Movie Reviews

James Bond has returned! Wait, no, I’m sorry that’s not Bond. It seems that director Marc Forster believes the best direction to take the Bond series is down the Jason Bourne route, (I know you all are probably tired of all the Bourne Bond comparisons, but they’re there for a reason so you’ll have to suffer through another one), which I don’t think is the best way for the series to go, and I know I’m not alone here. Quantum of Solace is the sequel to the incredible franchise reboot Casino Royale (Which I liked better than superhero reboot Batman Begins), which I see as one of the best in the series, and brings back Daniel Craig as the suave, clean cut, drinking spy we all know and love… Wait, go back, what I meant to say was brings back Daniel Craig as the sometimes suave, beaten, drinking action star that emerged in the last film. QoS also brings forth a new bond girl in the form of Olga Kurylenko, and favorite returning character M played by Judi Dench. The movie starts off almost immediately where Royale left off with Bond racing down a mountainside with a criminal in his trunk ready to be interrogated. This starts off the first action sequence as cars go flying off cliffs and running into very large trucks. When he finally sits down alongside M to interrogate Mr. White, as he is known, he finds out that White is a part of a secret organization and finds it incredible that MI6 knows nothing about them. He laughs telling them that they have people EVERYWHERE, at which point a traitor emerges and sets Mr. White free to run away which starts off another chase scene.The whole movie is pretty much one big long chase with Bond going after… something. In the beginning he is looking for Vesper’s (The bond girl from Royale who drowned, after betraying Bond) boyfriend to get some answers, but he gets sidetracked to a plot concerning a girl called Camille (Kurylenko) trying to kill him, and then a man called Dominic Greene (Mathieu Almaric) trying to kill her by sending her onto a boat where there is a General who killed Camille’s family, who she is now intending to avenge. Now that’s a long way to say that pretty much everyone wants to kill everyone, but wait, there’s more. It turns out that Dominic Greene has a secret plan to possibly control oil in South America, and he’s even getting help from those damn American CIA agents.You can tell from that small plot summary that this movie is going to have it’s themes spread throughout revenge and trust, and while that’s true it’s not exactly a point Forster focuses on too much. Sure you get Bond sulking for a couple of scenes, and trying to do anything to get what he wants, but it never truly feels real. This is not a movie trying to explain what revenge does to the human soul, or how trust can sometimes be manipulated. No, this is a movie about visually active action scenes put down on a mat with a thin plot wire holding them together. It is seen as a thin wire because by the end of the movie you don’t really care about Greene’s evil plan (which is much smaller in scale than what is first assumed). The whole movie you’re just waiting for the next action scene to start. There are a couple of sentimental moments, and even a few true Bond moments spread throughout the scene, but overall this is just your standard Hollywood explosion film with a just an extra small hint of style and dignity. Now there are some things that Quantum of Solace gets right, one of which is Daniel Craig. Craig is by far one of the best Bonds (beaten only by Connery) and this performance is great, even though he doesn’t have much to work with. When he’s given the chance he shines, and that’s all we can ask for from him. The movie is also fast paced for the most part so you never really feel bored, but honestly there just feels like there’s too much missing from this film. To start off they bring in way too many characters. At the end you don’t care about any of the new ones introduced, or the ones brought back. They bring in so many characters that the new “Bond Girl” only gets around fifteen to twenty minutes of screen time. (That is of course a guess, but I can tell you that she wasn’t there long.) My biggest gripe though, is of course what I mentioned in the beginning. People need to realize that this is not an action film, Bond is a spy. He kills when he has too, but he does not enjoy doing it. Violence is an itch that James Bond hates to scratch. He sneaks, he listens, he saves the girl, he has one liners for everything, and he wears suits 99% of the time. He also uses gadgets Forster! Bond has watch lasers, and cell phone grappling hooks, he started that trend, and in over two hours of watching Solace I never caught a glimpse of the slightest bit of technology being used by Bond.Overall the movie itself isn’t bad. The acting is as good as you can accept it to be with Craig giving his all and everyone else doing the best they can with what they have, especially Judi Dench, but that’s practically a given. The direction is going to get points off from me, possibly unfairly, but the blame for this new Bond will fall on Forster and his screenwriters from me. I do not like where they are taking this new Bond and hopefully they will remedy this and bring us a third movie that’s on par with Royale. The screenwriting is just like above, but they get even more points taken off for the

I recently had the opportunity to watch the first three episodes of the web series “Kirill” and have to say I’m rather impressed. Most web series that I’ve seen, with exception to the BSG webisodes, have been a mixture of bad acting, poor writing, or plain poor production. “Kirill,” however, is quite the opposite. This is, of course, speaking about the first three episodes and it’s entirely possible that this interesting show could go downhill fast. Let’s hope not, though, because “Kirill” is really a fascinating little show.With episodes clocking in at about two-and-a-half to three minutes long, there isn’t a lot of time for the writers or the actors to establish their characters. But “Kirill” does all it needs to do in the first few episodes to draw my attention. It has an interesting premise: a desperate fugitive (played by David Schofield, who is deliciously creepy) trapped in a building in a hostile future Earth is, for reasons yet to be revealed to us, trying to initiate contact with a woman to warn her of…something. What’s so interesting about the premise is that even after about six minutes of show we’re