watching movies one cup at a time

I think we’ve finally reached the tipping point where Tim Burton is sliding into self-parody. This movie feels very phoned in, like someone opened the book of “Tim Burton-isms” and piled them all into this rather lifeless mush.

Check out this video called Tim Burton’s Secret Formula. They pretty much nailed it on the head.

The crazy make-up and scenery caught our interest in the build-up to the release, but once again a good story is sacrificed to just having a bunch of crazy-sh*t exploding everywhere. And the original story was hard enough to take seriously to begin with considering it’s mostly surreal nonsense on purpose. But here Burton attempts to take that literary nonsense and fashion a story “with heart” and “real characters”, giving the Mad Hatter a little back story and a little sanity believe it or not. However this makes the character completely impotent and lacking much of a personality at all. Instead we get a sad clown that wants Alice to “do the right thing.” Huh? Sure, Johnny Depp can be fun to watch when he plays these cartoon-like characters, but at this point it’s all been done so many times that the novelty has worn off. It’s become tired and cliche.

The rest of the cast pretty much phones it in as well and is very forgettable. Mia Wasikowska as Alice seems completely bored the entire time and doesn’t care what’s happening because she’s convinced it’s all a dream. This translates into a lifeless performance that never convinces US to care what’s happening either. Helena Bonham Carter is good but is not given much to work with. Anne Hathaway is truly bizarre as the White Queen who for some reason never lowers her arms the entire movie. She is constantly fluttering around with her arms up like she’s dancing ballet or something. It’s distracting and quite silly, in a bad way. Everyone else was forgettable and ultimately pointless.

In general I just never cared about any of the characters or the so-called problems they were facing. The movie was not faithful to the original books and feels like they were trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, covering over their inadequacies with a mountain of CGI rainbow goth vomit. Ultimately this film was pointless and empty. Plus the 3-D that is now so trendy was very lackluster and never wowed us. After Avatar, it’s going to take a lot to make the 3-D really stand out. Otherwise it feels like just another gimmick.

Bottom Line: Lots of pointless noise. Skip it.

This is generally considered to be the best Alien film in the four part series. And I must agree it is the most fun to watch. Each film is very different in tone and style. The first Alien movie was much more of a classic haunted house story where this movie clearly borrows from the action movie genre. This is really James Cameron’s vision as he came up with the story idea, wrote the screenplay and directed the film. There is a lot of connection to similar war movies with soldiers under siege. And following this movie, there were many more sci-fi stories involving soldiers in space, both in film and on television.

The story follows Ripley after her escape from the Nostromo. She’s been in space for 57 years and returns to an unfamiliar Earth and a shell of her former life. Colonists has populated the planet from the first film and discovered the alien creatures. Ripley and a team of marines go to investigate the colony’s communication breakdown under the direction of the Weyland-Yutani corporation (“the Company”). Of course all hell breaks loose and it becomes clear that the Company wants the alien for it’s bio-weapons division. Ripley barely escapes alive along with colony child-survivor Newt, the last marine Hicks, and the android Bishop. The colony explodes in a nuclear meltdown and presumably it takes all the aliens with it. The movie ends on a happy note as a mother-daughter bonded Ripley and Newt go to peaceful cryo-sleep on their way back to Earth. Read the rest of this entry »

Dude, that was messed up. There was some twisted stuff in this movie. Kids getting chest-bursts, a pregnant lady, parents, people getting killed constantly – it was pretty gruesome. And the main problem with all that is it felt really cold-blooded. This movie had no heart, it had no purpose. It was just a series of scenes filled with senseless violence. It felt like the kind of movie that a couple of dorky fanboys would make if given the chance, kind of like if Beavis and Butthead did an Aliens movie. I can just see the film-makers sitting around a stale pizza taking a break from Worlds Of Warcrack and saying “Hey, you know what would be freakin’ cool? If we had a kid get a chest-burst. That would be AWESOME!”

And hey, in all honesty, maybe I’m not the one this movie was made for. Maybe I’m the one who’s thinking too much and should just keep it to myself. But this isn’t stupid Freddy Kreuger we’re talking about. This is the Aliens movies. These movies have had amazing directors like Ridley Scott, James Cameron, David Fincher, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. And they told some real stories mixed in with the action. Some better than others. But the point is they weren’t so mindless, and skilled directors with a good cast were able to make interesting films. The Predator series on the other hand always kinda sucked. And maybe it’s watering down the Alien movie mythology too much. Read the rest of this entry »

One 50 thousand dollar chinchilla fur coat is all it took to take down the Harlem heroin kingpin. American Gangster is based on the true story of Frank Lucas, the Harlem gangster who cut deals directly with heroin makers in Southeast Asia to make loads of money in the U.S. while maintaining a low profile. What I found most interesting about the character of Frank Lucas is that he was not a flashy “Superfly” bufoonish kind of African-American gangster that you see all too often in movies. He was calm, cool, behind-the-scenes, and respectable. Yet he was a cold-blooded killer, a smart businessman, and a fierce leader. A man to be taken seriously.

Denzel Washington plays Frank Lucas magnificently well in another stunning performance from one of the best actors working today. Denzel does not often play bad guys in his movies. It’s rare. And this is a very different character from the loud and shady street hustler Denzel won the Oscar for playing in Training Day. Yet Frank Lucas is far more sinister and capable of much more destruction. This is a character who is ice cold, can shoot a person as easily as we would light a match, can strike a deal with the Italian Mafia as smoothly as we would be ordering a sandwich. And Denzel is so cool, so calm, so serious, he exudes intimidation at the same time as respect. What he says without saying anything carries just as much weight. Read the rest of this entry »

An Oscar-contender and Golden Globe winner, this film stars Keira Knightley and James MacAvoy as doomed lovers caught up in tragic circumstances. I’m usually not too into dramas, especially heavy dramas. But I found this film to be very well told and interesting.

