Category Archives: Movies

by

Iron Man 3 – Review

2/5 – The curse of three continues for Marvel franchises

The person next to me fell asleep early on during Iron Man 3 and woke up late in the movie. “What did I miss?” she asked. “The entire movie,” I responded, “and it’s terrible.” Okay, maybe terrible is an overstatement, but it is definitely a disappointment.

What is it with Marvel being unable to make a good third movie in their film franchises? X-Men: The Last Stand was terrible. Spider-Man 3 was all over the place. And now that Iron Man joins that club, delivering a very disappointing sequel with Iron Man 3.

I should have known it was going to disappoint when it was announced that Jon Favreau wasn’t returning as director. Or maybe when Robert Downey Jr and Gwenyth Paltrow said they didn’t think there would be an Iron Man 4 while promoting Iron Man 3. Tobey Maguire, James Franco and Kirstin Dunst all had the same attitude about another Spider-Man movie when they were promoting Spider-Man 3. Is Iron Man 3 Spider-Man 3 bad? No. But it was nowhere near as good as any other Marvel movie that Iron Man has appeared in to date.

There’s going to be plenty of spoilers in this post, so if you haven’t seen Iron Man 3 yet, you make want to not read further until you’ve seen the movie. 



The first two Iron Man movies are two of my favorite superhero movies. They were nuanced, with a great mix of action, plot and humor. Tony and Pepper had real chemistry. But here, their magic is gone. Yes, they care for one another, but the perfect banter they had in Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and The Avengers is gone.

Tony Stark is in a doldrums throughout Iron Man 3 because of “New York.” He’s questioning his place in the world because he’s now met gods, monsters and aliens. Are you kidding me? This isn’t Tony Stark. Tony Stark has one of the most curious scientific minds of any character in fiction. If he encounters things that fall outside the norm, he doesn’t retreat into a shell. He gets answers.

Remember that scene in the Avengers where Tony Stark is falling and the Iron Man races in and attaches itself to him? I thought it was awesome. Apparently, so did Iron Man 3 screenwriter Drew Pearce and director Shane Black. That scene happens over and over again throughout Iron Man 3. The armor attaches to Tony, to Pepper. The Iron Patriot armor vomits out the President at one point. Side question: Why is the President a generic crusty, old, white guy? Marvel knows that Mitt Romney lost in ’08, right?

Take a shot every time someone falls into or out of some armor.

And the Iron Patriot armor. Can we talk about the Iron Patriot armor for a minute? This armor was clearly put in the movie just to sell another action figures. At least the War Machine armor in Iron Man 2 was integral to the story. But in Iron Man 3, the Iron Patriot armor is brought in because “it tests better with voters than War Machine” and is then relegated off-screen until very late in the movie.

Iron Patriot was in the movie just long enough to get a good shot for the blister card.

But who has time to have Jim Rhodes in his new Iron Patriot suit? That would have taken time away from Tony Stark’s kid sidekick. That’s right, in case you haven’t seen the movie yet, IRON MAN GETS A KID SIDEKICK! I’m pretty sure this was the scene where I threw my hands up and said, “Oh, come on!” I didn’t realize those Verizon Fios ads were canonical. Iron Man, say hello to Cousin Oliver. He’ll be joining you for the next 20 minutes.

No, seriously. What the fuck?

When I first heard that Iron Man 3 was going to be pulling a lot of its story from the excellent Warren Ellis penned Extremis story, I was excited. But, wow, the Extremis bad guys in Iron Man 3 come across as if the producers asked “What if we cross the Human Torch with a T-1000?” Unfortunately, the answer is not “It’s awesome.”

The bad guy, Aldrich Killian’s entire motivation is this: Tony Stark ignores him when Killian tries to cock block Stark on New Year’s Eve with a botanist that looks kind of like Alanis Morissette . To get back at Stark, Killian gets really good looking and plans his revenge. I get “bros before hoes,” but this is a little extreme. In a plot twist that should have haters of Dark Knight Rises saying, “You know what, that whole Ra’s Al Ghul daughter thing kind of works,” Killian enlists the botanist that Tony Stark banged that fateful NYE 13 years ago to help him make human bombs.

Jagged little plot twist.

In another Batman-franchise move, the Mandarin and Killian’s relationship is ripped off from Ken Watanabe/Liam Neesan Ra’s Al Ghul plot twist from Batman Begins filtered through the 1960s Batman TV show and telegraphed very early on in Iron Man 3. It’s interesting that Killian is the true Mandarin. In the first Iron Man movie, Tony Stark is abducted by the 10 Rings, which leads to Stark creating his first Iron Man armor. That’s the Mandarin’s (aka Killian’s) organization. What the Killian/Mandarin Iron Man 3 plot twist reveals is that if Tony Stark didn’t snub Killian in order to have sex with a botanist, the world may not have Iron Man to protect it.

