Kingsman: The Golden Circle - Movie Review

Starring Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Mark Strong, Halle Berry, Pedro Pascal, Elton John, Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, Bruce Greenwood, Hanna Alstrom, Emily Watson, Edward Holcroft, Sophie Cookson, Poppy Delevingne and Michael Gambon.
Written by Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn.
Directed by Matthew Vaughn.

★★

The first movie definitely left it open for a sequel, but this one goes directions I didn't care for.

1. If Eggsy was such a gentleman at the end of Secret Service, why is he still such a potty-mouth?
2. We invested a lot emotionally into Roxy last movie. Why kill her in the first few minutes here?
3. They did kill Galahad (Colin Firth) in the first movie. Why bring him back and in such a convoluted way?
4. The Stateman organization is set up like it's going to be a big deal, but Tatum and Bridges are barely in this movie. Elton John as himself gets more screen time.
5. There's a weird nastiness with the tone here. Two different people get shoved into a meat grinder.
6. This is the second movie in two months that features Tatum and John Denver's "Country Road."
7. Julianne Moore's villain is ill-conceived. At least she had a cool diaolical plan.

There's still a lot of fun to be had. The action sequences are still CGI'd to look like it's one amazing take, and allowing guys like Firth and Pedro Pascal (Narcos) to look like skilled fighters. Egerton's charismatic enough to make us forgive some slimy things Eggsy does (stuff I remind myself that James Bond wouldn't think twice about).

First movie was better.

Logan Lucky - Movie Review

Starring Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Daniel Craig, Riley Keough, Seth MacFarlane, Katie Holmes, Hilary Swank, Katherine Waterston, Sebastian Stan, Jack Quaid, Brian Gleeson, Dwight Yoakum, Jon Eyez, Macon Blair, Farrah Mackenzie and David Denman.
Written by Rebecca Blunt.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh.

★★★½

This isn't as glitzy as Soderbergh's Ocean's 11 movies, but it's definitely better than the Ocean's sequels. By setting it in West Virginia instead of Vegas, it feels like the stakes are more real. These people actually need the money.

Channing Tatum plays Jimmy Logan, a blue-collar worker who can't seem to get ahead. "Logan lucky" refers to how unlucky his family is. He and his one-armed brother Clyde (Adam Driver) decide to rob a NASCAR event. They enlist their sister (Riley Keough) for help, and the plan grows from there.

There is such an ease to the flow of a Soderbergh movie. Throwaway scenes in any other film feel new here. he plays with timelines in a way that doesn't feel like cheating. There's also something about watching Daniel Craig let loose as a Southern safecracker. I can't remember the last time he looked like he was having this much fun onscreen.

The LEGO Batman Movie - Movie Review

Starring the voices of Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, Michael Cera, Ralph Fiennes, Rosario Dawson, Jenny Slate, Susan "Siri" Bennett, Hector Elizondo, Channing Tatum, Billy Dee Williams and Zoe Kravitz.
Written by Seth Grahame-Smith, Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Jared Stern & John Whittingham.
Directed by Chris McKay.

★★★

This is a tail-eating meta-feast of pop-culture jokes and superhero cliches. It's like the Naked Gun for kids.

Will Arnett is back as (deep-voice) Batman. He kicks butt and can beat all of his arch-enemies at once. (We even get Calendar Man!) He life gets turned upside-down when he absentmindedly adopts Dick Grayson. Meanwhile, the Joker decides he needs better villains around him, since he and Riddler and Two-Face and Bane and Poison Ivy and... Condiments Man... are too easy to defeat.

Plot doesn't really matter (though it is fun). It's all about deconstructing what makes Lego Batman tick. There are a ton of cameos (everyone from King Kong to the Wonder Twins), and if anything I'd say the movie is too overstuffed. I was amused at quite a few of the gags, which is the main point and therefore the most important point.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation - DVD Review

Starring Dwayne Johnson, Channing Tatum, Bruce Willis, Byung Hoo-Lee, Jonathan Pryce, Ray Park, Ray Stevenson, Adrianne Palecki, Elodie Yung, D.J. Cotrona, Walton Goggins, Luke Bracey and Arnold Vosloo.
Directed by Jon M. Chu.

★½

The first movie was not good.  You had director Stephen Sommers' Mummy-sequel sensibilities, Marlon Wayans, those CGI suits the Joes wore, phoned-in performances from the likes of Dennis Quaid and Rachel Nichols, and a movie that felt like the entire purpose was to set up Part 2.

Chu takes over directing duties, and he kills off most of the Joes, thereby nullifying a lot of the events from Part 1.  Gone are Hawk, Baroness, Scarlet, Ripcord, Heavy Duty, etc.  Destro's left in his Minority-Report-type prison, while Joseph Gordon-Levitt has left Cobra Commander duties to an actor named Luke Bracey.  GI Joe 2 had a smaller budget, and I see where some significant cuts were made.

