Tag: 2 out of 4

I have been told that The Other Guys was a great movie. By looking at the cover a long time ago, I assumed that was not true. This also came out around the same time as Cop Out, so I need to spread out my police cop comedy thrillers. Cop Out seemed to be a good movie at the beginning, very funny, and try and turn into a more serious thing by the end, causing me to care less. The Other Guys, on the other hand, seems to be a comedy throughout, yet still, I lost interest.

I am fine with this level of seriousness.

This movie starts out as an over the top action movie. Samuel L. Jackson and The Rock are chasing some criminals in NYC, and lots of damage get done. Sure, they had about only 3k worth of pot on them, and they caused 12million in damages, but who is counting? Crime has been stopped. They are heroes!

But the movie isn’t about them. It isn’t about Rob Riggle and Damon Wayans Jr. either, they are just normal guy. No, it is about the Other Guys. Will Ferrell, desk cop accountant who loves paper work, and Mark Whalberg, overly angry and paranoid detective who has to work with him.

The movie plot is pretty much, SLJ and The Rock end up dying with their reckless ways, and some people need to fill their shoes!

I loved the beginning, had me “lol”ing more than once. But as it got into the story (which was heavy on banking and monetary things, which is something I don’t understand well anyways), I didn’t get confused, I just cared less. Hard to describe it. The jokes did seem to get less funny, or be the same joke over and over. Eva Mendes and Michael Keaton are also both in this movie.

“Two possible pictures here, you chose one with Michael Keaton???” – Angry Gorgon Review reader.

I also didn’t like Whalberg’s character. Normally in a duo, one is annoying, and one is normal. You take Whalberg to be the “normal” part of the pair at the start, until later when you find out he is way annoying. Always yelling and freaking out. Part of the design, but not one I liked to see. So to me, it started out strong, then just got okay.

This is NOT a review of the books, or a comparison of them. Also, these reviews will be SLATHERED with spoilers. So, there is the warning.

Harry Potter is Daniel Radcliff, Ron Weasley is Rupert Grint, and Hermoine is Emma Watson. There are some other people, but who cares after the main three. The goal of the series was to have all the actors play the same role for all 7 (At the time, but now 8 ) movies! Lets see how that worked out.

It doesn’t.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

This first movie is very very simple. It has to get you caught up on the backstory (or origin), who the bad guys are, how the world works, etc. So you can consider this movie to be like the first movie of a superhero series, if it makes it easier. Like all good superheros, Harry Potter also lost his parents at an early age. While most superheroes still find themselves in a good situation, loving family, Harry gets the short end of the stick and has to live in an abusive house. The people in the house are the only real non magic users we learn about in this series, so I kinda just have to assume all British people are like that.

Logic!

Blah blah. Big scary hairy guy tells him he is special. Steals him to a witch school (where no Muggles are allowed. Hmm. Seems kind of racist. Flaw in the series? I’m not saying Muggles and Wizards are different races. But the people in the movie do. Really, to compare it to superheroes, they are like Mutants. Since two non-mutants can still make a mutant baby.

At mutant orphan school, he is picked on by Alan Rickman, is talked about behind is back, and learns to do magic. Like normal middle/high school. Some gay old man takes a special interest in him, and the rest is history.

Oh yeah. And some guy with another dude on his head tries to kill him through a series of weird games and three headed dogs to get to a stone that lets people live forever. That part was just weird though.

Really, this just looks like some sort of artsy statue.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Year 2! Life at home still sucks. School doesn’t. Turns out homeboy can talk to Snakes. That’d be amazing to me, you know, if these same people weren’t also flying around, shooting off spells and shit.

Some famous book guy replaces guy with two heads who tried to kill Harry as a teacher, and he also is inept at the job. Also, people are dying. Giant Basilisk in sewers? Oh no, evil dude who is dead kinda went to school here, had a diary (hah…) and tricked Harry! Don’t worry. The diary dies by the end, and all the kids are no longer stone.

What is going on here? Is he looking away so he doesn’t become stone? Why doesn’t the basilisk just bite him?

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Year 3! Home sucks, school doesn’t. Another new teacher, also inept, also suspicious. This one involves wearwolves though!

Oh. And shit. Dangerous criminals escaped from Prison. That sucks. More magic learning, more hall sneaking, more no good doing. Also, time travel. They got everything under the sun pretty much in this movie. Even that Dumbledore guy seemed confused by it all. HEY WAIT.

THAT’S A DIFFERENT ACTOR! SHENANIGANS!

Thankfully the actor change wasn’t this significant.

