Gorgon Reviews

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.

I really like hockey. Definitely my favorite sport to watch and cheer for. I also really like movies (you see where this is going?) So generally, hockey movies I am pretty fond of. Goon was fan-fucking-tastic, and Score: A Hockey Musical was so ridiculous, I couldn’t not enjoy it.

Well, the streak of great hockey movies is coming to an end tonight, unfortunately. Because I watched Breakaway.

I know what you are wondering. Yes, they do have helmets that can fit around turbans.

Rajveer Singh (Vinay Virmani) likes hockey. But he is Indian. Indian’s don’t play hockey. That is a fact! But her is actually good. All he does is play pick up with his friends, also all Indian, and they are looked down on by others. No, not by white people, just other older Indians. Indians don’t play hockey. Or Soccer. That is a movie reference of a movie with a similar plot, guys. Don’t make me spell it out.

Anyways, Rajveer had to leave college to work for his father (Anupam Kher), who really hates this hockey thing. He wants him to rise up in the family business that he created when he moved to America, but all Rajveer seems to want to do is play hockey and be a truck driver. No drive.

When Rajveer tries out for a local technically amateur but almost professional team in Toronto, he isn’t given a fair chance at all, despite being a great player. So he gets the idea. Why not just make a team with his friends? Then they can compete in the local tournament, win the cup, beat that other team whose name I can’t remember, and be heroes! Heroes to themselves at least.

Unless…unless the local Indian culture actually finds their tale inspirational and bands behind them? Just don’t tell Rajveer’s dad about it. No, the Speedy Singhs want to prove they can play hockey too. Also starring Camilla Belle as his love interest, Drake as the actual Drake (he likes Hockey, so what?), Russell Peters, and Rob Lowe as the local janitor turned their hockey coach.

Rob Lowe is LITERALLY the most famous person in this movie.

Oh goodness, the cliches.

Before anyone makes the claim, no I am not giving the movie a low rating just because of the first scene. Where our main character was imagining he was on the Toronto Maple Leafs and about to score the game 7 OT winner for the Stanley Cup against the Detroit Red Wings. Not the reason at all, but I did dislike it.

Unfortunately, this film is filled with all the cliches, even ones that are not about sports. There are other plot lines in here, outside of just Indians wanting to play hockey, but they weren’t as important, and just in general side plots. Because all the cliches happen, you will know already how it ends, and yeah, it does. There is even a chance when they might not get to play anymore due to a rule, but hey, they find a way around it. They even found an enforcer. They got it all!

The hockey in this movie isn’t really exciting to watch, and the story isn’t original. There was also a lot of Drake in this movie, more than I expected (which was around zero, I guess). It had some amusing moments, but not enough to make it worth ever watching again.

I first heard about As I Lay Dying a few months ago. I mean both this movie, and the book version. Don’t think I ever heard of the book, despite being on a list of best American books of all time.

No, I first heard about because James Franco directing it became a pretty big deal. I thought it was his first directed thing too, but turns out this guy has directed a shit ton, mostly shorts, but there are movies in there too. Go figure. What a secretly passionate man, that Franco.

Dat passion.

As I Lay Dying is a sad movie. You might be able to figure it out from the title. Or by reading the book.

Addie Bundren (Beth Grant) is dying, and her wishes are to be buried in Jefferson, a town nearby, but one that requires some travel.

Her husband, Anse (Tim Blake Nelson) tries to take care of her, while the eldest son, Cash (Jim Parrack), builds the coffin. The other two sons, Jewel (Logan Marshall-Green) and Darl (James Franco) continue with their job, but of course, she dies almost as soon as they leave.

It is their only wagon, so it sets their journey back a few days already. The daughter Dewey (Ahna O’Reilly) also joins the trip to Jefferson. Basically, everyone who goes has selfish and non selfish reasons, and enough shit hits the fan that it is basically a modern Odyssey. Also, Danny McBride is in this movie as a small role, and is no way comedic.

Also, split screen. This split this movie in half time wise I think.

The movie was supposed to come out to theaters sometime this fall, but I guess they changed their mind and went straight to DVD. Poor Franco.

I also found out this book was written as a steam of consciousness thing, with about fifteen or so narrators, often switching between them without a moments notice. That means you constantly get different points of views and don’t have to guess the true intentions of any single character. Which brings me to my main point: this movie was shot in a really weird way. You see that split screen? A lot of the film is in split screen, and I think it is to represent the constant different point of views represented in the book. To see multiple reactions after the same event. To tell the story in a better way.

Shit, that was really smart. Well done Franco. And creative.

