Trailer Reviews 10

Bad Words

Now I’m not normally one to find movies funny, but dear god this looks hilarious!  I also have a thing for Jason Bateman, so maybe that helps.  It also might help that I’m totally that person.  I’ll say most anything to kids just to annoy them, mostly because they annoy me.  Does that make me a bad person? Yes, probably but I don’t care.  The kid, Rohan, looks hilarious.  I think it’s also interesting to see Bateman in a directing role of a movie.  I know he’s done a couple episodes here and there of shows, but this shall be interesting.

 

Divergent

This is the second trailer to come out for Divergent.  I have read the books and enjoyed them.  It’s kind of nice that a lot of things are exactly as I have imagined them.  This trailer does show you a LOT of the plot.  It doesn’t seem to change a lot, so far.  Except that it does focus on some characters that were seemingly unimportant in Divergent (but might come in as more important in later books :p).  I’ll definitely see this and am glad the trailer looks close to the book.

 

A Million Ways to Die in the West

Another funny movie that I think I will like… but that’s because it is Seth McFarlane…. and NPH is in it.  Yes please. I’m sold.  It looks like a nice ridiculous live action episode of Family Guy. Yes please.  I hope though it’s not like all the funny parts are in the trailer.  That will be the only thing that might go wrong.  But so far, it looks good.

 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

I liked the first Captain America more than most people, I did have a nice time watching it.  But hot damn this one looks GREAT.  I’ve been looking forward to seeing what they are going to do with the Winter Soldier, and explain how he got there (since his story will have to be changed a bit…).  I do know we must have some flashbacks, because apparently Dominic Cooper is reprising his role as Howard Stark, according to IMDb, so we might have some similarities to the Winter Soldiers actual story.  Anyway, I’m excited.  This trailer we also get to see the Falcon in full force.  Yes please.  But dang does the Winter Soldier look awesome.  If you’re a fan of Agents of Shield, they left a nice little easter egg in an episode a few weeks ago, where Sky was reading a plaque of “fallen members” and the only name she read was “Bucky Barnes.”  I like how they are really tying in ALL of their Marvel universe completely.  Nice job.  Anyways, in short, this trailer looks awesome and I can’t wait for this movie.

 

Transcendence

YES.  There are so many things I like about this movie.  The crew on this movie is GREAT.  Let me just start with the fact that Wally Pfister is the director.  That name might not sound familiar because this will be his first time directing.  However, he has been the directory of photography on movies such as the Dark Knight Trilogy, The Prestige, Inception, Moneyball, and Memento.  So clearly, a Christopher Nolan guy (who is an exec. producer, btw).  That makes me think that this movie is going to be gorgeous.  It already looks dark, gritty, and very realistic, but the surreal scenes look fantastic.  I know I will enjoy this, if only for the visuals.  The plot is an interesting one, and I like the idea of it.  It could be really great or could be too weird and not well thought out…. however, I think considering the cast and the crew, it has great potential of being awesome.  I’m very excited for this one.

 

Review – Gangster Squad

Movie Title: Gangster Squad

Director: Ruben Fleischer

Date Released: January 11th, 2013

Date Seen: January 11th, 2013

 

Part 1 – Spoiler Free Quickie Review

If you’re in the mood for a good gangster film – skip this one.  It’s not great.  It’s a long, way too drawn out movie with nearly all unlikeable characters you hardly have time to connect to (which is astonishing considering how drawn out the movie was), and no good music.  I love the trailer music and so I was at least excited for that, but no.  The major problem is that the movie wasn’t billed correctly.  If you go in expecting an awesome serious gangster film – you’re going to hate it.  If you go in expecting nothing – you might enjoy it a bit.  It’s just so ridiculous and over the top and stupidly funny for no real reason.

