Movie Review: "Big Eyes" (2014)

Image Source

Movie: "Big Eyes"

Director: Tim Burton
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes

Margaret (Amy Adams) is a divorcee with a young daughter named Jane (Delaney Ray). Margaret is struggling to get by as she works at a furniture factory while selling her paintings and doing drawing on the side. While at a local art street fair, she meets another artist named Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz). Walter charms Margaret from the beginning and a relationship quickly sparks between them. When Margaret's ex-husband attempts to take their daughter away, citing lack of support in a single mother home, Margaret, desperate, marries Walter to show that she has a stable house. Walter is ambitious, a good salesman and hopes to sell their paintings directly to the public, but when people take a liking to Margaret's big-eyed children, Walter is quick to take credit and claim them as his own. Walter convinces his wife that people won't buy art from a woman and that he can make them money as long as they think the paintings are from him...and make money they do. Walter finds new ways to sell The Big Eyes through prints, postcards and plates, allowing the masses access to art at a lower price. After a decade of turning out art without recognition, Margaret is ready to fight back and risk their entire empire to let people know that she is the one who painted the big eyes and get the recognition she deserves. 

Tim Burton doesn't include Helena Bonham Carter in one of his movies and they split up! Now that doesn't seem right!

In our opinion, Burton has had a couple of recent professional missteps in his directing. We were almost worried that his best days were behind him. This time, on slightly lighter and much more colorful note than some of his recent films of the near past, the story involving the portraits of the Big Eyes is just weird and bizarre enough to be Tim Burton's style. "Big Eyes" is a triumphant return to form for the zany director, which gives us hope for "Beetlejuice 2." Maybe Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter were bringing him down! Throughout this film, there are little reminders that Burton is at the helm of telling this story to the masses in a nuanced yet vivid way, and we absolutely loved every minute of it.

The story of Margaret and Walter Keane is one that we knew nothing about going into this movie apart from the portraits themselves, and we were treated to quite a brilliant film! Amy Adams absolutely shines as Margaret, a woman who, after muscling up the courage to leave her first husband at a time when women just didn't do that no matter how bad the circumstances, falls in love with a master manipulator in her second marriage. Truly talented but with the disadvantage of being a single woman with a child, she has to rely on Walter and go along with a lie that she detests after a short time, but also profits from, too. Adams really brings the spirit of Margaret to life, both the good and the bad. You can see in the Big Eyes portraits she painted that she was deeply soulful and screaming inside because she was marginalized by not just her husband, but the art world, too. Christoph Waltz gives another spectacular performance as Walter Keane, the highly charming "painter" and professional salesman, who honed in on Margaret from the minute he saw her at a street fair. Waltz has this uncanny ability to be absolutely adorable and lovable while simultaneously being a total creep, and not just in this film, but in pretty much everything he has been in. His charisma knows no bounds. All of his deceitful ways help him financially succeed in this movie until Margaret gets the courage to stand up for herself and walk away from it all.

Overall, "Big Eyes" has many great moments of charm, though it does continue a startling trend of taking a few jabs at critics. We're starting to feel unloved. This movie will also make you think about how far back were in society even a mere 50 years ago. Women have come extremely far in recent decades, and this movie displays just how far back and undervalued women were and how they were once treated in society. The Keane's true-life story is such a spectacle that we're surprised we had never heard of it, but now, we're glad we got the chance to hear their tale.

My Rating: 9/10
BigJ's Rating: 9/10
IMDB's Rating: 7.4/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 75%
Do we recommend this movie: ABSOLUTELY YES!!!

Movie Review: "The Imitation Game" (2014)

Image Source

Movie: "The Imitation Game"
Director: Morten Tyldum
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour, 54 minutes

Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a brilliant mathematician who as has just been hired by the British government to be part of a team to help crack the German Enigma code machine. He is very good with numbers but very bad with people, which makes him unpopular with his team. Alan has an idea that could very well break Enigma forever. He wants to build a machine that will be able to decode every German message every single time without fail, but his abrasive personality has made it hard for him to gain the support of those in charge of the program, and they may shut him down before his idea can be fully realized. 

World War II has been able to offer a lot of content for Hollywood. There are probably dozens if not hundreds of movies based on this event. If 2014 if any indication, the film industry won't be stopping this trend any time soon. "The Imitation Game" is our favorite WWII film of not only 2014, but now it is a favorite of ours among all war movies in general. This film is based on the life of Alan Turing, the man who Winston Churchill believed contributed more than any individual to winning the second world war, and he didn't even do it on the battlefield with guns and tanks. He did it with his incredible mind. Benedict Cumberbatch is able to personify Turing so well that we think his performance was one of the best this year, if not this decade. He will prove tough competition to Eddie Redmayne, who up until now, has had our #1 pick for Best Actor of 2014 by a mile. Cumberbatch painstakingly portrays Turing, a man with his brains about him but no real social skills. Turing depicted as walking a fine line between being a reclusive genius and being a complete and total bastard, and Benedict Cumberbatch embodies both of these traits flawlessly and compellingly. You can see it in his face when he talks or understands and you can hear it in his voice when he speaks that Turing had trouble both understanding people and their mannerisms and had trouble conveying exactly what he wanted to say or do. It is a powerful and emotional performance of a man whose life was never given the proper credit it deserved until just recently. The tragic events of Turing's life post-WWII are heartbreaking, and what was done to him is truly one of life's great injustices. "The Imitation Game" succeeds where Christmas day rival "Unbroken" failed, and that is in its emotional connection and its ability to let the audience understand its protagonist as a person. We're not just witnessing Turing's actions, we are seeing a full person. We not only see how he acts and reacts while under pressure or strain, we get to see his personality, empathize with his situation and really, feel for the man himself in general.

Beyond Cumberbatch's outstanding depiction, all of the rest of the acting is superb as well. Keira Knightley, Charles Dance, Mark Strong, and Matthew Goode lend to a great supporting cast alongside Cumberbatch and each of these individual characters brings out a certain characteristic in Turing. The movie itself is enthralling, fascinating and engaging. The fact that we knew very little about the Enigma machine and subsequent attempts to break the code makes this film all the more interesting for us, not only to see Turing's contributions to the war effort, but to see his contributions to mankind through the invention of his Turing machine named Christopher, which is an early prototype of the modern day computer. It's all the more impressive when filmmakers are essentially turning a movie about math, statistics and building a machine, typically boring fodder, into something this exciting and intriguing. It also gives audiences a very powerful and eye-opening look back at just how damning it was to be gay in the 1940's. What Turing went through shouldn't have to be experienced by anyone, and though we're not a perfect world now by any means, if the circumstances would have been just a little bit different, he might have lived a more fulfilling, rich life to his full potential. Alan Turing's efforts have been underappreciated for far too long. It's crazy to think how far back we've held society through oppressive ideologies such as this.

My Rating: 10/10
BigJ's Rating: 10/10
IMDB's Rating: 8.4/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 89%
Do we recommend this movie: ABSOLUTELY YES!!!

Movie Review: "Unbroken" (2014)

Image Source

Movie: "Unbroken"
Director: Angelina Jolie
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 2 hours, 17 minutes

Louis Zamperini (Jack O'Connell) is a former Olympian and officer serving as a bombardier during WWII.  While he and his plane crew are on a rescue mission, their own plane malfunctions and crashes into the ocean. The few survivors of the crash are stuck to live on a life raft hoping help will come before they starve to death. Eventually they are rescued, but unfortunately, it's by the Imperial Japanese Navy and they are immediately taken into custody as prisoners of war. Louis is placed in a prison camp, where the head of the camp, Corporeal Watanabe (Takamasa Ishihara), takes a particular dislike to him, often torturing Louis and making his internment there a living hell. 

