Tag: Zoe Saldana

Out of the Furnace has the honor of being the only movie coming out this week, in a month that is typically packed to the brim with movies to take advantage of those holiday sales.

It also has the honor of making me think of the Meatloaf song, “Out of the Frying Pan,” so much that whenever I hear the film’s title, I can’t help but sing “And into the fire!” in my head.

This is an actual scene of the film, lollipop and all.

Russell Baze (Christian Bale) is your average factory worker living in Pennsylvania. He is a man who works for a living, a guy who will never be rich, but overall, a very caring and loving man. He has a lady (Zoe Saldana), a younger dumber brother Rodney (Casey Affleck) in the army, and his father is getting sick. But after a night of trying to do good and a few mistakes, Russell finds himself behind bars after a drunk driving accident.

Now, years later, his life has changed drastically. His father: dead. His woman: left him for a cop (Forest Whitaker). His brother: suffering from extreme PTSD after four tours in Iraq. Rodney is also deep in gambling debt and starting to take up illegal bare knuckle boxing to pay his debts. But when he gets involved with the Appalachian hill folk and their leader, Harlan DeGroat (Woody Harrelson), his life is going to make a change for the worse.

It is up to Russell, a good man who hasn’t done a lot wrong in his life, to potentially give up his moral convictions, his good nature, and his innocence, in order to avenge or save his brother… You know, depends on what they do to his brother first.

Willem Dafoe is also in here as a small town loan shark, and Sam Shepard plays a family friend.

Here’s a hint. That gun is not for hunting. Okay, normally yes for hunting, but right now it isn’t. Shut up.

Out Of The Furnace might feature some of the better acting performances of the year. There is a scene with Bale and Saldana on a bridge and it absolutely tore my heart up. It was very unexpected and it felt incredibly real. This is the best performance for Affleck since The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. If it wasn’t for Harrelson’s goofy looking head, I wouldn’t have recognized him speech wise as the incredibly corrupt hill folk.

Unfortunately, the great acting is the only real thing I like from this movie.

It is definitely a slower moving film, as it wants to build up the fact that Russel is a great human and just trying to live his life. A lot of intense scenes involving others are spliced with Russel hunting and working, just to show how un-extreme his life is. In fact, the movie goes to incredibly lengths to make that point during the ending, which seems to drag on forever. On top of that, the ending almost feels a bit dreamlike, including an ambiguous final scene that I am unsure of its purpose.

I believe this film has a lot of symbolism incorporated within it, but potentially too much symbolism, and not enough entertainment.

Fantastic acting, a good idea for a story, but just a dull way to deliver that story.

 

2 out of 4.

For whatever reason, just like my previous review of Star Trek, I am finding the right words to describe Star Trek Into Darkness.

I feel like a fake, a liar. I am a nerd who knows not a lot about the Star Trek series and never really cared to find out. So as to whether or not this movie fits the Star Trek world, I can’t comment on. But I tell you what I can do. Ignore the source material and just tell you if the movie is awesome or not. Basically what I do for every movie anyways!

I honestly don’t know if this is from the first or second Star Trek. The movie takes place right where we left off. Kirk (Chris Pine) is still captain of the Starship Enterprise, with the exact same crew. Spock (Zachary Quinto) is the first officer, Sulu (John Cho) the pilot, Bones (Karl Urban) the doctor, Scotty (Simon Pegg) the engineer, and Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin) as whatever they do on the ship.

Well, things quickly hit the fan when a bombing occurs in one of Star Fleet’s libraries, plotted by John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch), a former Star Fleet officer. That’s right, someone turning against his own former employers! Must have received a very poor severance package. After a few other attacks, he escapes to Kronos, home planet of the Klingons, the warrior race who wouldn’t mind having a reason to conquer Earth.

Well, crap, I guess they are screwed. Unless…

Clearly the best plan of action is to use long range Plasma Missiles to take him out (no trial needed), while hopefully not starting an intergalactic war. I trust Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) personally, so I am sure the strategy will work.  Bruce Greenwood also returns as Admiral Pike, and Alice Eve is brought in as mysterious science/weapons expert Carol.

