Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens Non-spoilers first: Got to see it a day earlier since a buddy works at a local IMAX theater and was able to screen it for a private group at midnight last night before the public sees it tonight. I love the Star Wars series, always have. Even the prequels were not as terrible as everyone made them out to be. So I went into this movie excited, knowing that JJ Abrams does a decent job on everything he touches. Overall, I liked the film, I didnt love it. Its not as good as A New Hope or Empire Strikes Back, but is probably on par with Return of the Jedi and certainly better than the prequels. The acting was was decent and Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher didnt seem like they were just phoning it in, they looked like they were really enjoying it. I also liked the new characters Rey, Finn, and Poe. The action was fun and the light saber scenes were better than they have ever been. What I didnt like about it was that it seemed more like half a movie, as if its sole purpose was to bridge ROTJ and Episode VIII together. I was expecting a little more in terms of an arc as I think serialized films should at least be self contained. A New Hope had Luke as a farmer in the beginning and at the end hes blowing up the Death Star. The end. This film didnt do that. Also, as I expected, there was a ton of fan service and call backs to the previous trilogy, which was bordering on toxic to the entire film. It was fun but it was almost overwhelming. Now the spoilerific thoughts: Spoiler -Some people in the theater actually gasped when Han Solo died. Really, you're surprised? I wouldnt have thought Harrison Ford would have come back any other way. Hes in his 70s, I doubt hes going to be wanting to do Star Wars movies for the next 4-5 years. It was a sad scene given that it turned out to be his son, but I think it was well done. -The Luke Skywalker reveal at the end was very good and I liked how part of the film was about finding him. Despite my above commentary, it does set up the next film nicely. Mark Hamill looks great. -The forced sexual tension between Finn and Rey was lame. -Kylo Ren wasnt exactly a threatening villain. Darth Vader was imposing and seemed to take up the whole screen with his presence. Kylo Ren was like that goth kid in high school draped in black because hes mad at his dad. Which is almost exactly what it was. Overall, as I said I liked it, I didnt love it. Given that Episode VIII is directed by Rian Johnson who directed Looper and arguably the best episode of Breaking Bad, Im excited to see where the series goes. 6.5/10
The Revenant Leo puts on a clinic in acting again along with Tom Hardy, should be enough to get them both nominated, it's a great movie. Stunning shots in Canada and Argentina (I think), it's a slow burn at 2.5 hours but well worth it. 8.5/10
The Hateful Eight See it at a theater showing it in full 70mm instead of digital if possible. Like most Tarantino movies, Only a few scenes, but a lot of excellent dialog with both Sam Jackson & Kurt Russell delivering. Jennifer Jason Leigh's character name is likely what it is purely due to how Kurt Russell says it. My only disapointment: Sometimes a defining signature can hurt a project and I felt Tarantino signature 70's style gore hurt the film. It felt out of place and cheapened the overall richness of the visual aspect. 9/10
I don't think this is a 9/10 film. The over the top Evil Dead gore was one thing. It is abundantly clear no one is telling Tarantino "no" at all, ever, when he is making a film these days. It could have worked much better as a mystery/thriller if it weren't for the head scratching things he did. Why have a completely random one off scene with voice over to explain part of the plot points in the middle of the movie? Why not just let, the relatively minor, plot points unfold as the scene does? Was there even a point to the flash back scene other than give the prop guys more chances to use squibs? I wasn't even that impressed with any of the actors' performances but this probably because they weren't given too much to work with beyond the out of place 70's blacksploitation cursing dialog. Kurt Russell and Bruce Dern did an alright job but there really wasn't any good colorful characters his movies are known for. Samuel L was just Samuel L ala Snakes on a Plane transported to the old west as a Bounty Hunter, Spoiler with unnecessary oral sex scene and all. I really wish he'd branch out from his homage exploitation schtick. It's been seeing diminishing returns. As he seems to try to one up himself in the craziness factor. I actually liked this one more than Django though it was less cohesive. Like my friend said after we left the film. It's definitely in the bottom half of his films. I think this guys drug use has caught up to him. This movie could have been a good 40 minutes shorter than it was. 5/10
Hateful Eight: I wonder if he didn't cast Samuel L just so he'd have an excuse to write "nigger" all over the script. I swear I heard more of it here than I did in Django, to the point that the audience just laughed at the later incidences. And why? What did it add to the movie? In Django it made sense, here it's excess for its own sake. Anyway, I left disappointed, definitely no plans to have it on my shelf later. I was this close to nodding off before intermission.
