Sex Tape
My eyes! My eyes! I wish I never saw Sex Tape. It’s not worth a trip to the movie theatre to see let alone a trip to the Red Box at Royal Farms. Skip it and leave it to die a lonely death in the cloud.
2 of 5 stars.
Snowpiercer
Snowpiercer currently has a 95% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Reading through the capsule reviews most all of them really like the movie. I must be in the minority 5% because I did not like the movie one bit.
Snowpiercer is science fiction movie about a future Earth covered in snow and cold with the remnants of human civilization living on a train that constantly circles the world. If it stops, humans will go extinct. Passengers on that train are either the haves, the upper 1% who inhabit the front of the train with sushi, clubs, and books, or they are the have-nots the sorry passengers at the back. They yearn for the type of stuff that the haves have. Into this world is Chris Evens who wants to go from the back of the train to the front. He leads a revolution.
With that set up, Snowpiercer would lead you to believe that the film will be an allegory. Except, it wasn’t. Yes, there was the battle between the haves and the have-nots. But there was also the musical number in the middle. And then Bong Joon Ho’s favorite, the key master and his daughter. They came from another movie. The allegory was lost. The movie had many different tones to it. How can you really make it an allegory when it was all over the map?
I think that Sucker Punch had a better train fight. This is the second Bong Joon Ho film that I didn’t like as much as others had. The first film? The Host. I didn’t like that one as much. This film makes me feel like I did during The Dark Knight — I think I’m missing something.
2 of 5 stars.
How to Train Your Dragon 2
How to Train Your Dragon 2 gets the thankless task of being the last film to open before the big juggernaut of Michael Bay’s Transforming dinobots or as I like to call it: The End of Days! Dragon doesn’t have the same action cache as a Michael Bay film, but it is a part of a better, coherent franchise.
Dragon 2 begins a few years after the first one ended. Dragons are the norm in Hiccup’s town; they are embraced, loved, and cared for. The town spends their time doing dragon races. Hiccup spends it exploring the world for more dragons. He’s grown up and may be ready for being the leader of his town. His dad thinks so. He doesn’t.
While exploring Hiccup eventually finds his mom. She’s a recluse living in a dragon world communing with dragons. She’s a natural dragon rider who believes her son has inherited her skills. Hiccup has but is not in a league like her mom. Hiccup has inherited his mother’s dragon nurturing skill. He’s nothing like his dad. But the movie will show that he will be his father’s son.
The mother could’ve been a more interesting character. She’s strong willed and talented. She knows dragons showing Hiccup a thing or two about the Night Fury he rides. Yet, as the movie progresses she becomes boring. She doesn’t get to use her dragon prowess to defeat the big bad. She disappears from the plot in the tail end of the movie. She could’ve been used better.
The animation looked phenomenal. The famous DP, Roger Deakins, is a consultant, and the camera work is absolutely amazing. It’ll wow you with its depth of field, shading, and lighting.
Finally, as with Godzilla, this film had kaiju. It’s a big kaiju lovefest.
3 of 5 stars.
Edge of Tomorrow
If you like to see Tom Cruise die horrible deaths over and over again, then Edge of Tomorrow is right up your alley. The movie is best thought of as the bastard son of Groundhog’s Day and The Battle of LA with Tom Cruise forever running into horrible deaths.
This movie evokes many other movies beyond Groundhog’s Day repeat until you get it right premise. There’s Aliens with the sergeant played by Bill Paxton leading the rag tag group of soldiers with a large ‘Tank’ type and a ‘Vazquez’ type as well. Then there’s Matrix with the Mimic enemy looking like the tentacle bots. For me, it reminded me of the Endless Eight debacle from season 2 of Haruhi.
Nice movie. Failing at the box office. You’ll catch this on HBO in December. It could be interesting. It could be non-boring. It’s a summer movie. At least it isn’t Transformers.
3 of 5 stars.
Chef
Chef is Jon Favreau returning to a smaller, intimate movie. It is the story of a highly celebrated chef caught in a bind serving a menu he doesn’t believe in because he’s trapped in a restaurant that is not his. Favreau plays the chef who has a meltdown, gets fired, and has to pick up his pieces thanks to his ex-wife. He finds the menu he finally believes in in Cuban sandwiches served from a food truck which he drives from Miami to LA. This drive redeems him as a person and a cook. It also redeems him with his son who accompanies him. They reconnect over cooking and the food.
This movie seems to be Favreau addressing his role as a filmmaker. He was a hotshot as a writer with Swingers then moved onto the big stage by directing Iron Man 1 and 2. Did that move cost him his auteur status? Did the knocks against Iron Man 2 make him freak out? Perhaps, but to address it Favreau returned to a smaller movie which he wrote and directed.
When I watched this movie, I had already had dinner. With scenes of cooking, it made me want to have another meal. Don’t watch this if you hadn’t eaten yet. Don’t watch it if you have. It’ll make you hungry.
3 of 5 stars.
X-Men: Days of Future Past
In the X-Men movie universe, they never had the Dark Phoenix Saga. Therefore without Jean Grey, there is no Rachel Summers. Without her and her telekinetic powers in the X-Men movie universe, the filmmakers of X-Men: Days of Future Past substitute Kitty Pryde as the mutant to send Wolverine back in time.
Right there is all that’s wrong with the X-Men movie universe. No Dark Phoenix, Wolverine as the main protagonist of Days of Future Past, Kitty Pryde having some kind of weird telekinetic power, Weapon X program in the 70s, Bolivar Trask as the mark, young Mystique. Just plenty of things that are not like the comic I know.
The only hope I had for the movie was seeing Jean Grey alive again. And Cyclops! But I was secretly hoping for Madelyne Pryor and sometime later — Inferno!
3 of 5 stars.