The Mandarin never reaches the coolness of this poster in the movie.

Did you stick around for the scene after the credits? The one where Tony Stark is telling Dr. Bruce Banner about all his problems, and Banner completely zones out. It’s like Banner just watched Iron Man 3 too.

Man, I really wanted to like Iron Man 3. But I just can’t. Looking at Twitter, I seem to be in the minority. People are raving about this movie. I just do not get the love that people have for this movie at all. I’m giving it 2 out of 5 stars and hesitating, because I feel like I might be rating it too high.

by

Jack The Giant Slayer – Review

3/5 – An entertaining second half to our Nicholas Hoult double feature.

After watching Warm Bodies, we promptly snuck our way into the theater down the hall to catch Jack the Giant Slayer and make it a Nicholas Hoult double feature night. I didn’t have any particular desire to see Jack the Giant Slayer. If Nicholos Hoult wasn’t in it, we probably would have skipped it. It just seemed funny to base a movie night around him. Plus the movie was starting 5 minutes after Warm Bodies ended. It’s like they wanted us make it a double feature night.

Yes, this is the awkward kid from About a Boy.

I’m amazed we didn’t get caught sneaking into Jack the Giant Slayer. Two of us were lugging around yoga mats on our backs, so we weren’t necessarily inconspicuous. But we didn’t even register on the staff’s radar.  I guess the theater employees have better things to do than hunt down people sneaking their way into a very less than full theater.

Understandably, I wasn’t expecting to particularly enjoy a CGI-heavy live-action remake of the Jack and the Beanstalk story. Not being a child, I’m not in the target demographic. I was fully prepared to sneak out of Jack the Giant Slayer as quickly as we sneaked into it.

Perhaps that’s why I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed Jack the Giant Slayer. It’s a good movie.

Second head or well executed photo bomb?

I really liked how they reworked “Fee, fie, foe, fum.” for this movie. I thought that was pretty clever. I also thought Ewan McGregor was perfect as the knight Elmont. He seemed to be channeling his inner Cary Elwes in the role. There seemed to be a touch of the Dread Pirate Roberts in Elmont. The Tooch, Stanley Tucci, is also in the movie and was awesome, as usual.

Elmont, I want your hair.
 
Jack the Giant Slayer is not going to blow your socks off or walk away with any awards, and I doubt I’ll ever meet a person whose favorite movie is this one, but if you’re looking for an entertaining escapist film, you could do far worse.
After the movie, I took in another “double feature,” this time at the nearby Taco Bell to try both the Nacho Cheese Doritos Taco and the Cool Ranch Doritos Taco. The Cool Ranch taco wins, but that’s not saying much. Anything from Taco Bell has a low ceiling in terms of quality. And the weirdo crowd hanging out there at midnight on a Friday? You would have thought you were in a Mexican food themed Waffle House. I haven’t been inside a Taco Bell in years. I think it’s more likely I’ll find myself going to another Nicholas Hoult double feature in the movie theater before I make my next trip to Taco Bell.
If you have to have one, make it this one.
by

Chasing Ice – Review

4/5 – An Engaging Inconvenient Truth

If you liked the idea of An Inconvenient Truth, but found the movie itself to be as exciting as, well, a PowerPoint presentation, I recommend checking out Chasing Ice.

Chasing Ice is much more personable than An Inconvenient Truth. It puts a human face on climate change. The film  follows environmental photographer James Balog in his quest to document the melting occurring at glaciers around the world. Balog and his team create their own camera housings that can withstand subzero conditions day after day and still function. They also have to trek out to hazardous and inaccessible frozen locales. It’s a project that takes its toll on Balog, both physically and mentally. This toll is what puts the human face on the project. Chasing Ice involves the science that made An Inconvenient Truth what it is, but seeing Balog struggles while undertaking this important project is what sets Chasing Ice a step above Gore’s movie.

What comes out of this project are amazing photographs that show the rapid decline of the polar ice caps. These are photos that should put any climate change naysayers to rest. Chasing Ice is the Food Inc. of climate change. It’s a movie that you must see, but also one that will leave you shaken after you see it.

While I usually catch documentaries at home, I suggest seeing Chasing Ice in the theater if you can. Seeing James Balog’s photographs blown up on the big screen is an awe-inspiring sight. The man is a tremendous photographer. The big screen allows you to really take in what is happening to these ice caps, and serves to make it more dramatic when they fall.

