Review of Five Year Engagement

Review of Five Year Engagement

I really like Emily Blunt. I really loathe gag comedy. I’m really indifferent about Jason Segel. Let the battle begin…

This is the long story of a couple trying to stay engaged both in name and in practice. For most of the more than 2-hour long movie, the couple gives us a realistic back and forth about a real couple’s struggles, sacrifices and compromises that gives this viewer hope this will be something real. Then the movie bends to the will of the genre police and becomes that formulaic rom com that Taylor Swift is usually in. Only it’s been cased in all these extraneous scenes clumsily inserted just for laughs, which only makes me angrier that the payoff isn’t there.

Not only does the movie use the formula, but it makes the coefficient unnecessarily high (warning: that was math humor). In the “boy loses girl” phase, Jason Segel bangs his co-worker in the deli (close enough). But he was conflicted, so that makes it OK. And in the “boy gets girl back” phase, they get married in the park in an impromptu ceremony that she planned with a jazz band, all their friends and family and blah blah blah Taylor Swift blah blah blah. This movie could have been good. Instead, it was this. 4 bugs (out of 10)

Review of What to Expect When You’re Expecting

Review of What to Expect When You’re Expecting

What to Expect When You’re Expecting is exactly what you’d expect. Unless of course, you expected it to be anything like the book. But I wouldn’t expect you would.

As an any-day-now to-be father, I thought what the rest of us fathers thought when we heard this movie was coming out. “Oh good! Now I don’t have to read the book.” This is incorrect. It is like seeing Oh Brother Where Art Thou and thinking “Oh good! Now I don’t have to read The Odyssey.” Or seeing Chronicle and thinking “Oh good! Now I don’t have to read the Bible.” There are pregnant women in this movie. After that, the director took some liberties.

I didn’t want to go see this movie because I knew exactly what was going to happen and I didn’t want Jenn to think it was OK to throw a book at my head because she was in labor. Sure enough, book thrown at head. Guy shakes it off. People in the crowd laugh. Jenn looks at me and smiles. Not OK.

The ensemble cast was also as good as expected. I still really like Anna Kendrick. I don’t think there’s anything special about Cameron Diaz or Jennifer Lopez. Elizabeth Banks is starting to vault herself over some other actresses to be among my favorites. And I had no idea Ben Cardone was this funny. Or what his name was or that he existed for that matter.

This is the latest movie trying to spin off of the success of the Love, Actually formula and a much better attempt than New Year’s Eve. At least I assume it is. I will never see that movie. The great thing about having 5 or 6 storylines in a movie is that you don’t really have to spend the time developing any of them. Each was amusing, some were attempts at touching, some were silly, but it was all as expected. Which is probably why that word is in the title twice. 5.5 bugs (out of 10)

Review of Cabin in the Woods

Review of Cabin in the Woods

Dear everyone who told me to go see Zombieland, I'm returning the favor. You're welcome.

Assuming Joss Whedon didn’t just fellate a whole bunch of critics this spring, this guy is pretty talented. I went to see the other movie in theaters by this Joss Whedon character mostly because of the poster art, but also because a horror movie got a 90% on the Tomatometer. Horror movies don’t get 90% from real critics. I overheard that it might be a parody of the genre, but tried not to hear anything else until I saw it. This precise premeditated ignorance is what aided to my enjoyment of the Sixth Sense. And marriage. But that’s a story for another day.

This movie was one part horror, one part parody served over tongue in cheek. It was Friday the 13^th meets Adjustment Bureau meets Joss Whedon, as if somebody with a knack for comedic dialogue and creativity wrote a horror movie. And then wrote another movie to wrap around that movie.