Nope. No Shame at all here at Gorgon Reviews.I saw the sequel in 3D and I am almost certain it didn’t warrant the higher price. The film was made for IMAX and later changed to include 3D, so it was a sort of afterthought. In terms of “rounding” out the picture, it didn’t really work for me, and felt wasted. But hey, some sticks fly at your face in the beginning, and I might have actually tried to dodge them.

I loved Star Trek Into Darkness. It was exciting, it was action packed, and it refilled my lens flare quota for the rest of the year. It is of course beyond perfect. I left out a lot of plot details, but I disliked that problems introduced early in the film were fixed only a few minutes later. It made me wonder why even write those problems in the first place and made me feel like they were rehashing the first movie.

I also hate that they introduced regenerative blood into the series. Regeneration itself is a very tricky subject, as it becomes a deus ex machina. Unfortunately it also appeared in Iron Man 3 and was one of the worst plot fixers in both movies.

I’d stil suggest watching the movie and avoid IMDB/Wikipedia, there are spoilers everywhere.

Despite not being a Trekkie, I am deep enough in this Pop Culture game to understand a lot of the throwbacks and homages to the original series/films. In fact, I liked this film enough that I almost want to try and watch the older Star Trek films, out of curiosity. Almost.

3 out of 4.

From what I heard, The Words was in production for awhile. Not a pet project by Bradley Cooper, but something he believed in and fought for with the directors to get made and produced. One of those maybe artsy things.

I think that is what happened. Don’t even feel like looking it up. I am just gonna be spreading facts as if they are true. Boo yah.

Hey look, love. Maybe. Or just walking. People can walk right?

The story begins with famous author Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) doing some section reading from his new book The Words. People love him, and so does some grad student chick Daniella (Olivia Wilde). Yeah, but that’s enough about that. We get to watch his story!

In which we have another writer, Rory Jansen (Cooper) who is struggling. He has good words, but not the best story for a first time author to get his name out into the world. So it sucks to suck. Sucks also for his dad (J.K. Simmons) who is tired of loaning him money, and his wife Dora (Zoe Saldana) who knows her husband can write good words, just can’t get a book deal.

So they decide to do what every NYC couple who is struggling to survive does. Take a honeymoon to Paris. Fuck the police! They even visit some Ernest Hemingway shop, for inspiration. Turns out Paris has some weird gift shops, without logos or names on them, just things. So Dora spends some of their barely any money on a satchel for her husband. Later, in America, Rory finds a compartment in it with a story! The most beautiful story he has ever read. Everything he felt about his own life displayed in words, and it was magnificent. He couldn’t stop thinking about the words. So he eventually killed his family.

Okay that is a lie. But he does type up the story just to have the feeling of what it is like to write those words. But his wife reads it, cries and stuff, and it is amazing. He can’t even tell her they aren’t his words! But he runs with it, and hey look, everyone loves him as a writer.

Except for an old man (Jeremy Irons). Who tells his own story about a young man (Ben Barnes) and his French lover (Nora Arnezeder) after World War 2. Who wrote a story and lost it. And how he is that man. In case you got lost, that would make that a story, in a story, in a story.

Then you know, potential backlash from this knowledge. But not really. Obviously Rory knew the story wasn’t his, just kind of got swept in it all. But now that he knows the real story, what will happen? But that is a book, so who cares, what about the author and grad student huh?
.

Fucking layers man. Stories and shit.

Did you follow all of that? Well good. Because that is like, 4/5 of the story. Yep.

Technically we don’t even get to see the amazing story everyone talks about. Unless it is just the old guys life as is, and not based on it. But whatever.

This movie is slow, and tries to build up to this big reveal, but you know what? Everything that happens is obvious real quickly in the movie. But they take an incredible slow time to go through it. The old guy telling his story after the War takes forever, and isn’t until the second half either. Yet he tells it as if it isn’t obviously a younger version of himself, for some reason.

