Tag: Comedy

Jim Rash and Nat Faxon wrote The Descendants, and graced our screens with its presence in 2011. It was nominated for Best Picture and eventually won Best Adapted Screenplay. It basically made these writers pretty hot commodities.

That is why I was excited to see The Way, Way Back, their next film. No George Clooney this time, but they have plenty of other actors to fill his void.

Look, here are three now!

Summer can suck. Especially if you are Duncan (Liam James). Your parents are divorced, your dad just moved from NY to CA, and your mom (Toni Collette) is dating the biggest douche in the universe, Trent (Steve Carell). Unfortunately for Duncan, he has to head out to Trent’s summer beach house to pretend to give this new family idea a chance.

Did I mention Trent is a douche? He talks down to Duncan, constantly goes off with his friends (Rob Corddry, Amanda Peet) to get drunk or high or both. It is basically his personal summer vacation, where Duncan and his mom are afterthoughts.

But eventually, Duncan finds friendship in the local Water Park. Slacker manager Owen (Sam Rockwell) has decided to take pity on Duncan, give him a job and help him find a purpose in this long dreadful summer. With the help of Owen and the other workers (Maya Rudolph, Faxon, Rash), Duncan learns that there are non sucky things out there in life.

That is great, sure, but will this new found joy in life at all help him with his horrible home situation? Will it help him woo over the neighbor girl (AnnaSophia Robb), who has to deal with her constantly drunk mother (Allison Janney)?

Oh god. He is staring into my soul. What do I do!? Just act natural. Ho hum…AHHH!

Comedy/Drama movies are actually quite hard to pull off successfully. After all, even the strictest of dramas tend to have some minor elements in comedy, and vice versa. But most movies labeled in this category are clearly still one genre over the other, or even worse, weak in both areas to try and find a balance. One of the best examples I could list of a real comedy/drama would be 50/50, a film that made me both laugh and cry.

Nat Faxon and Jim Rash wrote a decent comedy/drama with The Descendants, very enjoyable, but it could have been more dramatic. For The Way, Way Back, they decided to amp up their game, and created a much better film. Not going to lie, I cried three times during it. I can’t say I relate specifically to the scenes in this film, but thanks to an excellent build up with terrific acting from everyone on the cast, the emotions quickly took over.

Steve Carell had to play the biggest jerk in the world, and he pulled it off well. It was quite surprising. Sam Rockwell and Allison Janney carried the comedy for me, while at the same time their characters felt real. Everyone felt real. I love real, even though real characters lead to uncomfortable moments.

Major props as well to Liam James. I can’t say I recognized him in anything before, however he pulled off the awkward/lonely teenager role really well. But hey, apparently he was Young Shawn in the Psych flashbacks, so that is kind of cool.

 

4 out of 4.

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.

4 out of 4.

When it was released, Red received pretty decent reviews from critics but didn’t do amazing at the box office. It made up for it in DVD/Blu-Ray sales though, gaining a small cult following, which is why they green-lit the sequel, surprisingly named Red 2.

The main notable difference between the two is that this one doesn’t have Morgan Freeman. For shame.

Although, as you can see from the picture, it has a lot of John Malkovich being very very John Malkovichy.

The movie begins with Frank (Bruce Willis) and Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) trying to build a home together. Frank is retired (and still extremely dangerous) but he wants to put his past behind him. Too bad Marvin (John Malkovich) comes prancing in, warning him that he thinks someone is trying to kill them.

Well, it turns out there actually are people trying to kill them! Reports have surfaced that they are nuclear terrorists, who are trying to take out Russia. In fact, the CIA are trying to take them in, including their main man Jack Horton (Neal McDonough, who looks like the white Robert Ri’chard), who has hired the world’s best assassin Han Cho Bai (Byung-hun Lee). The MI6 are sending their old friend Victoria (Helen Mirren), and Russia has Frank’s former fling, Katja (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Sarah doesn’t like Katja.