Richards Harris died before the third of eight movies! All of their plans, ruined! Guess they shouldn’t have picked such an old actor for such a long project. Oh well, enter Michael Gambon.

I can’t even remember if Voldermort is in this movie. I know it has animal rights stuff. But I think this one just has his lackies.

Oh yeah, and the escaped convict is Gary Oldman, not actually a murderer, and Harry’s godfather. So his last remaining “family” even though that word is a big stretch still.

Why so serious, Black? This works because Oldman is in the Batman movies too.

So, I know they wanted authentic purposes. But I find the kids in the first movie to now just be creepy, based on their age. The first movie, when compared to the others kind of moves at a lot slower pace. Afterall, its the origin movie. With everything getting explained, it might bore future watchings. The second movie I usually just call a continuation of the first. Still a bunch of little kids. Still a bunch of explaining.

The third movie I think is the first to take on its own complete story and tell it well. It is interesting, and all of the components are interesting too, not confusing. Confusing is an easy adjective to give to movies dealing with any form of time travel too, so that is a great thing to pull off.

Obviously I remember the least from the second movie so it must not have had much of lasting impression on me, right?

Hey look. Another movie about a book I have not heard of!

The River Why is a simple movie. It asks the question, Why? It, being the river.

I wish this was about a large moving stream that spoke to the main character, much like a 5 year old child would speak to anyone.

“Why?…Why?…Why? Why? WHY? WHY? WHY?”

The story is of a fishing prodigy, Zach Gilford, who grew up in a fishing household. His dad, William Hurt, a famous fly fisher, and his mom, some lame worm fisher.

Once he leaves home due to tension at home, he lives on his own in the woods, with the ideal schedule of sleep, eat, fish. All day every day. Soon he meets Amber Heard, some crazy environmentalist lady being all naked and fishing in a lame way, and his life begins to change.

This is actually a coming of age story, with a bunch of fishing in it. Despite rising to a small amount of fame, eventually the guy finds out there is more to life than just fishing. It also comes with some philosophical backings, with the people he meets along the way.

It may or may not end with a big/long catch. Just sayin’.

It is a slow movie, but decent. I of course know nothing about fishing, because I am not a wild man in the woods (yet!) and I think I learned nothing about fishing in the movie. Fly fishing still confuses me with what they actually do. But damn it, it was kind of interesting.

13 in a few ways reminded me of the movie Mean Guns. Okay. Barely. But lets just say people die, and there is money available in both movies.

Ice-T isn’t in 13. But 50 Cent is.

The beginning of this movie is pretty slow (and arguably the ending). Sam Riley, some no name, is an electrician at some dude’s house. Dude dies though. For some reason or another, he opens his mail and sees a message with a key, telling him to go to a lockbox. He does, finds another message and a train ticket. At this point, he is like, fuck it, lets do this shit. Despite not knowing anything, he keeps going along with the checkpoints, getting frisked, searched for wires, etc. And you know what? He is fucked.

He is now taking part in a weird “tournament” where very little skill is required, just luck. A group of about 20 or so individuals, complete with numbers on their shirts (guess which number is our main guy?) pretty much play russian roulette. They are made to stand in a circle, each with one bullet, spinning chambers and all, and pointing their gun at the person in front of them. When a light goes on, they shoot. If they survive, congrats! If not, well dead.

Why is this? Because of gambling! Lot of people are watching these games, making very high stake bets. I couldn’t really understand most of the betting terminology though passed around. Each shooter has a handler to help them through the rounds, and someone who represents them for bets and what not. 50 Cent had brought in Mickey Rourke to participate. They have an interesting side story themselves.

Jason Statham brought in his brother (for the fourth time) and Alexander Skarsgård ends up helping main guy. At the same time, David Zayas is playing a detective looking for this underground gambling ring (he is good at being a detective I guess). So overall, there are three rounds, each with increasing bullets. At the end, 2 people are randomly selected to stand face to face in a duel, with 3 bullets.

Yes, this is all for gambling. Yes people die. But hey, if you survive until the end you get lots of money too. That makes it okay?

I will admit, I think this poster is pretty cool.

So the acting isn’t the best. But you probably expected that. This is a pretty low budget movie. It is probably too long at 90 minutes. The scenes to get to the gambling arena place took awhile. But the tournament, I just described it, doesn’t take that long either. So the ending after the tournament, if not completely expected, is kinda of slow too. Nothing unpredictable happens after it either. So that kind of sucks. This is one of the times I would have preferred a 75~ minute movie or so. Or, if they wanted, they could have had a lot crazier good acting, in regards to how the different “contestants” were handling the pressure of the game.

