Flicks-a-saurus Rex

Megamind, Mega-hilarious

2011-02-26T20:50:00.000-08:00

Megamind (****)

Director: Tom McGrath

Starring: Will Ferrell, Jonah Hill, Tina Fey, and Brad Pitt

MPAA: Rated PG for action and some language

Mega-hilarious. Watching movies like this all way give me a good feeling. I feel like there is hope, that when my children want to watch a movie there are clean, decent films out there that are smart enough to keep me entertained along with my five-year-old.

This was kind of a Shrek meets The Incredibles type of film. Super Villain Megamind (Will Ferrell) and Super Hero Metro Man (Brad Pitt) duke it out on the streets of Metro City, flinging witty banter and steel poles at each other. They have had this relationship since they were babies. But when Megamind’s master plan succeeds, he finds himself in way over his large blue head.

Will Ferrell is a talent who squanders his time on hopeless garbage like Step Brothers, when it is better spent making family fun like Megamind. He really manages to make this a fun and rewarding film. I was surprised by some of the little twists that come up. In general the film was an uproarious reboot on the super hero film.

I highly recommend this film. It is intelligent and witty. The voice cast meshed with expert animation, and a humorous, and different plot, really carry this movie as a fun Saturday afternoon flick.

Disney's Tangled (****)

2011-02-06T07:58:00.000-08:00

Tangled (****)

Director – Nathan Greno, Byron Howard

Starring – Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi, and Donna Murphy

PG - Rated PG for brief mild violence

Disney is back with a fun family feature that really does feel like the next classic. This is a computer animated film designed to charm the youngsters but still hold the adult’s attention. Tangled is a visual and an emotional treat. Enough twists and turns exist here to keep the audience’s attention, but the run time is short enough for kids not to have to run to the bathroom too many times. There is some exciting action, and some really beautiful singing; all combined to make a great twist on the Rapunzel tale we all grew up with.

In Tangled we find all the elements of the Disney classics (fun musical numbers, animals with more human traits than some of the humans, and of course a very different twist to the original fairy tale) combined with the now standard computer animation like Shrek and Toy Story. Tangled however sets a new standard for Disney, after the flop Princess and the Frog. It is official, the old animation is out, and computer graphics are here to stay.

Rapunzel is a four star treat to take the whole family to. There is nothing too scary, and nothing inappropriate for any age. Hurry to the theater while you still can!

The Town - Affleck's Best

2010-09-19T15:38:00.000-07:00

The Town **** (4 stars)

Director – Ben Affleck (Screenwriter)

Starring – Ben Affleck, Jeremy Renner, Rebecca Hall, and Chris Cooper

MPAA - Rated R for strong violence, pervasive language, some sexuality and drug use.

Actor/Director/Screenwriter Ben Affleck rises to Scorsese level brilliance in the crime drama “The Town.” This is a brutal, profane, movie that delivers thrills better than “Heat.” Affleck has made a film here that will be difficult to ignore at the Academy Awards.

The Town is Charleston Massachusetts, the capital of bank and armored car robberies, and slum suburb of Boston. Amidst prostitution, drug and alcohol addiction, and a daily threat of violent death, lives Ben Affleck’s character Doug MacRay. His life is run by the local boss “The Flouriest” and he plans and runs bank heists with his buddies. While trying to dig himself out of the pile of refuse his life has become MacRay falls in love with a hostage from one of his bank robberies, Claire (Rebecca Hall – Frost/Nixon). Their lives become an entangled web as MacRay and his friends are the prime suspects in an FBI investigation.

Co-Starring as MacRay’s closest friend is Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) who plays a vicious murder parolee whose life is lived under the shadow of death at each step. Affleck and Renner make a dynamic criminal duo reminiscent of Affleck and Damon in Good Will Hunting. The characters all are living tragic lives, but there may be hope for redemption.

I might say this film is like Good Will Hunting meets Heat and The Departed. Take the twisted plots and high caliber acting, meld them together and you get The Town. This is not a film for the faint of hear. While the violence is not over the top it is realistic and brutal, the dialogue has an F-word for every minute of playing time, but the overall film is gripping and tense.

This is the kind of drama I live to see in the theaters; a film with excellent character and plot development, good script, top notch acting, and intense action. This is a first class action/drama, one that is guaranteed to thrill.

Sex/Nudity – 8 out of 10 – In a very quick shat we see a stripper spin on a pole, and we see a glimpse of one breast and then we see the exposed buttocks of a stripper. A woman straddling a man from the waist up they moan and we assume they are having sex. We see a man with his shirt off laying on top of a woman, they moan, we assume they are having sex.

Violence – 8 out of 10 – There is a lot of machine gun fire against innocent bystanders, police officers, and security guards. Quite a few people are shot, there is some blood. One man is hit repeatedly in the head with the butt of a gun, we find out later he is in ICU but okay. One man crashes into a car and dies, we see his bloodied head and body.

Profanity – 150 or so F-words, multiple uses of other profanities and religious exclamations.

2010-08-31T08:35:00.000-07:00

Dark City Director’s Cut **** (4 Stars)

Director – Alex Proyas (Wrote and Directed)

Starring – Rufus Sewell, Jennifer Connelly, Kiefer Sutharland, Richard O’Brien, and William Hurt

MPAA – Rated R for violent images and some sexuality.

I never saw or even heard of this film until one day I was reading old movie reviews by Roger Ebert and I came across his review of Dark City. He loved it so naturally I had to see it. I popped it into the player and I was instantly hooked. This film might fall under film noir, but it also falls under Sci-Fi, murder mystery, and almost horror genres. Dark City is a wonderfully twisted film that seems to be part Truman Show, part Bourne, part Matrix, and part Inception. Intact this film probably made the Matrix trilogy and similar films a possibility.

Dark City is not the best movie ever made, but it is work of art. All the sets are done on an indoor sound stage, and everything is real. These are not computer generated sets; this is not a film that thrives on CGI. Of course there are some computer graphics at work here, but the vast majority of the film is wonderfully real. The film has a very distinct palette like, The Matrix, of greens and yellows. The sets and costumes are heavily influenced by 40s gangster and detective films, and while we assume it is a modern film it is difficult to tell.

Dark City is a film not to miss. It is a brilliantly crafted Sci-Fi thriller. This film delivers first class edge-of-your seat thrills. The graphics are a hair cheesy in one or two places, and the sound stage sets suspend reality a little bit, but the stages gave so much control to the director as far as lighting and sound goes that it works out to the film’s advantage. There are great twists and turns here plot wise, and while not everything is explained, the audience is not lost in the mystery. Dark city is an 8.5 out of 10 in my book.

Sex/Nudity – 7 out of 10 – A woman is seen changing into a robe and there is a brief glimpse of full frontal nudity. A dead woman is seen with one bare breast exposed in two scenes. A man is seen naked from the back.

Violence Gore – 7 out of 10 -There are a few scenes in which dead women are briefly shown with circular symbols carved into their skin. A few people die and their blood splatters quite a bit.

Profanity – 3 out of 10 – there were one or two mild profanities and not more than 10 religious exclamations.

Dinner for Schmucks

2010-08-30T09:15:00.000-07:00

Dinner for Schmucks *** (3 Stars)

Director: Jay Roach

Starring: Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Zach Galifianakis, Bruce Greenwood, and Jemaine Clement

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for sequences of crude and sexual content, some partial nudity and language.

I haven’t laughed this hard since I saw “The Other Guys” earlier this month. I guess that isn’t saying much, but you have to realize I practically peed my pants at that movie, and at “Dinner For Schmucks” I left the theater with an aching body I had been laughing so hard and so long.

At first I thought Dinner for Schmucks was not one of those batty Saturday Night Live skit style films; but then I realized this is a movie directed by the man responsible for the Austin Powers series and the Meet the Parents films, both long SNL skits with SNL casts. Dinner for Schmucks takes what was funny about those films and combines it with the antics of comics Steve Carell and Paul Rudd to make a film that shook the theater walls with laughter.

Dinner for Schmucks is the beginnings of a hybrid between the classic SNL film style and the newer comedy style of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up. While all these films have their roots in the slightly perverted sexual comedy Dinner for Schmucks manages to be considerably toned down compared to Austin Powers or Knocked Up.

This is still a wacky sort of comedy. The premise for the film is an odd buddy comedy matchup between the corporate ladder climber Paul Rudd and the lonely taxidermist and socially retarded Steve Carell. In order for Rudd to make his promotion at work he must bring an idiot to a work dinner. The purpose of these dinners is for the corporate guys to display their idiots for amusement.

While Rudd is bothered by the prospect of mocking innocent idiots he runs into (literally) Carell, whose special hobby is stuffing mice and using them to make vignette scenes such as The Last Supper. Rudd decides this is a sign and invites Carell to the dinner. What happens though is a long series of disastrous events with Rudd lying to his girlfriend, Carell inviting over Rudd’s personal stalker, and the star of Flight of the Concords Jemaine Clement’s bizarre cameo as out-to-lunch artist trying to steal Paul Rudd’s girl. This mix brought tears to my eyes as I tried to hold my guts in, I was laughing so hard.

What really works here is Steve Carell’s innocent character. This is not the
Michael Scott, the idiotic and rude social inept of The Office. This is a sweet, mild mannered and innocent man whose story is almost heart breaking; but whose incapability of normal social interaction causes more problems than Bugs Bunny to Daffy Duck. Carell is just so innocent though that anything he does is just passed off as “oh that poor man” instead of “what a moron”.

Dinner for Schmucks is a little bit of a dirty comedy. There are a lot of sexual jokes and profanity. However this is also one of the funnier films this summer. I’m giving this movie a solid 7.5 out of 10. The plot here is not brilliant by any stretch, but the characters are so wild and bizarre and the whole thing so entertaining it is a winner in my book.

Sex/Nudity – 6 out of 10 – There are a lot of sexual jokes and references. We see a picture of a woman’s bottom in skimpy panties with a message “are you touching yourself?” We see a man and two women being photographed they have only feathers covering their genitals and the woman have feathers over their breasts, the man invites two other men to have sex with him and the two women, the men decline the offer. There are a lot of cleavage revealing outfits as well.

Violence/Gore – 4 out of 10 – A man cuts off another man’s finger we see blood on the severed ends and a vulture takes the finger and flies away with it. A woman chases a man around an apartment in a playful way until he throws a blanket over her head and she fall over a railing, then she begins throwing bottles of wine at him.

Profanity – 6 out of 10 – 2 or 3 F-words, around 100 or so other obscenities and sexual references as well as religious exclamations.

The Ghost Writer, okay, but not what I wanted

2010-08-24T15:46:00.000-07:00

The Ghost Writer

Director – Roman Polanski

Starring – Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan with Tom Wilkinson

MPAA - Rated PG-13 for language, brief nudity/sexuality, some violence and a drug reference.

The Ghost Writer plays like an Alfred Hitchcock style thriller from the 60’s but with much more interesting cinematography. Polanski knows how to direct a thriller without using bad teenage gimmicks like mutilated bodies or other horror shocks. Instead this is a thriller built piece by piece. Actions and dialogue stack on top of each other to the point that, along with a musical score that captures the heightened tension and strained emotions, as an audience we realize our hearts are pounding and our palms are sweaty. This is a tense political thriller/drama.

That being said The Ghost Writer is not an action film and has almost no violence. Anyone expecting gunshots and fistfights should go see something else. The Ghost Writer is a film about dialogue and names. If you can’t remember names I suggest the subtitles function because what is being said is vital to the plot.

I was kind of hoping for a blend of masterful thriller and wicked action, and I was a little disappointed by The Ghost Writer because of the lack of action. I was kind of hoping for something like The International which is a superb thriller, like The Ghost Writer, but also managed to have one of the best gun fights I have ever seen. But I can’t complain too much, this was an exciting film, although from the hype critics are giving it I was expecting a much more intriguing plot.

I really liked how the mystery was set up though. Ewan McGregor plays a ghost writer, a man who writes other’s memoirs. He is working on Adam Lang’s, the former prime minister of England. In the process he is led to the possibility that there are many more secrets to Lang’s administration than we suppose at the start. This is slowly discovered as the ghost writer talks to Lang and his wife, finding little inconstancies. The story looks pretty straightforward and then, as the music crescendos, everything falls apart.

I did not love The Ghost Writer. I wasn’t very impressed by the acting. With names like Pierce Brosnan and Tom Wilkinson supporting Ewan McGregor I was expecting something a little higher caliber, like Micheal Clayton or something, but you have to account for the fact that Brosnan and Wilkinson each had only 10 minutes of screen time. McGregor was just not that interesting to watch in this film. His performance, which the film hinged on, was a little wish washy, and he seemed not to have much direction for his character. For a 40 year old writer there was little development to his character.

All in all The Ghost Writer was a little bit of a letdown. I was expecting an Oscar worthy movie, and while I was still happy to see a visually appealing film, that was also a good thriller, I wasn’t impressed by everything that happened. I wanted more dynamic acting and a little more action or drama or something to pick up the pace a little. This is a decent film, 7.9 out of 10, but it is not as high caliber a film as I was expecting.

Sex/Nudity – 6 out of 10 – We see a fully nude man from the side, his groin is hidden by his leg and hip, he crawls into a bed with a naked married woman who slides on top of him and begins kissing him. They wake up the next morning in bed together and discuss the affair. There are a few references to a man’s affair with a woman, and we see a man from the chest up in a bathtub.

Violence/Gore – 4 out of 10 – A man is shot and we see a little blood on his head. A man is punched in the stomach and face. We hear the impact of a man being hit by a speeding car, but we don’t see anything. A newscast shows a terrorist being tortured by water being dumped on his face. A body is seen washed up on a shoreline.

Profanity – I heard one F-word, there might have been one more, and there were about 40 or so other profanities and religious exclamations.

The A-Team

2010-08-22T15:42:00.000-07:00

The A -Team *** (3 Stars)

Director – Joe Carnahan

Starring – Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Jessica Biel, and Patrick Wilson

MPAA - Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence throughout, language and smoking

Another underestimated summer remake, “The A -Team” turns out to be a fun pop-corn flick with lots of laughs and some good explosions. This rebooting of the old TV show is actually pretty entertaining and worth catching at a discount theater or at the video store when it is released. While I am too young to have seen any of the episodes – except a rerun or two at grandma’s house – I found “The A –Team” to be an exciting and witty film, one that I plan on renting in a few months to get a little bit more of the action.

Like I said I have not really seen enough of the old TV episodes to know if anything but the names are the same in this updated film, so I am going to try and judge this film on its merits as a movie and not as a faithful remake. “The A – Team” is kind of one of those guilty pleasure films. It is a movie that you have to go into with no expectations so you can just sit back and enjoy what happens.

The movie starts off with bringing the four Rangers together in their first mission wreaking havoc on a dirty Mexican general. Then we are fast forwarded “8 years and 80 successful missions” later to the Iraq war where the four are brought together to take on one very important and classified mission. It goes off without a hitch until they are double crossed and end up stripped of rank and in jail. From here they must break out and clear their names.

This movie manages to go pretty quickly from a heist film to a prison break film, back to a heist film and then over to a revenge flick fairly quickly without leaving us as an audience confused at all. The writing for the film wasn’t amazing, and this movie was far from not having any plot holes, but it was not a serious film, and no one was taking it seriously. Instead all the actors were just having a fun time messing around and being funny. Even the double crossing bad guy was kind of a goofball.

I really enjoyed the film’s casting. The actors were a lot of fun to watch and listen too. They took a mediocre script and managed to make it entertaining and lively. Bradley Cooper and Patrick Wilson both kind of stole the show for me. They are good looking guys who know how to make an audience laugh with their clever come-backs and wicked smirks. Wilson plays the CIA agent Lynch. He was kind of diabolical but very funny as he fumes at his incompetent CIA cohorts. Cooper was the smooth talking Face who got the girls and the good one-liners.

There was also really good chemistry between B.A. Baracus and Murdock (Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Sharlto Copley, respectively). The two kind of had a love/hate relationship. Murdock as the pilot has to deal with B.A.’s fear of flights and dopes B.A. up a few times, B.A. then threatens to “kill all you fools” until he is soothed as Murdock promises B.A his favorite cooked dinner. Copley’s half insane Murdock was a hilarious character whose bizarre antics and country accent made for a flavorful addition to the cast.

I can’t help but compare this film with “The Losers”, another action/comedy/buddy flick with pretty much the same plot. Notice that this summer has done a lot of the same movies over and over again. “Bounty Hunter”, “Date Night”, “Killers”, “Knight and Day”, all were pretty similar movies involving couples getting into trouble and then getting to blow stuff up. Then “The Losers”, “The A-Team”, and “The Expendable” all with a bunch of action gurus blowing more stuff up while being double crossed and having to clear their names. It is just funny to see the different studios all making the same movies.

Anyone who liked “The Losers” will for sure enjoy “The A-Team”. Both films are very similar and I enjoyed watching them. I don’t think I could pick a preferred film. Both had great one-liners and almost no plot to get in the way of all the action and laughs. These are perfect guy movies.

One thing that kind of bugged me with “The A-Team” was that some of the action was just too fast to see. The camera swung around quickly, blurring the scenes and it was impossible for me to catch what was happening to the characters. I prefer crisp clean action where I don’t lose track of whose who and what is going on. There were too many times where the action on screen just got fuzzy or too dark and it was hard to figure out what exactly was going on. On top of that a lot of the one-liners were masked by loud explosions and music. In theater they call it holding for laughs, and while movies are not theater there still needs to be a pause here and there for the audience to catch the jokes.

“The A-Team” delivers an overall entertaining if not simple movie. The plot and script are average and no one is going to the Oscars on this film. But because those involved with the film were able to take things lightly, and not get too serious with the movie, the whole thing was able to remain and energetic and exciting action movie that beats out a lot of the competition to date. I’ll tie this film with “The Losers” at 7.5 out of 10. Nothing exceptional was done here, but all in all it was a fun flick to watch.

Sex/Nudity 4 out of 10 – A man is seen shirtless a few times. It is implied that a man and a woman have had sex as a woman takes her panties off of a bed and puts them in her pocket. A man kisses a woman, she slaps him and they kiss passionately. A man admits to sleeping with another man’s wife. Some women wear cleavage revealing outfits.

Violence/Gore – 6 out of 10 – There are a lot of explosions, gun fights, fist fights, and killing. The action is stylized but still realistic. A lot of people are shot and punched some people die, but there is relatively little blood. No dead bodies are seen or anything like that.

Profanity – 5 out of 10 – 2 incomplete F-words (Mother F - then an explosion cuts them off), 3 military WTFs (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot), a few birdie flips, 2 or 3 B-words, 30 or so S-words, 50 or so mild obscenities and religious exclamations.

Salt - The Russians Are Coming to take on Angalina Jolie

2010-08-18T22:59:00.000-07:00

Salt *** (3 stars)

Director – Phillip Noyce (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Saint)

Starring – Angelina Jolie, Liev Schrieber, Chiwetel Ejiofor

MPAA - Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action.

The Russians are coming, right back out of the 80’s, and they are as cunning as ever. While this formula might be tiring for some of the older audiences it works well for the younger crowd here in the non-stop action/thriller “Salt”. This one may be overlooked at the box office because it is not full mindless explosion after mindless explosion as the trailers seem to imply. Instead “Salt” is more of a political thriller combined with the ruthless action/violence that made “Taken” such an impressive film.

Anyone who liked “Taken” will find “Salt” at least as impressive. While not at all as brutal as Liam Neeson’s character, Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is still a blast to watch as she takes down anything standing in her way and leaves them lying bruised and unconscious…hopefully (As opposed to Liam Neeson who managed to blow away anyone who considered giving him trouble).

Evelyn Salt (a top notch CIA operative) is accused by a Russian defector (I didn’t know we still had those after “The Hunt for Red October”) of being a sleeper agent for a secret Russian government program. She goes on the run from her counterparts Schrieber and Ejiofor leaving us almost in the dust and as clueless as the cast is to the truth. I can’t give much more away, but the previews for the film really failed to show us what “Salt” was all about, in fact they were downright misleading.

This movie was not as incredible as “Inception” but in a summer run of very average films “Salt” is definitely one of the better ones. It is an incredibly clean film, low on the swearing and nonexistent in the sex category (though Angelina still manages to show us what she looks like in lingerie – even though she is being beaten and interrogated at the time). The action is pretty hard core, but stays safely in the PG-13 range, making us mostly believe that not everyone is being killed.

I found it refreshing to see a throwback to the days of the KGB and the nuclear threat. So many films today beat the middle-east conflict into the ground and “Salt” pays a little homage to the spy thrillers of Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy.

In short “Salt” is not a film you will regret seeing. It is a little over the top in showing Evelyn Salt’s abilities (hoping from the top of one semi to another while bullets graze her), but the action is done in a way that we can still believe the possibility that Salt is just super good at what she does. In fact I have never seen Angelina Jolie take such a ruthless beating while plowing through a high speed thriller like this one. I am not going to say this is Jolie’s best, nor is it this year’s best, but “Salt is a top notch action/thriller that actually manages to surprise the audience and leave them fully satisfied. An 8.5 out of 10 in my book.

Sex/nudity - 2 out of 10 – a husband and wife kiss a few times. A woman in a bra and panties is beaten while being interrogated.

Violence/Gore - 6 out of 10 – This is an almost non-stop action film with a lot of guns, shooting, killing, fighting, and the like. There is limited blood. There are also a lot of car crashes. There are a lot of fist-a-cuffs. Many people are knocked unconscious, some might be killed it is not certain. A man shoots up a whole room of unarmed people, lots of bullets and sparks fly around the room, almost everyone is left dead.

Profanity - 4 out of 10 – 1 muffled F-word (I am pretty sure it was there) , 10 to 20 other mild profanities and religious exclamations.

Eclipse - zzzzzzzzzz (look at the bottom for an additional post)

2010-08-16T08:39:00.001-07:00

Eclipse ** (2 stars)

(My brother and I had two vastly different opinions here and so I have posted his review after my own)

Director – David Slade

Starring – Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner

MPAA - Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence, and some sensuality.

I have to say, as a guy getting dragged to the Twilight films, that there is an automatic wall I of defiance I put up saying that I will not like these films. I mock them, I yawn at them, and in this case I refused to go see it until Eclipse hit the discount theaters. I thought why waste money on a movie ticket for a film I’ll hate. My brother took my wife to see the “Eclipse” opening night and the two of them loved it. Then I heard from another buddy that he really liked it, so months later my wife dragged me over to the discount theater so I could see number three in the Twilight saga, “Eclipse”.

This is not the lust-fest I heard it was, though there were enough tanned shirtless werewolf boys and Bella/Edward make out/conversations to wet any 14-year-old’s panties. Which I suppose is the point. The basic message here for the younger crowd is that you should wait to have sex until you are married, but all the spit swapping and Levi loving you want is okay. Again I say “Eclipse” was not a dirty teen sex movie, but there were plenty of onscreen raging hormones. Amazingly all three of the films have managed to keep most of the cast members clothed.

I was not bored by the film … nor was I particularly impressed by anything that happened. This is the third in an unimpressive franchise designed to make teenage girls think their first crush is going to be the orgasmic love of their lives. “Eclipse” manages to encompass all the silliness of high school relationships. We are again faced with the Bella/Jacob/Edward love triangle, made all the more complicated now that there is an army of newborn vampires at large in the Pacific North West. Of course a person would only know what was going on if that person had read all the books and seen all the movies. But these films are mostly made for the fans and not for the idle movie goer anyway.

I am mostly put off by Kristen Stewart. She is just plain bad. I have only seen her in the three Twilight films, but each faltering line mumbled out of her thin frowning lips makes me cringe. She is not a good actress and she is not fun to watch.

On top of her inability to deliver a single line clearly there is the general feeling that all the actors went to Soap Opera school before filming. Everyone’s face has furrowed eyebrows and drooping lips. No one smiles or takes any delight in being a part of one of the most financially successful franchises to date. Instead the cast is far too serious about the seriousness of the situation. I think I saw a smile flit across someone’s lips once while making a witty quip, but I can’t remember who it was or when. The serious stares and brooding dialogue was just too over-powering.

I will give “Eclipse” credit for being vastly more entertaining than the first of the saga. But that is like going from a 1 out of 10 to a 5 out of 10. The cinematography is infinitely superior and the CGI is far more advanced. I was quite entertained in fact by the marbled vampires smashing each other to smithereens. The brutal slow-motion fist fights were exciting, though I was sorely disappointed at the apparent uselessness of the giant wolves whose teeth were supposed to tear through vampire flesh. All they managed to do was look scary and distract the bad guys.

Eclipse is not terrible filmmaking, but there is nothing about this movie that makes it anything more than a 5 out of 10. I think a lot of people will enjoy the action, and a lot of teenagers will enjoy the sexy love story. I am just anxiously awaiting the close of this series, though I hear the last book will be a two part film so there will be a few more years of this nonsense. I did not like Eclipse, I don’t think it is a film worth watching. My wife however loves the books and the movies, and I am sure other fans will feel the same.

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(The following is written by my brother, the one who took my wife to see the movie opening night.)

So arrives the third installment in the Twilight Saga with all its promised fan fulfilling splendor and eye candy, (i.e. shirtless Jacob Black scenes, Vampire/Vampire & Vampire/Werewolf battles, funny one-liners, making out between almost every couple in the franchise, and of course almost an entire hour of close ups of Kristen Stewart’s face, and everyone else in the movie for that matter.)

For Twilight Saga fans, avid readers of the series, or just the movie followers in general, it is simply said that “Eclipse delivers!” Everything in the book, from costumes, character speech patterns, attitudes, dialogue, scenery, basic storyline including details, etc. has been smoothly and finely translated into a movie form that is action packed, hopelessly romantic, and good story telling; without being too choppy, too long, or too poorly acted.

Eclipse has come a long way from its predecessors, Twilight and New Moon, in many aspects. The filming feels heavy with a more than healthy dose of close ups during intimate dialogue scenes but feels balanced out with Vampire fast action sequences. Music in the movie is classic Twlight Saga’esque featuring the regulars such as The Muse and others. The overall acting from the cast has improved greatly since Twilight, with some great line deliveries from (Charlie), Taylor Lautner, Robert Pattinson, and Kristen Stewart to name a few. Robert Pattinson takes the spotlight more than a few times and impresses us with some good powerful and emotional acting.