Angelina Jolie, the director, not the actress, seems like she's made it her mission to make movies that matter, or if you prefer, Oscar-baity films. While the story of Louis Zamperini is quite harrowing and has all of the elements of what should be an award-worthy film, there is something lacking in both the story itself and this movie adaptation of it. For a movie with what should, for all intents and purposes, be a powerful story of triumph during a time of adversity, "Unbroken" fails to connect on many levels. When you get down to it, Zamperini survived the war, battered but not broken, with his life intact and that's pretty much the end of the story. Sure, many, many decades later, he ran with the Olympic torch back in Japan, but this movie doesn't go into much of anything that happened to him after the war outside of a few blurbed outlines of text at the end of the film. This movie is little more than a series of unfortunate circumstances shown on screen. All we know is what happened to the man, but we never truly get to know Zamperini himself apart from the fact that the man could take a beating. Its heart might be in the right place, but "Unbroken," as a whole, left us feeling sort of "meh." Plus, the most climactic scene in the entire movie is shown in full in the film's trailer and on the poster for the movie, which leaves no real surprise and takes away the impact that scene should have had on audiences.

As the movie starts, it feels like all of the acting begins pretty shakily, even that of relative newcomer Jack O'Connell, who plays Zamperini. It all seems very wooden and stiff, almost as if it were read straight from the pages of the script with no emotion whatsoever. It should be noted that we saw him giving an interview with Conan O'Brien recently and he was sort of a wooden dick during that, too, so maybe that's just his personality?? In the second half of the film, after the actors have lost large amounts of weight, the acting is stepped up a notch or two, but it still isn't spectacular, to say the least. It's almost as if a break was taken in between filming either prior to or after the principal actors would have lost enough weight for their roles. If there was a break, which we're assuming there was, did it make them more connected to their characters and understand them better? The most notable acting in the film is that of Takamasa Ishihara, the antagonist of the film, who plays a Japanese corporeal, and later sergeant, with relative ease. His great, commanding negative presence on the screen is the only character we liked in this film, even though he is the bad guy. One thing we really liked about the movie that must be mentioned is the casting. The young actor who played young Louis Zamperini and Jack O'Connell looked so much alike, we thought they were related. They aren't, but damn if they didn't get that casting perfectly.

All in all, this movie feels a little bit misguided in its approach to Zamperini's story, and this is, in large part, due to its lack of direction on the part of Angelina Jolie. It's all a bunch of dramatic weight loss and time spent waiting and waiting to be found at sea and beating after torture after brutality with no real substance behind it. There are better and more immersive true stories that have been brought to life out of the atrocities of World War II. Even other movies from 2014 left us feeling more satisfied and connected with what we had just watched and "experienced," "The Railway Man," for one.

My Rating: 6/10
BigJ's Rating: 6/10
IMDB's Rating: 7.0/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 51%
Do we recommend this movie: Sure, why not?
~~~~~~~~~~
One year ago, we were watching: "Frozen"

Movie Review: "Wild" (2014)

Image Source

Movie: "Wild"
Director: Jean-Marc Vallee
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 55 minutes

Following the death of her mother, Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) has sunken into depression, drug addiction, and a promiscuous lifestyle. After destroying her marriage and hitting rock bottom with an unplanned pregnancy and not knowing who the father is, Cheryl decides to turn her life around, and she knows just how to do it. She heads off on a journey of self-discovery on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), where she is going to walk over 1,000 miles alone through the desert and mountains, despite having little to no hiking experience. Based on a true story.

After seeing the trailer for this movie over the course of several months, we assumed this film would basically be Reese Witherspoon taking a walk, and it is, but not in the way you'd expect. It's actually much better than that. As we mentioned in the synopsis, this movie is about self-discovery and redemption, but also about coming to terms with what you cannot change in life no matter how hard you try. A friend of ours who saw the movie with us brought up an excellent point. This entire film is an allegory for death itself. When a loved one dies, you must learn to accept help from others, even if you don't want to do so. Everyone deals with grief in their own way. You can be immature about it and act out irrationally, but in the end, you're only hurting yourself because you're really hurting inside. By accepting help from others on her journey, Cheryl was able to complete her hiking mission where she probably would have otherwise failed. The hike itself is a physical manifestation of her emotional problems, from sex with strangers and cheating on her husband to descending into a drug and alcohol problem, all of which stem from the death of her mother, who was "the love of her life."

Reese Witherspoon puts on a brilliantly fantastic performance as Cheryl Strayed as she braves so many different elements emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually and naturally. We really understand her character's fears, both in the wild and during her life's trials. We empathize with her loss and her hardship not just afterwards, but during her hike as well. We had the same thoughts as she did on screen, like "is this random person a murderer or rapist?," "am I going to find water today?," "will I die out here?," "when can I get the proper supplies so I don't die out here?," and most importantly, "how much longer is this going to take!?" BigJ and I are not hikers, but we can imagine we'd have way less success than she did with such an undertaking. The scenery and the beauty of the Pacific Crest Trail's wilderness made us almost yearn to be hikers, but seeing her struggles and breakdowns every single day also made us glad that we're not hikers, because we would have most certainly died. This movie makes you cry in one scene and then cringe as she rips off her toenail in another. It makes you happy that she keeps on keeping on during her journey, and then makes you regret it when she poops in a hole or runs out of water. The emotional and physical responses this movie elicits are palpable, and this is all due to the wonderful direction by Jean-Marc Vallée. The way he chose to break the movie into two separate parts, her present journey and flashbacks from throughout Cheryl's life, was a smart decision that paid off in the end because we as an audience can look back on and feel our own experiences through watching her past and present experiences on the PCT. Our one gripe about the movie is that, though she was dirty looking, Cheryl never truly looked dirty enough throughout the movie.

All in all, we really enjoyed this film and the many stages of how it made us think about our lives through Cheryl's experience. Reese Witherspoon gives a wonderful, award winning performance, and the cinematography, direction and screenplay adaptation are all excellent.

My Rating: 8/10
BigJ's Rating: 8/10
IMDB's Rating: 7.4/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 92%
Do we recommend this movie: Yes!

Movie Review: "Foxcatcher" (2014)

Image Source

Movie: "Foxcatcher"
Director: Bennett Miller
Rating: R
Running Time: 2 hours, 14 minutes

Mark (Channing Tatum) and Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo) are wrestlers, brother, and Olympic gold medalists. Dave is considered a legend in the sport of wrestling and Mark has lived in his shadow. Dave works as a coach at a university and Mark struggles to get by. He sometimes does personal appearances at elementary schools at $20 a pop, since, at the time, there wasn't much opportunity for wrestlers to make money in their sport outside of coaching. One day, Mark is contacted by an eccentric billionaire named John E. du Pont (Steve Carell), who is part of the famous du Pont family. John wants Mark to come to Foxcatcher ranch and help train the U.S. wrestling team for the 1987 World Championships and the 1988 Olympics in Japan. He offers Mark a huge salary to have him coach, as well as a state-of-the-art wrestling facility. Mark agrees and goes on to win the world championship. Shortly after, due to drugs and other factors, Mark and John have a falling out and John brings Dave in to coach at Foxcatcher ranch. This sets off a series of tragic events as John's behavior becomes increasingly bizarre and unstable. 

"Foxcatcher" has received a lot of hype as far as the acting goes and it did not disappoint in that aspect. Steve Carell takes a huge leap away from his usual and expected comedic lead actor role, and though it is not the first time he has done this, it is the first time that he has done so with such conviction, giving a powerhouse performance as John du Pont. His appearance and speech changed, Carell is recognizable as his own person, but unrecognizable in this movie, meaning we don't see Carell, we only see John du Pont. His performance is simply fantastic. Carell brings to life minor details in du Pont's character, little minutiae, and ticks that du Pont really had as a person, and makes them front and center to his bizarre personality. His performance definitely award-worthy, though this year boasts some stiff competition. The good acting does not end with Carell, though, as both Mark Ruffalo and Channing Tatum were able to convey and display all of the mannerisms, behaviors, and body posturing that the Schultz brothers have in real life as wrestlers often do. Tatum, who is often more muscly by nature, maintained his fit form but also exhibited a large under-bite and prominent chin. Ruffalo, a former wrestler himself who now typically has a smaller build, gained a lot of muscle mass for the part of Dave. In an effort to truly capture the spirit of the brothers as wrestlers, Tatum and Ruffalo both trained for many months prior to and during the filming of the movie, and Tatum even busted his eardrum during one take where he told Ruffalo to smack him and get it over with. These minute details, to us, show tremendous amounts of painstaking detail in wanting to get the persons portrayed just right, and for the better.

Many people may not have heard about this film until it started getting award attention, though BigJ and I were both really looking forward to it. BigJ has watched the UFC since it began, and Mark Schultz actually fought in an early UFC event, so he was familiar with him already. Knowing the story ahead of time, nothing was a spoiler to us as BigJ told me pretty much everything there was to know about the Schultz brothers since he is so into MMA and amateur wrestling. That being said, despite all of its great acting, "Foxcatcher" is a pretty dull movie and is almost completely carried by the acting alone. The beginning of the movie initially starts out strong, showing how Mark ate, slept and breathed every single minute of his life for wrestling. At the time when he was an Olympian, the sport of wrestling did not pay very much outside of coaching, and there was no other way for these world-class athletes to earn money in their craft. Though there are good individual elements scattered throughout the movie, the overall feel of it is rather boring and drudges along to its ultimate climax. A little bit of the suspense may have been eliminated for us knowing the true story's outcome, but this does not take away from the fact that this film moves very slowly and is not all that enthralling as a whole. Plus, the filmmaker made a strange decision to compress about 9 years worth of their history into what seems to be less than 2 years. This squeezing of the real lifetime frame made it seem like John du Pont just snapped one day and went crazy, where he should have never been trusted in the first place. In actuality, du Pont slowly drifted into his madness and paranoia over a longer time period.

Overall, the acting makes this movie as successful as it is. Without these 3 actors, or even if they were changed, it could have been a really awful movie, but they carry it an save it from being horrible.

My Rating: 7/10
BigJ's Rating: 7/10
IMDB's Rating: 7.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 86%
Do we recommend this movie: Sure, why not?
~~~~~~~~~~
One year ago, we were watching: "American Hustle"

