This movie opened last week and based on box office take, I'm fairly sure everyone in the world has seen it already, so I question the need to even bother summarizing. I'll do it anyway... In short, Loki is a prick and wants to rule the Earth, so he forms an alliance with an alien race and goes about implementing some diabolical scheme to achieve the desired result. In response, Nick Fury forms the Avengers out of Black Widow, Iron Man, Captain America and The Hulk and also Hawkeye. Fighting ensues (on both sides) and then New York is smashed and the end. I suppose it's not really that complicated, but it works and it works really well with fun little call backs to the source movies (Captain America, Thor, Iron Man) sprinkled about. Generally, in order for me to score a movie really high it has to provide some sort of life-changing experience for me, either through message or art. I would probably say The Avengers technically did neither. There's no real message to be had and it isn't especially moving in any other way... but it is enormously fun and does an excellent job of bringing together so many pieces and making it look effortless. I'm going to go ahead and give that credit to director and co-writer Joss Whedon, even if he can't take credit for it.What I really like out of all this is that Joss managed to produce a movie that broke all sorts of records and I really hope has put him out there as a seriously kick-ass director which might mean more serious projects in the future.
I was walking outside today when I overheard a guy explaining to a woman about the "merman" and I knew exactly what he was talking about. I would love to tell you what they were talking about, but you haven't seen the movie yet, so we can't be friends. Please go see it so we can talk and I can maybe consider you a friend again. I'm not trying to be mean here, but there's very little I can say about Cabin without giving away one of the many fun twists. What I can say is that Cabin knows it's a horror movie and it basically dances around in the bloody showers that pour out of that statement. It delights in playing with all the classic horror movie tropes, and not in a Scary Movie parody sense. The gore is realistic, the terror is well played, and the truth is not what you think it is. So go see it and then catch me in chat so we can talk about it.
This story bears a strong resemblance to a number of other stories with Battle Royale probably being the strongest. There are some interesting differences, though. The basic premise is that every year, the twelve districts give tribute to the capital in the form of one man and one woman between the ages of 12 and 18. Those 24 people then fight to the death in an arena until only one is left. What I think makes The Hunger Games interesting, though, is the dynamic between the twelve districts (where the tributes come from) and the capital (which "consumes" the tributes). I'll leave you to watch and work out, I just want to get across that while it isn't the focus of the movie, it is what makes it so powerful.
Another heartwarming Studio Ghibli film distributed by Disney in the US that once again succeeds in making my heart melt a little (in a good way). This time we're focused on Arrietty, who is a teenaged "borrower," a 3 inch tall person, who lives in the walls and floor of big-people (called "beins" by the borrowers, I think that's short for human beings) houses along with her mother and father. Like other Ghibli films for young audiences, there isn't much here for the adults and pretty much no significant subtleties or implied plots. It's pretty much exactly what it says it is and that's all there is to it. That's not entirely bad, as the movie succeeds wonderfully at being adorable and making me melty inside. I found the voice acting to be satisfying and the sound design to be exemplary. It's a fun movie without being too deep, and sometimes, that's just fine.
There sure have been a lot of movies about spies lately. So, here's another. A rogue CIA agent walks into a US consulate in South Africa and is taken to a local safe house for interrogation. The house is crashed and the agent in charge of the safe house escapes with the prisoner and is on the run without support while trying to protect the man that is infamous for his "spy" abilities. It all seems fairly standard, and in many ways, it is. Lots of gunplay, lots of chases by car and on foot and over rooftops, etc. What I felt made this movie different from the biggies like the Bourne series, is the humanity of the two main characters involved. While they are highly effective at what they do, whether it's firing guns or hand-to-hand combat or light investigative work, they don't feel like unstoppable killing machines. They're frustrated and scared and tired and afraid for those they care about. Along with that, the acting was impressive as well. Not so much from Denzel Washington, we know he can act and he was largely playing a character we all know well, the older, jaded and yet, sagely Yoda-like badass. Ryan Reynolds, though, was quite satisfying as an under-utilized field agent wannabe who suddenly gets thrust into a world-wide operation that threatens not only his only life, but the life of his girlfriend and his own moral integrity. He also didn't crack a single joke through the entire movie, so it wasn't as if he could fall back on his comedic skills. This was all intensity and drama and badassery and he was damned impressive. In a lot of ways, I'd say Safe House was a lot like a male version of Haywire, except I actually really liked Safe House.