The movie begins with Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) ripping a man in half with his cars to send a message to Chicago – to try and show them that he’s the big man in LA.  So that’s our first introduction to his character – making mean glaring faces.  That’s pretty much all he ever does.  Glares at things.  At times when he was talking I’d zone out and think of his character in I Am Sam.  Mostly just because his facial expression never changed and I know Sean Penn is a good actor, so I just thought of I Am Sam and was happy again.  Then I realized I was still watching Gangster Squad, and was sad again.

We then meet the bad ass Sgt. John O’Mara (Josh Brolin).  He was awesome in every scene he was in.  Because he’s Josh Brolin.  We also meet the kind of doesn’t care about anything any more cop, Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling).  It was Ryan Gosling playing Ryan Gosling.  He was the same role he was in every movie.  O’Mara is recruited by the police chief, Nick Nolte, to try and take down Cohen.  So he recruits some other guys and then start to try to take Cohen down.

Here is where I lost faith in the movie (well, I had already lost a good amount of faith, but there was no hope after this point).  The movie couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a serious gangster flick or a parody of gangster films.  It had the feeling that two completely different writers wrote the screenplay.  This was probably due to the fact that it was based on a book by Paul Lieberman and then Will Beall (who wrote some episodes of Castle) wrote the screenplay.  It was just very very odd and didn’t feel cohesive.  It also took me out of the movie because I wasn’t expecting this rampant comedic stupidity some of the characters had.  Yes, I did laugh, but it wasn’t what I wanted from the movie.  I think this also had to do with the fact that Ruben Fleischer was the director.  Don’t recognize the name?  He directed Zombieland and 30 Minutes or Less.  He also directed some episodes of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and “Funny or Die Presents…”.  He’s also a producer on a number of MTV shows (Rob & Big, Fantasy Factory, etc.).  So see what the problem is here?  He’s used to directing/producing comedy laced movies/shows.  I just don’t think he was ready to direct a movie like this.  Moments of funny would have been nice – but not the rampant stupidity I found in the movie.

The movie also dragged on and on.  It seemed to take forever to get started, then moved way to quickly through stuff I would have liked to see, and then just dragged on.  I actually thought (well… hoped) that the movie was over at one point.  But nope, another 30 minutes!  Ugh.  You just didn’t care about the characters enough, nor see enough of Mickey Cohen being a completely evil gangster, to really care what happened.

Yes, there were some gun fights.  They were quick, blurry, and full of quick cuts, so you could hardly see what was going on.  There was some punch outs – but again, quick cuts, blurry, and fast.  Sometimes they’d throw in a bit of slow motion of a gun cocking or bullets falling to rattle you up – but no, still not a great scene.

Oh yeah.  And Carmen Miranda makes an appearance. Yeah, I get she was popular at the time the movie supposedly takes place – but I’m gonna say a big fat no the fact that she’d be singing in a gangster run club in LA.

 

Part 2 – In Depth Spoiler Ridden Review

The movie begins, Mickey Cohen is evil, they make a squad to go stop him. They *finally* defeat Mickey Cohen after being complete idiots, wasting time, not making plans, and going all “Raid Redemption” on the hotel he’s hold up in.  The end. Stupid.

 

Overall: 5/10

The more I think about it the more I realize that this movie sucked, I was waiting for it to be over, and I never care to see it again.  Some of the actors in the movie are amazing – but due to a poor screenplay, incorrect advertising, and a director who was out of his element, the movie failed.

Trailer Reviews 4

This is a special edition of my trailer reviews.  Rather than new ones, it’s all ones that I am SUPER excited about.

Movie Title: Gangster Squad

I suggest you watch this trailer in full screen, HD.  Go do it. Now.

I’ve always said that I love any movie with tommy guns.  Doesn’t really matter what it is…. I’ll love it.  Especially when there is a scene with with tommy guns, and hot guys standing in the middle of the road just mowing someone down…. fabulous.  And this movie seems to have a lot of scenes like that.  So I am excited.

