Displaying Category: Movie

Seriously, I'm getting too old to be going to midnight screenings... Thankfully, Salvation had enough action (pretty much wall-to-wall) and very loud effects to keep me awake and engaged all the way through. In trying to explain this movie to my father, I came up with "it follows a very monochromatic spectrum." This has nothing to do with the color palette used, I am referring to the themes, events, and travel the story makes. It sticks very close to its guiding rail and plays it hard and fast. No unexpected messages in this story, no unnecessary scenes to take you out of the world. It's very focused. That's a good thing in a movie like Salvation as long as you aren't expecting anything like the also action-packed but comparatively colorful and broad spectrumed Star Trek. The reason I am only giving Salvation a 4 is because of its lack of thematic diversity. It certainly doesn't make it any less entertaining, just less colorful and doesn't give you as much to think about on your way out, so it might lack staying power when you think back on it in a few years.

4/5

Wow. I'm still trying to work out how to review this movie, which is hard because I really don't want to give anything away, but it's tough to explain my thoughts on it without detailing elements of the film. It's a challenge!

It was definitely an excellent movie, no doubt, full of some wonderful nods to Star Trek history and mythos (can I call it that?) while introducing all new elements that really worked well. I was also impressed by how emotionally moving the movie was at points. We developed emotional connections with characters that were only on screen for a few minutes (except for Olsen, who was, unfortunately, wearing a red shirt) and those connections strengthened as we acquainted ourselves with these characters we've all known since forever, but now feel fresh and different and new.

While I can't come up with any obvious flaws, the movie does follow some classic space opera cliches and revisits the common Trek plot device of time travel. That doesn't detract at all, and is actually the spark that allows for this series reboot to happen and remain believable. Star Trek was well-worth seeing... probably even twice!

Update: Still lots of fun the second time around!

5/5

I got the impression the general assumption is that this movie would suck. In fact, it did not suck. We're not talking quality cinema, but it was sufficiently entertaining.

My biggest negative comment is how two dimensional everything felt. Plot, characters, it all felt thin and none of it was moving as it should have been.

It was nice to see some of the mutants in the earlier stages, but they had such bit parts that it wasn't really satisfying. In the end, for $6, it was a wonderfully entertaining morning.

3/5

Apparently, no one has heard of this movie. That's kind of a shame because this was a fairly decent movie. As I was standing up at the end of the film I was trying to come up with some way to easily describe it and the best I could come up with is "BSG-lite for kids" which I would consider a fair compliment. A brief summery is thus: humans invade a peaceful world and attempt to commit mass genocide. As any good BSG fan knows, though, it's more complicated than that, which is good. There were several challenging concepts raised involving justification for war, torture, military coups, friends, family, loyalty, and a few others I may not have immediately caught. I was actually impressed by the breadth of topics the writers attempted to tackle in a movie targeted toward that 12 year old boy and girl segment. Oh yes, the main character of the movie is a spunky, mechanically inclined and amazingly awesome pilot who is female. Think young Anakin Skywalker with every single ounce of annoying quality vigorously cleansed from her being.

Those of you who have seen a trailer for this movie might be wondering why I haven't mentioned the focal point of all the trailers, i.e., the fact that this movie is (best seen in) 3D and features large battles between small fighter craft (mostly). Well, while that is the reason I went to see this movie, it turned out there was so much more that easily surpassed the very awesome battle sequences that they really kind of slipped into the background in terms of what the main attraction to this film actually is. I think that's a good thing. The battles were a backdrop for character and plot development, but not a focal point of the feature.

This isn't a must-see movie and if you have interest in seeing it then a DVD rental might do you just fine. Sure, you won't catch it in 3D, but you'll probably still be happy with the movie and you won't be spending $15 on a 3D feature ticket.