Movie Review: "Annie" (2014)

Image Source

Movie: "Annie"
Director: Will Gluck
Rating: PG
Running Time: 1 hour, 58 minutes

Annie (Quvenzhané Wallis) is a young foster child who is currently under the care of an alcoholic former pop singer Ms. Hannigan (Cameron Diaz). Ms. Hannigan is still bitter that she was kicked out of C&C Music Factory right before their big break. Despite a rough childhood, Annie always tries to stay positive. One day while running through the street, Annie literally bumps into cell phone mogul and mayoral candidate Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx). She falls down and Will pulls her out of the way of an oncoming truck. This rescue was caught on camera and boosts Stacks' floundering poll numbers. Will's campaign manager Guy (Bobby Cannavale) believes Annie could be a good tool to help soften Will's rough, disconnected image and would help him get elected. Will sends his assistant Grace (Rose Byrne) to get Annie and bring her to help his campaign. Annie may wind up helping with more than Will's campaign, though. She may help him discover what is truly important in life. 

After watching the original "Annie" movie a couple of weeks ago, we were bummed that we didn't like it better after years and years of positive talk and glowing reviews about it. We didn't see what the point of a remake was, either, since there is already a remake of it from the 90's. The trailer for this new version of "Annie" has been playing for almost a year and has made us smile each time we have seen it. Critics seem to hate this movie on principle because it is a remake and this seems to be the same for some moviegoers, too, but there is also a section of people out there who have been rating it lowly without even seeing it because this Annie isn't white, and to those people we would like to say: STOP BEING A RACIST ASSHOLE.

This editorial note aside, we really, really liked this movie musical, even more than the original. Quvenzhané Wallis is a young Oscar-nominated actress and really hasn't been in too many movies, but dang, she wowed us in this! She was perfect as the titular character Annie, a girl who is down on her luck in life but always finds a way to keep on smiling. Honestly, her presence on screen, upbeat energy and glowing smile were infections and we feel like we will be seeing her a lot more through the years. Alongside her is Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx), whose gruff and out-of-touch demeanor doesn't clash well with Annie's sunny personality. Eventually, he comes around and turns out to be quite the charismatic charmer. Though still a rich billionaire and still mildly out of touch, he comes to find out what is truly meaningful in life. Wallis and Foxx's chemistry is incredibly sweet and they sing really well together, too. Unfortunately, many of the songs were auto-tuned, so we have no real way of knowing how it could have been without it. That being said, the new musical numbers are just as good as the original ones, though maybe not as catchy. Rose Byrne and Jamie Foxx, on the other hand, have good chemistry as assistant and boss, but as a romantic couple? I didn't feel it at all. Byrne was still good and provided a bit of comedy here and there. Bobby Cannavale is amazing in everything he does, skeevy and slimy or otherwise. Cameron Diaz managed to not be half bad at Ms. Hannigan, though there is not one state in this great union would see past the stink of her booze-infested house, no matter how hard she tried to clean it. Diaz is not, we repeat, not a singer and shouldn't aspire to do any more musicals after this, but the songs she sings as Ms. Hannigan are better in this version than they are in the original one due to some good backing vocals, modern producing, and setting throughout these scenes.

The plot as a whole is the same simple one as in the original and isn't re-done, it is just brought into our current and more modern time. Some might say this movie panders to big business and it does, there's really no doubt about that fact. It could have been good if this movie had gone into the current political climate as well as the divide between the rich and the poor a little more in the way the original sort of did, but hey, it's still a kids movie at the end of the day. Kids today will be able to identify with this version of the movie better than they would with the one set in the Depression era; it also helps that this version has plenty more dance numbers and vibrant colors to keep kids interested. If you go into it with a positive attitude and don't think about it too hard, chances are, you might actually like it.

My Rating: 7/10
BigJ's Rating: 7/10
IMDB's Rating: 4.5/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 29%
Do we recommend this movie: Sure, why not?

PS: MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Movie Review: "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies" (2014)

Image Source

Movie: "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies"
Director: Peter Jackson
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 2 hours, 24 minutes

After Bilbo (Martin Freeman), Thorin (Richard Armitage), and the dwarves awaken Smaug from his long sleep, Smaug is ready to unleash his fury on the people of Laketown. He delivers a continuous wrath of fire and destruction until Bard (Luke Evans) is able to succeed where his ancestor failed and slay Smaug. With Smaug dead, Thorin is able to take his rightful place as king of Erebor. With his treasure in hand, the extreme wealth of The Lonely Mountain, as well as the search for the Arkenstone have started to drive Thorin mad. When Bard seeks payment from Thorin for his promise to help rebuild Laketown, he is turned away as Thorin is not willing to give up even one single coin. To make matters worse, Thranduil (Lee Pace) has led an army of elves to stake a claim in the recovered fortune. Despite his best efforts for a peaceful resolution, Bard has gathered an army of men to take the payment they were promised. On top of that, Thorin's cousin Dain (Billy Connelly) has brought his army of Dwarves to defend Thorin and Erebor. But, when Azog (Manu Benett) and his army of orcs and trolls attack, the other armies must band together to defeat Azog and his horde.

KILIFILI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is this truly the end for Middle Earth? Probably, and we'd be lying if we said we didn't cry a bit when all was said and done. "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies" will probably not be anyone's favorite movie related to "The Lord of the Rings." Hell, it probably won't be anyone's favorite movie period, but damn if it's not a worthy conclusion to this trilogy. While the same problems that have plagued the series since "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" are still here in this third movie (for example, poorly done CGI, using CGI over prosthetic pieces, condensing scenes here and adding details there), BigJ and I think that this was our favorite movie in "The Hobbit" series. As one might expect, all of the "good stuff" was in this final film, and from start to finish, even as the movie opens with Smaug disintegrating Laketown, you know you're going to be in for one hell of a ride. The action never stops for a moment to catch its breath. Between Smaug and the Five Armies descending upon The Lonely Mountain, their battles are impressive and grandiose. There are even some scenes that might be considered frightening to kids under 13, so parents, be aware of that. What we like that is added in "The Battle of the Five Armies" is something that is seemingly missing from the LotR movies altogether, and that is heart. Let's face it, Frodo was sort of annoying. What "The Hobbit" has that LotR lacks can all be attributed to Martin Freeman, who we must reiterate was the greatest, bestest choice for Bilbo Baggins. His end scenes made us totally cry and gave us the feels. While the laughs and touching moments are brought by his character, the person who really stood out in this final film was Thorin, played by Richard Armitage. Here, we finally see Aritage immersed so deeply into the role of Thorin as his obsession with gold and money and power and "dragon sickness" have gone to his head in a sickening and mood-altering manner. Gone are the days when Thorin was just serious, now he's serious and downright crazy. He is not willing to part with one single coin and it drives him mad. All of the actors found in the first two "Hobbit" movie reprise their roles with the addition of Billy Connelly and all of them do so well and wonderfully.