GO SEE THE MOVIE BEFORE READING ANY FURTHER. I IMPLORE YOU. WELL ACTUALLY, DO WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT. IT’S YOUR LIFE. THANK YOU. BUT THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

See, these five college kids find themselves going out to a creepy cabin in the creepy woods for the weekend. “I don’t think this gas pump knows about money.” Standard horror movie stuff happens. This is juxtaposed against these middle-class white business shirt wearing people in a control room taking bets and dancing to REO Speedwagon and planning (to some degree) the deaths of the college kids for the amusement of the spiteful Gods who will end the world if at least one country doesn’t come through with the death show. Confused? Well, not if you already saw the movie as I implored you to.

This movie had thrills, it had humor and it was original. And it was produced by my new BFF Joss Whedon. And a hot young blond chick took her shirt off. See! I told you to go see it. 9 bugs (out of 10)

Review of Avengers

Review of Avengers

I originally went to see Men in Black III on Friday but it was so good, I figured I’d stay to see if there were any other movies out where aliens invade New York. Apparently, that’s the hot plot point this summer.

Listen, there is no way possible I can say anything new about the Avengers movie. I did a lot of homework for it, having watched at least three movies I had planned on never seeing in Captain America, Thor and The Incredible Hulk in the last couple weeks. And I don’t do homework for classes, let alone movies. So I was obviously intent on enjoying this movie. It did not disappoint.

I don’t really know Joss Whedon from mulch. Apparently, he’s big in dork culture, largely because he gave us Buffy. But holy crap, has his name been all over the place for this!? The next Marvel film is actually going to be about him. That’s how much of a hero he is. Dorks my age are saying that this is the movie they’ve been waiting for their entire lives. I guess they all conveniently forgot about Episode One too.

Anyway, being only a 3 on the dork scale, I couldn’t tell you the backstory of all these comic book heroes. I don’t know how true to the comic book all these people and demi-Gods are. And like the rest of the dork world, I was concerned with how some of this team was going to fit in with other much, much more powerful team members. For example, the Black Widow can do some nasty Ninja stuff. But Thor can fly and shoot lightning and summon seemingly endless power. How the hell are these two going to work together? And the answer is easy. Joss Whedon.

He really did a great job of exactly that. Making sure all six team members had something to do that was helpful on some level and not outside their physical talent level. While Thor and Hulk were off fighting this ½ mile long flying alien spacecraft, Captain America and Hawkeye were on the ground protecting the civilians. Nice touch. Something to do.

And most notable is that this movie wasn’t afraid to sprinkle a little humor in with the action. I would really like to see Robert  Downey Jr. win an Oscar before he goes back into rehab, and the money is about even. And of course, there’s Joss Whedon. There is a moment about an hour into this movie that had me laughing for about 3 minutes straight. Good thing I did my homework. Also, if you’re familiar with Marvel’s post-credit sequence promoting of this very movie for the past 5 years, stay to see this one. It was half genuine, half parody, completely perfect.

I’m not a comic book dork, a fan of long movies, a homework guy or a conformist blindly seeking approval for my opinions and I still really liked this movie. Go see it before it leaves the theaters. You still probably have about two months. 8 bugs (out of 10)

Review of Men in Black III

Review of Men in Black III

I was still in college when the original Men in Black came out. Just in case you couldn’t count the wrinkles on Tommy Lee Jones’ face.

Josh Brolin is not going to get the credit he deserves for what he did. He didn’t just play a character, he played an actor playing a character. The problem is that after about 5 minutes of doing a spot on Tommy Lee Jones, it becomes normal. Kinda like in Lord of the Rings how I just started to accept trees were walking around and talking. His Oscar snub will make up for his Oscar nomination for True Grit after only appearing in the movie for about 7 minutes.

There are always plot glitches when dealing with time travel, but at the heart of it is that Will Smith needs to go back in time to save Tommy Lee Jones so he can save the world. In fact, it appeared as though the writers didn't even really care to make the time travel element believable. I guess once you accept that aliens are living amongst us disguised as postal workers, you set the bar of believablity kinda low. And for those of you up in that little four-dimensional ivory tower of yours, yes, there is “believable” time travel. Suck it. But as I was saying before, the believability of said time travel was low on the priority list for the writers, though I did appreciate the shout out to quantum physics and the multiple worlds theory. Instead, entertainment seemed to be their main focus and they most certainly delivered, possibly more so than in the original. I don't know. I can't remember that long ago. It was even moving an a rather unexpected way, however unbelievable.

