Tag: Fantasy

Twin Films. Dopplegangers. Mirror Movies.

These are all terms to describe what happens when two movies about the same subject matter come out around the same time. Last year we had White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen, and surprisingly they both had their merits. Usually one of the movies is clearly better than the other, or they both are bad. This year is the battle of Hercules.

The Legend Of Hercules comes out 5-6 months before Hercules which has The Rock attached to it.

Unfortunately, after having now seen The Legend Of Hercules I can say that there is no way that these two movies fit the Mirror Movie formula. No, it fits an even darker and more sinister phenomenon. Whenever a big (usually CGI/Animated/Family) movie hits, there is usually a much lesser, straight to DVD version with a similar name (if not identical), that was rushed out to cash in on people buying the wrong version. I am talking Chop Kick Panda versus the real Kung Fu Panda stuff. You know, movies that the grandparents will accidentally buy.

The Legend Of Hercules feels like it should have been straight to DVD and never mentioned to anyone.

Yes, I would deprive you of those abs.

I know I never compare movies to the books they are based on, and really, what is Greek Mythology but really old books? But in order to understand the plot of this movie, you first need to cleanse your mind of everything you know about Hercules. Every little thing. The only thing about this movie that is like Hercules is the fact that he is a son of Zeus.

In this movie, King Amphitryon (Scott Adkins) has just conquered a new kingdom. He is a powerful and strong warrior, but also a huge jerkface. His wife, Queen Alcmene (Roxanne McKee) thought she could change his war like ways with marriage and with a son, but no, every day he wanted more and more power and she feels like she has helped create a monster. So she prays to Hera to help find a solution. Hera’s solution? She is totally going to let Zeus impregnate her, to make a second son, who will one day save the kingdom.

Wow. Thanks gods. Ask for a solution, get one in 20-30 years.

After a very special wind and rain storm, Hercules (Kellan Lutz) is born! However, Amphitryon has his doubts about the son’s origins, and makes sure to make his life a living hell, while also reiterating that his first born son, Iphicles (Liam Garrigan) is his real heir!

Many many (many) years later, Hercules is totally in love with the Princess of Crete, Hebe (Gaia Weiss) and she loves him back! So when Amphitryon declares that Iphicles (These names are the worst) is to wed her in four months to bring their kingdoms together, Hercules gets mad, and then gets sent off to fight a war and basically die. Hercules would rather not die, win the war, and return and take back the woman he loves, while also hurting his step-dad and half brother. Violence solves everything back then.

Also starring Liam McIntyre as some random commander Sotiris dude, and Rade Serbedzija as Chrion. Yes, Chiron is a human and not a centaur.

In this scene, Hercules is filled with bloodrush, and declares war on weather.

As you know already, The Legend Of Hercules has nothing to do with Hercules or his legends. Lutz is most well known as playing a brother of Edward Cullen in Twilight. Although not technically the same genre as Twilight, the two movies are actually similar. They take a story and turn it “darker” while changing everything about it and add in some romance. Basically, what they with Red Riding Hood. Fans of those films are what this movie was made for and no one else.

The CGI was gods awful (that’s a pun, due to the setting) and looks like stuff out of the 1990’s. I have my hunches that the entire movie was done in front of a green screen, even the scenes where the actors were swimming. I bet outside of the 7 tagged actors, everyone else was fake. The bad graphics made it so that I could never really connect to the movie. The film tried very hard to use as much 3D as possible but almost every time it was in a tacky way.

The acting is dreadful, but that is to be expected when your biggest star is Lutz.

The story was hard to follow at times, because every single scene was rushed in order to move the train-wreck forward.

The movie is rated PG-13, so the action scenes aren’t going to be as cool as they could be, making everything seem subdued.

It took the worst elements of 300, Troy, and Immortals (which itself was a bad movie and had Lutz as Poseidon) and crammed it into this CGI suck fest that will never be worth any price of admission.

If anything, the good news that this movie exists is that we already know one of the movies that will top the 2014 Worst Movies list. I hope this doesn’t mean bad things for Pompeii next month.

47 Ronin ended up being a textbook example of the phrase “production hell”. The “good people” at Universal Studios decided to give the directing chair to Carl Rinsh, who has only ever done some shorts and commercials before this big budgeted movie. It was supposed to be released in December of 2012, but went 50 million over budget, and required massive reshoots.