Arggh. It was frustrating. Everything kind of felt pretentious. The acting wasn’t really bad, it just also didn’t matter. Get this pointless story out of my movie.

0 out of 4.

I claim to be pretty nerdy on this site, yet almost every time it seems something nerdy comes up, I claim to not be that type of nerd.

This is another example of one of those times. Star Trek? Never really watched any of it. The amount I know about it is the amount I am supposed to know as a pop culture fanatic. I know some of the quoted famous lines, who a couple captains were played by, and that is about it. So hey, this film just has to appeal to those characteristics and be entertaining to watch for me to enjoy it.

Ah, Lens Flare. Makes me think of outer space. I doubt they used enough.

Movie begins not with the crew we love. Its other people. Who totally get attacked my Romulans, when they thought it was just a lightning storm. Turns out they are from the future, and want to kill some Spock dude. Whoops. Too early in time. Nero (Eric Bana), their leader doesn’t care. They continue to attack, killing the captain, leaving George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth) in charge, who orders the fleet to evacuate while he steers the ship on his own into the Romulans. His pregnant wife, Winona (Jennifer Morrison) gives birth to her son in the escape pod, James Tiberius Kirk (Chris Pine), while her husband, you know dies. Totally was a captain for a whole 10 minutes, but at least he saved lives.

Many years later, Kirk is a troublesome son. Smart, but doesn’t make something of his life. He could easily join the starfleet, be an officer in four years, and Captain a ship in eight. But he is lazy. Pike (Bruce Greenwood), a captain convinces him to try otherwise, and he enters star fleet. Definitely not just for a girl, Uhura (Zoe Saldana), an alien language expert.

Three years later, he is doing the Officer test. So soon! He ends up “cheating” some how to pass the test, which is supposed to be unwinnable, made by Spock (Zachary Quinto) himself. Half Vulcan, half Human, who joined Star Fleet instead of a science academy because he didn’t like the discrimination and perceived weaknesses. Eventually a distress signal is found near Vulcan, sending the academy into a panic and sending their entire fleet. Kirk is able to sneak aboard the Enterprise, thanks to the help of his doctor friend Bones (Karl Urban).

Hey look, a lot of other famous characters I have heard referenced before. Like Chekov (Anton Yelchin), a navigator and weird guy, and Sulu (John Cho), playing as George Takei. Scotty (Simon Pegg) gets there eventually.

So yeah, Romulans. They are mad. They set up a trap for the whole fleet! Can the Enterprise survive the attack, save the Vulcans, figure out what time travel shenanigans are going on, and save the day? Sure. But also, Leonard Nimoy.

In Star Trek for 5 minutes. Lands Thor part because of it.

Hey look, this film gave me pretty much everything I wanted in a Star Trek movie, as a non Trekkie, that’s great! My biggest complaint would just be weird technical aspects that tended to take me out of the setting.

Yes, lens flare indeed was an excessive problem. But then just little things that bugged me. Like little Kirk, driving the car and running away from the cops. He turns on the radio, and Sabotage from Beastie Boys comes on. So okay, car is playing music. I’m fine with that. But then car goes over cliff, he jumps out, car super far away, music still loud as ever, now it is just background music? Can’t do that shit to me. That bugs the crap out of me.

I think they did do a pretty good job dealing with a time traveling/parallel universe time line, and used it as a good way to explain why this is different than the TV show.

3 out of 4.

The Losers is one of those “Oh this is based on a comic? Why?” type movies. No super heroes involved, just your normal run of the mill elite black ops team, who gets set up/framed, and have to fix it. A story I might have wrote about yesterday, and very popular.

This movie came out around the same time as The A-Team though, which means you were far more likely to not ever see or hear of The Losers, as they are easily compared.

But this one has more than four people. And a woman! Eventually.

