Tag: Casey Affleck

It has been a few years since we have had a stop motion scary movie, the last of which was three years ago in Coraline. But this year we have two! ParaNorman, made by some relatively unheard of directors, and Frankenweenie, a remake of a 1984 short film by Tim Burton, king of the slightly creepy.

Yep, ParaNorman is the underdog in this fight but hey, it is at least in color!

All white people, but color nonetheless.

Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee) can see dead people. Ghosts at least, who are stuck on earth because their time and tasks have not been completed and cannot move on. So you’d think Norman would go around helping all the ghosts move on, but instead he just befriends them and acts like its not his problem. That isn’t the movie plot, they never even bring up Norman helping the ghosts, he is just a dick kid who never thinks to help out his ghost friends. Just an observation!

He doesn’t keep the ghosts a secret either, so everyone thinks he is a freak. His parents don’t know what to do (Jeff Garlin, Leslie Mann) and his sister (Anna Kendrick) thinks he is a loser. Outside of the ghosts, so far just a normal sounding life. His only friend is a guy named Neil (Tucker Albrizzi), who has no friends because he is fat. True story.

In this town, their claim to fame is that they once burned a witch. But before the witch was burnt, she hexxed her seven accusers into a zombie fate once they die, meaning that  she is actually a witch and really they did nothing wrong. You can’t just let witches free and running amuck! Years later, the curse still has not occurred because of people like crazy uncle Penderghast (John Goodman) who delay the curse. But once he kicks the bucket, it is up to Norman to make sure the zombies don’t rise up and take over, with the help of Neil, Neil’s older brother (Casey Affleck), his sister, and the local bully (Christopher Mintz-Plasse).

SO MANY ZOMBIES. SEVEN OF THEM. AHH.

Personally, I found the movie to be a bit boring. It is hard to classify just what kind of movie this was, and for who it was meant to be enjoyed by. Most of the good jokes were given away in the trailer and I didn’t understand how this town even felt threatened. I mean, seven zombies? That is a very specific finite number of zombies, in the modern age, a town should be able to handle them. There is a scene where the towns people try to destroy them and end up killing exactly zero. Despite multiple guns, they actually just end up beating them up with umbrellas and clubs and let them get away. Well then.

I could talk a lot about the actual movie, but this one has controversy which is more exciting.

Controversy? In a kids movie? Yes! At the end of the movie, one of the main characters turns out to be gay. It was just meant to be a minor joke, but it has caused a lot of parents to freak out. I won’t get into how ridiculous this controversy even is, leaving that up to you.

Overall, I can’t see why this film has received such high praise. I just felt the stop motion wasn’t the best and that most of the jokes fell flat. Feel free to see it as soon as you can and prove me wrong or tell me what I missed, because I am willing to listen. I do understand that the moral of the film wasn’t just destroy the witch/zombies, but that wasn’t enough for me to care.

I had a mini theme day yesterday. Realized I had a long block of time, very long, and to make the best of it I wanted to watch some long movies.

So I figured I might as well start with a long movie with a long title, hooyah! The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, and that is one of the last times I have to type it all out. Yes. For those curious, I then went The Patriot and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (Yes, seeing both for the first time as well, shut up).

Just a normal day in the life of Jesse James. Getting stared at by Robert Ford, obsessively.

You know whats awesome? Kind of spoiling the ending. Jesse James (Brad Pitt) totally dies in this movie. So if you have a collection of movies where Brad Pitt dies in them, this better be in it.

The movie takes place in the last few months of Jesse James life, including his last train robbery. He has the last remnants of his gang, including Frank James (Sam Shepard), Dick Liddil (Paul Schneider), Wood Hite (Jeremy Renner) and Ed Miller (Garret Dillahunt). Eventually they are joined by the likes of the Ford brothers, Charley (Sam Rockwell) and his younger brother Robert (Casey Affleck).

Growing up, Robert was obsessed with the tales of Jesse James and his gang of outlaws. He knew all about them, from the trains taken, to Jesse’s shoe size. He was his hero! Which is why he was in a situation where he finally got to join the gang and go on a mission with them, despite the fact that everyone else found his obsession a bit creepy. The robbery doesn’t lead to the riches they thought were coming, leaving a very disappointing final heist.

