The Cabin in the Woods - most fun you can have with your pants on.

Not much to say about this movie because if you say practically anything it will be ruined. Written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard, this is absolutely not a horror film, but does have horror elements. That is practically all I can say about the movie.

It really is something that is best seen without knowing anything about it. If you can avoid the commercials/trailers for it as well. It is scary at parts, so know you will get a few scares, but they are telegraphed fairly well so it won't be difficult to know when you need to do the 'ol "look through the fingers" trick.

So lets do a little checklist:

Acting - Check (Bradley Whitfield is great)
Horror - Check (scary nightmarish creatures)
Comedy - Check (this is very much a Joss Whedon script)
Gore - Check (things get a little messy)
Evil Dead - Check (this has a very Evil Dead vibe, almost so much that I expected Bruce Campbell to pop in at some point).

That is all I'm saying. If you can stomach a smidge bit of scary time, this is by far one of the most fun movies I've seen all year (granted its before the summer blockbusters, but I strongly think that it will be a contender throughout the summer).

Please see this movie.  4.5/5 (very little could have been better, seriously).

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Immortals and Tower Heist...Fight!

Was trying to make up for lost time this weekend so I went to two movies instead of the "former-usual" one. I took a look at Immortals (very enthusiastically recommended to me by my sister, although mainly for Henry Cavill's abs) and Tower Heist. Lets go in order shall we!


My sister, Liz, was very adamant that I should go see Immortals, because it had Henry Cavill staring in the role of Theseus, but more importantly, it had his abs in the role of bulging. Immortals follows young Theseus on his quest to avenge the death of his mother, who was killed at the hands of King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke). Its true, Mickey Rourke has an incredibly gruff persona, and physically fits the part very well. There is however, one drawback with casting him in a role where he has to wear a mask a lot. That drawback is that it is impossible to understand what he is saying. Its difficult when he's playing himself, and when you add in the muffling effects of a mask, it gets incredibly hard. Luckily though, for all intents and purposes, he just needs to stand there and look imposing.


There are also some Gods mucking about, the most important of which is Zeus (Luke Evans). I really like Luke Evans and he does a great job of being both menacing, and intriguingly tender when the situation calls for it. Plus he gets to kick quite a bit of Titan ass, and those scenes are incredible. It makes me excited to see Luke in the next two Hobbit movies, where he will be playing Bard the Bowman.


Immortals was done by the producers of 300, and was directed by Tarsem Singh, who is going to be directing Mirror Mirror, which is one 2012's two Snow White themed movies. He also has the honor of directing one of the movies that messed me up when I was a kid, the visually stunning and incredibly creepy "The Cell" with Jennifer Lopez and Vincent D'Onofrio.


Anyhow, Immortals was actually good fun, and unlike 300, which was 80/20 in action/plot ration, the breakdown here is closer to 60/40, which means you'll be getting some dialog and back story along with your bloody and visceral fight scenes.


This one gets a solid 4/5, go see it if you are in the mood for action, adventure, abs, and great effects.


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Tower Heist happened to be playing right after Immortals was over, and it was either go home and play Skyrim, or stay at the theater and take a look at another movie that I'd wanted to see for a while but didn't have the chance to go to.


Tower Heist is the story of Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller), the manager of "The Tower", the most luxurious residence in New York City, as he tries to plot the theft of over $20Million to cover the losses of his hotel's pension plan which was invested and lost by Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda). Phew, that was a long run-on sentence. The movie is filled with an all-star cast, including Matthew Broderick, Michael Pena, Eddie Murphy, Téa Leoni, Gabourey Sidibe, and (my favorite in this one) Casey Affleck. 


The plot is fairly simple, Arthur Shaw, fraudulently invested and blew through all his holdings and is being investigated by the FBI. When he gets arrested for one of the largest Ponzi Scheme's in history, The Tower's employees lose all their pensions. That's when Josh Kovacs and his rag-tag crew of a broke investor (Broderick), electrician (Pena), maid (Sidibe), and professional thief (Murphy) go after his fortune, hidden in his room atop one of the most secure buildings in New York. 


Without giving away a lot of the plot, basically, wacky hi jinks ensue. One of my favorite scenes is when Téa Leoni's FBI agent is having a drink with Josh and having a back and forth about the last time she "got this drunk". I miss Téa, and have been a fan of hers since "The Naked Truth", a sitcom she did back in the mid-90's. Murphy is also back to his old self! After a few not-so-stellar films (Norbit, Pluto Nash), he's back to his old rude/crude hilarious self. Which is kind of nice and hopefully he will get back to making dirty jokes and having a good time like he did way back during all those fun Beverly Hills Cop movies. 


Tower Heist is definitely worth taking a look at if you want a good laugh, some of Casey Afflecks lines and deliveries were hilarious and I actually laughed in the theater, which is fairly rare.


This one also gets a 4/5. Not a great comedy or heist movie, but its got heart and good laughs. Plus the actual heist is pretty impressive, and decently thought out, if not terribly believable. 


That's all for now! Hopefully I'll get to Three Musketeers here soon so I can get a bit more Luke Evans actions (he plays Aramis). Yay!

Knight and Day - Review

I have not gone into a movie in quite a while with lower expectations than when I went to see Knight and Day over its opening weekend. I had heard mediocre things at best about it from various different critics, but I did hear one by the Movie Man where he was pretty positive (http://bit.ly/9HOHn6). The Movie Man is into this movie and so am I, the movie takes about 5 minutes to get going, and then continues to throw in a mix of action, comedy, and dramady which holds your attention for the almost 2 hours that this film runs.

Tom Cruise (Roy Miller) and Cameron Diaz (June Havens), make for an odd couple. I believe in real life she towers over the actor but on screen their pairing kind of makes sense. He plays a suave, confident super-spy and she's a capable but clueless owner of a car shop. They meet randomly in Wichita, Kansas while waiting for their flight to depart. That's about all the set-up there is, in addition to some dialogue in the plane, before shit starts to get really real, really quick for June. While in the bathroom freshening up for Roy, June is completely oblivious to the fact that he dispatches a handful of assassins as well as the pilots of the plane they are on, and is then forced to crash land the plane in a field. That's the first 10 minutes of the movie, and from then on its a great back and forth between the two of them, from highway chases to speedboat rides, the two play off of each other and have a great rapport and chemistry on film.

The movie's plot is based on Roy trying to save Simon (Paul Dano) and keep a battery that Simon has developed from falling into the wrong hands. He's being chased by Fitzgerald (Peter Sarsgaard) of the FBI and Antonio (Jordi Molla) of a European gun manufacturing syndicate. At first I thought Jordi looked familiar and when he started yelling, I recognized where I knew him form, he played Hector Tapia in Bad Boys II and I really liked him in it, shame he doesn't get much screen time in Knight and Day.

I have to say that Cruise is back to his goofy bad-ass self in this movie. He's been doing different dramatic (Valkyrie) and comedic (Tropic Thunder) films for the last few years, but here he's back to what made Mission Impossible so great, he's: funny, smart, charming, daring, and has that Tom Cruise grin that all the ladies swoon over. It's almost unfair to Diaz, she tries very hard to keep up throughout the movie, but Cruise steals the show. She's a good fit for him though and their comedic timing fits well together (think Mr. & Mrs. Smith which is the closest thing to this movie).

I give Knight and Day a 4.5/5. That might be a little bit high, but the movie met and exceeded my expectations in every way (and that's not just because my expectations were low at the get-go). The best part about this movie is the way it ends, the final sequence is well done, and plays off the feel of the movie. Of course it also leaves a bit of an opening for a sequel and I, for one, and really hoping that they can do it.