I will say this story took a long time for me to really get into it. A lot of fucked up things happen by the end, a lot of which I did not see coming and definitely kept my interest. But the first half is what killed me. I hate it when a film doesn’t keep it interesting the whole time.

All of the people in this movie acted great though, which is a shame. I wonder how it would have fared if it got a theatrical release versus just a straight to DVD situation. I can’t say whether or not the movie follows the book closely or not. If it does, then the book must be pretty boring early on, and if it doesn’t then I guess it is Franco’s fault.

Probably best watched by people who love the book, and want to see it visually. Shit, if you have read the book, let me know how it compares. I know I won’t ever read it.

Every once in awhile I pick out bad movies to even out my website if I have seen too many good movies in theaters recently. I will at least try to pick a probably bad movie by knowing one of the actors in that movie.

Miss Dial is one of those movies, and also a great example of why I will watch random shit and give it a fair shot. Because somehow, despite everything, I really liked it.

No, this is not the people on the cover that made me want to watch it.

Erika (Robinne Lee) works for CPI consumer affairs. Who are they? They cover a lot of products, and take complaints and help answer concerns for people using these products. She can work from home, take calls via her laptop and all she has to do is follow a script and work blah hours a day, while multi tasking and doing whatever. What fun!

Well, except for she hates it. She also has recently heard rumors that her boyfriend, Alex (Jon Huertas) has been fooling around with one of his coworkers on the side. In fact, someone saw them together at dinner, maybe kissing, the night before. No. Not cool. Not cool at all.

So during a break she decides to call her best friend to talk about it but she accidentally dials the wrong number, and ends up having a conversation with some random guy instead. It felt like relief. She felt connected. She wanted to do it more. But with her boss constantly checking in (David H. Lawrence XVII), a queue of dumb consumers that doesn’t ever seem to shrink, and boyfriend troubles, she is having a very strange and confusing afternoon.

And when she calls Kyle (Sam Jaeger), a random NYC number, she feels more connected to him than anyone yet. And he is offering advice. He would be perfect, if she wasn’t so confused with hey boyfriend and you know, he didn’t live far from LA. Dule Hill and Gabrielle Union are also in this movie, but they are just two callers to the complaint department while the other events are unfolding.

Yet note their position on the DVD cover, and note Sam Jaegers.

Hint, Sam Jaeger isn’t on the cover.

Seriously. Dule Hill’s character name is “Popcorn Caller”. He has one scene, and so does Gabrielle Union. They are both famous kind of, but Sam Jaeger is also kind of famous. He is on Parenthood! And the second main character! But no cover. At least his name is on the top?

Despite that. Despite that glaring fact and awkwardly deceitful advertising. I liked the story. I really did.

First off, the movie was basically in real time, since it was mostly conversation, no other events really going on. Made it seem a lot shorter than it ended up being.

Second, a lot of clever shit happened by the end. The way they used phones and just normal conversation into tricking people to tell the truth. It was brilliant.

Third, the complaint people were hilarious. They really were. I knew a lot of people who ended up calling too, bunch of small time actors, getting a scene in to make us laugh. That is awesome.

And fourth, I really enjoyed the ending. I think that is point two. It had its ups and downs, but shit, I was entertained, and overall glad I saw this movie. Weird right?

Honestly, when I was first told about the movie Parkland, I just had to wonder why.

Why do we need a movie about the death of John F. Kennedy? There are a few out there, some of them considered classics. Some tell the true story, some focus on conspiracies, but they all get the same point across. It was a tragic event, that people alive then remember where they were. Everyone was confused. Cold war, Russia, Nuclear Bombs, Vietnam. All this shit was happening or on the horizon, so the last thing we really needed was a dead president to shock our country.

But hey, why not Parkland. Why not another movie? Fuck it. We got about a thousand on Lincoln as well.

Besides, where else can we get these two young actors as brilliant doctors?

This movie is based on a book, which tells a story of the day President Kennedy (Brett Stimely) goes to Texas and a few days after. Johnny does Dallas, so to speak. For instance, we got the story of Abraham Zapruder (Paul Giamatti), a man who was happy to see his president, he filmed the event, including The Event. His footage was quickly taken custody by the FBI, used in the capture of Mr. Oswald, and then later made as a way to get mad moneys to survive.

We learn of the doctors on duty at the Parkland hospital (Zaf Efron, Colin Hanks), who tried their best to save the president, but found the task impossible. These gentlemen were later given the task to try and save Lee Harvey Oswald after he was gunned down, and, you know, that is sort of fucked up.