Though Eclipse certainly doesn’t compare to movies like Beautiful Mind, Remember the Titans, Saving Private Ryan and other classics, what it was made for, (all those Team Edward/Team Jacob shirt wearing, fanatic, cheering, screaming, fans wanting a movie version of their beloved book) it dishes out excellently. In conclusion though people who make fun of, dislike or are just not into Stephanie Meyer’s work may not enjoy this latest release of the Twilight Saga, fans of the Franchise can expect to walk out of the theatre more than satisfied with Eclipse.
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Sex/Nudity – 6 out of 10 - A teenage boy and teenage girl kiss passionately on a bed. They discuss having sex, the boy indicates he wants to wait until they are married. A girl and a shirtless boy kiss passionately. Several shirtless men are seen throughout the film. A man and teenage daughter discuss having protected sex. A woman relates her rape and we see her grabbed by a group of men.

Violence/Gore – 6 out of 10 – There is a lot of fighting and vampire violence. Some people are attacked and their blood is drunk by vampires. Many vampires fight and their bodies are smashed and broken. The film style has made the vampires bodies look like marble statues when they are smashed. There is a lot of fist fighting between vampires; giant wolves also fight with vampires. It is not a gory film, but there is a little blood and some frightening sequences, especially for children.

Profanity – 3 out of 10 - 9 to 10 mild profanities and religious exclamations total.

Clash of the Titans (2010)

2010-08-15T19:30:00.000-07:00

Clash of the Titans *** (3 stars)

Director – Louis Leterrier

Starring – Sam Worthington, Gemma Arterton, Mads Mikkelsen, Hans Matheson, with Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes

MPAA - Rated PG-13 for fantasy action violence, some frightening images and brief sensuality.

Sam Worthington takes another dive into the mindless action film genre with the remake “Clash of the Titans”. I was very young when I saw the original film so I am not judging this new film on its faithfulness to the original but instead as a new film.

Upon finishing “Clash of the Titans” my first thought was how the title relates to the films. If I remember correctly the titans were created to kill the gods or something like that, and there are no titans clashing in this film (yes you could argue contrary but lets face it the movie is full of far many more holes than this). Instead it is the demigod Perseus (Sam Worthington) fighting Hades (Ralph Fiennes) and his kraken. Zeus (Liam Neeson) is a minor role as the creator of mankind, and the jealous Hades is working to undermine his brother’s love for man. Somewhere in the mess of a plot there is a lot of fighting and death and one or two quick kisses.

I enjoyed watching the amazing CGI graphics in Clash. It was awesome to see the giant mythological creatures. The producers here spared no expense in making the computer graphics as realistic as possible. If the makers of “Prince of Persia” had bothered to put this kind of CGI detail into their film, then I might have actually enjoyed it. The incredible special effects is really the only thing “Clash of the Titans had going for it. These effects blended right into the film so there was no clear line where the effects began or ended. There were a few scenes on the ocean that were pretty obviously studio filmed with green screen backgrounds, but they were brief scenes that are easily overlooked.

But a movie cannot stand on graphics alone. I know some people think so, and that is why pointless films like this get hyped up and pumped into the market all year. Clash is only half a movie. The other remaining pieces like plot, character development, and dialogue were left out. I mean there is the bare bones structure of a plot to be sure, and there is talking of course, and there are people in the plot doing the talking…but that is about it.

Usually in mindless action films the film makers try to make the movie humorous in order to create a quick emotional connection between the characters and the audience. With “Clash” though the actors are all pretending that they are a part of a serious epic like “Troy” or “Gladiator” when instead “Clash of the Titans” is a film more akin to “Transformers” or “GI Joe”. There were all the elements of a Transformers style summer action film, but the actors were taking everything so serious it was difficult for me to settle into the film and enjoy some good CGI violence. It was like the producers wanted a Neil Simon comedy and the actors wanted a Shakespearian tragedy. Lighten up guys no one is getting an Oscar for this film.

In short “Clash of the Titans” is a completely plotless action film made for 14-year-old boys. I loved the visual effects but was frustrated by the constant plot holes and failed attempts at both drama and comedy. If the producers had wanted an epic then they should have put a few more years into script development instead of shooting this film down the Hollywood assembly line. This is a mindless film that is barely saved from complete ruin by some pretty awesome special effects. I enjoyed watching the film with a big group of friends. We were able to make fun of the parts that sucked while gleaning a little fun from the action scenes. This is a 6.3 out of 10. I’ll tell you a secret though, I would definitely see Clash again before re-watching “Eclipse”.

Sex/Nudity - 5 out of 1 0 – A Greek god sleeps with a mortal woman, we see her bare shoulders and him naked from the back for a second. We hear a story about a woman being raped by a god. We see some bare-chested men.

Violence/Gore – 6 out of 10 – There is a lot of CGI action and violence. When any man dies there is little blood and the scene usually cuts away from any potential gore. The only really gory part is when a man stabs a giant scorpion monster and a lot of green blood bushes out. It is an intense movie with a lot of sword play and large monsters killing people.

Profanity – 2 out of 10 – Some mild obscenities and a few religious exclamations and name calling.

Toy Story 3 - A MUST SEE!

2010-08-14T21:11:00.000-07:00

Toy Story 3 * * * * * (5 stars)

Director – Lee Unkrich

Starring (Voice Actors) – Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack and Michal Keaton

MPAA – G

Pixar is a company that astounds me. Every film they have made is absolutely amazing excepting “Cars” which was fun but not groundbreaking. The idea of a third “Toy Story “really had me worried. I was not to keen on the idea of another sequel because the market has been so bad these last couple of years. Originality is so hard to find at the cinemas and the vast majority of sequels are so inferior to their predecessors. But I remained optimistic based on the track record of the past 10 Disney/Pixar films (one of them being the hilarious and touching “Toy Story 2”).
Then out came “Toy Story 3” and the buzz from both viewers and reviewers was the same, it was supposed to be the best film of the year. I put off seeing it for too long and when it opened in the discount movie theaters today in 3D I forced my wife to come with me. And even though I had to suffer the indignity 3D glasses (a wholly pointless gimmick might I add) and the previews for infantile films “Toy Story 3” was indeed another notch on Disney/Pixar’s belt of superb movies.

Having just had the absolute pleasure of experiencing the masterpiece that was “Inception”, I was not prepared to be overwhelmed with the beauty of another A+ film in the same week. While being a part of a different genre “Toy Story 3” is almost a dead tie with “Inception” for the best film of 2010 yet. The only thing that might be holding it back from ultimate greatness is that it was not quite as original as “Inception”. “Toy Story 3” still took its characters to infinity and beyond and with it went my imagination.

I say it was not as original because of course this is the third installment in a series; but the plot was still new and exciting. There were a few running gags from the first two Toy Stories, but the plot was a new experience and a new concept. The toys are faced with Andy’s departure for college, and are accidentally donated to a day care instead of being stored in the attic like Andy wanted. But instead of being the same story as the second film – that of stranded toys trekking the city to get back to their owner – the toys are instead faced with the idea of being rejected by their beloved Andy and they must now find a way to fit in with a new crowd. I’ll keep to this vague plot description to avoid giving anything away, but let it be known that the writers made a brilliant script that plays out very well.

“Toy Story 3” did not however out-do Pixar’s last two films “Up” and “Wall-E”. It would be difficult to do anything as incredible as those two films; films that were original, entertaining, and heart-warming. While I would rate both those Disney/Pixar ventures as 9.9s “Toy Story 3” is not far behind with an easy 9.5 out of 10 ten. This movie is as near to perfect as a movie can get. There was nothing to be critical about.

One thing that really surprised me is how well the makers of this film managed to stay away from elements of the earlier movies. There was no return to Al’s Toy Barn, no Zerg (except a blip in the credits reel), no emergence of the Wood’s Roundup. Instead everything was fresh and new. Yes there were a few elements used across all three movies, but those are the fun things that tie the trilogy together.

Not only did “Toy Story 3” stay true to the other films, it also stayed true to the magic of all the Disney/Pixar movies. This is a movie that is clean and appropriate for all ages (although there are quite a few frightening moments). It is also a movie that brought tears to my eyes, both from laughing so hard and from heart-warming and touching moments. My wife leaned over to me while I was sniffling during an ending scene (it was just such a happy moment I couldn’t hold it in) and whispered to me, “Are you crying?” “Of course not,” I retorted haughtily; there was no way I was going to admit tearing up during a G-rated Disney film in the middle of a theater. But here I am now confessing because Toy Story 3 truly was a beautiful film.

My only beef is this whole 3D deal. It is a useless gimmick for scoring more dollars from the movie goers. My experience was not enhanced in any way by going to this film in 3D. I only went because that was the only format available at the theater. SAVE YOUR MONEY! “Toy Story 3” is an outstanding film and doesn’t need the cumbersome label of ‘3D’ to be better. Go see “Toy Story 3” before it is no longer in theaters. If there is one film you have to see this year it is Toy Story 3.

Sex/Nudity - 1 out of 10 – You see a shirtless Ken doll and there is a kiss or two between toys.

Violence/Gore – 2 out of 10 – There are some frightening images and some adventure peril that is a little on the intense end. The kids behind me kept switching from crying to laughing.

Profanity – 1 out of 10 – Please, if this movie offends you then do us all a favor don’t go see movies, don’t read books, stay in your bed with a pillow over your face. There is some name calling along with uses of Darn and Heck.

Inception - OSCARS here we come!!!

2010-08-13T13:10:00.000-07:00

Inception

Director – Christopher Nolan

Starring – Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe,
Cillian Murphy, and Michael Cain

MPAA - Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action throughout.

WOW. This single phrase encompasses everything I felt about watching Inception. I walked into the theater expecting to see the best film of the year and I walked out having seen the best film of the year. I have watched other great films this year, but I have yet to see a movie this good that was released this year. Inception is a completely original masterpiece. It is film-making at its best. I already dread the Oscars when this brilliant and captivating piece will be passed over for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Cinematography by films not even half as good.

My writing teacher told me to choose words for their precise definitions. Masterpiece for instance means: an outstanding work of art or craft; the greatest work of an artist; something superlative of its kind. I am not misusing this word when I call “Inception” a masterpiece.

First it is an outstanding work of art. This is the kind of movie I live to see. Not only is the plot engaging and original, it is also a nail-biting thriller. The movie combines gun-fighting, fist-a-cuffs, and mind-blowing special effects with an intricate plot that captures the imagination. I have a wild imagination, but in my most bizarre dreams I could not conceive of a film so flawlessly put together.
This is a film about entering people’s dreams and stealing their ideas; a notion that is impossible. Leonardo DiCaprio leads a team of specialized mind probers into the psyche of businesses’ elite taking corporate espionage to a new level. The Matrix-esque idea is original and intriguing. Since “The Matrix” no other film has stretched the mind the way “Inception” does.

While “Inception” is an exceptional example of movie making, it is also the greatest work yet seen by Christopher Nolan. This film was 10 years in the making and is worth every second poured into it. Christopher Nolan surprised us all with the brilliantly intricate film “Memento”. This film was so interesting because we see it played out backwards. I had to watch this film three or four times before I understood what was happening. “Memento” however is only the foreshadowing of what “Inception” is.

“Inception” starts somewhere towards the end of the middle of the story, then jumps to the beginning. The characters in “Inception” frequently move from different levels of dreams, dreams with in dreams you might say. And the plot moves that way too. For the first 30 minutes of the film we are not sure what part of the movie we are in, but slowly everything begins to make sense. Christopher Nolan truly outdoes himself with an intricate story line that plays out flawlessly, leaving no question unanswered.

For something to be superlative it must be of the highest possible excellence. This is the third definition of a masterpiece, and describes “Inception” well. These days it is almost impossible to find a movie that combines a flawless plot and good character development with first class special effects and almost constant action sequences. Somehow, amid the flying bullets and mind-bending CGI, there is still a deep plot and realistic characters. The one thing I have not mentioned is of course the acting, which is just as magnificent as every other aspect of the film. Inception truly has it all.

I cannot say enough about how good “Inception” is. The IMDB is currently giving it a 9.1 out of 10. I would venture to give this movie a 9.9 out of 10. Not only is this a brilliant film, but it is free of Hollywood’s obsession with splattering blood, shameless sexuality, street urchin profanity. This is a film so good I fear it will be passed over by the elitist Academy Awards, but we who go to the movies will know “Inception” to be a true masterpiece.

Sex/Nudity – 0 out of 10 – A husband and a wife kiss, a young man and woman kiss, there is slight cleavage exposes in one scene.

Violence/ Gore – 6 out of 10 – This movie is full of gun fighting and fist fights. There are a lot of explosions. Some people get stabbed and shot. All this however happens in a dream world where if you die you wake up. This does not however take the excitement out of the many death defying stunts and the edge-of-your-seat action sequences.

Profanity – 4 out of 10 – a total of 25 or maybe 30 profanities are used total. There are one or two S-words, a few religious exclamations, and a few mild obscenities.

The Other Guys - SNL at its BEST

2010-08-13T11:35:00.000-07:00

The Other Guys

Director – Adam McKay

Starring – Mark Whalberg, Will Ferrell, Micheal Keaton, Eva Mendez with Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

MPAA - Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content, language, violence and some drug material.

Happy Birthday to me; my aunt took my wife, my brother, and me to this film for a little birthday present. It was opening day, a matinee, and the theater was pretty dead; but this did not stop my aunt and I from busting our guts laughing through this riotous film. I was in the mood for a goofy Will Ferrell comedy and I was not disappointed.

This is the best Adam McKay/Will Ferrell collaboration I have seen yet. “Anchorman”, “Talladega Nights”, and “Step Brothers” were all funny to be sure (all though “Step Brothers” was mostly offensive and awkward) but they all strayed a little too far from reality to be anything more than random SNL movies. “The Other Guys” however manages to take the clever and bizarre dialogue from McKay’s earlier films and combines it with everything good about buddy/cop films to make a hilarious combination of action and comedy. Anyone who loved McKay’s earlier movies will flock to “The Other Guys” in droves, but this movie also will bring in the crowds who are less fond of Will Ferrell because co-starring with Ferrell is the heart-throb Mark Whalberg.

Whalberg is a fun actor to watch and in this film he is given the freedom to mesh his bad-boy attitude from “The Departed” with the goofy absurdness of the SNL style film. Whalberg helps to ground the random humor so prevalent in McKay’s films. So often in the other McKay/Ferrell films there are moments when I would turn and look at who ever I was watching the film with and just shrug my shoulders in complete confusion at where a particular joke or scene was coming from. Sometimes I was so baffled I didn’t even laugh. Most of “Step Brothers” I was just embarrassed. While there are plenty of mind-bogglingly weird moments of dialogue in “The Other Guys” instead of being mystified by the absurdness of the moment I was just caught up in the hilarity and almost peed my pants as a result. The humorous dialogue is so well played out.

The film starts off with action super-stars Samuel L. Jackson and “The Rock” cruising through the city streets blowing stuff up and catching bad guys. These two are the dynamite heroes that everyone loves and they know that their stuff don’t stink. Whalberg and Ferrell are on the sidelines; desk jockeys, who are unappreciated and almost unneeded. Then suddenly the action stars are gone and the two mismatched partners are left to fill the shoes of Jackson and The Rock. Whalberg and Ferrell blunder badly across crime scenes yelling and fighting with each other and of course eventually doing what happens in all cop films – finding the bad guys and becoming great friends while causing billions of dollars in property damage and making the audience roll around the isles laughing.

I am definitely heading back the theaters to see “The Other Guys” again. It is a witty and random comedy that is really the apex of the SNL genre. I love the action/comedy genre when it is done right, and this is an example in excellence...goofy excellence. Yes, this is a random film; and anyone not amused by Saturday Night Live, Adam McKay, or Will Ferrell will probably not appreciate “The Other Guys” or recognize it as anything other than a foolish teenage-boy film. It is a little crude, there is a little profanity, but it is very very funny.

I’ll give it a 7.8 out of 10. I can’t give it much more than that because then I would be suggesting that there was good plot development or other artistic elements of higher quality than that of other films in the genre. That would be misleading. This is not a deep film on any level. It is a long SNL skit but thoroughly entertaining; delivering non-stop laughs.

Sex/Nudity – 5 out of 10 – There are a few sexual references, sexual jokes, and a husband and wife exchange sexual propositions using an elderly woman to deliver the messages. There are a few scenes with women wearing cleavage revealing outfits. A husband and wife disrobe while preparing to have sex, we see her briefly in lingerie and he is shown briefly with his shirt off. A man’s car is stolen, and when it is recovered the police report that it was used for a gay orgy of homeless men. This gag is used two or three other times and the homeless guys are seen later again trying to steal the car.

Violence/Gore – 5 out of 10 – 3 men jump to their deaths in different scenes, we see their bodies hit the ground but there is no blood seen. There are a lot of gun fights, explosions, and everything else you see in a cop movie. There is very little blood. A car runs over a few dead bodies and a little blood spurts out.

Profanity – 6 out of 10 - There are various sexual references, maybe one F-word, somewhere around 100 uses of the S-word, A-word, and other mild obscenities.

Extraordinarily Plain

2010-08-04T10:12:00.000-07:00

Extraordinary Measures

Director: Tom Vaughan

Starring: Brendan Fraser, Harrison Ford, Keri Russell

MPAA - Rated PG for thematic material, language and a mild suggestive moment.

A warm-hearted film that fails to be the wrenching drama it wanted to be, “Extraordinary Measures” is instead a nice family film the never really takes off. I enjoyed some of this film but I would have never seen is had it not been for Harrison Ford’s title billing, and if I had seen it without Harrison Ford I would have shut it off half way through. Harrison Ford is really the only reason to watch the movie, and even then it wasn’t the most interesting of his films.

This was a film that needed to delve deeper into character development and not spend as much time on showing story line pieces. The characters are so thinly put together we have to focus on who the actor is to get any depth out of the characters.

Brendan Fraser for instance plays a character similar to himself, a nice guy who cares about his family – I guess passionately cares, but it is hard to tell – and he stays true to that character the whole movie, but it is never that interesting. Harrison Ford plays an eccentric professor and doctor who develops a treatment for a rare disease. He plays country music extremely loudly ah he tests his theories, and he yells a lot at anyone who does things differently from him. Ford is entertaining, but he doesn’t get enough screen time to develop anything interesting, and we never get to find out why he is such a pain in the butt.
Brendan Fraser and Keri Russell play John and Aileen Crowley, the parents of two children afflicted with Pompe disease. This is a rare disease and there is no cure. Both children have a life expectancy of one more year and so Fraser’s character seeks out Dr. Robert Stonehill (Harrison Ford) who may have a treatment that will save the kid’s lives.

The film tries to be a movie about a family and a movie about two men developing a treatment and a movie about kids overcoming adversity ( I think that is all). Instead of masterfully combining the three genres we get a hodge-podge mish-mash that kind of skims the surface of all three genres; never taking enough time for the audience to get a grasp on the message. Do we feel bad for the kids? Yes, but we only see them for a minute and then we are on to another scene. Do we connect with the parents who are desperately trying to save their children? Yes, but the fact that these parents are millionaires and can afford all the medical treatments for their children plus whatever else is needed does little to help us feel the desperation. Do we feel for the cranky doctor who is on the verge of a medical breakthrough but is socially inept and unappreciated? The check for 16 million dollars says “NO!”

And that is the problem with “Extraordinary Measures”, it is interesting enough to watch, but it fails so badly at greatness. This movie needs a focus and character development, then it might be worth a second go. For now it is a mundane film that is mildly entertaining and kind of makes us feel warm and fuzzy. It is a 6.9 out of 10.

Sex/Nudity – 2 out of 10 - a husband and wife kiss and make out on a couch and are interrupted by a nurse.

Violence/ Gore – 0 out of 10 –

Profanity – 4 out of 10 - 25 obscenities – Son of a “B”, the “S” word, and so on - plus a few religious exclamations.

Not a Loser of a flick!

2010-07-28T14:30:00.000-07:00

The Losers

Director - Sylvain White

Starring – Jeffery Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana, Chris Evans, and Jason Patric
MPAA – Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence, a scene of sensuality and language.

“The Losers” is one of the better graphic novel movies to come out. It is exciting, funny, and holds its own against the onslaught of summer garbage dumped on filmgoers this year. Pitting this movie up against last year’s “GI-Joe” I would watch “The Losers” ten times before I suffered through GI-Joe again. In fact I would definitely watch this film over “Knight and Day” and “Prince of Persia”, two films I have recently reviewed. I liked “The Losers” a lot. Not because it was an amazing action thriller like the Jason Bourne movies, or because it was as clever and as witty as “Ocean’s 11”. I had fun because it was an old fashioned action film that didn’t try to do anything more than make me laugh.

I was reminded of the camaraderie held between the players in “Ocean’s 11.” “The Losers” comprises five Special Forces officers; each man having his own specialty; electronics, weapons, and the like. They each have witty parts and they trade banter back and forth in general good humor. The five men are all good at being funny and are very cool. They trade jokes and insults as they sprint across roof-tops firing large guns, destroying all the bad guys in their way; and it all works in a fun stylized action movie. Each man had his own character, different than the others. This kept this film interesting as we saw the brotherhood of these renegade soldiers.

The story goes like this: these soldiers go into Bolivia to take out a drug dealer, they paint the target with a laser and the house is set to be blown to smithereens. Then the Loosers see there are kids in the house and the defy orders to rescue the kids. However this pits them against an unknown villain named Max. This film marks the beginning of the hunt for Max.

Speaking of Max, he is played by a hilarious Jason Patric; whom I am convinced had way too much fun playing the villain. Of course he was the cookie cutter evil psycho who is offhandedly kills employees and enemies alike. But he is so much funnier than most villains we see in these small action flicks.

I also enjoyed the cinematography in this film. Any time a movie puts extra effort into creating a visually appealing picture I always take note. It is not difficult to achieve this picturesque quality in films, and “The Losers” shows that. Yes there is plenty of CGI action, but it is very minimal compared to others of the genre. Most of the movie is just good old flying bullets and wise cracks, and I loved it. “The Losers” gets a 7.5 out of 10 in my book. It was not an exceptional movie, but it was so much fun to watch.

Sex/Nudity – 6 out of 10 – There are two sex scenes, one is prolonged and we see a woman in her bra and panties, and then just her bare back. We see women in swimsuits, a lot of cleavage, and there are few sexual jokes and references.

Violence/Gore – 7 out of 10 – BOOM, KAPOW, SMAK! There is a whole bunch of gun fighting and shooting; people die, things blow up, and there is almost no blood accompanying it. There are a lot of fist fights as well, and these come with the accustomed bruises and bloody noses, but in general the gore is limited but there is a plethora of action.

Profanity – 5 out of 10 – There is 1 F-word, and about 30 or so obscenities and name calling with about 15 religious exclamations.

Tears of the Sun

2010-07-28T14:25:00.000-07:00

Tears of the Sun

Director – Antoine Fuqua

Starring – Bruce Willis, Monika Bellucci, Cole Hauser,

MPAA - Rated R for strong war violence, some brutality and language.

“Tears of the Sun” manages to take a standard search and rescue jungle movie with a predictable plot and make it into a thought provoking, if not somewhat disturbing, action/thriller. I liked “Tears of the Sun” a lot for this reason. I was not blown away at how amazing this movie was, but I did enjoy how this film used a Nigerian coup and genocide to show the audience a change of character in Bruce Willis’s part. The film uses excellent cinematography to paint a dreadful and haunting, but beautiful, African jungle; and used that background for us to see Lt. A.K. Waters (Bruce Willis) change from a hardened warrior to a man fighting for a cause.

This movie reminded me a lot of the Oscar winning “Blood Diamond.” Though not as heart breaking or as structured, “Tears of the Sun” is still a well made film that shows the horrors of war, but still manages to develop characters and plot a little bit. Yes this movie does dive into some of the age old Hollywood cookie cutter parts. Yes there is virtually no dialogue (everyone is running through the jungle trying to not get killed, there is no time for talking). But through these flaws we still get a powerful story.

I was really captivated by the stunning shots of the African jungles. The cinematography was stupendous. What the film lacked in plot and dialogue was made up in dramatic music/film sequences with shots of Willis’s face looking mournful. These scenes helped us to see the effect the genocide witnessed by Willis’s character had on him, and how he was changing into a better man.

Waters (played by Willis) leads in a group of Navy Seals to extract American doctor Lena Kendricks (Monica Bellucci) from the middle of a Nigerian Civil war and ethnic cleansing. The doctor refuses to leave without the refugees she is caring for. This creates inner conflict for Water’s and he struggles with his conscience and with his orders as he and his men trek the jungle with the refugees as the Nigerian army closes in.

I liked “Tears of the Sun”. It was not an amazing film but it is definitely worth watching once. The action junkies will like the long battle sequences, and those searching for a deeper meaning will enjoy it as well. This is not a film for the faint hearted, it is violent and brutal; but it shows the horrors in Africa and I feel the makers of the movie might have been making a political statement here. ‘Tears of the Sun” gets a 7.8 out of 10 in my book. Not excellent, but it was worth watching for sure.

Sex/Nudity – 6 out of 10 – 2 rape scenes and we see part of an exposes breast. A woman shows quite a bit of cleavage throughout the film.

Violence/Gore – 9 out of 10 – This is not quite as brutal as “Saving Private Ryan but it is still messy. Most of the gore is in a rape scene where we see a badly beaten woman; we get the impression and we are told later that her breasts have been cut off. It is a violent film, but I would not say it is gratuitous violence, it was not for fun.

Profanity – 20 F words and a few other obscenities.

Remember Me

2010-07-27T19:03:00.000-07:00

Remember Me

Director – Allen Coutler

Starring – Robert Pattinson with Chris Cooper and Pierce Brosnan

MPAA – Rated PG-13 for violence, sexual content, language and smoking.