When all is said and done, sure, some things are left out, some characters were introduced and never appear again, the movie might feel a little truncated to some but overly long to others, yet we loved this film for what it was and are sad to see the series end. No one should have to read a book to understand the characters in a movie. If the movie isn't clear enough, filmmakers and directors haven't done their job properly and have failed in not just the character development aspect, but the storytelling aspect as well. We believe this movie links the two series together nicely as we marathoned both of them back to back, and what an undertaking that was! "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies" won't win any Oscars, but it's still a decent movie. Though it is not the best movie of the year, it was certainly one of the better movies of 2014. Contrary to others, we were so looking forward to this movie and it didn't disappoint us in the slightest.

My Rating: 10/10
BigJ's Rating: 10/10
IMDB's Rating: 7.9/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 60%
Do we recommend this movie: ABSOLUTELY YES!!!
~~~~~~~~~~
To see our review of "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," click here.

To see our review of "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug," click here.

Movie Review: "Top Five" (2014)

Image Source

Movie: "Top Five"
Director: Chris Rock
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 42 minutes

Andre Allen (Chris Rock) was a popular comedic star who hit it big at the box office with his "Hammy the Bear" hokey action comedies. After some big life changes like getting sober and prepping for his marriage to reality star Erica Long (Gabrielle Union), Allen is no longer interested in doing comedy. While on a press tour for his new drama "Uprize," about the Haitian revolution, he reluctantly agrees to do an interview with New York Times reporter Chelsea Brown (Rosario Dawson). She is unexpectedly able to relate to Allen through her past addictions and is able to get him to open up about the more intimate details of his life and why he wants to give up on comedy. 

"Top Five" pretty much flew past our radars and to our surprise, very few theaters near us have even been offering it to view. It is not a perfect movie, but it's pretty damn entertaining. We're not really huge Chris Rock fans, and lately, like his character Andre Allen, he has been making some horrible career moves (See: "Grown Ups 2"). Rock wrote and directed and starred in this movie and had quite a few poignant things to say about the entertainment industry today. The friend who went with us even compared some parts of it to "Birdman," to which I agreed to an extent. It is about an actor trying to reinvent himself in a genre that is completely foreign to him. In this case, Andre Allen wants to move on from comedy and comedy movies because he doesn't feel funny anymore. In his leap to drama, critics and fans alike have lambasted him for this choice and refuse to see him as anything but a comedic actor. Allen faces the same problems many real-life comedic actors do, where they are forced to choose between doing outrageously dumb movies that they don't enjoy making or even like themselves but are big financial hits (IE: anything Adam Sandler has done for the past decade and a half), or attempting to do more powerful, meaningful pieces of cinematic art that might be important to them personally, but will typically fail at box offices. This movie is pretty much Chris Rock's life, although we aren't certain if he had any substance abuse problems. It's a smart and witty film ripe with present and past cultural references, word play, and a good balance of humor and dramatic, intimate moments. It pokes fun at the current state of modern entertainment where "if it's not on camera, it didn't happen," while simultaneously bringing this notion to light. Our generation is obsessed with reality TV and making it big by "going viral," and all of these elements weave intricately throughout the course of the film. Erica Long, played by Gabrielle Union, could be representative of many, many reality stars who have no discernible talents other than being obnoxious on television. The film as a whole is very self-aware and Rock is not afraid of who it will offend and is willing to take shots at pretty much everyone to get his point across.

All this being said, the movie does feel a bit slow moving at times. Everything that happens in the film happens over the course of one day, but a couple of parts in the movie feel a little contrived and would have worked better if they had happened in brief summation or in flashback form, as many other instances in the film were handled. The romance between Chris Rock's character and Rosario Dawson's character is one you can see coming from a mile away, but we like how they are able to identify with one another based on their common experience with addiction. Beyond this rather obvious ending, the movie is relatively solid all around.

This is also Adam Sandler's best movie in years, and he's only in it for about 5 minutes. We wonder how that makes him feel about his life. He should be thanking his good pal Chris Rock for the cameo and for reminding us that Adam Sandler can actually be funny once in a while.

My Rating: 8/10
BigJ's Rating: 7/10
IMDB's Rating: 6.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 90%
Do we recommend this movie: Sure, why not?

Movie Review: "Exodus: Gods and Kings" (2014)

Image Source

Movie: "Exodus: Gods and Kings"
Director: Ridley Scott
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 2 hours, 30 minutes

Moses (Christian Bale) has been raised by Egyptians and is treated like a son by Pharaoh Seti (John Turturro) and treated like a brother by Seti's son Ramses (Joel Edgerton). After the death of Seti, Ramses takes the throne and appoints Moses his adviser. When Moses advises the Pharaoh to arrest the Viceroy in charge of the slave camps for embezzling from him, the Viceroy inform Ramses of rumors that have been circulating among the Israelites They believe Moses to be one of them and that he will lead them to freedom. When the Ramses finds out that Moses actually is Israeli, he cannot bring himself to have him executed, so instead, Ramses banishes Moses to the desert. Moses has moved on, settled down and started a family, but after nine years in exile, he receives a message from God that he is to lead the people of Israel to freedom. Moses reluctantly accepts the tasks and with the help of God unleashing a series of plagues upon Egypt, he starts to lead the Israelites to Kanen, but Ramses is ready to unleash his army to stop them from getting there. 

Holy whitewash, Batman!
And this time it works because Batman is actually in this movie!!!!

Lately in cinema, there have been a lot of visually epic films on screen. From the stunning 3D of "Avatar" to the massive spectacle that was "Jurassic Park," visuals can often make a positive mark on an otherwise bad movie, not that those are bad movies to say the least.

Unfortunately, that is not always the case for "Exodus: Gods and Kings."

It has been hard to write this review between the disappointment we felt during and after watching the movie and the mediocrity of the entire essence of the film itself. Mediocre is sort of being nice at this point as I have been waffling about my feelings for the past few days. There are a lot of things wrong with it, so I guess we will start with the good this film brings to the table. First, Joel Edgerton manages to prove he was a good casting choice and performs wonderfully as Pharaoh Ramses. Somewhat physically changed and sporting a chrome dome and shaved body, his bronzed appearance oozes both power and petulance. His goldened skin, jewelry and selfish, childish demeanor scream of excess and getting his way, and Edgerton really performed the hell out of this role. Christian Bale also did a good job as Moses, though I feel like I'm at my threshold with him as an actor. We get it, you're method. Moses is represented as more of a non-believer at the beginning of the film and it's not until mid-way through the movie that he eventually gets to his spiritual revelation and is placed into his anointed role. His beard was pretty epic, though. And while we're on the subject of the actors, almost everybody did a decent enough job with in the respective roles, except for a few, but more on this later. We really like that almost everyone was kept very, very dirty throughout the course of the film. Plus one for good makeup application. The score of the movie was your typical epic instrumental one, though I thought it helped carry the weight of some of the scenes that were lacking in connection, but again, more on this later. Overall, the visuals are relatively strong throughout the duration of the movie. Director Ridley Scott does a superb job in portraying the plagues of Egypt. Each plague, though first initiated by God, has a clear natural cause and effect where one incident directly leads to the cause of the next plague. This more natural portrayal might offend some moviegoers. Only the plague of Passover is straight magic and/or hand of God and the only one that isn't too exciting on screen.

Now, onto the bad, and there is a lot of cover. The worst part of the entire movie was God himself, or the messenger of God, or the voice of God, none of this is ever clearly stated. God is portrayed in this film by a young boy named Issac Andrews, who seems more like a bratty child throwing a hissy fit than a deity. Though one may expect his holiness to be a bit condescending, Andrews is overly snarky, grating on your nerves, rude, and downright annoying. It might have worked with a different child actor, but we're not even too sure about this. Scott has said in interviews that Malak, an angel messenger thingy, is pure and innocent, and this kid is anything but. The visuals, while they were mostly pretty good, when poorly executed, were overtly obvious, and sometimes, they even drifted into video game-esque territory. This was mainly seen during the final climax, which was extremely underwhelming after such a huge build-up. Sigourney Weaver plays Tuya and has literally 3 lines in the entire film. Instead of helping the movie overall, her presence is just distracting. She doesn't play a developed enough character to warrant her, a huge star in her own right, filling that role. In the end, audiences won't see Tuya, they will only see what looks like Sigourney Weaver going to a costume party. Ben Kingsley is in the film for a brief while and is wholly underutilized in our opinions. In fact, all of the Israelites are underdeveloped and Ridley Scott really fails to connect the audience to their plight. While we're on the subject of connections, there are few to be found, and where there was a connection, it was with Ramses, who is the villain and had it coming. We as an audience are supposed to connect to Moses and his journey, as well as the struggle of the Israelites, and we just don't because it's not there. Maybe Scott hoped that people's familiarity with the story of Exodus was enough to offer a preexisting connection, but this was a gamble we believe he lost. Finally, it feels like everyone in this film was on their A-game, except for Ridley Scott. He spent so much time and money investing in this story that ultimately turned out to be a flop. We don't know if he has lost his spark or if he's just getting lazy as a director. It seems like he felt this movie would be like a biblical version of "Gladiator," but the end, it's not epic enough, not developed enough, and frankly, not good enough to merit such a comparison.

My Rating: 5.5/10
BigJ's Rating: 6.5/10
IMDB's Rating: 6.5/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 28%
Do we recommend this movie: Sure, why not?
~~~~~~~~~~
One year ago, we were watching: "Philomena"