We get the story of James Hosty (Ron Livingston), who realized after Lee was picked up as the shooter that he was supposed to investigate him a year earlier and found him clean. We look at Robert Oswald (James Badge Dale), the brother of the shooter, who had no idea what was going to happen and someone who would refuse to run. There is also a look into the presidents security team, their presumed failures, and Lyndon B. Johnson taking over the presidency.

Also in this movie are Billy Bob Thornton, David Harbour, Mark Duplass, and Marcia Gay Harden.

No, I don’t find Paul Giamatti behind this camera creepy at all.

Can we all just take a moment to acknowledge Brett Stimely? He got to play the president, and you probably never heard of him. Sure, most of the scenes are actual footage taken by that dude, or him just lying on the table. Never his face. But he got to play the president! Actually, this is the fourth time he has played John F. Kennedy. He also played him in Watchmen, Kill the Dictator, and Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

What? Why the hell has this random guy played JFK four fucking times in film?

That is besides the point.

I learned a shit ton from this film. From what I could tell, it didn’t really bias a damn thing, just showed people being emotional, and getting sad, and doing things from their sadness.

That sounds dumb. But it is not. First off, I never felt emotional about the death of JFK before. Why would I? I wasn’t alive. But this film did a good job of conveying the emotions people felt and passing them on to the viewer. Secondly, it gave so many sides and showed so many people affected, it just really opened up my eyes to the whole situation. A lot of stuff went down, it was a big investigation, and you know what? I want to watch more. Bring on the JFK. Bring on the conspiracy shit. Bring it all on. I am sorry for claiming there was too many movies about this subject.

I got to see the trailer for Girl Most Likely only once, and that was at an independent movie theater before I saw Fruitvale Station.

And I made plans to wait for it on DVD. Wasn’t an appealing trailer, looked super low budget. It looks like one of those stories, written by someone who doesn’t write normally, but is secretly writing about her own life, and this is a way of telling her story.

Yes, I determined that out a trailer once a few months ago. Shut up.

I said shut up, not hold open your mouth. That is just awkward.

Imogene (Kristen Wiig) is about to have a break down. She used to be considered very bright. She was a great writer. She won a huge grant for $30,000 to write a play and have it performed in NYC. But all of her dreams came crashing down and she has been slowly unraveling, enough to chase her long time boyfriend away. So she tries to kill herself.

Oh. Erm. Shit.

She isn’t too good at it though, so she gets hospitalized instead. Even worse than that, she has to be released from the hospital into a loving environment, which they assume is her home in Jersey. Nopenopenope. Her child hood sucked! She was in a single parent home, because her dad died when she was young and her mom (Annette Bening) was trash. Her brother, Ralph, (Christopher Fitzgerald) had it worse, having some form of autism. He is smart, just a recluse. At least he will be there when she moves back.

Oh, and her mom’s new boyfriend, Geourge Bousche, who talks about spirtuality and is quite mysterious (Matt Dillion). And some dude, Lee (Darren Criss), who she has rented out her old room too. Shit, she can’t even stay in her old bed. Oh well, she just has to survive three days until she can go back to her apartment in NYC. Or if her boyfriend comes to pick her up.

One of the two.
One. Of. The. Two.

Ah, Glee has turned Criss into a boy band member. That was unexpected.

Alright, my original thoughts may have been wrong, but I can’t get that same feeling out of my head.

The main character is a play writer going through a tough time. She has to get out of a slump, and is in freak out mode. Like every movie ever about a struggling writer, the events in the film eventually turn into inspiration, and aww, she is accepted again. That isn’t a spoil, because that is a stupid movie cliche, and it totally happens in this one.

So I feel like this movie of this happening is the third level of realization or something. A movie about a writer who writes a play about her life, and this movie might be about her life too secretly.

I think I am babbling.

This movie had some nice moments, I laughed out loud a few times. It also had a lot of whatever moments, like the first part, and the ending. It was just full of rookie movie mistakes. Things were cut oddly, and it all just felt like a lot of rookie movie making mistakes. Full of jokes that just fell flat.

So overall, it was okay. I enjoyed what they tried to do, and some of the things that were done, but thought a lot of it was just not up to par.

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.

If I learned anything about the advertising campaign of Last Vegas, it is that sometimes people don’t like seeing the same ad every fifteen minutes. Last Vegas was produced by CBS Films, so it has the benefit of being advertised on a channel that is watched by the millions during football games every Sunday.

Unfortunately for the movie, I know plenty of people who wrote it off solely on overexposure, a likelihood probably expressed around America.

At least the suits are colorful.

Last Vegas takes us into the lives of four kids who grew up best friends, but into their adulthood, their lives began to veer in different paths.