Why reshoots? Because Universal Studios thought that Keanu Reeves would be the star of the movie. When they found out he was just a side character, they brought in new editors and had to reshoot many scenes to make him a much bigger player. After all, how else could they market this already huge huge budget movie, without a star being the star? How dare the director try and tell the actual ronin story!

Apparently lying about who the stars were wasn’t too important, given that the main poster for the film (Seen here), features a guy with bone tattoos. He is in the movie for about 5 seconds, has one or two lines, isn’t a villain, and isn’t even wearing make up. Yep, those are his real tattoos, you may remember him from the “Born This Way” Lady Gaga music video.

Yep, here are your brave 47. Not the best shape. Some old. But whatareyougonnado?

47 Ronin is actually a true story that takes place in Japan, this version is just heavily influenced by fantasy. You know, to make cooler fight scenes. But the message and plot are still there.

Early in the 18th century, Japan was in a feudal system, run by warlords. One warlord, Lord Kira (Tadanobu Asano) wanted to extend his rule and conquer the land of a neighboring kingdom, but he wanted to do it without being seen as the aggressor.

At the Ako castle, Lord Asano (Min Tanaka, who looks like the Japanese Bill Nighy) had to host Lord Kira and the local Shogun over for a festival. After a few blunders, Asano attempted to kill Kira (with magic influence being the cause) and he was sentenced to death. Kira has a witch (Rinko Kikuchi) working for him! With their lord dead and because Asano’s only heir was a girl, Mika (Ko Shibasaki), the shogun says that she must marry Kira, joining their kingdoms to prevent further bloodshed. Oh yeah, and all of Asano’s samurai get kicked out and lose their jobs.

A year later, the former samurai leader, Ôishi (Hiroyuki Sanada) decides it is time the remaining ronin (term meaning former Samurai) to rise up, and avenge their former lord’s death. There is of course another side story about Kai (Keanu Reeves), a half blood Japanese man, who also might be part demon. Don’t worry, he is totally a good guy too.

Also featuring Jin Akanishi as Ôishi’s son, and Takato Yonemoto as the coolest ronin in the army.

Shit, that guys sword glows. You know it is serious now.

Overall, 47 Ronin can be seen as a nice fantasy based retelling of an actual historical event. From what I can tell, the story is basically right, minus the parts with the demon raised half blood. Not sure where that came from, but I am not an expert on Japanese history.

On the other other hand, while watching, you can definitely tell the problems that went into production. Scenes are edited weirdly, and I was able to notice that although Reeves’ character was involved, he wasn’t 100% involved. Calling him the main character is silly, because Hiroyuki Sananda as Ôishi is clearly the main lead according to the story. Another way to imagine it is that Sanada plays the main lead, and that Reeves is the strongest weapon in his army, so they are both important.

The acting could have been better, and honestly, I would have liked better CGI effects than what was offered. Sure, the dragon fight scene was nifty, but multiple “villains” had similar styles and it just felt like I was getting a few rehashed fights. Unfortunately the movie will most likely bomb, because the story is great. It just needed a lot more polishing.

Last time, when I reviewed The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, I didn’t get to see it in the 48 FPS 3D version until about a week later. But this time, times are a changing, and I can talk a bit about that too. I ended up liking the super detailed high frame rate for the first film, so I am of course excited to see right away this time.

But I am also stoked for a second reason. Now I don’t have to watch The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug twice within a week in theaters. I don’t care how good it is. Ain’t got time or money for that now. I don’t like to watch these LOTR movies a lot anyways. Once in theaters, and once eventually an extended version.

This picture does not do justice to how BAMF he actually looked on screen, 3D, 48 fps.

Plot outlines for this seems dumb. I assume everyone knows the story?

This movie starts out with Bilbo (Martin Freeman), Gandalf (Ian McKellen), and the Dwarven friends (Ricahrd Armitage, Ken Stott, and more) on the run, orcs still chasing them. Some stuff happens, and Gandalf has to leave again to go figure out some necromancer stuff.

