Tag: review

If you wanted to see an AI built from the hubris of man, you can watch The Avengers: Age of Ultron. You could also watch Ex Machina. This AI was just as hell bent on destruction of a more personal kind.

The film, for those who haven’t seen it which is all of you, is about a programmer sent to his boss’s remote home to conduct a ‘Turing Test’ on a robot to see how human she is. Ava, the robot, has a woman’s face and hands, but the rest is a sleek, sexy android. Data has nothing on her. She was built by a programmer modeled on a mishmash of Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and the founders of Google. His company is also a mishmash of those actual programmer’s companies: Facebook, Microsoft, and Google.

The worker was chosen as being the best in the company. It was a test of who was the alpha programmer. It really was the boss who was the alpha. He played his underling, but played himself into a corner.

I thought this was sly. I thought the robot was being naive. She was really being human — complicated, conniving. I really wondered if we were all being played.

3 of 5 stars.

There was a whole lot going on with The Avengers: Age of Ultron. It wrapped up the Hydra plot, introduced Ultron and (SPOILER) the Vision to the Marvel Cinema Universe, added the Scarlett Witch and Quicksilver to the Avengers line up, set up the conflict for Captain America: Civil War, and brought us the Infinity War/Gauntlet. All this in two and a half hours.

That is why it was not as good as the first one. It had too much. Although, it was missing Tigra. Overstuffed is the word for it. Still lots of action, but it feels like the middle of a larger story like being at the crossroads or at a train station junction. Lots going on, but people are passing through to better destinations.

3 of 5 stars.

I think I will watch anything Naomi Watts is in, so I found myself in the matinee show of Noah Baumbach’s latest film, While We’re Young. The film is about Generation X and Millennials.

Ben Stiller is an older documentary film maker in a rut in his 40s. His latest film has been in work for years, and he makes excuses for finishing it up. His hot wife, Naomi Watts, is just hot.

Adam Driver is a young, hip videographer who styles himself after Affleck. His hot wife is Amanda Seyfried, and she makes ice cream. Unfortunately, I don’t find her hot. I wish it was Greta Gerwig.

Charles Grodin is in it, and he plays Watts’ father. He is also a successful documentary film maker and represents the Baby Boomers. Ad Rock is in it. He plays a new father friend of Stiller’s. He’s meant to symbolized the adult Gen Xer. He’s got old, too.

Stiller and Driver become friends after a film lecture by Stiller. They are soon going out on couple’s dates and block parties together. Stiller is enamored of the young man’s inhibitions. He even goes out to a ridiculous new age, peyote ceremony. He is liberated from his stodginess.

Unfortunately, the final third of the film tries goes into old man mode: ‘Get a hair cut, ya hippie!’ The film creates conflict just to indict Millenials: Driver isn’t as genuine or truth striving as Stiller. It is rather shallow, but it does throw out the good cross generational feelings as done in the earlier bonding scenes. Perhaps it just goes to show that when you’re old, the young suck.

I’ve seen two and a half Noah Baumbach movies. Most of them I did not like because they made me uncomfortable. I did like his collaboration with Gerwig in Frances Ha. This film really is his most accessible. As a Gen Xer without kids, I liked it. The slight jabs at Millenials remind me that you can hate the young, but that was you at that age, too. Youth is wasted on the young

4 of 5 stars.

It’s been so long since I’ve written a blog post. I was stuck in Hawaii and Los Angeles for a few weeks. Now I’m back and needed to post these reviews of the movies I saw while shipped out to Marinette on work. I don’t remember much, so I’ll just blurb these three films.

Cinderella is the live action Disney flick. Someday your prince will come. It’s the film that only Disney can make. It made me want to puke, but that’s what a Saturday in Marinette would do to you: go see Cinderella.

2 of 5 stars.

The Second Best Marigold Hotel is just as good as the first one. It’s serviceable for a Sunday afternoon. It was more of the same, but with more Bollywood dancing.

3 of 5 stars.

Get Hard made me dumber after I watched it. Plus, it had a lot of gay-tred in it. It was trying to make pretend that it was scary being gay. Not sure why, but it was the worst. Please, don’t watch this movie ever even if it comes on Comedy Central. You will be dumber afterwards.

1 of 5 stars.

Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) had opened in my neck of the woods last October/November. It was only playing in 2 or 3 places around town; down at the arty theatre and its off shoot, the slightly well to do theatre uptown. Then it was showing at the whitey mall in the suburbs near me. I was planning to catch a viewing when I took the day before Thanksgiving off. When I checked the listing on that Wednesday morning, the film was gone. I was unable to catch it. I believe it played for only a week there, and I was unable to catch it.

It won the Oscar for Best Picture last month.

Now its on BluRay and DVD, but I had to watch it in theatre. In the last few weeks, its been playing right next door in its victory lap. I went this past weekend. I was finally able to catch it.