I caught Chasing Ice at the Sebastiani Movie Theater in Sonoma, CA. Expect a post all on its own about that theater soon. If you’re ever in the area, I really recommend catching an evening show there after you’ve spent an afternoon wine tasting at the various wineries’ tasting rooms that dot village square.

by

Eulogizing Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert passed away yesterday. He was 70.

If you read movie reviews regularly, you probably have a favorite critic. The wild-haired, bushy mustached Gene Shalit has his fans. I feel like Leonard Maltin owes Doug Benson an agent’s fee for introducing his podcast listeners to Maltin’s reviews. Others will identify themselves with the late Gene Siskel or Joel Siegel. I, like many, always preferred Roger Ebert.

I first encountered Roger Ebert when I was a young boy, turning the dial on my parents’s wood-pane-encased television on a weekend morning. Siskel and Ebert At the Movies was on. They were talking in a  movie theater, about a movie I was probably too young to watch and whose name is lost to time. But, I found them both fascinating, though to be truthful it would be years before I could remember which one was Siskel and which one was Ebert. Their thumbs up, thumbs down rating system quickly made its way into the US’s, and my own, lexicon.

I didn’t always agree with Ebert’s reviews (I still haven’t quite forgiven him for calling The Blair Witch Project a masterpiece), but I always respected him. Like any great review, his reviews were both well thought out and well written. I wish my reviews were written half as well as his. His reviews didn’t come from his ego, and he wasn’t trying to show you that he knew more than you did like those guys at the New York Times. His reviews came from a love for the movies. They were often a jumping off point for my cousin and I when we would talk movies.

It wasn’t until Esquire published his portrait in February, 2010 that I knew about the extent of his battle with cancer. Ebert’s perseverance while battling cancer was extraordinary. The disease took his jaw, but not his will. His final byline, a review of The Host, was published just days before his death.  It saddens me how many people, both celebrities and in our own lives, that we’ve lost to cancer. I hope a cure is discovered in our lifetime.

Ebert was the gold standard of movie reviewers. American cinema is lesser for Roger Ebert’s passing.

by

Warm Bodies – Review

5/5 – Warm Bodies is like the anti-Twilight. See it!

Zombies are very hot right now. Just ask Robert Kirkman, the creator of The Walking Dead. The success of The Walking Dead has led to a huge influx in the amount zombie-related fiction making its way to movie theaters, bookshelves and comic racks. Unfortunately, the majority of these zombie stories have me wishing that the copycats would leave the zombies to Kirkman. Thankfully, Warm Bodies does not fall into that category.

I loved Warm Bodies. It works on so many levels. It’s a great satire of both zombie fiction and modern society. It points out that we are already a bit zombie-like before any zombie plague hits, walking around heads down, staring into our iPhones, oblivious to the world around us. Warm Bodies is my favorite horror comedy since Shaun of the Dead and my favorite adaption of Romeo and Juliet since West Side Story. I never thought I would have to ever write that previous sentence, but I did.Thanks, Warm Bodies..

Most of the movie is narrated by R, the main zombie played by Nicholas Hoult. Yes, that’s the awkward kid from About A Boy. No, I don’t get how he grew up to be so good looking either. But he did, and he’s better looking dead than I am alive. Theresa Palmer seems to be channeling her inner Hayden Panettiere when she plays J. Hoult and Palmer have great chemistry, which is something, because unlike the marble-like vampires of Twilight, R is a rotting corpse.

Rob Corrdry wins in Warm Bodies. He’s M, another zombie, and the closest thing R has to a friend. Without a doubt, M has the best line in the movie, which I won’t spoil here.

When the first Twilight movie was released, before supernatural romance has its own shelf at your local Barnes and Noble (I’m not kidding. Look for it next time you’re there), I joked that I wanted to write a movie about a girl falling in love with a zombie. We laughed it off; a zombie isn’t something you’d expect a girl to fall for. Needless to say, that joke movie idea I had was nowhere near as good as what Warm Bodies turned out to be.

There will be obvious comparisons made to Twilight. Yes, they both fall into the supernatural romance genre and star guys that make girls giggle. But Warm Bodies is so much more than those surface comparisons. I’m guessing those Twilight similarities helped keep people away from Warm Bodies in the theater. It would have kept me away if I hadn’t frst seen the trailer. Warm Bodies did nowhere near the business that the Twilight films did. If that’s not proof that there’s no justice in the world, I don’t know what is.

Upside of a zombie apocalypse? No more Twilight movies.
by

Skyfall – Review

5/5 – SKYFALL IS AWESOME!

