Before Wall-E came out, I thought the robot was a ripoff of Johnny 5 for kids too young to remember Short Circuit and Short Circuit 2. After seeing the movie though, I can admit that I was wrong… the good thing is that I am not usually this glad to be wrong about something. There were also some great nods to classic science fiction and technology fans, with callbacks to 2001: A Space Oddyssey and the classic Mac startup chime, to just name a couple.
I consider myself a jaded New Yorker and that’s why I was so surprised to be emotionally knocked on my ass for many scenes in this film. I even teared up during some of the scenes between Wall·E and Eve (the slick white robot that resembles ASIMO), which was the most surprising thing for me. I was NOT expecting to be hit so hard by the love story and the ability of Pixar’s animators to imbue that much emotion into robots that say less than 5 words to one another.
One of the most interesting aspects of the film though was the first 40 or so minutes of the film on Earth, first with WALL·E alone and then with Eve. This was some of the best pantomime since Charlie Chaplain and what really moved me was the interaction between WALL·E and Eve reminded me of Chaplain’s City Lights. I liked the juxtaposition between Fred Willard’s live action scenes from the past and the animated humans who are now blubberous blobs of laziness and a shell of their ancestors, played to a tee with voicework from Jeff GarlinJohn Ratzenberger and Kathy Najimy.
This movie is a definate must see, even the silent animated short with a hungry bunny and an obnoxious magician was entertaining to watch and I know I’m going to be looking for this movie when it is finally released on dvd. Thanks to MoviePatron for the above pic.
I’ve been waiting a while to see Hancock, but I was very surprised with what I got with this movie. I HATE it when the trailers reveal too much about the plot of films, especially when they reveal the film’s final scene, battle or closing explosion.
It turned out that the trailers for Hancock really didn’t reveal anything about the plot and that was refreshing. I didn’t even realize, going into the film that Charlize Theron was in the cast. I don’t usually like her, but I loved her character in this film and I thought she gave a great performance that I didn’t expect at all. I’ve never really been attracted to her, but she has never been more beautiful than in this film in my opinion.
Jason Bateman plays a struggling public relations agent who has taken up the task of pitching an idea that no big company wants anything to do with and it was fun just watching Bateman pitching his absurd, yet hopeful ideas.
Then, there’s Will Smith as Hancock. The film opens with him being woken up by a little kid (Atticus Shaffer) who tries to get him to dispatch some criminals, only for Hancock to blow him off because of his hangover and the kid calls him an asshole, a name he really doesn’t enjoy being called. He ends up saving the day, but at a definite cost to the city. This paves the way for us, the audience to see what we’ve got in store for us.
It’s only after Hancock saves Jason Bateman and Bateman tries to pitch a new image for Hancock that things start to change… slowly. I’m not going to reveal any more of the plot, but I must say, this was a fun movie.
The problem is that there really wasn’t anything special about this film. It was a fun summer movie, but not so much so that it was memorable for anything in particular. This may have been director Peter Berg’s fault. The movie wasn’t filmed in a great way and there are some scenes and dialogue that could have been cut down a bit, but there aren’t many bad things to say about the film.
One thing I did notice from the trailers was that there was a lot of talk about Hancock, the hero that no one wants because he brings with him chaos and destruction along with his “help,” but there was never any mention of an enemy for him to grapple with… after watching the film, I can see why, there really were no interesting baddies in this film. There was a main villain, it is just that it wasn’t very satisfying watching Hancock face the film’s big bad… although, it was fun watching the irony in how the big bad was ultimately defeated.
After what I thought was a TERRIBLE marketing campaign during the runup to Kung Fu Panda’s release, it took me a while to actually bring myself to the theater to see it. It wasn’t until I saw some of the previews for Tropic Thunder, another movie starring Jack Black, that I got excited to see this film. Below is that promo.
Now that I’ve seen the film, I wish I had gone sooner. This was easily the best Jack Black film to date, with King Kong and School of Rock trailing behind. One of the best moments comes right at the beginning of the film where the first style of animation we see transitions to the film’s main animation style. The way it was done was stunning. It made it very hard to tell that the style transitioning to was animation at all! I was very impressed.