The film revolves around an actor whose starred in a trilogy of superhero films about Birdman some years ago. He wants to be a more legitimate actor, so he writes, stars, and directs an adaptation of a Raymond Carver story on Broadway. Except his past haunts him as well as the present difficulties in staging the play. His cast gains a “ACTOR.” His show is lacking funding. The critics are readying to rip the show to shreds. And he’s only hearing Birdman egg him on. Is he crazy?

Maybe, he was. The story suggests it isn’t reality, but a figment of the lead’s imagination. The Birdman follows him around. He floats in the air in his tight-whiteys. He exhibits telekinesis. He was crazy!

This one winning the Best Picture fits the trend of ‘meh’ that the last few have been. It doesn’t knock you out as a film. It doesn’t scream classic. Let’s give it another few years and re-evluate if it is any good. Maybe in a decade.

All I know is I saw 2 of the 8 Best Picture nominees and this was the worst of the two.

3 of 5 stars.

Still Alice was a horror movie.

That’s not what you say about the film which won Julianne Moore the best actress Oscar, but it was very horrific.

Moore stars as the eponymous Alice, a young Columbia professor who is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. She’s in her early fifties, but she inherited the disease from one of her parents. The film follows her descent into the horrors of this disease. It was especially tough for her character, because she was an intellect.

It was also tough on her, because she could pass it along to her 3 children, two of whom took a test to discover if they had inherited it. The youngest daughter didn’t, and she kept leading a care free life coming back to help her degenerating mother.

I had a friend who went crazy. He became erratic and delusional. When you looked into his eyes, you did not see him there. That is frightening like the Alzheimer’s in this movie. The person you know is gone but is still physically there. They are living ghosts.

3 of 5 stars.

I was ready to be appalled by the violence in Kingsman: The Secret Service, because of the reviews I read about it. Guts spilling out everywhere, heads exploding, decapitations, mangled bodies. I was expecting Quentin Tarantino levels of blood. The movie had it all, but I wasn’t appalled. After a while, it was pure spectacle. It became hilarious and hard to believe. It was cartoony violence.

The movie revolves around a secret spy organization which keeps the world safe from Saville Row in London. They are the tailors who tinker and spy. To be a part of the organization, one had to be born in high class. The kid in this one wasn’t high born but was given a chance because his dad was a trainee who gave his life to save Colin Firth’s life. The film follows the kid’s journey from novice to international super spy. He saves the world.

The film reminded me of James Bond movies with Sean Connery. It was kitsch in that sense. The cartoon violence was part of that. It couldn’t take itself too seriously. It was like Quentin Tarantino decided to do an Austin Powers movie. Still, there was violence, but come on, it was ridiculous. There was even a secret lair in what should’ve been a volcano. Plus heads asploded in it. ASPLODE!

3 of 5 stars.

Jupiter Ascending is a movie that would’ve been better released in the heady days after the first Star Wars film. It wouldn’t have been considered a disaster and a bomb as it is nowadays, but a better of a cash grab of a movie riding on the coat tails of the epic Sci-Fi films in the wake of the seminal genre defining space epic. We would’ve all went gladly hoping for another Star Wars, but would’ve been disappointed with the lackluster film. It is two films removed from what it could’ve been.

Jupiter Ascending is basically a princess film in the Disney vein. It has Mila Kunis’s Jupiter finding out she is actually space faring royalty. She is out of her leagues caught in the middle of galactic intrigue. She needs to be the Queen of Earth for Earth’s sake. Except the film kept making her the princess needing to be rescued. And that is what is wrong with it. She should’ve been kicking ass and taking names, like a shojou heroine. Unfortunately, she became the princess to be saved like a Disney Princess. Come on, she should’ve been a better character.

I would rather watch Speed Racer than this…

2 of 5 stars.

The Wedding Ringer is terrible. I was hoping for a romantic comedy. What I got was a bromantic comedy!

The love achieved was between two men. Not love, in the homosexual way, but in the bro way, bro.

Josh Gad and Kevin Hart found love between themselves. Bromantic love!

I didn’t like the third act twist that turned the film into a bromantic comedy. I thought it was really condescending.

2 of 5 stars.

I went to the theatre twice over the recent Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday in hopes to catch Selma. I went the Sunday morning before, I went on Monday evening, but I only saw it once, the Tuesday after the holiday. Both showings I tried that weekend were sold out. I settled for the day after the holiday.

Selma tells the tale of the Civil Rights marches for minority voting rights in Selma, Alabama. It was centered around Martin Luther King’s machinations to get the White House to push for the voting rights act. It showed lots of background to get things in motion. It also showed how the Civil Rights movement worked.

It was a good movie about an important time with really important people. I was the wrong person to watch it. I already believe many of the things that was espoused in the movie. That what was history is still relevant today. That our voting rights are still under assault. That minorities are mistreated by the establishment even thought of as second rate citizens. That police assaults are real.

I should’ve not been the one to have watched this, but I am satisfied that I did.

4 of 5 stars.