Movie Review: "The Homesman" (2014)

Image Source

Movie: "The Homesman"
Director: Tommy Lee Jones
Rating: R
Running Time: 2 hours, 2 minutes


Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) is a middle-aged unmarried woman and land owner in Nebraska who takes care of herself as best she can. When three women (Miranda Otto, Grace Gummer and Sonja Richter) in their small pioneer town have been driven crazy, Mary volunteers to see them to Iowa since she is able-bodied and has no familial ties. Before leaving on their journey, Mary finds a degenerate claim jumper strung up to a tree sitting on a horse with a noose around his neck. He begs her to free him, and she agrees to do as as long as he will do anything she says. The man, George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones), promised Mary he would help her, but when she informs him of what he is to do, it was a little more than he bargained for.

With a strong major cast featuring the likes of Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones (also the film's writer and director) and an expansive supporting one including Miranda Otto, Meryl Streep and her daughter Grace Gummer, James Spader, William Fitchner, John Lithgow, and Barry Corbin, one would expect "The Homesman" to be another great film in a long line of movies featuring ensemble casts such as this.
Well, it's not.
Not even close.

Based on the book of the same name, this film is simply another in the still ever-growing list of mediocre films made in 2014. Critics will praise it for its "brilliant acting," we're sure, but we didn't think there was really anything brilliant about the acting or the movie in general. Let us set the background a bit more. Tommy Lee Jones plays George Briggs, a man who isn't afraid to steal the shirt off your back and never settles in one place for too long. He's a coward and a swindler, so when he is tied by his neck to a tree to be hanged for theft, there would have been no loss if he had perished. Instead, he is saved by Mary Bee Cuddy, played by Hilary Swank, a godly yet unmarried 31-year-old spinster who has taken it upon herself to see that 3 women who have "gone crazy" make it across the Missouri river to a church where they are to be cared for by a preacher. In exchange for saving his life, Cuddy makes Briggs promise to help her with her task and he agrees to travel across the gorgeous plains with her. Hallelujah.

The beginning of the film, I think, began pretty strong. Mary Bee Cuddy is the woman I would have wanted to be during the time she lived. I mean, it was clearly one of the harshest times in the States, where real physical manual labor was required to simply survive. Dust storms were rampant, crops, agriculture, and animals died with no warning, etc. Mary Bee Cuddy was a woman who did all her own cooking, farming, cleaning, etc, with no man to tell her to get back into the kitchen, and it almost seems as if not only the writer of the book but Jones and company as well, wanted to make Cuddy seem like her own self-sufficient woman, dare I say even a little feminist? She even mentions it at one point in the scene at church. This character speaks to our inner feminist, so we got excited, but not for too long.

After this initial establishment, the next hour and a half is spent traveling across the plains. There were only two real incidents that could have posed a problem for the wagon party on the trail, and it seemed as if Jones wanted these incidents to be more intense than they actually turned out to be on screen. In fact, to us, they were devoid of any real tension for the most part. Beyond this, the in-fighting between Swank and Jones makes up the crux of the trip, and since one of them is a saint and the other is a sinner, you can imagine that they don't get along too well. Plus, you know, the crazy ladies in the back of the wagon don't help the situation any. While Swank and Jones do have great chemistry together on screen, the material they have to work with just sort of fits into the typecast they have been used to forever. When you think about it, Hilary Swank cherry picks her roles so that the only thing in common with them is that they are all depressing as hell. Tommy Lee Jones always plays a fast-talking, crotchety Southerner with a lot of sass and a heaping side dish of wit. He pretty much plays himself in every role. Together, they and their band of crazy-but-not-really-that-compelling-crazies make the trek from Nebraska to Iowa, only to have the entire movie switch gears three-fourths of the way through the movie. For a fighter as strong as Mary Bee Cuddy seemed initially, when push came to shove, she was obviously just a desperate, deeply depressed character and that's really the way the entire movie is at its core. We understand that what happened to each of the "crazy" women sucks, but we think Tommy Lee Jones failed to connect them and their sadness to the audience. We visually see their plight, but there's not enough overall background beyond a few seconds per woman to make us engaged in their struggles or care about their depression, or concerned for their safety. BigJ doesn't like depressing movies. He thinks there should be a distinction between depressing, where terrible things happen to the film's characters and leave you feeling empty inside, and sad, where bad stuff happens to the film's characters but there is some kind of catharsis in the end. To this I say, "Requiem for a Dream," but that's for another day.

Overall, though the cinematography is very pretty and well-shot, and the film overall has decent enough acting throughout, "The Homesman" fails to make us feel anything other than a shitty void at the end of it. This film has "Oscar bait" written all over it as far as several categories go, but its entertainment factor is next to nothing. Even though the main protagonist could very well have been a feminist by today's standards and we enjoyed that aspect, the author of the book, and subsequently the filmmakers, do a complete 180 in the middle of the story and this defeats its whole purpose.

