Tag Archives: Jesse Eisenberg

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Now You See Me – Review

now you see me poster

Watching Now You See Me, I couldn’t help but think I was watching Ocean’s 11 with magic. This isn’t a complaint, just an observation. And it’s not just because Now You See Me is a heist movie. It’s also the tone, the snappy dialogue and that the audience is worked through each magic heist after the fact.

Just going by the cast alone, I’m surprised I didn’t see Now You See Me when it was in the theater. Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Jesse Eisenberg…these are people who draw me to movies. Isla Fisher too, but for, um, different reasons.

now your see me henley tank

The highlight of Now You See Me for me was that Morgan Freeman’s character, Thaddeus Bradley, narrates a movie within the movie, which made me laugh because Morgan Freeman IS movie narration these days.

There was something about the ending that didn’t jibe right with me. I’ll go into it after this picture of Dave Franco doing his best Gambit, so that anyone who wants to avoid SPOILERS, can.

now your see me dave franco gambit

Okay, so Mark Ruffalo’s character, Dylan Rhodes , the lawman who is always one step behind The Four Horsemen, is revealed to be the mastermind. I’m fine with that. I personally thought it was going to be Melanie Laurent’s character, Alma Dray, for a few reasons. One, it looked like she was feigning being asleep when Ruffalo walked into her room in New Orleans and found her passed out reading that book on magic. It seemed like she wasn’t really asleep and was planting that there for his benefit. Two, it really did seem that she could have fudged her whole Interpol background when she showed up. But I was wrong. Rhodes is the mastermind. Fine.  And I thought they explained Dylan’s motivation well (though if Alma was the mastermind, his motivations would easily have carried over to her without any many changes). What I don’t get is, is The Eye real? And if it is, does Dylan actually have a connection to it, or was that all for the benefit of tricking The Four Horsemen into doing what he needed them to do.  I noticed on IMDB that Now You See Me 2 is in pre-production. Hopefully some of these questions get answered in the sequel.

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At The Theater #39: Love and Other Drugs

“1996” is the first thing you see on the screen at the start of Love and Other Drugs. The first thing you hear is Two Princes by Spin Doctors. I immediately thought to myself, “Why?” Two Princes hit the height of its popularity a couple of years earlier was so overplayed that by 1996 no one could stand it. True story: It wasn’t until 2005 that I was able to listen to Two Princes again without rolling my eyes. But here is Jake Gyllenhaal, dancing away to Two Princes in this small electronics store where he works.

It took awhile for me to figure out why Love and Other Drugs takes place in 1996 instead of 2010. Best Buy has replaced the small electronics store, but it’s basically the same place. Pharmaceutical companies are still pumping out new and improved antidepressants. There’s still no cure for Parkinson’s. Love interests that don’t want relationships still work in coffee shops. Why 1996? It wasn’t until about halfway through Love and Other Drugs that I got my answer, Viagra.

Looking at this ad might make you need Viagra.
Slick marketing, Pfizer.

When Viagra first comes up in Love and Other Drugs, it’s still in development at Pfizer and Jake Gyllenhaal, now a struggling Pfizer sales rep, has a serious hard-on to sell it. I thought it was going to be a one-off joke, similar to his showing off a Star-Tac earlier while he was working at the electronics store. But the second half of the movie largely becomes the Viagra movie. Every character gets caught up in the Viagra tidal wave. Jake Gyllenhaal and girlfriend Anne Hathaway cheer when it’s mentioned on Conan, doctors who previously snubbed Gyllenhaal beg him for hookups, and the little blue pill powers a crazy pharma-sex party that would have probably sent all my college friends into pharmaceuticals if Love and Other Drugs was released in when it takes place. There’s even a great “when Viagra goes wrong” bit that was one of the funniest parts of the movie.

