Category Archives: Movies

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New Favorite NYC Movie Theater

New York City, say hello to your new favorite movie theater. It’s the AMC on Broadway and 84th. “Wait a second, I’ve been there before. It’s nothing special,” you might say. Oh, but it is. The theater has been completely overhauled and is now AWESOME.

You’ll notice the changes as soon as you walk in. The concession area is updated and modern, with a self serve ICEE machine, and that “what-crazy-combination-can-you-come-up-with?” 100-choice soda fountain.

Gone are the cramped seats, which have been replaced with rows of oversized, cushioned recliners. The chair are comfortable! And when I say, they go back, I mean they go back. I’m not talking about reclining like coach seats on a plane. I’m talking about reclining like your dad’s Barcalounger, with a footrest and everything. The aisles are huge, like exit row huge. This is the movie theater equivalent of sitting in first class.

Now this is a movie seat.

Now this is a movie seat.

This is the view from the seat while it's fully reclined. There's no problem seeing the screen.

Even when your seat is fully reclined, you have a great view of the screen.

Most importantly, when you buy your tickets in advance, you select your seats! Yes! I have wanted New York City movie theaters to embrace this for years, ever since my first trip to the Arclight in LA. It is the best! Now you no longer need to arrive at the movie theater an hour beforehand to find five seats together. Unlike the Arclight, the ticket was the same price as other AMC theaters. There was no upcharge for selecting your seat.

I hope AMC does a good job of upkeeping this theater. Those reclining seats are awesome, but the control buttons look like they’re easily broken. And I hope the ushers enforce the assigned seating. I saw some self-enforcement going on when I saw Gravity there this weekend, but that was for a weeks old movie in a barely full theater. A blockbuster on opening night might be a different story.

The 84th St AMC seems to still be a hidden gem. Check it out now before people realize how awesome it is to see a movie there.

 

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Thor: The Dark World – Review

thor the dark world poster

It was a bright, sunny Saturday morning when we headed to the movie theater. The boys were seeing Thor 2 and the girls were seeing About Time. I hated having to decide between the two, as Rachel McAdams looks adorable in the About Time poster, but there was no denying the siren song of seeing Thor: The Dark World before it crossed oven with Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD (next week!).

Adorable

Adorable

I thoroughly enjoyed Thor: The Dark World. Like the previous Thor movie, the takes-themselves-so-seriously Asgard scenes were balanced out with slapstick comedy during the Earth-based scenes. Unlike the first Thor movie though, I never felt like we needed to get back to Earth right now whenever Asgard was on-scene.  Asgard is fleshed out more in this sequel, and while the individual members of the Asgard supporting cast are not on the screen very long, they are on just enough to make me want to see more of them in Thor 3.

There has been rumors circulating recently that Jaimie Alexander, who plays Sif, will be playing Wonder Woman in the upcoming Superman/Batman movie. After seeing her in Thor: The Dark World, this seems like the most perfect of perfect casting. Because her Sif armor isn’t that far removed from Wonder Woman’s current costume, it almost seemed like Wonder Woman was guest-starring in Thor: The Dark World.

 

Sif or Wonder Woman?

Sif or Wonder Woman?

Tom Hiddleston as Loki steals every scene he is in. It’s amazing what Hiddleston and the Marvel movies have done for the character of Loki. Before the first Thor movie, Loki was one of Marvel’s lamest villains. With the exception of when Walter Simonson was writing him, I can think of few comic book examples of Loki pre-Thor movie in which Loki didn’t come off as lame. But Hiddleston has helped to reinvent the character. But now, thanks to writer Kieren Gillen, Loki is one of my favorite comic book characters. I wonder if Marvel would have given Gillen his shot at reviventing Loki in the comics if Hiddleston didn’t create so many fans of the character in the movies.

hiddleston thor 2

We need to start the Tom Hiddleston for 13th Doctor campaign right now!
#Hiddleston13thDoctor

Often fantasy and science fiction are squarely separated from each other, but Thor: The Dark World does a good job of blending the two. The evil dark elves ride in starfighters that could have been in the latest Star Trek movie. Science and magic are weaved together, which I liked, because Thor exists in the same world as Tony Stark. Odin makes a point in this movie to state that Asgardians are not actual Gods. And the story plays that out. They’re more like mythological extra-dimensional aliens.

