Elysium

THE PITCH

WORTH

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THE VIEWING

" It's just a flesh wound! "

Elysium felt like a return of cinematic imagination, a symphony of Science fiction, a just-what-the-doctor-ordered.  Especially in a time of low expectations from big budget flicks.  Yet, so very far from my knee jerk rush to judgment feelings after seeing the first teaser.  Even more so when learning that this movie is from the same minds that brought us the disappointing District 9.  Yes, disappointing because the movie had untapped potential to be great and it wasn't.  Elysium is what District 9 should of been.

    It is a shame that this film won’t go down as a classic because of the warm numbers at the box office.  Not perfect by any definition but you won’t find a better Science Fiction film now-a-days… well, maybe when Star Trek drops another one.

   Beautiful and imaginative imagery.  The year 2154 looked very real and plausible, along with the bio-tech.  The plot was thick and very tense.  The fight scenes were visually crisp and thrilling to watch. The characters were all extremely interesting.  I heard that Eminem was rumored to play the lead character and I can’t help but wonder how much justice that would of done in an already near-perfect film.

    This is definitely a picture that you should see if you haven’t already, move it to the top of your rental queue. 
 Worth the dollar and it gets an A.

Despicable Me 2

THE PITCH

WORTH

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THE VIEWING

" Just because everybody hates it doesn't mean it's not good. "

Better than the first in my estimate…. but that's me.  There is this ‘like it, love it or hate it’ air about this sequel.  So, in order to help you judge whether or not YOU want to see this movie allow me to first offer a deeper insight into my tastes and expectations.  

    Firstly, those minions don’t have as much of a grip on me than they have on the rest of the world.  My sister and niece think that they are just the funniest little things in yellow since the dancing banana  

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 Having said that, I really liked their [minions] existence in the sequel.  It was meaningful and flavorful.  A powerful combination that could either make or break any movie.

    I’m a big Steve Carell fan and he was at his best.  Playing the voice of Gru he [Steve] has a unique talent for making his audience feel for him even when he’s being a butt.  He’s especially talented for situation relationship comedy, which worked here.  If fact, those were the funniest moments of the movie to me!  

     Some say the music was better in the first one, I don’t know about that… I really enjoyed the music in this one.  Plus I enjoyed the villain more so here than in the original.  I thought the movie, as a whole, was slightly funnier than the first.

  All in all there’s enough here to keep the kids interested and a lot of adult humor to keep us glued to the screen.  Worth Watching.

letter grade: B+

White House Down

THE PITCH

WORTH

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THE VIEWING

"I can't think of a more important job than protecting the President."

Back a few months ago I mentioned in a review for Olympus Has Fallen that White House Down may be a result of Hollywood ripping off screenplays as they make their way around Hollywood shopping for that ever fluorescent green light.  Welp... turns out WHD was pretty doggone good, so now my knee-jerk reaction is…  which movie ripped off who!?  To which I have no answer only more questions.  One thing's for sure, I enjoyed both of them.  I remember having the same debate between Deep Impact and Armageddon.  Both (at the time) had a fresh and very unique idea for a plot, and jockeying for position to be the first to present their original film to the masses.   Armageddon had the bigger budget and the brighter stars... I liked it a lot, but I ‘loved’ Deep Impact; talk about a movie versus a film.  Which essentially is not what we have here, we have movie vs movie and I’m ready to break this particular movie down.  I too want to know why I liked it.

•            The very first thing I have to get out of the way is how misleading the trailer is.  The corny line “Let go of my Jordans!” just set an awful and shallow indication that this movie’s climate would be FOR the awful and shallow.  

•            Mostly anything Channing Tatum is in I’m going to automatically dislike.  Sorry, maybe this review may be a bit biased [I’m sure it isn’t] but I don’t think this guy can act…  very well.   

•           Again, it’s coming on the heels of another, already awesome movie about the White House getting the business from terrorist.

•         The Director [Roland Emmerich] that directed this movie also did 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow…   Maybe I should end with that.

            2 for 2 still leaves me teetering on the scale.  What tips it in favor of awesome is I genuinely felt sadness or despair [as I did all through Deep Impact] during the end of the climatic conclusion.  It really took me by surprise, and left me with it’s own unique imprint tattooed in my memory.  That’s what sets this movie apart from Olympus Has Fallen and thats why I like watching movies so much… you just never really know.

     Definitely worth watching…. letter grade B+

The Lone Ranger (2013)

THE PITCH

WORTH

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THE VIEWING
" It was a ranger, riding a white horse. Got some lunatic Indian with him. They're coming for you."

The Lone Ranger isn't what I thought it would be but it is exactly what I expected from Disney.  Think Pirates of the Caribbean... on land though.  Almost too goofy for this sort of reboot but Johnny Depp certainly balances the seesaw between corny and funny.  Also, too many wise cracks when death is imminent.  It’s different when James Bond does it, most times the one liners are timely and used sparingly but it’s something else entirely to be a smart butt all the time with bullets whizzing past your head.  This is a dangerous trend because a lot of movies suffer from this, most recently Ironman 3.  Back to the Lone Ranger…  The story seemed to unravel itself pretty slow even though the pace of the movie seemed to be fairly good.  *hunching shoulders* That’s another way of saying the ‘flow’ was weird. More a bad than good… and yes, there can be a good weird.

     True fans, especially the ones in their 50’s and up might sneer at the modifications and the “new” attributes installed in some of the main characters sprinkled throughout the story…  Walking out the theater I saw a multitude of “I don’t know what to make of it” faces.  My mom said [paraphrasing] she liked it but wished they would've let the ‘Lone Ranger’ BE a Ranger…. I agree.