So Frank, Sarah, and Marvin have to work together and find Dr. Bailey (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant war scientist who has been kept in the loony bin for over thirty years. Together, they hope to clear their name, and possibly stop a nuclear bomb from taking out a huge populatio of the world.

I decided to not talk about John Malkovich with my second image.

I don’t think you need to see Red in order to understand Red 2. All you have to know is that Frank and Sarah met in the first film, and everyone else has a huge history with everyone else. If you had to only pick one to watch, go with the original.

Red 2 isn’t bad per say, but it just doesn’t seem to care too much. Sure, it is entertaining, and funny at times, but not a lot happens overall. They are framed fugitives being hunted by the top governments around the world, yet they still have time to walk around Paris and go shopping. It just seemed odd and ruined the flow of the movie for me. The ending chase scene ended up being really predictable as well.

Red 2, just like R.I.P.D. had its enjoyable moments and was entertaining, just not something I would ever recommend to see more than once. I think Red 2 is not really based on the graphic novel like the first movie. Instead it is based on whatever the writer felt like. I usually don’t care how close a movie is to its source material, but I think in this case, they really didn’t know what to do with their characters. Because of that, it just felt like a mess.

John Malkovich is brilliant as always, and a bit more insane than normal. Malkovich is the main reason to see Red 2, and the only real reason.

2 out of 4.

Don’t worry readers, I am not about to spend a whole review explaining why R.I.P.D. (Trailer) just looks like a rehash of Men In Black. From the grumbles I heard in theaters during the trailer, I realized everyone had already figured it out on their own.

Technically R.I.P.D. is based off of a graphic novel of the same name, but it didn’t publish until after the first two MIB movies came out. Regardless, it seems like Universal itself doesn’t care about this movie with limited promotion and refusing early showings for critics. Generally when critics can’t get early showings things are going badly.

That facial hair from Bridges is not the something bad though. Nick (Ryan Reynolds) is a member of the Boston PD, and finds himself dead unexpectedly during a raid. Man, dying sure does suck. He gets pulled up to what he thinks is heaven and runs into…a Proctor (Mary-Louise Parker). What? Were you expecting Jesus? She offers him a choice. He can either go straight to Judgement and find out his fate for eternity, or join the Rest In Peace Department, serve for 100 years, and get a recommendation before Judgement.

Given Nick’s somewhat corrupt cop nature, he chooses to join the force. The R.I.P.D. are sent down to Earth to round up those who have died and refuse to pass on, as they slowly corrupt everything around them. Roy (Jeff Bridges) is a lawman from the 1800s, and reluctantly takes Nick under his wing.

Too bad the deadoes are also working on building an artifact to bring all the dead entities back to earth, and end the world. Good thing Nick just died and can try and stop it!

Kevin Bacon plays Nick’s old partner, Stephanie Szostak is Nick’s wife, and James Hong and Marisa Miller play Nick and Roy’s avatars while they are on earth. A joke that most certainly gets old really fast.

This joke might have gotten pretty old real quick. R.I.P.D. is not as bad as the trailers will have you believe. Sure, it has a lot to work on, and it could have been a lot better, but still, it isn’t complete trash. Critics just tend to give lower ratings to movies that they don’t get to see for free.

As for our leading man Ryan Reynolds, I thought he was really weak in this movie. Sure, his character just died, and he has a lot of angst, but I didn’t believe any of it in this movie. He was supposed to be pissed off the entire movie, but he just seemed passive aggressive and pouty.

Jeff Bridges was over the top in this movie, but it really did work. It was strange at first, having his era specific dialogue mixed in with the modern dialogue of everyone else. Once you got over that fact, basically everything he said was gold. I will give props to Mary-Louise Parker as well, who didn’t really have a lot to work with for her role yet still made it her own. She was in two different movies released this week (Red 2), and thankfully her characters were completely different.

The movie felt really short, and the ending was wrapped up pretty nicely with a bow, by ignoring pretty huge plot points. If you have monstrous beings running around Boston, blocking off whole intersections, with giant vacuum like holes appearing in the sky and taking out infrastructure, you are going to have hundreds of thousands of dead. After the initial appearance of bad guys, the streets became miraculously clear and no humans seemed to die. Great!