Master-of-disguise Zartan (Arnold Vosloo) has assumed the disguise of the President (Jonathan Pryce), which means this time around, Pryce gets to be the villain.  (I don't think Vosloo himself worked more than a day on this film.)  Storm Shadow (Byung Hoo-Lee), whom I swore died in the first one, is back, but his allegiances aren't as obvious.

New Joes include Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson), Lady Jaye (the bland Adrianne Palecki) and Flint, played by D.J. Cotrona, who makes Palecki look like an Academy Award winning actress. Maybe his part was underwritten, or maybe they cut a lot of his stuff out after they saw what a dead weight he was, but he was sore-thumb bad for me.

For those who grew up on the 1980's cartoon and toy line, I can't say it's any better than the first one. But if you liked the first one, you'll probably like the second one. I didn't care for the first one, and I was hoping the significant changes might result in a better movie.  Didn't happen.

Bright spot of the movie: Walton Goggins (Justified) as the supermax prison warden who loves his job.

Since GI Joe 3 is happening, and Chu will again direct, I hope they kill Flint quickly and bring back Destro. I can't imagine Christopher Eccleston couldn't use the money.

Side Effects - DVD Review

Starring Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Vinessa Shaw. Directed by Steven Soderbergh.

★★★½

No one is as crisp a filmmaker as Soderbergh.  I love that now that he's doing these less ambitious projects, they're still every bit as professionally done as any "prestige" pic he might want to work on.

The 50-year-old director has threatened retirement a few times, and I hope that's not the case.  He's working on a TV mini-series now starring Clive Owen as a doctor at a New York hopsital in the 1900's, but no more movies are on his plate.

This is a straightforward mystery and it plays like a novel.  A young woman (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's Rooney Mara) with anxiety and depression issues is waiting for her husband (Channing Tatum) to get his release from prison.  He'd been in for insider trading, and they're ready to get their life back.

Mara goes to a doctor (Jude Law) and he prescribes a fairly new medicine on the market for her symptoms.  But the prescription has some severe side effects. And it goes from there.  It flows at a Hitchcockian pace, and there isn't a wasted scene anywhere.

White House Down - Movie Review

Starring Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke, James Woods, Richard Jenkins, Joey King, Nicolas Wright, Jimmi Simpson, Michael Murphy, Rachelle Lefevre, Lance Reddick, Matt Craven and Jake Weber.
Directed by Roland Emmerich.

★★½

Emmerich movies always have the tongue implanted in cheek, and this movie's no exception. Think of the big-budget disaster flicks like 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow or the more action-oriented flicks like The Patriot or Independence Day.  Now comes a ridiculous buddy-action-comedy between a Secret Service wannabe and POTUS fleeing terrorists in Die Hard in the White House.

Jamie Foxx is the Obama-esque President, and I'm not saying that because he's black.  He even adopts the way Obama speaks, at least in the beginning of the movie. His character's name however is President Sawyer.  Sawyer has announced he's withdrawing all US troops from the Middle East, which makes some never-seen CEOs of defense-contractor companies upset.  Needless to say, eventually some mercenary types start blowing stuff up around the White House. I wonder who could be backing them...

Tatum's character is John Cale.  Not quite John McClane, but come on, he even winds up wearing just the wife-beater by the end of the movie.  It's never bold enough to have him declare "Yippy-ki-yay!"  That'd just be too much.

The movie's fun the whole time.  Even when it gets stupid, and it does, it never forgets it's just a moooovie.  Tons of explosions, gunfire, but with the cameras angled just right to help keep that PG-13.

Tatum and Foxx have infectious chemistry.  Joey King (Beezus & Ramona) has her own moments as Cale's daughter.  MVP is Nicolas Wright as the tour guide. It seems like a throwaway part that just keeps getting better.  Anyone left of center should love that all the bad guys' motives hit on every Evil Republican cliche. Some are in for white supremacy, some are in it for money, some are in it to create more war, etc. We just needed one terrorist to say he's pro-life.

It's not the best movie of the summer, but it's worth seeing if you take it on its own level.

Random Entertainment News - 5/7/13

- The Avengers 2 is slated for May 2015, but not all of the actors are pinned down, most notably Robert Downey Jr.  Downey made $50 million on the first Avengers and could wind up in the $70 million range for the sequel.  Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Mark Ruffalo (Hulk) and others also haven't agreed, and Marvel may replace some of them if they can't settle salary disputes.

- Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty) is in talks to join Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Michael Caine in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar.  Jonathan Nolan (The Dark Knight) wrote the script, and it's set to open November 7, 2014.

- Johnny Depp (The Baker) and Meryl Streep (The Witch) are in talks to star in a big-screen version of Into the Woods for director Rob Marshall (Chicago).

- Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are teaming up for a remake of Guys & Dolls.  The original film version starred Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra.

- Meanwhile, Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill will return for 21 Jump Street 2, set to open June 6, 2014.

- Megan Fox will play April in a new live-action/CGI Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Will Arnett co-stars.

- Jason Statham will star in a remake of Heat, not the 1995 classic with Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro, but the 1987 drama that starred Burt Reynolds.  It's about a gambler who takes on the mob after his friend is brutally beaten.  Sofia Vergara, Stanley Tucci. Jason Alexander, Anne Heche and Michael Angarano co-star.

- NBC has renewed five dramas for this fall - Grimm, Law & Order: SVU, Revolution, Parenthood and Chicago Fire.

- Angus T. Jones will not return as a regular on CBS's Two and a Half Men this fall.  Ashton Kutcher and Jon Cryer have signed new one-year deals to continue with Season 11.

GI Joe is #1, Tyler Perry #3, Host #6

For the weekend of March 29-31.

1. GI Joe: Retaliation - $41.2 million ($51.71) - 1 wk (Par)
 . . . 3719 screens / $11,078 per screen
2. The Croods - $26.5 ($88.62) - 2 wks (Fox) -39.3%
 . . . 4065 / $6519
3. Tyler Perry's Temptation - $22.3 - 1 wk (LG)
 . . . 2047 / $10,894
4. Olympus Has Fallen - $14 ($54.74) - 2 wks (FD) -53.9%
 . . . 3106 / $4507
5. Oz the Great & Powerful - $11.61 ($198.28) - 4 wks (BV) -46.2%
 . . . 3324 / $3491
6. The Host - $11 - 1 wk (OR)
 . . . 3202 / $3436
7. The Call - $4.8 ($39.48) - 3 wks (TriS) -46.1%
 . . . 2439 / $1968
8. Admission - $3.25 ($11.76) - 2 wks (Foc) -47.1%
 . . . 2161 / $1505
9. Spring Breakers - $2.76 ($10.1) - 3 wks (A24) -43.2%
 . . . 1379 / $2000
10. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone - $1.3 ($20.58) - 3 wks (WB) -69.9%
 . . . 1575 / $825
11. Identity Thief - $1.09 ($129.91) - 8 wks (U) -57.8%
 . . . 1082 / $1010

GI Joe: Retaliation survived bad reviews to nab a big opening weekend.  It was supposed to open last summer, but they wanted reshoots to beef up Channing Tatum's part (he'd originally been slated to die in the first scene).  The other wide releases - Tyler Perry's Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor and The Host - received even worse reviews.

With a cast like Tatum, Bruce Willis and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, GI Joe looks like a younger, better Expendables spinoff.

The marketing never came together for The Host. There was never a final sell, and tracking numbers fell off for it the last week.

I keep waiting for Tyler Perry's Phone Book to be released to big numbers.

Magic Mike - Movie Review

Starring Channing Tatum, Matthew McConaughey, Alex Pettyfer, Cody Horn, Olivia Munn, Matt Bomer, Joe Manganiello, Kevin Nash, Adam Rodriguez, Riley Keough and Gabriel Iglesias.  Directed by Steven Soderbergh.

★★★½

Arguably the best male-stripper movie ever made.  Arguable because I can't think of another one.

Steven Soderbergh said after the long shoot and quick box-office death of Che that he wasn't going to be as concerned about "art" so much as just making movies that interested him.  When he filmed Haywire with Channing Tatum, he spoke with him about his stripping past and developed a movie out of it.  After Contagion and Haywire, this is Soderbergh's third movie to open in nine months, and none of the three looked rushed.

An engaging element in a movie that centers on a profession is to show us the behind-the-scenes grind of what doing that job actually entails.  Magic Mike is light-hearted in its approach, at first, and it makes being a male stripper look like a much more fun way to earn $200 a night that, say, construction.  The story comes together when Mike (Tatum) takes under his wing a teenage punk named Adam (I Am Number Four's Alex Pettyfer) who needs some money of his own.  We meet the other men who work there, a very unique foursome consisting of Matt Bomer (USA's White Collar), Joe Manganiello (HBO's True Blood), Kevin Nash (Rock of Ages), and Adam Rodriguez (CBS's CSI: Miami).  And they are all led by Dallas (Matthew McConaughey), a southern-fried Fagin, fulfilling the fantasies of women all over Tampa Florida in his club.

Naturally, Mike knows he can't dance forever and his real dream is to start his own custom furtniture business.  This contrasts with Adam, who's dropped out of college and seems content for the quick score, eventually dabbling in the ecstasy business.  A movie with that element can only stay light-hearted for so long.