But this movie if anything was interesting for the majority chunk of it, and I like that it tried something new, if not horrible to think about.

I should start off by saying I do not hate foreign movies. Subtitles can be annoying if they are barely in a movie (so if I am not watching fully, I might miss something) but if I know it is all subtitles, I should be fine. One of my favorite movies I’ve seen this year was over two hours and subtitled.

But I am soooo bad at Kung-Fu/Martial Art movies. Sure, sometimes the fight scenes are good. But I feel like half of them tell the same story. Especially a story like what Shaolin offers.

A lot of my Shaolin Monk knowledge comes from Mortal Kombat.

So Shaolin is a movie with China and Warlords. Some dude is bad, some bad things happen. Dude goes to a Shaolin Temple after losing everything, to redeam himself. Jackie Chan is in this movie as a smaller role, as the cook for the Monks. Training sequence, attack from gun people for main dude, but everyone wants to protect him still. Eventually finds redemption, a lot of people die, and somehow Jackie Chan is secretly still good at fighting.

But yeah. It all seems unoriginal. It had beautiful scenery, clothing, homes, etc. The fighting was usually interesting, especially the Jackie Chan fight (I guess because it was less serious? You know how he does it).

“What are you talking about? Jackie Chan only does serious fights!” – Response to Review

So yeah. This could be a fantastic martial arts movie. But to me it is just okay. I promise I won’t review these again, hah.

When I first saw the trailer for The Wolfman, I assumed it would be like all of the old werewolf movies, with nothing really new behind it.

Then I realized I hadn’t really seen any actual older werewolf movies, just a bunch of dumb cheesy ones. Looks like I should give the Wolfman a try!

Alright, so maybe my only werewolf movies are Underworld, Van Helsing, and Harry Potter 3. Sue me.
And yes, I will ignore that other one I just reviewed.

The movie stars Benicio Del Toro, a Shakespearean actor who is sent back to his home for his brothers funeral. Some people think it is from the trained dancing bear that the gypsies had (err) and others think a Werewolf (equally implausible, I guess). Wanting to get some answers himself, he goes to the gypsy camp where he is of course hurt by a werewolf, gaining its curse. Now he has to both try and live with his curse, and try to stop the man who killed his brother. His dad is played by Anthony Hopkins, his brother’s lover is Emily Blunt, and Huge Friggan Weaving busts out the mutton chops for a detective role.

The acting in this movie is fantastic. While watching it though I had no idea why a werewolf would go on a crazy rage killing spree. I always figured it was just for food, but it seemed like the werewolves were killing just for killing sake. It could also be explained by people shooting at them, but eh. Who knows.

The special effects and make up were pretty top notch. Makes sense that the film won best make up. I loved the scenery and music too. Not to mention Hugo’s mutton chops.

But overall I thought it was still lacking. Maybe it was the ending, wasn’t my favorite. Didn’t care about the main dude that much either. Probably because I am heartless, but he went for his brothers widow pretty damn quick. Predictable stuff happened also. But the asylum was also pretty damn cool. But still lacking.

Did I mention Hugo’s mutton chops yet? They’re kind of a big deal.

Why hello Spiderwick Chronicles. Good news, there are zero spiders in this movie! Which was my biggest worry. All I knew this was some fantasy kids movie, based off some book series no one has heard about.

Maybe because it only comes in giant hardback, with old pages and is bound by a spell?

The story involves Mary-Louise Parker and her 3 children moving into an old house in the woods, thanks to divorce! It used to belong their great aunt, but she is in crazyland now. The twins are played by Freddie Highmore, who was Charlie in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. One of the twins was all rawr Divorce and angry, the other is a smart pacifist. Anyways, rambuctions twin discovers a book of fairies.

Now, for some reason, if this book about fairies (made by Spiderwick. They are his Chronicles) gets taken by Goblins, everyone will die. Some plot points were awkward. Like them trying to destroy the book, instead of Goblins. I mean, what? A great book of knowledge, and they just wanted to end it?

Nick Nolte plays the Ogre shape shifter king of the Goblins dude, while voices are provided by Seth Rogen (a hobgoblin) and Martin Short (I dunno? A House Elf or something?). Seth Rogen just likes voice acting now, with Monsters vs Aliens and Paul.

So overall, the story was interesting though. Of course no idea how it is to the books, but who cares? The CGI seemed to only be creature based, which is nice. I liked the look of the goblins. Kinda cute in a rawrawrawrgnashgnash kind of way.

“You must pay the troll’s toll if you want to get into this boy’s soul!”

