The Other Woman

When you see me blog about a movie like The Other Woman know this, it’s not my choice to go see a movie like this. I like watching movies and I’ll watch almost anything. I’ll catch dumb comedies. I’ll gladly watch superhero, action flicks. I’ll go see ghost stories. And with The Other Woman, I’ll watch chick flicks.

Yes, it’s a chick flick. In the theatre, the majority of the audience was female. They were grouped mainly in groups of 3 or more in what can be described as girls’ night out. Yet, it was the late afternoon film. We’re all trying to save some cash.

Anyway, the film is standard ladies revenge flick on the cheating husband mixed with girl bonding. Leslie Mann plays the wife whose husband has cheated on her. Cameron Diaz is a high powered lawyer who was the mistress. Then swimsuit model, Kate Upton, is the second girl who mistress. They all get revenge on the husband because he’s a terrible, terrible person. The husband is some generic guy. Supposedly, he’s in Game of Thrones. I haven’t seen an episode.

The surprising part is that it was a Leslie Mann film. She stole the show. Cameron Diaz played second fiddle. I kept thinking about her as the monster from The Counselor. Kate Upton, meh.

I don’t hate the movie, but it wasn’t for me.

2 of 5 stars.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

What’s amazing about the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that the less you know about the superhero, the better the movies turn out to be. Because you don’t know the story lines, your expectations are much lower. You’re also not so worried about the plot lines of the movie diverging horribly from the comics that you can enjoy and be surprised by the movie. The Avengers kind of works that way, but so does Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

This Captain America movie takes place in the present as opposed to the first one taken place during World War II. It finds Captain America in an America he doesn’t understand. He can’t compromise his principles even for his country, and he can’t understand how his country had compromised its principles.

The Captain finds himself embroiled in S.H.I.E.L.D. intrigue. Can he trust S.H.I.E.L.D. to protect the country without compromising the American principles? It reminds me of Agent Mulder and the mantra Mr. X told him, “Trust no one.” Alternatively, “The Truth is out there.” And it is spelled HYDRA!

This is a better movie than the first Captain America. It didn’t get slow towards the end. It actually picked up with all those revelations. And it made Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. a much better television show this past week.

Because I was never a big Captain America reader, I liked this movie.

4 of 5 stars.

Sabotage

Sabotage is a dark, violent movie about the war on drugs and the people who fight it. It’s also an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. It’s not a film with his signature one-liners. Plus, with how dark the film is, you wouldn’t laugh at any one-liner.

Sabotage is about an elite DEA squad led by Arnold. During a drug raid, they steal $10 million from a Mexican cartel. When they go to recover the money, they find its been stolen from them. The squad members then start getting killed, and they are forced to worry about if its revenge from the cartel or one them being greedy.

The lineup for the DEA squad was like a manly-man actor squad. They were all tough. Even the girl — the crazy one. And when she’s the crazy one, then you know this movie will be off kilter. There’s violence similar to that found in The Counselor very cringe inducing and hard to take in. Torture, head shots, stabbing are just a few of the fun stuff waiting.

I figured that Arnold would return to his action form. Unfortunately, he went dark Arnie as in End of Days/Sixth Day. I wanted an Arnie flick. I got nothing but torture and head shots.

3 of 5 stars.

The Monuments Men

The Monuments Men tries too hard to be an important type film. It was once scheduled for a Christmas season release, a time for Oscar prestige openings. But then it was moved back a few weeks into the current year, and we find it still playing to an audience of elderly on a Saturday afternoon.

The movie tells the tales of the Army men who were tasked to save the treasures of Europe from the Nazis. Ordinary men of arts were gathered together and sent to the front to stop the pillaging of the great arts of Europe. Art restorers, architects, painters, and sculptors were recruited. They made up a small team that poked around the front lines in the latter part of the war finding and guarding important art.

It was a perfectly adequate film for a Saturday afternoon.

3 of 5 stars

The Wind Rises

At the start of the US version of the The Wind Rises, the distributor is Touchstone Pictures. At the start of the Japanese version, it’s Toho Studios. I smiled and chuckled when that shining Toho emblem blazed away before the Totoro of the Studio Ghibli mark. The Touchstone Picture mark didn’t do anything for me. Will my reaction color how I perceived the US dub versus the original Japanese soundtrack? Of course it will!

The Wind Rises is the last film directed by the great animation director, Hayao Miyazaki. He sails off to retirement with my favorite of his. It beats out Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke as a film. That’s because Miyazaki finally tells a story that could’ve been done as a live action film, and he makes an anime highly similar to something Satoshi Kon would’ve done. Miyazaki fulfills my tenant of a great animated film: using the animation medium to tell mature stories. The film is not one of his flights of fancy, but a well grounded story that soars because of his deft touch.