If you saw Thor: The Dark World already, hopefully you stayed until after the credits. Does anyone leave the theater any more before the credits are completely over in a Marvel movie? The scene with the Collector made me NERDGASM. No, not because of the Collector himself. Who cares about him? Because of what the Collector says, namely that THE TESSERACT AND AETHER ARE INFINITY GEMS!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! Avengers 3: The Infinity Gauntlet? Yes, please! If you haven’t read the Infinity Gauntlet, I highly recommend buying it today and reading it. It’s one of my favorite comic book stories ever, it will fill you in on who that big purple guy at the end of Avengers is and why his appearance was the signal of something awesome coming.

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Welcome to The All-New Tuesday Night Movies!

Welcome to the All-New Tuesday Night Movies! Sit down, make yourself at home. I hope you like what we’ve done with the place. After a few years hosting the site at Blogger, the opportunity arose to give the site a major face lift. Sadly, that meant leaving the familiar confines of Blogger behind.

But I think you’ll agree that this new site is a lot nicer! The new design is thanks to TNM contributor Dave Tomko, who graciously offered to give Tuesday Night Movies this major makeover. Posts will now be categorized and labeled with what they deal with, for example movies, television or comic books. Besides looking cooler and being friendlier to navigate, you can access the Tuesday Night Movies Facebook and Twitter pages straight from the homepage.

Also, you might have noticed The Store on the homepage. The Store takes you over to a curated showcase of some of our favorite things on amazon.com. If you plan on making any purchases at Amazon, please click over to Amazon through our Store link. You’ll find the same experience and prices as if you had go to Amazon yourself, and you’ll be helping keep Tuesday Night Movies around to provide you with movies and television reviews, convention reports and other fun stuff.

In the top navigation bar is a link to The Billy and Bryan Show podcast. I co-host a podcast! What? You didn’t know? It’s true! On the podcast, my co-host Bryan and I talk about a different topic each week, often with guests. We do a Top-5 list related to that episode’s theme every episode. You can download the podcast free on iTunes, or stream it from The Billy and Bryan Show page.

I’m hoping you enjoy the All-New Tuesday Night Movies!

Billy Henehan – Editor-in-Chief

 

 

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Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods – Review

5/5 – Fascinating.

I had wanted to watch Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods for some time now. Unfortunately, Netflix didn’t have it on disc or streaming, and my halfhearted attempts at tracking down a copy never produced any results. One of my friends brought the movie up in conversation recently, asking if I ever saw it. When I mentioned I hadn’t, he lent it to me. Success!

The movie spans the entirety of Grant Morrison’s career up to when the documentary was made in 2010. Grant talks about his childhood, growing up the son of an anti-nuclear activist. Hearing about some of the places his dad would bring him as a child makes be better understand what makes Grant such a unique guy.

Grant’s charm definitely comes through in the film. He’s not full of himself, and doesn’t treat his own writing like it’s the work of God. I had the chance to meet Grant last year at NYCC. I was intimidated, but he turned out to be one of the nicest and enthusiastic comic book creators I’ve ever met.

Hearing Grant’s theories about chaos magic are absolutely fascinating. He clearly believes it works, and he and others point out instances where Grant’s chaos magic does seem to have indeed worked. Who knows, maybe chaos magic is real. If it is, I feel that Grant may be tuned into its workings far beyond the scope of most people.

Interspersed throughout the movie are The Office-style talking head interviews with comics creators talking about Grant. It’s interesting to hear what his colleagues and collaborators have to say about him, especially Phil Jimenez relating his experience of working on The Invisibles with Grant.

Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods is intimidating. No, not because of Grant Morrison’s mind full of crazy ideas. Well, yes, there is that. But I mean because it’s two full discs long. The special features disc takes up as much time as the movie itself. But you cannot skip the second disc! Trust me on this one. In some ways, the second disc, despite being full of bits that didn’t make the movie, is better than the movie itself. There’s an interview of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely together that is a must see for anyone who’s a fan of their work together. Hearing them talk about their collaborative process is a real treat. If you read Grant’s run on X-Men, you really have to watch this second disc. He goes into detail about his entire run, including how Marvel treated his work towards the end.

This conversation is the best part of the 2-disc DVD set.

Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods is a must-see if you enjoy Grant Morrison’s writing. This very personal documentary gives us access to this creator that I don’t think we’ve had anywhere else, outside of maybe parts of Grant’s book, Supergods. Hopefully one of your friends has the DVD sitting in his house too.

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The Other Guys – Review

5/5 – This peacock flies.

I distinctly remember not wanting to see The Other Guys when it was first released. I can’t remember why, but I can remember not wanting to see it.

I ended up catching it on HBO recently through no fault of my own. I was vacationing in Cancun. There was a torrential rainstorm outside. Some other movie had just ended on Mexican HBO and The Other Guys came on. I wasn’t even paying attention as it started. But by ten minutes into the movie, I was hooked. I wouldn’t let the channel be changed and once I returned home to the US, I rented the movie from Netflix just to watch it all the way through from the beginning.

Been there.

Without a doubt, The Other Guys is the funniest movie I’ve seen in a while. It is so over the top and so ridiculous, but the movie just goes with it. Even when it questions its own ridiculousness, it answers back with an even more ridiculous answer. Why does Mark Wahlberg’s rageaholic Detective Hoitz know how to dance like a ballerina? Simple, it’s because he took classes so that he could “make fun of guys when we were kids to show them how queer they were.”

Will Ferrell is hilarious as the buttoned up Detective Allen Gamble. This role is up there with my favorite Will Ferrell roles of all time. When we got Gamble, er I mean Gator’s, origin story, I was dying.

Careful, Hoitz. Gator don’t take no shit.

If you get your hands on the DVD, make sure to watch the gag reel and improv outtakes. I can’t believe I’m recommending a gag reel, as it’s usually a collection of boring “watch this actor break and then everyone on set laughs” clips one after the other, but the gag reel for The Other Guys is really funny, as is seeing what improvised lines didn’t make the final cut of the movie. Rob Huebel really shines here.

Samuel L. Jackson and Duane “The Rock” Johnson steal the movie as action-hero cops in the beginning of the film. I still laugh to myself whenever I think of the line, “Aim for the bushes.”

With all the serious movies that he’s done, I forgot how funny Michael Keaton can be. He’s awesome as the precinct’s captain that can’t stop quoting TLC songs.

The combination of a very funny script and a cast who go the distance with their improvised lines make The Other Guys a must-see movie. Definitely watch it. Twice.

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Jeff Who Lives at Home – Review

2/5 – Watch Cyrus instead
On paper, I should love Jeff, Who Lives at Home. It stars two of my favorite comedic actors, Jason Segel and Ed Helms. I really liked the Duplass brothers’ previous movie, Cyrus. But Jeff, Who Lives at Home just did not work for me.
I’m not exactly sure why Jeff, Who Lives at Home didn’t work for me. Maybe I wasn’t in the right mindset that particular night for a story involving kismet and the interconnectedness of things. Or maybe, the movie is just too slow. That’s the danger of making a lazy stoner your main character; you end up devoting a good amount of time to that character being a lazy stoner.
Jason Segal and Ed Helms star in Two Men, One Bathtub
I thought the ending of Jeff, Who Lives at Home was terrific. It not only paid off on things set up earlier in the film, but it was also in my opinion, the best part of the movie. It was both touching and thrilling. However, I don’t think I can recommend sitting through the rest of the movie in order to reach this high point.
Jeff, Who Lives at Home is currently streaming on Netflix and Amazon Prime, and is available to purchase on Amazon.

