Tag Archives: JGL

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Premium Rush – Review

4/5 – Quite a rush!

I finally caught Premium Rush on Blu-ray this week. I missed it when it was in the theaters. Now that I’ve seen it, I wish I had seen it earlier. I remember not being that excited for it in the theater thanks to the trailer, which it turns out did not do this movie justice.

Premium Rush is an excellent thriller. I wouldn’t have expected a movie that takes place mostly on bicycles to be that entertaining, but Premium Rush really is great. The movie is told mostly in real time, between 5:30 PM and 7:30 PM on a weekday evening. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Wilee, a bike messenger with what appears to be a death wish. Granted, anyone who is a bike messenger in New York City is taking their life in their hands every day on the job, but Wilee lives at the edge. He doesn’t have brakes on his bike. He speeds through busy intersections and rides between buses.

Wilee picks up a package that gets him in a mess of trouble. It turns out there’s a McGuffin in this envelope that a bad man would like to get his hands on. It’s the bad guy in the movie, Bobby Monday (played by Michael Shannon), that was the only low point in the movie for me. At times, it just seemed like Shannon was overacting his part. But after watching the bonus features, it seems Michael Shannon might be like that in real life too, just full of crazed energy. So maybe I have to rescind this complaint.

Wole Parks does an awesome job as the other main antagonist in the movie, Wilee’s nemesis Manny. Manny is Wilee’s opposite in many ways. He wears a helmet, has brakes on his variable speed bike and trains daily, while Wilee thinks brakes will get you killed and rides a fixed gear, steel frame bike.

They’re chasing the ice cream man.

There are a few really cool chase sequences in the movie each involving a bicycle vs. something else. Bike vs. bike, bike vs. car, bike vs. pedestrian, they’re all done great. Director David Koepp does a really good job in the bonus features explaining how he wanted the bike chase sequences to each be very different from each other, and that’s what led them to having the bike face off against different modes of transportation.

My favorite of the chase sequences was the first one, with Wilee on his bike being pursued by Monday in his car. During this chase, a bicycle cop goes after Wilee as well. The bikes can go in places that cars can’t, which Koepp takes full advantage of.

It was also very cool to see Wilee’s point of view as he approaches a busy intersection. His decisions on different routes are mapped out on screen, showing which ways are perilous and which one will will work. The decision takes place in a split-second, but it was very cool seeing it mapped out like that.

It looked like at least 95% of this movie was shot on location. They are all over Manhattan, usually on the streets. It was very cool seeing actual New York City all over this movie. I felt like some of the geography didn’t match up during a couple of the chases, but for the most part, they were accurate.

Premium Rush is one of those rare movies where I recommend watching the special features after the movie. They are both very well done and definitely add to the experience of watching the movie.

Five people played Wilee in total throughout Premium Rush!

I wonder if Premium Rush is helping or hurting bike sales in New York City. After watching the movie, I plan on sticking to the subway.

Yeah…I think I’ll walk.

If I were to rank Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s movies from 2012, I’d rank them Looper, then The Dark Knight Rises, then Premium Rush, then Lincoln. How would you rank them? All-in-all, I scored those four movies 17/20 combined. That might make JGL the actor of the year for Tuesday Night Movies.

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Oscars Rage!!

What!? Are you kidding me?!

Pardon the rage. The Oscar nominations came out today. I don’t always agree with the nominations, but this year seems particularly egregious.

I have four major problems with this year’s Oscar nominations:

Ben Affleck gets snubbed for Directoring. I was shocked to find out Ben Affleck wasn’t nominated for Directoring. Did you see Argo? If you did, I’m guessing it’s easily in the top five movies you saw this year. It is the best of the movies I’ve seen that was nominated for Best Picture, and the second best movie I’ve seen this year. After seeing the Best Picture nominees, Argo seemed like a shoe-in for the Best Picture winner. But the last time a movie won Best Picture without the director being nominated for Directoring was Driving Miss Daisy in 1989.

I would definitely nominate Ben Affleck for Argo over Steven Spielberg for Lincoln. And I’d give Ben the award too.

Lincoln gets 12 nominations. Lincoln was a good movie. It was not a great movie. Daniel Day Lewis was awesome in it and deserves to win Actor in a Leading Role. He deserves every bit of praise he gets for playing Lincoln.