R.I.P.D. caused me to laugh on numerous occasions, but in general, the plot and acting from Reynolds felt really weak. It is at best a little bit entertaining, but not something I’d ever watch again.

2 out of 4.

Turbo is the latest example of a kids movie following a very standard formula. Let’s take some sort of entity and either a) give them an impossible dream (and reach it!), or b) give them some ridiculous flaw (and overcome it!). Like a bird who doesn’t know how to fly. Or a plane that is afraid of heights (and wants to race). Or an overweight comedian who wants to box. Or a snail who wants to race in the Indy 500. Oh wait, that one is Turbo!

Fuck. Let’s get this over with. Turbo (Ryan Reynolds) is a snail! He has big dreams. He wants to go fast, and is the fastest snail he knows. In fact, he just did the yard in 17 minutes, a new personal record. He dreams of entering the Indy 500, thanks to words of advice from his hero Guy Gagne (Bill Hader), who claims that no dream is too big. His brother Chet (Paul Giamatti) thinks his dream is stupid, rightfully so.

Well, eventually Turbo falls into a car engine and gets coated with NOS, transforming his DNA and giving him incredible speed! This also somehow turns him partially into a car, with headlights, radio, rear review lights and stuff. Not sure how that second part happened. Even more eventually, Chet and Turbo find themself caught by Tito (Michael Pena), a down on his luck Taco maker. He works for his older brother (Luis Guzman) and their business is not doing well. Why did Turbo decide to not run away as soon as they were captured? No idea. But he could have.

Luckily, Tito is all into snail racing. Turns out Turbo is stupid fast and he wants to use Turbo to get more business. A very noble cause. So they set off to enter him into the Indy 500, for exposure. Nowadays kids would just make a YouTube video and become famous that way.

Oh yeah, Turbo has his own snail crew to back him up now. There is Whiplash (Samuel L. Jackson), Smoove Move (Snoop Dogg), Burn (Maya Rudolph), Skidmark (Ben Schwartz), and White Shadow (Mike Bell). Of course Ken Jeong voices a tiny Asian nail technician.

This movie is about to get fucked. Seriously. No mercy. Cover your eyes if you don’t like violent imagery.Let’s start with some factual errors. Why? Because they matter to me. I am a Masters Geophysics Student, and the sloppiness bugged me. Basically I am going to be super critical.

Turbo made a big deal about getting a yard in 17 minutes. I know it was a yard, because they showed the measuring stick briefly. However, 36 inches in 17 minutes is really slow. Like, really really slow. That is why I went over to WolframAlpha to convert it. Seriously check the link.

WolframAlpha is so amazing it compared the velocity calculated to the the velocity of a garden snail automatically and it is about 33% the speed of the actual garden snail. Great, we have a snail that is statistically slower than most garden snails. Let’s say that factual error can be ignored, fine. Unfortunately, almost every other point in the movie (pre-genetic manipulation), Turbo and other snails are still shown with greater velocities than his trial. Unless it was important to the plot that is (see: the tomato/lawn mower scene).

Come on now, consistency.

[Editor’s note: Apparently IRL and F1 are different things, but similar vehicles. I just know them as “Not NASCAR”. Point still stands, basically.]
The ending bugged me a lot as well. As it is a car race, it involved a pile up of cars real close to the finish. At this point, Turbo and Guy go into a “foot race” type of situation for the finish like, similar to Talladega Nights.  But according to official Formula 1 racing rules (here and here specifically), none of it would count and the whole thing feels pointless.

Let’s get to the most important part of the movie. This plot is inherently stupid and bad. I didn’t read the full rules for the Formula 1 racing, so I can’t confirm if there is no rule that would disallow a snail. However, the concept behind it can only be described as cheating and a snail would never be allowed to race in such an event. They have very specific standards for the size of the vehicles, type of protection they need, everything you can possibly imagine. The snail’s dimensions do not match a car’s dimensions. For an extreme example, it’d be like using a Ferrari. Or like doping.

