Movie of the Week: Transformers

   

 

    Movie of the Week (7/28/13-8/3/13): The director of this movie gets a lot of scrutiny for his movies because they are big action pictures with not much story and a lot of explosions. Well, part of that is true, his movies do have a lot of explosions in them, but they also have a story, and yes some are better than others. However, Michael Bay gained some attention with this film, and more than usual, because it is arguably his best film and film in a franchise that is soon going to reboot with Bay coming back to direct. Transformers focuses on a group of robots, both bad and evil, from the planet Cybertron who make there way to planet Earth in search for the Allspark, which the location to is inscripted on a pair of glasses owned by a teenage boy, Sam Witwicky.
    Now, as I said most people do not care for Michael Bay movies, especially those of the Transformers series, but I'm going to go on and tell you, I enjoy the series very much, especially this entry. This film is a good film because we get a long introduction to things, it doesn't just jump into the mess of explosions, although the opening might count as part of the explosions, but I'm talking about after that. We get a good introduction to all of the characters and the intense opening gets a good explanation thanks to the writers. Since, this is kind of an origin story we get good background information on the Autobots and Decepticons and why they are on Earth looking for the Allspark. We also get a good introduction with the human characters and good character development.
    From human characters I introduce you to the cast, like you don't already know them anyways, and tell you how good a job they did. First, we have Shia LaBeouf as Sam Witwicky, the kid who holds the key to everything, and he actually does a pretty good job and I enjoyed his performance, he was funny, emotional, and energetic, although sometimes too much, but he was having explosions going off all around him. We also have Megan Fox, who probably gives us her best performance so far of her career in this movie, and she is better than the girl who shows up in the third film. Plus she is the eye candy here too, but I believed her performance and I think she did a good job. We also have Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson, the helpful military men who help save the day, who also gives us serious and sometimes funny performances. There is also John Turturro and Anthony Anderson who are there as the very funny comic relief. We also have a couple veteran actors playing two different serious and funny roles with Jon Voight as the Secretary of Defense and Kevin Dunn as Sam's father. So, the cast is really a great cast and does a great job over all.
    In a movie like this, especially with Michael Bay as director, you need some great visual effects and that is what we get. The visual effects group did a great job with the robots, explosions, and the epic fight scenes, in fact they did so good that they got nominated for an Oscar. Also, this movie has a lot of stuff going on in it, especially when the robots transform and when the fight scenes take place. Those things take a lot of work and the teams responsible for that did a fantastic job mixing and editing the sounds with the effects and editing of the film. All of that mixes perfectly together to give us a masterpiece for the eyes and ears.
    The technical aspects of the film are obviously great and I also believe that Bay himself did a good job, although his movies are not masterpieces in themselves they are fun to watch. Of course he didn't write the film, we have Alex Kurtzmen and Robert Orci who, to me, wrote a good, not great, screenplay and story to show us the origin of the Autobots, Decepticons, and human characters. They did it with seriousness and humor and it all mixed well, although sometimes it goes overboard with the humor, but it doesn't hurt the film that much. What we have here is a good first film in a franchise that is still going, a good Michael Bay film, but I could be biased to that because I like him, great visual effects, a great cast that works well together, an entertaining screenplay, and a well scored film too. I always have to mention the score because that aspect can make or break a film, music in film is always important, but of course you know that!     
3.5/4 Stars.              

Movie of the Week: The Untouchables

  

 

    Movie of the Week (7/21/13-7/27/13): As we all know the 1920's and the early 1930's were all about prohibition and smuggling in alcohol. The smuggling of booze was mainly a gangster thing, every major city had a select number of gangsters who illegally smuggled in booze anyway they knew how. The Untouchables is about just that, it follows a treasury agent who recruits a couple of trustworthy Chicago cops to help him take down Al Capone. First it was just about catching him with booze, then getting him on tax evasion, but in the end it ends up being personal.
    The first thing this film has is an A-list cast that gives us very powerful performances all around. We have Kevin Costner as Eliot Ness, the agent who wants to put Al Capone away, who gives us a great performance, although probably not his best, but it is up there. We also get an electrified performance from Sean Connery as Jim Malone, who helps and becomes close friends with Ness, he also won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance. There is also Andy Garcia as Agent George Stone aka Giuseppe Petri who probably is the worst in the film, but he still manages to do well because of the talent around him, and he was young at the time. Finally, we have the king of Gangster films, Robert De Niro as Al Capone himself who again gives us a wonderful performance.
    Several scenes in the film are very intense and were written and shot well. One scene includes Malone picking up a dead bad guy to make one of the live ones talk who doesn't know that his friend is dead. Malone then puts his pistol in the dead guys mouth and pulls the trigger, the live one then talks. As the late Roger Ebert said, it is a scene that is very intense which the rest of the film lacks, well I would have to disagree with the great film critic on that last part. There are a couple shootouts that are well choreographed and intense, a short elevator scene that is intense and possibly hard to watch, a scene where the bad guys gets the best of the good guys in Malone's apartment that is tough to watch, and a very intense and long climax that might make you squeeze your armrest. So, despite Ebert not caring too much for the film, it has several very intense scenes thanks to the writers.
    The film also has some very good editing and sound editing and mixing along with great costumes that match the period very well. It all mixes great together for a very good period film, especially the sound, it really is very good and sounds great with the clear cut editing. Along with it sounding great the film also looks very good, especially on Blu-ray, the backdrop in mainly 1930's Chicago so the cinematographer had a lot to work with, also of course with help from the set designer who brought the period to life very well. It all works great together as one of the better looking films set in the 1930's Chicago.
    One last thing that made this film very good was the amazing musical score that was nominated for an Oscar. The music is very fast paced in several scenes that make it extremely intense or at times frightening when it gets that slow cold feeling, and you will know it. Okay one more thing, director Brian De Palma also did a good job as well, although it is quite different from his previous Gangster film Scarface, he still did a good job at telling the story through a lot of great camera movement. Of course he had help with his great crew and cast, but he still did a good job, I just think he would not have been the best director to do it. Despite that this is still a great Gangster film that shows 1930's Chicago in great detail through costume design and set pieces, it looks and sounds great, has a wonderful intense score, and a fantastic cast who does a wonderful job. This isn't the best Gangster film, clearly, but it is ranked fairly high on the list.                                                                                                     3.5/4 Stars         

