Tag: movies

August: Osage County is not a movie I would go see, but my mom wanted to catch it. It’s a film adapted from a stage play. It too got an Oscar nod for its actresses namely, Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts. I’m not one to judge acting, but I thought that Streep was overboard. I think she got the nod, because she’s Meryl Streep. There’s got to have been more subtle acting to have gotten the nod. I think it would be better.

Anyway, the film is about Streep as matriarch of a family looking to escape from each other. She’s got cancer. Her husband gets her help then goes and drowns. The family, all daughters, gets together to bury him. The gloves come off. They bicker — mother-daughter, sister-sister.

It’s a story about family history. You leave, you love, you come back. You know it all hurts. Especially, if your mother is as demanding as Streep was. Or as big a drug addict.

It’s an interesting film for a Saturday afternoon. It’s not something I want to catch again. It was adequate.

3 of 5 stars.

American Hustle is all about the 70s look. Amy Adams’s plunging neck lines, Jennifer Lawrences’s hair, Bradley Cooper’s perm. You’ll be too busy being amazed by the costume design to really appreciate the film.

American Hustle purports to tell the tale of the ABSCAM scandal in the late 70s. It was an FBI scam to trick congressman and senators into accepting bribes to make a fake Arab sheik an American citizen.

Amy Adams and Christian Bale play the original con men caught by the FBI and ordered to run the scam. They were small time players, but Bradley Cooper’s ambitious FBI agent wants to make a name for himself by going after big fish. The big fish was a Jeremy Renner’s simple Jersey mayor looking to help his constituents. He wanted to bring jobs back to Atlantic City helping people — a good guy? Cooper, a good guy? Bale and Adams good people? Jennifer Lawrence, Bale’s wife, not so good as she plays a loud, no class girl who when she finds out about the scam tries to needle her way into the action and when she gets blocked out takes it upon herself to destroy everything.

I think Bale did a fine job at portraying a small time hustler caught in a too large scam hustling his way out of the jam. Cooper was good as well playing the FBI agent looking to go big time. He was out of control. The girls, Adams and Lawrence, did well too with Adams and her cleavage edging out Lawrences’s Jersey girl nonsense in the heart of this viewer.

This movie is a Golden Globe nominee for best comedy. While there was a lot to laugh at, I don’t think this started out as comedy. It’s just that the con men got themselves into laughable situations. This isn’t an Adam Sandler film. The funniest part is ‘science oven’ — you burned the science oven!

It’s a good flick. Maybe better than the rating I’m giving it.

3 of 5 stars.

47 Ronin is a mess. It’s a movie based on a traditional Japanese tale of loyalty and revenge plus magic, dragons, and Keanu.

The Japanese tale was about samurai whose lord had to kill himself for disparaging another. His samurai, now leaderless ronin, vowed revenge because they thought that the offense was not severe. The 47 ronin of the title plotted for years eventually exacting revenge on their target. The Emperor liked the way the ronin conducted themselves and allowed the ronin to have an honorable ending. They all died in the end.

This version adds in Keanu as a mystically half-breed. Yeah, it makes no difference, but they needed him so that they can add the magic, the dragons, and the vile witch.

Everything has to be epic in Hollywood. That’s why there was the magic, the dragons, and the vile witch. Hollywood must make everything ginormous. Unfortunately, not everything needs the ginormity. The original 47 ronin story has all you need. It’s withstood years and years of telling in Japan. It may withstand the magic, the dragons, and the vile witch, but it isn’t that good of tale with it.

3 of 5 stars.

The latest film version of Thurber’s short story, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, has nothing in common with the written word. It may have day dream sequences, but they are not like the ones in the story. Then after a bit, the day dreams go away and we are left with another movie whose sole purpose is to utter the banal line, “carpe diem.”

Yes, we know.

Walter Mitty is the analog curator at Life magazine as it transitions to the digital age of online internet. He receives the quintessence of Life magazine in a film negative, but loses it because he lacks reading comprehension or doesn’t put money in his wallet.

He also wants to flirt with a girl at work. He does say hi and they do start connecting and then you wonder how they did connect.

I wish this was a better movie, but it wasn’t. It was Ben Stiller putting on his indie director mood similar to how he became Simple Jack. Lots of weirdness. Could’ve been funnier. May become another hit on Comedy Central.

3 of 5 stars.

Frozen, the latest Disney animated film and not how I feel in the morning as I get into my car. Perhaps I’m not the right audience for the film, because it didn’t impress me like it did the many, many movie-goers who made it tops at the box office this past weekend. I guess I’m not a 10 year old girl or have the soul of a kid because I actually didn’t know what was so special — I mean, come on, it’s Tangled in the snow.

Frozen features 2 princesses of an unnamed northern European city-state. When they were young, the eldest exhibited Iceman-like powers and hurt her younger sister. She’s was told to suppress them so as she gets older she doesn’t know how to control them. When it came time for her to ascend to the throne, the sisters get into a fight which plunges the city-state into a deep winter. The princesses must make up, the queen rein in her power and be regal, and the younger princess must reconcile and help heal the rift between the two.

And there was a magical snowman, a puppy-like reindeer, and an oaf. There was also villains.

This could’ve been something neat if more of the relationship between the sisters was explored. If it tried to deal with the princesses like Pixar’s Brave did. The conflict seemed too superficial.

There was also way too much singing.

3 of 5 stars.

I received a text message from Cousin Bob saying that Bill Murray was an awesome guy. Seems he’s doing makeup for the Untitled Cameron Crowe movie filming out in Hawaii. Sounds pretty much fun meeting movie stars, etc., etc. Cousin Bob also says he’s working with Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, and the sweety Rachel McAdams.

Wait! Rachel McAdams? Why didn’t you say so? I just saw her in Richard Curtis’s droll science fiction, romantic comedy, About Time. It was only because she was in it that I went to see the movie. I think I would go see her read the phone book.

About Time is about a lanky ginger who finds out that he has the gift of time travel. He gets to go back in time to any point in his life. Of course, he uses it to find the love of Rachel McAdams.

Their meet cute was decent. He loses her, because he changes his timeline on the day he fell in love with her. Then he waits to meet her again, woo her, and make her his. The time traveling helps for the first kiss, first date, first sodding, first wedding.

Then the film turns away from rom-com and becomes a study of living life to the fullest. The guy’s father dies, and he uses time traveling to revisit him until complications with the time line forces him to leave his father forever. That’s a scene that teared me up a little thinking about my own father.

I came for Rachel McAdams, but found a wonderful film to while away a lazy Sunday afternoon.

3 of 5 stars.

Thor: The Dark World is a continuation of Loki’s story in the first Thor and in The Avengers. It does include Thor, the god of thunder, but the more interesting character is Loki. And we don’t see much of him until the final third of the film. The early parts had him locked in the prison he was sentenced to at the end of The Avengers. Once freed, the Trickster does his thing: tricks his way to the throne of Asgard. What does it mean for the rest of the Marvel Movie Universe and for the Thor franchise?

The Dark World is very similar to this summer’s Superman, The Man of Steel. A once banished villain, the dark elf, Malikith, wants to return and bring ruin on the son of the man that put him away. To do that he must threaten all the worlds of Yggdrasil, Asgard, Midgard, the Giant land, the dwarven home, and to do that he must do it in Greenwich, England. Thor is there to stop him along with his love and their wacky science team.

Can I say that it got kind of funny in the middle of things with the wacky science team. It’s weird, because it was not grim. There’s always a little bit of laughter in Midgard.

3 of 5 stars.