Ooh, lets try and do this the team way!
First we have Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) the leader of the group.
Then there is Roque (Idris Elba) the second in command.
Jensen ( Chris Evans) is the communications/tech guy, and a lot of the comic relief.
Pooch (Columbus Short) is the driver, and soon to be family man.
And finally, Cougar (Oscar Jaenada) their ‘long range specialist/sniper’, wears a hat, and doesn’t talk much (At all). So mysterious. So deadly.

Well the missions they take are never officially wrote down, very very covert, don’t technically exist in the government. They are in Bolivia on a search and destroy mission for a drug cartel, but find that the camp has dozens of slave children. They try to call off the attack to their handler, Max (Jason Patric) but he ignores them. So they do the reasonable thing, break into the compound, kill the drug lord, rescue the children and barely escape!

On the helicopter sent to pick them up, they decide to stay behind and save the children instead. And when it gets up to leave. BAM. Missile. It was meant to kill them instead. They know there will be huge back lash here, so they decide to fake their deaths as if they were in the helicopter, and plot their revenge against Max. Which they get four months later, when another mysterious person, Aisha (Zoe Saldana) has a plan. But can she be trusted.

Stealing hard drives, and getting to Max is the rest of the movie, and having to go through his “top notch security” (Holt McCallany). Also filled with betrayal, the Losers try and stop Max before he acquires new age weapon technology, and you know, start a new world war.

The “mind bullets/tech support” scene is one of the better scenes. Of all time. Complete with Journey!

Seriously though, you will probably enjoy that scene even without the rest of the movie. That is what comic relief character gets you. Great scenes.

It is definitely more action than comedy, not everything is laugh out loud heelarious, but the movie is not meant to be taken too seriously. The first picture of the review is just covered in campiness.

Other aspects I found boring. I enjoyed it, but on a rewatch, not as much interests me as it did before. So its definitely a one and done kind of film. Won’t blow your socks off, but can be enjoyed if you are in the right mood.

2 out of 4.

Plural? Yes.

I watched Death at a Funeral (British version) the other day, and I realized I wanted to see Death at a Funeral (American version) as well. Obviously the British one came first, but I figured they’d be different enough with the same general plot to do two reviews, but no. They pretty much are the same. Some different jokes, but all the same stuff happens. SO ONE SUPER REVIEW (that counts as two, damn it). Also probably my record for most tags. Two ensemble movies in one. Hooray!

And why not start it off with a naked Alan Tudyk on a roof?

So in both movies, the patriarch of the family dies. The main guy (Chris Rock, Matthew Macfadyen) lived with his folks and is an inspiring writer, which is bad because his slightly younger brother (Martin Lawrence, Rupert Graves) already has made a best seller. Jealousy!

We also have their cousin (Zoe Saldana, Daisy Donovan) is bringing her new fiance to the funeral, hoping her own dad will approve of him. This makes the fiance (Alan Tudyk, James Marsden) nervous, and he takes some Vallium to calm down. But it really isn’t Vallium. Her ex is also there (and trying to win her back…Luke Wilson, Ewen Bremner), now a friend of the family, along with another friend of the family (Tracy Morgan, Andy Nyman) who has the unfortunate job of looking out for the wheel chaired uncle (Danny Glover, Peter Vaughan).

Got all that? Too bad. A few problems go wrong, delaying the actual ceremony, which is perfect for the real main plotline. The midget who no one knows turns out to be the secret gay lover of their dad (Peter Dinklage, Peter Dinklage) with picture proof, and threatens to show everyone unless he gets a nice sum since he was left off of the will. Yes blackmail, and midgets.

I am sure I tagged some people and didn’t mention them. Honestly I lost track. Here is Loretta Devine, who you would have guessed was in the American version without looking it up probably.

Somehow, both of these actors naked on a roof was the easiest “same scene” from both movies to find.

So, these movies both feature large ensemble casts, with a few different plot lines so that they can all build up and get crazy by the end of the movie.

But which is better? I have heard from multiple sources that they think the British version is WAY better than the American. They also said this before watching the American though. After watching both though I find that…well they are both okay. I didn’t find one vastly superior to the other. Honestly, I probably would have been fine with either of them if only one of them had to exist!

