Movie Reviews: Courageous Lions Sure Kill Dreams!

More movie reviews!  That’s three consecutive days of movie reviews now and I’m sure you are getting tired of them.  But it’s like a sickness.  I just can’t stop watching movies!  Anyway, I saw The Lion King 3D a few weeks ago but completely forgot about it until now.  I think it’s because it’s not a “new” movie.  But the other three were all within the past week.  In fact, I saw Courageous just yesterday.  Now I can say that I’ve seen every movie currently playing at the theater I work at!  Is that impressive or pathetic?

The Lion King 3D AWESOME!

Who hasn’t seen Disney’s 1994 hit The Lion King?  I’m pretty sure the vast majority probably even owns it on VHS or DVD somewhere.  Yet Disney’s re-release of Simba’s story to the big screen—this time in 3D—was pretty breathtaking to behold!  The 3D was tasteful and really helped me to appreciate the beauty of the animation and the drama of the tale.  Featuring great voice talent (Matthew Broderick, James Earl Jones, Jeremy Irons, Nathan Lane and Whoopi Goldberg to name a few), spectacular songs by Tim Rice and Elton John and a score by Hans Zimmer, this movie is well worth a revisit!

Dream House AVERAGE

Daniel Craig stars as Will Atenton, a man who has left the city and just bought his dream house with his wife Libby (Rachel Weisz) and two young daughters.  Everything seems perfect, until they discover their new home was once the crime scene of a brutal murder.  The only one who seems to know anything about it is their neighbor Ann (Naomi Watts).  Things get even weirder as the movie progresses, and the final plot twist was completely underwhelming.  Dream House, written by screenwriter David Loucka and directed by Jim Sheridan, isn’t scary or particularly inventive.  It’s kind of like last year’s Shutter Island, just less good.

Killer Elite AVERAGE

Jason Statham plays Danny, a retired special-ops agent, who is forced to kill again when his mentor Hunter (Robert DeNiro) is taken captive by a sheik.  If Danny can assassinate three individuals responsible for the deaths of the man’s three sons, Hunter will be let free.  Things of course get complicated, especially since the leader of a secret military group (Clive Owen) is hot on Danny’s tracks.  The movie wasn’t fantastic by any means, but there was solid action that kept the movie going, especially one particular sequence where Statham manages to fight two guys off while tied to a chair.  Pretty cool stuff if you turn your brain off for a while.

Courageous ADMIRABLE

Alex Kendrick is the writer, director and leading actor of this Christian film about a group of cops who make a pact to become better fathers after Adam (Kendrick’s character) loses his daughter in a terrible accident.  While at times laying on the cheese in cringe-worthy doses—especially with a storyline involving a Hispanic man and his wife, who incidentally cannot act worth a hill of beans—the message was very spiritual and impactful if not subtle.  Overcoming my cynical inclinations, I found myself enjoying this movie greatly despite its flaws.  The film courageously campaigns for more Christlike parenting in the world today, and that’s something I can get behind.

You can read Brian's review of Dream House at his blog Addiction to Film.

Love movies?  Check out my Movie Page!

Movie Reviews: We Drew Straws, and 50 is Your Number

Continuing with yesterday's post, today I am posting three more movie reviews!  I bet you are just riddled with joy.  Or not. Straw Dogs was already out a couple of weeks when I saw it, but both What's Your Number? (which I saw at the midnight showing, actually) and 50/50 just came out this weekend.  I saw the first two with Michelle, but Brian came with me to see 50/50.  You can read his review of the movie at his blog Addiction to Film.

Straw Dogs AVERAGE

James Marsden plays David Sumner, a screenwriter from LA who moves with his wife Amy (Kate Bosworth) to her hometown in the south.  Tension between Sumner and the locals begins to brew almost immediately, especially with Amy’s ex-boyfriend Charlie (Alexander Skarsgard) who still lusts after her.  The movie is a disturbing look at how far you can push someone, and involves a rape scene that is very unsettling—partly because it’s filmed in a sexy manner.  Kate Bosworth was the weakest component to this picture, in my opinion, because I never understood or really believed any of her character’s actions.  From what I hear, the original movie was much better.