Then in the final months, we have Robert Ford getting to spend time with his FAMILY. He has kids! And a wife (Mary-Louise Parker)! What! But that ends eventually too, and he then lives with a few of the previous mentioned former outlaws.

But over the final months, Jesse finds himself a bit more paranoid with less people he can trust each and every day. So some people die. Some people get arrested. And Robert Ford is left with an ultimatum, kill or arrest Jesse James himself, or find himself in prison.

LOOK AT THAT CINEMATOGRAPHY. Look at ittt.

“Wait a minute! That movie is 160 minutes! You barely gave any plot? Does it move slow?”

Well technically, and despite the fact that you already know what it is about (The Death of Jesse James), I didn’t feel a real need but to introduce the characters and the first few scenes.

Why is this movie so long? Probably because this director loves him some detail. The camera works was almost orgasmic on Blu-Ray, and all the scenes gorgeous, but not over the top. But even better than that was, surprisingly enough, Casey Affleck. Yes, Ben’s younger brother. He made this movie his bitch, and was so damn good at the role. Brad Pitt, also excellent in this film, both surely scene steals, but the level of detail that went in from Casey was just astounding. It all felt so real, which made it all a bit more eerie and awesome.

All of the acting was really well done, and I was very interested in the story line. Of course, one other problem with it could be just that it is…well very damn long. Hard to justify watching this movie a lot, without wanting to just skip around to a few scenes. Also super dramatic. Not a wild wild west shoot em up. Only a few shooting scenes really.

From the start I think Tower Heist got a lot of bad publicity. Why initially? Because it planned on releasing itself for download only a month after going to theaters, before coming out on DVDs. Apparently a lot of theaters were mad about that, and were refusing to show it. So of course it backed down.

But then after that, people are generally “Ben Stiller? Gross, next.”

That is the face Ben Stiller makes every time someone walks away and calls him gross.

I think the trailer did a bad job of explaining the overall plot. So here we go. The Tower is actually some large sky scrapper building in NYC, that is basically just apartments. Large staff, super secure, and they don’t accept tips.

Ben Stiller is the overall manager, runs the day to day, keeps his staff in tip top shape and helps all of the top clients. Casey Affleck is his second in command. Matthew Broderick is a formerly rich guy getting evicted and divorced, Michael Pena plays an elevator operator, and Gabourey Sidibe is a Jamaican maid.

And they all get fucked over. The penthouse belongs to rich wall street investor Alan Alda. And he has just been arrested for stealing investments, and getting people trapped in Ponzi schemes. And he also handled everyone who works in the Tower’s pensions!

Stiller gets mad. And he takes it out on Alda’s apartment (as he is now stuck there for temporary house arrest), getting himself and other fired. He then takes the drunk advice of a special agent on the case, Tea Leoni, and decides that the old school method of pitchforks and mobs to storm the castle were appropriate. But instead of storming, they should rob him.

The amount of money he should own versus what they found didn’t match up, so it is likely that Alda is hiding a batch in his apartment, in a safe in a secret wall. Can his team get the maybe 20 million dollars in the safe, escape without jail time, and divide it up amongst the workers to get their money back? Not without a criminal. Thankfully Stiller “knows” a guy, Eddie Murphy, who steals shit!

Potted plants, cash, and scenes, mostly.

Seriously. Eddie Murphy is hilarious in this movie. This is best classified as an action/comedy, despite the action not being that much, and the comedy not being…that much. Oddly enough. There was only a few times I really had a good laugh, some of Eddie Murphy’s scenes, the thing about lesbians, and a few others. But I could just classify it as a “movie” and maybe that genre is specific enough.

But I really enjoyed it as a whole. When I saw the preview, I assumed it wasn’t an apartment, but just some big corporation in NYC. I assumed they were people who had lost their jobs due to budget cuts, and I assumed Stiller used to be a big fat cat, but got screwed over. But they really do a good job of making you feel for and root for them. There are many other workers at the building who aren’t part of the thievery, but they show enough of why their lives were affected by it.

Some jokes and situations, sure predictable. But not all of them, nor the ending really. I was surprised that I liked it that much.