I thought about making this only a three word review: Skyfall is awesome. And leave it at that. Three words, a shot of the poster, and call it a day. It doesn’t come from laziness. It’s just matter of fact. Skyfall is awesome. That’s really all you need to know.

How awesome is Skyfall? I rank it higher than The Dark Knight Rises in movies from 2012. And I loved The Dark Knight Rises. Not good enough? Fine. Skyfall is better than a unicorn riding a dragon. That’s right.

Skyfall is more awesome than this!
Still not good enough? Are you nuts? That’s a mythical beast riding another mythical beast! Fine, Skyfall is more awesome than Batman riding a Tiger with bat wings.
Why does this Tiger have bat wings? I don’t know, but it’s awesome. Not as awesome as Skyfall, though.
I haven’t seen many James Bond movies. I can count the ones I’ve seen one one hand and still have fingers left over. Skyfall makes me want to watch all of them. The only thing stopping me is that I’m not sure if I will enjoy them as much as I enjoyed Skyfall. Maybe I’ll just watch Skyfall again.
I’m really hoping that director Sam Mendes comes back for the next James Bond film. He’s already said he’s out. Hopefully the trucks of money the producers drive to his door changes his mind.
by

Dark Shadows – Review

2/5 – Another
2/5 – Watch the trailer instead.

After the disappointment that was Alice in Wonderland, I had high hopes for Dark Shadows to be the movie that would redeem Tim Burton in my eyes. The trailer looked very funny. But as can often be the case, the best parts of Dark Shadows were in the trailer.

If you’re not familiar with the origins of Dark Shadows, the film is based on an old soap opera of the same name. A family from the 60s (or the 70s in the film version) has a very distant relative move in with them…namely a recently unearthed vampire ancestor.

The trailer for Dark Shadows made the movie seem like it would be very tongue-in-cheek and campy, like the excellent Brady Bunch movie from the 1990s. Unfortunately, the tongue-in-cheek campiness is kept to a minimum beyond what what was already shown in the trailer.

Instead, we get a movie that was overly long and slowly paced. The screenplay seemed lazily written. Maybe screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith was trying to make the movie feel like a soap opera brought to the big screen, but there was a little too much deus-ex-machina towards the end. One character gets special powers out of nowhere, turning the tide in the climatic battle. The love story between Barnabus and Victoria never goes anywhere and seems tacked on. Victoria is often relegated to the background, despite being Barnabus’s supposed reincarnated true love.

The movie is not completely bad. There are some funny lines and amusing montages, but as a whole it’s a disappointment.

Johnny Depp should play Michael Jackson in the Michael Jackson story.

After watching the movie, I turned on an episode of the Dark Shadows television series on Netflix’s streaming service. Wow, I thought the movie was slow. It amazes me that fans can watch this show in marathon sessions. Dark Shadows the TV show is the definition of slow. I didn’t even make it to the introduction of Barnabus. There was a scene where a character was staring at the wall of a crypt for a good 30 seconds. It was like watching a small-screen adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

I recommend listening to the This American Life story on a Dark Shadows convention more than watching either the movie or TV versions of Dark Shadows. That story was great.

I haven’t given up on Tim Burton yet. I still very much look forward to watching Frankenweenie. The trailer looks great, but then again so did the trailer for Dark Shadows.

by

ParaNorman – Review

I was really excited to see ParaNorman.  I remember cackling during the trailer in the theater every time that little Igor kid would come on. And this would happen every time I saw the trailer. So when ParaNorman arrived from Netflix, I immediately put it in my DVD player.

That funny Igor kid never showed up.

When is this kid appearing, already?

It turns out that the movie I was excited to see was Frankenweenie. It was about a half hour into the movie that I realized this. Oops.

The movie I was looking for.

ParaNorman is an enjoyable movie, even if it’s not the movie I meant to watch. I didn’t laugh during it as much as I did during the trailer for Frankenweenie, but it is still a well told story. It’s like The Sixth Sense for kids. Young Norman sees dead people, a lot of dead people. There’s a cool sequence where he’s walking down the street and we see all the ghosts that he sees. It basically turns his quiet suburban commute into the crowded streets of Manhattan. A lot of people are dead, and they all want to talk to Norman.

I was surprised to see ParaNorman earn a Best Animated Feature nomination. It was not even in the same league as Wreck-It-Ralph. But I can see why kids would love this movie: ghosts, parents who just don’t understand, kindhearted fat jokes. What more could a kid want?