What’s Your Number? AVERAGE

Anna Faris can be really funny, but sometimes she falls short.  I think in this movie she fell a little short.  While What’s Your Number? had quite a few laughs and chuckles, it wasn’t nearly as funny as say, Bridesmaids (the opening sequences are almost identical), which had me laughing in hysterics.  Faris plays Ally Darling, a woman who is concerned that she’s had sex with too many men, so she tries to look back at her exes and see if one of them might really be the one after all.  Her neighbor, Colin (Chris Evans) helps her out on her quest and I don’t think it’s a “spoiler alert” to say that the two fall in love.  It’s a chick flick, people.  We all saw this coming.  The movie, however, is pretty darn cute and both stars show lots of skin if that’s what you’re into!

50/50 AWESOME!

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars in this dramatic comedy as Adam, a 27-year-old guy who discovers—quite unexpectedly—that he has cancer.  His best friend Kyle (Seth Rogen) does his best to keep Adam’s life happy, mostly by trying to get him laid after his girlfriend Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard) cracks under the pressure and leaves him.  His mother (Anjelica Huston) wants to take care of him, naturally, but it’s ultimately his psychiatrist-in-training Katherine (Anna Kendrick) who helps him to deal with everything.  50/50, written by Will Reiser and directed by Jonathan Levine, manages to infuse quite a lot of genuine humor into a pretty bleak subject and the result is a very real and relatable story of human mortality.

Love movies?  Check out my MoviePage!

Movie Reviews: I Don't Know How She Abducts the Dolphin's Money

I have seen a lot of movies within the past week and I have a certain friend who has been nagging at me to get my reviews posted... so here they are!  Well, some of them.  There are so many that I didn't want to lump them all into one gargantuan post, so I'll be doing them in groups.  Two of these four movies were just plain awful, one was really cute and one was flat-out terrific.

I Don’t Know How She Does It AWFUL

Sarah Jessica Parker plays Kate Reddy who juggles a busy business career and a family.  So how does she do it?  Well, she doesn’t.  She’s sort of a frenzied mess, and so is this movie by director Douglas McGrath and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna.  It’s a comedy geared for women that is not once funny or particularly moving.  In fact, it’s really dull and has nothing interesting to say about the working mom, even though the characters talk and talk and talk and unnecessarily give interviews to the camera.

Abduction AWFUL

Taylor Lautner is the cute-as-a-button boy-next-door with a nice set of abs that has no business having a career as an actor.  An underwear model?  Sure, why not.  But an actor?  Hell to the no.  In Abduction he plays teenaged Nathan who discovers his baby picture on a missing persons website and soon finds himself on the run from bad guys and CIA agents… and the result is just a lot of second-rate action sequences and abysmal acting.  This movie by director John Singleton is so bad it’s almost funny, and it somehow manages to make seasoned actors like Sigourney Weaver look like they’d be better suited for community theater.

Moneyball AWESOME!

Brad Pitt stars as Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane who feels like it is impossible to put together a winning team on such a tiny budget when all of the best players get snatched up by teams who can pay them more.  He gets an idea—sparked by Peter Brand (played by comedian Jonah Hill showing great skill in a serious role)—to draft players based off of computer-generated analysis.  Although everyone thinks he will fail, he sticks to his beliefs and revolutionizes the game of baseball.  Director Bennett Miller does a fantastic job at delivering a powerfully motivating message without ever getting cheesy, and the performances are all top-notch.

Dolphin Tale ADMIRABLE

Morgan Freeman, Harry Connick Jr. and Ashley Judd all star in this family-friendly film about a dolphin who loses her tail and the boy who never gave up on her.  Young Sawyer (Nathan Gamble) untangles the poor animal and instantly forms a bond with her.  The dolphin's story inspires many people with disabilities and helps Sawyer to come out of his shell.  There were brief moments in the film that felt overly silly or unimportant—like a crazy people-attacking pelican and a five-minute sequence of a toy helicopter zooming around the aquarium—but overall the feel-good film was heartwarming and very inspiring.

Read Brian’s reviews of I Don’tKnow How She Does It, Abduction and Moneyball on his new movie blog Addiction to Film!

Love movies?  Check out my MoviePage!

Movie Reviews: Driving is Contagious

Contagion movie poster, image property of Warner Bros.
Drive movie poster, image property of FilmDistrict.