First off, this movie is amazing on several levels. The acting is incredible (largely for the understated nature of all the performances), the story is rich and layered, and the setting feels perfect and immersive. Secondly, this movie is for smart people. I'm pretty sure I didn't successfully work out what was actually going on and I also feel like there were several layers above and below that I never caught on to. Briefly summarizing, Tinker, Tailor... is about tracking down a double agent in the British Secret Intelligence in the early 1970s. Not much action, not even a lot of talking, and particularly lots of time-jumping... but it works well and probably makes sense if you're able to keep track of the shifting time settings and characters and what everyone has said and done. I would heartily recommend this movie if you're feeling like a deep and intelligent thriller and you don't even need to see it in a theater. This movie will work just fine at home.
I feel like most people are already going to know the basics of this story, be it from the books or the previously released Swedish movies. Regardless, I haven't read the books or seen the other set of films, so this is all new to me and I have nothing to compare to. Very briefly, there's a mystery that needs a-solving, and a journalist is hired to solve it. When he needs help, he hires a clever 23 year old woman with a very difficult history to be his research assistant. This girl is both a genius and possibly insane (though I think it would be much more accurate to call her traumatized). Stuff happens, mystery gets solved, the end. I found the movie to be very well put together, brilliantly paced (for a 2 hour and 40 minute movie) and extremely entertaining. My only issue with the movie is that it takes place in Sweden (which is great) and that everyone speaks English all the time and everything is written in English. It's one thing if everyone simply speaks English in a foreign country, that I can forgive, but don't try and convince me that all the newspapers are English and Swedish people write their personal journals in English, and so on. I am really looking forward to the other movies in this series.
I have to say, the trailers I saw for this movie were a bit deceptive. There is an adventure, that was accurate enough, but the trailers seem to put an awful lot of weight on the mysterious little automaton that you see floating through the air. While there is a great deal of attention put on this clockwork boy in the movie, it is not the focus or central theme of the movie. It's actually all much more interesting and worthy than that. It's a rather fantastical 3D movie about the magic of the movies going back to the very beginnings of moving pictures while also tackling the rather more significant subject of the importance and value of having purpose to one's life. You know, why are we here? And all... I really enjoyed this well made movie and the interesting subjects it raises, and while it isn't necessary to see it in 3D, I will say that the effects were quite well done and possibly worth a few dollars extra.
It seems silly, right? Robot boxing... Maybe it is, but I don't care. This movie was so well put together that even my extreme dislike of boxing wasn't enough to generate any dislike at all for this movie. Straight up, this is a "family" movie. The boxing is mostly just a scaffold around which to build this relationship between a father and his estranged son. It could have been baseball or go-kart racing, but really, robots are cooler. And seriously, the robots in this movie are very cool. More than that, there's some effective acting from Hugh Jackman and an absolutely amazing performance from Dakota Goyo, the estranged son. Of course, he doesn't at all behave like an eleven year old kid, but that's not his fault, he's just written to have an almost sickeningly cocky attitude toward everything. Anyway, it's a fun movie with what I thought was great pacing and an entertaining story. I was expecting a bit more history behind the fighting bot "Atom," but in the end, I suppose it didn't matter.
I feel like this could be a really short review if I just talk about whether I liked this movie or not. So to get that out of the way, yes, I liked this movie a lot. Not only is it a wonderfully put together movie, it also manages to wrap up an epically long series in a satisfying conclusion. If I had to call out something that isn't ideal about this movie (and actually the last four movies) it's that it departs from the themes that I enjoyed so much about the first four films (a group of young people going to school and having Scooby-gang adventures) in favor of what is basically a fairly dark fantasy adventure. That's not a true criticism as I understand this is where the series was headed and needs to head (characters grow up, situations become more and more dire, shit happens)... It's just, these things are not what my love for the series is about. Also note that I saw it in 2D ("standard-vision") and enjoyed it just fine. While I could easily detect the scenes that were clearly designed with 3D in mind, I'm not convinced it'd be necessary, especially considering how dark this film is already, I'm afraid the 3D version might be so dark as to detract from the experience in some marked way.