“Remember Me” is a well written film, with deep characters and a riveting plot. It’s greatest fault is that the characters are inevitably linked to coincidences that in the end made me wonder why I bothered to invest two hours into a movie that decide to cheat me out of a good ending. Roger Ebert says the film is like two people meeting and falling in love and then a refrigerator falls on one of them, tragic, but who wants to see it? And that is exactly how I felt about “Remember Me”; I felt cheated out of a good film.

What worked was everything leading up to the completely coincidental ending. I loved the cinematography. The filming was done in deep rich colors that are found in good action movies, but the plot is realistic, and the combination is interesting to watch. On top of the beautiful picture, I was captivated by the depth of the characters. The script was surprisingly well written. Usually this type of movie is geared towards teenagers, and therefore the scripts are so bland and uninteresting the films barely hold together. Instead the dialogue is rather impresive.

Robert Pattinson and Emilie de Ravin have pretty good chemistry, and both are talented young actors. Pattinson manages to shed his cold vampire acting (wich was intolerable in the Twilight series) and is instead a warmhearted – if not troubled – young man. He still manages to lose all ability to act when he first starts talking to the blonde beauty De Ravin, but he gets better in time. She is a lot of fun too, and her strong willed character is well developed and realistic.

We get to see Pattinson’s character in his normal life. He picks up his little sister every day after school, he goes to work at a book store, he is troubled, hates his dad, and it is clear something terrible has happened in his life. The main plot revolves around a romance that develops between Tyler (Robert Pattinson) and Ally (Emile de Ravin). Both have strained relationships with their fathers (Pattinson’s is Pierce Brosnan and de Ravin’s is Chris Cooper). These two men have small roles, but they play their parts well. In fact the background stories of all the characters are well put together and make the film that much deeper. Both Brosnan and Cooper each have dynamite confrontational scenes that are emotional and truly prove each mans high caliber abilities.

I really enjoyed the side story and character of Tyler’s little sister played Caroline by Ruby Jerins. Having three younger sisters myself I felt like Jerins’ older brother as well. I just loved her character. As a young actress she just needs to be cute and adorable to carry herself, but she plays the character well and I think Ruby Jerins has a lot of potential. She has a really heart-warming part to watch.

I grew attached to the characters and I wanted things to work out. I wanted the family issues to be resolved, and then came the ACME safe, right out of the sky, and my hopes for the film were crushed. I can’t give the film anything higher than a 7 out of 10 because of the “coincidence”. Everything worked up till then. It is a great story, with excellent characters, the acting is good, the plot is well structured, but I felt cheated, robbed, and I was left conflicted between excellent development and a bummer ending.

Sex/Nudity – 6 out of 10 – There is a lot of sexual dialogue, and some really heavy kissing. There are two sex scenes where we see a lot of shoulders and bare backs; these scenes are a little longer than most.

Violence – 6 out of 10 - There are a few gritty scuffles with a bit of blood, they are very realistic.

Profanity – 6 out of 10 – There are 2 “F” words and many other vulgarities.

Fantastically Fun

2010-07-26T11:41:00.000-07:00

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Director: Wes Anderson

Voice Actors – George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, and Willem Dafoe

PG - Rated PG for action, smoking and slang humor.

Oscar nominee Wes Anderson combines the genius of his movie “The Royal Tenenbaums” with some of the most entertaining stop animation yet to create a marvelously entertaining, if not odd, “Fantastic Mr. Fox. This movie plays like a children’s picture book, but is so unique in presentation it captures the imagination of the old and young alike. This film flourishes on rich the rich texture of the furs and fabrics and stop motion that gives the “Wallace and Gromit” series a run for its money. There is true artistry in the movie, and I felt like I could stop the movie at any second and just stare and the hand crafted detail for hours.

In fact all the pleasure of reading a particularly amazing picture book to an interested child is captured in the beauty of “Fantastic Mr. Fox”. The plot is simple enough to follow so that a three or four-year-old can watch the movie sitting on his 30-year-old father’s lap, while dad is also held captive to the screen enjoying the more sophisticated jokes. While the film is a little twisted in that there is a darker side to the movie, it is a film nonetheless that a whole family could take delight in while watching, though the movie can aptly be described as weird.

Mr. Fox (George Clooney) is a reformed chicken thief in a land where the line between animal and human is blurred. Animals live in the woods; in trees and holes, but they have nice furnishings and wonderfully intricate clothes. Humans live in the city but there is no apparent lack of communication between humans and animals, they all seem to speak English, though the villains have rather ominous British accents. Mr. Fox decides to go for one last chicken raid and succeeds only in causing a war between three farmers and the animals. Here we get this “Over the Hedge” feel to the movie that blends in nicely with the humor and wit of “The Royal Tenenbaums”.

George Clooney steals the movie and dwarfs the other voice actors. His rich baritone gives Mr. Fox this Danny Ocean quality that makes the dialogue very fun to listen to. Meryl Streep plays Mrs. Fox, but she has so few lines and they are delivered in such a flat monotone I couldn’t help but wonder if she was merely a money name to draw viewers. However the movie was so fun to watch this little conundrum weighs little on my mind.

“Fantastic Mr. Fox” is a fun family film that can be enjoyed as a wonderfully artistic picture book, and as a film with slightly deeper implications. As with other Wes Anderson films (and with the books written by Roald Dahl – author of the children’s book “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”) there is more to film than just the funny story and witty dialogue. This movie scores a 7.5 out of 10 in my books. I enjoyed it, but it was a little weird to be truly great. Visually this is a treat, intellectually it is a bit of a puzzle, but a really fun one.

Sex/Nudity – none

Violence/Gore - 3 out of 10 – There is some shooting and a little bit of cartoon blood. A fox catches and kills chickens; we see their broken necks in the fox’s mouth. A fox and a rat have a fist fight, the rat has a switch blade knife. There are references to killing and death.

Profanity – 3 out of 10 – there are no traditional profanities but the word “cuss” is substituted for any and all swear words. There are many uses of phrases like “what the cuss”, “are you cussin’ me”, “cluster cuss” and the like.

Knight and Day, Ha Ha...What?

2010-07-17T13:19:00.000-07:00

Knight and Day

Director: James Mangold (Kate and Leopold, Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma)

Starring: Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgaard, Paul Dano

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for sequences of action violence throughout, and brief strong language.

Another playful romp through mindless summer movies, “Knight and Day” delivers laughs and action and very little of it is memorable. It is a movie that we have all seen before in many different pieces. Cameron Diaz is the blonde sexy starlet who has never fired a gun before and screams a lot the first half of the movie and then settles in during the second half. Tom Cruise is the muscled action hero that can out-run, out-think, out-shoot, and out-wit everyone, but is absolutely hooked on his lady co-star. This all plays out amidst flying bullets and explosions.

The problem here is that nothing is remarkable or lasting. I laughed and then five minutes later I forgot what I had laughed at, then something else funny comes along and I forgot about that scene seconds later as well. The concept of the film is entertaining, but ultimately unsatisfying. Anyone going in to the movie expecting anything more than light summer fluff will be disappointed. We pretty much saw the whole movie in the previews anyway.

I did enjoy the watching the film. I had a few laughs and the action was so-so. The best action part of the movie was when Tom Cruise takes out a plane full of assassins one by one. That scene is the only one with some real one-on-one fighting. The rest of the movie is chock full of relentless car chases and gunfights that would give similar films from the 80s heart-attacks. The problem is, after all the gunfire has stopped and the situational comedy has come to a halt, there is emptiness to the movie that left me disappointed.

“Knight and Day” could have been a lot better, and all in all it scores a 6.5 out of 10. It was an entertaining and average film for the summer; but no one will be talking about “Knight and Day” in a month. It was unremarkable, but the summer crowds will flock to it in droves.

Sex/Nudity – 3 out of 10 – A man and woman kiss a few times, a man is seen without a shirt in a few scenes, a woman is seen in a small bikini. There are also a few sexual innuendos and some sexual dialogue.

Violence/ Gore – 6 out of 10 - Lots of gun fighting and people being killed, almost no blood, there are some fisticuffs, a few people get stabbed. A lot of the killing is done in an almost comic book style and there is very little realism in the action.

Profanity – 6 out of 10 – One loudly pronounced “F” word, 6 or 7 “S” words a few obscenities and 10 or so religious exclamations.

One Good Man - a hit for Mormons

2010-07-16T21:12:00.000-07:00

One Good Man

Director: Christian Vuissa (Baptists at Our Barbeque)

Mormondom will praise this family friendly film for its high standards and sturdy plot. “One Good Man” was not an amazing movie, but it one that actually holds its moral ground and is surprisingly deep. Amidst the onslaught of silly Mormon films, this movie is remarkably sober, without being cheesy, and holds its own even with the stigmatic amateurish feeling of the fledgling Mormon cinema genre.

I actually liked “One Good Man.” It is a slower film that never really takes off, but still manages to hold an audience. Those of the LDS faith will be able to connect to the plethora of problems faced by the title character, Adam Young (Tim Threfall). Adam is a middle aged father of five (maybe six, it is hard to keep track of them all, ha ha) who faces company layoffs, trouble with kids, and difficult church responsibilities. All the problems any LDS man might face…packed into 90 minutes. This slightly over stuffed plot seemed a little excessive, but since things never really come to a head the many difficulties were needed to pull the audience through the film.

The film does feel a little amateurish. The cinematography is okay, but has a soap opera quality. It is acted and made by people with relatively few film credits to their names. “One Good Man” however goes far beyond the childish humor saturating the LDS film market. Instead we have a nice movie that warms our hearts a little bit and makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside. The script feels a little more like a play not a movie; but the acoustic guitar score playing in the background works well and wouldn’t transition onto the stage well. The actors also seem more accustomed to the stage than the screen. Lines seemed a bit forced in some areas, though the lead Tim Threfall was quite convincing in his role. The best actor of the film was a side character played by Adam Johnson who indecently played a similar role as the non-LDS boyfriend in “Charly” (which might be the best LDS film to date next to “Saints and Soldiers”).

“One Good Man” gets a 6.8 out of 10 in my book. It was not a half bad movie, ameraturish like I said before, but still a quiet and gentle film that the whole family can watch. There is nothing offensive in the movie. It delivers a few chuckles, but ultimately is just warm and fuzzy. It is a good start to the more serious Mormon movies.

Sex/Nudity – 0

Violence/Gore – 0

Profanity - 0

Prince of Persia - Fun for the Gamers, Lame For the Rest of Us

2010-07-11T21:02:00.000-07:00

Prince of Persia

Director: Mike Newell

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Kingsley, and Alfred Molina

Prince of Persia is a long CGI fest made for someone with the attention span of a 10-year-old. The gamers out there will probably love the film because it was like watching someone play a video game the whole time. The spotty plot and had more holes than a sponge, and was even less absorbing. The Prince of Persia is an empty movie that relies exclusively on its big budget special effects, and fails to deliver anything more than a slight chuckle and a couple of yawns.

CGI has become a slow and painful plague on the summer blockbuster and it is all too evident in the constant action sequences barely held together by a videogame plot with a script aimed at pre-teens. Some of the stunts are fun and exciting feats of acrobatic prowess, but they are ruined by the obviously green screened in sets. Then the really ridiculous action scenes are so farfetched it is absolutely unconvincing to the audience.

The costume design however was really amazing. This is definitely the only category that Prince of Persia might be considered for an Oscar in. There was intricately designed armor and beautiful flowing silk robes. The amazing costuming did lend an authenticity to the film and helped me to ignore the video game scenery.
This film was not a terrible movie. It will be a popular movie especially for lovers of the video games and for the younger movie crowd. One thing that really bugged me was the movie maker’s indecision as to who the film was targeting. It was trying too hard to get adults, teenagers, and little kids, of either gender into the theaters and make them enjoy the film.

The side characters were the absolute worst part. Alfred Molina plays an outlaw who is supposed to be the leader of a roughish band of killers and thieves. This is just a cover however for a secret society of ostrich racers who don’t want to pay taxes. Molina is supposed to be the anti-hero-fun-villain. He is instead the worst written character to ever co-star in a film. He is a stock character that the filmmakers tried to revive, but it felt forced and badly written.

Prince of Persia is an overused plot in the time-traveling and event-fixing genre. It is fun to see a live-action Aladdin style film, but the writing and filming of the movie were done in a very popular way, made to appeal to the masses in a generic formula. I won’t give Prince of Persia anything higher than a 5 out of 10, but most people will find it a fun adventure film.

My appetite was just spoiled by the over used computer special effects. Once these special effects were used to add a little spice to already exciting movies; however, now they are used as the meat of a bland and tasteless dish. It is a tragedy that CGI and green screens is now the thread-bare blanket not quite concealing the shoddily constructed plots they are draped over.

Sex/Nudity – 2 out of 10 – There are a few shirtless men, woman in cleavage revealing and skin tight costumes, and some kissing.

Violence/Gore – 6 out of 10 – There are a few violent battle scenes with lots of sword play, some explosions and killing. There is very little blood at all though. A few people get stabbed and we see little trickles of blood. There is quite a bit of death, some people get hit in the chest with arrows or bolts and we see a little blood at their mouths and chests. We see dead corpses and bare skeletons a few times. Some men are attacked and killed by snakes, a man kills a few snakes.

Profanity – 2 out of 10 – there are a few religious exclamations and some name calling.

Saving Private Ryan, one of the best films ever

2010-07-05T10:29:00.001-07:00

Saving Private Ryan

Director: Steven Spielberg

Starring: Tom Hanks, Tom Sisemore, Edward Burns, Barry Pepper, Adam Goldberg, Vin Diesel, Giovanni Ribisi, Jeremy Davies, and Matt Damon
One of the most brutal, gripping, heart-breaking, and uplifting films ever made, “Saving Private Ryan” is one movie no American should miss. This film is almost as perfect as it gets; I cannot praise “Saving Private Ryan” enough. The five time Academy Award winning film is worth every second of it’s almost three hour run time. Granted this is one of the most violent films ever made, showing the unimaginable horrors of the D-Day invasion down to flying body parts, gushing wounds, and spraying blood.

The violence is not of the mind-numbing and gratuitous sort though. Spielberg did not make the violence and gore for the purpose of entertainment. It is instead as realistic as you can imagine, and draws the audience in to the scene, capturing the imagination, and churning our stomachs. But the violence is counterbalanced by the beautiful French country-side, a wonderful plot, and characters that that are well developed to the point that we as an audience are heartbroken at every death, and elated by every act of heroism.

“Saving Private Ryan” is not just a war movie. There are plenty of movies out there that exist on the raw battles and action scenes with little character development. Here there is an excellent combination of the two. Each action scene is well balanced by great dialogue that connects the audience to the individual characters. In just a few lines, and short scenes we see a fully developed human being in each character. I wasn’t forced to watch three hours of people being shot and blown up only to wonder if I really cared who lived and who died. Instead every one of the main characters had qualities that made them whole individuals and not just cannon fodder for the screen.

The movie starts off with the most heartrending war scene ever depicted in a motion picture. The action is chaotic and senseless. The audience feels like they are running onto Omaha beach themselves, lost in the spray of German machineguns. It is the scariest, most thrilling 30 minutes of war footage ever depicted, and also manages to build the characters we come to love through the duration of the film.

Tom Hanks leads a group of seven other men through Nazi occupied France looking for Private Ryan. Their mission is to find and extract Private Ryan, who has earned a ticket home through the death of his other three brothers in different parts of the war in a three week period. The eight men can all see the ridiculousness of their mission. Risk eight lives for one? A complete waste of men, right? This emotional struggle runs throughout the film as disaster strikes the men at every turn. Spielberg is not afraid to let our heroes die, and each death felt like I lost a personal friend, a man that I admired through all his weaknesses. These are not super heroes, but sons and brothers, fathers and husbands, and while watching I found that these were men I could relate with, and each one was someone who was making the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom of others.

Saving Private Ryan is a film that I would not have missed for the world. It is exciting, full of excellently written dialogue and took me on the emotional roller coaster that I crave in good film making. I enjoyed almost everything about the film, and while it is violent beyond any proportions I have ever seen “Saving Private Ryan” is still a beautiful film that earns a 9.8 out of 10 in my book. If the violence had been toned down a hair it would have been a 10 out of 10, that is my only complaint.

I laughed, I cried, I loved “Saving Privet Ryan.”

Sex/nudity – 2 out of 10 - There are a few sexual references and two men tell stories from home that involves a little sexuality.

Violence/Gore – 10 out of 10 – it is war, it is violent, if it can happen it does. It is very realistic, but not for the purpose of entertainment, more for the purpose of showing the horrors of war.

Profanity – 7 out of 10 – 20 to 25 ‘F’ words and quite a few other swear words.

Ghosts of Girlfreinds Past - Formulaic but Funny

2010-07-04T12:33:00.000-07:00

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

Director: Mark Waters

Starring: Mathew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, and Michael Douglas

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for sexual content throughout, some language and a drug reference.

The director of “Freaky Friday”, “Mean Girls”, and “Just Like Heaven” brings us another fun little romantic comedy that uses Charles Dickens’ classic “A Christmas Carol” as a frame for the womanizing Mathew McConaughey to fall in love again. He is the Scrooge, and love is bah humbug. But he is taken on the journey of the classic fairy tale meeting his womanizing uncle, Michael Douglas playing the Jacob Marley style character, and shown his misdeeds to women’s hearts. Of course it is not the very active sex life he is condemned for, no sex is okay, but it is the toying with women’s hearts that he is to blame for. No one ever seems to get the point that flagrant pre-marital sex and heartache go hand in hand and as the many loose women fail to realize, the cause of their grief is their eagerness to screw the hottest thing on the market, hoping he will treat them differently than all the other women he has left alone after a one night stand.

This is a very sexual comedy that does what most Hollywood films continue to do, blur the lines of casual sex, love, and marriage. Of course the final theme is that true happiness is monogamous love, but that is found only after years of casual sex and flagrant promiscuity. In fact promiscuity is the prevailing theme and as the many women McConaughey seduces complain about his arrogant and womanizing ways, they also remark how they sure wouldn’t mind another roll in the hay, keeping it causal though, cause that is okay.

“Ghosts of Girlfriends Past” is a decent film as far as laughs and heart go. It is pretty cookie cutter on two fields though. One is that it has everything any adaptation of Dickens’ classic has, including waking up the next morning and asking a little boy outside if it is Christmas, and two there is everything a wedding disaster film has including a psychotic bride and a ruined cake. The film follows each mold precisely, hoping no one notices the aged formula through the camouflage of plunging necklines, blunt sexual dialogue, and bantering.

There is not much acting involved in this film. No one stretches to change character at all. Jennifer Garner is smart and sexy as any heroine in a romantic comedy must be. She is fun and flirty, and likeable, but nothing new or different than any other movie...except “Elektra” but that was terrible and we will pretend it never happened. Mathew McConaughey is equally as entertaining as Jenifer Gardner and is as cookie cutter as they come. Anyone in fact looking for any kind of interesting acting choices should look elsewhere , but of course that is not who this film is marketed to.

This is a fun little date movie, but its heavy sexual themes might be a little turn off for some. The sexuality is not easily edited form the film, and for those who prefer clearplay and the like, this might be one to avoid totally. For those who enjoy the slightly more scandalous they may enjoy this fun twist on “A Christmas Carol” though it is definitely not a Christmas movie. We have a 6 out of 10, until the film tries to end and bumps its self to a 5.6 or so just for some really dumb closing choices. It is a fun date for the ladies, but nothing to satisfy the real movie lovers.

Sex/Nudity - 7 out of 10 – There are a lot of cleavage, women in underwear, and sexual situations. A man speaks rather bluntly to different women trying to get them to sleep with him. There is no actual nudity, but some kissing and heavy petting and implied sex.

Violence/Gore – 2 out of 10 – A man hits another man. A man his slapped by a few women. A man is thrown into a grave and dirt is dumped on him(this is a dream like sequence).

Profanity – 5 out of 10 – There is a ton of sexual dialogue, and about 50 or so obscenities including religious exclamations and name calling.

Green Zone, Visually Interesting, Emotionally Empty

2010-07-03T08:58:00.000-07:00

Green Zone

Director – Paul Greengrass

Starring – Matt Damon, Amy Ryan, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson, and Jason Issacs

MPAA: Rated R for violence and language

Director Paul Greengrass might have done a lot better here had he teamed up with Oscar winning Kathryn Bigelow director of the Hurt Locker. I have to compare the two films because both are Iraq War films, but one was far superior. The Green Zone is a decent film but from the get go fails to really establish a link between the audience and the characters. There is decent action, but rarely was I on the edge of my seat wondering what was going to happen. In The Hurt Locker Bigelow blows away her one A-list actor in the first 10 minutes, making viewers believe there is a chance that no one is going home in her film. Green Zone does not have that kind of suspense.

Greengrass does do a great job with his classic gritty swinging camera shots he made famous in the last two Bourne films. It makes the action a little chaotic but ads to the tension of the scenes; but compared to the second Bourne film the cameras in Green Zone were practically standing still, so sea sickness is not a problem at all for viewers. Also there is an interesting use of the night vision lighting that makes the picture very graining in some shots. This adds a gritty feel to the harsh condition of a bombed out Iraq.

The movie begins in 2003 as America bombs Baghdad at the beginning of the invasion on the pretence of Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction program. Matt Damon is a Chief Warrant Officer in the US Army charged with finding said weapons. It seems though that every piece of intel takes them to another empty site, void of any WMD (side note the acronym WMD was said so many times it almost got on my nerves, is there really no other way to say it?). The film turns into a manhunt for the mysterious Iraqi contact who knows the truth behind WMD in Iraq.

This plot twist puts Jason Issacs – whose vicious role as the British rebel hunter in “The Patriot” is comparable to this part in Green Zone as an angry and determined intelligence officer set on finding and killing this Iraqi leak – up against the more gentle Matt Damon, who wants to bring in the source and expose the lie about WMD. This could have been an interesting matchup of two brilliant actors, but there was little time to develop any characters in the film as most of the dialogue was shouted or whispered quickly over while actors ran through alleys, hurried down stairs, and rushed to important meetings. A little tension was built, but the lack of development kept me aloof as an audience member.

This movie makes you wonder about its use of British star power with American accents. Issacs and Gleeson (both with Harry Potter credits to their names) have good American accents, but it is the English accents that make them so much fun to watch. Issacs did an excellent job in his role as a sadistic soldier, but Gleeson seemed underused. He was not very interesting at all really. “The Office’s” Amy Ryan (Michael Scott’s HR rep and girlfriend Holly) has a bit part here, but doesn’t do much to add to the film either. Greg Kinnear does a decent job here, but again there is so little connection to the characters the filmmakers had to get popular names in order for the audience to have any emotional connection at all. Even Damon’s character was nothing out of the ordinary.

In brief Green Zone is a so-so war flick, that is really only worth a single viewing and even that viewing wasn’t all that interesting. I’ll give it a 6 out of 10 because while the filming was interesting and the plot was a unique take on the mystery behind our invasion of Iraq, the lack of connection with characters kept me from riding the emotional roller coaster I so enjoy when watching a movie.

Sex/Nudity – 1 out of 10 – We see some men and women in bathing suits at a swimming pool and a lady in a slightly cleavage revealing shirt.

Violence/Gore – 7 out of 10 – Violence in this film is very PG-13. I would have no problems having my teenager watch this film as far as violence and gore goes. There is a lot of shooting, but relatively little gore accompanying it. It is a tasteful war movie free from the splattering blood found in most films of its genre. There are a few gun fights, some people get gunned down, there is a little bit of splattering blood.

Profanity – 30 to 40 F-words with about 30 other obscenities including 10 religious obscenities.

The Lovely Bones...DO NOT WATCH THIS FILM!

2010-06-28T07:34:00.000-07:00

The Lovely Bones

Director – Peter Jackson

Starring – Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Stanley Tucci, and Susan Sarandon

MPAA - Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material involving disturbing violent content and images, and some language.

The Lovely Bones is Peter Jackson’s foray into the non-epic film genre. Instead of portraying epic battles and giant monsters, we get kind of a murder mystery thriller that blends the artistic green screen aspects of “The Fountain” and “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” with films of high tension and mystery like “Frequency” and “Changeling”. The wild imagination of Peter Jackson heavily influences this film, but the major bugs are not all Jackson’s fault. We can also blame is screenwriters, the same ones who collaborated on his past 4 epics.

What could have been a great film mixing the thrills of a murder mystery with the drama in a victim’s surviving household, instead became a film tripping out on an acid-high version of heaven combined with an overreaching message teaching us that a first kiss is so important that even if a person dies, he or she can’t go to heaven until that person processes the body of another to get that first kiss. Screw catching your killer, forget reassuring your grieving family, NO, possess your old boyfriend’s new girl friend, and get your dang first kiss, then you can move on!
The first three quarters of the movie are fairly well put together. Aside from the weird “in between place” that out lead character is stuck in while her family grieves for her murder, the plot is pretty interesting, well thought out and gripping. I wanted to go into the film and just cut out the dead narrator and focus on the family, and Stanley Tucci’s brilliant villain character.

The unassuming Stanley Tucci performs in a role so different from his charming Paul Child in “Julia and Julia”, it is hard to tell it is the same actor. No wonder he got an Oscar nomination for the movie. In fact his performance was one of the only redeeming qualities in the film. Had it been just the living people in the movie without a dead girl running around a Tim Burton-esque heaven landscape trying to let go of life so her family could move on it would have been a pretty good film. And throwing in Stanley Tucci’s performance of the creepy neighborhood serial killer the movie might have bordered on brilliant.

What we got instead was a movie that was half interesting, half a psychotic drug trip, and complete with the worst last 20 minutes ever. In fact the ending is so horrible it makes the whole film unwatchable. I am sure there are a few Peter Jackson film-lovers who sat through this garbage ending loving each slow motion second… They probably also liked the fact that this film had more endings than “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King”, though we are spared from the 3 hours of tedium.

The plot starts us off with the happy Salmon family fathered by the soft spoken Mark Wahlberg and mothered by Rachel Weisz. The fashionable grandmother is Susan Sarandon, who is also a hoot in this film, as much fun to watch as Stanley Tucci, but obviously not as creepy, is a heavy influence on the little starlet who narrates. The 14 year-old Susie Salmon (a pretty decent acting job by Saorise Ronan) is killed by Stanley Tucci, who plays the kind, gentle, almost un-noticed, unmarried, neighborhood recluse, and she goes to a place between life and death where she has to learn how to let go of life and move on while running across landscapes more bizarre than Dr. Parnassuses Imaginarium, but a little more tame than Tim Burton’s Wonderland.