My Rating: 5/10
BigJ's Rating: 5/10
IMDB's Rating: 6.6/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 79%
Do we recommend this movie: Meh.
~~~~~~~~~~
One year ago, we were watching: "Delivery Man"

Movie Review: "The Theory of Everything" (2014)

Image Source

Movie: "The Theory of Everything"
Director: James Marsh
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 2 hours, 3 minutes

While working on his doctorate degree at Cambridge University, Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne), an active young man and science major, meets a young arts major named Jane (Felicity Jones). The two grow closer together, despite having many differences. After a nasty fall, Stephen is taken to the hospital and it is discovered that he has a motor neuron disease called ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. His life expectancy is 2 years. Even knowing the risks and facing the possibility that Stephen might die sooner rather than later, Jane and Stephen fall in love and get married. Despite his rapid physical deterioration and eventual loss of speech, Stephen continues his scientific work and research while Jane cares for him and their 3 children, though outside influences begin to put a strain on their decades-long relationship.

Though we are not typically fans of biopics or biographies that are about a subject who is still very much alive, "The Theory of Everything" does Stephen Hawking a great justice. If it had been a bad movie, well, then it would have been super awkward come release day. Lucky for the filmmakers, their gamble paid off handsomely in the form of a brilliant movie.

A lot of us know who Stephen Hawking is because he is a world-renowned scientist, as well as a public figure, but most of us don't know about Stephen Hawking, the man behind the mind. Before this film, we had no idea he was married or that he has multiple children. All we knew prior to this movie was that he is a genius scientist with ALS. While simultaneously telling his scientific story and exposing very intimate details of his personal life and relationship with his first wife Jane, this film is quite outstanding, mostly because of the superb acting job was done by Eddie Redmayne. Transformative is an understatement here, and we feel like we have been using that word quite a bit this year in movies. Redmayne was able to capture the very essence of Stephen Hawking, both pre and post diagnosis. There were at least two points in the movie where I thought Hawking was actually on screen playing a cameo role, that's how convincing Redmayne was. With intricate details such as hand and foot placement, speech style, signs of his slow deterioration and his overall look, Eddie Redmayne delivers his best performance to date and we will be extremely surprised if his portrayal of Hawking doesn't garner at least a little award attention. Though some might call this movie "Oscar bait," and we admit, it is a little, the difference with this film is that it actually manages to grip its audiences and move them, at least us, to tears a couple of times.

Though the story itself is rather generic, about one man and his life and marriage, the level of connection between not only Jane and Stephen but the entire movie to its audiences, is remarkable. We come to empathize with both Stephen and Jane, together and separately. Stephen, a man with an incredible mind, because of his illness, could have been trapped inside a shell of a body with no way to express his beliefs and scientific discoveries to the world. Thank god for technology. Though we feel bad for him because of his illness and the plight he comes to endure, we sympathize more so with Jane, who stood by him in his darkest days with an incredible about of resilience and strength. She put her life on hold for Stephen and for their love, and we saw that in the performance of Felicity Jones, who does a fantastic job in her role, though her performance is slightly eclipsed by that of Redmayne. Jones and Redmayne have extreme amounts of chemistry, and without that believable bond, the film would not have worked at all. It was not all good chemistry, either, as Stephen and Jane often clashed throughout their relationship, mostly about the fact that he was a very outspoken atheist and she was a Christian. Audiences are allowed to get invested in their relationship, the good and the bad because their chemistry is so believable. Their portrayals together paint a picture of what it's like not only to deal with a debilitating disease such as ALS but to be a caretaker for someone with a disability such as ALS as well.

There were a couple other things we enjoyed about the film as well. The camera work used throughout the film is neither consistent nor steady but in the best way possible. From long shots to sepia tones and home movie-style footage, this film is all over the map with its cinematography. We loved the way the camera would go from a long hallway shot of Redmayne to an extreme close-up during a face-to-face conversation between Hawking and his doctor. The direction, done by James Marsh, was really spectacular and because of his directing skills, this allowed us to be engaged with the story, to laugh at Stephen's quick wit (even now), and to be captivated by both Stephen and Jane as people and as a couple. All this being said, the film does seem a little bit long, but this is understandable since filmmakers are essentially cramming 50 years worth of someone's life into a 2 hour run time.

Though Hawking never overcomes his disease, in reality, he truly has managed to "defy every expectation, both scientific and personal." A well-done movie for not just science lovers.

My Rating: 8.5/10
BigJ's Rating: 8.5/10
IMDB's Rating: 7.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 83%
Do we recommend this movie: Yes!
~~~~~~~~~~
One year ago, we were watching: "The Goodbye Girl"

Movie Review: "Horrible Bosses 2" (2014)

Image Source

Movie: "Horrible Bosses 2"
Director: Sean Anders
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 48 minutes

After their past experiences with having horrible bosses, Nick (Jason Bateman), Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) and Dale (Charlie Day) have decided to venture out on their own. They have developed a prototype for a new gadget called The Shower Buddy, a shower head that is a soap/conditioner/shampoo dispenser all in one. After doing a local morning show segment, the trio is contacted by a catalog company that wishes to distribute their invention. They meet Bert Hanson (Christoph Waltz) and his son Rex (Chris Pine), who agree to place an order for 100,000 units and convince the would-be entrepreneurs to take out a $500,000 loan to meet the order and create Nick Kurt Dale Inc. Upon completion of production, Bert cancels his order with the intent to bankrupt Nick Kurt Dale Inc. and then plans to buy up their assets for pennies on the dollar. The three men, desperate to save their company, decide to kidnap Rex and hold him for ransom for the amount of money needed to pay off their start-up loan and prevent going out of business.  

Sure, "Horrible Bosses 2" is a bit of a rehash of the first film with a similar plot. Nick, Kurt, and Dale have, once again, found themselves needing to take desperate measures, this time in the form of kidnapping (or "kidnaping," in Kurt's case) and still fumble and bumble their way through that felony, too. But, we don't see comedies for compelling or original stories, well, not really. We go to them to laugh, plain and simple. In that aspect, this movie is at least moderately successful as we actually laughed quite a bit, even though we didn't think we would. A couple of the funniest parts are included in the trailer with some slight expansions and they still made us chuckle even during the movie knowing what was coming. Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day have the same chemistry as they did in the first film, though Bateman tries to be a bigger voice of reason this time around. As always, he uses his classic "serious face that turns into a smirk" over and over again in a deadpan fashion that clashes with the personas of his counterparts, yet makes him slightly more endearing, too. Sudeikis seems to be even more misogynistic and sex-crazed in this film than he did in the original. Now, he a line of cocaine short of turning into his old boss, played by Colin Farrell in the original, someone who he despised and hated for wanting to fire all the fat people in order to hire new, dumb hotties, which is exactly what Sudeikis does when he is part of his own company. Some people may call him smarmy, but we guess it works for him in this movie even though he's moderately offensive to women? Charlie Day is still Charlie Day, this time with more complaining about his wife and kids.

Jamie Foxx reprises his role once again as "MF" Jones, though we thought he would have a more substantial part in this movie compared to how much he was in it in actuality. Kevin Spacey, though in jail, is still brought back to this film to give advice to the three friends, who obviously have no idea what they are doing and seem to thrive on his negativity. He has a lot of epic lines uttered in the way only Kevin Spacey can, with a great mix of gravitas and terror. Newcomers Christoph Waltz and Chris Pine do well with what they are given. Waltz has a minor role here and provided a darker comedy, much like Spacey in both films. Where Spacey is more of an overt asshole, Waltz is much more two-faced and conniving, something we like to see him do in any genre. Chris Pine is your ultimate bro. He is idolized by Kurt and Dale for being rich, charming and handsome and also has tons of useless, cool shit to brag about, despite actually being a total self-centered prick and masochist with daddy issues. Pine was able to not be annoying in this movie and contributed to a lot of laugh out loud moments when paired with Nick, Kurt, and Dale.

Though there are a lot of funny moments throughout the film, mainly those that involve minor dialogue and glances, there are still sometimes where we feel like the filmmakers thought their jokes would be wildly successful and they just weren't. The entire demo of the Shower Buddy at the beginning of the movie during the morning show segment was so obvious that it hurt. It kind of had us worried that all of the film's humor would be blatant and forced. Another example is the entire joke about their company's name. If you say it fast enough, provided you pronounce it wrong, it can sound offensive, but it's really a stretch of a joke. Most of Jennifer Aniston's sexual advances are not subtle enough to be funny and come off as jarring and contrived. Overall, to us, there are more funny moments than those that flounder.

Though no one asked for this sequel, we got one anyway, and we enjoyed it quite a bit whether or not moviegoers and critics hate it. We may have even liked it better than the first, but please, don't make a third in 3 years.

