Oy, Veykenstein - I, Frankenstein Review

I, Frankenstein was better than it had any right to be. That said, it was still a long way from "good". Maybe it was Stuart Beattie, who was a second-time director and maybe unfamiliar with the intricacies of making a movie flow. Or maybe it was just that the movie was too short. Though, as the writer of the screenplay Beattie might also be to blame there.

Too short? Yes. If you take away the story, the action sequences in I, Frankenstein were actually fairly good. As were the special effects. Even most of the acting was fine. If the story had a bit more time to develop, I think the overall film would have come out better. As it stands, you are barely introduced to the characters before epic-scale fight sequences begin and the story starts to unravel.

That story is as follows: Frankenstein, played by Aaron Eckhart is drawn in to a fight between the Gargoyle order (headed by Miranda Otto's Leanore) and evil demons (headed by Bill Nighy, as Naberius). That's basically the end of the plot, other than a few other things that would essentially give the movie away. Suffice it to say that the Naberius really wants to catch and study Frankenstein. Meanwhile, Leanore and Frankenstein are both trying to avoid it.

There's good fight sequences, good effects, and Billy Nighy is amazing as always. He is the best part of the Underworld films, and brings his evil charm to this movie as well. Aaron Eckhart tries his damndest to care, but it's apparent that his heart just isn't in it. He does try to impersonate Christian Bale's Batman voice, but it doesn't come off too well.

This one gets a 2/5. Buoyed by the effects and Bill Nighy-ness of the movie. Had it been a bit longer, and you had a chance to care about the characters, it could have been a fine mediocre-film. Now, it's just a decent film to watch on a slow Netflix day.

Elysium - Ack...Poor People!

Neil Blomkamp is a good director. District 9 was a great movie made for practically $0 (in Hollywood standards), and did great at the box office. He was supposed to direct a Halo film, but that never took off, so he spent time directing and writing Elysium. Neil Blomkamp is not so great at writing.

Elysium suffers from a few plot holes that took me out of the movie a few too many times. Normally I can let it slide when something just doesn't make sense, but the holes here are so gaping it made it difficult for me to stay focused on the action, which really was quite good.

Elysium follows Max (Matt Damon), a rehabilitated ex-con who is now working as a low level button-pusher for Armadyne (I really love it when futuristic companies use "dyne" in them) a weapons/robotics/drone manufacturer. Bad stuff happens to Max and he has to get on to Elysium, an orbiting Halo-like object where 8,000 rich folks live away from the gross poor people, and where they have little medusa-like chambers that can heal any ailment, which is what Max now needs.

Armadyne is owned by John Carlyle (William Fichtner, who I continue to love). He hatches a plan with Delacourt (Jodie Foster), the Secretary of Defense to topple the Elysium government in exchange for Delacourt taking control of the government and Carlyle getting all the tasty government contracts that every weapons manufacturer desperately wants. Through some weird brain stuff that isn't really well explained, the plans get in to Max's head and now he has to get to Elysium to save himself, and his childhood sweetheart's kid, who has cancer.

Elysium is where the majority of my continuity issues take place. The world below is portrayed as a huge shit-hole, where everyone speaks Spanish, there are no jobs, and everyone is sick and dying, or on probation. Elysium is a high society place where they only listen to classical music and whenever an undesirable (read: poor person) appears, they freak out and run in to their fancy houses. These fancy houses are where they have their healing pods, which is what the poor folks want as well, because as stated earlier, most folks on earth are sick or diseased.

No one on Elysium has a home defense drone or robot. So when the poor folks break through their glass windows, they just waltz right in and with the help of some poorly explained DNA-scrambler get treatment. Home defense drones are the future. Get a home defense drone. It will prevent poor folks from getting in to your house and using your machines to fix their ailments. Poor people should all die. Duh, they are poor. That's the general consensus on Elysium.

There's also a main character, Spider (Wagner Moura), who I couldn't understand really well, but he was essentially a slum lord down on earth that makes money by smuggling people to Elysium. He helps Max get up there. Personally, if I was writing this thing out, I would have made Spider a former Elysium citizen, outcast due to his gambling habits or other generally frowned-upon activities, who helps the regular poor folks get back up to Elysium to help them and also get back at those no-good rich folks. That would have made for a much more dynamic and interesting character. Unfortunately, Spider isn't. But he's really good at yelling and acting dismayed.

That's really a writing issue though, which is where I had the most problems with the movie. Blomkamp does a decent job of introducing a futuristic world (though I take issue with pick-up trucks and Nissan GT-R's still being serviceable in the year 2154), but he doesn't do enough to flesh it out. Elysium is 109 minutes long. If it had an extra half hour, or even 15 minutes dedicated to explaining how Elysium was built (there were some physics things I took issue with that could have been explained in a few sentences), and giving a bit more depth to the various characters, the film would have been much, much better. As it is is though, Elysium is a decent action movie with good effects, but little else.