Contagion ADMIRABLE

Director Steven Soderbergh’s thriller about a pandemic quickly killing off millions of people is stylish, straight-forward and highly entertaining from the get-go.  Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) returns from a business trip to Hong Kong feeling sick—very sick—and moments into the film she is spewing foam out of her mouth and convulsing before dying unexpectedly.  Her husband Mitch (Matt Damon) finds that he is immune to what scientists are discovering is a deadly virus with no known cure and is left to grieve while protecting his daughter (Anna Jacoby-Heron).  Meanwhile Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) and a crew of scientists and medical authorities (including Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet, Jennifer Ehle and Elliott Gould) all race against time to discover the origins of the virus and how they can best stop it.  All while blogger Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law) and the rest of the world deal with the fear of world destruction.

Contagion was a very interesting look at how connected our world is and how very easily we could all be affected by something so sinister.  The movie reveled in believability and created interesting characters and situations that could potentially arise from a pandemic of that nature.  Casting so many well-known and gifted actors really helped to give the film authority and a reason to invest ourselves in their characters, but unfortunately some of the storylines got lost along the way leaving some of the actors underused.  But aside from a few plot lines that lacked resolution, I felt that the movie did a very good job of painting a frightening—yet ultimately hopeful—depiction of the personal trauma and political banter that would derive from such a threat.

Drive AWESOME!

Director Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive is a calm, cool and collected film noir that is as gritty and brash as it is stunningly stylish and horrifically beautiful.  Ryan Gosling stars as a part-time stunt driver and mechanic who is very withdrawn and mysterious.  At nights he drives the getaway vehicles for various criminal heists—never getting involved and only driving.  But things get messy when he falls for his neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan).  Her husband Standard (Oscar Isaac) returns from prison and if he doesn’t do a job for some guys, they will come after Irene and their young son.  Gosling’s character—unnamed, mind you—agrees to drive for him, but things go awry and soon the driver must break his own rule and get involved in order to protect the woman he loves.

One of the things that I loved about Drive was that it was very controlled.  Every scene seemed necessary, every shot was given importance, and the characters weren’t overly “talky”.  It’s a nuanced film that isn’t afraid of silence, only employing a soundtrack at the crucial moments.  Another thing I loved was the beautiful photography, paying very close attention to lighting and framing.  My favorite scene takes place in an elevator and the whole thing is shot in a very surreal way, where time seems to stand still.  It’s stunning.  The scene quickly goes from dreamy and romantic to raw and brutal, and even the shocking violence is handled with an artistic flair.  Drive is simply captivating.

Read Brian’s reviews of Contagion and Drive on his new movie blog, Addiction to Film!

Love movies?  Check out my MoviePage!

Movie Reviews: Day of Warrior Sharks

Warrior movie poster, image property of Lionsgate.

Warrior AWESOME!

Warrior, co-written and directed by Gavin O’Connor, is in many ways everything you would expect from the fight movie genre.  It’s the classic underdog story where the characters—against all odds—rise up to victory.  However, Warrior manages to be a lot more than a fighting movie:  it’s a compelling family drama that is as emotionally raw as it is brutally macho.

The story is of two brothers, Brendan (Joel Edgerton) and Tommy (Tom Hardy), who haven’t seen or spoken to each other in years.  Their problems seem to center around their drunken and distant father Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte) who is riddled with grief over his past misdeeds and the broken family that resulted from them.  Tommy—an ex-Marine—shows up on his father’s doorstep unexpectedly, wanting to be trained in Mixed Martial Arts but still unwilling to forgive the man.  Meanwhile, Brendan—a former MMA fighter turned teacher—is struggling financially and about to lose his house.  Against his wife’s wishes, he returns to the cage to try and win some money.  The two brothers progress to the point that they must finally come head to head in the biggest MMA Championship in the sport’s history, and only then can the two face their demons and come to an understanding.

The movie thrives on its terrific performances.  Nick Nolte does terrific work as the damaged father and does the role with restraint and control.  This is probably the best work I’ve seen Nolte do in a long time and I was really very moved by his character.  He and actor Tom Hardy have some of the greatest scenes in the film, which leads me to say that Hardy was equally impressive in his role.  Edgerton does a great job as well, and the finale of the film with he and Hardy had me in tears.  Really moving stuff.

Besides all of the great emotional characterizations, Warrior has a lot of great fights that really get your adrenaline going and manages to balance the two sides very well.  It might not be as Oscar-worthy as last year’s The Fighter, but it’s definitely up there.