Water For Elephants is based off of a book of the same name. In fact, a year ago I almost read that book! But when I realized that the only people I knew who read it were women, I decided to investigate more. Last thing I wanted to do was read a romance novel, yeuch! But by doing research, I found out that a movie was happening, so like a real American, I decided to watch the movie instead of read the book.

I thought the movie would be two hours of this. A sequel to African Cats.

Instead, much to my delight, this movie stars an older and more rugged Robert Pattison (or Edward Cullen). Seriously, the look he has almost reminds me of how Leonardo DiCaprio looks now, post Titanic. Dude might be a star yet.

In the movie, Edward Cullen just wants to be a Vet. Almost graduated from Cornell, but left college once both of his parents died. No longer wealthy (turns out the dad was scammin’), he runs away, and gets picked up by a circus! Starting out as hard laborer, once they find out about his college schooling, he becomes a vet for the horses and elephant. He also falls in love with Reese Witherspoon, who is married to the head honcho, Christoph Waltz.

So. The whole movie deals with life as a Carnie in the early 1900s. You get to see animal abuse, shady tactics, and a lot of people getting beat up. An absurd amount almost. I think my favorite role was Waltz as the owner. Really good acting there. Cullen still was kind of just the pretty boy savior role. There was also a small role for Paul Schneider at the beginning and end of the movie. Who, if you watch Parks and Rec, know he is the coolest guy around.

Mark Brendanawicz! Well. Cool until season 3+. We don’t talk about that though.

Overall, the story was very simple and pretty guessable. Some good acting, but mostly just normal expected stuff. I am watching the credits now, they are doing a very classic take on it, weirding me out. It was kind of good, kind of alright.

Trespass is one of those words that just looks misspelled to me always. Trespass. Treespas? Tresspass? Just all look wrong.

Trespass however tells the story of a nice rich family! The dad (Nick Cage) deals with diamonds, not the blood kind, the normal legal ones. His wife (Nicole Kidman) just loves that money, and their daughter is probably spoiled, but at least has good morals (Liana Liberato).

I heard she has less morals in Trust, but I haven’t reviewed it yet, so who knows.

Long story short, she sneaks out of the house to go to the party, and the parents get held up at gun point in their own home. FROM TRESPASSERS. Three men and a lady, guns, mask, all black. They’ve been working on this for months (expected the kid to be home) and need that sexy diamond money / diamonds. Cam Gigandet is one of those bad people, and he has been in a bunch of movies lately.

Longer story short, fuck Joel Schumacher.

I was generally interested in this movie. But after awhile, not only did I get bored, but aggravated. There is a twist limit. A few are good. But every couple minutes another “Twist” (coupled with more of the happy married couple getting beaten) did not entertain, just annoy. Because after a few twists, if they keep coming, you can no long accept the new twist as real. Then its just, “get to the fucking point already”. Because when you are on a rollercoaster of twists, you can just blank out and wait for the last one and be good.

I give it an okay rating, just because I was interested in the beginning. Some of Cage’s yelling scenes were good. This movie just goes to show (over and over and over again) that everyone lies.

Everyone.

This is not a Hollywood original movie. I am flabbergasted at this notion. It is based off a French movie from the previous millennium in 1998. The Dinner Game. How dare you, Hollywood.

Okay that is fake anger. Dinner for Schmucks is the American version and therefore the better version, amirite?

This is the most American picture I could find.

Paul Rudd plays 6th floor Stock Broker or something like that. He keeps proposing to his woman, but she won’t accept it. He just wants to move up in his company. Thankfully, he gets his first opportunity, but the boss is a weirdo. Once a month he hosts a dinner party where everyone brings one amazing guest. And by Amazing, we mean weird. And the “weirdest” individual gets a trophy, and the person who found him gets bonuses.

Then Steve Carell comes crashing into his life! He then has to spend the next few days with Steve as he seems to ruin his life. Also featured in this movie are Zach Galifianakis, Lucy Punch (who was just in Bad Teacher), and Kristen Schaal. But more importantly, Jemaine Clement.

Jemaine is nothing like his normal New Zealander self (from Flight of the Conchords). He plays some other type of foreigner, has no glasses, long hair, and just continued to make me laugh.

He is an artist!

But yeah. Yes Steve is very annoying, but he plays the character well. Some scenes I felt were too long or unnecessary. The Brunch scene was too excessive. I am glad the whole movie wasn’t the dinner, only about the last 20 minutes. Definitely didn’t see it coming. But I did laugh. Despite half of the humor being pretty stupid. I did laugh.

I almost forgot! Chris O’Dowd is in this movie, and plays the great blind fencer. His roles are always way too good. I have to watch The IT Crowd now.