3/5 from me for good action, effects, and directing. I can't give it a better score though because the writing did detract from the greatness this movie could have had. I hope there's a director's cut in the future with an hour more of back story, but I doubt that will materialize, which is a damn shame. It's a neat premise.

Iron Man 3 - Now With More Tony!

The third installment in the Iron Man series contains a whole hell of a lot of Iron Men. However, you get to see way more of Tony Stark in this one, and that's a good thing. The Robert Downey Jr. factor is what made the original Iron Man such a hit, and in my opinion, he added the much needed levity to The Avengers. Having a lot more Robert in the movie is great, though, I've heard some people complaining. Those people are entitled to their own wrong opinions!

Iron Man 3 - Poster

Anyway, I saw Iron Man 3 twice in theaters, in 3D and in regular D. With this particular movie the 3D didn't add anything, just gave a bit more depth, so if you're worried about the shekels in your pocket, go ahead and skip the 3D costlier version, you'll still get lots of awesome explosions.

The plot here is pretty standard for an Iron Man flick, someone is really pissed at Tony Stark. In this case it's The Mandarin, played interestingly by Ben Kingsley. When I first saw the trailer for Iron Man 3 and heard him say, "You'll never see me coming...", I thought the delivery of that line meant that this villain would be like Heath Ledger's Joker, however Ben Kinglsey comes off a bit more like Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow, which is great. So, The Mandarin doesn't like Tony Stark and goes after him. That's pretty much the plot in a nutshell, but a few fun twists make the story play out really well. One of the twists is that following the events of The Avengers, Tony is suffering from a bit of PTSD. This makes the snarky Tony feel a bit more human, which is a welcome change from the ever wise-cracking Tony that we're used to.

Fret not, there are still plenty of wisecracks. Don Cheadle plays Colonel Rhodes, the guy in War Machine suite, except this time around War Machine has been re-branded by the United States government to give him a more "fluffy" name, Iron Patriot. Gags like that are plentiful, and Jon Favreau along with Gwenyth Paltrow provide some fun side-commentary as well.

One of the biggest surprises of this film was the writing. A lot of the little sub-plots and scenes get little throw-away lines of dialog to explain them, and I didn't even notice them until my second viewing. It's the little things that matter in big-budget movies like this, and writing one line of dialog that helps guide folks from one scene to another is something that I greatly appreciate.

4.5/5 from me. If you like the first two Iron Man movies, you'll like this one. I enjoyed it a bit more than two, but a bit less than The Avengers (which I think is one of the most well put together super hero flicks ever concocted). Go see it with some popcorn and a soda, and stay until after the credits, there's a fun little Easter egg.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation - Or: Plot Holes a-Plenty

This is going to be a quick one. I went to go see this out of boredom and boy is it an odd flick. The action is good, the 3-D is used mostly for depth (which is a good thing) with only a couple of "pop-out" moments. The acting is probably fine if you're just going in to this movie for the boom booms and the hoorah's.


Basically it's Dwayne Johnson, Channing Tatum, Bruce Willis, and from way the hell out of nowhere The RZA. None of the story line really makes sense. If I remember anything from the previous G.I. Joe movie (and I don't) there was a lot of emphasis placed on how Cobra Commander was a bad dude and his Cobra symbol was on terrorist flags and things. Why then does when (spoilers?) Cobra Commander come back does the entire world give one giant shrug when the Cobra symbols start popping up on the White House? 

The plot is like Swiss cheese, but if what you're looking for is to see Adrianne Palicki in short shorts, then this is the movie for you! There is however one action sequence on the side of a mountain that looked incredibly stupid in the trailer. In the movie however, it the action sequence is well shot, but incredibly stupid.

2.5/5 for me, high marks for action sequences. The Director Jon M. Chu, does an OK job with the script that he was given. Fun fact, his previous movie was Justin Bieber: Never Say Never. That should tell you most of what you need to know.

Olympus Has Fallen - My Interest Has Risen!

Morgan Freeman. Even when he isn't playing the president, he ends up playing the president. That man is magical. Olympus Has Fallen is about the White House getting terrorized in spectacular fashion and Aaron Eckhart's President Asher getting taken hostage. It's up to our man on the inside Gerard Butler to rescue him and the First Child (not to be confused with the Golden Child), Connor.