I also know this movie is going to be good because I could care less that Ryan Gosling is in it.  WHAT?! I know, I know, but hear me out.  I think the cast is PHENOMENAL even without him. We have Sean Penn, Josh Brolin,  and Nick Nolte to pee our pants over and then you add in Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, and Anthony Mackie?  Yes please.  I am so excited.

Also – the trailer has a great use of music so I’m thinking the movie will as well.

 

Movie Title: Looper

So in time travel movies, I figure you can watch them one of two ways – you can either just accept the realm of time travel for what it is – or go nit-picking about how that would never work blah blah blah.  I accept each time travel movie for however they want to present it, for the most part.  Recently I loved how MIB3 did it, but that’s besides the point.

I like how they took Joseph Gordon-Levitt and altered his face a bit with makeup to make him look more like Bruce Willis – but the fact that we all know it’s Joseph Gordon-Levitt under there kind of ruins it.  But I love him, so I’m ok with it.  The movie looks great.

 

Movie Title: Django Unchained

I feel like I’ve talked about this one before and I don’t care.  I think I am the most excited about this movie.  It looks INCREDIBLE.  I love everyone in it – Christoph Waltz, Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, and if you go look at the imdb.com page, apparently even more awesomeness.  It just looks great.  And it’s Quentin Tarantino… ahhhh.

I love Dicaprio for taking this slightly-out-of-recent-character movie, for what’s got to be less pay than normal, but he looks incredible in it.

 

Movie Title: The Great Gatsby

Alright, I’ll admit it – I love Leonardo DiCaprio in everything.  But this movie looks awesomeeeeeeee.  It’s from the same director, Baz Luhrmann, as Australia and Moulin Rouge.  Both of which I love.  So I love that we are getting a roaring 20s movie with his style.  It looks over-stylized, fantastical, and well shot.  I think for the movie it will do well.  Do I care if it sticks to the book? No, because I honestly don’t remember what happened in the book *that* much (I remember overall, but not details).

 

Movie Title: Lawless

A group of hot men fighting over moonshine? Yes. Now let me just list the fabulous cast – a nice mix of “older” actors and the new crowd: Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Guy Pearce, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska, etc.  Please tell me how it could not be good?

 

So clearly, I like man movies.  Whatever.  All of these look awesome and I’m excited about them.

Review – Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Movie Title: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Director: Timur Bekmambetov

Date Released: June 22nd, 2012

Date Seen: June 23rd, 2012

Seen with: Michael (best friend)

 

Part 1 – Spoiler Free Quickie Review

First I will begin saying that I read the book and I loved it.  The book does an AMAZING job of mixing real historic events in the life of Abraham Lincoln and just adding in a vampire element.  For example, the reason he was “really” against slavery, was because the vampires used the weak slaves as food.  He was very against that.  Or just the real reason someone close to him died – was because of vampires.  It would also just include other historical references to people that were supposedly vampires (Elizabeth Bathory for example).  So yeah, loved the book.

You don’t need to have read the book at all to see the movie.  In fact, I recommend you don’t (before seeing the movie).  Why?  There’s not a lot in common… I mean, pretty much the similarity is that Abraham Lincoln was a vampire hunter… his mom died because of one…. and a few other parts.  Some scenes are reminiscent of the book, but not the same.

Normally I’d have a problem with that – but in this case I don’t. Why, you ask?  Well, because the author of the book, Seth Gramme-Smith, WROTE THE SCREENPLAY.  So he adapted his own novel into a movie format.  I think he did a great job at that.  The way the book was written, there isn’t a central “bad” vampire, like there is in the movie.  The movie NEEDED one.  So even though there was this whole new storyline added, it worked great with the existing one.  The movie lost a LOT of the historical accuracy (a big one – his first wife and all the other kids other than Willy don’t exist in the movie), but whatever.  It still worked plot wise.

So my quickie review – I highly enjoyed this movie.  Do I think it was a cinematic masterpiece? Hell no.  It was just super fun to watch.  Some hilarious death scenes, fight scenes, some good story telling and come on, it’s freaking Abraham Lincoln killin’ some vampires!!