Josh Gad plays Jake Gyllenhaal’s brother in Love and Other Drugs. If Jesse Eisenberg is the poor man’s Michael Cera, Josh Gad is the poor man’s Jack Black. If they make a sequel to Year One and can’t get Cera and Black, I think it would be kind of awesome if they got Gad and Eisenberg. I would definitely go see Year Two if it starred the poor man’s Michael Cera and the poor man’s Jack Black. That might be the only way I’d go see Year Two.

Josh Gad can also be the poor man’s Zach Galifianakis.

Love and Other Drugs has been getting a lot of press for both Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway having partial nude scenes in the movie. When Anne Hathaway’s bare breast first makes an appearance during a visit with Dr. Hank Azaria (not using his Dr. Nick voice), I thought “That wasn’t that big a deal. That was onscreen, what, five seconds?” I spoke (or thought in this case) too soon. Anne Hathaway’s breasts are in this movie more than Hank Azaria or Oliver Platt. Anne Hathaway’s breasts should have received third billing in the credits under Gyllenhaal and Hathaway. I hear they may be nominated for a Supporting Actress award this year.

Okay, put them away already.

Jake Gyllenhaal spends a lot of time disrobed as well in Love and Other Drugs. They are many shots of Gyllenbuutt and when he’s walking around in his underwear, I said out loud “Gyllenbaalls.”

I walked away liking Love and Other Drugs much more than I thought I would. If you’re looking for a good romantic comedy, try this one. It’s not cheesy, it will fulfill any questions you had about Anne Hathaway’s nipples, and you’ll get see the Gyllenbaalls you can take.
 
And if you really like Love and Other Drugs, Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman have a clone of it coming out soon called No Strings Attached. The preview was so much like Love and Other Drugs that I thought Love and Other Drugs repeated a joke during the movie and realized no, a very similar joke was in the No Strings Attached preview.

Love and Other Drugs – Anne Hathaway’s breasts = No Strings Attached.
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At The Theater #33: The Social Network

And the Academy Award for Most Over-Hyped Movie of the Year goes to…The Social Network.

Forgive my snark. The Social Network was great and I think that Aaron Sorkin is very deserving of a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination. Sorkin accomplished the double-impossible by making legal depositions and emails sound fascinating. But this movie is seriously over-hyped right now. Is it a good movie? Definitely. Is it “the Citizen Kane of this generation?” Not in my opinion.

The greatest thing to come out of The Social Network is Jesse Eisenberg stepping out of Michael Cera’s shadow. For some time now, he’s seemed like the poor man’s Michael Cera. But he really holds his own in this movie, and didn’t remind me of Michael Cera once.

Was Sean Parker involved in the casting for The Social Network? That’s the only explanation I can come up with for Justin Timberlake being cast in the role of Parker. Don’t misunderstand me, Justin Timberlake’s acting in this movie gave me yet another reason to be jealous of him, but Sean Parker is no Justin Timberlake. If anything, Parker looks more like Jesse Eisenberg…or maybe Carrot Top.

Admit it. You’re not sure if this is a picture of Sean Parker or Carrot Top.

The casting decision that took me out of the movie the most was that of Brenda Song as Facebook co-founder Eduardo’s girlfriend, Christy. After her second scene, I turned to Julie and said “Is that the girl from Zack and Cody?” One: Yes, it is. Two: Yes, I’ve watched The Suite Life of Zack of Cody on more than one occasion. Three: No, I don’t have any children that I can blame this one on.

Yes, I’ve also seen The Suite Life on Deck.

If you haven’t seen The Social Network yet, you really should. It’s a fascinating story about the start of a website that you’ve probably checked your news feed on more than once today.

The Facebook Movie definitely beats the Twitter TV show.

In my very early Oscar call, I think The Town should win best picture over The Social Network.

Three movies this week! And they were all good movies! Yes, I know I’m behind. I’m doing my best to catch up. Expect more multi-movie weeks as we get closer to December.