 

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Pre-Order Kotobukiya’s NYCC Exclusive R2-Q5 ARTFX+ Statue

Kotobukiya has opened up pre-orders for its NYCC 2013 exclusive R2-Q5 ARTFX+ statue. The statue is $29.99 and will ship out one week after NYCC. Shipping adds over $11 to your order. Unfortunately, they are not taking any pre-orders for pick-up at NYCC. If you’re definitely attending NYCC this year, you may want to wait to buy it at the show and save yourself the cost of shipping.

But if you’re a Star Wars fan who can’t make it to NYCC this year and has a thing for dark side astromech droids, this is your perfect opportunity to secure a R2-Q5 for yourself!

The NYCC version of R2-Q5 comes with an exclusive coin.

What’s with companies and using R2-Q5 as their NYCC exclusive? The same droid was a Hallmark NYCC exclusive Christmas ornament last year.

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Mud – Review

5/5 – Like Stand By Me, but with more McConaughey

When you watch Stand By Me, do you think to yourself, “This movie is good, but it would be great if it had Matthew McConaughey in it.” If you do, then Mud is the movie for you.

Okay, maybe I’m being too glib. Mud is neither a carbon copy nor a rip off of Stand By Me. But I am guessing that if like one one, you will also like the other. Tonally, they are very similar.

Of course McConaughey is shirtless in Mud.

McConaughey plays the titular character in Mud, but he’s not the main character of the film.  That would be Ellis, a young teen who, along with his best friend, Neckbone, encounters Mud living in the boat they want to salvage from up in a tree. I’d like to pause here and say that Neckbone is the coolest name I’ve heard for a supporting character this year. Who names a kid Neckbone? It’s not his given name, that gets used a couple of time throughout the movie, so how on Earth does a kid pick up that nickname? I’m hoping for a Neckbone: Origins prequel in 2014.

Neckbone and Ellis

Mud is a gritty movie. Not over the top gritty like Sin City, but gritty in a these are real people with real problems kind of way. People who have fallen out love, people who have fallen on the wrong side of the law, or in Mud’s case the wrong side of some very bad men; these are the people that inhabit the world of the film Mud. But like the character Mud, the the overall film Mud has a lot of heart.

Okay, Matt, we get it. You’re ripped. Put a shirt on already.

One word of caution though, be careful what advice you take from Mud. As it turns out, a snake will cross a braided rope.

Mud is a serious contender for the best of 2013. Buy it now on Amazon.

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This is the End – Review

5/5 – Funniest movie of 2013

On the eve of This is the End’s release, I still  had no idea what the movie was about. The poster tells you nothing. I hadn’t seen any trailers. I wrongly assumed it was a Hangover-like bachelor party movie. All I knew about it was that quite a few people  whose opinion I like said it was hilarious. And really, that’s all the information I needed.

I really liked that the actors in this film are all playing themselves. It helps that they’re all real life friends who have worked together before, as they take a lot of comedy from their past experiences working together. Like when James Franco showed off his art to Seth Rogen.

I want similar paintings at my place.

The This is the End poster says “with Michael Cera and Emma Watson.” Oh man, if these two have had funnier roles before, please point me in the direction those movies. Michael Cera was especially hilarious, playing the douchiest version of himself imaginable. There are more celebrity cameos that I’d hate to spoil here…they’re just too damn funny.

George Michael is all growns up.

There are so many funny scenes in this movie. The rapture of James Franco might be my favorite. That, or how Michael Cera comes to his end.

As I was watching the movie, I found myself falling in the Friends/Sex and the City game of trying to match my friends up with the characters on screen. Who in your group would be the Danny in the post-apocalyptic world? After you figure that out, you might want to avoid that guy from here on out.

If you haven’t seen This is the End yet, I highly recommend it. It’s easily the funniest movie I’ve seen in the theater this year. It’s probably too late to see it in any theater unless you have a third or fourth run theater near you, but it will be available on DVD and Blu-ray on 10/1 from places such as Amazon.

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GI Joe: Retaliation – Review

5/5 – COBRAAAAAAAAAAAA!

When I first saw the trailer for GI Joe: Retaliation, with its ninjas swinging from mountaintops, I thought “Man, this looks awesome,” immediately followed by “Man, I bet this is going to suck.” It’s a lesson that has been beaten into me by the previous GI Joe movie, the Transformers franchise. There are enough cool looking action scenes to cobble together a trailer that makes me want to see what ends up being a tremendously awful movie.