The film is about the aeronautics designer for the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces, Jiro Horikoshi. He designs planes for a living and his designs rained death and destruction on the world. Except that Jiro is a gentle soul only designing airplanes for their majesty in flight and not for their destructive nature. His superiors direct him to make them so; he makes them so that they are elegant. One of the critiques of the film is that Miyazaki lightly touches on this aspect of the creation of war machines, yet in every moment of planes engaging in war Miyazaki, through Jiro, shudders and recoils at the thought of using such beautiful machines for such ugliness.

Jiro is an engineer who expresses his creativity through the designs of his craft. That his works of art cause death and destruction do not take away from the diligent and excellent work he does. The engineer’s job is to design. It is not to lead a nation to war. To complain about Horikoshi’s work is to complain as if one had the higher moral authority. Yet, who can do such a thing? We all have ugliness somewhere in our nation (see 12 Years A Slave).

The film follows Jiro as a young dreamer to the wizened, middle aged man father of the Zero. It deviates to tell of Jiro’s love with a younger lady. She completes him and pushes him to finish his work. She also is sickened by tuberculosis so their love is tragic.

Miyazaki has made a great film which time will only validate as such. I was saddened that Disney’s Frozen beat it out. The category of Best Animated Feature Film should be renamed as Best Cartoon because I doubt that Frozen is a better film. I doubt that it is any better than the Lion King, and I’m not a big fan of hakuna-matata.

I’m glad I caught The Wind Rises in the theatre. It was at the Charles with the Japanese version and Hunt Valley with the US voice cast. Both were sparsely attended. My favorite sequence in the film is the Great Canto Earthquake especially the sound of it as it crashed through the land. *GOONG*

5 of 5 stars.

Pompeii

I went into Pompeii hoping that Paul WS Anderson would produce a good bad movie like his The Three Musketeers. Unfortunately, it was a terrible, terrible movie. From Kit Harrington, the leading man trying to be Orlando Bloom channeling Erica Bana, to Emily Browning, the romantic interest not filling the Mila Jovovich role, this movie missed on all cylinders. It was derivative of Titanic and Gladiator, and it didn’t try to hide that fact.

Pompeii plot is about the last days of the city under threat of Mount Vesuvius. Browning plays the daughter of the chief merchant of the city. She has just returned from Rome sickened by the political machinations. She’s come home to find that her Senator suitor, Kiefer Sutherland and a weird accent, holds the fate of her father’s ambitions in his hands. Harrington is a slave and gladiator, brought to Pompeii for the big festival. He was a member of a Celtic tribe slaughterd by Sutherland. He’s come for his revenge. He’s joined in his quest by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje playing the Djimon Hounsou from Gladiator. His arch is exactly the same. He’s Harrington’s nemesis first, then friend afterwards. This all happens under the threat of the volcano.

The acting was bad. The story and plot movements were bad. Keifer Sutherland was bad. I wish I had something good to say, but don’t watch this ever.

1 of 5 stars.

August: Osage County

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.

Her

It’s been more than a week since I saw Her in the movie theatre. No, no, not her, but “Her” the movie starring Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore Twombly, a guy who has fallen in love with his digital personal organizer. The film is written and directed by Spike Jonze. This was science fiction and a love story and has received Oscar nominations, best original screenplay and best picture being the most of the important ones. I’m still trying to process it.

As I left the theatre, I thought about Sophia Coppola’s Lost In Translation. Is this Jonze’s riposte to his ex-wife? Maybe. It plays like it, and if you’ve see the both of them back to back, it would seem to be. But to think of this film destracts from the the film itself. You’ve got to divorce the two to see what Jonze was trying to accomplish. That pun is intended.

I think the central conceit of the movie is that the heart is mysterious and you love whomever or whatever you love. Fact: it was no big deal for Twombly to fall in love with an OS. There were others who have, and Amy Adam’s created an intimate relationship with one also. In the future, you’ll find love in many other places. No one cares if you fall in love with an OS. It happens.

Now was Twombly looking for a relationship he could control or as his ex-wife said a perfect simulation of a wife? Can’t be judgmental here. We do get their history from his perspective. It seems he was faithful and caring; cold and distant and judging not so much. He was supportive; It felt like they fell out of love. Was her success too much for him? Maybe, but they don’t get too deep into it.

They love. Then they don’t love. It is a mystery of the heart.

What was most bothersome about the movie is how it ends. Spoilers if you don’t want to know. It ends with a “Thanks for the fishes” moment, which was perplexing. It’s the least talked about aspect of the film, but the most interesting. I was thinking about how it would end. I was expecting a “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” style disconnecting. It happened, but then the complicated return and subsequent leave made the film rushed. I felt like sitting alongside Twombly to piece it all together. Yeah, I’m still thinking about it.

4 of 5 stars.

American Hustle

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

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.