This causes the gang to get in lots of trouble. Trouble with spiders, and then the wood elves (Where we meet Legolas (Orlando Bloom), and Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), who totally gets the hots for a Dwarf. Odd!). Some escapes happen, they eventually get to Laketown, meet Bard (Luke Evans), sort of help an uprising, and get their way to the mountain! After all, they only have so much time to get there, before the secret entrance is no longer revealed.

Then we finally meet a dragon, Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch), who just wants to get his sleep on, but bitches be burglin’, so he has to get his rage on.

“Damn it Bilbo, I will not draw you like a french girl. Stop asking!” – Smaug

The term desolation might not mean what it used to mean. With a title like that, and if you already know The Hobbit story, you then know when this movie is going to stop at.

But you’d be wrong.

After seeing this movie in theaters, I left with an overall bad taste in my mouth, definitely something I didn’t see coming, and rather unfortunate, due to the size and nature of this movie.

I should reiterate, I don’t care what the the book story is, and the sideplots they added from other source material to make these movies. More interesting plot lines never hurt anyone. But this movie is called The Hobbit and subtitled The Desolation of Smaug. A better, more descriptive title would have been Legolas Kicks Ass, and then they meet Smaug. Which is all this movie felt like to me.

Sure, there was a cool spider scene. The barrel escape was nifty. But plot line wise with this film, you would find a hard time figuring out what actually gets accomplished. Once they introduce Legolas, they almost forget about the other characters, and focus on how amazing he and Tauriel the other elf are at fighting. It becomes just a Legolas show when he is literally running around Laketown and taking out a whole Orc invasion pretty much on his own.

Smaug was very badass. That is very clear. He was a well made CGI creation, probably one of the better dragons I have ever seen in a CGI movie. The best scene in the movie for me was the initial encounter between Smaug and Bilbo, when Smaug toyed with Bilbo as he ran through the treasure piles. But eventually he felt like nothing more than a cheap cartoon villain, or something, once the Dwarves got involved and start to mess with him.

I understand that this movie is part of a series, but I felt like this one has done the worst job at still telling a complete and actual story. Each of the LOTR stories felt complete. Yes they had more to do, but they ended at appropriate points once the current biggest baddest climactic point was finished, the ones they were building up to for each film. An Unexpected Journey ends after a series of skirmishes, a close encounter with death, and the dwarves finally learning to accept Bilbo.

This movie LITERALLY ends right in the middle of a fight. What in the fuck. Is this Lost? Is this some show that needs cliffhangers? So instead of getting a complete story, I get part of a story. A 160 minute part of a story.

Here is a third picture, to give you a better scope of this movie.

So what is the main complaint? I guess, somehow, it is their change from 2 to 3 movies. A problem I didn’t have with the first one, but I believe in this one becomes very very apparent. This entire movie, save for a few scenes, felt like filler, working towards the third, probably more exciting and conclusive story.

I will reiterate, Smaug was great. The barrel scene was way better than I could have imagined. The spiders were interesting. But everything else just fell flat or felt repetitive. I felt no fear from the Orcs the entire movie. The appeared, they died, they kept appearing, they kept dying.

Peter Jackson might thing he is infallible now, given the original success, and other successes of stuff like The Adventures of TinTin, but for this film I think he reached too far.

I have a confession to make. I really really enjoyed the first Thor movie. I enjoyed it far more than everyone else I know.

It gets a lot of negative attention compared to the other Phase 1 Marvel films, and personally I disagree. I enjoyed it probably the third most out of all of the films, after The Avengers and Iron Man. It had comedy, it had action, it had Norse mythology, and well, it had Thor. Like a lot of people my age, I first heard about the God of Thunder from watching Adventures in Babysitting, which lead to discovering the Marvel version. I think that film was received as well only because he wasn’t as well known as the rest of the Phase 1 heroes.

So, Thor: The Dark World has an upward battle to climb.

“But we will make that climb, together, brother!” – Loki, in a very specific genre of Thor fanfiction.

This film takes place just as Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is proving why he deserves the “Mighty” adjective, by bringing peace again to The Nine Realms after the Bifröst was destroyed in the first film. He has been very busy, and could not return to Earth except for exceptional circumstances for that reason.