My Rating: 7/10
BigJ's Rating: 7/10
IMDB's Rating: 7.0/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 36%
Do we recommend this movie: Sure, why not?
~~~~~~~~~~
One year ago, we were watching: "Premium Rush"

Movie Review: "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1" (2014)

Image Source

Movie: "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1"
Director: Francis Lawrence
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 2 hours, 3 minutes

After destroying the Quarter Quell Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is rescued by rebel forces from District 13 and taken there since District 12, her home, has been annihilated by the Capitol. Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore) want Katniss as the face of the impending rebellion against President Snow (Donald Sutherland) and the Capitol. Katniss agrees to be their Mockingjay, or, the symbol for hope, and in an effort to rally the other districts into overthrowing the Capitol with them, they make a series of Propo (propaganda) films that are illegally broadcast to the masses. Unfortunately, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and the other Hunger Games participants were captured by President Snow and Peeta is being used as a weapon against the rebellion. Katniss' one condition to being the Mockingjay is that Peeta and the others be rescued and extracted from the Capitol at the earliest opportunity.

We continue to be impressed by the "Hunger Games" movie franchise, though "Catching Fire" is still, by far, our favorite of the series. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to read the last book before this movie came out, but I am going to do so soon because the movie pretty much rocked. Once again, the message of social injustice at the hands of the government is the center plot, and Katniss Everdeen is back to kick more ass and take more names, only this time, she is a little worse for the wear. With Peeta captured by the Capitol, Katniss is worried about his well being, especially since it turns out he is being used and broadcast on a massive scale to quash the rebellion and everything it stands for. Returning again is Jennifer Lawrence, who cries a lot in this movie. When she is not in her bat-suit, oh no, we mean her Mockingjay suit, her acting does seem a little forced, but she does give a very inspirational speech about halfway through the movie that is extremely emotionally moving. Our eyes widened with delight and excitement and wonderment! What a bitchin' speech! We can't wait for the second part of this movie so Katniss can return to her to angsty, anti-capitol ways (though this is shown a little bit in this movie here and there). I think that the majority of the crying was necessary for her character because she has been slowly falling in love with Peeta over the last two and a half movies; filmmakers: A) needed filler, and B) needed to show that she was emotionally broken by the last Games. Josh Hutcherson is not in the film a whole lot, and when he is, he is pandering Capitol propaganda, though it is clear he is being made to say these things and is being tortured as exhibited by his gaunt exterior. He has an intense scene towards the end of the film which makes us even more excited for part 2. Lesser Hemsworth just stands the entire movie looking dopey, IE: like Lesser Hemsworth, being all second fiddle and shit. Newcomer Alma Coin, played by Julianne Moore, never truly reveals her hand and we got the vibe that she wasn't being completely honest with her involvement in the rebellion. Moore does a good job in this role. Philip Seymour Hoffman is in most of the scenes in an advisory role, always talking and never quite being able to express his true thoughts. When the "in memory of" flashed across the screen at the end of the movie, I cried knowing this is one of the last movies where we will ever see him. :(

This is another movie in a long line of theatrical mini-series of sorts, where the final piece of the movie puzzle is broken into two (or sometimes even more) parts a la "Harry Potter," "Twilight," "The Hobbit," etc. This is only the beginning and middle of an adaptation that has been put into film form. It's not a complete story and has no real climax because of this. Sure, this particular movie does end nicely on a major plot point, but always on a cliffhanger. Do we hate that it is done this way? Yes, absolutely, for many reasons. 1) INSTANT GRATIFICATION. We don't want to wait one more damn year to see how this movie plays out in the end. 2) MONEY-GRUBBING WHORES. We can tell quite obviously that the studios want to squeeze every freakin' penny out of us poor saps knowing full well that we will pay every freakin' penny to see both parts of these films. 3) HAVING NOTHING LEFT. Hollywood is full of unoriginal ideas, prequels and sequels being the least of them. But, in an effort to, once again, make more money, they squeeze every freakin' penny out of and every freakin' word and every freakin' possibility out of these series since there are no. new. or. original. ideas. left. They know that these series are popular, so they milk them instead of creating new, inspired films.

As we mentioned above, there does seem to be a lot of chatter and filler in this movie, and besides a couple of key scenes, there's not much action here as most of this has been reserved for part 2. The film mainly focuses on the use of propaganda films by both sides, and because so much time goes into making these pieces, this does lead to some dragging in the middle of the movie. That being said, we still enjoyed it quite a bit and cannot wait for the second half.

My Rating: 8/10
BigJ's Rating: 8.5/10
IMDB's Rating: 7.5/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 68%
Do we recommend this movie: Yes!

Movie Review: "Rosewater" (2014)

Image Source

Movie: "Rosewater"
Director: Jon Stewart
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 43 minutes

Maziar Bahari (Gael Garcia Bernal) is an Iranian born journalist working for Newsweek Magazine who has been tasked with covering the 2009 presidential election in Iran. After a landslide victory for incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, widespread reports of election fixing are reported, which helps to fuel the Green Revolution in Iran. After filming one of these protests that turned violent, Bahari is arrested by the Iranian police and accused of being a spy working for the American government. Maziar Bahari is held in solitary confinement and interrogated daily. The evidence against him stemmed from an interview with comedian Jason Jones joking about being a spy from "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."

This film was definitely a passion project for writer and director Jon Stewart as we're sure he feels somewhat responsible for Bahari's incarceration since to his own show was used as evidence against him. We are huge fans of "The Daily Show" pretty much love all things Jon Stewart, but this movie is not without its flaws. It is an important story to tell and we are glad we got to hear it, though there are definitely some notable drawbacks to the film itself. While this is certainly a noble effort for first-time director Stewart with an interesting story that needed to be told, the entire thing is dragged down a couple of pegs due to its seemingly poor pacing. For a movie less than 2 hours long, it feels much longer. We understand that Bahari was in solitary confinement in prison for over 4 months in real life, but the audience shouldn't feel like they have been a theater for that long. Stewart, however, does an excellent and informative job in relaying what happened. He was also able to capture what goes on inside Iran rather splendidly, something that most of the Western cultures know little or nothing about, though this poor pacing and what BigJ feels was a lack of a real emotional spark makes this movie just okay. I disagree to a certain extent on emotional spark part, since I did shed a few tears at one point during the film, not just for what Bahari faced for simply trying to do his job, but for knowing that these things still go on in only just Iran, but around the world as well. It's crazy how we in America take our freedoms for granted, and though Bahari was living in London at the time, he was still a target and was ultimately used as a pawn in political propaganda in order to control the information that got out to the citizens of Iran. The one thing that Stewart was able to capture the best was the use of social media and the internet is not only the Green Revolution but in Bahari's eventual release from prison as well. Social media and the internet have made it far more difficult for these tyrannical governments to constrain their people and to control what information is true or not. Many of these government rely on lies and misinformation in an effort to manipulate the mindset of its citizens.

It's all serious, though, and the film manages to have a couple of moments of laughter amidst the chaos and confinement. It is also interesting to note that Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal was chosen to play Maziar Bahari, especially since they look nothing alike. This doesn't distract from the great job he does with his performance, but his accent was a little off at times. Kim Bodnia, who played the interrogator who smelled of Rosewater, drew a distinct line between seething hatred for Bahari and simply doing what he needed to do to carry out his duty, personal morality aside. He gives another great performance. The movie really was filmed in Jordan and Jon Stewart took time off from his TV show to shoot the movie as close to Iran as he could get, something many filmmakers just don't do anymore. Every piece of this crazy puzzle seemed to fit together, though its lack of good pacing was very noticeable. The cinematography was excellent, the direction was valiant and what it had to say about social media being used as a tool for good are all reasons that make this movie one you should watch if you're interested.

My Rating: 7/10
BigJ's Rating: 6/10
IMDB's Rating: 6.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 75%
Do we recommend this movie: Sure, why not?
~~~~~~~~~~
One year ago, we were watching: "Free Birds"

Movie Review: "Whiplash" (2014)

Movie: "Whiplash"
Director: Damien Chazelle
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 47 minutes

Image Source

An aspiring young drummer named Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller) is in his first year at the Shaffer Conservatory in New York, the best music school in the country. Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) runs the Studio Band, the toughest program in the school, and tries to drive his students to be absolute best. He is always looking for new members and Andrew becomes his latest addition. Andrew has the desire to be the best, but Fletcher's program isn't what he expected. In an effort to bring the best out of his students, he berates, insults and demoralizes them to their breaking point and sometimes beyond. 

This movie is the literal definition of blood, sweat and tears, along with the drive, motivation, passion, pain, tension, anger and frustration that comes from wanting to be the best. The plot is your basic initiative and drive versus want and need story, just in a musical setting as opposed to something else (usually, this subject is explored through a sports theme). For being a drama about drumming, we sure were on the edge of our seats the entire time! This movie is so compelling and is certainly enthralling. We want Andrew, someone who has been pushed to the side his entire life, to finally be the best at something so he can prove everyone in his life wrong, but we also don't know if he can handle the beating it will take to get there.

