Unbroken

All of the Oscars... Maybe... Probably.... Most likely

Unbroken follows the true story of Louis Zamperini (Jack O' Connell) a soldier that was held as a prisoner of war during WWII. The story goes through his childhood, when he was constantly getting into trouble; then transitions to his brother training him to run cross country so he learns to behave himself. The training eventually leads him to the Olympics, where he wins the competition for America. He then joins the Army and experiences engine trouble over the ocean, which leaves him and two of his friends stranded. He is picked up by the Japanese, and tortured for information, awaiting rescue.

This guy has had the most interesting life put to film to date. Honestly, I wish I could meet him so I could hear his unedited version of the story as opposed to the hyped up Hollywood version. Sadly, he passed away during the filming of this, so we are left with this movie, which isn't a horrible substitute, but it could have been better. I just wish I could have got more story on his reasoning for joining in the first place, as opposed to being thrust right into him in a dog fight. I know that the creators have to make sacrifices in the mindset of time and pace; but, I was expecting about a three hour movie to begin with. This being a two hour movie might have hindered it from being amazing. It was great, don't get me wrong, it was just missing a few things. As it stands, this movie seems to have wanted to emulate every critically acclaimed movie ever. There are elements of Cast Away, every touching sports movie ever made, and every touching war movie ever made. This is not a bad thing, but it doesn't seem to have much of a voice for itself. This is still a very touching movie, with plenty of moments that will make the audience angry, sad, scared, and every other type of passionate; so that is a win in my book.

The direction here was great in a lot of ways, but horrible in one. It had great camera work, Angelina Jolie knew how to get the best performances out of her cast that they could offer her, and some of the shots are beautiful enough to have a dozen artist renderings. The part that drove me up the wall here was the sound, and more to the point the sound effects. None of the sound effects seemed to have any gravitas behind them. The gun fire felt like listening to popcorn sometimes, the ocean seemed to have the weight of a pool, and my biggest complaint was with the punching scenes. If I am trying to get the audience to feel sorry for a character getting beat up, I want to make those punches have some bang to them. I want it to seem like Rocky got in a street brawl with Apollo. There is still that "meat hitting meat" sound, but it is low; sacrificed for emotional music.

The acting is the thing that could have made or broke this movie, luckily we had some amazing performances given here. The only problem I had was that there were moments when the characters seemed so disinterested in everything surrounding them, which could have been intentional; but, just not the way I would have went about it. The supporting cast does great, but there is no denying where the weight of this movie fell, and Jack is brilliant. My hope from this entire production is that Jack O' Connell gets some more work, and eventually stars in a movie that I can give my highest honor to.

Final Verdict: See it in Theaters There are some missteps made in this film that are hard to overlook, but it is still a great piece of work. Some small tweaks would have made it unforgettable, but this will do for now.

Into the Woods

Fairy tales and music from Disney. Perfect, Right?

Our story mainly follows a baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt), who desperately seek to have a curse reversed, allowing his wife to bear a child. The witch (Meryl Streep), whom originally laid the curse on the baker's house, tells the baker to gather four items. A slipper, a hood, a cow, and some hair. The baker and his wife begrudgingly take to the quest, meeting the famous fable heroes of old.

Okay, let's get this out of the way right now. If you don't like musicals this movie is not for you, right from jump street. There is more singing in this than spoken words, and this movie is reserved for people that either enjoy that, or can withstand it for around two hours. Now that we have that out of the way allow me to begin my review.

I love musicals, and I especially love musicals that are adapted for the screen. Gerard Butler as The Phantom, Rosario Dawson as Mimi from Rent, and even John Travolta as Danny from Grease are all lasting memories. I have seen musicals on Broadway, in my home state of Florida, and where ever else I can find them. So, where does this movie rank among the classics of old? Meh. It's okay. This is one of the few musicals I never had the opportunity to see, while I was growing up. So, like most people that go to see a movie adaptation of a musical, my entire experience was based on the way it was presented in this movie. I like the entire third act, I think whenever you can cleverly flip some old fairy tales around to make them your own, the world is a creatively better place. Everything leading up to the third act felt like a race to get to the finish line. Some characters were forgotten about completely, some resolutions were reached without much resistance, and some of the morals were heavy handed. I don't expect to sit through a movie about fairy tale characters with out some heavy handed lessons at the end; but, this was a bit absurd. Almost every character broke the fourth wall to let the audience know just what they should be learning from this. I feel the creators went that way to combat the blatant pedophilia feeling people would be getting from the Little Red Riding Hood arc. I would normally take someone at their word if they told me I was looking into this too much; but, there is no getting around the fact that you can directly correlate pedophilia and the Wolf's hunger without much issue. That lesson is supposed to be "don't talk to strangers," the main lesson is "be careful what you wish for," and a couple of other messages mixed in. Trust me they will all be hard to miss.