But Tommy Lee Jones? No way. I loved Tommy Lee Jones in Lincoln, but that’s because I love Tommy Lee Jones, and in Lincoln, Tommy Lee Jones was playing Tommy Lee Jones as a senator. Tommy Lee Jones is the new Jack Nicholson. You can put him in any role you want, but chances are you’re going get Tommy Lee Jones playing Tommy Lee Jones. Like I said, I love Tommy Lee Jones, but I don’t think he should have been nominated.

I saw three movies that Joseph Gordon Levitt was in this year. Out of the three, Lincoln came in third place. I don’t think Lincoln should have been nominated for Best Picture. It was good, not great. Its spot could easily have gone to Looper, the best JGL movie of 2012. But…

Looper was completely snubbed. Best movie of the year. Zero nominations. At the very, very least, it should have been nominated for Best Picture and Writing: Original Screenplay.

Wreck-It Ralph deserved a Best Picture nomination. I thought we were past the days of great animated movies being stuck in the Animated Feature Film ghetto. Wreck-It Ralph was awesome. It lived up to its name and wrecked it. It wasn’t technically a Pixar film, but for all intents and purposes, it was a Pixar movie. And like all Pixar movies that don’t have the word Cars in their title, it rocked. But then again, so did Argo and Looper and the Academy was more than happy to short all three of these movies in favor of gushing over “I’m at least a half hour too long” Lincoln.

I’m watching the 18th Annual Critics Choice Awards while I write this rant. Affleck walked off the stage with the Best Director award. Looper won earlier for best Sci-Fi/Horror Movie. Maybe the Academy should have waited a few days before they released their imperfect list of nominees.

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The Dark Knight Rises (At The Theater 2012 #9)

Yes, yes, yes. I loved The Dark Rises. This was my most anticipated movie of 2012 and it did not disappoint at all!

I loved it so much that I watched Batman Begins and The Dark Knight again back to back shortly after seeing The Dark Knight Rises.

Thank you, Christopher Nolan. This trilogy has been amazing.

Anne Hathaway is definitely the sexiest Catwoman since Julie Newmar. I wasn’t sure what to make of her being cast at first, but she was perfect in DKR.

We can all pretend the Halle Berry movie didn’t happen now, right?

Tom Hardy as Bane was awesome. I loved how well he communicated without saying a word. I loved his voice. I’m very glad they didn’t go with Bane’s traditional wrestling unitard and pants costume from the comics. I’ve always found that costume to be ridiculous looking.

I really glad they didn’t go with this look.

I loved Bane’s jacket in Dark Knight Rises. Seriously, where can I get that jacket?

This jacket will be my closet’s reckoning.

Random thought: Is it me, or does Matthew Modine look a little too much like Aaron Eckhart? When he came on screen, I thought, “Didn’t you get horribly disfigured and die in the last movie?”

SPOILERS BELOW!


IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE SPOILED, COME BACK AFTER YOU WATCH THE DARK KNIGHT RISES!

I really liked how Nolan mirrored scenes from Batman Begins in Dark Knight Rises, like when young Talia climbs out of the prison. It looked just like young Bruce’s ascent from the cave as a child.

Speaking of Talia, I called Marion Cotillard as Talia fairly early on. She was always being put in situations where if she was a villain, it would be very much to her advantage. Like, “Oh hey, here’s where we keep our nuclear reactor,” and “Hey, can you let me know which truck the Geiger counter says to mark? Thanks.” I was happy to see I was correct and I liked her Danny Ocean-esque plan for getting back at Batman. My only quibble is with Talia’s death scene. It was such a silly looking “And now I’m dead” death.

I don’t think Dark Knight Rises was better than The Dark Knight, but The Dark Knight is my favorite superhero movie ever, so it’s tough competition. The Dark Knight Rises is a great end cap for the Batman saga.

I would very much like to see a new movie with JGL as either Batman or Nightwing. There are so many Batman rouges left that Nolan didn’t touch. I know Nolan says he’s done with Batman, but it would be great if he came back on as producer if he doesn’t want to direct. Give us JGL as Batman like when Dick Grayson took over for Bruce after Batman RIP, or give us JGL as Nightwing. Either would be awesome. That said, I doubt it will happen. I think the next time we see a Batman movie in the theater, it will be a whole new franchise, in a whole new continuity.

That said, this would be all kinds of awesome.