One Day AVERAGE

Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess star in this film based on the novel by David Nicholls (who also wrote the screenplay) and directed by Lone Scherfig.  Hathaway plays Emma, a bright girl who finds success as a writer late in life and Sturgess plays Dexter, a man who has everything but nothing.  The two meet on the night of their graduation in the late 80s, and the movie shows us where they are in their lives every year on that same day.  Sometimes they are together, sometimes they are a part.  It is essentially a romantic drama and the two friends find that they love each other by the end, but the movie suffers from a lack of humor—everything is very heavy-handed—and the “one day” premise makes it hard for us to really see the character progression.  It feels like we keep fast-forwarding through the good stuff.  That being said, I still liked the movie well enough and admired Hathaway for taking on the British accent.  She really is very underrated.

Shark Night 3D AWFUL

A less-than-all-star cast led by Sara Paxton and Dustin Milligan get terrorized by sharks in this ridiculously awful horror movie.  The premise is this:  a group of college kids go to a lake house to spend a weekend of drinking, sex and fun but lo and behold there are sharks in the lake!  It’s a salt-water lake of course.  It turns out the sharks were placed there by three hillbilly psychopaths who get their jollies off of seeing people get torn apart and devoured.  They’ve even put cameras on the sharks to sell the footage on the internet.  Sound stupid?  Well, that’s because it is stupid.  The stupid script coupled with cheesy over-the-top acting of the soap opera variety make for one horrible movie.  Oh, and it’s also really predictable.  The entire time I was saying things like, “It’s gonna jump out and eat him” or “he’s bad, isn’t he?” and I was correct every time.

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Movie Reviews: Apollo 18 and the Colombian Debt

The Debt movie poster, image property of Miramax.
Colombiana movie poster, image property of TriStar.
Apollo 18 movie poster, image property of The Weinstein Company.

About a week ago Brian set up a new blog called Addiction to Film and is also once again writing for examiner.com.  So before when it was just me begging and pleading for us to get off the couch and go see a movie, now it’s Brian saying, “I need to review that new movie so let’s go.”  It’s kind of nice that both of us are motivated to see movies now.  Maybe I won’t get so far behind!

The Debt AWESOME!

Helen Mirren gets top billing for her role as Rachel Singer, a retired Mossad secret agent who was once part of a dangerous mission to capture a Nazi war criminal.  However, Jessica Chastain is the actress who plays the younger version of Singer who we see for the majority of the film.  Although the movie begins and ends in the 90s, the majority is set in the 60s where we watch the secret mission go down.  The movie has quite a few surprises that I won’t give away, but just know that the acting is superb by both Mirren and Chastain (as well as from costars such as Sam Worthington, Marton Csokas, Jesper Christensen and Tom Wilkinson), the action is intense and violent, the suspense builds, and some interesting questions about justice and truth are posed.

Colombiana AVERAGE

Zoe Saldana stars in this action flick as a Colombian woman named Cataleya who witnesses the brutal murder of her parents as a young girl and then grows up to become a killer set on one thing—revenge.  She spends the majority of the movie running around in her underwear (or something equally skanky) killing mobsters left and right.  The action sequences are all pretty entertaining, even if they are completely unbelievable and sometimes silly.  Just watch the opening sequence and you’ll know exactly what I mean.  Another flaw to this movie was the lack of any character development.  When all we know about our main character is that she seeks revenge, we don’t know enough.

Apollo 18 ADMIRABLE

Brian only gave this movie one star out of five on his blog.  He wasn’t the only one who hated it though.  An old woman in the theater bellowed out, “Well that was stupid” as soon as the credits rolled.  I, however, liked it quite a lot.  I also have the reputation for being “too nice” to movies by the more cynical critics, so perhaps my opinions are simply to be ignored.  I don’t think that’s the case though.  Apollo 18 is about three astronauts (Warren Christie, Lloyd Owen and Ryan Robbins) who go on a secret mission to the moon.  Slowly they begin to realize they are not alone, that their country knew it, and they are left to their own devices to try and survive.  The movie had me jump out of my seat a few times, look away in squeamish horror at one particular scene, and sit in an uneasy sort of anxiety for the majority of the film.  In short, I thought it was pretty scary.

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