4/5

I fuckin' loved it! This movie felt a lot like the TV show 24, except not in "real-time" and instead of CTU and FBI agents, it follows a group of reporters trying to find the story behind a series of murders and turn up a Capital Hill scandal. State of Play is set entirely in the DC metro area, and they did everything they could to capture the feel of DC from the often icky weather to people drinking out of Redskins mugs, to high profile locations like Chinatown, the Kennedy Center, to Crystal City. It was fun to recognize these locations, not only in name, but for them being real locations. Scenes filmed in the Rosslyn Metro station. I recognized an exit of 66. Obviously we all know the Kennedy Center... That's all well and good, but what all these things, in such casual settings, does is lend credibility to the these characters as residents of this city who know it and love it. It felt whole, not like other "DC" films where there's a couple helicopter shots of the capital and drive over a bridge and maybe a shot outside the Capital. They used the DC Metro, not the LA subway. They walked the walk, you know?

The plot was compelling and the action felt well-paced. I was actually shaking throughout the movie because it all had me so worked up. I was into it and I was buying it. In fact, I was completely sold. This movie won't get a perfect five because the twist at the end kind of stole a little bit of the satisfaction I was anticipating and because almost nothing gets a five, but it was really an excellent excellent flick.

4/5

This was a live presentation of the NPR radio show that usually broadcasts on Saturdays that was beamed by satellite to movie theaters all around the country. I have never seen any of the episodes of the show that broadcasts on Showtime (because I don't have Showtime), but I do love the radio show, so I thought this might be fun. I guess the initial big hurdle to get over is that the tickets were $20 a piece. Walking out, though, I definitely felt like it was worth it.

Waiting for the broadcast to start, they were running these odd little anagram puzzles and hangman puzzles. That was different and fun. The show itself was really quite wonderful. I've never seen Ira Glass do his thing before, so he's doing his intro story and running the quotes and music cues himself on two separate machines. It actually reminded me of running lighting and audio boards back when I did theatre, but obviously he is a professional. There were both funny and touching stories from Mike Birbiglia, Starlee Kine, and Dan Savage. There was a little clip from the final episode of season 2 of the Showtime program. There was a peculiar little cartoon by Chris Ware. And, finally, it featured musical guest Joss Whedon. I was expecting an interview out of Joss, but no, he actually got on the piano and did a little number. Good stuff! They also played some clips from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, which was great to see on the big screen.

For those who missed it the first time and want to see it, there's an encore showing on May 7th. It also sounds like they'll air a trimmed down and "edited for radio" version on May 2nd as one of their regular Saturday shows.

5/5

Though I have seen some episodes of the Dragonball anime, I can't at all claim to be knowledgeable in the story or characters, so I won't be judging the movie on any of that. So is the movie entertaining? Surprisingly, yes. Is the movie silly? Definitely. Is the movie satisfying? Not really. This isn't because they botched the execution somewhere, there just wasn't enough of the movie to get to the really entertaining parts. I felt like, you know, this would be really fun if it were a 26 episode series, but as a 90 minute movie, the compression of events is just too severe and we lose too much characterization and plot buildup.

I thought Justin Chatwin did a decent job with his character. I don't really care for the Master Roshi character, but I thought Chow Yun-Fat did a good job with it at least as far as my memories of the series go. I can't say much for the female characters, but they seemed the weakest to me. James Marsters as Piccolo was interesting and I would say he did a good job if he had more than a few sentences of spoken dialogue. And Ernie Hudson? Seriously? That was a surprise...

I can see how children would really enjoy this movie. It was entertaining and it showed glimmers of being more enjoyable, but never really made it to satisfying. Of course, it's clearly set up to be a series of movies, so I expect we'll get some future opportunities to see where the live action Dragonball franchise goes.

2/5

"I have a great idea, let's make another movie about undercover cops and criminals driving tricked out cars in underground street races!" "Brilliant!" Well, they succeeded. Fast & Furious is a completely predictable and formulaic movie featuring the return of some parts of the original cast doing what they've already done. On that count, it's a great success. The rest of the movie is poorly executed with bad writing and vehicle stunts that are, unfortunately, too far over-the-top. It's not bad if you just want to see the cars, but I still feel the first movie did that much better.

2/5

I saw on io9 that Sarah Michelle Gellar is ready to do a new Buffy project.

Of course, Joss would have to be attached to it for me to even consider it a true Buffy project, but were that to happen, then hells yeah!

/me is not getting his hopes up.

It sounds like things are looking good for the new J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie.

I'm excited. See, this is me excited. :|