Movie of the Week: The Hangover

   

 

    Movie of the Week (8/4/13-8/10/13): I'm beginning to make a habit of this late thing, but I was in Gatlinburg this weekend, so I think that is a good excuse for being late this time. With summer slowly coming to a close and school beginning to start back up, I thought a movie about a party gone wrong would be a good fit. Although I don't believe most people will stop partying for those reasons and I hope your party doesn't turn out like it does in this film. Four friends go to Las Vegas for a bachelor party and are slipped drugs, then one thing leads to another and they lose the groom, the next morning three of them wake up and must retrace their steps to find out where he is in The Hangover. 
    What is good about this film is that it is very original when it comes to the writing from screenwriters Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. Throughout the film the three main characters are faced with many serious, but very funny challenges that will make you laugh for a while after the movie is over with. They have to face things like a stripper who married one of the guys without him knowing it, an unknown baby, a couple funny police officers, a powerful, yet small, man named Mr. Chow, a tiger, and Mike Tyson himself. All of these encounters are well written and original, which is why they turn out to be extremely funny, along with a great cast that couldn't have been better.
    The cast is extremely good in this film with Bradley Cooper as Phil, Ed Helms as Stu, Justin Bartha as Doug, Zach Galifianakis as Alan, Heather Graham as Jade, Ken Jeong as Mr. Chow, and Mike Tyson as Mike Tyson. When you put this funny cast into one movie you know it's going to be hilarious. This movie was also the coming out party for Zach Galifianakis, who is very funny, and has done other roles since then and looks to be very promising. Everybody else is superb in their roles as they embraced them, especially Bradley Cooper, who will win an Oscar one day, and Ed Helms who give us the best performances in the movie.
    With the film being set in Las Vegas it of course looks great and it has great cinematography, but that is not why we watch comedies, but of course that is still important. When it comes to comedies we mainly look at the originality of the film, like I have already mentioned, which is powered by the writing. But, we also look closely at the direction, editing, and score because all three of these are very important for comedies, although they are also important for other films too obviously, but comedies are different, they are hard to make. The director, Todd Phillips, does a great job at directing the cast to give us hilarious performances and making each scene serious and funny at the same time. The scene where Stu sings "The Tiger Song" is probably one of the funniest in the movie. The director is also helped with the editing and score, both of which are very good and help bring humor and tension in each scene.
    This film is the first of a trilogy, the last part of which was released early this summer, and they started it off with a bang. I haven't met very many people who did not like this movie. What makes this movie a good comedy is that it is not a stupid comedy, like most people think comedies should be, no it is funny situations happening in a serious setting. That is what makes this movie a great original comedy, I know I keep saying that but it is true and why it is so good. It fits in the ranks of comedies form directors such as Mel Brooks and David Zucker, his earlier films that is. It is hard to make comedies these days and Todd Phillips proved everybody wrong when this film came out, it is one of the best, if not the best, comedies in the last five of ten years.                                           3.5/4 Stars

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    

Movie of the Week: Gettysburg

   

 

    Movie of the Week (6/30/13-7/6/13): In honor of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg this week, July 1-3, a critical battle in the Civil War and a defining moment in the history of our nation, Gettysburg is the movie of the week. The title pretty much tells the plot of the movie, it is a visual telling of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, but this is based on a novel called The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, which is a great book!
    The film opens with a spy looking in on the Union troops and he reports back to his commander. So, once it starts it really is hard to not finish the film even though we know how it ends, we still want to continue to watch it and experience the battle for ourselves. The film opens up showing us how the armies ended up in that small town of Gettysburg instead of just jumping to right before the battle. We get a good set up as to how and why the North and South armies end up there and we are introduced to all of our main characters in the first 45 minutes of the film. It was done well for how large of a film this was on a budget that it had.

    The cast for this movie was truly wonderful, and it was all male, the only female speaking part was one line in a town in which troops were passing through. We have Tom Berenger as James Longstreet, Martin Sheen as Robert E. Lee, Stephen Lang as George Pickett, Richard Jordan as Lewis Armistead, Sam Elliott as John Buford, C. Thomas Howell as Thomas Chamberlain, Kevin Conway as 'Buster' Kilrain, and Jeff Daniels as Joshua Chamberlain. This is a great cast and I could go on all day about how great they all did, but I'll just say that they were wonderful and their real life counterparts, with the exception of Kilrain, would have been proud.
    What makes this a great war film is that it is one of the most accurate war movies put on film. From the first day of skirmishes of the last day of the battle, it shows in great detail through exciting battle sequences and dialogue scenes. It is not just a movie with bloody fight scenes, we get fantastic drama as well, from just soldiers sitting around camp fires talking about home, politics, or the battle itself to men telling each other their goodbyes in case they didn't make it the next day in battle. Again, what makes this movie great is the tremendous detail in the camp and the pre-battle speeches, which may give you chills when watching it for the first time.
    We are shown in great detail each day of the battle, although some things are missing because it is a film and the battle was so large they couldn't just fit everything in it. The second and third day of the battle in the movie are the most emotional, especially the last battle, which is very powerful, emotional, and just plain sad to watch at the end. With the film being so large and on a small budget we can see some things that doesn't make it quite as realistic. There are really not very many cannonball explosions on the ground as their should be, not very much blood or bodies on the ground, and some of the beards look fake, but some of the beards back then were so big that the actors just didn't have time to grow their own. But, don't let that stop you from watching this film.