Instead of solely dealing with the finding and catching of Stanley Tucci’s character the film also deals with the concept for letting go and moving on after a traumatic death. We see the unique though not all that interesting perspective of a the murdered girl and her struggle to accept her death and move on while simultaneously seeing her parent’s struggles to cope with the death of their oldest child. The in between world of Susie’s and ours is somehow connected through the actions of the killer, the victim, and the victim’s family. It is an interesting idea, but mostly serves to confuse the audience, muddle the ideas of an afterlife, and let Peter Jackson show us all he knows how to use a green screen too.

In short “The Lovely Bones” forces the audience to sit through an artsy take on life and death and then leaves everyone in a disappointed rage with the worst endings ever. I will give this film a 5 out of 10 because it was not a terrible film as far as film making goes, but it is a frustrating and weird piece that is ultimately unsatisfying and mostly a waste of time.

Sex/Nudity – 4 out of 10 – A husband and wife passionately kiss on a bed, we assume they have sex. A teen boy and girl kiss. A teen couple go into a corn field and we assume they are engaged in sexual activities. A teen girl is blamed for arousing a boy because of her nude drawing, we see the naked woman sketched in pencil. We see a man naked in a bath tub, the camera is looking straight down, but the water is murky and hides his mid section, we see bare legs and a bare chest.

Violence/Gore – 6 out of 10 - A man is badly beaten with a flashlight and baseball bat. We see some blood and multiple bruises. A man imprisons a teen girl she kicks him in the face as she struggles to get free. He throws her to the ground. Later we see him in a bath tub, there is mud and blood on the sink and tile floor. We see the corpses of a man’s murder victims. A man falls from a cliff and we see his body hit many different rocks, we hear crunching sounds as he hits.

Profanity – 4 out of 10 – Kids In Mind says the is 1 “F” word, but I don't remember it at all... there were only maybe 6 other exclamations, including one or two religious obscenities.

A Wannabe Epic

2010-06-26T13:40:00.000-07:00

Robin Hood (2010)

Director – Ridley Scott

Starring – Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Mark Strong, and William hurt,

MPAA – Rated PG-13 for violence including intense sequences of warfare, and some sexual content.

Picture these scriptwriters pitching story ideas to each other while walking down the hall at Universal Studios. They have this decent idea for a mid-evil film that deals with the close of Richard the Lionheart’s crusade and his return to England.
The problem is that they don’t really know how to make it marketable. Then these scriptwriters bump into Ridley Scott who is in the mood for making a period piece and he likes this story idea. To market the film they start thinking it might be a good idea to make the film a sequel to Kingdom of Heaven. But Scott is too good a director to sequel a movie that wasn’t all that great to begin with, so they pitch around some more ideas and someone says, “Hey let’s make it a prequel to Robin Hood!” Obviously they had never read any of the Robin Hood legends but they knew some of the character’s names and went with it.

For those die hard Robin Hood fans, if there are any… This film kind of reworks the whole beginning of the Robin Hood stories. Russell Crowe’s Robin Hood is not the clever, charming, jesting Robin Hood of the legend I grew up with as a child. Instead he is a sly, serious man with a troubled past. He is essentially the beefy and loyalty inspiring Maximus from “Gladiator”. It works for the film, but I always pictured Robin Hood as a much happier and more light-hearted guy, and anyone who has read the old legends would agree.

Setting this prequel business aside there are some really good aspects to this film. The plot is pretty creative. Robin Longstride (Russell Crowe) is a brave and beloved archer in the army of King Richard. Richard’s army has completed its bloody crusade and is storming across France plundering the country for money to pay for the expensive crusade. Through a bit of bad luck Robin and his comrades, Little John, Will Scarlett, and Allan A’Dayle, desert the army and cut across France trying to return to England. They stumble on an ambush of the King’s knights and Robin Longstride meets a dying Robert Loxley (the original surname of Robin Hood from the old stories). Longstride promises Loxley he will return a sacred sword to Loxley’s father at Nottingham.

The band of merry men, mostly merry because these ruffians drink and sing like modern rock stars, then dress in the garb of the ambushed knights and take their boat to England. Of course in the wake of a missing King Richard, the younger brother John has screwed up the country. Longstride assumes the name of Loxley with the consent of the elder Loxley and begins a romance with Marianne, who was married to the dead knight Loxley. Robin unearths his past, helps save England from the invading French, kicks a lot of butt, and in the end somehow becomes an outlaw in Sherwood Forest. Like I said, it was supposed to be a different film, but to get us to the theater they decided to make it a prequel, and it is true I might not have seen it had there not been a Robin Hood angle.

The plot though was entertaining. In fact the whole buildup of the film and the character developments was very strong. The script needed a little fine tuning to make it sound a little more middle age-ish, but it still told an interesting story, that might have stood on its own a little better than trying to mash it in with the old Robin Hood tales. In fact there was a lot of unmet potential here that the film just didn’t quite pull off. And now we all want to see the next film, so we can find out what happens. What was really disappointing was the Invasion-of –Normandy style attack the French make on England. It was like Ridley Scott just copy and pasted a bunch of shots from the opening scenes of “Saving Private Ryan” and meshed them with some battles from “Braveheart”, it was not a very plausible or convincing battle. The French even had the same kind of boats the Allies had in Spielberg’s epic.

Some of the pacing throughout the film also felt a little jumbled. The story was trying to do a political thriller in med-evil England while also keeping up a mistaken identity (or hidden identity)/ romance, and the cutting back and forth made the movie feel a little choppy and made it difficult to fully develop either story, and when they tried to make the two subplots in the middle it all kind of jumbled up and got lost. Truly this film would have been a much better if the makers had not tried to do what Antoine Fuqua did with King Arthur, a much more cohesive and well put together “How the Man Became the Legend” movie.

The action and violence was relatively gore-free. As opposed to Gladiator, which was stunning, one of the best films ever made, but very gory, Robin Hood is heavy on the action, light on gore. There is a lot of war violence, people getting hit by arrows, slashed with swords, dying right and left; and all of it is pretty realistic, but we are spared the spraying blood that hits the camera lens just so, and the severed body parts rolling around the battlefield. It is still a gritty action film, with lots of great battle scenes, but the violence is very PG-13, not even bordering R.

Robin Hood earns a 7 out of 10. It was a disappointing prequel, but standing alone, it was an interesting and exciting film that just didn’t get fully developed. If the story and the script had been ironed out a little bit before the crew got to production then all in all Ridley Scott could have had a real winner on his hands. Instead it is an average movie, pulled down even further by the Hollywood prequel/ sequel craze so abundant in the summer list of flicks.

Sex/Nudity – 6 out of 10 – an older woman finds her son engaged in sexual intercourse with a woman who is not his wife, we see them under a blanket clearly having sex, the mother pulls down the blanket to reveal the man’s bare back and the bare arms and shoulder and most of the bare breast of a woman, the man stands and we see his bare chest and part of his bare buttocks. We see women in cleavage revealing outfits, a few men pursue these women and we see the men shirtless the next morning and we assume they have had intercourse. A man attempts to rape a woman, we see part of her bare leg. A women helps a men out of his armor and we see his bare chest, this is a non sexual scene.

Violence Gore – 7 out of 10 – Refer to the second to last paragraph.

Profanity – 2 out of 10 - three or four religious exclamations, some name calling and 7 obscenities.

2010-06-25T13:24:00.000-07:00

Valentine’s Day

Director – Gary Marshall

Starring – Jessica Alba, Kathy Bates, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Patrick Dempsey, Hector Elizondo, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Topher Grace, Anne Hathaway, Ashton
Kutcher, and Queen Latifah, (AMONG MANY OTHERS)

MPAA - Rated PG-13 for some sexual material and brief partial nudity

Here is another charming if not trite comedy about adults, well mostly, and a comedy that actually tries to make a distinction between love and sex, well mostly. I think this is a comedy that actually manages to bridge the gap between pre-teens fawning over the hottest actors, and adults looking for some decent entertainment. Usually mainstream films like this are so geared towards a teenage crowd that it is impossible for an adult to do anything but cringe. And while Valentine’s Day has its pubescent appeal in the face of the ever present Ashton Kutcher, there is still plenty for the older audiences.

What works well in this quaint, but charming film is the development of the characters. It seems the filmmakers wanted to do what was so masterfully accomplished in "Love Actually", and while coming up a bit short still managed to piece together a film with fun characters and decent development. While the acting is nothing to be impressed by, mostly because all the actors are just playing themselves in pretty standard situations – Kutcher as the goofy lover, Jamie Foxx as an egotistical sports anchor and so on – we still get to see a little bit of real acting with Julia Roberts, who is a stony career military woman on a long flight home (though I won’t ruin her story).

I also liked how we didn’t have to sit through an hour and a half of the same old cookie cutter love story with two ridiculously attractive actors who can’t keep their pants on. Instead we see a whole bunch of little love stories mixed with witty dialogue and all the little formulaic scenes are so much shorter and seem a little more interesting because we only see little bits and pieces of everyone’s story instead of long segments of over used plot.

Valentine’s Day is a simple and fun film. I still find Hollywood so frustrating in the prevailing perception that sex comes before love, and that message is far to prevalent in this film. Surprisingly enough the two sexiest teen stars of the film, Taylor Lawton and Taylor Swift, both their characters profess to have a relationship that is not sexual, though their prolific use of their tongues make you question that a little. I am saddened by the message of promiscuous behavior that is constantly sent to teenagers through films like this and others.

This isn’t a great movie, but it is a fun date flick that will have you laughing and holding the one you live tightly. For you singles… avoid it until you have someone… or don’t, not my problem. I will give this a 6 out of 10. It is indeed a lot of fun, but overall, not a movie to take for any artistic value.

Sex/Nudity - 6 out of 10 – A teen boy is seen naked in his girlfriend’s bedroom, he has a guitar covering hit midsection, and we see the side of his buttocks. The mother comes into the room and he is seen running out and down the street covering his body with the guitar and loose clothing. Quite a few couples are seen in varying degrees of undress in the morning after spending the night together. A woman operates a phone sex business and she is often on her cell phone talking to client in different accents and making whipping sounds. A man caresses another man’s face and hair. Quite a few women are seen in cleavage revealing out fits. A teenage couple talks about having sex. There are also other bits of sexual dialogue and innuendos.

Violence/Gore – 1 out of 10 – there is a comical domestic squabble on a news broadcast. A woman hits a man a few times.

Profanity – 4 out of 10 – 20 or so mild obscenities and name callings.

Alice in BLUNDERland

2010-06-13T14:16:00.000-07:00

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland

Director – Tim Burton

Starring – Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, and Alan Rickman

MPAA - Rated PG for fantasy action/violence involving scary images and situations, and for a smoking caterpillar

The more movies I see made by Tim Burton the more convinced I am of his twisted brilliance. He is either seriously on acid or a film genius. That doesn’t mean that Alice in Wonderland was brilliant, but if it had been made by any other director the film would have been as lifeless and dull as its script.
Burton took a shoddy screenplay packed with bad dialogue and a plot more twisting and curving than any set piece and turned it into a visually entertaining and exciting trip. If anything this film will be great for wild and thrilling amusement park ride. I am wondering why the people in charge of Harry Potter didn’t snag Tim Burton for their films. Then at least they would have had visual interest.

And that was all Alice in Wonderland was, a visual experience. Its convoluted plot that jumped around more times that Hulk did in his first disastrous film, is saved only by the mastermind Tim Burton. Alice is 20 and has been plagued by dreams of Wonderland since she was a little girl; I am guessing that was what the original animated Disney Film is supposed to be. So we pick up with this sequel where Alice returns to Wonderland to help the devastated fantasy land and save them from the clutches of The Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter). She is aided by a muttering mad hatter, who is clearly off his rocker...in a nice , but ever so creepy, way. Johnny Depp plays his part well, though at anytime we expect him to rip off his CGI eyes and say, "I'm Captain Jack Sparrow love, savvy?"

In this adventure we get a feeling of The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe meets Sleepy Hallow, although this film lacks the writing that Narnia had, and therefore makes us completely u interested in the characters. Yes there were plenty of little things to laugh about, but we didn’t really like Alice or care about her predicament, in fact we didn’t really care about anyone in the film, there was just no emotional connection to them.

Alice in Wonderland is probably a 6.5 out of 10. Yes I enjoyed the brilliant colors and the interesting cinematography. It was a visual gem. There were also funny moments and a little bit of action, and the little quirky characters were fun. But there was very little writing and a disjointed plot that really kept the film from being too engaging. It was interesting, but not a film of any lasting value.

Sex/Nudity - 2 out of 10– A girl grows tall and small and her clothes don’t change with her. One scene she stands behind a bush and she is bare from the shoulders up. There is also a little cleavage. A married man is caught kissing another woman. A man makes advances on a young woman.

Violence/Gore – The whole film is kind of creepy. There are a lot of scary images. One animal gets its eye speared out by a mouse, then gets the eye back later. A dragon gets its tounge cut off and later its head, it rolls around and bounces a lot, The head is left bleeding on the ground. A girl is cut on the arm by a monster; the cut gets infected and looks pretty nasty later on. There is a most full of decapitated heads; they look like porcelain mannequin’s heads. A lady makes potions from chopped up fingers. In other wards it is a fairly grisly picture and should have been PG-13 because of fantasy violence and disturbing images.

Profanity – 1 out of 10 – There is some name calling.

17 Again, I'd see it again

2010-06-12T11:00:00.000-07:00

17 Again

Director - Burr Steers

Starring – Zac Efron, Leslie Mann, Thomas Lennon, Melora Hardin, and Mathew Perry

I am a big Mathew Perry fan, and that is the only reason I allowed my wife to convince me to watch this movie. He is just such a funny guy that I figured I could give this movie a shot. Well it was worth it, 17 Again does what a lot of stupid teen romance comedies fail to do, and that is be funny. Usually these movies are good for a snicker and they make my wife laugh but I am usually left unsatisfied and bored. However 17 Again has enough adults in it, and is more about adults than other teen comedies, that I could actually laugh at the jokes.

I like comedies about adults and adult relationships. I don’t like comedies that make high schoolers look like a bunch of horny, boozing, morons. I’ll admit there are high schoolers out there that are horny, boozing, morons, but for the most part Hollywood capitalizes on this mentality and makes kids think that this is the only way to get through high school. Unfortunately 17 Again still follows this general prescription for stock movie high schools but it actually tries 9kind of) to promote responsible sexuality and abstinence for a change.

What works in this overused plot is the hilarious actors and the straight faced comedy. Zac Efron plays Mathew Perry. It is like he sat down one weekend and watched every episode of friends. Everything he does it was like watching a young Mathew Perry, and his interaction with adults of the film made it interesting and funny.

The movie opens with high school senior Mike O’Donnell (Mathew Perry – adult version – and Zac Efron – teen version) the basketball star who leaves the dreams of college ball for a life with his impregnated high school sweet heart. Flash forward 30 years and he is now a moaning and groaning has been who wishes he could do it over again. He is getting a divorce (his wife is sick of him always using her as his excuse for not being successful), his kids don’t really like him, and he loses his job. So through unexplained magic with a Santa Clause looking janitor Mathew Perry becomes Zac Efron who takes on high school again and gets a chance to grow closer to his kids then he thought possible.

I liked this movie because it was an adult in high school trying to fix the problems he had to deal with himself. It was an adult comedy with kids in it… kind of. It is true this is more of a kids movie (barely, with the amount of sexuality in it I wouldn’t let my kids watch it, though a teenager could see it), when I say kids I mean like high school age kids.

What I am trying to say is that the fun characters and the witty dialogue and banter are what make this film so funny. The humor is very enjoyable, especially to Mathew Perry fans. I think after Zac Efron gets over being a teen idol he has a decent career ahead of him. I also have to add that the side kick best friend in this movie Ned Gold (Thomas Lennon) is absolutely hilarious. He is probably one of my favorite side characters in a romantic comedy and the movie is worth it just to see this funny little guy.

Overall I’ll give 17 Again a 7.5 out of 10. It is an above average romantic comedy that delivers serious laughs. It was well scripted and perfectly casted. And while I hate high school comedies in general this one is one of the better ones of its class. You want a good date flick? Get 17 Again, it’ll make you laugh.

Sex/Nudity – 5 out of 10 – There is a lot of sexual dialogue in this movie, almost all of it involving teenagers. One boy is pursued constantly by three different girls all who make suggestive comments to him. One girl is alone in a bedroom with a boy and she tries to have sex with him, but he talks to her about him being in love with another girl, she is very sexually aggressive. There is a lot of heavy kissing an petting between a teen couple. A man works at a pharmaceutical ad company and they discuss Viagra giving you users a 4-hour erection. There is one scene in a teen part where a nude boy with a large shield covering his privates runs through the scene.

Violence/Gore - 4 out of 10 – There are a couple of fist-a-cuffs and scuffles, one boy is hit repeatedly in the face, but there is no blood or even bruising. There is some high school bullying, one kid is duct tapped to the toilet.

Profanity – 5 out of 10 – 2 mouthed or not completed “f” words, some sexual references and about 20 other mild obscenities and religious exclamations.

Armored, bad, but not that bad...

2010-06-11T12:33:00.001-07:00

Armored

Director – Nimrod Antal

Staring - Matt Dillon, Lawrence Fishburne, Jean Reno, and Columbus Short

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense violence, some disturbing images and brief strong language.

Armored is an easy to watch, formulaic, action/heist film that somehow still manages to have a few twists and turns that make up for shoddy dialogue, and a formulaic plot. Armored is a basic film with average action, a decent plot, and a marginal climax. I would give it a 6 out of 10. It was gracefully short, and so was not intolerable.

My brother, my wife, and I all sat down to what we figured would be a decent little action film. And while we were not blown away by the films set up, we were pleasantly surprised to find that there were enough twists to make the film an enjoyable, if not below average, action/heist film.

Stomp the Yard’s lead, Columbus Short, takes his place next to action stars Laurence Fishburne and Jean Reno as the hero of Armored. He is a war veteran of Iraq and it is implied he was well decorated. He is now home in the ghetto taking care of his little brother working with his godfather Matt Dillon as a security guard driving armored trucks. Behind his back the old-timers, Dillon, Reno and Fishburne, conspire to steal $42 million dollars, by stashing the cash and covering their track, from their own armored car. Columbus Short goes along with the plan until things go disastrously wrong and Short holds half the cash and himself barricaded in an armored truck looking for a way out.

From there we see a series of deaths, a few car chases and the other necessities to a “B” average action flick, or in this case “C” average. I do enjoy a good heist film, and this one was not disappointing at that angle. What didn’t really work was the fact that the script was pretty poorly written and the makers of the film didn’t bother to do anything terribly interesting in the film. All the characters were pretty standard. Columbus was the hero who made a bad choice. Dillon is the mastermind who didn’t figure in all the angles. Fishburne just wants to kill something. Reno say like two words the whole film. Frankly the movie makers could have canned the 2nd string “Big names” and hired two or three writers to put together a more emotionally gripping film. But I guess they got what they paid for, I paid to see Laurence Fishburne, who was not interesting at all in this film.

In all this is probably a film you could skip and not have missed a thing. It is dry and not very exciting. It does have a twist or two that keep you wondering, but you are not sure you care enough about the characters to bother with being interested. Again this is a 6 out of 10, not an epic failure, but certainly not much of a winner either. In the end we learn that there are always bad guys and there is no such thing as the perfect heist, especially in a B movie where $42 million dollars are at stake.

Sex/Nudity - 3 out of 10 – we see a shirtless man once, and a man’s butt crack once. There is some discussion over the size of a man’s gentiles in a brief joke.

Violence/ Gore – 7 out of 10 - A man gets shot in the hip and we see his wound quite a few times, although it is usually in shadow or covered by a hand so we mostly see the pooling blood. 2 men are burned in an explosion, one man is stabbed, and we see his killer washing off the blood in a puddle. The violence is moderate, a little more than you would see in CSI or 24, and a little bit more blood.

Profanity -6 out of 10 - 1 audible “f: word and 4 more noticeable only with subtitles on. The other profanities are scattered throughout maybe 15 in total.

2010-06-09T11:37:00.000-07:00

Edge of Darkness

Director – Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, The Mask of Zorro, Golden Eye)

Starring – Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, and Bojana Novakovic

MPAA - Rated R for strong bloody violence and language

The director of the gritty, fast paced, action blockbuster, Casino Royale, brings us a tale of revenge, packed with brutal violence, and top notch suspense; Edge of Darkness. Martin Campbell has directed a very good film, filled with suspense, action, and a little bit of hope. This is one of the better action/thrillers to have hit theaters in a while.

Mel Gibson managed to do what Harrison Ford failed to do with Firewall, make a comeback and still entertain the audience. I use this comparison because both Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson were mega stars of the 80s. They continued in stardom through the early 90s but in the last decade there has been very little from either actor. Gibson of course made The Passion and Apocalyptic, but hasn’t starred in anything for a while. Then Ford tries a little bit of a comeback with the marginally entertaining thriller, Firewall. It was an okay film, but felt very 1989 and was a critical disaster. Gibson’s comeback film is very modern and makes full use of today’s recourses to stand as a tense thriller that is very entertaining, and while not a masterpiece in the industry it holds its own over many of its action/thriller counterparts.

Mel Gibson stars as the father of a murdered daughter. She is shot on his front porch as their last name “Craven” is shouted across the street and a shotgun toting bad guy blow the young woman through the door and across the hall. The cops assume Gibson was the target, but he takes a different approach assuming she was the target. His revenge is aided by the clever government fixer Ray Winstone, whose thick British accent and cold mannerisms were enough to chill my blood.

This is a fairly formulaic revenge thriller, and it is packed with gory violence. But it was well put together. It had a plot with good twists that really kept me on the edge of my seat. It was also heart rending to see Gibson’s flash back with his little girl. There is one really cute scene where he is shaving and his daughter comes into the room and he puts some gel on her face and she shaves with his comb while he talks with her and continues his own shaving. Then we blink and she is gone and he is left alone in the empty house.

I would give Edge of Darkness a healthy 7.6 out of 10. While we have seen many films with similar plots, similar twists, and some with even better action than this, Edge of Darkness is still a tense thriller that will keep its viewers biting their nails. This is a lot better than most films of a similar genre, one that is sure to thrill.

Sex/Nudity – 2 out of 10 - one sexual reference and a reference to a woman’s relationship with her boyfriend, that she might be pregnant. A woman wears a cleavage revealing shirt.

Violence/Gore – 8 out of 10 – There are a lot of bloody gun fights and there are a lot of bloody dead bodies. One man is seen with most of his head shot off, blood and brain matter on a couch. A woman is hit by a car and we see her broken body fly quite a few feet. A woman is shot by a double barreled shot gun and we see her fly through a door backwards. It is a violent film but not gory like dead zombies or torture or anything like that.

Profanity – 8 out of 10 – 50 “F” words, and a small smattering of other profanities, name calling, and a few religious exclamations.

2010-06-07T10:42:00.000-07:00

Gigi (1958)

Director: Vincente Minnelli

Starring – Leslie Caron, Louis Jourdan, and Maurice Chevalier

MPAA - G

Gigi as a beautiful film about love and lust in 1900 Paris, that makes you laugh and cry, and smile about the way films used to be. It is a classic movie, made in the style of My Fair lady and Cinderella. It is a fun musical comedy that also managed to sweep the 1959 Academy Awards taking home 9 wins including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Cinematography (color).

The problem is, I really hate musicals and this is, without a doubt, a musical. The songs are not super catchy, and after finishing the film a viewer may only be able to hum a few bars of one or two songs, but some of them are classics, off repeated today. Like ‘Thank Heaven For little Girls’ or ‘I Remember it Well’, both done by Maurice Chevalier, a handsome though aging man, who somehow missed and Oscar nod himself for this film, though he was nominate in ‘59 for contribution to cinema.

The film centers on high society in Paris in the year 1900. The Gentleman look for the latest and greatest in fashionable women and trade they off a few months later for a new model. Gigi (Leslie Caron), a spunky and vivacious 16-year-old girl, is being raised by a grandmother, a woman who played the game for many years and now lives relatively poorly.

Weekly Gigi goes to her aunt’s home to be instructed in the ways of a lady. Gaston (Louis Jourdan), a wealthy gentleman in his late twenties is a long time friend of the family, and often stops by to be among the poor. He and his uncle (the ever charismatic and witty aging playboy Maurice Chevalier) are wealthy playboys, romping around the city of Paris, trying out the beautiful women. Gaston, ever so staunch and rigid, find solace in the home of Gig and her grandmother. Inevitably a romance blossoms surrounded by the absurd social ideals of Paris’ high society.

I enjoyed Gigi, it was a funny movie, and the script reminds me of the vicious wit of Oscar Wilde, and it is a film I am sure he would have enjoyed as well. I don’t like musicals mush, and this film does have an awful lot of singing, but the songs are short and simple, and I could stomach them while cuddling with my wife on the couch. We watched it in blu-ray, and the picture was incredibly clear. It was a beautiful film to see, and we loved the crisp colors.

I would give Gigi a 7 out of 10. That is judging it against more modern films. It is a of first rate quality for its time, but I am always more entertained by modern films. Gigi is a little silly, the acting s very mellow dramatic (of course all movies from that era are that way) and the songs ever present. But the charm and good natured remarks from Maurice Chevalier, along with a fun, and witty script make up for the “oldness” of the film. For lovers of old cinema Gigi is a classic that should not be missed, and for those who don’t find old films very enjoyable, well Gig will not be your cup of tea.

Sex/Nudity – Without saying anything outright there is a lot of infidelity between relationships. The movie makes fun of those who make fun of cheating on lovers and wives, but it also focuses on a society that is accepting of premarital relations and there is some dialogue to that effect.

There is no violence or profanity.