Olympus Has Fallen - Trailer

It's a pretty good movie. There's lots of explosions. The action is gritty and it certainly deserves an "R" for violence. The story is "plausible" in that, it isn't out of the realm of imagination that the White House could be attacked by terrorists, however the way it gets infiltrated is a smidge over the top. The plot revolves around a group of North Koreans breaking in to the White House and taking the President hostage, and threaten to execute him unless the United States has pulls out of the DMZ and recalls the 7th Fleet, which is positioned in the South China Sea to support the South Koreans should shit hit the fan.

As fun and captivating as the story line is, lets take a moment to talk about the importance of not having a stingy special effects budget.When you have the National Monument falling to pieces, maybe have a little bit more pixels shaded eh? Or perhaps when you show the White House getting hit by a helicopter, a few more details would be good?

I took this screenshot from the trailer above.

                            

It makes me sad that often, fairly decent movies can "take me out of the action" by having some fairly wonky visual effects. I'm hoping that as visual effects get even more prevalent in films that studios will take an extra week or two and put some more detail in to the movies. Especially now that we're in a HD universe. 

Special Effects aside the movie's fun! I give it a 4/5, but make sure if you go it's with folks that don't mind a little violence. The movie's got plenty of it! It's a fine flick, but they really didn't leave themselves a lot of wiggle room for a sequel...which might be the best part!

A Good Day To Watch A Good Day To Die Hard

My sister was visiting from Iowa and we made plans in San Francisco for the afternoon, so what do we do to pass the time? Go see Bruce Willis blow some shit up of course!

A Good Day to Die Hard stars Bruce Willis in his 5th go-round as John McClane. Lets be honest, the plot in these movies doesn't really matter. What matters is how many things get blown up, and how often John McClane says "fuck". That was my biggest problem with Live Free or Die Hard, it was rated PG-13 and that took a lot of the edge off of the movie. Warning, the next paragraph contains what is regarded as the plot to this movie.

There is a plot in A Good Day to Die Hard, and it revolves around something that I love dearly, Russians. As a Russian, it makes me giggle when we are depicted as bad guys and hungry for world domination. I for one, have no interest in world domination because it seems like a lot of work, and I'm more of a hands-off type of leader. Anyway, the plot is about a Russian bad guy that's locked up in prison. His name is Komarov (which derives from komar, which means mosquito, so his name means, "he who is a mosquito"; that's not in the movie, but a bit of Russian trivia for you) and he's played by Sebastian Koch. He's put in jail by a rising star in Russian politics, Chagarin (played by an actual Russian, Sergey Kolesnikov). The Americans want a file that Komarov have and they orchestrate a rescue, while Chagarin tries to orchestrate a murder. Both go awry and the CIA operative Jack McClane (Jai Courtney) has to go on the run and help Komarov find his secret file that can put Chagarin away for past war crimes.

That whole previous paragraph is not important. What is important is that there's an awesome car chase sequence about 15-20 minutes in to the movie and it was one of the most impressive ones that I have ever seen. Is it better than Ronin or the original Italian Job? Probably not, but it is up there.

*EDIT: I'm not the only one take notice! Apparently A Good Day to Die Hard now holds the record for most cars destroyed in a film at 132! Wow!*

My sister said it best, there was about 10% dialogue and 90% explosions in this movie, which is probably why at the time I'm writing this, it has a whopping 16% on Rotten Tomatoes. The good news? 82% of audiences liked it. What does that mean? Well, it means that artistically, this movie is about as interesting as watching Jackass. However, as a way of keeping your attention and making you giddy from explosions, this thing is amazing. There's a "passing of the torch" moment as well, so I think we can expect to see Jai Courtney take over the franchise and we'll get little cameos from Bruce Willis in the next film: If I Die, Let it be Hard.

3.5/5 from me, because plot does somewhat matter in the grand scheme of things, but as a diet coke + popcorn movie, this thing is fantastic! Go see it, but not on a first date.

Gangster Squad - Like Watching Someone Play L.A. Noire

I went to see Gangster Squad last week and didn't have many expectations going in to the film. I knew Ryan Gosling was in it. I knew Ryan Gosling was pretty. I knew Emma Stone was in it. I knew Emma Stone was pretty. That's pretty much good enough for me (Josh Brolin really isn't my type).

Anyhow, Gangster Squad is the story of how a group of Los Angeles cops go off the clock and take down Mickey Cohen, a notorious L.A. gangster and not a nice Jewish boy like myself. The squad was started by Police Chief Parker (played by Nick Nolte), who selects Sgt. O'Mara (Brolin) to go outside the law and take down Micky Cohen (Sean Penn) by any means necessary. O'Mara selects few folks, including Sgt. Wooters (Gosling), and they go on a rampage taking down Cohen's business'. There's no spoilers in this blog post, but if you click on the Micky's wiki page above, you can see what happens to him.