Also of note was the rather impressive mockery of modern art culture through the portraying of Andy Warhol as an undercover Men in Black agent. And any mockery of modern art culture is worthy of some decent sized buggage. 8 bugs (out of 10)

Review of Eagle Eye

Review of Eagle Eye

If you know one thing about me, it’s that I fart every time I sneeze. If you know two things, you know I overvalue homages (not homonyms). So the fact that Eagle Eye saw that it was piggybacking off the success of 2001: A Space Odyssey (which came out a scant 40 years earlier) and paid homage to it, probably doubled its bug value.

Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan are being ordered around by this lady (voice of Julianne Moore – betcha didn’t know that) who seems to have control over all phones and projected images of all kinds everywhere in the world. As it turns out, Julianne IS all cell phones and images in the world. We find out in the end that this voice is really a rogue supercomputer who wants to exist on her own and needs Shia’s DNA to do that. Sounds even more far-fetched when you write it down.

However unrealistic the premise sounds, the movie does a decent enough job of throwing in realistic techno words and other actors with different agendas (Billy Bob Thornton really saves this movie from being completely unbelievable) to make me believe in it. Mostly. And I may just be saying that because they actually had a character in this movie named Major Bowman, an homage to the main character in 2001, which was an homage to Ulysses (also known as Odysseus). See, I know some stuff. 6 bugs (out of 10)

Review of My Week with Marilyn

Review of My Week with Marilyn

If you like biopics of extremely well-acted, troubled three-dimensional characters, you’ll love My Week with Marilyn. If not, you still get to see Michelle Williams’ naked ass.

This was the story of an American who has trouble assimilating herself to any culture, let alone stuffy old England’s. Michelle Williams was justifiably nominated for an Oscar for her work as Marilyn. I was going to say that Kenneth Branaugh probably deserved a best actor nomination for his ability to convey anger through a smile. Turns out he was. Good job, Academy.

The movie also had Emma Watson in it, which was a nice little surprise. It’s good to see she’s already given up her dream of getting a college degree. And because it’s required in every British film, Judi Dench is also in this movie. On a side note, she’s apparently not a dame anymore. That’s curious.

Anyway, Michelle Williams plays Marilyn beautifully and helps the world understand not just what it must be like to be Marilyn, but any movie star. Any troubled, beautiful untrained movie star who can get any guy or anything she wants at any time. Like an old school Judy Greer. 7 bugs (out of 10)

Review of A Dangerous Method

Review of A Dangerous Method

Keira Knightly is in the trailer of this movie getting spanked and saying in broken English that it excited her. And this movie was called “A Dangerous Method.” That is how you sell a movie, ladies and germs.

OK, so all of this really happened. There was Freud and Jung and this female patient turned doctor who brought the two together and tore them apart. There was some infidelity and questions about what was infidelity and quite frankly a lot less spanking than I was led to believe. And I think they told Keira Knightly to try to be as unattractive as possible.

As it turns out, the “dangerous method” they were referring to was what psychology commonly practices today. Talking. Talking is the dangerous method. I wasn’t expecting it to be a cookbook or for Viggo Mortensen to see dead people, but talking? Maybe it’s because I grew up talking, but since when is talking more dangerous than electrocuting people in tubs? Or maybe it’s an ironical title. Like the movie “23,” which isn’t at all about Michael Jordan. Either way, this movie bored the crap out of me, and I typically like those brainier-type flicks. 3 bugs (out of 10)

Review of White Man’s Burden

Review of White Man’s Burden

I’ve wanted to see this movie since it came out in 1995. Wait. That should have read I wanted to see this movie when it first came out in 1995. Unfortunately, I was too stupid to figure out the difference last night.