The story was a lot of fun, a definite winner of a kids movie. There really weren’t any adult wink wink nudge nudge moments, but the movie was hilarious so I didn’t mind at all. There were some reviewers *cough* Filmspotting.net (subscribe here)*cough* that thought it was unwise to portray the Chinese villagers as yellow buck toothed bunnies, but I didn’t find it to be offensive or in bad taste in any way. When I was looking for this, I found that in actuality, the villagers were really represented by a few different animals: bunnies, pigs and birds. So I felt this was a real non issue. Seriously though, if you want some great movie reviews, check out Filmspotting.
I really think that if you want to just go in to see a film and spend the majority of the time laughing, this is an easy choice for a film to go see.
Watch as a brave voodoo doll tries to save its fellow voodoo dolls from harm. If you can, try and check out the high quality version to get a feel for some of the amazing detail work that went into this!
Enjoy a visually stunning 4 minutes created using Maya and After Effects.
I was hoping that the Sex and the City movie would be that holdover. I enjoyed the television show, but I can’t say I’m a part of its rabid fan base. So, the advantage for me was that I knew all about these 4 women going into the film…
After watching the movie, I felt that it held pretty true to the television show and would satisfy the film’s built in fan base. It felt like 3 or 4 episodes of the television show back-to-back. After telling the person I saw the movie with this, I realized that this may not be such a good thing after all.
The film didn’t just feel like 3 or 4 episodes of the show, it felt like the film ran long, with these episodes just tacked onto the back of each other, instead of a tight continuously flowing story.
The next realization I had was there was very little setup for the main characters (and why the casual viewer should care about these 4 relatively well off women). Now, for someone like me, who knows these four strong ladies very well from their tv escapades, this was not a problem, but what about for someone who has either never seen the tv show or has only seen a handful of episodes? Well, these people just get a quick (~2min) video recap of the tv series laying out the history of the characters and a voice over by Sarah Jessica Parker to go with it and my guess is that this will leave the uninitiated confused and in the lurch.
Even with these misgivings and the fact that there were times when I felt the film was just a bit long, I DID enjoy the movie, there were a handful of unexpectedly funny moments, Charlotte’s troubles during international travel being one of them (a point I disagree with my favorite reviewer, Roger Ebert on). I feel like for those people who are NYers, New Yorkophiles or fans of the tv show, you should definitely go out and see this film (especially if you’re planning on pre-gaming with a Cosmo or two), but if you’ve never really seen the show or know the characters, you’d be better off not initiating yourself to this world with this film, just go back and rent/borrow/buy the dvds of the original series.
MUTO is an amazing visual experience. This short film by Blu was created using stop motionanimation in Buenos Aires to painstakingly create this 7min short film. I’ll let the film speak for itself, just check it out.
After watching the movie, there are a few interesting things of note. I was worried thinking about seeing Harrison Ford (65 years old) as Indy again, but from the first scene, when he picks up his hat, he just exudes Indy. My only problem with Indy was best stated by Alex Albrecht on The Totally Rad Show (subscribe here) when he wished they hadn’t turned Indy into an invincible superhero and I completely agreed with that sentiment after the refrigerator scene. Another issue I had was with the heavy handed use of CGI… especially unnecessary/bad CGI.
The movie was definitely fun to watch (how can Indy NOT be fun to watch?), but the movie wasn’t exciting, there were no real edge of your seat moments. There were times when it felt more like I was watching The Da Vinci Code, Sherlock Holmes or National Treasure, than Indiana Jones which was disappointing.
Even with all that going against it, I still had a good time at the theater, but the person I saw it with fell asleep a couple of times (remember that not exciting quality I mentioned earlier?). I did love watching how Spielberg was able to create an incredibly violent movie, but because most of the gun violence takes place off camera, it seems like a much lighter movie than it really is, it always amazes me just how effective leaving things to your imagination is for a film maker, instead of showing every bit of violence and gore possible,
Every year the summer brings us blockbuster movies which is like Christmas for the movie studios because these are the movies that tend to bring in LOTS of money for the studios and this year it looks like Christmas came early for the film industry.
First off, let me say, if you love the summer blockbuster, especially if you’re a Marvel fan, just STOP reading this and get your butt to the theater and STAY THROUGH THE END OF THE CREDITS(!!!), you don’t need to read what I have to say other than that this movie will rock your pants off. I can’t tell you how many people walked out of the theater before seeing probably one of the best credit cookies I can remember and sets up the sequel perfectly.