2010-06-04T20:28:00.000-07:00

Surf’s Up

Director: Ash Brannon and Chris Buck

Voice Actors – Shia LaBeouf, Jeff Bridges, Zooey Dechanel, Jon Heder, and James Woods

MPAA - PG for mild language and some rude humor

Surf’s Up is a witty and entertaining flick proving Disney/Pixar does not hold the monopoly on fun kid’s flicks. It is a little cruder than its Mousey counterparts, but still very suitable for a young audience. I wouldn’t feel bad letting any child watch this film, it is enjoyable, non violent, and supports good attitudes. Some children’s movies are just not suited for youngsters but this is one film that a 30-year- old father could sit down and watch with his 3-year-old, and both of them will find amusing scenes to keep them entertained.

One thing that is phenomenal about Surf’s Up is its attention to detail. It was like the animators at Columbia Pictures got royally sick of being one step behind Dreamworks and ten steps behind the Mouse/Lamp and decided to get their computering butts to work. I could see this movie as an easy competitor to its competitor Ratatouille (losing in 2008 to the aforementioned for Best Animated Feature Film). Each leaf came fully equipped, every wave was a masterpiece in digital art, and every grain of sand seemed life like. If for no other reason Surf’ Up is a must see for its visual brilliance.

The plot was a basic underdog story. Cody Maverick (LaBoeouf) is a young, small for his age, surfing penguin following in the footsteps of the great surfer penguin, Big Z (Jeff Bridges). He enters a surfing competition as the mega underdog, but is taken under the wing of an old surfer, and makes his way to the championship, learning on his way to live life to the fullest, and love the surfing, not the competition. A simple plot but packed with laughs, goof characters, and beautiful surfing sequences that are truly magnificent works of art.

What is interesting about this story is that it is a mocumentary style film. Like The Office, this film is made to look like a documentary, it is all made to look like it is filmed by a sports documenter and there are cuts, retakes, and random boom mics swinging into the shots. The story is told through interviews with different characters and has a lot of regular shots too that keep the movie moving. It is an interesting concept to have an animated movumentary, and it is a fun twist.

Surf’s Up is a lighthearted film, not to be taken too seriously, but one that still makes you feel happy about in the end. It is basic and tells a story that we seem to have seen in hundreds of kids movies before, but is still a lot of fun. A 7.5 out of 10, not amazing, but a visual treat that still made me laugh.

Sex/Nudity – A penguin urinates on another penguin’s foot as an antidote to the poison from a sea urchin. An otter gets out of a hot tub and there is fake digital blurring where genitalia might be.
Violence/Gore – there are a few frightening moments with large waves and surfers wiping out and possibly being harmed.

Profanity – One penguin starts to say something tastes like sh… but is then cut off. There is some name calling.

A new standard in cinema and animation

2010-05-31T11:21:00.000-07:00

Up

Director: Pete Docter and Bob Peterson

Starring: Edward Asner and Christopher Plummer

MPAA: Rated PG for some peril and action.

I remember growing up on classics like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and The jungle Book. Then during my life time came the hits like Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King. In 1995 a little novelty was released that turned into massive hit, Toy Story. Now, 15 years later Up is the standard in excellence. I am more and more surprised by the incredible stories that are told through these detailed works of art that come from this studio. In comparison to the older Disney films these computer animated masterpieces are just so full of life. They are visually phenomenal, and so much more interesting than the older classics. Not to say I don’t love the originals, but every Disney/Pixar film gets better and better.

Up takes the genre to new heights of extraordinary in visual beauty that challenges the imagination, and also in a story with rich and interesting characters that touch the soul and warm the heart. I was captivated with Up from the moment it started. The movie opens with a little kid in a theater seeing the downfall of his hero, a great explorer named Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer). The little boy dawdles his way home and meets a little girl who also is a fan of Muntz’s and the two become friends. Their life is played out quickly in pantomime and they grow old together. In this little set up piece the full range of emotions played across my heart and I want from joy to sorrow and back and forth. Then Carl (Edward Asner – Who was Lou Grant in the Mary Tyler Moore Show and Santa Clause in , the little boy from the beginning, is all alone, and an old man now with a little cane/walker complete with 4 tennis balls at the bottom to keep it from scuffing the floor. Carl then proceeds to take his house and accidentally a little Cub Scout boy on the adventure of a lifetime. They find exotic animals, tread the un-trod landscapes, and soar across continents in the most unlikely of transportation. And finally come face to face with the even older Charles Muntz.

The movie is so funny, so sad, so happy, that it is everything I look for in a film. There is even some exciting action so creatively and beautifully put together it captured my mind and enveloped me in a cloud of imagination. In 90 minutes I was whisked around the world and shown some of the most fabulous landscapes I have ever seen, and I was also taken on the best emotional roller coasters I have ever been on in a film. Up is definitely a film that should not be missed.

It is amazing that this film actually made its hero a 70 year old man. This crotchety old widower is the best hero I have seen in years. He is a real person, and average Joe, what we will all become. He is grumpy and lonely and wants to fulfill a promise to his late wife. Movies these days seem to be packed with rebellious children who know more than their parents and always seem to be right and the authorities are always stupid and wrong. Carl’s stowaway Cub Scout neighbor, Russell is a little bit of this stock character. But it was nice to see a child hero that was a little pudgy, a little naive, and still respectful to Carl. Up shifts away from the standard to readily used in today’s entertainment and I think that it showed good moral sense in this decision.

Up is a masterpiece well deserving of its two Oscars and two additional nominations. In fact Up was probably the best or close to the best film made in 2009 and well deserved it’s best picture nomination. I would give up a 9.9 out o10. It wasn’t perfect but as close as it gets in film making. It is an uplifting film that succeeds in entertainment and art.

No Sex/Nudity -

Violence/Gore – minor cartoon peril and action

No Profanity -

Fun Film Fails at Finish

2010-05-28T09:57:00.000-07:00

Sahara

Director: Breck Eisner

Starring: Mathew McConaughey, Steve Zahn, Penelope Cruz, William H, Mace, Rainn Wilson

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for action violence.

I have two questions here regarding Sahara, where it he sequel and why is it only a 5.9 out of 10 on the IMDB? I am not saying that this is a brilliant film and should have swept at the Oscars. It was a silly over the top action adventure film. But in the midst of terrible remakes and bad sequels and a deluge of “B” average action films, Sahara is a little gem. I really wish the makers of Indiana Jones 4 had gotten a little assistance from the makers of Sahara; then it might have been worth my time, when instead it was a deplorable movie with no redeeming qualities. On the other hand Sahara is a witty, intelligent movie, with dynamic and exciting actors and a plot more ridiculous than most of the James Bond films.

What makes this a fun film is not the amazing special effects, the over the top story line, and the exciting fight and chase scenes, it is instead the crazy characters that add spice and life to an otherwise cookie cutter adventure film. Mathew McConaughey and Steve Zahn are the perfect buddy film actors. They are a great duo that have excellent comedic timing and play off each other extremely well. They have the perfect bormance going on. There is none of that awkward love triangle going on when Penelope Cruz steps into the film, it is obvious she and McConaughey are supposed to be the love interest – for the duration of the film only, as it is in all action flicks – and Zahn doesn’t get man jealous as is so often the habit of filmmakers in these situation. Instead he is goofy and funny, and has a great laugh-out-loud line every two or three minutes. The two stars are just dang funny together.

Then there are the characters played by William H. Macy and Rain Wilson, also hilarious side characters that just add more flavor to the soup. Macy is the Admiral, the money backing the expedition. He is the fatherly figure whose stuff is constantly getting blown up, but things always turn out right in the end so it is okay. And Rain Wilson is the inexperienced techie, who bumbles around in the middle of explosions, and we forget that he is Dwight and instead see a goofy, scared, nerd, so funny.

I realize the plot is almost too much to handle. The fate of the world is being decided in the midst of war torn Africa and only these two treasure hunters with the help of a very sexy doctor (Penelope Cruz) can save it. But it is the build up that is interesting. The characters are so much fun that you really just say, Who cares if this is unrealistic and could never happen, it’s fun!” And it is a different kind of fun than the ridiculous Transformers blockbusters, where computer animated machines beat each other up, and the live actors run around green screen sets pretending to act scared. Instead it is a James Bond film with Indiana Jones, and you just smile and go along with the ride. I just don’t understand why people enjoy summer junk like the Transformers movies and then don’t appreciate clever adventures like Sahara. I would put Sahara at a strong 7.4 out of 10, for its good characters and fun script. The Transformers movies might get 6.5 out of 10 on a day when I am feeling dang generous.

The movie has a great build up, and is supported by strong characters. It is a little over the top,true, but the biggest problem with the movie is where the heads, off into plot la la land. The plot just gets too big and too ridiculous. It doesn’t get confusing or muddled or anything like that, it just gets too over the top, and that is what disrupts how good the film could have been. It is almost “Austin Powers” bad in how ridiculous it gets… only the villain isn’t holding the world hostage for “one hundred million dollars.” Overall though, Sahara was a fun popcorn flick.

Sex/nudity – 3 out of 10 – a man and a woman kiss on a beach in swimsuits. We see cleavage and he is bare-chested. We see a man in swim trunks only walking out of the water. A woman wears cleavage revealing clothes.

Violence/Gore – 6 out of 10 – A lot of fist a cuffs, men getting shot, people being shot at. A humanitarian group is massacred, dead bodies are seen. We see a few people shot, no blood is seen. A plague leaves people sick and bloodied; many dead bodies are seen lying around. There are a lot of explosions and people dying but it is all done in a way that is a little unrealistic and there is very little blood splattering or anything like that.

Profanity – maybe 1 F-word, 10 to 15 mild profanities and religious exclimations.

Thriller and Comedy

2010-05-25T20:41:00.000-07:00

Signs

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Starring: Mal Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin, and featuring M. Night Shyamalan

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for some frightening moments.

A tense thriller with a surprisingly humorous and witty script, Signs is a film for both Sci-Fi junkies and family film lovers. M. Night Shyamalan knows how to write and direct real tension and drama; and in Signs he uses these skills, along with a script that rivals a good comedy, and weaves a story so creatively it is okay that we have seen it in a hundred other movies.

While Will Smith is out blowing up Aliens, the Hess family is in rural Pennsylvania trying to catch the news and figure out what is the deal with the crop circles popping up all over the world. We see lights on the TV and news reports, but we never seem to catch a clear look at the invaders, and 90% of the film leaves us wondering if it isn’t a big hoax. The tension is shown through the eyes of a ten-year-old kid, his 6 year-old sister. They are scared and believe aliens are invading. The panic stricken Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) sits in the closet watching the TV, his ace white as a ghost. Graham (Mel Gibson) has rejected his position as a reverend and the existence of God because of the death of his wife six month earlier.

The four are a great family on screen. There are tears and smiles, and plenty of laughs. Gibson walks into the house at one time to see Phoenix and the kids sitting on a couch with tin foil fats wrapped around their heads to keep the aliens from reading their minds, and I went into hysteric laughing so hard. It was great. The dialogue between the two brothers is great, and we have no problem believing Gibson is Phoenix’s big brother. They have great chemistry, and the kids thrown into the mix make for a great family suffering from the death of a mother and now living in the horrible reality of an alien attack.

M. Night Shyamalan really put together a great story here. He used interesting angles in his cinematography to emphasize the eerie aura of the film. One angle that was used a lot, and very effectively, was a head on straight shot; usually it was a medium wide shot, and he used it a lot in the film. It was very basic and very effective in telling the story. To balance the creepy feeling ever present in the film he uses cute kids and great characters with an even better script to tell an almost horror tale. This is not a movie you can stop half way through to do homework. It is a movie that keeps you riveted to the screen, wondering if there are aliens or not, and if there are, what does it all mean?

I really can’t believe I pushed this film off eight years before seeing it. I enjoyed it, and I’d give it a solid 7.8 out of ten. It does remind me a bit of K-Pax because it raises so many questions and gives the audience a far more human and realistic view on what would happen if there really were aliens. I enjoyed Signs and would recommend it to the Sci-Fi nerds and the moms watching Hallmark dramas. There is something for everyone here.

Sex/Nudity – 0 out of 10 – a man talks about kissing a woman and a man talks about having beautiful women licking his feat – in a hypothetical situation.

Violence/ Gore – A woman is said to have been cut in half by a car crash. A police officer tells a man fairly graphically about the accident. Man chops off fingers from a hand that reaches out for him under a door jam. A dog is seen laying on the ground stabbed with a BBQ fork, there is a little blood. There are a lot of frightening scenes, a man is chased in a corn field in a scene of high tension, many scary hands are seen grabbing at people, there is a lot of tension of fright in the film.

Profanity – 4 out of 10 – A few uses of the “B” and “S” word, some name calling and one or two religious exclamations.

2010-05-24T22:06:00.000-07:00

K-Pax

Director: Ian Softley

Starring: Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for a sequence of violent images, and brief language and sensuality.

A visually interesting movie, with a plot and actors to match, K-Pax is a fell constructed film that earns a good 7.8 out of 10. This is one of those movies that keeps you guessing throughout, and ends with some questions still unresolved, is it a surprise ending with a wicked twist, or is the twist false, and the movie is in fact exactly as we perceive it. This question makes the movie in its self worth watching.

Kevin Spacey is Prot (pronounced Prote), a man who seems to materialize out of light in the opening credits and is almost instantly sent to a mental hospital because he claims to come from a distant planet. Jeff Bridges is the ever skeptical workaholic doctor in charge of the hospital, and he takes Prot on as a personal project. Both actors are very interesting on the screen. Spacey is comical and very intelligent, almost an idiot savant, but so honest and witty that we keep changing our minds about Prot and his origins. Bridges keeps us guessing too as he examines and Prot, and probes into the corners of his mind searching for the answer. The two actors play off of each other very well, and these two men are a perfect team up for dry humor and the touching friendship they develop.

My only beef with the film comes in the mystic hypnosis sessions Bridges’ character conducts to get to the true root of Prot’s psychosis. As far as I know, from Intro to Psychology, hypnosis and regression therapy are two forms of treatment not practiced by most doctors, and in fact myths from old spy movies and bad melodramas, and their use in this film is not well incorporated and makes for some cheesy scenes.

Getting past the cheese isn’t too hard though, and I recommend the movie to anyone who wants a good drama with a possible Sci-Fi twist. Though I can’t give away the ending or any good scenes, so I’ll say “possible” because you never know what may happen.

The different directions the film goes in are fun. We meet the family of our ever working doctor, and he learns their importance as the film progresses. We also meet many quirky mental patients and see them change to with the help of Prot. Throughout the movie creative filming adds emphasis to the mood of the story and different angles and lighting techniques enrich the visual aspects.
Overall K-Pax is an above average movie that will bring smiles to the audience’s faces. It is heartwarming and fun to watch. It gets a little hoakey as I said before but the acting makes up for any defects there. Anyone looking for a deeper drama check out K-Pax, you won’t be disappointed.

Sex/Nudity3 out of 10 – A couple are awakened in the middle of the night, they appear to be nude but we can only see dark shadows and the top of her breasts. A man talks about painful sexual intercourse on another planet.

Violence/ Gore 6 out of 10– We see shots of a rape and homicide through a man’s imagination. A man breaks another man’s neck in a fight. We see splattered blood on a wall and hear about a woman and daughter being raped and killed. We see the woman’s body briefly.

Profanity – 5 out of 10 – 1 “f” word and a smattering of other profanities and religious exclamations.

2010-05-20T20:31:00.001-07:00

The Shawshank Redemption

Director: Frank Darabont

Starring Morgan Freeman and Tim Robins

MPAA: Rated R for language and prison violence

It is simply stunning how the master of Horror, Stephen King, can write a book of such phenomenal brilliance as to bring a tear to the eye and lift the spirit. The
Shawshank Redemption is perhaps the best film ever written. It is absolutely on my top 5 list, and I give it a strong 10 out of 10. My wife and I just finished the film and she gave me a big hug and a kiss and told me she loved the movie.
True, this movie has scenes implying brutal violence, including prison rape (none of which is seen of course), and is littered with profanities including many uses of the “F” word. But the ends justify the means, easily. This is an amazing drama that will change any ones view on the “ease” of prison life and how good prisoners have it.

Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman are convicted felons serving out life sentences in Shawshank Prison. They are not bad men, but are men who are learning from their mistakes and becoming better people for it in the midst of violence and misconduct by the guards and the inmates. The storey covers over twenty years of time spent in the prison and the evolution of the men’s lives through humorous and tragic events within the prison.

Both men perform admirably and could have each picked up an Oscar for their roles. Freeman aptly earned his nomination, but Robbins deserved one as well. This amazing piece of artistic brilliance did not win any of the seven Academy Awards it was nominated for. It lost Best Picture to Forest Gump, though it is an infinitely better film, though Forest Gump was a marvelous movie, it just doesn’t compare to Shawshank. It also lost in Best Cinematography to Legends of the Fall, which might actually be a good call, because Legends was a beautiful film.

This is a flawless film. The acting is perfect, the script is entertaining, the cinematography beautiful, and the plot surprisingly suspenseful and intriguing. It is hard to see where this film is headed. It starts off with a murder and a trial and continues with men being beaten to death and gang raped. You never see any nudity or blood, but you see a lot of hitting and hear a lot of really nasty sounding beatings. Then there are some much lighter scenes that just make you laugh out loud. The balance of dark and light is fantastic, and the very surprising twists and turns make the film a true winner.

You can’t miss this film. It is a landmark in cinematic history. I have seen it too many times to count, and every time I am filled with such happiness. The deep dark spots of the movie are counter balanced very well with the happy moments. This is a visual and intellectual masterpiece, the best adaptation from book to movie I have ever seen. Sit back and enjoy this film of iconic magnitude.

Sex/ Nudity - 7 out of 10 – A man and a woman are shown kissing passionately and his hands go up her dress, we see them thrusting and hear them making noises. There are quite a few references to prison gangs who rape people. There is talk of prison rape, and a man is cornered three or four times and we assume he is raped. We see bare chested men a few times and one brief scene in a shower where we see a few men from the stomach up showering and talking, a man comes on to another man in the scene. We see men holding prison clothes over their privates marched to their cells, bare legs and chests are visible.

Violence/ Gore - 8 out of 10 – A few people are beaten badly by prison guards. We see them hit (or the camera pans off of them and we hear them being hit) repeatedly by the guard’s sticks. One man dies from the beating, one man is taken out in a wheel chair badly bruised and bloodied. A gang of prison rapists beat another man badly three or four times and we hear how long he spends in the infirmary recovering. One man is shot several times. A man and a woman are shot. One man hangs himself and we see him swinging in the back ground.

Profanity – 9 out of 10 – At least 50 F-words and many other profanities and religious exclimations.

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

2010-05-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

Director: Terry Gilliam (The Brothers Grimm, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Twelve Monkeys, Time Bandits, Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

Starring: Christopher Plummer, and Heath Ledger, with Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Collin Farrell

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for violent images, some sensuality, language and smoking.

The last of Heath Leger’s films is quirky, muddled, and ultimately unsettling. Terry Gilliam has made another film that leaves the audience thinking WTF. It is hard to believe that this director was also behind the comic genius Monty Python and the Holy Grail (one film I could do without… but successful none the less). I tried watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, another one of Giliam’s, but it was a disgusting piece of film making that left me with a splitting headache. The Imaginarium though, was interesting, exciting, and fun, if not a little disjointed and confusing.

Heath Ledger was great, but still clinging to some Joker tendencies throughout the film. To be fair he was not really the main character but more like Brad Pitt in Spy Game. He moved the plot along and was an essential character, but not the lead role.

The movie is about Dr. Parnassus, a genuinely good man whose two vices are drinking and gambling. But the stakes are much higher than wealth, the wages are souls, the players are him and the devil. Dr. Parnassus makes bets with the devil, and lives a miserable life because of his choices. Ledger comes into the story as Tony, the mysterious stranger found hanging from a bridge, and he is either the key to beating the devil at his own game, or the instrument that will bring Parnassus to his ultimate downfall.

The plot is a good idea, well used, but this film takes the idea to another level. Dr. Parnassus can take people to another world, the imaginarium where they can choose to come out better people or they are destroyed by the devil. In the imaginarium is a computer animated world that is more bizarre than Alice’s Wonderland, and less realistic than Toon Town. The great part every time Heath Leger goes into it we see another one of his faces (found in the fabulous acting of Johnny Depp, then Jude Law, and finally Collin Ferrell).

Problem is, the movie starts out slow and doesn’t really get the show rolling very well. It putters around badly with some rather poor sound editing and a spotty script and then picks up with the appearance of the devil and then finally Heath Ledger. Where the plot then twists around five or six times trying the keep the audience on its toes but mainly succeeding in leaving out heads spinning. There is deeper meaning to be found in the story, but one has to do a lot of uncovering to succeed in that endeavor.

It is obvious the unexpected death of Heath Ledger through the filmmakers through a loop and so they improvised well with the three faces of Tony, but the plot did seem like there was too much cut and paste – with Terry Gilliam’s track record though it would be very easy for us to believe that was how he wanted it all along though.
Over all The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus gets a 7 out of 10. It was weird and quirky, had a few good laughs, went some wild directions visually speaking, and in the end succeeded in leaving the audience sitting in silence, whether it was a ponderous silence or a stupor of thought will be up to the viewer. Check it out if you want to see Heath Ledger, or just a trippy flick, but if not then this might not be your particular brand of vodka.

Sex/Nudity – 6 out of 10 – A 16-year-old girl is seen naked with a long wig covering all private area, we see her bare hip and the side of her breasts. A man and a 16-year-old girl kiss and then we see their boat start to rock, afterwards we see her laying with her dress open in just a bra and bare stomach, it is assumed they had sex. A man chases after a young lady yelling at her and making sexual suggestions. A teen girl is seen in many cleavage revealing outfits. A man dresses like a woman and the suit has cleavage. A chorus of men dressed in skirts and pantyhose do a song and dance and moon the screen, we can see their bare bottoms through the thin hose.

Violence/ Gore – 5 out of 10 – a man is found hanging, he is cut down and resuscitated. Another man is hung by the neck and we here crunching as the camera pans off of him, then we see his body swinging. A man blows up in a bar explosion. 4 men beat and punch another man. A man tries to comic suicide and is caught in the jump. A man hits a child and a woman a few times. An angry mob chases a man trying to kill him and in the process they trample another man.

Profanity – 5 out of 10 - 1 “F” word (audible only with the assistance of subtitles, it is muttered and background noise obscures it) and 20 or so other obscenities, 10 or so religious exclamations, some name calling.

2010-05-11T19:44:00.001-07:00

Four Feathers

Director: Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth and Elizabeth II: The Golden Age)

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for intense battle sequences, disturbing images, violence and some sensuality.

Starring: Heath Ledger, Kate Hudson, Wes Bentley, Djimon Hounsou, and Micheal Sheen

Heath Ledger in one of his most riveting and emotional roles; Four Feathers is a drama of epic proportions. This is a slow movie, not slow like a monotonous three hours of unbridled dialogue dipped in pompous English accents. Instead it is a masterfully built story about redemption and loyalty that has desolate scenes of desert travel and panning shots of the African landscape as characters contemplate there situation. This is a story of the horrors of foreign wars fought by soldiers who did not understand the need for England to spread itself across the nations of the earth. I think it is a very appropriate movie for our time because it deals with issues of war and hate in a venue a little removed historically, but still pertinent.

Ledger plays young Harry, the son a career military man who now faces war or the woman he loves. His closest friends ship out to fight in the deserts of Africa, while Harry stays behind. Disgraced he feels he must head to Africa to find his friends and prove to everyone he is not a coward. Each feather is a sign of disgrace given him by former comrades in arms and he quests to return the feathers. Heath, with a beard that rivals those of the Old Testament prophets, is brilliant as the young adventurer. He is racked with guilt and torn between his fears and his need to be a better man. His journey is a message to everyone that the path to redemption is difficult.

Supporting Leger's phenomenal performance is Djimon Hounsosou (Gladiator and Blood Diamond). He plays the guardian angel, watching Harry closely in his search for his friends and aiding the boy with the words, “God put you in my path.” He is a stony character with a sneer that could kill the faint of heart, and a smile that could melt ice. He and Ledger make a dynamic duo more interesting than Batman and Robin.

Michael Sheen (The Damned United, Frost Nixon, and the head vampire in New Moon – BLAH!) is a youthful companion of Harry’s. He is a handsome actor and really fun to watch in his supporting part here. It is interesting to see how far he has come in the last few years, and I loved seeing him as a young military officer in this movie.

While slow, this film doesn’t seem to drag at all. The scenes all flow together well, and while sometimes they do jump in the story and leave the audience saying, “What the heck,” it still manages to flow rather well; telling a gripping story and ties up almost all of the loose end eventually.

I wouldn’t say this is a movie for everyone. It is a deeper film that has a lot of emotion. Some people want thoughtless action with little character development and virtually no plot, just look at what is in the theaters and you can tell. While

Four Feathers has a lot of tear jerking war scenes, and breath taking action (done tastefully but still with the dirt and grit of realism) it focuses on Harry’s relationships with his friends and the steps he takes to prove to them and himself he is not a coward. It is a movie that focuses on the emotions of the characters, and it picked fantastic actors who do just that. While it does have four different ending spots that seem to drag out a little bit it is still a well paced film that uses is slower scenes to add emphasis and drama. Four Feathers is a marvelous film with a deep plot, and exciting story, and rich characters. Don’t miss this film, it is an easy 8.5 out of 10.

Sex/Nudity – 5 out of 10 – Two side characters have sex behind a rock as a man looks on trying not to be seen; we see them kissing, moaning, and moving from the neck up. We see some men bare from the chest up. There is some talk about soldiers and prostitutes.

Violence/ Gore – A man stabs a camel and drinks its blood because he is dying of dehydration. Many people are shot and killed. In some prison scenes men are beaten and bloodied. A man is hit over the head with a rock and we see blood. One man is savagely beaten to death off screen but we hear the thuds. Men fight over scraps of food and beat each other. A man is whipped savagely (no blood is shown). We see the legs of men who have been hung, and we see many dead corpses. Some rugby violence. One big battle scene with a lot of shooting and death, no spurting blood or anything like that.

Profanity – Three or four mild obscenities and two or three religious exclamations.