The music in this was another part of this movie that held it back from true greatness. Usually, I love the music in every musical I see, and will immediately run to iTunes so I can enjoy it for the next week. This time, there were a few songs that just couldn't register with me. It wasn't the singer's fault, or the orchestra, some of the lyrics that they came up with were just so bland. Again, don't get me wrong I liked a good amount the songs presented; but, there were just a couple that seemed a bit lazy and I found that weird, since it hasn't happened to me much before. I loved the song where the princes started to compare the agony they were going through, but I was bored by the opening theme.

The acting here should be close to perfect with the amount of A list actors they threw at this production, right? Well, yes and no. Just because they are A list, doesn't mean they were made for this picture. As usual I had a major problem with Chris Pine's acting; but at least he can sing. Thankfully I didn't have to suffer through much of Johnny Depp's bullshit, since he was only allowed about five to ten minutes of screen time. The rest of the cast was fine. Anna Kendrick was a bold and welcome choice as Cinderella. James Corden and Emily Blunt didn't have much chemistry, but did well in their respective roles. The true scene thief here should be no surprise to anyone, Meryl Streep. My God, this woman is amazing. Sings beautifully, and sells the audience on anything she feels like conveying. Sometimes I felt like the characters acting scared of her in the movie, were just the actors conveying their admiration of a true legend.

Final Verdict: Rent it I was a little disappointed by the showing here. It was an above average movie, with a good cast, and a descent enough storyline. You won't hate yourself for watching it, but there is no rush.

The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies

Fighting, fighting, and more fighting.... Oh look! Some story.

In this final installment of The Hobbit series, we continue with a dragon coming to lay siege to a small village. After that is dealt with, we see the Dwarves we have been following through the first two movies (recently separated), reunited in the mountain they have been seeking all this time. As they come together, they are confronted by their leader having been driven mad by gold. They must try to get him back to the way he was as two interested parties come to collect on debts that were promised to them. While all of this is going on Gandalf has to race to the scene where our heroes are, and warn them of a large army of Orcs coming to destroy them all.

The story here should not be important to anyone. Seriously, if you read the book, just get it out of your head that this movie is going to make every detail shared with you in text, come to life on the big screen. Luckily, I am not weighed down by such matters when it comes to a movie. If a movie is good, I am going to appreciate it as a movie. The storyline here is WAY, WAY, WAY far in the background for this movie, and what you should expect is a truck load of battle sequences. There is something about a love triangle between two pretty elves and the pettiest, little Dwarf in the company. There is something about a king being driven mad because a dragon laid on some gold for so long, and poisoned it or whatever. There is something about humans being anti-war, and children being around. I don't know, all I know is that this movie provided more fan service than any movie before it, with the fight scenes given. All of the story arcs met an abrupt end.... like solved within a few minutes kind of abrupt, and to me this was just Peter Jackson trying to out do any big battle scene he had done before.

I feel like this movie needed one of those overly enthusiastic sales people you find on late night television at the fore front of each one of the trailers for this. You want these three older characters kicking ass against a bunch of ghosts? We got it! You want big troll things being used as a battering ram/siege tank? We got it! You want an army of Elves mixed with an army Dwarves, with a small band of humans? We got it! and we even threw in a wizard, some animals, and a Hobbit. You want a climatic and satisfying ending to the big, bad Orc terrorizing our company of heroes through the first two movies? We.... well.... I am not going to spoil anything. This movie was about an hour and a half of battling, half an hour of story development, ended with twenty four minutes of credits. Not a bad thing for those of us seeking "battles of epic proportions," and I really didn't expect much more from Jackson in this last movie.