The Revenant: Good: I like the way it looked, very beautiful and well shot. Also really well acted. Plot was interesting, though not really captivating. The battle scene at the start was magnificent. Bad: I don't mind a slow burn, but some of it was downright boring. I feel like it could have been chopped by 45 min and not have missed anything. Tom Hardy's accent was mumbly and hard to understand at times. The ending did not give me a feeling of closure, and after investing 2.5 hrs I did want some damn closure. It's not like there's gonna be a sequel. Overall, slightly above average. Just give Leo a damn Oscar already. 7/10
Deadpool: Fantastic. Reynolds is snarky in exactly the right ways, the trailer didn't give up all the best parts, Morena Baccarin is briefly nude. It was great. Everything I could have asked for. 9.5/10
The Witch A first-time director made THIS? An Oscar-worthy, claustrophobic nightmare of a period film as a New England Puritan family goes berzerk with (understandable) paranoia living in the 17th century New England wilderness. Incredible period detail, an insanely menacing tone (nobody is safe) and cold-blooded in a way you can't imagine for a mainstream film. DO NOT miss this one, even though it will make some of you not want to watch. This is what intelligent, brilliantly-mounted horror is all about. 9/10
The Big Short Its a movie about some guys who made money off the 2008 financial crisis by predicting and betting against the housing market crash. It stars Steve Carrell, Brad Pitt, Christian Bale, and Ryan Gosling. The movie is smart and funny and is a pretty accurate description of what happened that led up the crisis. I think the only misstep is that the subject matter may be a bit too confusing for people that are not in Finance and dont understand the concepts. They have clever vignettes throughout the movie of random celebrities playing themselves (Selena Gomez, Margot Robbie, Anthony Bourdain) explaining the concepts, but even then, I watched with a group of pretty intelligent people we had to pause so I could explain to them what the characters were talking about it. If I didnt have experience doing it, I would be wildly confused myself. Overall though, the movie is very well done and gives a good perspective of house Wall Street outsiders cashed in on it. Definitely worth checking out. 8.5 / 10 Conversely, if you want to see the financial crisis through the eyes of the investment banks, check out Margin Call with Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, and Zachary Quinto. Skip the HBO movie, Too Big to Fail, that movie is garbage.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I had to explain the concepts to my wife (whom has a JD and a Doctorate in Pharmacology - yeah, so she's not dumb), but I thought the movie did a fantastic job of making it understandable. I'd go 9/10 on this one though, just based on Steve Carell's performance. Margin Call is definitely worth a viewing, and for the trifecta I agree that Too Big to Fail was garbage.
Batman vs Superman. The first hour jumps all over the place. The entire thing is just... bad. 3/10, and that's being nice.
I read somewhere that the break-even for the movie is somewhere around $800 million. That's kind of hilarious.
The issue with B vs. S is they borrowed from too many comics for one movie. The Dark Knight Returns was awesome to see on film, and Wonder Woman is probably the most interesting character in the whole movie. Pass.
OK, so here's a bit more in-depth on Batman vs. Superman. The guy who played Lex Luthor played him as "Jim Carrey as the Riddler". Wonder Woman was just thrown in basically to have a hot chick in a tight outfit. The Batman vs. Superman stuff was lame and forced. Superman doesn't like Batman because he's not goody two shoes. Batman doesn't like Superman because he's too powerful. The first hour jumps back and forth between characters so much that it's tough to follow what the fuck is going on. Honestly, the movie is just bad, but making it worse is that they showed a preview of Civil War right before it and it just reminds you how well Marvel does with its movies. Even the worst of the recent Marvel movies (probably the Thor movies) are 100 times better than this pile of shit, and Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron show that you can have multiple headlining superheroes co-exist, but this pig-fuck just can't pull it off. Whoever wrote the script for this is obviously not a Superman or Batman or Wonder Woman fan. I was expecting this to be better than it was because Man of Steel was pretty good. This movie would have been better if they just had people shit in a bucket and throw it on the screen.