At one point during the race, the announcer screams that he can’t believe Turbo is passing a car from below. I am fine with his reaction, because Turbo is basically cheating. But the announcer is surprised instead that he could fit, even though Formula 1 cars have about 4.5 inches of room underneath them, while a garden snail is at most 1.5 inches tall.

If you hadn’t figured out by now, Guy is the villain of this movie, but only because he wants to win the race too. Just like the other 30ish humans in the race, all doing it without cheating.

I laughed I think a total of two times. The laziness of the plot, the laziness of the details, and the laziness of the character development ruined this movie for me. To quote Eleanor Roosevelt. “America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed.” Turbo would not have lived up to the former First Lady’s opinions on America or Racing.

 

1 out of 4.

Here are some facts about Adam Sandler!

Adam Sandler has never made a sequel to any of his movies before Grown Ups 2. He has been in one sequel before, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, but he wasn’t in the first film, and he obviously didn’t make, direct, or star in it.

Who would have thought that Adam Sandler secretly had some standards? He only works with new(ish) ideas. That is unless his film makes a lot of money, like Grown Ups did.

Okay, that is really just one long fact about Adam Sandler. Sorry if you expected more.

The scene from the trailer where he says “Your car is filthy” is cut out. Disappointment. The movie takes place soon after Grown Ups, except now in a small town! Lenny (Sandler) has moved his family away from Los Angeles for a quieter and simpler life. Long story short, Grown Ups 2 is a day in his and his friends life.

Lenny’s wife (Salma Hayek) wants to discuss having a fourth kid. Marcus (David Spade) just realized he has a son who is visiting him today. Kurt (Chris Rock) wants to celebrate his 20th wedding anniversary, but his wife (Maya Rudolph) forgot. And uhh, Eric (Kevin James) really loves his mother and hides that fact from his wife (Maria Bello)? One of his kids might be dumb? His part doesn’t really have a plot.

There are other characters too. Like Nick Swardson, playing some sort of extremely drugged out bus rider. Or Taylor Lautner, leader of the frat boys, with assistance from Milo Ventimiglia.

Sorry agian, but I think that is the best plot description I can give of this film. Honestly, it feels like it is a skit movie. The plot is basically childish adults hanging out, so most of the scenes are really unrelated. It isn’t set up like a traditional skit movie, like the recent Movie 43, but it feels like it could be a long strange episode of Saturday Night Live. Or a live action Family Guy.

The amount of cameos in this movie only helps that stigma. Here is a big list! There is Colin Quinn, Tim Meadows, Steve Buscemi, Jon Lovitz, Shaquille O’Neal, Steve Austin, Dan Patrick, Aly Michalka, Andy Samberg, Will Forte, and even Paulina Gretzky, daughter of (of course) Wayne Gretzky.

Yet no Rob Schneider. Where the heck did he go from the first movie?

I say some shocking things in this review about Mr. Lautner. Read on to find out! D: D:There is a lot wrong from this movie. All the jokes are extremely low-brow, almost 100% poop and sex jokes. In fact, there were so many sex related jokes that I was surprised this movie was rated PG-13 still.

It just felt bad overall. Yes, I still found some of the scenes humorous, but because it was put together so badly and without any context, it just left a rank taste in my mouth. There might have been ten minutes worth of plot. Maybe.

The CGI was out of place in this movie too. The Moose didn’t look real, nor did the “tire rolling down the hill” scene. It almost felt like a cartoon, in that people were doing things that should have killed them, but they were completely fine afterwards.

The ending itself is lazy humor. I am describing it as slap stick to the extreme, as it ends with all the adults in a literal fist fight with a group of frat boys, and kicking there butt. I do mean all the adults, as in everyone linked to above. The ending of the movie is just a long brawl.

Speaking of the frat boys, Taylor Lautner was literally the best part of this movie, and he had a huge role as the main villain, with tons of dialogue. Yet he wasn’t even listed in the credits? What? Six different frat boys were credited, only two of which had real names, but not the main frat guy.