2010-05-10T18:48:00.000-07:00

Iron Man 2

Director: Jon Favreau

Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Don Cheadle, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mickey Rourke, Scarlett
Johansson, Sam Rockwell, and Samuel L. Jackson, with Paul Bettany and Jon Favreau

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence, and some language.

The summer deluge of “B” average sequels and over the top action flicks has started off with the loud clang of iron being forged. Out of the fire comes a not too shabby, if not anti climatic, return of Iron Man. It is a sequel, one packed with characteristics all “good: sequels must come with, too many top named actors, plots that split and twist into thirty new directions, more action, more stuff blowing up, more flaws in the hero, serious personal troubles that make carrying the responsibility of policing the world too difficult, and on and on and on.
Simplicity is too easy an answer and beyond the grasp of Hollywood writers so instead Iron Man 2 has a plot similar to Pirates of the Caribbean 2, entertaining yes, but elusive! Iron Man 2 wasn’t nearly as crazy as Pirates 2 but it still follows that same BIGGER AND BETTER idea. Hopefully they will grasp that and Iron Man 3 will scale it back a little.

I went into the move with relatively low expectations. Hollywood has broken my heart a few too many times recently and so I wasn’t expecting much. Robert Downey Jr of course was as good as ever. He is a witty actor who knows how to deliver a line with sincerity and realism. He is hilarious, one of the best actors of our time and Iron Man 2 does not hold him back. There are a couple of scenes where he is stomping around in his CGI suit with the face shield up, where he looks kind of stupid, but that happens I guess.

Don Cheadle makes for a great Rhodey, some liked him better than Terrance Howard. For the record I love Don Cheadle and he never disappoints, but I am one for keeping the originals. Like when the first 4 Batman movies came out and the last two had Val Kilmer and then George Clooney for Batman, I was just a kid and I was still way bugged that there couldn’t be any consistency. The same thing bugs me here too. But Cheadel worked just fine and it wasn’t a huge deal because he was in the film about as much as Gwyneth Paltrow, who incidentally was a wreck on screen. It was like she forgot to watch Iron Man before filming and so ignored the lat Pepper Pots and a gave us this new one who was a big spaz. I guess they needed her to contrast the ever so HOT but completely emotionless Scarlett Johanson. I guess when you get so many stars in one movie things just get dull.

Mickey Rourke was just plain scary. It was like The Wrestler with a doctorate in physics. He looked pretty awesome, but let’s face it, we already saw a bigger badder suit in Iron Man 1 with Obadiah Stane’s take on Iron man. I guess they justified Ivan Vanko’s (Mickey Rourke) smaller suit with the 30 other Iron Man suits running around blowing stuff up and Vanko’s wicked but ultimately useless energy whips.

Samuel L. Jackson had a small bit part where he tries to play the fatherly and wise leader. He is mildly entertaining, but there is little need for his part in the movie. It was more of a toss in for the comic book fans and had little need for the plot development. Sam Rockwell was fun to watch. He was the sniveling competitor with Stark industries and had all the classic symptoms of spineless jealousy. He was none the less a fun villain.

Ultimately Iron man 2 is a decent sequel that will thrill the action and comic book fans but will fail to impress any serious film watchers. There is very little depth in the film and it is a bit anti climatic. The film fails to put many of the pieces in place and leaves the audience with a 2000 piece jigsaw puzzle about three fourths completed. It’s entertaining, but not that great. 7 out of 10.

Sex/Nudity – 4 out of 10 – There are some sexual innuendos, we see a woman dressing in the back seat of a car, and we see her in a bra. We see a photo of a woman posing in lingerie.

Violence/Gore – 6 out of 10 – There is a lot of stuff blowing up and guns going off and fighting and punching and all the stuff seen in a million other movies. The
violence involves very few people getting hurt or at least little visible injury. A man does kill a couple of people. There is some fit-a-cuff and a little bit of blood and bruises on faces.

Profanity - 5 out of 10 - 2 bleeped out “F” words and a few other mild obscenities and religious exclamations.

2010-05-03T21:12:00.000-07:00

Date Night

Director: Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum 1 and 2)

Starring: Tina Fey and Steve Carell, with Common, Mark Whalberg, Ray Liotta, and Mark Ruffalo

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for sexual and crude content throughout, language, some violence and a drug reference

The perfect date night flick, “Date Night” is an uproarious comedy that pairs off the two funniest people in the entertainment industry today. Tina Fey and Steve Carell are a riot! “Date Night” is a funny as the trailer, and while a lot of the best scenes are in the preview there is still more to behold in the film. If you laughed at all when you saw the ads for this movie then you might as well check out the new dynamic comedic duo found in “Date Night.”

This movie pales in comparison to Oscar Nominated “It’s Complicated” but I guess it is not quite in the same genre. Similar films might be “Baby Mama” or “Stranger Than Fiction” or other movies banking on SNL like scripts. However this movie is not nearly as filthy as “Step Brothers” or even “Talladega Nights” or a farfetched as “Zoolander” though it does seem to be in the same movie family.
I like movies with dynamic couples. I like movies about married people with married problems who try to make things work and in the course of the film resolve some of their conflicts. This is one of those movies. Phil (Steve Carell) and Claire (Tina Fey) Foster are in a little bit of a rut. They go to work every day, work hard, take care of the kids, get to bed late after putting the kids to bed, and are roused from their comas early each morning by WWF movie from their two children and they even go to the same restaurant for their weekly dates.

However they are in love, just resigned to the mundane duties of married life. They still play a little game during their dinners, it is obvious this is a long standing tradition between the couple, where they guess what date the couples around them are on and pretend to talk for these people. This is when the comical genius of these Golden Globe winning actors really comes out, the banter little dialogues back and forth, each comment getting more absurd. It is a hoot to watch. But one night changes their marriage for the better when they take another couples reservation and end up running from the mob in a case of mistaken identity.

Carell and Fey have great onscreen chemistry. They do not overpower each other like some actor heavy movies. They play off of each other very well, trading humorous lines, each funnier than the last. They banter a little bit, but they feel like a genuine couple that has gotten used to being together and, while there are still bumps in the marriage, they are a happy couple. It is easy to believe they are a normal suburban couple in a very abnormal situation that could happen to anyone committing the heinous sin of taking someone’s dinner reservation (a running joke throughout).

"Date Night" had a good story development. It was well thought out and paced at a good speed so as to not dump the audience head over heels into the classic mistaken identity plot. In fact the film was well thought out right up until the last fifteen minutes, which were a huge let down in comparison to the rest of the movie.

We got very little sense of a climax, and completely failed to use Mark Wahlberg’s supreme butt kicking abilities. Instead it kind of wrapped things up in one fell swoop as if the writer (Josh Klausner, the not so genius behind scripts for Shrek 3 and 4) was like, “Dang, we use our one “F”-word, and our allotment for jokes; I guess we are done with the movie,” and left the director with his thumb up his nose for the end of the film. This thoroughly disappointing ending really knocked the film down from an 8.3 out of 10 to a low 7.0 out of 10. The movie was clever and fun, not amazing, but well done, right up until a bogus ending that really killed the light, amusing mood of “Date Night.”

Sex/Nudity – 6 out of 10 – There is an extended scene in a strip club; a lot of women in lingerie dance suggestively on poles. A man women couple goofily dance for another man and he becomes very excited at their dancing, and asks them how much to spend the night with them. There is no nudity at all. There is some sexual dialogue including discussions about sexual fantasies. A woman asks if another couple will be joiner her for sex.

Violence/Gore 4 out of 10 – There are a few small gun fights, no one is shot though. There is a long car chase with some crashing, no one is injured. A few people get hit in the head or punched, no blood of any kind.

Profanity – 6 out of 10 – one very loud “F” word, kind of unexpected, sexual references, use of the “S” word and “B” word a few times, and some mild obscenities and religious exclamations.

2010-04-30T20:52:00.000-07:00

The Blind Side

Director: John Lee Hancock (The Alamo and The Rookie)

Starring: Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron and Kathy Bates

MPAA - Rated PG-13 for one scene involving brief violence, drug and sexual references.

A near perfect film, “The Blind Side” is a wonderful true story that had my wife choking up about every five minutes. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and thought how great it was to see a film with so much heart and not much that could be considered offensive. We felt like we were watching one of those Christian movies except this one had a plot, acting, and decent dialogue.

Sandra Bullock was fantastic. She was so different compared to the many romantic comedy roles she has previously been in. I have always loved her movies, though this new one, “All about Steve,” looks like a serious looser, but in general she is great. I have never really seen her stretch much in a role, but in this one she was really good. I am not saying she was so good that she beat out Merrill Streep in “Julia and Julia”, no one’s performance last year matched Streep’s Julia Child, but Bullock was really good. She was the sassy, sexy, and very confident Leigh Anne Tuohy; a woman who steps out of her comfort zone and breaks social norms by befriending a homeless black teenager (Quinton Aaron’s Michael Oher) and makes him part of the family.

The unfortunate part to Bullock’s superb acting was that she dwarfed everyone on screen the way Oher does on the football field. She was almost too good for the rest of the cast. The only one who was nearly as good as her was Jae Head playing the nine-year-old son. He was actually very good, reminiscent of “Squints”, from the classic tale of baseball and boyhood “The Sandlot”. This was an excellent role for the mouthy little kid; full of information and funny as heck.

Quinton Aaron was okay. His towering physique mad him perfect for the role of NFL star Michael Oher, but he is not yet as developed an actor, someone a little more experienced may have been better for the role, but maybe not. He was still a loveable giant, looking for acceptance and respect like all teenagers. Aaron held his own, and pulled the part off.

Earlier I said “The Blind Side” was a near perfect film, and it was. I’d give it a good 8.7 out of 10, but I felt like something was missing to really push the movie to be extraordinary. We have a lot of football movies littering the screen, some are good, some garbage, but one stands supreme in the realm of sports movies, “Remember the Titans.” A movie so good that it’s equal will have to pack some pretty amazing stuff into it to get there, and “The Blind Side” fell a bit short.

It succeeded in being a warm movie about family and love, and built loveable characters in situations that could just break someone’s heart, but it hit the same roadblocks as Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus.” The film climaxed a bit and there was a point of emotional stress for the characters, but it was not passed on to the audience very well. We all felt bad but we didn’t get that gut churning emotional roller coaster that we experienced with “Remember the Titans”. That was the only drawback to the film; it was just not quite intense enough.

But on a whole it is a film to remember. What the director has sculpted is a feel good film about families and good Christian ethics. Like “The Rookie” and many other sports movies, “The Blind Side” is a winner and one you won’t regret seeing.

Sex/Nudity – 3 out of 10 – There is some sexual dialogue among teenagers and gang bangers. A man and a woman lie in bed together and the man rolls on top of the woman and kisses her, you could infer they are going to have sex but the scene ends. A woman shows cleavage in a lot of scenes.

Violence/Gore – 5 out of 10 – There is a fight in one scene where young men are tossed around a room, some punching and a gun goes off. A lot of furniture is broken and a crib is knocked over, a baby starts crying. There are some hard hits in football practices and games. References to boys dying in gang fights and other gang violence is mentioned. There is nothing gory or distasteful for anyone over the age of 10 or so.

Profanity – The “B” word is used a few times, the “N” word as well, and a few religious exclamations. Some sexual dialogue and name calling.

2010-04-26T19:36:00.000-07:00

500 Days of Summer

Director – Marc Webb

Starring – Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel

MPAA – Rated PG-13 for sexual material and language.

A film spiced with witty humor, flavored with fun and interesting actors, and frosted with a unique indie soundtrack, 500 Days of Summer is a flavorful alternative to the shoddy array of romantic comedy genre trash littering the shelves of video stores today. This film is done in the style of “Away We Go”, another witty film that does not mold to the contemporary romances pumping out of the film factory these days. It also reminds me of hits such as “Juno” and “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist.” All of these films had the feel of an independent movie, a little more laid back, better scripts, and sharp humor based on dialogue as opposed to over the top situational farce.

I was reminded of the sharp wit displayed in Oscar Wilde’s masterpieces as I watched this brilliant little film. This is one of those rare gems of its genre that sparkles a little bit and is different. It is a more mature comedy, a little like “Its Complicated”; I enjoy films about adult relationships, and I love movie where the ending is so different from the average films. Others were disappointed by the films choice but I will tell you now the beginning of the movie tell your right up front that this is not a love story.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt earns his Golden Globe nomination as the love sick Tom Hansen. He has grown up a lot since “Angels in the Outfield” and it is fun to see that his comedic timing has been sharpened to a point. Zooey Deschanel is hilarious as well as Summer, the girl of Tom’s dreams. She has a vicious sense of satirical comedy that makes her so much fun to watch. Her performance was fantastic and she should have scored a nomination as well. Summer does not believe in true love, un-like Tom, and so as the two of them embark on a “casual relationship” we see how much chemistry they really do have.

Tom’s friends make for colorful side characters, which always makes a movie more interesting. The best though is how Tom always turns to his nine-year-old sister (Chloe Moretz) for romantic guidance. She is the go to girl and has some of the best lines in the movie. I guess she is in the new movie “Kick-Ass” and she is supposed to be pretty funny there too, it seems she is going to be an actress to be reckoned with.

Over all 500 Days of Summer is a first class movie. It easily gets a 9 out of 10 in my book. I loved the smart dialogue and the fun characters. The film has enough twists to keep you guessing, and it uses flashbacks a lot to make an interestingly developed plot. I highly recommend this film for those seeking a reprise from the below average romances forced upon film-goers.

Sex/Nudity – 6 out of 10 – We see a woman (presumably naked) from the back lying in bed waiting for a man to come out of the bathroom. It is assumed they have sex. A man and a woman rent and watch an adult video. We see a shower with an opaque curtain. We hear a couple attempting to have sex in the shower, we see a hand grab the curtain and accidently pull it down on top of them. We see a zoomed in picture of a man crotch and see his bulge. A man and a woman kiss passionately.

Violence/Gore – 2 out of 10 – A man punches another man and is hit back, we see him later with an ice pack. No real bruising or blood.

Profanity – 5 out of 10 – Kids-in-mind says there are “3 F-words and its derivatives.” I think there was one “F” word, some sexual dialogue, a few religious exclamations, and some other obscenities.

2010-04-26T12:34:00.000-07:00

An Education –

Director – Lone Scheig

Starring – Olivia Williams, Peter Sarsgaard, with Alfred Molina and Emma Thompson

MPAA - Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material involving sexual content, and for smoking.

Nominated for three Academy Awards including Best Picture, “An Education” is a brilliant coming-of-age drama full of unpredictable twists and laced with a script worthy of its Best Adapted Screenplay nomination. Not comparable with the machine gun dialogue of “Inglourious Basterds”, An Education is a marvel in its own right.

What I liked best about this film what that I had no idea what to expect from the plot. Far from the cookie cutter romantic comedies that have laid siege to American Cinema, instead we have a twisting, weaving plot that never quite lets the audience know what they are in for; is this comedy or drama, a little of both, what? What will happen to the lovely Carey Mulligan’s Jenny, the 17-year-old school girl whose plans for Oxford may come to a screeching halt at the new lifestyle introduced to her by the smooth talking and dashing David (played by Peter Sarsgaard)?
Jenny runs into the wealthy playboy Jenny as she is walking home in a drenching downpour. He gives her a lift home and we are all charmed by his “Ewan McGregor” smile, and his gentlemanly actions. His age is undetermined but he is vastly older than Jenny by a good 10 years.

However he still wins over Jenny and her parents and introduces Jenny to a night life of extravagant luxury that seems to blind Jenny from her goals. What will happen, is this love for real, is this a Cinderella story, or is it a story in the fashion of Citizen Kane and the corruption of money? The plot takes you in both directions simultaneously charming you while arousing suspicion.

I don’t know if the performances are award winning, but they are convincing. The acting is better than most films, and the beautiful cinematography reminds us of the Audrey Hepburn classics. Jenny and David visit Paris together and all I could think about was the magic in “Sabrina” or another 60’s era film. I enjoyed this film far more than many of its Best Picture Nominee counterparts and it definitely deserved the recognition. An Education is a winner without a doubt. It takes you deep into the life of a young woman and helps us all to see the effect our decisions have on our family and others. This is a four star film, a 9 out of 10 in all respects.

Sex/Nudity – 6 out of 10 – There are a few sexual situations between a sixteen-year-old girl and a thirty-something man. One seen she takes off her top and shows him her bare breasts, we see only her bare shoulders and he puts her shirt back on. The two of them discuss having sex and her losing her virginity to him, however we only see them ever kiss once or twice. One scene we see a man laying in bed bare chested, a woman stands in a window, it is assumed they had sex a few moments before.

Violence/ Gore – None

Profanity – 4 out of 10 - Some religious exclamations, five or six mild profanities, a few racial slurs.

Knowing (a guest movie review from Slik Dawg, because I would never watch this garbage!)

2010-04-22T22:10:00.001-07:00

KNOWING

Director – Alex Proyas
Starring Nicolas Cage and Rose Byrne

MPAA - Rated PG-13 for “13” or so “Pretty Good” special effects scenes and “Pretty Good” movie cameras used to film the movie. (okay really rated PG-13 for disaster sequences, disturbing images and brief strong language.)

SPOILER ALERT!!

Well… after watching this movie I’m so glad I came out “knowing” that everything, (creation, the world, life, universe, all that jazz) wasn’t actually The Big Man Upstairs (if you get my drift) Yup, it was actually aliens. Weird looking aliens, who stalk people, look like pale freaky vampires, wear ominous black trench-coats, whisper creepy things to kids, slick back their super bleached blond hair like roaring twenty Mobster Lords, do weird blinding flash light attacks by opening their mouths REALLY wide, don’t actually explain anything to anyone or move the plot forward other than be all around creepy, and who finally at the end of the movie turn into angelic creatures of light with shimmering glowing alien bodies and wings and actually good intentions, WHO WOULD’VE KNOWN!? They looked so eerie, and were always in the shadows, and gave the poor boy a nightmare that even I would freak out if I had it. Were they supposed to be the good guys? I COULDN’T TELL!!

If weird alien things looking like that came and told me I had to leave my Dad I would tell them exactly where they could stick that invitation. And If I were the girl, I would DEFINETELY NOT go with them… They kidnapped me from my mom and made her chase after me frantically and end up getting run over by a truck.

What was up with those rocks too? I mean, like, yes, we get it, the little black rocks are connected with the whispering scary angel/demon/alien dudes. What is it, like their calling card? It’s like they can’t actually talk (except like weird nonsense whispering to the kids which I don’t even understand HOW the kids understand what they are saying…) so they have to leave this black rocks all over the place. Was the black rock in the truck with the dying Mom (Rose Byrne) like them saying “Sorry we had to kidnap your daughter and make you chase after her and get in a car wreck and die without any explanation from us… sorry about that… here’s a little black rock to make up for it… really, you’ll like it, it’s black, like us, all black and ominous…really, we’re really sorry we can’t talk about it… Bye!”

I mean I have to give this movie props for the filming. It was SO AWESOME! Like the colors were so saturated and such a sharp image! I love that type of filming, I wish every director used the cameras they used to film Knowing, then ALL movies would be awesome! Plus the special effects were AMAZING!

But seriously, everything else was SO bad that amazing special effects and filming can’t make up for it.

The plot was just so terrible, and NOT connected. Awesome, so he gets the numbers, they are related to all these accidents, guess what IT STILL DIDN’T CHANGE ANYTHING!! Yeah Nicolas Cage got to go around trying to figure out these accidents and disasters and its all mysterious and stuff but there was NO POINT! If the whispering people were just going to come and talk to the kids anyways Nicolas Cage didn’t NEED to do anything except say goodbye to his son. And the weird/scary/freaky kid from 1959 didn’t need to see the dates and numbers in the first place cause it do anything for her either, her daughter dies in a car accident and her daughter’s daughter gets taken away anyways… so, WTF? Why the plot? Why the story?

Sorry for ranting, just... I thought it was a pretty retarded movie.

Here’s what I would have done if I directed the movie. First off, when dealing with angels and Adam and Eve and creation and heaven and God and things, NO creepy stuff. The weird whispering/sinister/alien dudes (who APPARANTLY were actually “angels”) would have come all dressed in white, directly to Nicolas Cage and sat down with him and his son to talk about what was going to happen, how they were going to take him away, and they would have not done it in a creepy way at all. AND there would be no weird alien spaceships… and… yeah, I give up, there is just too much garbage to fix up in this movie. It’s not worth the time.

Yeah, not going to lie, the ending sequence was the best part. I imagine the Earth being baptized by fire and receiving its paradisiacal glory just like that, very good special effects.

Final movie synopsis: Numbers correspond with locations and dates of disasters/accidents. Pointless Plot. Pointless running around. Pointless mystery. Pointless character buildup. Weird/creepy/demon/angel/alien/kidnapper dudes come and kidnap kids to take them to distant planets to “start over.” Everyone else dies. End of story.

Just a heads up for you reader, if you’re thinking about watching “Knowing” I think before hand you should come off knowing that I want 1 hour and 55 minutes of my life back.

SPY GAME

2010-04-10T09:31:00.000-07:00

Spy Game
Director – Tony Scott
Starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt

MPAA - Rated R for language, some violence and brief sexuality.

This is a fantastic tale of espionage, friendship, and love. Robert Redford is an aging CIA agent who, on the eve of his retirement, learns of a young recruit’s captures in Red China. As he quickly uses his long developed contacts and skills to understand the situation, he learns of the CIA’s reluctance to help, and a secret agenda to leave the young recruit to a Chinese execution.

Robert Redford is the classic smart and witty retiree. His part has been played in many movies by many of the greats but Redford does a great job carrying the movie.
Any one hoping to see Brad Pitt in action may be a little disappointed because this is Robert Redford’s movie. Redford’s Nathan Muir maneuvers deftly through the halls of the CIA headquarters making his supervisors head spins as he plays them for information while feeding them tidbits. He is quick with good lines and makes a relatively easy script interesting and fun to listen too. Redford has a rich voice that is soothing to listen to and as he narrates a lot of scenes it is a great voice over.

Pitt is excellent as always but is only in about a third of the film. He had the challenge of making a smaller but vital role interesting and believable and he did a good job. He is a CIA operative who has a long relationship working under Nathan Muir in Vietnam, Berlin, and in Beirut. We see him grow from a Boy Scout soldier in the Jungles of Vietnam to a skilled operative falling in love with a dangerous mark in Beirut. He is an emotional character who brings in an excellent human element that the audience can connect to.

Tony Scott the director of “Man on Fire”, “Déjà vu”, and of course “Top Gun”, does a brilliant job here with stunning cinematography. The camera angles and views are not nearly as trippy as the Denzel Washington hit “Man of Fire”, but this is still a visually gripping film. In fact those made sick by the film on acid look of “Domino” and “Man on Fire” will appreciate the less explosive film-making style. There is one amazing scene done in Berlin with Redford and Pitt having coffee on the top of a building where the helicopter shots are brilliant. The two talk back and forth while the camera rotates around them showing the city in the background and really capturing the tension in the conversation with the wide shots and rotating cameras.

All in all Spy Game is a great dramatic thriller. The friendship, an almost father/son relationship, that builds up between Redford and Pitt is touching, and really helps to carry the movie. The script is a little weak and the characters are both pretty stock. We see them in many different films with fairly similar plots, but the two leads here make the movie very interesting, and there are enough twists in the plat to keep it going. I definitely recommend this film, it is not the best but the cinematography and the acting make the movie a worthy view; 7.5 out of 10.

Sex/Nudity - 2 out of 10 – A man and woman are seen asleep in bed together. It is assumed they have had sex, she is covered from the shoulders down and he is seen bare chested. We see her bare back in a pan shot. The intro to Baywatch is seen with lots of scantily clad men and women.

Violence/Gore – 7 out of 10 – A man is electrocuted when trying to plug into an outlet. People are shown getting vaccine injections. There are some gunfights and shootouts. A bomb blows up a building; some people are pulled from the wreckage some limbs missing. A man is shown being punched on the face while being interrogated. His face is very bruised and bloody. A war clinic is shown with people’s injuries being treated.

Profanity – 15 “F” words, 10 or so other uses of the “S” word, “D” word and a few religious exclamations.

Invictus

2010-03-15T10:58:00.000-07:00

Invictus

Director: Clint Eastwood

Starring: Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for brief strong language.

What could have been a brilliant masterpiece of incredible star power, Invictus was instead a wonderful and beautiful but slightly disappointing movie. I went in expecting brilliance like Grand Torino or Million Dollar Baby, instead I got Remember the Titans without the Remember part. I still reflect on the issues raised in Million Dollar baby, and I think about the dark sorrow in Eastwood’s classic Unforgiven. However with Invictus, while uplifting, I did not get that stirring power from other Clint Eastwood films.

Morgan Freeman does a great job as Nelson Mandela. He has the screen presence that makes him every ones father. He is a loving person who truly wants to mend the Apartheid that had ravaged South Africa. To do this he uses the rugby team that has always represented Afrikaners racism to unite blacks and whites. Matt Damon is the captain of the rugby team, and his part is more of a minor supporting character. He has a great accent and looked so much younger than the last Bourne film. Both stars were great. They used the script they were given to play strong roles on screen.
There were also a few other characters that had fun side plots. Mandela’s security force was mixed with black and whites and it created a little bit of tension. One big theme that was stressed a lot was the reverse racism that the black had towards the white Afrikaners. Mandela really stressed the importance of unity in the country and forgiveness instead of retribution.

The big problem with Invictus was there was no serious personal struggle. Other sports films make audiences sweat and bleed with the players. Remember the Titans made us feel the racism problems of the 60s in America and we connected to the problems coaches and players had. Invictus felt a little empty in the human connection category. It failed where Titans succeded; and instead of a film that makes you laugh and cry and love the characters, you get a movie that is kind of surface deep.

I enjoyed Invictus. There were some parts that were so uplifting and happy. It was not a bad movie both morally and technically, and it was a fulfilling movie. It was just forgettable. The movie had it ups and downs and it had some really good sports action, but it is not a movie that people will think and talk about a year from now. I really liked the themes of forgiveness and unity that were stressed in the script. But the biggest problem was the lack of connection in for the audience to the story and the characters. I recommend Invictus because it is a good feel good story. There was nothing immoral of bad about the film and there were some very uplifting scenes. I’ll give it a 7 out of 10, not bad, not great. Invictus just does not measure up the Clint Eastwood’s other masterpieces.