But Billy (Michael Douglas) is getting married, finally! To a girl half his age! So he wants to invite his old pals to the wedding: Sam (Kevin Kline), who is currently living a sad life in Florida in a sexless relationship. Archie (Morgan Freeman), who is living with his son (Michael Ealy), while constantly on pills. And even Paddy (Robert De Niro), who hasn’t left his apartment since his wife died a year ago and also really really hates Billy now.

Why does he hate Billy? Well, that is a spoiler. But he gets tricked into showing up for the bachelor party / wedding.

Thanks to pension funds and a little luck, the four gentlemen end up having one of the wildest weekends imaginable, while also allowing time to air out their grievances and fix their standing in life. How awesome is that?

Mary Steenburgen plays Diana, a lounge singer who helps create conflict, Romany Malco, their butler-esque character, and Jerry Ferrara, a recurring jerk.

Old dudes, doing young things. Hilarious!

I think I figured out a pattern in new comedies. First we had a group of guys in Vegas with The Hangover in 2009, then a group of girls in Vegas with Bridesmaids in 2011. Another two years later we were given old guys in Vegas, so I expect in 2015, we will get either old women in Vegas, or elementary school girls in Vegas. It depends on if this relationship is linear or a ramping sine wave, respectfully.

Overall, I guess this movie delivered exactly as the previews showed. A lot of old people jokes. Old people jokes are a subset of jokes, where everything is funnier, just because the characters involved happen to be old. So old people talking about drugs, going to clubs, flirting, being hungover. This movie has the bonus aspect of seeing Morgan Freeman do all of these things, one of the more revered older actors currently out there.

But after awhile, it becomes obvious that all of the jokes are basically the same, so it is hard to still find them funny across the entire run time. The movie also took its sweet time ending, with what felt like at least three endings thrown on.

Of our actors, Douglas was not at his best, which is a shame given his last role in Behind The Candelabra. De Niro was also hit and miss in this film. The best two were Kline and Freeman, arguably supporting actors in this movie.

Most of the plot lines for the characters went the obvious routes, so nothing felt surprising. Everything gets wrapped up by the end, the conflict presented isn’t too huge, and it is just a simple movie. It was odd to see E from Entourage, so thin. There were two cameos: LMFAO, an already outdated reference, and 50 Cent, who was a welcome surprise.

If you go into Last Vegas expecting a lot of cheap laughs and some touching moments, then you will overall enjoy it. Not a game changer by any means in the comedy genre, but an okay one all the same.

I will admit, when I first saw the trailer for Free Birds, I chuckled at a few spots. The nameless government entities making a pun and laughing throughout the trailer was great. A movie about a dumb animal trying to save the world with other dumb animals might lead to a lot of just tongue in cheek situations or rampant fourth wall breaking or who knows what. The possibilities are limitless.

But they also are including time travel, a known killer of many movies, if they define a version that doesn’t make much sense. None of this “its a kids movie!” bullshit either. No, the story has to be somewhat coherent, or else shit is going down.

“Down like a Tom covered in poults.”
“Hey, that’s not a joke, witty, or remotely funny.”
“It would be if we were dealing with chickens, not turkeys!”

Reggie (Owen Wilson) is a freak. He is a smarter than your average turkey, which isn’t hard, because turkeys are dumb. But he is too smart, and refuses to eat and get fattened up for Thanksgiving, which causes the flock to throw him out. Luckily for him, he gets pardoned by the President, which apparently means he can sit around all day, not worry about getting eaten, and just watch TV and eat pizza.

Well, his new awesome reality comes crashing down when Jake (Woody Harrelson) takes him from his home! Oh no! Another Turkey, not some random dude named Jake.

He wants to infiltrate a secret base in Camp David where there is apparently a time machine. He wants to use that time machine to travel back in time to the first Thanksgiving, to take turkeys off the menu. Err okay. Well they do that. And the time machine named S.T.E.V.E. (George Takei), which was built for humans, can somehow understand the gobbles from turkeys.

Then they get there. The turkeys are just extremely obvious metaphors for American Indians, being hunted by the colonists, for this important feasts in a few days. Except these turkeys are all smart. That is right, they are saying turkeys became dumb due to domestication and Thanksgiving. So we have a bunch of smart turkeys and really only one dumb one, Jake. CAN THE TIME TRAVELING TURKEYS SAVE THEIR RACE FROM DESTRUCTION? Will he be able to score with Jenny (Amy Poehler), a smart enough turkey to not believe he is from the future? WILL HUMANS BE CAST AS THE BAD GUYS?