So watch whatever version you choose, knowing full well that if you choose the British one for any other reason than it being the original, then you are probably a racist.

2 out of 4. (British)
2 out of 4. (American)

When you see the cover for Takers, you probably go “Hey! I know some of these people! It must be good!” To be fair, some of the people are known for being in some decent, and some bad movies. We have Idris Elba, Hayden Christensen, and Matt Dillon, who at least classify as actors. Then Michael Ealy who would be a lot less know, along with Zoe Saldana who people are only starting to recognize.

But then you see Chris Brown and T.I. YES! If you love their music, you will love their acting! I guess that is the idea.

I am probably just upset that 50 Cent didn’t get the call.

Lets see! It’s hard to really put a finger on what I didn’t like about this movie. Mostly because my finger isn’t big enough to hit everything at once.

Dillon and some other guy are investigating a very well done bank Robbery. Done by all the guys listed above, but not T.I. or Zoe. Why not T.I.?! (Boom, all 3 “endings in a row). Because he was in prison! From five years ago, he got caught while the rest got away. Thankfully he ain’t a snitch. But he does come back after that bank robbery, when everyone is happy, with a new mission right away. In five days.

Seems legit, if not rushed. Russians are involved, just an armored car thing. Some people don’t like it (so soon!) and what not. But it happens. And then. Betrayal. (WHO SAW THAT COMING?)

But yeah. A lot of movie happens before the heist, and then the heist actually takes some time. But after the heist, when backstabbing may occur, I think it is only in the last 20 minutes. I think a lot of the “pre-heist” stuff is just super slow, and not well done at all. The actual heist? It was kind of cool. I will give you that. Even with the fuckups. But I had so little interest in the rest of the story, it was crazy.

But not as crazy as the fear in his eyes there. Man up!

So uhh yeah. I would rather watch Armored again than this.

1 out of 4.

Possibly the most hyped movie that is coming out this week (Versus things like Warrior, Dolphin Tale, and Margin Call), Colombiana seems to be about one thing. Money.

And how to get more of their monies.

The movie starts in, you guessed it, Colombia. Guy runs into his house, people are coming for him! So he gives some things to his little girl, letting her know to not give up the item, and some other instructions. They die, right in front of her, yet she doesn’t run and hide. Instead she eventually escapes, despite being like, 7 or something. She then makes her way to Chicago, from Colombia, and finds some uncle, Cliff Curtis, who takes her in and just seems to “know”. She demands that he trains her to be a killer.

FIFTEEN YEARS LATER. In 2007. Zoe Saldana now gets to be in the movie. Get to see her be all sneaky assassin like person, breaking and entering into a prison just to kill someone. Whattabitch. She is doing this to try and get the guy who killed her parents to take notice and come to the US. You know, because the guy she killed was important to him. While doing this, she has a boyfriend who knows nothing, and the FBI are on her tail lead by Lennie James to stop her. Guy sends another assassin after her, Jordi Molla. People die, trust is betrayed, and Zoe exists.

I found watching this movie to be pretty ridiculous. Thankfully she wasn’t fighting toe to toe with everyone, or else it would have made me hate it more. Zoe is VERY small, and can only suspend belief so much. I think she really only does that once, and most of her kills are secrets / from behind. (Aka, without Honor? But this isn’t Ancient China or Revolutionary War or whatever).

But what really bugged me is the bad acting, bad plot, and gratuitous T&A scenes. It probably has one of the more pointless “Hey lets get our main star in a shower” scenes, that even shows a nipple, which is generally “no no” for a PG-13 movie.

Alright, I didn’t expect to see this picture available. But hey, there ya go.

Maybe. Just maybe this movie is secretly parodying other “action movies with women” in them. But no one knows it is a parody? Maybe. That is the only way to explain the amount of times that she gets naked, how awkward the dialogue is, and how robotic it all feels. Fights scenes don’t even look natural, just extremely choreographed. She doesn’t have any special powers or anything, its just training from an uncle.

But to me, this just doesn’t work at all.

1 out of 4.