Godzilla
I was expecting the latest Godzilla to be a reboot of the original, Gojira. Instead I got a “Godzilla versus” film. This one is Godzilla versus MUTOs, Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Objects.
The movie starts in the Philippines where a mining operation finds a large skeleton of something, but they unleash two MUTOs into the world. The first one finds its way to a Japanese nuclear power plant with Brian Cranston and Juliette Binoche as scientists worried about the seismic activity heading their way. The second one is stored in the US. These are not Godzilla. He seems to hang out in some far off land waiting for MUTOs to show up. I can’t wait for the sequel to see “Monster Island,” because I want to reference that classic Simpsons line: it’s actually a peninsula.
The MUTOs destroy Japan then head to America destroying first Honolulu then San Francisco. Godzilla follows them in order to stop them. He’s Nature’s exterminator. He kicks ass and shoots radioactive breath. He stomps and stomps, and doesn’t care for humans.
Neither does the movie. Humans and actors didn’t matter. It was just about big kaiju. I wanted to see kaiju; I got kaiju once more. Except it wasn’t so awesome. The action was there, but kaiju versus kaiju isn’t as satisfying as kaiju versus giant robot.
The humans weren’t so memorable. I couldn’t care about them. And their issues: trying to get home, trying to justify their craziness, trying to reunite with loved ones. Eh. Just give me kaiju.
Godzilla is a summer movie. Will it be the biggest, baddest of them all? We’ll have to find out. Here comes summer.
3 of 5 stars.
Heaven Is For Real
Heaven Is For Real. For real? For real, real!
Some kid in the heartland of America saw it. It’s with angels and everyone you ever loved is there. It’s straight out of the Bible.
Amazingly, the kid’s father, a preacher, couldn’t fathom it. He didn’t want to believe his son. He thought he was crazy. He had to reach deep into his faith to finally accept it.
Heaven is for real. For real, real!
I’m not in the target audience of religious movies, so I found it fascinating that the preacher had a crisis of faith. He couldn’t believe something so unexplainable. He only accepted it eventually when he thought about it deeply. But did he really? He just concluded that he was going to believe what his son believes.
Science can explain somethings. It can’t explain everything. Yet.
Faith doesn’t explain anything. It just add hope to life. And sometimes that’s just enough to get by.
As I said, I’m not who this movie was for. It was for more religious people. They’ll find this a more satisfying movie.
3 of 5 stars.
Neighbors
I was expecting Project X when I caught an afternoon matinee of Neighbors. I wanted party-party-party. I wanted mayhem. I wanted a joke, escalating into pranks, finishing with someone getting hurt. All I got though was a call to grow up.
Seth Rogan and Rose Byrne are a couple with a new born child. They don’t think they’re old. They’re not, by the way, but they’re older than Zac Efron and Dave Franco, the frat boys who move in next door. Rogan and Byrne don’t want to appear old to their neighbors, so they mosey over and try to be cool old folks to the young dudes. They bring a peace offering of a joint and then they spend the rest of the night partying Project X style. Mayhem! That’s what I am talking about. Except that would be the best of it.
Eventually, the neighbors call the cops on the frat boys which sour their relationship. It becomes one of escalating pranks against the old couple. The pranks! You saw the airbag joke in the trailer — that’s about it. The neighbors retaliate to get the frat kicked off campus.
The movie had the thread that everyone has to accept growing up. The neighbors needed to act their age and not join in the partying. The frat boys needed to become adults. Even Dave Franco knew.
There were weird threads in this movie that seemed to come from older drafts. The neighbors separated friends were half-in and half-out of the movie. They showed up to flesh out some funky plot points — like the broken leg (LOL!), but they didn’t make any sense to the battle of the neighbors. Also, they didn’t use McLovin very well. He was just background character. Finally, the bro-mance between Efron and Franco that was some weird stuff their especially the hint late in the movie about more than just bros. Weird and out of left field.
Neighbors was a serviceable movie, but not the epic comedy I wanted. I laughed at points and I wanted to smoke a joint afterwards, but I just wanted an epic party. Sadly denied.
3 of 5 stars.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2
There is no zettai ryouiki in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. There is knee high socks and knee high boots, but sadly, no zettai ryouiki. Still, the movie is okay. Nothing special, another comic book movie, except it kept reminding me of the superior, Spider-Man 2. If it had more zettai ryouiki, perhaps it would’ve been the greatest Spider-Man movie of all!
The second installment finds Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy graduating from high school. Peter is busy punching out the Rhino. Gwen is the valedictorian. She parlays her internship at Oscorp into move to Oxford. Peter parlays his photography into being the one guy who can get Spider-Man. Taking pictures should not equate to having a serious relationship with the guy, and yet it is a convenient trope for writers to get the both together.
The big bad is Jamie Foxx as Electro — a geek who fell into a vat of electric eels, died, and became an electricity conductor. He’s similar to Cane Marko, the Sandman from Spider-Man 3. Jaime Foxx acted all weird as a geek, but then acted all funny as Electro. He reminded me of the creatures in I Am Legend.
The big bad for the next movie will be the Green Goblin’s son, the Hobgoblin. He’s played by a Leonardo DiCaprio look-alike. He also scares me like DiCaprio does.
The writers went down a path I didn’t think they would ever do. The did this. I never expected them to do it. It was a plot line I wanted since the first Spider-Man trilogy. I got it. I had never been so sad. It was devastating. No more zettai ryouiki in the third installment.
Andrew Garfield is a different geek than Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker. I can get behind Maguire’s riffing and geekdom. Garfield doesn’t make me like his geekdom. His Peter is just an ass. I can’t believe he squeals like that.
I wish it was a better movie that the Gwen Stacy plot line deserved.
3 of 5 stars.