That's too bad. I read this long article in Entertainment Weekly a couple weeks ago, about how this movie was going to be the big set up. (i.e. how they're trying to copy Marvel) http://www.ew.com/article/2016/03/03/batman-v-superman-dawn-justice-green-lantern-dc-movie-universe I think Zack Snyder may have just lost a shit ton of money.
I saw batman vs superman the other night. As already said. It was terrible. There were some scenes that seemed to occur just at random, almost as if they had a build up to it but then had to cut something due to time and ignored that there was an explanation in there. Way too much jumping around. I get that they were trying to introduce a lot of characters as a jumping off point, but it was just so forced that it ruined the movie. Also, this may just be a personal preference, butabout six different times they had music and montages that seemed like they were building up to the climax of the movie. Was just weird in my opinion, I have friends who are way more into the marvel/dc movies but as an "outside" opinion I was wondering what the hell the director was thinking with a lot of the choices they made. "It could have been worse" was about the best thing anyone could say if you're trying to come up with a positive.
This was one of the reasons why I didn't like Age of Ultron. Warning, super fluffy opinion ahead: I didn't like Man of Steel. I didn't hate it, I think the acting and story line were fine. But it was just so grey and drab. I don't know whether BvS suffers from this as well, but the picture of WW and her fellow Amazonians that came out the other day was very brown and drab. And the Aquaman pictures are very dark and drab. I know that superhero movies try to move away from the garish colors of the comic books. X-Men did it successfully with the black instead of yellow suits. But in general, the only superhero I expect to be dark and brooding is Batman. Everyone else needs to have some goddamn vibrancy. Told you it'd be fluffy.
Batman v Superman As a non superhero fanboy, I really don't get all the flack this movie is getting. It tried to shoehorn too many comic book story lines into one movie? Who gives a shit? As movie I didn't find it convoluted or confusing, and not having read the comics I could've cared less where the story lines came from. It focused on too many characters? I didn't find that to be a problem either. For a movie with an ensemble cast I was expecting that going in, and they didn't try to hide the fact that this was a starting point for Justice League. Any episode of Game of Thrones has 10x more characters than this. Again, I didn't think it was confusing. It definitely could have been better, specifically by getting rid of the stupid Batman dream sequences that added nothing and were too obvious they were put there for shock, and by not ruining the Lex Luthor character. He was bad. Like really terrible, should have been curb stomped to death bad. I've seen the TV show Smallville and that's the Lex Luthor they should all be modeled off, not this turd. And the 3D added nothing I would have preferred to not worn the glasses. Ben Affleck's Batman could've ruined the movie if he did a bad job, but he didn't. He was good and I bought him as Batman. Not Chrstian Bale or Micheal Keaton good, but light years ahead of Clooney. Alfred wasn't great but he wasn't in the movie much. I give it a 7/10. Could be an 8 if they fixed Lex. Others haven't been as forgiving but I think they had expectations that weren't being lived up to and that's fair. Judging it as a movie on it's face I thought it was good. But I also liked Man of Steel.
DC has better villains, Marvel has better heroes. Also DC characters are older, and need to be updated to avoid the ridiculous, campy originals (thus the "dark and gritty" overtones...in a Goddamned comic book movie). Finally, Superman is a one dimensional character. This means the Marvel movie path will not work. Suicide Squad will be more entertaining than Justice League, a super hero movie needs some element of silliness and the whole DC "Gods Among Us" won't work and no one gives a shit about what happens to Superman. What's the arc for his character going to be? Nope, still the same boring ass superhero.
Man of Steel is the one and only time a Superman movie was done right, and one of the best comic movies ever made. The common complaints for it were exactly what made it good: "It's too violent". "It's too sci-fi" "It's all action." ...that's what a Superman comic is, period. Cities being destroyed in mass alien brawls and innocent bystanders being slaughtered by the hundreds or thousands. In the "Death And Return Of Superman" series people were killed by the millions. My only complaint it that wasn't nearly violent ENOUGH. Superman should be rated R, it's never been a comic for kids.