left wondering a lot of things: What is going on? Why is he so desperate to help this woman? What has happened to the Earth? Why is he in this room? Hopefully these questions will be answered in the following webisodes, but for now, Schofield has done a fantastic job bringing this character with so little screen time to life.Another interesting point about the show is that it is part internal dialogue and part external dialogue. While this doesn’t work for movie-length features, it seems to work wonderfully in “Kirill,” where Schofield’s internal dialogue delivers rather morbid discussions of the tolerances of the human body. Outwardly we are given a ragged older man, obviously warn, psychological strained, and desperate. I’ve always liked Schofield and that hasn’t changed here. In some ways I think this is a perfect role for him, because he is now being given the face time he seems to never get (his stint on Pirates of the Caribbean was far too short, in my opinion).Adding to the more “standard” video, there are, as far as I can tell, two blogs roaming out there, one of which is linked through the “Kirill” website. These blogs seem to be an attempt at producing a more realistic platform for the webisodes and offers a quick way for the characters to sort of establish themselves even though they haven’t had any screen time yet. If you want to get into more of the mystery behind this series, you should read the blogs. They come with short video clips and a lot of information written much like real personal blogs are written. They enhance the story by showing the outside world that our main character, Kirill, doesn’t see (and a lot of scary things are happening in the outside world). My only complaint is that I don’t get the same emotional attachment I do to Schofield’s beaten-down character, and perhaps that’s because Kirill has a face and these other characters are mostly faceless.Beyond all this, it’s hard to say whether “Kirill” will shape up to be a groundbreaking web series. While it certainly looks like it could be, this will all depend on future episodes where new actors/characters are introduced and the writers/director will have to show us what is going on. There are, as far as I can tell, only seven webisodes left, leaving the show little time to get the ball rolling on the story (unless there will be more and this short season is a “teaser” or sorts to test the market). I have high hopes, though, and we will see as time passes. Go check it out!

I’m a little late, but I had a lot to think about for this review. I’ve started doing my movie reviews for a friend. My review of The Dark Knight can be found here. Loved the movie, by the way. Anywho! (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)

I’m watching The Hills Have Eyes II right now and have come to the conclusion that Hollywood has forgotten how to make good horror movies, let alone good movies. I thought for a moment there was hope, what with Wall E being such a fantastic film, but this movie has made me question whether Hollywood should be making movies at all.My problems with the movie after only watching about half and hour or so: What is with portraying the troops as these ill-prepared morons who can barely fire a gun, let alone show a little knowledge of military tactics, common unit placement, etc.? Our troops are not so stupid and I don’t know why they have to be portrayed as such. Not to mention that the actors don’t look like soldiers (even National Guard ones) and they don’t act like soldiers either. The National Guard goes through training too. They don’t just slap a gun in their hands and say “have fun”. One thing that surprises me is a complete lack of military discipline. Since when do soldiers just wander off? This movie relies on the character’s stupid for plot devices, rather than attempting to do something that is logical (you know, like have the creepy hill people actually be intelligent, rather than a bunch of mutated freaks who are barely more intelligent then the men with guns). There’s a reason why our military is relatively efficient at fighting. What happened to suspense? Everything is right out in the open. There are no scary moments. The creatures just come bumbling out, swing a makeshift ax and that’s that. Nothing happens to get the adrenaline pumping. This is a problem with all horror movies now. It’s either gory or boring. Someone needs to look back to what made the old horror movies great. So, the point of the movie is that somehow these mutated freaks have gone unnoticed on a military compound where scientific research is being done and, for some reason, the radios magically don’t work? Right. And, against better judgment, knowing that said radios aren’t working, these soldiers decide, “hey, let’s go into the scary old mine where these crazy mutated freaks are even though nobody knows that’s where we’re going and we have no backup, not to mention we clearly suck at what we’re doing”. There’s a rape scene that has no purpose other than as shock value. The character doesn’t grow and even seem affected by the event once the movie reaches the end. The only reaction she has is to smash the monster man’s genitals with a sledge hammer during the final fight scene. Okay, but couldn’t they have had the same reaction if he had only tried to rape her? In fact, if you took the rape scene out and made it only an attempt, the ending would make a lot more sense. It’s basically an unresolved, yet serious plot point and I think the failure of the writers to address it properly basically treat it like a trivial piece of the story. Apparently rape is trivial now. The movie ends with the whole thing seeming like a strange experiment involving the mutated people. What? They’re practically mentally retarded in the movie, but they can use a laptop computer? Needless to say, this movie was crap. Not scary; not even all that surprising at all. It adds nothing new to the genre and doesn’t even attempt to do so. It even lacks the character depth that would have made it a great horror film (Silence of the Lambs had such depth, though that is a fairly different kind of horror I suppose).The only good thing about this movie is that at least towards the end the good guys start to win. It’s never really explained what Sector 16 or whatever is or why these monsters exist (maybe that’s in the first one, but I have no desire to see that now). Just another poor attempt to scare us by being gory and disturbing rather than genuinely terrifying.