It seems fitting that with this post I’ve now added the ability for you to like these posts on Facebook using the button below. Click it. Your friends will be impressed.

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On The Couch #10: Zombieland

I feel sorry for the producers of World War Z. Is there any point to making a movie based on Max Brooks’s zombie outbreak book now that Zombieland is here? The stories are largely similar. Sure, Zombieland doesn’t have the worldwide scope that World War Z does, but it does a great job of capturing a lot of the elements that Brooks’s book did so well: the introverted loner who initially survives because he’s walled himself off from society, cross-country zombie hunting, and rules for staying alive in World War Z, er..I mean Zombieland.

I’m catching a theme running throughout the movies I’ve been watching on the couch lately. Food Inc. showed us how easily disease can spread when you have cows packed tight, wading in their own manure. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs showed the problems of trying to play God with your food. And now Zombieland tells us that the zombie outbreat was the result of a guy eating some tainted meat at a local fast food joint and quickly developing a taste for human flesh. The lesson is obvious; eat organic or become a brain-hungry creature of the night.

Zombieland proves how important it is to be ready for a zombie outbreak. True story: I was walking through Brooklyn one day on the phone with my girlfriend when I saw a limping, smelly, bloodshot-eyed guy shambling in my direction. I told my girlfriend “Either this guy is a crackhead or a zombie.” By the looks of him, I was guessing zombie. I instinctively looked around for a baseball bat, crowbar or shotgun…no luck. I made eye contact with the crackhead-zombie and he yelled “What are you looking at? I’ll kill you!” Whew, crisis averted. Everyone knows that if he was a zombie, he would have just said “Blaaaarggghhh…”

The unlikely heroes of Zombieland.

There are less than 10 credited roles in zombieland. The majority of the zombies are extras. Woody Harrelson is great as the bad-ass zombie killer Tallahassee. Superbad’s Emma Stone is equally bad-ass as zombie movie femme fatale Wichita.

Witchita: bangs + leather jacket + dark eyeshadow + shotgun = badass.

While watching Woody Harrelson fire off multiple firearms seems natural, the biggest casting surprise was Abigail Breslin as the shotgun wielding 12-year old Little Rock. It’s very entertaining to watch an actor take a 180-turn from what she’s known for, especially if the turn involves hunting zombies.

Is there anything creepier than a child zombie?

Jesse Eisenberg seems to be setting himself up as the go-to guy for when a movie can’t cast Michael Cera. In some scenes, he is so Michael Cera-like that the only thing separating the two of them is his bigger hair. Michael and Jesse should do a movie together. Would Youth in Revolt have been better if Francois was played by Jesse Eisenberg? Maybe not, but Michael Ceara and Not-Michael Cera really need some screentime to share.

You were awesome in Juno.

My favorite parts of Zombieland were the inventive use of titling throughout the movie that displayed on the screen showing Columbus’s rules of surviving in Zombieland. These would pop up any time that a character followed or, usually at the cost of their life, didn’t follow those rules.

There’s a reason there are so many fat zombies in Zombieland.

The special features on the Blu-ray aren’t too special. The deleted scenes were deleted for good reasons and the two making of featurettes spend most of the time showing you scenes you just watched in the movie. The main highlight of the making-of featurettes is Abigail Breslin complaining about how jealous she was of all the people in zombie make-up and how she begged the director constantly for her character to become a zombie in the end.

I’m giving Zombieland five stars on Netflix. It’s great. For the easily quesy among you, be forewarned the movie is very bloody right from the start. Looking back on it, the beginning of the movie seemed much more gory than the rest of the movie. Either they did a great mix of gore and humor throughout the film, or the they did a great job at desensitizing me to gore very quickly. Either way, kudos.
 

Batter up!

 
I think Bruce Springsteen sang it best:

Kids flash shotguns just like switchblades hustling for a Twinkie or two
The hungry and the hunted explode against the bat in his hand
They face off against each other out in the street
Down in Zom…bie…land