Unfortunately the Convergence is about to occur, where the nine realms line up perfectly. It happens every 5000 years, and causes all of the realms to be a bit wonky, creating portals to each other and messing with gravity/physics. It has also awakened an old threat, King Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) of the Dark Elves, who tried to destroy the universe at the last Convergence. He used an ancient magic source called the Aether, which has been hidden for thousands of years. But guess who found it? Oh that meddling Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and her team (Kat Dennings, Jonathan Howard)!

At the same time, monarchy based drama in Asgard is occurring, as Odin (Anthony Hopkins) and Frigga (Rene Russo) are planning on making Thor the next king, given the recent actions of Loki (Tom Hiddleston). But Thor’s love for a mortal is worrisome, and a cause for concern that he might be focusing too much of his attention on just one realm.

It isn’t too bad for Thor I guess. He just has to save his very fragile love from the powers of the Aether, watch out for Loki while he is imprisoned in Asgard, deal with potential enemies on all sides, and try to stop an ancient race from destroying the universe. Probably just another Wednesday for him.

Thor: The Dark World features a whole lot of other actors, including the returns of Sif (Jaime Alexander), Heimdall (Idris Elba), Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) and The Warriors Three (Ray Stevenson, Zachary Levi, Tadanobu Asano). Well, Asano really wasn’t in this movie much, and Levi replaced Josh Dallas, but hey, Stevenson is still there! Also introducing Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as the second in command to Malekith.

Also, the Dark Elves in general reminded me of really strange Putties.

One thing I learned from watching Thor: The Dark World is that Chris Hemsworth definitely helped cement himself as the only man who can play the God of Thunder. Over the summer, huge contract negotiations were taking place between Hemsworth and Marvel, the latter who claimed that they don’t need him in The Avengers 2:Age of Ultron, they could just hire someone else, and refused to budge. Well, eventually they budged, thanks to the help of Robert Downey Jr., so presumably both sides reached a worthwhile agreement.

Thor: The Dark World more or less gave me everything I wanted in a sequel movie, expanding on a lot of areas that the first film established. It still has the same level of comedy, so we aren’t just dealing with a serious space fantasy drama. The chemistry between Hemsworth, Portman, and Hiddleston is electric, allowing the story to flow just a little bit better. The film also takes place a lot more off Earth compared to the first film, allowing the use of new landscapes and helping separate the franchise from the rest of the Avengers movies.

The does come with a downside, however. With a lot of the film set off world, we are given many more scenes that are heavily CGI’d in order to create the scene, which gets tiresome after awhile. I’d like more of it to be grounded in areas that aren’t created by green screens.

My biggest issue from the film actually has to do with the editing. I found the scene transitions really distracting, as on more than one occasion it felt like we were cut far too quickly to another scene, almost cutting off lines by the characters. We weren’t always allowed the appropriate time to even acknowledge what was just said, before having to focus our attention elsewhere. It made the pace of the film seem a bit off to me, and not what I would expect from a film at this scale.

Most likely Thor: The Dark World won’t get anywhere as close to touching the amount of money that Iron Man 3 brought in. I hope that doesn’t detract Marvel Studios from eventually bringing us more Thor outside of The Avengers.

This film had an excellent amount of drama, action, and comedy to help create a fantastic theater experience, but has some technical aspects that distract me from giving it that perfect rating overall.

Byzantium came out on a day when few movies felt like coming out, apparently. I counted maybe four or five new releases, half of which ended up being stuff that made it to the theaters.

Wait, Byzantium went to theaters too, just not a lot. Indie theaters and such. Well, why does no one care about this random tale?

Hard to say, probably just no one has heard of it. Yeah. I know personally I have no idea what this movie is about.

Hey, blood imagery. Hopefully its not another period movie!

Vampires. That is what this movie is about. Sneaky vampire movie. I have seen quite a lot of bad vampire movies, but they tend to go the teen / romance / comedy route, while I am pretty sure this one features almost none of those genres.

Hookers gonna hook. That is what I learned from this film, as Clara (Gemma Arterton) has abandoned her (daughter? I can’t tell if she was her actual daughter or like, taken in, now basically, daughter), Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) sometime during the time of Napoleon, in order to get her affair on. Shit goes badly, like in all movie affairs, and they go on the run.