Did you like the cast from the first two Hobbit movies? Good news everyone! They haven't gotten sick of this movie series yet, and are still amazing in their roles. There are no weak links in the chain here, everyone looked happy to be working, and (more to the point) gave almost perfect performances. Out of everyone I saw here it is hard to pick a favorite performance... at least it would be if Richard Armitage hadn't stolen every scene he was in. He may not have been my favorite character, but this performance brought him up to a close second. On a quick side note, if you didn't like the cast from the first two movies, what the hell are you on and can you keep it as far away from me as possible?.... Just a joke.

The big question hovering over this movie series (now that it is over) is: Does it hold up against the original trilogy? The answer is no, but it was fighting an up hill battle with that from jump street. The thing that made the original trilogy so appealing was, that they integrated big battle scenes and story so seamlessly. The original series left out tons of characters from the books, and still got away with being called a masterpiece. This movie can't get away with adding characters without scrutiny. The original movie series was fun, brilliantly acted, exquisitely written, and left most everyone that exited the theater happy. The question over this movie never should have been: will it be as good as the first? It should be, will it be fun? The answer to that is, yes. I had more fun with this than I did with the first two Hobbit movies, and feel no shame in admitting that (even if it didn't go exactly according to the book).

Final Verdict: See it in Theaters All of the movies in this trilogy probably would have gotten the same score. All of the movies in the original trilogy probably would have gotten my highest score. Take the stick out of your bum and have some fun. 

Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb

With all due respect...

In this installment, Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) finds himself trying to save the living museum exhibits from not remaining still forever, when the magic tablet that allows them to move starts to decay. They must go to visit Ahkmenrah's (Rami Malek) father, who is housed at a British Museum, and holds the secrets to the tablet's magic. While dealing with the problems at the museum, Larry must also try to understand the changes his son is going through as he grows older.

So, this is a tricky review, being so close to the death of a man I held in the highest regard. I haven't agreed with every cinematic choice he has done; but, the gems that he produced have lived on in my heart and guided me through my life. I assure you that what you are going to read here is not going to be effected by Robin's death very much, I will mention a few things, but my overall opinion of this movie remains. Now that we got that out of the way, on with the review.

There is a lot of bad to say about this movie, but at the same time a great amount of good that redeems this movie into a completely neutral film. Some of the comedic points hit the nail right on the head, and they even managed to leave a fair amount of those points out of the trailers. One point in particular had me rolling on the ground laughing, but that point should remain a surprise. I could definitely do without the side storyline with Larry and his son, it seemed forced, and could have been completely cut out of the picture. There were a fair amount of recycled jokes from the first two movies, where I guess the makers of this film were thinking along the lines of "if it ain't broke don't fix it." The biggest problem I have with this movie is that the thing that gave the original film so much of the limited charm it had, was that it was basically a walk through history in a comedic effect. Here, we have them trying to add even more made up theology to a series that already had a truck load of history to dive into. What is worse is that they didn't go through much of the history (or fables) in England. They picked the most basic thing about English history/fables (Lancelot had the hots for Guinevere)  and beat that horse into the ground until it was a puddle of blood and bone. I will give them credit on doing a bit (when so many films choose to leave that part out of Arthur's tales), but it was basically mentioned every time Lancelot was on screen, and I wanted some more history. Bring in Jack the Ripper cutting things, some King obsessed with beheading (who also happens to be a serial monogamist), or even a damn William Wallace character (I know he is Scottish). Don't beat me over the head with the most famous knight of the round table pining over a quest. Aside from that, the new caveman was endearing enough, and Marenkahre (the Egyptian Pharaoh father) had some pretty great jokes.

A major problem I had with the movie was with the visuals. It seems like they are using the same visual effects team from the first movie, and they haven't learned anything new. The statues look even more fake than one would expect in a movie riddled with CGI. I will give them that they seemed to have their shit together within the first ten minutes of the film, then something happened when they went to England, and everyone must have gotten lazy. The only other thing that struck me as weird was the amount of time they spent on Robin when he was in danger, or clinging to life (with respects). I don't know if it was just me looking into to it too much, but it did seem like they lingered on a couple of key moments to shamelessly tug on some heart strings.

The acting in this was where most of my trouble came from. Everyone just seemed so tired. Like the collective cast all took some Zanax before every shot. The only people that seemed to say "no" to the downer party were Luke Wilson, Steve Coogan, and Dan Stevens. I could say the same for Rebel Wilson, but she seemed to play the same character I have seen before.The worst culprit of underacting was the headliner, Ben Stiller. He just had this air of being above all this, like "why the hell am I making this movie into a trilogy?" The one who seemed to save a couple of moments during this sad train was Dan Stevens. He brought some fresh unfamiliar energy to the proceedings, and seemed to not let the participating cast's mood get in his way of having some fun.