OK, now that the fanboys and people who I KNOW will love this movie no matter what are gone… onto the review:
Robert Downey Jr. gets the prize roll of the film, he plays Tony Stark and gets to essentially have fun drinking, tooling away as a mechanic/builder, womanizing and just flat out have fun for two thirds of the film and I LOVED every minute of it. Jon Favreau directed the film and has a fun cameo as Stark’s driver/bodyguard and Gwyneth Paltrow plays the spicy Pepper Potts. I couldn’t believe it, I was surprised when I heard that Paltrow was cast in this movie, but after seeing the scenes and banter between her and Downey Jr. it reminded me of one of my favorite on screen relationships: Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant from the hilarious His Girl Friday.
The only real problem with the film was seeing The Dude playing Obadiah Stane and from the very first moment we see him on screen, we know exactly what’s going to happen with this character, now I am not terribly familiar with this character from the comics, but unless Bridges was trying to match the look of the original character, I think this was a bad choice that ultimately hurt the suspense of the film.
I have to say though, this is the superhero origin story that we’ve never gotten before, this film is just a joy to watch. Most times, we need to wade through an origin story (Spider-Man), just to get to the movie we were hoping for (Spider-Man 2). The only other origins story I really enjoyed was one that completely broke the mold for this type of film, Unbreakable from M. Night Shyamalan, which has a secret connection to Iron Man which you’ll only understand if you watch through the end credits.
I also enjoyed some of the little things that Favreau and the writers put into the the film. I grew up with a family that spoke Arabic (a language that I never learned), but watching this film I recognized a lot of very familiar Arabic slang and it was something that I totally wasn’t expecting, not to mention that when I saw that the prisoners in the film passed the time playing backgammon, it made my eyes light up with joy.
There are very few directors whose new movies I actively seek out, but David Mamet has been on that small list ever since he came out with Glengarry Glen Ross.
The movie stars Chiwetel Ejiofor (a man I’ve been on the lookout for ever since he played the big bad in Serenity), Tim Allen and Joe Mantegna and Mamet crafts an interesting tale of honor in a world that seems to have it in short supply. The story takes place around the world of Jiu-Jitsu.
Ejiofor plays the instructor and proprietor of a Jiu-Jitsu school and he gets sucked into a world of sticky ethical situations, sometimes with honorable and other times despicable people and it takes some time to figure out who is who, but with Mamet’s amazing dialog, scenes that would normally be rushed are filmed with care and scenes that seem like they are going to be cliche, end up surprising you.
This is not an amazing movie, but it was an interesting study of honor among today’s characteristic shades of gray in life and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
One of my favorite movies is Punch-Drunk Love, it is by far the best (and most out of character) performances by Adam Sandler. One of the best parts of this film though (for me) is the song on the soundtrack, He Needs Me. What I didn’t know about it though, was that the recording of the song in the film was lifted from the 1980 movie, Popeye, with Shelley Duvall performing the song. It makes me want to get Popeye, even though I have heard that it was not very good and even hurt Robert Altman’s career.
I saw the trailer for the Mamma Mia! movie last time I went to the movies. Now, I didn’t have any idea what the Broadway musical, that this film is based on, was about… actually, my only knowledge of it comes solely from this poster:
Thanks to The Digg Reel for promoting the film so I could find it. I wish I knew how to use programs like AutodeskMaya after watching this film, at least I’m not too lazy to watch the movie!
For anyone who grew up during the 1980’s, the Street Fighter video game series, especially Street Fighter II, was THE epic game while growing up, bringing nonsense phrases like “root-raww, root-raww, root-raww” into our consciousnesses.
I wasn’t sure what to make from the trailers for Semi-Pro, it looked a bit stupid to be honest, but after watching the film, I realize it was COMPLETELY stupid, but in probably the funniest possible way. I loved this movie, I was laughing so loudly during so many different scenes, it was great seeing Andy Richter in the film as well, I always like seeing him, I wish his career had really taken off after he walked away from being the Late Night with Conan O’Brien sidekick.
It was also great seeing Maura Tierney in the movie, it was odd seeing her though, since the last movies I saw with her in it were Insomnia and Scotland, Pa. I’m used to seeing her on the now defunct Newsradio and ER. Her storyline with Woody Harrelson brought a little bit of cinema into what was otherwise a pure comidic farce of a film.