200 years later, the times are more modern, and they find themselves at some coastal resort town area. Clara finds a hotel called Byzantium, under new management (Daniel Mays). It used to be popular, now it sucks! Using her “cunning,” she is able to convince the owner to transform the inn into something even greater than an inn, a brothel!

Hookers gonna hook.

The brothel serves as a way to lure in travelers, to help their drinking blood habit, without anyone realizing what is actually going on. At the same time, Eleanor starts to fall in love with a young waiter, (Caleb Landry Jones), and she tells him stories and tells him far too much personal information. But they are just stories. He won’t start to believe her ever, right? He won’t figure out the missing patrons and assume vampires, right? That would be incredibly preposterous!

Sigh. I guess they gotta do what they gotta do to survive and run.

Tis a shame, really. This is a vampire movie that tries to do things different than the norm. They definitely do! It is very serious, it is very specific, and its amount of T&A is somehow still limited in comparison. It has everything going for it to be a great cool new movie, except for my interest. It holds zero of my interest.

Byzantium is a slow moving movie. It tells a nice story, with nice acting, and isn’t a complete piece of shit, yet I still find myself overall bored, and halfway through it just waiting for it to end. That is upsetting to me. Maybe it was a long day and I’d rather just do nothing, but I couldn’t enjoy the movie in any real way.

If it was a bit more entertaining, sure, it’d be higher rated. But that’s why movie reviews are all subjective anyways. I will put a pin on this movie, if I ever have time and a huge interest, I might try to rewatch it. But I need a bit more razzle dazzle. Not explosions, or sex or gore or anything crazy. Just something to move the story along at a quicker pace.

Heh. The Hole.

Heh heh heh.

Heh.

Oh. This isn’t that funny anymore.

Dane (Chris Massoglia), Lucas (Nathan Gamble) and their mom (Teri Polo) are moving to another new home, in another non descript good old fashioned US City.

The kids find a hole in they’re basement. It is deep. It is dark. So dark. Oh well.

Eventually they start seeing weird things happen. You know, a puppet moves around on its own. They see a tiny (dead?) girl creeping around the house and going into the hole. Just a lot of weird things. They also introduce their neighbor, Julie (Haley Bennett), to the hole, and it goes okay.

After talking to Creepy Carl (Bruce Dern) who lives down the street, he claims the hole as existed since the first fear existed. That’s right, it may be a funnel to hell, but it scares you with your greatest fears, and manifests them into a real entity that can hurt you. Shit. And these fuckers had to go and open it, dooming everyone.

“Yep, that’s a hole.”

The only reason I decided to watch The Hole is because it was directed by Joe Dante, who brought us Gremlins and Small Soldiers, both scaryish films but decent for kids in their own ways. I like them both, and nostalgia aside, I think they are both rewatchable many years later. So I was hoping this movie would be similar to them in nature.

Well, I don’t think The Hole is really similar to them at all. Sad but true.

It goes for a horror-esque element, but nothing felt terrifying, just hokey. Hell, Small Soldiers still kind of frightens me when I watch it. This one is just lacking any of the same humor level and fear. It is just some kids being kids. Not an exciting topic for this adult.

This story reminded me of another horror movie I saw in my youth. The Gate. In The Gate, a group of kids find a hole in their backyard, not their basement, and it leads to hell. Demons come out, scary shit. I remember it vaguely, I remember it terrified me, even though it was PG-13 and I was the appropriate age. I can’t imagine anyone finding this one scary. So yeah, a very similar story. Not too original Joe Dante.

Shit. The Gate had a young Stephen Dorff in it. Very surprising, he grew up to be famous! I wonder if any of these kids will matter in 10 years. (Probably not).

The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones is the next book series turned film franchise to attempt to sweep us off our feet and make that preteen money. Twilight let everyone know that supernatural teen romance/action books could be popular.

Of course, I have never read this series. It is currently up to five books, with a sixth one on the way. What I do realize is that this title is far too long. It really should just be called City of Bones. I try to save time by watching movies, I don’t want the title to be as long as book!

If you look closely, you might be able to see that she is actually a moose.

Thankfully, TMI:CoB is set in modern times, in New York City. Clary Fray (Lily Collins) is your average almost adult girl and she lives at home with her single mother (Lena Headey). She is getting pretty angsty, because it is near her birthday, and she is obsessively drawing strange symbols around her house.