   Barely worth watching. Letter Grade is a C+

Man of Steel

THE PITCH

WORTH

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THE VIEWING


Clark Kent - age 9: The world's too big, Mom.
Martha Kent: Then make it small. Focus on my voice. Pretend it's an island out in the ocean. Can you see it?
Clark Kent - age 9: I see it...

    Man of Steel accomplished everything that it set out to do.  Wholly ‘apart’ from any Superman movie in the past.  Which is why, I believe, they didn’t use the words ‘Superman’ in the title and hardly in the story... I digress. Darker than your conventional Superman movies, although I didn’t feel the word “dark” is truly accurate.  It was a more desolate or outcast type themed that really worked.  Competitive; If Marvel truly wanted competition, it has it.  If DC COMICS decides to combine just the two, Henry Cavil & Christian Bale, for an answer to Marvel’s  Avengers movie(s)... well, I shudder to think.  Man of Steel alone matched all the action in Avengers plus some.  Even as I type this fresh out the theater I still see residue images of destruction and planetary chaos involuntarily skating around in my brain. I shake my head to focus on what I’m writing but it remains... terrible part is I like it.

        The imagination and ingenuity used here is just amazing, specifically on planet Krypton. The sheer wonder saturated me to the point where I almost lost myself and may have missed some of the story.  Re-watch value really didn't need any help but I just added that onto the list for a second reason to visit the theater.   

         Just when you thought you’ve seen everything you realize that you haven’t.  All you've learned in the past is just a precursor to what the future holds: limitlessness.  The work done with CGI, especially on the planet Krypton, is just unbelievable! The function between science, design, physics, form  all looks and feels foreign, alien and not an ounce of human or earthly familiarity resides in those scenes besides the actors and actresses themselves.

         I liked the direction of the story but did not love it.  I feel some character introductions may have been too short.  Most of the collateral characters barely got established before they were thrust into the peak of the plot but again, the course that the film took to get from beginning to middle to close justifies the minimal personage build up.

     I have to talk about the score music.  Again, being a film void of any prior franchise influences the music had to be original.  This will mark the first Superman movie since Superman(1978) that didn’t use any of the original score music from the great[est] film composer John Williams.  The baton now rest in the very capable hands of Hans Zimmer.  He is, right now, my most favorite composer and it is not going to be fair to compare the two.  As iconic of work Hans did for the Batman movies he just barely fell short of a great, or should I say, ‘classic’ sound for this new Superman series under Zack Snyder.   Don’t get me wrong, the music was powerful, riveting, and extremely good... just not great.  At least not yet, perhaps I should give it some time.

                 Is Man of Steel worth your money? Emphatically yes!!!  I can see myself not only going back to theater next week to view it without the 3D but purchasing the bluray the very Tuesday it get’s released.  

   

            letter grade: A

FAST & FURIOUS 6

THE PITCH

WORTH

$$$$1/2



THE VIEWING

“I can reach out and break you whenever I want.”

           So I just watched the 6th Installation of the Fast & Furious franchise.  Whenever a movie goes beyond a trilogy, the final episodes are usually dry.  After the 5th F&F [for a quick review click here ], I was really hoping they would stop. That would've been a perfect closure to a really good run .  Of course that wasn’t enough, so the good people down at Universal green lighted a 6th and the edit room for 5 wasn’t even warmed up yet.  So before we end the movie shoot a teaser on the end of the reel after the credits roll thru and walla!! Now we have a seed planted.  One, I thought would be for a disaster but I am here happy to report I was wrong.  In fact, this time you don’t have to sit thru the entirety of the credits.  This time it’s not after the movie (credits)ends, there’s bonus material in the ending sequence that you definitely want to see.  Screen footage that may or may not lead you to believe that they are just not quite done taking you for a ride; Awesome footage, might I add.

         If you are one of the people who don’t like the Fast & Furious brand because of the unrealistic street racing events filled with more female models than hoodlums or you didn’t like the dumbed down action sequences, I understand... but you would of loved last one (5)!  Five was a departure from the original F&F blueprint.  More of a intricate story and a very successful heist flick.   Although 6 returned to some of the things that F&F fans enjoyed from the previous movies, Fast 6 is definitely a stand alone.  Anyone can enjoy this by itself.

          Everyone casted had surprisingly good chemistry...again! More impressive was the comic relief by Ludacris and Tyrese.  Tyrese may be under appreciated but I’ll just tuck that away for another day.  It seems ‘critics’ all over have a problem with Vin Diesel’s raw, drawn out vernacular. I don’t. Just like Sly Stone in Rocky, his marbles in the jaws speeches delivers a different pace than what everyone else on screen is doing.  It also sets their subject matter apart from the rest of the speedy dialogue on screen. Which, in effect,  highlights their simple but powerful statements.  It’s effortlessly digestible and easy to love.  

         Things that go BOOM in the summer usually result in higher box office ticket sales.  That’s no secret, and the movie directors and producers all know that we know that yet still try to satisfy the masses with explosives and all sorts of mayhem.  That’s what I would call “industry” tactics and I’m usually oppose to them.  Once in every while, they do get it right.  All though the more refined movie/film goer would frown or even walk out of some of the impossible stunts that F&F 6 throws at you... I would challenge them to stay.  Plausibility and realism is always best, especially when entertaining me, but sometimes ‘fun’ overrides everything!

         Definitely worth watching and worth your money: B- (minus for the ridiculousness lol)