Just an example why this whole film was a mess. That and the unexplained disappearance of Rob Schneider.

 

1 out of 4.

I’d argue that there are two really “big” coming of age indie movies competing for top dog status this summer. The bigger of the two is The Way, Way Back, as it was written by the same guys who brought us The Descendants a couple years ago. The lesser known movie is The Kings of Summer, written by Chris Galletta, who is writing his first movie.

If you are surprised that we have a first time movie writer, stop it. They are called indie films for a reason.

Indie films tend to include forest dance scenes and drum solos, right? Being in high school can suck. Why? Well, your life is changing, you feel like an adult, but you still live with your parents. You just might lash out against your parents. Like Joe (Nick Robinson). His mom died a long time ago, and his dad (Nick Offerman) is now dating. He is also a bastard and has become very strict in his single parent raising. His sister (Alison Brie) has already moved on, but he is stuck with him for at least three years more.

Patrick (Gabriel Brasso, from The Big C) has a different problem. His parents (Marc Evan Jackson, Megan Mullally) are over bearing. Not in any mean way, just nice. Way too nice. Really fucking nice. Also they are ridiculous, it is just hard to feel alive under their care.

Eventually, Joe has the idea to build a house in the woods. Not just some lame tree house either. A real house, with two stories, multiple rooms, and they can live there, by their own rules, live like MEN. You know, hunt their own food, boil their own water, the whole nine yards. Biaggio (Moises Arias) is there too, neither of them really know him, but they are afraid to tell him to leave.

We have a few kids, building a house in the woods, and attempting to live on their own. They of course will also discover a bit about themselves, their family, and maybe what it means to be a man. Potentially with the help of Kelly (Erin Moriarty), a fellow high school buddy. We also have Mary Lynn Rajskub (most well known as Heartfire from season 4 of Arrested Development) and Thomas Middleditch as the head cops on the missing kids case.

The race to grow the best pedo-stashe is on. Coming of age films tend to be hit or miss with me. They are popular for both indie and mainstream movies, so to have a great one nowadays, you really have to offer up something new. Not just another misunderstood kid with big dreams.

The Kings of Summer takes the running away story, and well, runs away with it. For the first time movie writer, his dialogue was pretty top notch. Full of memorable quotes, I found myself looking for a piece of paper in the theater just to write some of the absurdly funny things I heard.

Witty comedy doesn’t make a complete film however, so the plot has to also stand on its own. I was afraid I would be dealing with a lot of teens who thought they were god’s gift to suburbia, the standard definition of first world problems. Thankfully, I found myself agreeing with Patrick and Joe, at least a little bit, and thought leaving home made sense for both characters.

It wasn’t perfect though. No, I would have changed the ending a lot. It was a bit too cliche at that point, which made it feel off from the rest of the movie. I am also pissed off by the romance element in the film, although it is more at the naivety of youth, and not for being actually bad. In other words, it hurt me square in the feels.

But despite that, The Kings Of Summer is wickedly funny and unique. For sure, it is worthy of at least one viewing, if not two in your summer line up.

3 out of 4.

Despicable Me 2 might make the most money out of any CGI movie this summer, so it is kind of a big deal. But does it deserve that money?

The kid vote does not count, damn it. Despicable Me 2 starts us off soon after the first film. Gru (Steve Carell) is no longer a big bad villain because he has three kid to take care of, and he has had a change of heart. In fact, he has turned his whole secret laboratory into a secret jelly making factory, complete with free minion workers. With overheads that low, he can really make a splash in the market.

Unfortunately, the change in operation has left Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand) with no joy in his life, so he leaves Gru to pursue other opportunities. Speaking of pursuing other opportunities, Gru gets kidnapped by the Anti-Villain League. Silas Ramsbottom (Steve Coogan) wants Gru to lead an investigation on a disappearing arctic base that is researching chemicals that can cause ordinary creatures to become terrible beasts.