Her best friend is Simon (Robert Sheehan), and for whatever reason she doesn’t understand that she is totally leading him on. They go out to a club and she witnesses a murder that no one else can see. Yep, she is going insane. Then she realizes the boy she saw, Jace (Jamie Campbell Bower) is following her. Creeper alert.

What she doesn’t realize is that she is going to discover a world, hidden in our own. A world of shadow hunters, demons, angels, witches, and more, and it is her destiny to help and try to save the day. Or at least just find her mom, who has been kidnapped.

Kevin Zegers and Jemima West play Jace’s adopted family, Godfrey Gao a warlock, CCH Pounder a witch, Jonathan Rhys Meyers the evil guy, Aidan Turner the good friend Luke, and Kevin Durand as a regular bad guy.

Here are the other main members of the cast, also in the same club. Yay dancing.

I think The Mortal Instruments would have worked better as a TV series, a la The Vampire Diaries, and not a full fledged movie franchise. Like it or not the sequel, City of Ashes, is due for a release late next year, so they are really hoping this series takes off. Not all franchises are destined for greatness however. The Golden Compass at least had the brains to wait to see if the first one could make any movie before announcing the sequels would happen.

Unfortunately for them, it looks like TMI:CoB is destined for failure.

A lot happens in this movie, which is good news since it has a 130 minute run time. Outside of the things I listed before we are also given werewolves and vampires! Roughly all fantasy elements seem to be in this hidden universe, which gives them plenty of time for more shenanigans and future plot lines. It is almost as if they were just throwing different elements at the screen, to see what would stick with the viewers.

Outside of that, the film had to explain a lot about this new world. Despite trying to go over the new terms, I can honestly say I left the theater perplexed. I was left trying to figure out what was happening over and over again throughout the film. At the same time it was also full of every teenage fantasy cliche, so I was able to predict the minor events, and not understand most of the major ones.

Here are some things I am left wondering (Potential spoilers):

• Why is the big bad guy so big and bad? In the film he really only kidnaps someone, but apparently he is way worse and way evil? I can’t tell what his end game was. Something about bloodlines.
• There is a “twist” about certain characters being siblings…maybe. I am not sure because that scene seemed to imply truth and lies.
• A character gets turned into a vampire during the movie, and then that fact gets ignored and/or forgotten about. The fuck?

There ending was a complete mess and they seemed to be making it up as they go. Characters die during it, mostly due to bad tactics. You froze a bunch of demons. Great! Now why do you just sit around until they unfreeze, then decide to try and kill them? Are you daft?

There was a big demon summoning beacon too, that for whatever reason had two separate off switches attached to it, against any sort of logic.

This movie is the type that will only make a lot of sense if you have already read the books. I have been told from my friends that this movie spoils the first three books of the series though. So watch out.

It is a real shame too, because this film could have been better. There was a lot of action and I never really felt bored. It just didn’t make any narrative sense and was an overcrowded mess.

Come on. Look at Vamp U. Look at it.

You know exactly why I got it. The same reason anyone gets these type of movies. I was bored and wanting to see something ridiculous, when I had a spare afternoon. I can’t always watch super dramatic or actiony movies. Sometimes you just want something that has a chance of having some cheap laughs. A good old fashioned college sex comedy. This one just so happens to be about vampires.

And the dashing young gents who have to bring em down.

Hey now this movie stars a guy named Wayne Gretzky (Adam Johnson). No, there is no relation to the hockey player. But he does have the nickname “The Great One,” so I guess that is something. He teaches history at some nondescript university. It is typical if not small. There is at least on fraternity and one sorority. Wayne is very popular among the students. He also happens to be a vampire.

He is rather unique in that he doesn’t kill humans. Why not? Because he is impotent where it counts. No not there, his teeth. His teeth just don’t want to come out, so he can’t feast. It might have something to do with killing the love of his life 300 years prior. Since then he hasn’t really had the ability to get it up. His teeth.

That is until Chris Keller (Julie Gonzalo) walks into his life and reminds him oh so much of his former lover. Yeah. That gets his gears back in motion. But after a series of flings, he does the unthinkable and makes her a vampire too. Well that’s just great. Now she is going to terrorize the campus, turning them all into vampires. First her sorority, then the campus, then…the world?