The scenes of France were visually fantastic. I especially enjoyed the long single camera shot on the beach where the soldiers are waiting to evacuate. It evoked the chaos of the situation but injected a serene beauty and sorrow as well. The English countryside never looked better as well. It’s not the cliche rainy, muddy fields I’m used to seeing in these movies.

The ending was very unexpected and very satisfying. It has a twist that really put the whole movie into a much more interesting light. Though of course it’s very sad, how the story is presented is very compelling. The characters are multi-dimensional and capable of evolving, which is refreshing. Saoirse Ronan plays the young Briony and she does a fantastic job for such a young but pivotal character. Her facial expressions were perfect and not overdone but communicating a lot.

Bottom Line: Definitely see Atonement but be-warned it’s a weepy-drama. It is not a Hollywood happy ending, which is a good thing in this case.

James Cameron set out to make a groundbreaking film that not only raised the bar for 3D filmmaking, but also married the technological breakthroughs to a rich and detailed world inhabited by characters and creatures that drove a great story. So often story and character development get sacrificed in the name awe-inspiring special effects. But Cameron has spent such a great amount of time filling in the details of this new world that I believed in the reality he created and could easily connect with the characters it spawned. This is a world that doesn’t exist but watching it I believed every moment. And the 3D effects were nothing short of brilliant. Pandora felt alive and amazing.

The film is set about 150 years in the future where a company has set up a mining operation on an alien planet named Pandora to get a rich element that will feed an energy-starved earth. The problem for the company is that Pandora has a rich and complex ecosystem that includes an indigenous population called the Na’vi. These people live in harmony with their environment as each plant and animal is connected and sustained by the balance maintained by Pandora. The human scientists discover that each tree is in fact literally connected to every other tree and that the planet functions like a living organism. The company disregards this in the name of obtaining their precious minerals and proceeds to destroy anything and everything getting in it’s way. Special avatars are created with organically grown Na’vi bodies that are operated through a mental connection to a human. Essentially the human “drives” the avatar like a possessed puppet, each avatar specifically grown for a specific human. Initially the avatars are used to try and bring about the cooperation of the Na’vi and put them at ease with the company. But due to the nature of the relationship between the Na’vi and Pandora, there is little the humans can offer besides being an intrusion and invasion. Read the rest of this entry »

Tina Fey is awesome. She may not be the best actress in the universe but what she is capable of, she does extremely well. Baby Mama is the story of Fey’s character, Kate, who decides that after years of being a career-centered woman she now wants to make room for a family. Unfortunately she finds many road blocks in making that happen and decides to go the surrogate route. Amy Poehler becomes the surrogate and eventually winds up living with Kate. From there we get a lot of “The Odd Couple” type of jokes but it never gets stupid or overly-cliche. And eventually both characters make changes for the better.

It is an interesting view of contemporary family life. The nuclear family has eroded to the point of extinction as modern life keeps changing and more possibilities become available to people. And in the end, as long as there is a loving, secure environment, it shouldn’t matter if a family has 2 moms, 2 dads, just 1 parent or any combination. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are given some chances to stretch and show some real emotion and I believed it. They pulled it off. Read the rest of this entry »

Nicolas Cage makes about 3 or 4 mediocre movies a year. I guess it pays the bills. Every once in a while he does an exceptional performance that justifies why he got an Oscar all those years ago. However, this film is not one of those exceptions. Now having said that, it’s really not that bad. I kind of enjoyed this movie.

Cage plays an assassin-for-hire named Joe. He is on one last job in Bangkok and things don’t go as planned. But Cage’s role doesn’t slip into a two-dimensional one-note character. It could very easily but he gives it some edge, some depth. Not a lot, but just enough to make you pay attention. This isn’t Shakespeare and most likely this movie will be forgotten, but for what it is, it’s pretty decent.

This movie was quite a phenomenon when it came out in 1989. I remember actually waiting in a line that stretched down the block on opening day. People ate it up. The timing was just right for this movie and Tim Burton did a great job of capturing a dark, brooding Batman that had become popular largely due to Frank Miller’s milestone graphic novel, The Dark Knight Returns.

This movie kicked off a string of big budget hero movies that hadn’t been seen since Superman IV stank up the theaters. But with each film you got the sense they were trying to outdo the previous one by getting more “big stars” and more characters crammed in. Until you had the unholy Batman and Robin piece of garbage with 3 villians, 3 heros, Arnold freakin’ Schwarzeneger… too much. But back when this was the only kid on the block, it was impressive. Read the rest of this entry »

Holy Bats**t, Batman! This movie SUCKED! It sucked so fiercely there is a video montage on YouTube of just the sucky parts strung together (shown below in this post). Though one could argue the entire film itself is just one big sucky part. By far the worst Batman film ever, where do we even start with the crimes committed by this movie?

First of all, Joel Schumacher needs to be beaten with a bat-stick for the two films he helmed. Tim Burton injected a lot of style into the first two and the decision to go in such a radically different direction for the next two was a huge miscalculation by Warner Bros., who appeared to be under the assumption people loved the frickin’ craptastic television show more than the actual comic book that the hero is based on. Read the rest of this entry »