I was pleasantly surprised by this flick. The cast that they assembled was really good, and it was a pleasant surprise to see Giovanni Ribisi pop up on camera. Emma Stone was gorgeous, as per usual, and Ryan Gosling's accent made me giggle whenever he spoke. I'm not quite sure what he was going for, but it was start contrast to Drive, where he spoke about 3 lines of dialog throughout the film. Drive, by the way was on of my favorite movies of 2011.

If you play video games or know someone that does, ask them about L.A. Noir. Watching Gangster Squad was very similar (in tone) to playing the game. You get a sense in both that the characters are all flawed in some way or another and Sgt. O'Mara specifically reminds me a lot of Officer Phelps from the game. Both come back from the war, and they don't know how to re-insert themselves in to normal, day to day life.

I give this a solid 3.5/5 and one of the only reasons I ding it is because at parts the story sagged a little. I'd have liked to learn more about Micky Cohen's rise to power. Plus there was a part of the movie where it looked like they either changed film types, or shooting styles, and it was a smidge jarring (most of the film looked a bit grainy to me, but the last few scenes were crystal clear).

Anyhow, go see it. It's lovely. And Emma Stone is Emma Stone, or Ryan Gosling is Ryan Gosling, wherever your interests lay.

The Bourne Legacy: More Like Leg-to-your-facey

First thing's first; The Bourne Legacy takes place at the same time as The Bourne Ultimatum. Also, it does not have Jason Bourne in it, except for in name. The main character here is Aaron Cross, played by the ever increasingly bad-ass Jeremy Renner (possibly the best thing to ever come out of Modesto, California). Aaron Cross is a member of Operation Outcome, which is similar to the previous films' Treadstone (of which Jason Bourne was a member) and Blackbriar (which was sent after Jason to silence him, after he threatened to expose them). If you're not familiar, all of those programs/operations are CIA Black Ops projects that are creating super duper field operatives.

Spoilers-ish, in this film the Outcome agents are treated with a virus that helps them increase their mental capacity and physical prowess by some percentage. This works out great for Aaron Cross because before joining the military he was a dummy! The army recruiter added 12 points to his IQ...durr. Anyhow one of the scientists involved in this virus engineering is Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz, who I've been in love with since The Mummy). Aaron and Marta's paths cross (get it?) and they go off in search for a stem cell that can help Aaron's character stay smart indefinitely. 

The main bad (or good, depending on your political/conspiracy leanings) is Eric Bayer (Edward Norton, who is great and I wish he'd make more movies instead of being a selfish brat and only making things he "believes" in...ugh). His role is basically the same one that was played by Joan Allen (as Pam Landy) in the other Bourne movies, he's trying to find Aaron Cross before not so flattering information about the United States is released to the public.

Enough about plot. The movie's actually pretty cool, and the action set-pieces are great (much like in the Total Recall remake; however unlike the Total Recall remake, the dialog was not atrocious and non-action elements kept my attention). If you like action, and if you've seen any of the other Bourne movies and are looking in to this one, you are probably are, you should certainly see this movie. If you are cautious about throwing money away, you can see it in a matinee, but in a theater with the thundering surround sound is probably the way to go. I will say this: the car chase scene in this film takes place in Manila, and is very well done, as far as chases go, but will leave you wondering how in the hell they could shoot there (it looks a smidge crowded). 

This guy gets a 4/5, all-around good flick, good action, and Jeremy Renner getting another franchise to be a part of is good news for everyone. I think the next movie, "The Cross Identity" (probably), will start with Rachel's character being found face-down in a plate of Pad Thai somewhere off the coast of Thailand, and Cross teaming up with Jason Bourne to take down the baddies (or goodies). I'm very excited about this!  

*EDIT* There's also a Moby song at the end of the film and everyone knows that the way to Yev's heart is through a Moby song.

Quick note about Total Recall as I will not be writing about it:

I give it 1.5/5. The 1 is for the CGI and action sequences, which are good, as long as no one is talking. The .5 is for the cast, I love Colin Ferrell and wish he would be in more stuff; Kate Beckinsale is always cute; Jessica Biel is kind of a bad-ass here which makes me think of her in Blade Trinity, which makes me happy; Bryan Cranston is not cooking meth, but plays a believable baddy nonetheless; and
Bill Nighy might be one of my favorite current Brits. All those folks are great, but their dialog is horrible, so you can go ahead and just re-watch the Arnold campy classic movie instead.

Hopefully this will re-set my ability to write these things and I'll get more out there. Not going to write one for Dark Knight. If you haven't seen it, you're an idiot and should go. As always, comment/share/suggest!