Or you know, will anything really cool happen? Eh.

Does this turkey look high to you?

Man, Owen Wilson I tend to hate at voice acting. Aka Cars and Cars 2. But he was able to show some emotion this time. Well done. Woody Harrelson sounded nothing like himself, so I want to assume that means he put effort into his lines. Having George Takei as navigator of sorts was a “I see what you did there” moment.

But enough about that, lets talk about the plot and other things I disliked. The beginning of the movie is very fast, so much that I’d be willing to bet that 85% or more of the movie takes place in the past, whereas the trailer had mostly set just getting to the time machine. A little misleading. Most of the best jokes were also in the trailer, including jokes that weren’t actually in the movie (due to splicing of the trailer into new jokes, not taking them out of the movie). Meh. I don’t think I would have liked it more if I didn’t see the trailer, however.

Making the turkeys in the past smart is lame. That leaves only one stupid character, and not the hordes of them that they implied in the trailer. That would allow it to have a lot more zany shenanigans! So, overall, the humor in this film isn’t really existent. The theater was practically silent for the most part.

The time travel itself is super sloppy. It was fine early on, but they went back to the present, and all sorts of stuff started to occur that don’t make sense based on how they defined time travel earlier in the film.

The ending is horrible. It just…it just isn’t good. The conflict doesn’t happen, despite a resolution. The resolution leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

So we got an unfunny movie, that breaks its own definitions of time travel, and has a shitty ending. Yawn. Let’s just wait for Frozen at the end of this month.

Hey look, a movie based on a book! You know. Like most movies.

But this isn’t any book. This is Ender’s Game. A very famous sci-fi novel from the 1980s, that is required reading in some/many schools now! So, that can mean a few things. It can mean angry mobs of book fans when the movie of Ender’s Game turns out unfaithful, or it can just mean a buttload of money.

That’s right. Buttload. Not even getting into the personal thoughts and opinions of the author, Orson Scott Card, but there are 20 separate books/collections/short stories that he has published in this story. Ender’s Game was the first one to get published, but it is now like, the middle book. Jeez.

Apparently his games just involve very large octahedra dice.

In the future, shit is all bad. Big alien force came and killed a lot of people, but a hero was able to think on the fly and saved the day for everyone. Hooray!

Well now, almost fifty years later, the alien forces are building again and the threat of a new attack is high. They have begun to train children to become their new generals and commanders. Due to growing up with realistic war video games, they are not as afflicted by things like morals or death or killing. Heck yeah!

Our hero is Ender Wiggan (Asa Butterfield), third born from his family, and taking a stab at joining the academy. Well, he is good. He just has to march through rank after rank, school after school, to be deemed good enough to eventually, finally, maybe, go against an actual alien fleet. But until then, it is really just a series of…games.

Harrison Ford is a commander, Viola Davis some sort of…officer. Abigail Breslin is Ender’s sister, Nonso Anozie a sergeant, and a bunch of other kids are played by Aramis Knight, Suraj Partha, Moises Arias, and Hailee Steinfeld. Hailee, who of course starred in True Grit and was called a supporting actress back then! Whoa.

Yes of course Ben Kingsley is in this movie. Just in the last third.

I decided to sleep on the analysis part of the review, and not write it all in one sitting like usual. After watching the movie, I still had so many questions. Ones I would bring up here, but I can’t spoil them because I am not a dickface.

I am really surprised this movie was under two hours, because it felt a lot longer. Here is why. Most of the movie is Ender training at consecutive harder and harder levels. He has to go through a fleet academy thing, he has a break down, then battle school, then battle school at the next tier, he has a break down, then battle school leading his own group of “soldiers”, then he has another break down, then he has to go to commander school, then another breakdown, then his final test.

Just. So many god damn tiers. It felt long because I knew that even though the beginning felt super rushed, the ending confrontation with the evil bug aliens would also have to be potentially rushed. So it felt like a lot of waiting to me.

Outside of that annoyance, and certain inconsistencies near the end that really had me confused, I did enjoy many parts of this movie. It dealt with emotions and morals that are very important and need to be discussed, but it didn’t delve on them as much as I would have liked. Aka, it was just quick, like a lot of the movie. Nothing really felt dealt with, and I don’t want to wait for another movie for things to be dealt with. Probably won’t happen. It didn’t make a ton of money, and Thor 2 is next week. Sooo, yeah. Probably going to be considered a flop, unfortunately, because acting was good.

I am sure that if I read the book a lot more would make sense. Presumably a lot was left out, and I hate it if I have to read a book to fully understand what a movie is trying to convey.