He would also get a new partner on the case, young and bubbly Lucy Wilde (Kristen Wiig). Oh yeah, she totally has the hots for him, too. This movie is mostly about Gru as a single dad and afraid to date. This provides many scenes of him avoiding the neighbors and awkwardly flirting with Lucy. Sure, maybe the world is threatened if this formula gets in the wrong hands, but love is also important.

Benjamin Bratt leads his vocals for El Macho / the mysterious Salsa Dancing restaurant owner who looks like El Macho, Ken Jeong as a mysteriously short wig salesman, and Kristen Schaal as a mysteriously well endowed blind date for Gru.

Spoiler, he does not choose the well endowed blind date by the end. Illumination Entertainment made the original Despicable Me in 2010, and is what they are most known for. That is because before Despicable Me 2, they have only made two other films, The Lorax and Hop, both ridiculous flops (and a bit terrible). So it makes sense they are already doing a sequel, and are releasing a spin-off titled just Minions in December 2014. What doesn’t make sense is how they have the rights to so many Dr. Seuss based movies down the pipe line, when they did so badly with their first chance.

Speaking of the Minions, did you love them from the first movie? They were arguably the best part of the first film, and quite cute. They have made sure that they advertise the fuck out of these minions for the sequel and eventual spinoff.

Basically, everywhere I look, there is a Minion based toy, gizmo, commercial, because “Hey, they are cute!” They recognize the best part, gave us a movie with potential for rich new characters, but then threw minions at our faces until we had to get new 3D Glasses. There is an overabundance of minions in this movie. They are in every scene, part of every plot point, and potentially in this movie more than Gru. It turns the entire movie into mostly slapstick based humor instead of witty jokes, which doesn’t help rewatchability or entertainment.

Basically I believe the main character is pushed out of the spotlight, similar to how Cars 2 was handled. At no point in the movie is he even considered despicable. In fact, he is rather admired and chased by women, loved by his family, and just a good guy. The plot is really straightforward, and you will figure out the main bad guy well before the reveal. The bad chemical itself was inconsistent with how it works, where it could have been fixed with a sentence of dialogue.

Long story short, Despicable Me 2 is not really about Gru trying to save the world from a threat (although he does that as well) it is more about Gru the single dad finding love. With minions. So many minions.

 

1 out of 4.

Sync up your William Tell Overture Finale folks, it’s The Lone Ranger time.

Although I never listened to the original radio series, or watched the TV series, or other movies, The Lone Ranger himself is pretty ingrained in American Pop Culture. A hero to the old American West, and a franchise that Jerry Bruckheimer has decided to take under his wing. After all, if it proves to be a success, he could release a new Ranger movie every three years, similar to his current Pirates of the Caribbean trek. Just think of how much money Johnny Depp will make from both franchises, too.

If explosions were dollar bills…

In Colby, Texas, the great American Railroad is coming through, bringing prosperity and happiness to the small town. Their goal is to connect the East with the West. John Reid (Armie Hammer), a district attorney from the big cities, is returning to his hometown to reconnect with his brother and brother’s wife, Rebecca (Ruth Wislon).

What poor John did not know, is that also on that train was famed bandit cannibal Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner), who is finally going to be hanged for his crime. There is also this Indian named Tonto (Johnny Depp), but he is a bit more mysterious. After a train robbery, Butch is back on the run, and it is up to John Reid, his brother, and a gang of lawmen to bring him back for justice.

Until something goes wrong. Terribly, deadly wrong. Somehow, John is saved, and Tonto explains to him that he is a spirit walker, who cannot be killed according to his beliefs. Tonto also wants to bring Butch to justice, so they team up to right wrongs and save the day! Speaking of trains, Tom Wilkinson plays Cole, the railroad tycoon, and Helena Bonham Carter a bordello mistress. Fun fact, this is the first time Carter and Depp have been in a film together that was not directed by Tim Burton.

It is also the first time Depp has worked with this horse.