 

Part 2 – In-Depth Spoiler Ridden Review

The movie is very fast paced in terms of his vampire hunting adventures.  We go from his early life of seeing his mom murdered by a vampire, to him trying to avenge her death 16 years later in about 5 minutes.  Because of that, I don’t feel like going through every scene but let me tell you about the scenes that stood out to me:

The battle between Abraham Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) and Jack Barts (Marton Csokas).  Abe has already had one attempt at killing Jack.  He now goes back for a second attempt.  He runs in on Jack, and Jack takes off with a herd of horses.  To me, it first appeared that there were only about 20 or so of them, in a pen.  Suddenly though, we have a Lion King Wildabeast stampede sized problem going on, and we’re no longer in the pen.  I’m ok with it.  Because the scene is a GOLD mine of awesome.  First there’s the typical vampire running fast with Abe chasing him on the horse.  At some point, they both get knocked off.  And then the best scene in the whole movie happened: Jack grabs a horse, WHILE IT’S RUNNING, by the ankle and whips it around his head and swings it at Abe.  Yeah, reread that once or twice to get the full glory of it.  Vampire grabbing a running horse by its ankle and swinging it around and bitch slapping Abe Lincoln with it.  Then, the vampire proceeds to use the horses as stepping stones, and so Abe has to follow.  The whole scene was hilarious for the sheer WTFness of it, and yet so awesome.  I think it was the best scene and I would probably see the movie again JUST for this scene.

The Plantation Fight Scene – This is my favorite scene in the book.  So I was really worried.  They changed it a lot from the book, but I still liked it.  The way the movie did it was the evil vampire, Adam (the ever sexy Rufus Sewell) and his sister Vadoma (Erin Wasson) kidnap Abe Lincolns best friend, Will Johnson (Anthony Mackie).  So, Abe and Joshua Speed (Jimmi Simpson) go to rescue him.  They happen on an odd scene of a bunch of vampires dancing, conversing, entertaining with some slaves.  And then they feast upon them.  Abe bursts in and an awesome fight between Abe and the vampires ensue.  There was a really nice shot, where the room seems  to get darker and vampires seem to come from the murals on the walls.  It was very well shot.  The rest of the scene goes on, Abe is pinned by Vadoma, blah blah, they’re about to kill Will… and Speed comes bursting in with a horse drawn cart.  Then they escape the other vampires with Harriet Tubman on a barge through the bayou.

Gettysburg – This scene was just awesome watching vampires rip through the mortal men.  I loved it.  I’m evil.

The Train Scene – Another hilarious goldmine.  There’s vampire fights outside the train, inside the train, there’s some vampire heads getting chopped off, there’s a lot of jumping around on the train and still managing to stay in the same spot when you land (even though it’s going full speed).  While the train is going, Vadoma is setting the wooden bridge on fire, so then cars just start falling.  There’s one awesome sequence of a car going diagonally down and thus knocking down all the parts of the bridge that were still remaining.  The highlight of the scene is the end when Henry (Dominic Cooper) manages to hold the railroad pieces together long enough for Will and Abe to jump off to safety.  It was beautiful.  And I love Dominic Cooper.  So win win.

Mary v. Vadoma – a quick scene.  They have just arrived with the silver and out walks Vadoma.  Mary sees her coming and grabs a shotgun and loads it with the little silver dagger that was Willys (her son that Vadoma murdered).  As Vadoma charges her, she shoots her in the head with it.  Awesome.  Well shot.  Extremely satisfying.

The Final Scene – I just liked the end and the subtle hints at Abe’s death.  Henry is begging Abe to let him make him immortal and you hear Mary yelling that they’re late for the theater.  He runs down to meet Mary and you see him wave, for one last time, at his friend Henry.  It was done in a very tactful way that was nice to watch.

 

Overall: 6.5/10