Gary Cole plays the horn dog dean, Alexis Knapp (from Pitch Perfect and Project X) plays a sorority girl. Maclain Nelson plays a love sick guy who really wanted Chris, and Matt Matson (What) his best friend, blogger, and soon to be vampire hunter.

I swear that this is a relevant picture.

College sex comedies!

Well this one is definitely comedy. The other two thirds are doubtful though. Well, in terms of sex, I guess the professor and the one girl. They for sure have sex. Off camera. Implied. Then that is it. No naked people at all, that is the closest naked part. Alexis Knapp in a bra.

Alright so that is lame, and yes I will base my rating off of that.

As for comedy? Well, it is obvious that is what they were going for. And I probably laughed at least twice. But so many of their attempts were just miss after miss after miss, it got a little bit depressing. Matt Mattson’s entire point is comic relief, but he can only do so much. The other main male college student spends half the movie whining that his favorite professor got to his girl first, even when she is a vampire.

Honestly, it took an actual okay idea (vampire sorority?) and just did nothing with it.

Obviously the main jokes were going for sexual inadequacy with the vampire in regards to not extending his teeth. But they just didn’t work.

I’d probably rather see Twilight again.

This just in. The director of Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters is named Thor Freudenthal. What a bad assname.

He has done a few kids movies before (Hotel For Dogs, Diary of a Wimpy Kid), but that is it. Hopefully directing this movie is a sign of changes for this man. With a name like that, I want him involved in most action movies from now on.

Back to the movie, I am pretty excited for this sequel. I actually enjoyed Percy Jackson, The Lightning Thief. As an undergraduate, one of my majors was Ancient History, which of course gave me a love of mythology as well.

No, I don’t hate that these films change the Greek Mythology meaning and stories around. Because this is just another case of a movie not being identical to the source material. If I am fine with what happened in Iron Man 3, I will be fine with whatever they can throw at me here.

Besides, these mythologies are basically dead. I love it when anything can attempt to spice them up a bit. This one is promising to add a whole sea of monsters! Hooray!

Look! There is one right now! It looks nothing like a rainbow version of The Water Horse, either!

Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) is no longer a big deal in the demigod camp after the first film, as teenagers are fickle. Who cares if he just saved Olympus/the world. What has he done for them lately? For fucks sake, Percy.

His friends, Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) and Grover the Satyr (Brandon T. Jackson) believe in him, but everyone is else is obsessed with Clarisse (Leven Rambin), daughter of Ares. She wins all the events and challenges at camp.

Don’t remember her from the first movie? Well, presumably she was there somewhere. Maybe she just sick the two or so days that Percy visited in the first film, since at that point, Annabeth was the best warrior in the camp. Maybe they can’t handle two great female fighters at the same time.

Well, it turns out the protective barrier around their camp is falling, and it is all thanks to Luke (Jake Abel), son of Hermes, villain from the first film. Of course! He wants to do the unthinkable, and resurrect Chronos, the Titan, so that he can kill all the gods and ruin the world.

Classic villain strategy.

But that is not as important. They just want to restore the barrier to their camp, and to do that they have to find the Golden Fleece! Anything else is just gravy.

Oh, Percy also has a new half-brother Tyson (Douglas Smith), a young cyclops. His dad Poseidon just gets lonely sometimes, I suppose. Poseidon, Zeus, and Hades do not make any actual appearances this movie, but we do get Hermes (Nathan Fillion, technically a recast), and Dionysus (Stanley Tucci), who for some reason didn’t get to drink wine. Chiron is also back in this movie as the camp mentor, but he is played by Anthony Head (of Buffy fame), and not Pierce Brosnan. Boo recasts.

I would have raged the hardest if Brandon T. Jackson was replaced.

I would say that overall, Sea of Monsters is not as good as The Lightning Thief. But one major improvement was getting rid of the “& The Olympians” part out of the title. That title was long enough to be comical.