After watching The Lone Ranger, I really just want to listen to famous, old classical music. Major props to Hans Zimmer for rocking out another great movie soundtrack, something I don’t bring up a lot in my reviews.

I will start with the negatives first. This movie is 149 minutes long. What! A lot of the film is set up, in order to introduce us to the character before he dons the mask, a little bit about Tonto, and a whole lot about his brother and his old town. It is necessary, I guess, but it could have easily been shortened. The film uses the method of unreliable narrator, as a much older Tonto is telling the story on how he first met John. The idea itself is a neat one (and allows for more crazy situations) but the method of delivery just feels hokey to me.

Thankfully, the positives far outweigh the negatives. Hammer and Depp have great chemistry. Tonto is not just a secondary character but an equally important one. They have the appropriate throw backs to the original series while also doing their own thing.

But the best part of the movie is by far the climactic train ending. The final chase is incredibly long, but so meticulously planned and detailed that it was hard to stop smiling the entire time. The director had many gorgeous shots of the landscape, like a classic western, including setting parts of it in the Monument Valley as a different type of throwback.

The movie will also give you plenty of screen time with Armie Hammer, who is currently rumored to be the new Ant-Man or Dr. Strange, upcoming heroes/movies Phase 3 of the Marvel Universe.

Although this film has had many negative reviews, I’d say give it a chance. Especially if you have three hours (movie and preview) to waste on these hot summer nights.

 

3 out of 4.

The Miami Heat recently won their second consecutive NBA championship. A lot of people don’t like them, but that has nothing to do with this movie.

The Heat (Trailer) is a female buddy cop movie, following the style of most buddy cop movies before it. Two completely different people, having to work together for some bureaucratic reason. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.

Oh yeah, they also definitely won’t get along for most of the film.

FBI Special Agent Sarah Ashburn (Sandra Bullock) has closed more cases than any other agent in the last few years. So when news comes out that her boss (Demian Bichir) is getting promoted, she realizes that his spot is now up for grabs. Too bad she is arrogant and selfish, so much that no one else wants to work on her. Being a boss is more than being smart.

So she is sent up to Boston, to find out the secret identity of this really big drug dealer dude. In Boston, Detective Shannon Mullins (Melissa McCarthy) had just apprehended a small time drug dealer (Spoken Reasons), but she doesn’t realize that he is just a pawn in the chain. She also doesn’t care, because Ashburn is a [not nice woman]. Chain of command is stupid if people are going to be mean about it.

Eventually the two realize they have to work together if they are going to get anywhere, or else the bad guys win. Marlon Wayans has a small role as another FBI agent, Michael McDonald as a bad guy, and Michael Rapaport as a brother of Mullins. Basically only “M-named” actors.

Bullock is packed with guns in this movie. I don’t mean those things that fire bullets either.

Surprisingly, Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy had pretty good chemistry together even though one is a veteran actress, the other a relative newcomer to the scene. Melissa McCarthy has actually had roles in movies since 1999 (the cult hit Go), she just didn’t get really noticed until her roles in Bridesmaids and Mike & Molly. I recognize her comedy talent, I just personally think her improv isn’t as good as others might.

For example, watch the trailer. Roughly 1 minute in, she has a tiny rant to a guard in a prison, something clearly improvised and it is supposed to sound menacing/threatening, but it actually makes no sense. There is nothing humorous about it once you actually analyze it. I have only had the time to analyze it, because The Heat has only had one trailer since they started showing it roughly in November.

Thankfully the version that was in the movie was a bit better, but there were a few more examples of improv from her that just missed the mark completely.

On its own it was a decent buddy cop movie. Each successive new one just tries to outdo the last one with a new gimmick. Unfortunately this one’s “gimmick” is that they are women, which is a terrible thing to say out loud but it is true. The Heat at least earns its R-rating thanks to the words that come out of McCarthy’s mouth. The good news for those who absolutely loved the movie is that the sequel has already been announced. While it has its funny moments, I think it doesn’t stand out on its own to really differentiate it from any other buddy cop movie.

 

2 out of 4.