Still, I hope Frankenweenie is better.

by

Osombie – Review

1/5 – This puts the zero in Zero Dark Thirty.

After watching Zero Dark Thirty, I headed home and popped its sequel, Osombie. I won’t lie, I was genuinely excited for a movie about Osama Bin Laden coming back as a zombie. Sadly, it didn’t live up to my expectations.

Savage Dragon did it better.

Osombie begins where Zero Dark Thirty ends, with the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. Unlike the raid in Zero Dark Thirty, Osombie reveals that UBL had zombies in his basement. Before being taken out by Seal Team Six, UBL downs a couple of One A Day vitamins zombie pills.

That’s right, I said zombie pills. The zombies in Osombie are the results of a super soldier program gone wrong. Instead of making Captain America, the program created a bunch of biters. I can’t help but think this was a needlessly complicated plot device. With a zombie outbreak, you don’t need to spend this long explaining how the zombies came to be. They’re here. They’re hungry. That’s enough.

I had a few problems with Osombie beyond the zombie pills. For one, if the US and British governments are aware of the zombie problem, why did they only send a small group of soldiers to wander around the desert to deal with it? The US and Great Britain are worried about the zombies making it over the border and a worldwide outbreak ensuing. So they end a half dozen people, on foot, to deal with it? I get not wanting to risk your own soldiers getting infected by sending legions of soldiers, but this is ridiculous.

All of the characters behave like they have god-mode turned on. Unfortunately for each of them, god-mode decides to turn itself off without warning.

God-mode fail.

Can we get that one guy in the squad to put his shirt back on? I get it, you want to show off your abs to your colleagues, but you do realize that the #1 cause of zombie infection is them biting through bare skin, right? Not to mention the skin cancer risks.

“I didn’t know the risks! For the love of God, where’s my shirt?!”

It’s amazing how little seems to happen over the course of the movie. Most of the film is spent following these soldiers riffing on things while wandering around the desert. It’s like Clerks 2 meets a sandbox. The most annoying of these characters is Joker, the “funny” guy in the group. His jokes are so lame that he had to steal a bit from another movie. Don’t think I didn’t notice that, screenwriter Kurt Hale.

I kept rooting for a group of zombies to just devour Joker.

Osombie is such a great name for a zombie movie! Why’d they waste that on this script? The movie plays out like it was written from someone’s first draft from Screenwriting 1. The only way I’d be able to recommend this movie is if Kevin, Mike and Bill make a Rifftrax for it.

by

Life Of Pi – Review

4/5 – Ang Lee earned his Best Director Oscar

With less than eight hours to go before the start of the Oscars, I upped the number of Best Picture nominees I had seen by one by catching an early afternoon showing of Life of Pi. It’s good we showed up early, because it looked like everyone in the vicinity of Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill Cinemas had the same idea.

Before the movie began, the old lady sitting behind me decided to walk her husband through the entire story of the movie in her loud old lady voice. Thanks, lady, you rock. I haven’t read the book, so I thought about turning around and yelling “Dobby dies in book 7!” at Madame de Spoiler. Instead, headphones went in, Foo Fighters came on, and spoilers were avoided. I have to admit, I considered keeping Foo Fighters going a little longer when I saw the first trailer was for the latest  Fast and Furious movie.

Life of Pi started, and despite the constant running commentary from the old lady behind me (She loves meer cats! Tigers are scary!), it was a really good movie. First off, it’s beautifully shot, and the 3D looks awesome. This is the best 3D I’ve seen in a live action movie since Avatar. But unlike Avatar, everything doesn’t look like it’s CGI. Oh, a lot of this movie is CGI, but it doesn’t have that telltale fake look that CGI usually has. I was surprised to find out that the tiger in Life of Pi, Richard Parker, was a CG creature throughout the entire movie. I thought they used an actual tiger for at least some of the scenes.

Cesi n’est pas un tigre.

Life of Pi walks the line between endearing and tragic so well, and that’s what I think is the main reason why I liked it so much. Pi goes through an experience that rivals Job’s, but the movie never turns into maudlin naval gazing. Instead, it’s lifted by by its heartwarming and humorous parts.

I’m glad Ang Lee won the Best Director Oscar for Life of Pi. With Kathryn Bigelow and Ben Affleck both snubbed for Zero Dark Thirty and Argo, I was happy to see it go to Ang Lee for Life of Pi over Steven Spielberg for Lincoln.

See Life of Pi in the theater, and see it in 3D. The shots of the movie during the Oscars didn’t look quite as magical in 2D on my home TV as they did in 3D in the theater.

Parting thought: Gerard Depardieu is a jerk.

Jerk.