    The one thing that seems to turn people away from this movie is its run time, which clocks in at about four hours and forty minutes. But, that is not a problem, you can easily watch it in two nights or if you want you can watch it in three nights, what ever makes you happy, just sit down and watch it, you will not be disappointed. This is truly one of the greatest war films ever made, my personal favorite, because it is one of the most accurate. We get wonderful performances, great direction from Ron Maxwell who had to take on the large production, good drama, some exciting battle sequences, and we also have a truly heartbreaking musical score that is both uplifting and extremely sad. If you haven't seen this film, see it, this week particularly, you can watch it in two nights if it will help you get through it. It might be long but it will be worth it, I promise!                                                                                       4/4 Stars      

Check out the trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=arGg3Twqmi8

Review: World War Z

   

 

    My apologizes for getting this up late as well, by this time I'm sure a lot of you have already feasted your eyes on this film about "Zombies." Yes, we have another movie about "Zombies." You might be wondering why I used quotation marks with the word "Zombie." Well, that is because in the film they are never really termed "Zombies" and are more likely infected with some kind of disease that doesn't technically kill them. So, now that we have cleared that up early on let's take a look at this new Brad Pitt picture that was among the list of most anticipated movies of the year, World War Z.
    If you have seen any trailer for this film then you know how it opens, Brad Pitt's character, Gerry Lane and his family have breakfast and are getting ready to go on vacation. Next, they are stuck in a traffic jam where, you guessed it, the city and the world are all of a sudden attacked by people who have somehow attracted a disease that make them attack humans. These "Zombies" are not the slow moving kind you see in The Walking Dead, no, they are the kind that move fast and can climb on top of each other very fast in order to get somewhere. Which makes the movie that much more thrilling.
    This was a good movie, not great, but good and let me tell you why. First thing I thought needed to be fixed was the opening, although I liked how it was done, only told from the family's point of view, it was too short! Once the attack sequence begins there is not much destruction, a lot of aerial views of it , but not much up close and personal views that would have made the film more shocking to watch, of course it is PG-13. The other thing that I was a little disappointed in was the ending, the climax was good, although not quite what I thought it would be, it was a little slow, but still very intense because Gerry is trying to get something in a lab full of these creatures. But, the end was a little of a let down because we don't get much of an explanation about what has happened, although we get some, but not enough for me. Of course it sets it up perfectly for the sequel, which is already in the works.
    Now, that was what bothered me about it, although it didn't bother me very much because the sequel will answer more questions, here is what I loved about the movie. The first thing was Brad Pitt's performance. He was great in it, it might not be his best, but it is definitely up there, I mean it has to compete with Moneyball and Inglourious Basterds. But nevertheless, he was great in it, I loved what he did with his character, the way he interacted with his wife and daughters and how he turned back into the old Gerry Lane when he needed to go out facing the "Zombies." He was almost two different characters and a I loved it.
    The other thing I loved about the movie was the visual effects, which were great, from seeing the destruction of cities, to the "Zombies" running fast in the aerial views, to a walled in safe zone being overrun, and an airplane being attacked. Thanks to the visual effects, they made the movie more exciting and thrilling to watch. There were several scenes that were very nerve racking and I loved it, that is what a movie is suppose to do to you. My favorite scenes were the safe zone being overrun and the airplane scene, which were the most thrilling in the whole movie. The climax was pretty intense too, especially by the end because you were hoping what Gerry did worked.
    World War Z is not a great movie, but it will certainly make you hold on to you armrest for dear life in certain scenes, which is why it is a good movie. We get another great performance from Brad Pitt and the visuals are great. Marc Forster gave us a great thriller to keep us on the edge of our seat at times. The ending may be a let down for some people because it doesn't explain very much and they (Spoiler alert!) don't find a cure for the disease, but find another way to survive for now, which sets up the sequel perfectly. And I'm excited for that! I don't know if it does the book justice because I haven't read it, I simply watched it as a movie, but I hear that some fans of the book might not like it. I couldn't tell you! But, if you want to see a good thriller with great acting, visuals, and intense scenes this go see this movie! I also heard that the Blu-ray is going to have more stuff added to it that the theatrical did not have in it, which makes me even more excited to see that version. But, for now:                                                                                                          3/4 Stars