Movie of the Week: Glory

   

 

    Movie of the Week (7/14/13-7/20/13): On July 18, 1863 the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry regiment charged a fort on the coast of South Carolina, that fort was Fort Wagner. The first all black regiment in the United States Army suffered over fifty percent causalities, including their commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. The Union failed to take that fort for another two months after that charge. This Thursday, July 18, is the 150th anniversary of that battle so I thought the movie that showed the formation of this regiment and the charge it led would be suitable. Here is my review of Glory.
    The film opens with the bloody Battle of Antietam in September of 1862, which introduces us to two of the film's main characters, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and John Rawlins. After that we are taken into the life of Shaw as he goes home and is asked if he would be the commander of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry regiment, which would be the first all black regiment in the history of the United States. We then see the formation of the regiment, the training, and experience the hardships that the all black regiment acquired from both Union and Confederate troops. From the first battle scene to the last climactic battle scene we are told a great story of courage that has yet to be forgotten.
    The cast of this classic Civil War movie is fantastic with Matthew Broderick as Colonel Shaw, probably his best performance, Denzel Washington as Private Trip, who won an supporting Oscar for his performance, Cary Elwes as Major Forbes, Morgan Freeman as Sargent Major John Rawlins, and Andre Braugher as Corporal Thomas Searles. We get wonderful performances from all of these actors despite all there roles being fictional, with the exception of Shaw. With great acting comes great character development and that is what we have in this film. Some develop from being scared and shy to brave and heroic and some from cocky and troublesome to friendly and brave. All the characters in this film develop nicely in some way, which makes the characters that much more interesting and why we grow to love each one.
    The acting and development is great, but what also makes this a great film is the direction, battle choreography, and musical score. Edward Zwick, who gave us more recent classics such as The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond, and Defiance, gave us this realistic feeling war film with great camera angles during battles and showing us how rough it was for these black men in such a dividing conflict. Zwick also shot some beautiful scenes in camp during the troops pass time and directed some great dialog scenes that were very powerful and emotional to watch. The film also has one of the greatest scores for a war movie provided by the great James Horner. Most people recognize the famous rhythm when it is heard. From beginning to end, especially in the climax, the score will give you chills and make you cheer.
    This film is one of those that most everybody likes, even historians despite some of the historical inaccuracies because it is such a well done movie. It is well done because it was written very well and had the right actors to play the right parts along with the right director to bring it to life. The film is not the best war movie of all time but it is high on the list because we connect with the characters so much as the film goes on that by the end we are so emotionally distraught by what becomes of them. The ending is so powerful and emotional it is almost anti-climatic, but we know what the formation of 54th Massachusetts led too. Glory is a great acted, intense, emotional, and perfectly scored war film that will be remembered for years to come and should have won Best Picture for the 1989 Oscars.                                                                                     4/4 Stars               

Movie of the Week: Miami Vice

   

 

    Movie of the Week (7/7/13-7/13/13): Better late than never, eh? Well, I decided to pull a movie out that wasn't very popular with the critics of the general audience this week. In the 1980's there was this T.V. show called Miami Vice, which was very popular with everybody. But, then came along 2006 when one of the original show's creators, Michael Mann, decided to do an updated version of the classic show of the same name. Did Michael Mann do a good job on his new take on the show? Is it worth the watch? Well, let's find out about the 2006 Miami Vice.
    The movie revolves around two detectives, Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs, played by Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx respectively. They go undercover to help run a drug operation in the islands around Miami with the eventual task of taking down the drug lords. But, things take a nasty turn when one of their own is kidnapped as insurance along with the soon discovery by the bad guys that they are policemen. The story seems kind of generic, we have seen this story before in other action films, so there is nothing special about the story with this film.
    Michael Mann tried to write a good crime drama, with a lot of drama, in fact there is too much drama. The drama in it never really grabs you enough to pull you in, unlike another Michael Mann movie that does just the opposite, Heat. The dialogue is fine, it is just that we are given too much explanation about what is going on through words instead of through actions and at times the film gets boring to watch. He seemed to try too hard to make the perfect update of his show and it is easy to tell.
    That being said, we do get a couple well choreographed shootouts, although one is very short and takes place in a car, but they are very realistic looking and exciting to watch. It's a good thing they are exciting to watch because if they weren't, the movie would have been terrible, although Michael Mann is known for giving us good shootouts. What also helped the movie was how it looked. A lot of scenes take place at night and with Michael Mann's shooting style and Miami as his back drop, it really is a very beautiful film to look at, especially the night scenes. The film had good cinematography.
    Although we have good performances from the two leads, the film never really takes off like it should have. It is slowed down by a script that was just trying too hard to make a perfect remake of a show, there is too much stuff going on personally and professionally that it doesn't mix well. At times the film seems quite dull. What saved it from being terrible was the performances from Farrell and Foxx, the two good, and short, shootouts, and how it looks. In the end it is not a movie to call your friends over and watch. If you're a fan of the old show you probably won't like it, but if you're a fan of Michael Mann's style of filming, you might like it. It doesn't quite do the show justice and it's one of those that you might watch once and put it in you collection for a couple years until you think you want to watch it again just for the heck of it.
2.5/4 Stars