Final Verdict: Netflix It A good movie for one of those lazy days, but nothing to rush out for. I feel like most people who plan to see this already have their mind made up, and usually I would try to stop you; but, this time I will just let my rating speak for itself.

Exodus: Gods and Kings

God? Damn this movie, please.

Going to skip this introduction. There have been too many movies and re-tellings of this story. It is thousands of years old. Get some small history knowledge and you will know the basic premise..... Not good enough? Fine. Moses was an adopted prince of Egypt. He gets found out as a Hebrew, and sentenced to exile. While in exile he happens upon a small community of Hebrews where he finds his wife. His peace is interrupted so he can go and free the Hebrews from slavery. Plagues happen, parting of an ocean, SPOILER WARNING the Hebrews are free and start a new journey. Done and done.

It is hard to fail on as many levels as this movie did. I mean, I have never seen a movie fail on so many levels in my life time. Legitimately, a have a hard time believing anyone walked out of this movie, fully satiated. Are you religious? Did you come to this movie for a religious experience? To bad. You like action? Did the previews give you some notion that there was going to be action in this? Whoops, sorry. Go see another movie. Do you like amazing visual effects? Were you expecting to see what the technology of today had to offer us, when it came time for the sea to part? You are better off watching Prince of Egypt. Do you like it when people white wash history with quite possibly the most Caucasian people in Hollywood playing the roles of Hebrews and Egyptians?  GOOD NEWS!

On a more serious note, let us delve into this movie's story. It is all pretty basic for a Moses story... oh wait, well at least parts of it were. There was a small hiccup along the way of making this movie, and I am not going to be talking about the biblical inaccuracies. Mainly because I loved Noah so biblical inaccuracies don't really concern me. At first they were trying to make it seem like Moses was crazy, then he slowly became more and more sane. He still talked to a small, invisible child, claiming it was God speaking to him; but, no one really questioned that after a while. After some time passed they had a small concern come up about Moses' sanity, then it got stifled by a speech that I assume was supposed to be motivational. There was no believable hard choices in this. Moses made a fuss or something about "hating to see the people that raised him undergo such turmoil" or something to that effect; but, it seemed like they just fit that in, out of some undo obligation, or ignorance. I say ignorance because the scene just seemed to come out of no where. Like someone told the director "Umm, Moses is supposed to feel bad about hurting these people.," the the director smacked his head and added a line. Oh don't worry, there is so much more to take issue with when it comes to the story here, but in the interest of time let's move on to the audio.

 For those of you who frequent my blog, you will take note that I usually don't comment on the audio or visual of a movie, unless it blows me away or leaves me cringing. This case is an example of the later. Why is it that most religious movies feel that they have to make this movie seem older by adding a shit ton of wood instruments? Do they think the building of pyramids, and choices in fashion were to subtle? The music in this is not only cliche, but cliche in awful way. Cliche in the sense that you feel they had to pay Disney to use tracks from their movies made in the sixties. Music wasn't the only problem here, dialogue was all but impossible to hear sometimes. At first I thought I should just blame the lead actors for mumbling, then I realized I had to strain to hear anything coming from any of the actors unless they were yelling. When you can't even get the audio in your movie right, we have some major issues.

Audio now leads us to visual. In today's day and age, this company should feel embarrassed that they released something so visually unappealing. Some of the shots were well done, but it was mainly thanks to the scenery. The real fault here lies with the effects. Noticeably fake alligators, noticeably fake wall of water, noticeably fake plagues, and the CGI wasn't the worst part here, that honor lies with the make up. How do we make boils and plague look like shit? Ask whoever was in charge of the make up department here. Blood that looked like paint, boils that you could see were peeling off in some areas, and the worst ageing effect ever done in film's history (that includes J. Edgar). When I said this movie failed on every level I wasn't exaggerating. This movie fails on every perceivable level.