Sex/Nudity – 2 out of 3 – Some bare chested men in locker rooms. A few women are seen in cleavage revealing dresses. A woman goes into her husband’s hotel rooms; they kiss and the camera moves off of them, presumably they have sex.

Violence/ Gore – 3 out of 5 – There are some shots of violent riots (possibly real news footage), some rugby violence, and some racial tension.

Profanity – 5 out of 10 - The “S” word is used 10 times or so, there might have been 1 “F” word, however the strong accents made it pretty hard to tell, subtitles may reveal one more, I wasn’t sure. There are a few other religious exclamations.

Sherlock Holmes

2010-03-12T16:48:00.000-08:00

Sherlock Holmes

Director: Guy Ritchie

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Jude law, & Rachel McAdams

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some startling
images and a scene of suggestive material.
Guy Ritchie delivers an action packed megahit with Sherlock Holmes. This is James Bond meets Indiana Jones in Victorian England. Any fans of Ritchie’s previous masterpieces will agree that Sherlock Holmes is another brilliant film by an amazing director.

This was the second time I saw Sherlock Holmes and I loved it as much as the first. I can’t wait until I get the DVD and we can turn on the subtitles and understand even more of the witty bantering thrown back and forth between Robert Downey Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes and Jude Law’s Watson. My wife and I really enjoyed the film and what was great about it was being able to see it with the in-laws and not feel awkward about it at all. There was almost no swearing, no sex, and the violence was kept to a minimum, all three of these aspects seem very different from Ritchie’s other films like Snatch and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. What I am trying to say is that Sherlock Homes is a great film that appeals to adults because of the witty dialogue, and older kids can watch it too because there is nothing there for parents to worry about.

What really makes this film amazing is Robert Downey Jr.’s Golden Globe winning performance as Sherlock Homes and his faithful sidekick Jude Law as Dr. Watson. Their banter is brilliant; the writers really put together some good stuff here, and with two master actors the film played out flawlessly. Mark Strong is Lord Blackwood, and he is as creepy and dark as Holmes is witty and brilliant. The faceoff between them is great.

When I first saw the previews to Sherlock Holmes I was really afraid the makers were going to butcher this epic story like what was done with Wild Wild West. Don’t worry, nothing like that happened here. There s a great mix of action, humor, special effects and a good strong plot full of mystery to satisfy the action junkie and the script obsessed snob; of which I am a little of both. If there is not enough plot to sustain tireless action I can’t abide the film (like G.I. Joe), and Sherlock could have taken away the action and still been a decent movie. The awesome part about the action is it is done the way all action films ought to be done. Why a director in this decade would bother to do anything less is beyond me. The fight scenes are fluid, gritty, and intense without the ridiculous gore some movie makers feel is necessary for a good action flick.

Overall this is a practically flawless film. The thick English accents made some of the dialogue a little difficult to understand but the subtitles will fix that in a month or two when the DVD edition comes out. The only other problem I had was the way the mystery was set up. Some movies allow the viewers to look at clues and evidence and try to solve the case while the leads are working on the case. In Sherlock Holmes instead we see Holmes observing the clues and evidence and we see him putting everything together, but it is not until the end when he explains everything that the audience can finally say, “Oh yeah, now it makes sense.”

These two minor details however do not take away from the fact that Sherlock Homes is one of the best movies 2009/2010 has to offer. It is top notch entertainment for teens and parents. I would not recommend youngsters for this film as some of the darker elements might be rather frightening and the action a little too intense. Go see Sherlock Homes while it is still in theaters, you must, this is one film you can’t miss.

Sex/Nudity – 3 out of 10 - As a woman walks around a screen to change she slips off her dress and you see most of her bare back. She changes clothes while a man is in the bedroom with her, she is behind a screen and we see her bare shoulders. She comes out in a long dress, her shoulders and a little cleavage is visible. A man is handcuffed naked to a bed; there is a pillow covering his lap; a maid walks in and is frightened away when he tells her the key is below the pillow. There is nothing sexual (meaning that he did not have sex nor was coming on to the maid) about the situation but it is a little bit of an innuendo.

Violence/ Gore 6 out of 10 – A man is executed by hanging, we see him drop off the gallows and his feet twitch. We see his dead corpse as a doctor pronounces him dead. There are quite a few fist-a-cuffs, some bloody noses and lips. There are a few gun fights, some people are hit and fall over. One man is killed from a body falling on him and two men examine his dead corpse. One man is lit on fire and jumps out of a high window and lands on a carriage, one man is seen dying in his bathtub boiling alive. A dead body is seen buried in a coffin; some maggots are crawling on his face.

Profanity – 2 out of 10 - One or two mild obscenities and religious exclamations, some name calling.

There is some alcohol and other substance abuse and tobacco use.

Slumdog Millionaire

2010-02-28T09:29:00.000-08:00

Slumdog Millionaire

Director: Danny Boyle

Starring: Dev Patel, Freida Pinto

MPAA: Rated R for some violence, disturbing images and language (This movie should have been rated PG-13, anyone who is hesitant about watching R rated movies scroll to the bottom of this post where this is explained because you don’t want to miss
Slumdog Millionaire because of a poor rating. If I had just said it was rated PG-13 you would have watched it and never known the difference.)

WOW, brilliant, beautiful, gripping, heart wrenching, amazing, all these words just scrape the surface of the masterpiece Slumdog Millionaire. I love movies that portray so much hope and love, and at the same time are so tense one feels like biting his nails the whole film. There is no question at all why Slumdog Millionaire won Best Motion Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted screenplay (and 5 more) at the 2009 Academy Awards. I wish I had taken the time to see this film in theaters.

The true question is, “Why this film was rated R”. The movie was lass offensive than 90% of the movies out there and because it has branded with an R rating many people will not take the time to see it and be enriched by its beauty. My mother for instance would love this film because it is a gripping humanistic movie that tells a story about love and overcoming obstacles in a very tasteful way. Any violent of scary or even sexual situation is done in a way that captures realism, but does not go over the top the way many films do. Instead the scene cuts away or the camera movies in another direction so that a dead body is not seen or something like that. Thus the message is sent but the audience is not exposed to a gut wrenching or disgusting scene.

Slumdog Millionaire is set in modern day Mumbai on the west coast of India. A young man from the slums is a contestant on India’s Who Wants To Be a Millionaire. As each question is asked the man is sent back through childhood memories that relate to each question. Two brothers, Jamal and Salim, are orphans trying to stay alive in the most tragic surroundings I have ever seen portrayed on film. The streets are made from garbage, the houses built from trash, the water is filthy and brown, and these two beautiful children run through the streets and play in the water with the biggest smiles, they are so happy in their pitiful state. As they get older the two boys choose different directions in life and the drama played out between them is enthralling.

The movie does jumps around quite a bit from past to present, and it takes some getting used to. I also had a hard time distinguishing different characters from the other especially when they were young boys. But as the film progressed I got used to the nationalities and then I had no problems. I found it very interesting to hear Hindi spoken throughout the whole move and have it incorporated with English. The movie uses a lot of subtitles but the main characters all speak a lot of English too, so there is an almost seamless blend throughout the film where one language starts and the other ends. The new culture was fun for me to watch and learn from. I have watched very few Hindi movies and so there was a little bit of a culture shock to Slumdog Millionaire, but the story was so captivating I jumped right in and loved every minute of the film.

You can’t go wrong with picking Slumdog Millionaire. It will change your life, the way only 2 hours of cinematic pleasure can. This movie is perfect, 10 out of 10. I can’t think of anything that made this move less than a wonderful film of hope and love. There are heart pounding moments, nail biting scenes, comedy and drama, Slumdog Millionaire is a masterpiece and a tragic loss for those who do not see it.

Sex/Nudity – 5 out of 10 – A girl is seen dancing in a belly dancer style costume, her abdomen is showing. In another scene girls dressed in “clubbing garb” somewhat immodest dance seductively with men. Two boys walk into a whore house there are some couples shown from above, a little bit of kissing is seen. A teenage boy forces another boy out of a hotel room so he can be alone with a girl, it is implied they have sex. A teenage girl gets out of a shower we see the tops of her bare shoulders, a teen age boy, with his eyes closed and head turned, hands her a towel.

Violence/ Gore - 6 out of 10– There is a small gun fight with a little bit of blood. A large riot between Muslims and Hindus breaks out in a slum. There is a lot of fire, people being hit with poles and sticks. We see a man lit on fire running. A young man is interrogated by the police, his head is dunked repeatedly into a bucket of water, he is hit a few times, and electrocuted, he spits out bloody saliva once. A little boy is knocked unconscious and them blinded by 3 men so he can beg on the streets at a higher rate. 2 young men scuffle and hit each other a few times. The disturbing images include a boy imagining he and another boy are thrown from the top of a building, a boy escapes from being locked in a outhouse by jumping down the hole, and we see a dead woman floating face down in a pool of water.

Profanity – 5 out of 10 - 1 or 2 “F” words in the background or subtitled in Hindi, 10 or so other mild obscenities, a few religious expletives.
See it is a PG-13 film with and R rating!

Everybody’s Fine

2010-02-26T09:21:00.000-08:00

Everybody’s Fine

Director: Kirk Jones (director of Nanny McPhee)

Starring: Robert De Niro, Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell,

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for thematic elements and brief strong language.

Everybody’s Fine is a beautiful study into families that captures the audience’s heart and pulls at their heart’s strings. It is a wonderful film that easily gets an 8.5 out of 10. It is a little bit of a holiday move in that it is about a family coming together and growing closer, but only one scene actually takes place during the holidays, and so it is one of those holiday films that can be watched any time you want to feel good, cry a little bit, and laugh.

De Niro is a retired blue collar worker who, after the death of his wife, feels his grown children are slipping away from him and he is losing connection to his family. He raised his children to be successful and happy and wants to see them all and know they are okay. So he embarks on a road trip to see his children and be with them.

The movie is a slower film, it’s pacing is similar to The Boys Are back, another beautiful film about strengthening family relationships, but the pacing does not detract from the film at all. It kind of adds to the apprehension De Niro’s character feels as he travels across country to see his children. There are beautiful landscape shots and a little theme of telephone wires following the road across thousands of miles. As De Niro travels we hear telephone conversations some of his children calling each other and some of other conversations. I guess it sounds a little weird my describing it, but it makes sense in the film.

It was nice to a see a good family film without any sex, nudity, and limited swearing. This move is not really a comedy, all though there are definitely some funny scenes, that is not what this movie is about. Themes in the film revolve around deceit in families, hiding truths, and trying to avoid disappointment, and coping with loneliness. I imagine this is a movie that grown up sons and daughters and widowed spouses can identify with. Everybody’s Fine is a film about a grown up family and the challenges that a family can face in the wake of a tragedy and when they are spread across the country.

The director did a good job with the film’s pacing. The script is believable and doesn’t cross into the land of cheesy drivel that so often happens in dramas. It is a clever, all the more so because the actors are so good. De Niro is the stern father whose children try to hide their imperfections from because they fear his disappointment in them. The children play their parts well, and we feel a swell of emotion as we see them through De Niro’s eyes as the little kids they once were.

I highly recommend this feel good movie. It is beautiful and fun. My wife cried during it, and I even got a little choked up. Again I say this is an easy 8.5 out of 10, there is just so much to this movie that I wouldn’t want people to miss. It is a film with a broad audience base, so a lot of people in different stages of life can enjoy the many elements of the film. Everybody’s Fine is an excellent family film!

Sex/Nudity – 3 out of 10 - In a brief clip there is a water fountain/statue of ancient Greek style of a little boy holding his penis, urinating. There is also a discussion of sexual preference confusion. In one scene a woman giving a man a lift suggests a motel he can stay the night at. He thinks she is making a sexual proposition, she says she is sleeping in her truck.

Violence – 3 out of 10 - There is an attempted mugging and scuffle, one man is thrown down to the ground.

Profanity – one “F” word and a few other mild expletives, a few religious exclamations. The language is pretty uncalled for, the “F” word is during a mistake while golfing, but it is kind of muttered and I only noticed it because I always watch my movies with the subtitles on.

The Damned United

2010-02-25T12:51:00.001-08:00

The Damned United

Starring Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon), Timothy Spall (Peter Pettigrew from Harry Potter) , Colm Meany (Chief O’Brien in Star Trek), and Jim Broadbent (Prof. Slughorn from Harry Potter)

MPAA - Rated R for language.

I forgot how much films from the UK liked using the “F” word and this movie was no exception. I also forgot how good they are at incorporating that word into their dialogue, making it sound more like the words stinking or shoot in our daily language. That being said, to those who are not offended by this word then The Damned United is a brilliant film and takes its place in among the greats following the theme, “pride cometh before the fall”.

This is not a sports film. There might be two or three scenes with football (European not American) footage, and these shots are impressive, but anyone wanting to see Remember the Titans for soccer should realize this is not a move about sports. Instead this is a true story about a man’s rise to greatness and his pride; how pride can destroy relationships and careers. I can’t give too much away, but this is a great study in relationships and the acting in this film is flawless in its portrayal of life.

The film follows the true story of acclaimed football manger Brian Clough, his rise to stardom as coach for Derby County, and his tragic fall over Leeds United. Michael Sheen of Frost/Nixon and Timothy Spall (Peter Pettigrew in the Harry Potter franchise) star together as fellow coaches, one consumed with pride the other trying to be the friend who can pull them through. The story is gripping and the friendship is almost tangible. Sheen and Spall are fantastic actors who carry this movie through to the end.

Pride and loyalty are major themes in this film. Watching as Sheen digs himself into a huge hole and seeing Spall trying to save his friend is touching. This film explores the things that can happen because of a carried grudge and does an excellent job portraying life’s challenges. The screenplay is written by Peter Morgan who was also wrote Frost/Nixon and The Last King of Scotland, two amazing true story adaptations. With a track level like that no wonder The Damned United is so damned good!

The Damned United is a superb film. It has a plot that is riveting and characters and dialogue that pulls the audience in different directions laughing and cringing at times. This film is an easy 9 out of 10. It is an excellent achievement in film.

Sex/Nudity – 1 out of 10 – There are a few locker room scenes where we see bare chested men. A man kisses another man in a friendly happy way, not in a sexual way.

Violence/Gore – 4 out of 5 -There are a few bloody sports injuries and some cheap punches in the middle of a soccer game.

Profanity – 9 out of 10 – 50 or so “F” words and various other explitives.

The Informant

2010-02-20T21:50:00.000-08:00

The Informant

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Starring: Matt Damon, Melanie Lynskey, and Scott Bakula

MPAA: Rated R for language.

The Informant is as quirky and fun as Ocean’s 11. It doesn’t have the star power of the Oceans trilogy, but it beats the living heck out of 12 and 13 (I guess that is not saying much though). It is a winner all the way around. It is the first of three true stories I have watched today and my wife and I just couldn’t believe it’s veracity it was so outrageous. If you liked The Informant than go check out Find Me Guilty, because it is another quirky true story that will make you bust a gut laughing. This is The Office meets Oceans 11 without the heist. It also reminds me a little of Fight Club when we get Edward Norton’s monologues during the film. Matt Damon does something similar in The Informant. Discussions can be going on around him that seem to have some relevance to what is happening but the audience doesn’t get to hear them, instead Matt Damon’s character talks in his head about French ties and trying to get them into the States without declaring them at customs. It is really quite hilarious. “I am Mikal’s odd sense of humor!”(Fight Club joke!)

The whole movie can best be summed up as quirky. Matt Damon’s character is a genius, and Damon carries it out flawlessly. Half the time the audience is not sure who is being played. This is definitely a new character for Damon, he is not the silent Linus from Ocean’s nor is he the muscle bound Bourne, instead we see a returning to elements used in Good Will Hunting, as this brilliant character tries to stay afloat in the company he is slowly burning to the ground. He is like Will Hunting because he has enormous charisma that seems to charm everyone, and he also has a propensity for lying his butt off. I think Damon added some weight and definitely lost some sense of style as he took us back 20 years to early 90s corporate America.

I can see why this move didn’t go as mainstream as others in Soderbergh’s library. It is a film geared for adults, thus the R rating. If it had been rated PG-13 than it would have looked like a film for younger audiences, and it just plain isn’t interesting to a 13 year old audience. The swearing in the film is pretty mild, so it seems the rating was put there only to limit the audience a little, which is okay because we are all adults here right. I guess this is just another example, like It’s Complicated, of how the MPAA is a little bit ridiculous in its rating system.

The Informant is hilarious, but it also has some sad and serious moments which serve to balance the film. It gives it a little bit more of a realistic edge to it, and it feels a lot more believable because of it. The script is hilarious, and Damon’s acting is great as well. I don’t have any complaints really about this film at all. It was well thought out and well put together. The Informant is not the best film you’ll see this year but it is well worth the time to watch it. I’ll give it an 8 out of 10.

Sex/Nudity – None –no kissing, no sex, a little sexual dialogue; a reference to a co worker and how attractive she was and it was a shame she was getting married.

Violence/Gore – None

Profanity – 6 out of 10 – About 6 “F” words, maybe one or two more, but most of them are said in the back ground and without subtitles on there would be no way to know they were said. There were about 20 other uses of the “S” word, “A” word, and a few other mild obscenities.

What Doesn't Kill You

2010-02-20T21:10:00.000-08:00

What Doesn’t Kill You

Director: Brian Goodman

Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Ethan Hawke, and Amanda Peet

MPAA - Rated R for language, drug use, some violence and brief sexuality.

A beautiful drama about the lives of two young street thugs growing up on the streets of south Boston; heart and soul and love, this is really what is at the center of What Doesn’t Kill You. Mark Ruffalo is amazing in this rough a tumble part, a real difference from the Hugh Grant style shy love interest he usually plays. He is backed by Ethan Hawke who plays a pretty stock character. He is not bad at all, but his character requires very little in the way of exploring new fields for Hawke. Both are a powerful duo however and with the mix of Amanda Peet as Ruffalo’s wife there are some pretty touching and intense moments in the film.

What Doesn't Kill You is pieced together a little differently than some movies. It kind of jumps from scene to scene a little bit throwing off continuity and it takes a little while to get used to this style. I almost shut the film off after about 20 minutes because I didn’t think the movie was going anywhere, but I stuck with it and I was not disappointed. The film makes a little too much use of the “F” word and while it works for the characters, they being uneducated and in the streets, it gets in the way of what could be have better dialogue. The screenplay doesn’t really focus on the script and doesn’t need it as badly as it needs the many and sometimes seemingly random scenes to build the plot and characters.

What was really good about What Doesn’t Kill you is its overlying moral message and its ability to put together a realistic story line about what really happens to people whose lives are left to unproductive activities. Ruffalo and Hawke go through a struggle that is much deeper than the fight to make some dough and keep up the reputations as the baddest on the block. They are trying to find what is truly important in their lives and what really matters. As the armed robberies, fist fights, and drugs pile up their lives become less free and more and more they find themselves painted into a corner.

This makes for a very interesting story, even though it takes a little longer than it should to take off. The intro really starts off with a bang and it hooks you, but then you have to suffer through some random scenes until you get the hang of the director’s style, over all though you are in for a treat. It is a gritty ride, with lots of bumps and what not but it is well worth it. What starts out as a questionable meal turns into a delicious feats and an emotional roller coaster. While not an amazing film What Doesn’t Kill You still gets an 8.5 out of 10 in my book.

Sex/Nudity – 5 out of 10 - a few women are seen in underwear at different times. One woman in a tight shirt and booty shorts is asked to dance for a man; she dances suggestively for a second. One woman is straddling a shirtless man in her underwear, he rejects her. A husband and wife kiss passionately but the scene cuts before anything happens. We see a shirtless man a few times.

Violence/Gore – 7 out of 10 - There are a lot of fist fights and guns. One man is shot at close range several times. A man is seen in the hospital after having been shot, he is in a lot of pain. A man is put in a car with two other men, the shoot his arm and question him, then from outside the car you see and hear several gun shots; we assume the man is killed. The violence is very realistic and fairly brutal. There is not a lot of blood, but plenty of violence.

Profanity – 10 out of 10 – The “F” word is used persistently throughout the film and other expletives liter the dialogue as well. It is not a badly written script, just heavy on the language.

50 Dead Men Walking

2010-02-20T18:09:00.000-08:00

50 Dead Men Walking

Director: Kari Skogland

Starring: Jim Sturgess and Ben Kingsley

MPAA - Rated R for strong brutal violence and torture, language and some sexuality.

In what is probably one of the most overlooked films of the last few years Jim Sturgess (of the thriller 21) and Ben Kingsley deliver star performances in the supercharged action thriller 50 Dead Men Walking. This is an excellent film, the UK’s version of The Departed. This film has top notch cinematography, an excellent plot and decent acting that put this film into the almost “A” class of cinema.
I really loved the gritty cinematography of 50 Dead Men Walking for anyone who has seen the crime drama Street Kings or Training Day you know what I mean. The filming has a dark rich quality which makes things seem a little dirtier a little grittier. It also makes for a more picturesque quality to the footage that is very appealing to the eye. It added to the thrill of the chase and torture scenes. There is more suspense in this film then I have seen in a lot of this independent crime dramas.

The plot is kind of a blend between Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt’s The Devil’s Own and the more recent Departed starring Matt Damon and Leonardo Dicaprio (as I said above). Jim Sturgess is a young adult Catholic in the midst of the Irish upheaval in the 90s. He is poor and can’t make a living. Ben Kingsley, playing a British handler, recruits Sturgess to be an informer in the dangerous terrorist organization the IRA. Sturgess moves through the ranks trying to prevent bombings and hits to be carried out by IRA gun men. Through it all the audience is biting their nails on the edge of their seats fearing for Sturgess’ character’s life. There is not a moment when the movie is too slow or too random. Everything comes together in a great mix of drama and thrills.

The script, directing, and acting are all top notch. Sturgess has a great Irish accent, and is very good in his role as a young informant trying to stay alive. He is a lot more interesting to watch in this film as opposed to 21(not a bad film but Sturgess wasn’t all that great). Now he show a lot of promise in this role. Ben Kingsley plays the part of the wizened old spy who knows the business and sees Sturgess as a surrogate son. It is an oft played role by the aging Kingsley, but his toupee helps add credibility to his part. I prefer the shaved Kingsley I think he comes off more menacing without hair. The pair are quite good together and the acting is better because the script and plot are so well put together.
Over all this film is a great adaptation and works wonderfully on the screen. The fact that it is taken from a book actually written by Martin McGartland (played by Jim Sturgess in the film) about actual events in Martin’s life really helps add to the quality here.

This movie is very good but serious watch. I would give it an A- like maybe 9 out of 10, or at least a high B. It was just so well done I can’t believe it did not get more notoriety. Check out 50 Dead Men Walking, it is worth it, I loved it!

Sex/Nudity – 7 out of 10 – There are two scenes where we see a couple having sex. One scene they are completely covered by blankets but the movement and sound alludes to their activities. They are interrupted and we see him bare from the waist down and she holds a blanket across her chest to expose only bare shoulders. In another scene we see her bare legs around his bare legs and some thrusting, their shirts are on.

Violence/Gore – 8 out of 10 – There are riots, shootings, explosions, splattering blood, the works. The violence is not done in a cartoon or comedic fashion it is all very serious. There are a few torture scenes. The violence is not in any way gratuitous, there is not effort made for any ridiculous amounts of blood, but it is still a bloody film.

Profanity – 8 out of 10 – I read on the IMDB that there about 100 “F” words. I don’t think there were that many, and if there were it was not in the main dialogue it was more in the peripherals so to speak. There were quite a few uses of the “F” word, and a lot of other swear words used too.

Up In The Air

2010-02-18T09:07:00.000-08:00

Up In the Air

Director: Jason Reitman (Juno, Thank You For Smoking)

Starring: George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick, Jason Bateman, Danny McBride, Melanie Lynskey

MPAA: Rated R for language and some sexual content.

Up In The Air is a very good film, but because I knew it was going to be good I was not knocked off my feet by how incredible it was. In fact, while my wife loved it, I really did not get why this movie is so hyped. It is really good, I am not saying that it wasn’t I just was expecting to be blown away…and it failed to blow me away. I was blown away by Michael Clayton, that was an amazing film, and I expected that from Up In The Air. That is not to say that this was a bad film; it was excellent.

Reitman has a vicious wit that is really apparent in Thank You For Smoking and comes through in this drama/comedy as well. He is a talented director and screen writer that makes his message clear, and does a good job making a movie with a heart and soul. Combining that with top notch acting from Clooney, and a powerful performance from Kendrick (Twilight’s fun and flirty Jessica), this movie is witty and entertaining masterpiece.

Clooney works for a company that is hired out by other companies to go to workplaces and do corporate firings. He travels thousands of miles and hundreds of days out of the year, across the country to meet with people personally to fire them so their bosses don’t have to. He has perfected the art of air travel and the art of firing people and making them like…almost. Kendrick’s character comes in fresh out of graduate school with plans on re-vamping this ancient company and moving them into the new decade. So Clooney is burdened with the chore of taking Kendrick around the country a a slew or corporate axings, showing her the ropes. On their trip he finds greater purpose in life and she discovers new elements to her life.

The almost bubbly awakening to this movie is deeply overshadowed by the element of despair as the film is deeply entrenched in today’s economic crisis. Clooney is the enemy and friend, the hermit in the midst of crowds trying to live apart from people while trying to guide them through the last few moments of their abruptly ended careers. The film is very funny, and has a lot of nice happy moments. And then Reitman brings us back to reality as we are put face to face with people who have come to the edge in their work.

The use of realistic interviews to really pound at the heart’s of his viewers, and then minutes later a grim wit puts a smile back on our faces. Up In The Air is fantastic, and while I wasn’t blown away this film is an easy 8 out of 10 stars. Great scripting, sharp witted dialogue, and a smooth moving plot with a good message make this film well worth watching.