The acting is top notch and absolutely exceptional. J.K. Simmons' face might be recognizable, but his demeanor sure isn't. We didn't really know he had it in him to be such a demanding hard-ass. You wouldn't know it from the Farmer's Insurance advertisements, but the guy is RIPPED. His stature, his posture, his entire essence, really, are commanding and intimidating. Fletcher is a no nonsense type of instructor who demands perfection and will accept no less. He switches from calm and understanding to raging lunatic in an instant, and each time he says something sweetly or as a normal person would, you wonder how long it will take until he starts shouting obscenities again. Fletcher has all the mannerisms of a drill sergeant, and yet he is just a humble band leader. Just as a drill sergeant would keep his salute and form tight in the presence of an officer, Simmons' arm and hand are taut and rigid when he's getting ready to conduct. Simmons' performance has been likened to that of R. Lee Ermey's in "Full Metal Jacket" and we can absolutely understand that comparison. He remarks in one scene in the film that "there are no two words in the English language more harmful than good job," and this epitomizes Fletcher as a character. Nothing is better or more necessary than being pushed to perfection.

Miles Teller continues to impress us with another immerse role as Andrew. The final drum scene in the movie is worth the price of admission all on its own. We didn't blink the entire time he was on stage banging away at his symbols. It was intense, dominating, and compelling, and the tension is caused was frenetic. There's so much emotion behind the scene that it is palpable to the audience. As we mentioned above, we want Andrew to come into his own as an artist, but feel for what he has to go through to get to be the best. According to IMDb, Teller has played the drums since he was 15, but really did get blisters and bleed during filming. He was also slapped by J.K. Simmons in one scene early on in the film, which just shows how far he was willing to go for this role. Simmons is Teller's biggest supporter and also his arch nemesis. Each and every time they are together, the hairs on the back of our necks would stand up straight...their chemistry was profound and brilliantly captured.

The cinematography and imagery in this movie is absolutely outstanding as well. Beyond the fact that the camera obviously focuses on Miles Teller or J.K. Simmons when they are on screen, audiences get to see the entire band from side to side many times during the film, mostly on cue with the music. It is deliberate, and the camera angles and cuts that are made are just stellar. As we mentioned above, there is no lack of blood, sweat, and tears, which turned out to be mostly real, and the imagery is almost burned into your brain to show just how serious Andrew really is at wanting to succeed at being a drummer. The attention to detail is great and much of the film focuses on the little things like drops of blood and beads of sweat dripping across symbols and snares. Every part of this movie makes you feel something. Beyond the music, which is fantastic, there are lots of noticeable noises and acts associated with a band that were left in the film: releasing, dripping spit from valves, the inhalation of a breath before playing a note, feedback from an amplifier, toe tapping...and we swear we could smell the resin in the air. This movie is the ultimate immersive experience, and you wouldn't know it just by looking at it.

You do not need to be a fan of jazz music to find this movie interesting. It's more about the sacrifices one man is willing to make in the pursuit of greatness. This film is definitely one you must see!!!

My Rating: 10/10
BigJ's Rating: 9/10
IMDB's Rating: 8.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 97%
Do we recommend this movie: ABSOLUTELY YES!!!
~~~~~~~~~~
One year ago, we were watching: "About Time"

Movie Review: "Dumb and Dumber To" (2014)

Image Source

Movie: "Dumb and Dumber To"
Director: Bobby and Peter Farrelly
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour, 50 minutes

Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) has spent the last 20 years catatonic in a nursing home. His friend Harry (Jeff Daniels) has visited him every week for the last two decades. When Harry informs Lloyd that this will be his last week visiting due to an illness that will take him out of commission, Lloyd breaks out of his catatonic state and yells "Gotcha!," as he has been faking the whole time. Harry then tells Lloyd about his illness and that he needs a kidney transplant. They decide to ask Harry's parents to donate a kidney to save him but are shocked to find that Harry is adopted and that the Chinese couple before him is not his biological parents, meaning they won't be a donor match. Since Harry hadn't been home in over 20 years, he had some old mail, including a postcard from his old girlfriend Fraida Felcher (Kathleen Turner), informing him that she was pregnant and she needed to see him. This means Harry might be a father, which means a possible kidney match. They come to learn Fraida gave her daughter up for adoption, so they set out on another road trip, this time to find Harry's estranged daughter and hopefully a new kidney. 

We are very much aware that humor is subjective from person to person. The thing about comedy movies and movie critics together is that most critics don't take well to comedies because they are stuffy "shirts" who want to pick them apart based on things that aren't the laugh factor. The bottom line is that humor, no matter what, has to actually be funny in order to be considered comedy. Is that not the basic criterion for any joke to be considered a joke? Critics need to ease up a little bit when it comes to comedies, because most of the time, they aren't fans and sometimes, unfoundedly so.

Regardless of your subjective humor and whether or not we just happen to be a couple of people who review movies, this movie is straight-up not funny. At all. Hardly anyone at our movie theater laughed, and we didn't even laugh once. NOT ONCE. ZERO TIMES. In almost 2 hours. Can you imagine what that must be like for people who love watching funny movies? To not laugh is to not breathe. Not only was it not funny, but it made us angry, too.

It's hard to say that this film was a disappointing failure 20 years in the making because filmmakers waited so long to produce a sequel for the masses. Even if they had waited only 10 years, it probably would have been 10 years too long. When we first heard that "Dumb and Dumber" was getting a sequel after such a long time, we were a little concerned, to say the least. When we actually saw the trailer, it didn't ease that concern one freaking bit. The trailer looked dreadful. It had been so long since the first film, we wondered why bother releasing a sequel at all, and as we mentioned before, it seems like it was a money grab on the part of not just Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, but the Farrelly brothers as well. And yet, they pushed on through the skepticism, and even after the dismal knockoff prequel, there is no way their sequel could be as bad as that, right? We decided to watch the original "Dumb and Dumber" again recently and it still made us laugh, so at least we have fond memories of that, we guess. We entered the theater with tepid expectations and an open mind in the hopes it would come even a little, just a little close to the original...Unfortunately, all of those hopes were quickly dashed, and as we mentioned above, in the 1 hour and 50-minute runtime, including the after credit scene, we laughed a grand total of ZERO! times. Joke after joke fell flat and the entire movie as a whole was eye-rolling, groan-worthy, and often disgusting as opposed to being funny. There are no "but at least there was that one-moment" moments. It's all terrible. BigJ mentioned to me about halfway through the film that my reactions to what we were watching were funnier than the actual movie itself.

Besides a recycled plot, rehashed one-liners from the original movie and stupid running gags throughout (IE: pushing people into bushes = comedy?????), Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels were terrible in this movie. They are playing parodies of Harry and Lloyd rather than just playing Harry and Lloyd. Part of the reason why the first film worked at all relied so heavily on the comedic timing and delivery of these two actors. There is no comedic timing and no good delivery as far as the eye can see in this sequel. In the first film, the duo were stupid and oblivious, but nowhere near as stupid and oblivious as they are here. They are dumbed-down so much that you wonder how they function or even feed themselves. It's less silly-stupid and more "these people cannot possibly function alone in the real world" stupid. Lloyd has been turned into an even bigger, meaner asshole with Harry as his now even dumber sidekick. There was a little bit of an innocence to the duo in the original, which was has been completely erased here in lieu of absurdity, calculated meanness, and dumbassery. Beyond the slew of basic, menial, moronic fart/poop/pee/butthole/dick/hand trapped in dusty old lady vagina jokes, some of the humor in this movie is downright offensive, and what's not offensive is just fucking empty. It's basically 2 hours worth of unfulfilled potential and a massive letdown for those who actually wanted a sequel. The supporting cast isn't much better. The only person who ever got us close to cracking a smile the entire time was Rob Riggle with a stellar camouflage body paint.

Not all the blame falls on the actors here. It's not like they had anything decent to work with and it's not like the writing was top-notch to being with. Gone are the days when Jim Carrey was the 20 million dollar man and Jeff Daniels actually acted with integrity. The Farrelly brothers should be ashamed of themselves, not just for this movie, but for the many, many, many pieces of shit they have made in their lifetime. After hefty expectations from die-hard fans, this is simply another movie that can be added to the seemingly never-ending pile of filthy for no point, unoriginal and rehashed, poorly acted stink bomb cash-grab movies. This is a fucking disaster, and we've seen "Left Behind" this year. It's really no wonder why Bill Murray wanted to be hidden behind a meth-making mask because I wouldn't want to be associated with this train-wreck either. Genuinely one of the worst movies we have seen in our lifetime.

My Rating: 1/10 (1 point for Rob Riggle)
BigJ's Rating: 1/10
IMDB's Rating: 5.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 27%
Do we recommend this movie: AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!