Finally we come to the acting. Surely, having a cast filled with A list actors this movie won't suck in the acting department, right? Wrong. Did the director forget that his job is to rein in these primadonnas? Christian Bale was all over the place, but he has a tendency to be hit or miss in any movie. Joel Edgerton surprised the hell out of me, by overacting worse than William Shatner trying to escape an alien planet. The only person that could even hope to give Joel a run for his money was John Turturro. Sigourney Weaver seems to have one mode these days, and that is to act like Sigourney Weaver. My condolences lie with Aaron Paul, and Ben Kingsley in this production. This is the second movie Aaron Paul was in that I didn't like, and I just want to see him do well for some reason. Ben Kingsley should have known better than to sign on for this garbage.

Now before you start saying that I had something against this movie right out of the gate, let me just say that I really wanted this movie to succeed. I was riding high on the release of Noah this year, and I was just about to start giving every religious movie a shot. When the movie was about half way through its run time a woman got up and walked out screaming religious sacrament to the audience that remained as she left, with her friend screaming "AMEN!" behind her. So I wanted this movie to shut them up by turning around and being good. After all of that, here I sit. Disappointed and angry. Don't make the same mistake.

Final Verdict: Don't do it If you have any respect for the film industry, teach these people a lesson by not acknowledging their movie's existence. More to the point, save yourself the time, money and energy.  

Top Five

Chris Rock gives us something unexpected

We follow Andre Allen (Chris Rock), a celebrity that got his start doing stand up comedy, moved to doing comedic movies, and now wants to be taken seriously as an actor. He is to be married to a reality television star named Erica Long (Gabrielle Union), who controls his life and is making their union all about the show. On the cusp of the release for his first serious film he meets Chelsea Brown (Rosario Dawson), a writer for the New York Times sent to get an interview. During this interview she challenges him with serious questions as a fan of his old stand up work, wondering why he isn't funny and why he doesn't want to be anymore.

So, the only way I can compare this movie to something else out there right now is by saying that this is a different version of Funny People. Which may sound like an insult, but trust me it is not. I liked Funny People and this is just looking at the celebrity lifestyle in a different lens. Instead of trying to regale you with drama, they attempted comedy, and the result has me a little skewed. I liked this movie, even though I didn't really laugh a lot. It had its funny moments, but I might not have been the target audience for some of the jokes. Which has me skewed because I am a big fan of Chris Rock's stand up. Maybe it was the threesome joke, the gay joke, or maybe this just wasn't something I was supposed to laugh my way through, regardless I respected the story, even if it wasn't necessarily the funniest movie I have seen. This movie was just a great tale, with interesting directing, and some points of well rounded acting. I loved the characters, I loved the slight jabs at the entertainment industry, I loved the "back to my old stomping ground" moments, and I loved that this movie had a character that took the piss out of reality television stars. Don't get me wrong this movie wasn't perfect by any means. I didn't much care for the ending, I didn't have much care for the side characters, and there were some points that were just a bit to unbelievable (like, you are really going to sit here and tell me that you kissed a woman in on a street where not one person caught that on camera?).  Chris Rock has had his moments of ups and downs, but this movie is assuredly a rise up, despite the problems I had with it.

Chris Rock has definitely found out how to direct, not that I thought he was bad before; but now it seems like he at least has a style he can call his own. I liked the flash back scenes, they seemed to move well within the film. There were some shots that stood out in the film. Not like I was going to frame that still from the movie on my wall or anything, more like it just seemed to be more grounded in realism. In a movie that (I assume) is trying to make you think of this as real life, some of the shots were integral to bringing out the movies full potential, and it seemed like he nailed it.

Now for the acting.... the acting.... right. Well, let's start off with the good, the women in this production were the ones that stood out above anyone else. Rosario Dawson and Gabrielle Union were believable, and gave this movie some moments that were truly wonderful to behold. The rest of this cast is filled with a who's who of actors you haven't thought about in the last five years (at least five, if not more). That doesn't mean they did poorly, just that we have seen everything that they are bringing to the table. Cedric the Entertainer plays the "man with all of the connections," and he was good in that role, but I feel like I was transported back to the mid-2000's watching it. Tracy Morgan was present.... and that is about it. I like some of Tracy's stuff, but he never really took off with me. Chris rock showed us that one of the lines "you are a terrible actor" may have been a bit harsh, but not completely unwarranted. He had some good moments of acting, but those moments seemed to come from a more comedic place, the times he tried to play it straight were a bit of a drain.... than again maybe that was the point.

Final Verdict: See it in Theaters Some missteps with the story, as well as the acting took me out of the experience a couple of times; but, it w