Here is one of my biggest issues. Luke as a villain doesn’t make a lot of sense in this movie. To resurrect Chronos, he also needs the Golden Fleece. Unless he didn’t think he could get it himself with his band of mighty demigod soldiers, it is silly to break the camp barrier, causing them to go after the fleece as well. Instead, he could have not done that, and succeeded in his plan as no one even knew he was alive.

Instead we have a movie where there is a ton of buildup for the great and powerful Chronos, who then gets easily “defeated” in a matter of minutes. It happens in a lot of fantasy films. I am surprised more people don’t get angry when they are teased about the destroyer of the world coming, but when he finally does, its a whimper. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is another recent example of that.

It does have a lot of cool effects still. Caribdis was gorgeous and they had a manticore! However, the manticore went out in a single hit. Caribdis ended up being comparable to the whale from Pinocchio. I didn’t feel scared for any character, because the solution was always immediate or obvious. Plus, you’d think there would be more monsters in the sea of monsters. At least more than one. Maybe.

They did have some good attention to detail for the minor mythologies though. I loved the gas in the Oracle scene. There are many references to The Odyssey. Just showing Caribdis without bringing up Scylla is unique. Tyson the cyclops seemed like a horrible addition early on, due to the awkwardness of his CGI’d eye, but I got over it, and he became a funny/sweet character.

Overall on its own, it is a decent family movie. Minor continuity issues arose, but they can be ignored easily by most movie goers. The ending was cliffhanger-ish, which generally feels tacky when used in movies.

I mean, what if we started allowing cliffhangers in everything? Like songs, movie reviews, and

I often find that when all you do is talk about movies, people tend to suggest them. Of course I will watch a movie if someone suggests it to me, but with Ruby Sparks something even stranger happened. TWO people recommended this movie to me, potentially within a few weeks apart. Well, of course I have to see it now.

I also realized why I didn’t watch it right away. Sparks? That title is too close to the title Sparkle. I hated that movie.

I could write a better movie than Sparkle for sure. It would be about some sort of mythical creature that Sparkled under strange circumstances. I am sure that’s an original concept.

Calvin (Paul Dano) is a genius. Alright, he doesn’t like that word. But he dropped out of high school once he wrote what many consider to be the next great American novel, and he quickly rose to fame and success. But now, almost ten years later, he is in his late 20s and he still has one novel under his belt. He has released a few short stories and novellas, but nothing of any real length or magnitude.

Some genius indeed. It must all be getting to his head. In fact, he has to see a psychiatrist now just to sort through his feelings of loneliness.

But then one magical night, he has a dream. A dream of a girl, with red hair, and a quirky attitude. She is perfect to him. So he writes about his dreams and turns it into its own new story. Yes, this is the one, his next great novel! Who cares if his brother (Chris Messina) thinks the story is dumb.

Calvin really is a genius. His brain is so powerful, that one morning he woke up and found the literal girl of his dreams in his kitchen. Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan). In the flesh. Based on everything he wrote about. How can that be? People can’t just be created! Or can they? Truly only a genius (or geniuses, in some cases) could create a person without even trying. It gets weirder when he realizes it is not in his head. It gets creepier when he realizes that whatever he types comes true. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about.

Annette Bening and Antonio Banderas play his mom and step-dad, while Steve Coogan has a small role as “other older writer dude.”

Anyone else find it funny how Ruby is always wearing red? And how she and Superman are never in the same room?

Yeah, so I really fucking love strange quirky movies like this. Pretty easy to learn that given my rating record. Watching this movie made me want to watch Stranger Than Fiction right after it. Another well acted quirky movie about the truth being determined by what someone rights. Who knew there was a whole drama about this!?

I found myself flailing while I watched this movie. My mind raced ahead of itself, so once I was given new information, I always assumed the worse. Having complete and utter power over someone? That can lead to many dark dark places, and I assumed each one would be touched upon. Thankfully, each one wasn’t touched upon, because I didn’t feel like crying that night. But the scene where the power finally got to the head? Shit scared me, and it did it in away without having to go the hard R rating that most of us are probably imagining. Which is great, when I rewatch this movie, I can not flip out as much and STILL enjoy the process they go through.

Besides, this type of stuff is every (male?) fantasy. Since Frankenstein, the idea of creating a person has always been intriguing. So why not?

I think this film is excellent on all cylinders, and exactly the type of thing I’d watch again and again.