Pixar has done it again. Possibly one of the best films in the last ten years and quite probably the best film of the year. If Wall E doesn’t win a mass of awards when awards season starts up I’d be surprised and ticked off. Almost everything you can do right in a film is done in Wall E. After the blunder of Cars (which is so unlike a Pixar flick in comparison to some of the company’s better works) we are given a grim view of the future, but touched with the awesome, vivid, and powerful storytelling that made us all love Finding Nemo and The Incredibles, except one thing: most of the story had to be told without the benefit of human characters. To put it simply: I love Wall E.To the breakdown: Direction 5/5I’m not even sure what to say here. Pixar has managed to turn a tiny, junker robot into possibly the cutest “living” thing to ever grace the big screen. Simple things like the cute up and down motion of Wall E to how the two robots (Eve and Wall E) interact are examples of the amazing way the director managed to make me love the characters of this film. There are absolutely NO moments in this film that made me go “eh, that wasn’t good”. Everything is pulled together seamlessly, all moving progressively towards the end. The love story is not over the top, but balanced perfectly throughout. It’s just…amazing. Cast 4/5The only complaint I have with this movie is one that probably won’t bother anyone. It didn’t really bother me either, but it was something that made this film just short of perfect. The voice actors are somewhat sparse. Granted, Wall E, Eve, and the other robots are all dominated by slightly robotic voices, but the few human characters are a little generic (particularly the male characters). I think perhaps diversifying the cast of human voices would have helped, but maybe this is just something I noticed and that nobody else really cares about (it doesn’t detract from the story, but I’m apprehensive to give anything a perfect score).Adaptation N/AThis wasn’t technically adapted from any works of literature, but the parallels to previous written works about robots and human society in the future are there and noticeable if you pay attention to such things. Writing 5/5While the story for Wall E is somewhat typical (in a way), it is also extremely powerful. Earth is devastated. Mankind has abandoned the blue planet after essentially killing her with junk and other goodies (yes, Global Warming is a part of things). For the most part, this aspect of the story will roll right over your kid’s heads, unless they are very well educated. They’ll see the dead Earth, and when they ask about it, just make something up. Pixar doesn’t try to cram environmental stuff down your throat here (and people that say that’s what they’re doing are probably the same folks that think kids are too stupid to think for themselves, and thus coddle their children to create little wimpy kids who have been brainwashed). Ranting aside…Wall E is the last remaining “cleaning” robot. His job is to clean up all the garbage left behind and essentially make Earth livable again. Humans, however, have long since left on a luxury liner with the promise that the company Buy N Large (sort of like the the future Walmart) will clean things up and eventually call them all back when the Earth is back to normal (or at least life sustaining).Wall E, of course, has grown his own little personality after being stuck on Earth for some 700 years, sporting a fascination with love and old 20th century musicals (plus an obsessive habit of collecting bits and pieces of former human life, and anything that tends to draw his attention). Then he meets Eve, a “drone” sent from the Axiom (the luxury liner) to determine if Earth is good to go…and well, you can figure out how things go.The story is absolutely heart warming. The love story is accented in just the right way in the writing that it’s believable and, well, cute. It reminded me the cuteness of my own relationship, which hit a chord with me. I don’t generally like love stories, but this one really gripped me. And I almost cried…something I don’t do very often.Point is, the story is fantastic, with plenty of good stuff for the adults (let’s face it, even if GW is a part of this story and it’s preaching the green card it’s still giving us an example of the worst case scenario…a picture we need to see and one which science fiction has been doing for a long time). The kids will enjoy this too. Many people have claimed this was a sleeper on Fandango, but I don’t see it. The kids in the theater were cracking up and so were the adults. It’s simply one of the best films made in a long time. Visuals 5/5It’s Pixar at its best. What more is there to say? Overall 4.75/5What else is there to say? Between being one of the cutest stories since Finding Nemo and possibly one of Pixar’s best films to date, this is a science fiction nut’s wet dream. It’s everything that makes scifi wonderful and exciting, with all the cuteness, comedy, love, and visual stimulation of the computer animation world. If you haven’t seen Wall E, what are you waiting for? What’s wrong with you? Take your kids, or go with your friends. This film should be drowning in ticket sales right now.If you have enjoyed Pixar films before, see this. If you haven’t, see this. If you don’t know what Pixar is, see this. If you haven’t seen a movie in a while, see this (it might just make you love movies again). Wall E = awesome.

