen. That on it owned ruined this from a great film to an okay one for me..

Of course everything changes by the end and people accept the dragons. Thanks to the kid character, they can all now learn how to train a dragon. The sequel being called HTTYD2 doesn’t make sense though. Oh well. I liked this more than Toy Story 3 (the movie it lost to for awards) though overall, is because unlike TS3, it shows that people can change, even if it takes some unreasonable amount of time. Guess what my biggest complaint of TS3 is? Hah.