Without giving anything away, having scenes like that the bear fight and the origin of commonplace modern basketball moves really made this a killer comedy.
These two play probably the most famous sisters in English history. Portman plays Anne, the smart and headstrong sister, while Johansson plays Mary, the shy and often looked over younger sister (according to this film, at least). Portman is extremely strong in this movie, in almost every scene she is the strongest presence whatever room she’s in. Eric Bana plays King Henry, but outside of a couple of scenes (one of which where he’s alone and furious with Portman in her room), it feels like he is completely overshadowed.
Two other strong performances come from Kristin Scott Thomas (The mother of the famous Boleyn girls) and David Morrissey (The Duke of Norfolk, patriarch and uncle to the Boleyn girls). There is one scene in particular, where Anne is being lectured to by her mother and Thomas‘ monologue about women’s power over men is wonderfully performed.
I know it’s early in the year, but as of now, my favorite performance of 2008 is Natalie Portman as the strong and complicated Anne Boleyn.
After watching the movie, I’m so glad I caught that news.com video. At no point during the movie did it look like I was watching CGI. The blending of live action actors with the many many fanciful characters was a ton of fun to get absorbed into. Mary-Louise Parker does a great job as the mother of this troubled family, that is trying to essentially start a whole new life after moving away from NYC. The dynamic between Parker and her children, as well as the dynamic between the syblings was a lot of fun to watch, since it felt so natural and realistic, while the family problems were surprisingly mature.
The movie is also surprisingly scary and after I left the movie, I was glad to see that it was rated PG. This movie would probably scare very little children. I don’t think most adults would be drawn to this movie, unless they were as interested in the computer animation as I am, but if you want a fun movie to bring your younger teen sibling/cousin/child, this is really a great choice.
I love film, but I usually only get to see mainstream movies. This week, thanks to Boing Boing TV, I was able to watch this short film called Food Fight, a film by Stefan Nadelman and presented by Tourist Pictures which starts with World War II and essentially reenacts all the major wars since then… using food to represent the countries involved in the conflicts.
The film is a lot of fun and it is done very well. Check it out.
Cassandra’s Dream is Woody Allen’s 3rd London based movie he has made in as many releases and at first, I thought this was a very different type of story compared to anything Allen has done previously, but after a few days of thinking about it, I realized I was wrong.
First off, the movie stars Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell, has Tom Wilkinson in a small, but interesting role as well as Woody Allen finding one of his most beautiful leading ladies he has ever put on screen, Hayley Atwell, a woman I can understand wanting to do anything for, to keep interested in me.
The problem though is that after seeing Match Point, this London based Allen film falls flat. The acting performances are uneven, at best and there was more than one scene that was written to be serious, but ended up causing laughter from the audience! Collin Farrel’s performance was by far the most varied, there were some scenes where he shined, but for a majority of them though, he was pretty disappointing to watch. Wilkinson, an actor who has become one of my favorite actors to look out for, after his small, but memorable roles in such films as In the Bedroom, Batman Begins and Michael Clayton, also had scenes that switched from well acted to absurd in what seemed like a blink of an eye… very disappointing.
The ending, something I won’t reveal here, just seems too tidy for a writer/director as talented as Woody Allen. It’s a shame, I adore Allen, but this movie seems like a far inferior combination of Match Point and Crimes and Misdemeanors.
The Orphanage is a new movie that has gotten a lot of press for being produced by Guillermo del Toro after his success with Pan’s Labyrinth. The movie is directed by J.A. Bayona and he looks like someone we should be watching out for in the future.
I will avoid giving away as much plot as I can, since finding out about this story is part of what makes this movie fun and I carefully avoided hearing anything substantive about the story before seeing the film and was rewarded greatly for that decision.
Let me just say that this movie was truly scary, there were no fake scary moments where they used music and quick camera moves just to make the audience jump and no scenes of torture porn, which does not make a movie scary. I really appreciate seeing a film that is still able to scare the living daylights out of me sometimes.
Also, I have to say, this movie’s ending gave me a real Hillary Clinton moment, I teared up and it almost made me cry. This was the only part of the film that really even reminded me that del Toro had a hand in this film.
I saw this film in a PACKED theater and there was one scene which scared one woman so badly that her scream made the ENTIRE rest of the audience jump from their seat! It was great! If you like creepy, scary movies, you should definitely find a theater and see this movie.
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