Once again the world proves that they really don’t understand M. Night Shyamalan. The reviews for his first rated-R film have been overwhelming negative on the critic’s side and even worse on the public’s side. Comments have ranged from supposed claims that this is an Intelligent Design movie in hiding or a poorly made film that doesn’t give you any answers. I’m curious as to how many people actually watched this film and of those that watched, how many of them attempted to not have a bias of some sort. Let’s face it, Shyamalan has been slammed by critics and “fans” alike, the vast majority of which have been disillusioned by the media (who have attempted to make his films look like something they’re not) or simply too narrow minded to realize that his films are not typical Hollywood reboots touting the same typical cliches in the same exact way as every other Hollywood scary movie (or “creepy” move, if you will).To put it simply: The Happening isn’t the best of Shyamalan’s films (I’m rather partial to Signs to be honest), but it’s also not the worst film he’s ever made. If you were to say it’s the worst, that’s not saying it’s bad at all, only that it’s not as good as his others (which I would probably agree with, but I refuse to say it’s the worst of his films). I liked this better than I liked The Village, and since I haven’t finished The Lady in the Water or seen Unbreakable I can’t place it above or below those. It’s not his best, but definitely better than the public is saying.The fact is, people don’t get Shyamalan. They go into his films expecting another Hollywood reboot of some idea, which they will almost always complain about anyway, only to be given something that requires you to either think or attempts to trick you into thinking something, only to turn the tides in the end.Now to the breakdown: Direction 3/5This isn’t Shyamalan’s best film as far as direction is concerned. I think a lot of the problem is that his characters aren’t entirely the focus here, as in films like Signs or Sixth Sense. The world at large, or at least the East Coast is the primary focus, so while the early parts of the film are absolutely superb (the way he drew together the carnage was amazing), his delivery later is missing something. I blame this on what I just mentioned: this isn’t a character story like his other films (and maybe he wanted it to be a character story, but it just didn’t work that way). He has his moments here, but it could have done better to bring more focus on the characters. Cast 2/5I’m not overly ecstatic about the cast. Wahlberg was either flat or over the top in places. His delivery was sometimes just too ridiculous (a little of that gosh-wow stuff). He had his moments though (there is a particularly great bit of dialogue revolving around a superfluous bottle of cough syrup, which is simply a classic). Unfortunately, his moments aren’t enough. Deschanel was okay, although flat, which is sort of how she acts I think. She wasn’t horrible as she was in the Wizard of Oz reboot, but she lacked a lot of depth. Again, a lot of the problems stem from this film not being a character film. The little girl, unfortunately, didn’t have a lot of lines, but Leguizamo was absolutely awesome. I really wished his character had stuck around more. There are numerous other characters that add to the cast, most of which are really good choices for their parts and fit well into the story I think. Adaptation N/AThis wasn’t adapted from anything as far as I know, so it doesn’t apply. Writing 4/5A lot of people have reamed him on his story. Either they think the science is stupid or they have this strange idea that this is an Intelligent Design propaganda film. Let’s face it, maybe Shyamalan wanted and ID movie, but what he gave us was a film that very clearly talks about science exactly in the same way that scientists would. The fact that they pass off the epidemic as an act of nature that won’t be fully understood doesn’t say that it’s God (Shyamalan thinks it does, apparently). All it does is show us why we love science: there will always be other questions that need answering.The story revolves around an epidemic in which some strange contagion turns off people’s “survival reflex” and instead flips the switch so they actually would rather die. It’s chilling and freaking creepy when we see people offing themselves for seemingly no reason. The reasons for the contagion are explained in the movie (contrary to what everyone seems to think), while still leaving a little room to wonder why. Yes, the story has some serious logic to it, based on what we know about certain parts of nature in the first place. The “infection” has a very interesting and probable base in a scientific reality (although, perhaps Shyamalan has pushed things to a higher state on purpose, because seeing this sort of thing happen at a snail’s pace would be exceedingly boring).Overall, the story works really well. The critics have blasted this film for reason that still don’t make a lot of sense to me. In fact, the whole ID argument makes absolutely no sense since it is never really established that the main characters are wholly religious. They don’t pray on screen, they don’t run around screaming “oh Lord, save me” and they don’t carry around Bibles. They’re just normal folks. It’s completely irrelevant that Wahlberg and Shyamalan are strong Christians, because the film itself doesn’t give us a long babble about such things. It’s a movie about a normal married couple trying to survive an epidemic and not knowing what the hell is going on. And it works. Visuals 5/5The visuals are by far