Despite feeling that I really should know better, I still wanted to see GI Joe: Retaliation. I missed it in the theater, but I caught it on Blu-ray recently.

I wish I saw it in the theater. It’s awesome. If you were a fan of the GI Joe cartoon and comic from the 1980s, you will love this movie. It is so evocative of the cartoon that I half-expected to hear Cold Slither on the movie’s soundtrack.

Dear Michael Bay: GI Joe: Retaliation is how you make a movie based on a 1980s franchise and not be accused of ruining people’s childhoods.

The movie was awesome from the moment I popped the disc in. When it loads, you choose your side, GI Joe or Cobra. Depending on which side you choose, you’ll see different clips and graphics on the menu screens. I thought it was a cool touch. Also, Cobraaaaaaaaaa!

In the behind the scenes special features included on the Blu-ray, it’s made clear why this GI Joe movie is so much better than the previous one. The main reason is director Jon Chu. He’s such a fan of the 1980s franchise and it comes through in the film. He pays a lot of fan service, but it’s not hollow. He’s putting this stuff in there because he’s a fan himself. I’m really hoping Chu sticks around for the next movie. Also, the producers wanted to ground it more in reality. Gone are the crazy super soldier suits and sci-fi vehicles. There’s still some cool tech in this movie, like Roadblock’s click-in, click-out arsenal, but overall, the weapons and vehicles in this movie seem much more grounded in real world technology.

As a fan of the TV show Friday Night Lights, I was super-excited when I realized that Lady Jaye was played by Adrianne Palicki, aka Tyra Collette. Seeing her kick ass in GI Joe: Retaliation made me wish that her Wonder Woman pilot had been picked up.

Hey! Wasn’t Scarlet the red head?

After realizing that Tyra was Lady Jaye, it struck me that quite a few notable Dillon graduates have gone on to the military, as both Riggins and Landry were in Battleship.

If there’s any disappointment to be had with GI Joe: Retaliation, it’s the casting of Rza as The Blind Master. I haven’t seen acting this wooden since Hayden Christensen in Star Wars: Episode II. His line delivery was beyond comical. He sounds like a guy imitating a Kung Fu movie. On the one hand, in the behind the scenes special features, he clearly comes across as a true fan of the Joes, and must have been crazy excited to be part of this movie. He even notes that The Blind Master has only appeared in the comics, never on the cartoon, so he was the first to give voice to him. But that voice is terrible! It sounds like a 10-year old voicing Doctor Doom. I couldn’t help but laugh every time he was saying his lines. Seriously, it was ridiculous.

The coolest to come out of Rza’s casting as The Blind Master?
Rza action figure!

DO NOT PASS JINX IF YOU WANT TO AVOID SPOILERS!

Remember the original Jinx action figure that had red nail polish so you knew she was a girl ninja?
 

When GI Joe: Retaliation was delayed, I heard it was because of Channing Tatum being a much bigger star now than he was when the first movie was released. The producers realized that Tatum was arguably now the biggest star in the movie, and was being killed off very early on. The delay, as I heard, came from them rewriting, shooting new scenes and editing the movie so that Tatum lived. But then when I watched the movie, fully expecting Tatum’s Duke to survive, he totally bit it. So what’s up? Anyone know the real reason the movie was delayed from the theater for so long?

Who ordered the stripping soldiers? Because here they are!

I was kind of bummed when Cobra Commander kicked Destro out of the band. Not cool CC.

When Roadblock and Firefly faced off against each other, I thought, “Wait, isn’t Roadblock supposed to be the one with the Cajun accent?” And then I thought, “Wait, what exactly is Firefly’s accent? Is that southern? Australian? South Australian?” I liked that in a special feature on the Blu-Ray, they addressed the mystery of Firefly’s odd accent.

If you were a fan of the GI Joe: A Real American Hero cartoon from the 1980s and like your action movies to be fun, I think you’ll enjoy GI Joe: Retaliation.

Yo Joe!