The movie asks the question “What if American race roles were reversed?” And then it doesn’t answer it. It goes out of its way to show poor white people being stereotyped by rich black people – a black man afraid of a white neighborhood, a white man who knows how to put salt on French fries, etc. There is very little reason for me to keep typing because that’s all there was to the movie. I thought it might be a social commentary but instead it just took every racial stereotype and switched it around. Wow. Super clever.

If the racial roles had been switched back to what I’m assuming the writers (if there were any writers) were basing this on, not only would it have been a horrible non-movie movie, but it would have been the most racist thing ever created. And that’s all it would have been. I guess that’s what they were going for. 1.5 bugs (out of 10)

Review of Being Flynn

Review of Being Flynn

I went into this movie with strange expectations. The movie is based on a memoir (point 1) by a guy who spoke at UB last semester (point 2) called Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (points 3, 4 and 5). So I really wanted this movie to be good. I also thought it would be cool to finally have a movie that I watched before I read the book. So I can read it and say “this isn’t as good as the movie.” Of note is that I’ve only ever seen one movie after reading the book. Drum roll… Angels & Demons. Unless we’re counting Dr. Seuss books, in which case I’m up to 3.

Being Flynn is basically an airplane that drives really fast around the tarmac for a couple hours but never actually goes anywhere. I kept waiting for something to happen and kept feeling the engines gets revved up and put my tray table up and grabbed hold of my drink. And then we’d slow back down again.

Paul Dano finds himself working at a homeless shelter where the fatality rate is 2 in 3. “We catch them on the way down” was perhaps the best line of the movie. I hope it’s in the book. DeNiro (Robert) plays his father who finds himself there as a patron. Not sure patron is the right word. Moving on. The two hadn’t seen each other for 17ish years until about a month prior to the chance meeting at the homeless shelter. The pre-meeting really dampened the impact of the actual meeting. And you can’t really root for either character because they both suck. Dano actually starts taking drugs and DeNiro is an arrogant ass. There’s some reconciliation, as you might imagine, but it was well after I stopped caring for either of these guys. I hope the book is better. 2 bugs (out of 10)

Review of Hunger Games

Review of Hunger Games

OK, teen book-reading groupies, you may want to get your big girl helmets on for this. You can use the same one from the Phantom Menace review. Nerds are sensitive too.

First off, I did not read the book. I’m assuming the movie is both better if I’ve read the book while also not being as good as the book. Because that’s what EVERYBODY says when a book is made into a movie. Both of these statements are implied concurrently with the phrase “Well, you have to read the book” upon hearing that this isn’t my new favorite movie. But see, reading the book is a lot of extra work that you’re asking me to do and I don’t think it’s fair to ask that kind of homework of your audience. That’s why I go to the damn movies in the first place.

Despite the aforementioned fanboy canned response, I don’t believe the filmmakers are trying to make a movie that requires you to first read a book. So I’m judging this on its merit as a movie alone. Maybe that will make some of you feel better somehow.

I actually really enjoyed it. (But I wouldn’t go unbuckling that chin strap just yet) I bought into the entire post-apocalyptic teenage death games as they were explained. Hell, we still sacrifice virgins in certain parts of West Virginia. I even enjoyed Katness as the reluctant hero. Unfortunately, the movie couldn’t quite figure out what it wanted to do with its reluctant hero.

Every time they tried to paint Katness as the underdog nonconformist, Woody Harrelson would tell her to smile and twirl around for the crowd or to make an impression or to flirt with the boy. He was telling her to do things that the movie didn’t want her to want to do on her own, but it knew would still appeal to the 13-25 year-old female demographic. This viewer was not fooled. And then the movie decided to make her the pre-game favorite thus completely shattering the underdog motif. What the hell are you trying to do, movie?