Sex/Nudity – 7 out of 10 - A man and a woman go to eachother’s hotel rooms a few time so have sex. We see a woman in one scene completely nude from the back as she walks across a room to lay on a bed, we get a glimpse of her brest as she turns to the side. A man and woman talk about the different pieces of furniture they made love on, she is nude lying on a bed (we see her bare shoulders) he is presumably nude (we see his bare chest).

Violence/Gore - none

Profanity – 7 out of 10 – 20 or so “F” words, and maybe 20 more other swear words including religious exclamations, the “S” word, “A” word and the like.

The Time Travler's Wife

2010-02-13T07:53:00.000-08:00

The Time Traveler’s Wife

Starring: Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, brief disturbing images, nudity and sexuality

Well this movie is a cute little romance (not a comedy...at all) with a sci-fi element to twist your mind and try to hook the guys. And while you do get hooked the problem is you are also so confused by plot holes and time paradoxes that you really just want the movie to finish and resolve it’s self so you can actually understand everything that is going on. But then it ends and you are still scratching your head and you feel like you just lost in a game of chance to a street magician and you knew you were going to lose but you still can’t quite figure out how you lost.

Eric Bana plays the time traveler. He is a research librarian who since the age of 6 or so has the power to travel in time. The problem is he can only travel with in his life time to important events, there is one exception, which I want go into because it is extremely important…kind of, but it is like the one plot twist so I can’t give it away. The other flaw in this time traveling deal is that it is as involuntary as sneezing. Bana is about to start shaving and boom and he can’t take anything with him, including clothes. So he winds up naked at every destination, then he breaks in to people’s stores or jacks people’s wallets so he can have some clothes until seconds later poof he evaporates into time and you kind of wonder what the heck was the point of all that.

On top of the bizarre premise to the film there is also the problem of some of the driest acting on record. Bana and McAdams are usually pretty fun to watch. I thought Bana was hilarious in Funny People dropping his Australian accent, and McAdams is pretty cute. But this film was pretty limited in the on screen chemistry department. Bana is stern and gruff the whole time and is tolerable at best. Couple Bana’s chip on the shoulder attitude that with the brooding McAdams and the film drags on like a dubbed Korean soap opera.

This might be one of those movies that girls think is amazing and romantic and heartwarming, but in reality it is a confusing mish mash of romance, strained relationships, and a twisted sci-fi premise. It is a movie that creates barley enough emotional connection to the characters to force you to watch in puzzled apathy while really nothing interesting happens. There are a lot more movie out there worth watching. This movie was like choking down a bony Velociraptor and getting his razor sharp toe claw stuck in your throat. The Time Travelers Wife is a 5 out of 10, not the worst movie ever made, but a lot worse than most.

Sex/Nudity – 6 out of 10 - A guy time travels naked a lot, we see silhouettes of his naked body and see his bare chest a few times. There is some sex and kissing. We see a woman’s bare buttock as she gets out of bed after sex. She pulls on an over sized shirt to cover her top half but her butt is still visible.

Violence/Gore – there is one fist fight and some tense chasing scenes. A man breaks and enters a few buildings and a car. One man is shot and we see him bleeding in the stomach area.

Profanity – 12 or so uses of the “S” word and “A” word. There are a few other swear words and religious exclamations throughout.

It's Complicated

2010-02-10T07:53:00.000-08:00

It’s Complicated

Director: Nancy Myers

Starring: Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin and John Krasinski

MPAA: Rated R for some drug content and sexuality.(This movie was more tame than some PG and PG-13 movies)

We loved Away We Go so much that we just had to go see another flick with John Krasinski and the only one we knew of was It’s Complicated. So my wife and I headed over to the dollar theater and soon we found ourselves rolling on the floor in hysterics throughout this Nancy Myers hit. This is one of those main stream films that is so excellent one is astounded by it. Yes there are some cookie cutter elements to this movie that are expected in all romantic comedies, but what is so great about It’s Complicated is that it is done so well that you can overlook the little flaws, if there are any, and just soak up the movie.

Nancy Meyers is the genius (writer and director) behind masterpieces like The Holiday and Something’s Got To Give, she also directed the Mel Gibson & Helen Hunt hit What Women Want. Well the talent that made those films so good really comes out in this one, and makes it a winner. It’s Complicated gets somewhere between an 8 to an 8.5 out of 10. It is a fantastic film that comes off almost flawlessly. This is also one of those “R” rated films with no “F” words (or any other swear words) no bare breasts, and really no reason to be “R” at all.

This movie falls into the classic romantic comedy genre, but is a little different mainly because it is about adults in adult relationships. The story is about Meryl Streep's character who is finally getting over her ten year old divorce, when after an evening of drinks and dancing she finds herself in bed with her ex-husband Alec Baldwin. He is having troubles at home with the new trophy wife and finds comfort in the arms of his familiar old wife. During their affair Meryl Streep’s character finds herself attracted to her architect, the “girl’s best friend” type Steve Martin. Between sorting out her feelings for both men and trying to hide her affair from her grown children, this situational comedy delivers laugh after laugh, with a good piece of drama in there too balancing out the comedic highs.

John Krasinski’s small role as the oldest daughter’s fiancé is hilarious. He gets caught in the middle of the deceit and plays a hilarious confidante type. He is the basic “Jim” from the office, but that is what makes him so fun. Meryl Streep is gorgeous at 60 and as funny as ever. She is truly an acting legend and she does not disappoint in this film. Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are each fantastic actors and carry their roles flawlessly. They have such great comedic timing and are absolutely a riot; they really make it a hard decision (as love interests) to choose between, both for the audience and for Meryl Streep’s character. The top notch cast of great actors really helped pull this movie off. It couldn’t have made it without them. It would have been good, but not a great film.

The family side of this movie was great too. It is nice to see a film where there is more than one child, and the kids are not all screwed up. They are normal kids and as an audience we can really connect with them and their situation. On one hand you want the family to be back together again, on the other hand you want the other love interest to succeed. The love triangle is funny and sad, and well…complicated.

For anyone who liked What Women Want and Something’s Got To Give then It’s Complicated is right up your alley. My wife and I and the old ladies behind us in the theater were all busting a gut because it was so funny. It is also a sweet movie about a family, and the elements of comedy and drama make this a very satisfying film. The Flicks-a-saurus Rex calls this flick a great meal complete with appetizers and dessert. YUMMY!

Sex/Nudity – 6 out of 10 - There is some sexual dialogue in the film. We see a man lying naked on a bed with a lap top placed in front his groin (it covers from his belly button to about mid thigh). When he gets up we see his bare buttocks. We see a woman slip off her robe and she is seen from the shoulders up, and a man is shown shirtless a few times. There are a few scenes where a couple is shown lying in bed after intercourse, in one scene they are still in their clothes (the woman’s top is
open and we can see her bra) and in another scene they are under the blankets. We also see a woman in the bathtub but only her shoulders are visible.

Violence/Gore – 0 –

Profanity – 4 out of 10 - 10 or so religious exclamations and about 10 other swear words “S”, “A”, and a few other profanities. Some PG movies have more swearing.

The Rocker

2010-02-09T15:13:00.000-08:00

The Rocker

Starring: Rainn Wilson (The Office’s Dwight), Christina Applegate, Josh Gad,

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for drug and sexual references, nudity and language

Rainn Wilson is hilarious in The Rocker. This is School of Rock meets the Office; and while not as good as School of Rock, The Rocker is still a hilarious film with good music and fun acting. This is more of a snack film as far as movies go. I was in the mood for a light hearted film without any serious undertones and this movie is just that. It is as light as The Office and follows very much in this sort of comedic genre.

What is good about the Rocker is Rainn Wilson. He uses the bizarre and eccentric humor of Dwight to make his character Fish into a 40 year old that never really grew up. Fish got booted at a young age from a band that is supposed to be the fictional version of Aerosmith or something like that. The group goes big because they ditched Fish and now Rainn Wilson’s character is plagued daily by the fact that he could have been in the world’s greatest band. Fish’s second chance comes as he becomes the drummer for his nephew’s high school band; he takes the kids on tour and learns a little bit about growing up.

This film could have been just another one of those lame movies about adults who just can’t seem to grow up, and it kind of was. It was different because there is a lot of maturity shown by the kids to counter balance the rampant foolishness we see in Wilson’s character. Wilson and the kids are all pretty funny and they do a good job in the film. Again it is not a brilliant movie, but it is fun to watch. If you like Rainn Wilson then don’t miss this movie, if you like The Office, again this is a winner. If you are looking for a meaty film that you can dwell on the intellectual and moral questions that are brought up… then go read a book, because this is not for you. We’ve got a 7 out of 10 here; nothing earth shattering as far as cinematography goes, but this is a pretty fun film.

Sex/Nudity – 5 out of 10 – We see a man’s bare buttocks and he drums naked with conveniently placed objects hiding private areas. We also see a man in his underwear and a close up of a man’s crotch (he is hearing leopard print pants). There is teen kissing and a man talks about his desire to have sex with a woman (he is rather explicit in his talk).

Violence/Gore – In a very cartoon style a man attacks a group of men driving a van. He is struck by the van and thrown from it a few times, but he gets up every time and there is no blood or damage at all. There is other scenes of slapstick comedy involving falling, hitting his head, spraining ankles, wrists, and other caricatures of injuries.

Profanity – 1 or 2 mouthed or uttered “F” words. I wouldn’t have caught them if I had not had the subtitles on. There are a few other swear words maybe 25 or so in total.

Away We Go

2010-02-09T08:08:00.000-08:00

Away We Go

Director: Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Jarhead)

Starring: John Krasinski (Jim from The Office) & Maya Rudolph (from Saturday Night Live) with cameos from Jeff Daniels, Jim Gaffigan, and Maggie Gyllenhaal

MPAA: Rated R for language and some sexual content.

Juno and Reign Over Me meet The Office in this brilliant and sweet romantic journey. I laughed my head off and I was also touched by the delicate and sweet moments in this film. Away We Go is a delicious meal; the kind of movie the Flicks-a-saurus Rex can dig into and savor its succulence. I am not going to lie this film is not for everyone, it has a slow feel to it that makes some people wonder what is going on, what is the point of the film.

Away We Go is directed by Academy Award winner Sam Mendes (Best Director American Beauty), and some of that realism he uses in American Beauty and Road to Perdition comes out in Away We Go. There are long scenes of dialogue that feel so realistic it could be you and your wife there speaking to each other.

John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph are 30-something-year-olds who haven’t really started life. They are living together just getting by when the surprise of a life time comes, she’s pregnant. So they take a long vacation across the USA to find out where they are going to live and raise their child. The hook up with old friends and family and see different family types; families in pain and families so awkward I just had to cringe in my chair. There is a little bit of an emotional roller coaster as we are taken from city to city and see the different people and life events that are faced. It is funny, sad, and wonderful.

Krasinski and Rudolph are hilarious in a sarcastic and sometimes brooding fashion. This isn’t Jim from The Office on the screen; it is a nerdy guy who is not very sure of himself. Their relationship is so much more believable because it is not a frill Hollywood romance that happens with a glance, this is a relationship that is portrayed with real ups and downs and real love. It was so refreshing to see a love story that was not about selfish sexual desires; instead it was about two people trying to do what’s best for their family.

There really are some awkward scenes in Away We Go. Kind of like the style of dialogue in Juno or Reign Over Me, where people pause more and create dialogue with silence. Films are trending towards this style anyways and I really enjoy it. There are also some slap stick comedy parts, but it takes a little while to really get into the film. I loved it, and give it a 9 out of 10 easily. I wouldn’t change a thing about it. The acting is great, the plot well thought out and well put together, and the script is hilarious.

Sex/Nudity – 7 out of 10 - No nudity, but we do see a woman breast feeding two of her children at the same time and we can kind of see the side of one breast. There is a lot of sexual discussion throughout the film. Some of it is a little edgy but most of it is done in an adult context. There is one scene in a Karaoke strip club and we see one man without a shirt on dancing. A woman comes out and does a dance around a stripper pole but she is clothed and it is a very sad dance, not at all sexually arousing. Then two more women come out on stage and the scene turns away from the stage. A man and a woman are seen kissing in bed and he moves under the covers presumably to have oral sex, she moans a little bit and then they proceed to talk about her vaginal flavor. All you see is her head at the top of the bed talking to his head under the blanket.

Violence/Gore – 0 – no violence, no gore … a little slapstick humor when a man falls down.

Profanity – 7 out of 10 – A lot of sexual references and 10 to 15 “F” words. 3 or 4 uses of the really bad “C” word and various uses of other swear words as well.

2010-02-04T13:28:00.000-08:00

The Boys Are Back

Starring: Clive Owen

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for some sexual language and thematic elements.

A beautiful film about a father raising two sons in the Australian outback, Clive Owen struggles to balance family and work, while grieving his wife’s death, in The Boys Are Back. This film was a meaty movie that you can really dig into. It is sad and tense and beautiful. This film is a must see, with beautiful shots of Australian landscape and a gripping and realistic story.

I rented this flick because I wanted to see an emotional film with some comedy and tragedy all mixed together. I hadn’t read anything about it, but I like Clive Owen generally and the little boy looked so cute. I knew this would be the right flick to watch with my wife and after the first ten minutes I wanted my mom and dad and everyone to see this little tear jerker.

A quick warning, this film is done in a slower pace than other popular films, this is not a romantic comedy, it is beautiful film about the delicate balance that must be struck between family and the outside world, about becoming a parent, about the decisions of the heart that change lives. As you can tell I really enjoyed The Boys Are Back. I would give it a 8.5 out of 10. I really don’t think there could be much to add to this film. It had some touching moments as Clive Owen tries to raise his sons, and there were some funny moments too.

The only thing that may have been missing was a real high tension scene. There wasn’t really a point of greatest climax. While the film was emotional and took you on a roller coaster of ups and downs, it was more of a gentle ride and didn’t take the audience to that breathtaking moment. Instead the film was a steadily moving, and at sometimes lagging, train ride around the amusement park instead of thrill ride. I came away feeling like I had been on a journey through the outback and through the characters lives, and I loved it.

This movie is a great rental that you may actually watch a couple of times. The wide shots of the countryside are gorgeous, and the relationship between Clive Owen and his boys is just as beautiful. I highly recommend this movie. As Clive Owen says in the film, “it is like Home Alone except there are three of us.”

Sex/Nudity – 3 out of 10 - Some discussions raised center around a man’s adultery and leaving his family. We also see a little boy and a teenage boy in underwear at different times. A young boy and his older brother are seen playing in the bathtub together, we see bare shoulders.

Violence/Gore – 3 out of 10 - A man gets head butted in the nose and he gets a bad bloody nose.

Profanity – 5 out of 10 - There are a few English swear words, “bloody” and so on. There are about 30 uses of the “S” word, “D” words, and “H” words, and also a few religious exclamations.

The Princess and the Frog

2010-02-04T06:53:00.000-08:00

Walt Disney’s The Princess and the Frog

MPAA: G

The Flicks-a-saurus Rex enjoyed his little snack last night at the cinema. The
Princess and the Frog was a little snack that sent me back a few years to when I was a kid watching all the Disney classics for the first time. We’ve got maybe a 7 out of 10 here with Princess and the Frog. It was kind of like The Emperor’s New Groove meets The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Not that there was a hunchback or anything, but the movie had light, off the cuff, quick, almost Saturday Night Live humor, and a mix of some of the creepier scenes from Hunchback. It was a fun film to add to the kid’s library of Disney flicks, but did not compare to the brilliance of Beauty and the Beast or Aladdin.

In our age of computer animated sensations like Up and Shrek, it seems almost ludicrous for Disney to bother with a film that falls into step with the classics it made starting with Snow White. I first thought it was just a gimmick to get grandmothers and mothers to drag the next generations down memory lane, and while yes it was a little nostalgic, it was mostly a tribute to an era of animation that will soon be so antiquated no one will ever make a film like this again.

One thing that bothered me was that we really never got to know the bad guy the way the classics do. Disney is famous for the saying “the villain we love to hate” well this film gave us a pretty mediocre villain. He wasn’t so diabolical and twisted that we just loved every scene that he was in like Jafar or Captain Hook, instead he was about as flat as the animation that depicted him. We get no look at his back story, and from the beginning he just jumps in to being naughty, he was almost boring. His shadow was more interesting than he was.

I was also not thrilled by the music. When the Lion King was over the audience all walked out of the theater with “Hakuna Matata” running through their heads; in contrast I had forgotten the songs in Princess and the Frog by the time the last song was over. It was pretty disappointing to come out of a Disney film and not have any cool choruses running through my head.

I enjoyed the New Orleans jazz scene that was the theme of this film. The jazz was a fun background piece. The main characters were fun and even better were the side characters that we met along the way. The plot was from the same cookie cutter for most kid’s films but there were some fun twists to the classic tale of Princess and the Frog. And for those of you looking to pick a fight with the racial issues behind a black Disney princess, well have fun, there wasn’t much to the racial side of things.

So hurry you guys take those little dinos of yours to Princess and the Frog. It is a fun family film that even the parents will laugh at!

2010-02-02T13:08:00.000-08:00

Frost/Nixon

Director: Ron Howard

Starring: Frank Langella as Richard Nixon and Micheal Sheen as David Frost also with Kevin Bacon, Sam Rockwell, and Oliver Platt

MPAA: Rated R for some language.

Frost/Nixon is a great film, the modern sequel to All the President’s Men (not exactly but similar). The Flicks-a-saurus Rex can definitely sink his teeth into this flick and come out very satisfied. It is a brilliant true story that takes the audience into the wake of Watergate and Nixon’s resignation from presidency.

A few notes on this film real quick; Frost/Nixon is another one of those films that cannot be rated R but it was. There is nothing in this film that is R rated. There is no nudity, no violence, and the F words in this film are no more than any PG-13 film on the market.

Also Frost/Nixon is a perfect example of what First Amendment scholars call Governance and Check on Government Power. The media, because of its protection under the freedom of speech, is a perfect check on the government because it has the power to expose corruption. Frost/Nixon shows a pivotal point in history where America’s biggest crook is given the closest thing to a trial he could ever get, and the film captures this momentous occasion perfectly.

David Frost is a talk show host a performer who decides he wants Richard Nixon on his talk show. This is his struggle to get his show aired, for the world to take his show seriously, and to show the world Richard Nixon at possibly his most candid public moment. How this movie missed an Oscar is beyond me. Everything we loved in All the President’s Men was here again. There was excellent acting, scripting, and filming.

Frank Langella was a brilliant Richard Nixon. When the movie was over and I was watching the special features I could see where Langella picked up his ideas from.
He had Nixon’s voice and attitude down to a pat. He played Nixon with a power and tragedy that made you feel contempt and pity on the man who wanted greatness but went down in a ball of fire. Michael Sheen was dwarfed by Langella, but it was perfect. He was supposed to be a talk show host who had no idea what he was getting himself into and when he faced off with Langells’s Nixon, it was like a bad match up in a boxing ring, Sheen’s David Frost was down for the count. But then he picked himself up and buckled down to business and brought the audience to a stunning climax with Nixon against the ropes.

The scrip and plot really dived in to the characters of Frost and Nixon. The movie set up the ultimate rumble in the jungle, a fight to the death where only one of the two fighters could come out of the ring on top. The struggle against the networks that David Frost was engaged in while he was also trying to prep for battle with Nixon was nail biting, and the insights into Nixon’s exile from the political realm brought a smug sense of tragedy to the audience. Frost/Nixon is a must see for anyone interested in political history or the role of media in America. This movie is an 8.5 out of ten, a delicious meal of tender, medium rare, Triceratops steaks.
If you liked All the President’s Men, this is a must see and vice versa!

Sex/Nudity - We see a naked woman get out of bed for a second, she is in shadow, and the man next to her is bare from the chest up. We also see a man skinny dipping in the ocean and we briefly get a glance at his bare buttocks.

Violence/Gore – There is news footage from the bombing in Cambodia. The images are very tragic and there is blood shown

Profanity – 5 “F” words or its derivatives and 20 other “A” or “S” words during the film. A lot of the swear words you can’t even hear unless the subtitles are on.

Terminator: Salvation - Action fick with the guys

2010-01-31T15:25:00.000-08:00

Terminator: Salvation

Director: MCG (interesting name…?)

Starring: Christian Bale and Sam Worthington

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and language.

This movie was our second blu-ray pick to test out our new system. My wife and I enjoyed this popcorn flick when we saw it in the theater and I was in the mood for an action film. It was just what I wanted, special effects ridden, and violent sci-fi/post apocalyptic thriller. This was a juicy little snack on a baby stegosaurus, about a 6.5 out of 10. A lot of you movie munchers out there may disagree but I liked this summer action flick.

There really is nothing to scream about in this movie. It was just fun to watch.
The machine’s technology was pretty much ripped off of transformers. They had motorcycles that popped out of giant walking robots that chased the good guys as they were driving away at top speeds on their decaying tow trucks. There were giant claws that grabbed humans out of buildings and put them in cattle cars for shipping to the machine’s plant. These giant mechanical beasts were pretty stupid, and we had pretty much already seen them in Transformers, I could have definitely done without them.

However I did enjoy all the gunfights and the classic face off between the humans and the terminators. Christian Bale was a great John Conner. He kind of has the grungy, underdog, leader attitude. He was fun to watch, though sometimes with his American accent he gets really gruff and hard to understand, and he yells a lot. Sam Worthington couldn’t really decide what accent he was going with, for a while it was American and then at a moment of intensity there was some English accent slipping through there. At the end of the film he was switching back and forth a lot more too.

There were quite a few scene changes where the cutting felt pretty awkward. I couldn’t quite tell if the next scene was later that night, or the next day, it was just a little choppy. What I enjoyed were the gun fights and the show down between John Conner and the terminator. The overall film was not brilliantly done at all, and very much like the first two movies (except with a lot better cinematography).

I guess this film is a onetime watch for those Terminator buffs. I couldn’t stand T-3, but T-2 was amazing, and this flows right along with the rest of the Terminator series. Watch it if you are in the mood for a good sci-fi action flick, but if you are looking for a meaty, well done film, then this is not what you want to watch.

Sex/Nudity – 3 out of 10 - None… you see the shadow of a naked terminator, bare chest and bare legs. You also see the shadow of a man covered in mud and he might be naked, but he is so covered in mud it is hard to tell. No sex or sexual situations of any kind. But three guys surround a woman with the intension of raping her but they are stopped.

Violence/Gore – One woman is surrounded by three guys, it is assumed they want to rape her, she beats them up and another guy come to help her out as well. There is a lot of fist fighting and punching. One guy is thrown around a lot, taking some bone crunching hits. There is a lot of machine gun fire and some people are hit. One guy gets dragged under water by a machine and all you see is blood rising to the surface. People get cuts, bruises, one guy gets stabbed. The gore however is pretty mild. There is very little splashing blood or anything at all. Even the stab wound is pretty clean.

Profanity – There is one “F” word but unless subtitles are on you can’t even tell what the person says. There are two or three other mild expletives, but for the most part the swearing is pretty limited.

No Country For Old men - AMAZING

2010-01-31T15:16:00.000-08:00

No Country For Old Men

Director: Joel and Ethan Cohen

Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem

MPAA: Rated R for strong graphic violence and some language.

What a film! This sucker is a plate full of brontosaurus stakes, a film I can just dig into and come out so full. This is not a perfect movie, and at the risk of spoiling the plot I’ll tell you up front that I came out feeling a little bit cheated and a little empty. As the ultimate movie muncher I was very satisfied with my meal, but something didn’t settle quite right, and you’ll have to watch to find out what. That being said this is a near perfect movie with flawless acting, breathtaking suspense, and a brilliant script.

The acting was great. This Texas based movie came with a flourish of colorful characters the most interesting of which is a tie between the psychotic murderer played by Javier Bardem or the wizened old sheriff, Tommy Lee Jones. Josh Brolin holds his own as the hero of the story, a blue collar welder and Vietnam vet. The three of them, at separate times, encounter a multitude of the most interesting folks who add color and humor to this otherwise dark and taught thriller.
The plot is riveting. There is a tense cat and mouse game between Brolin’s and Bardem’s characters as they tear through Texan towns in a life or death match. Jones’ sheriff is always a step or two behind them and mystified by the violence left in their wake. The movie is slow and seems practically music-less but at the same time there is an intensity so thick you almost can’t breathe.

Couple the intensity with the brilliant and witty script and the slow feeling to the film works extraordinarily well. Tommy Lee Jones is an example of dry wit at its best. Every line he delivers is full of irony and wisdom. His exchanges throughout the film with different characters are so interesting and entertaining you almost want to rewind the scene and watch it again. Then there is Javier Bardem’s character whose stern looks and deep mildly accented voice sends shivers down your spine. Each and every scene in this film is a work of art and could stand alone as a mini film. It is just brilliantly put together.

My wife hated the film, I offered to turn it off and I would finish it later (I had already seen it in the theaters when it first came out) but she was still so hooked on the plot and the dialogue that she didn’t want to turn it off. And that is just the kind of film I like. It was such a deep film, and it set its own pace, but at the same time it pulls a person in so that even if you don’t like the film you are hooked and you have to see how it ends. This movie is an easy 9 out of 10. It is not the best movie ever made but it is ranked pretty dang high on the scale. I loved No Country for Old Men, it is a film a guy can really sink his teeth into.

Sex/Nudity – A man is cleaning a gunshot wound he has and he sits naked with one leg over the other covering his private area as he cleans his wound. We also see him in a bath tub cleaning his wound. There are no sexual situations. A married man and woman are shown sleeping together but both are clothed. One man makes a reference to his wife about having sex with her.

Violence/Gore – There is a lot of very realistic violence and gore. People get shot in the head, chest, other areas, blood flows freely from the wounds. One man is choked to death with a pair of handcuffs and eventually his neck starts to bleed. One man cleans a free flowing gunshot wound and a lot of blood comes out of the holes in his skin. A lot of dead and decomposing bodies are shown, including a dog riddled with bullet holes. The violence and gore is not over the top or ridiculous or humorous in any way, it is very serious and very realistic.

Profanity – 2 “F” words and a few other expletives.
If the movie was rated on the Sex and Profanity it would have easily been PG-13.