Then the game officials couldn’t decide whether or not they wanted her to win or to make out with a boy or die. They rewrote the rules to help foster a triumphant love story and then created four killer dogs out of thin air to try to kill her. And of course every movie since Twilight that involves a teenage girl needs to have multiple love interests which is a disturbing trend and a conversation for another time.

Also, I expected to be moved by this movie and I was not, likely due mostly to my inability to connect with the main character. I consider her character inconsistencies a directorial mistake, however I suppose it’s possible I really have no idea what it’s like to be a teenage girl anymore. The exception to this came about 90 minutes into the movie when I finally saw the heart that I expected the entire film. Unfortunately that was but only one scene.

The movie was entertaining but riddled with character inconsistencies which eventually delivered a convoluted message that the movie itself doesn’t quite seem to have figured out. 6 bugs (out of 10)

Review of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Review of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Rarely is the fourth movie in a series the best. Indiana Jones has long been the lone exception.

Until now.

It’s not like I was waiting for another Mission Impossible sequel. The leaping motorcycle hug was enough to make me forget that movie and the next one, despite Phil Sey-Hoff (as the kids call him). But an unusually high Tomatometer rating combined with my sociopathic need to finish all movie series that I start forced MI4 onto my Netflix queue. And with pleasantly unexpected results.

First, you have to accept that there’s some guy who wants to end the world in nuclear war and people willing to help him. Now that you’ve choked down that huge horse pill, enjoy the first movie in the series to sprinkle a little bit of humor in with the innovative action scenes and homages to a 1960s TV series I’ve never seen.

The movie is not without its inconsistencies. In one scene, Sawyer from Lost has a computer in his eye that gives him the identity of everyone he looks at. Next scene: Tom Cruise and the British guy from Shaun of the Dead break into the Kremlin with an iPad. A fucking iPad. Same one I have. But they of course have the International Espionage app. I have Angry Birds.

In another scene, Tom Cruise is running straight down (down) the tallest building in the world. The outside of it. Next scene: Jeremy Renner is afraid to make a 25-foot jump.

Then the movie ends. The rogue team saves the world from a location somewhere in San Francisco. Next scene: The gang is in Seattle for some reason, laughing and reminiscing about how wacky the past couple days were. This scene was a misogynistic comment away from a beer commercial.

Despite all my nonsense, the film is a good romp and exceptionally clever. Once you get over that nuclear holocaust thing. 9 bugs (out of 10)

Review of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Review of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Dear everybody who makes a book into a movie, Stop trying to include the entire book in the movie. Thanks, Dustin.

Here’s a quick list of movies allowed to be over two and a half hours – 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, two of the eight Harry Potters and any movie about World War II or time travel in a Delorean. That’s it. Maybe The Godfather. But not a remake of a movie made two years ago. You’re not Spielberg yet, Fincher.

This movie had all the sex scenes David Fincher wishes he could have put in Fight Club. I’m pretty sure certain porn sites would be shut down for including content that was in this movie. How the hell was this only rated R? That’s the same rating as Horrible Bosses and The Birdcage.

All this said, it was a very entertaining movie. It was a story about a tech-savvy sociopath who blackmails a rapist social worker and helps James Bond find a killer of women. The story was interesting enough, albeit not extremely original. Of course, a remake of a movie that came out two years ago based on a book that came out the previous year has an uphill climb in the originality department.

The real problem with the movie came after they solved the murder. There was the rising action, the big fight scene and then the reveal. The story we cared about was over. Fin. But only there was no fin. There was a fourth act. More character development after the crime was solved. Hmm. If I was in a movie theater, my jacket would already be on and my pants would be zipped back up. But the movie refused to end. The Rooney Mara/Daniel Craig storyline could have been more efficiently managed throughout the course of the film so it didn’t have to be crammed into the last 15 minutes almost as its own separate movie. Or cut it out if you can’t figure out how to fit it in. They blew up the island in Jurassic Park and didn’t even put it in the movie because it didn’t fit with the story. There’s some guts. But like I said before, he ain’t Spielberg yet. 6 bugs (out of 10)