This movie made me appreciate the economy of Soderbergh.  His editing choices never feel too choppy, nor does any scene drag.  He also knows where to put a camera to allow for natural responses from his actors.  The stand-out performance belongs to McConaughey.  Getting away from Kate Hudson rom-coms has done him some good.

Random Movie Stuff - 7/12/12

- John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein (Horrible Bosses) have written a sequel to the National Lampoon's Vacation movies, this time focussed on grown-up Rusty Griswold and the misadventures he has vacationing with his family.  (I'm assuming Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo will show up at some point as Grandpa and Grandma Griswold).  Ed Helms is in talks to play Rusty.

- Channing Tatum will play daredevilling pioneer Evel Knievel in a biopic.


- The Hunger Games: Mockingjay will be split into two films.  Part I will open in November 2014 and Part II in November 2015.  The Hunger Games: Catching Fire opens November 2013, and in case you missed it, Philip Seymour Hoffman has signed on to play new gamesmaster Plutarch Heavensbee.


- Deadfall will now open December 7.  It stars Eric Bana (Funny People) and Olivia Wilde (Cowboys & Aliens) as two siblings on the run from a botched casino heist. They're trying to make it to the Canadian border during a whiteout blizzard.  Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy), Kate Mara (American Horror Story), Treat Williams, Sissy Spacek and Kris Kristofferson co-star.

- Jim Piddock (The Man, Tooth Fairy) has been hired to write the screenplay for the big-screen adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey.  If he takes the Exit to Eden approach, he's going to get crucified.

- More cast members have signed on for Olympus Has Fallen, starring Aaron Eckhart as the US president when the White House is overtaken by terrorists.  Gerard Butler, Angela Bassett and Radha Mitchell had previously been announced, but now Melissa Leo (The Fighter), Ashley Judd and Robert Forster have been added.

- And here's the trailer for Sam Raimi's Oz: The Great & Powerful.  It looks as visually interesting as Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, but it didn't do anything to ease my main fear: James Franco doesn't seem like the right choice to play the Wizard.

Haywire - DVD Review

Starring Gina Carano, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Channing Tatum, Bill Paxton, Antonio Banderas, Matthieu Kassovitz and Michael Angarano.  Directed by Steven Soderbergh.

★★½

The boast of this fairly standard thriller is that the fights scenes are more realistic. Gina Carano is an MMA fighter, and therefore her fights are a little more belieavable than those from DOA: Dead or Alive. Even then, though, there were a couple times where the sped-up editing felt like there'd been some CGI tweeks to what I was watching.

But they are good fights. They're fast, they're brutal, they have a more realistic choreography to them than what we're accustomed to from Hollywood.

Now I need to back up. The plot bears more than a passing resemblence to the Bourne series, though it is a little murky, in that Carano's an agent who's very good at her job, so why her government chose her to be the fall guy for an assignment gone wrong doesn't make sense. But hey, at least she gets to go on the run and beat up guys like Michael Fassbender and Channing Tatum.

The movie has its slow spots, and it's clear that some of the big name stars (Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas) only had a day or two of filming for their scenes.

Is Carano the next female action star? Meh. She needs to work on her on-screen charisma, but I'm willing to follow her, see if she improves from here.

Random Movie Stuff - 3/27/12

- Chloe Moretz (Kick-Ass, Hugo, Dark Shadows) has been offered the title role in MGM's remake of Carrie, based on the classic Stephen King novel about a shy girl with telekinetic powers who has the worst prom ever.  Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry) will direct.

- Chloe Moretz has also joined the cast of The Drummer, a biopic about Beach boys drummer Dennis Wilson, who died in 1983.  It stars Aaron Eckhart, Vera Farmiga and Rupert Grint (Harry Potter).

- Kenneth Branagh (Thor) will direct the next Jack Ryan movie.  The reboot would star Chris Pine, who'd star after filming on Star Trek 2 is complete.  Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck have played Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan in movies past.

- Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis have been offered the leads in Jupiter Ascending, the next sci-fi movie from Andy & Lana Wachowski (The Matrix).

- Melissa Leo (The Fighter) has joined the cast of Oblivion, a sci-fi thriller from Joseph Kosinski (Tron Legacy).  It stars Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace) and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones).

- Greg Dean Schmitz's Upcomingmovies.com was one of my must-visit sites about 10 years ago.  Yahoo bought his site awhile back, and now he's the main news guy for RottenTomatoes.com, a site I currently can't go a week without visiting.  Here's some news tidbits from his Weekly Ketchup column, which gives his top ten movie stories of the week (be they fresh or rotten):

1.  Michael Bay's producing a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, now titled Ninja Turtles, as the plan to have them actually be aliens.
2.  Brett Ratner's name has been attached to direct Midnight Run 2, a sequel to the 1988 hit with Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin.  DeNiro's expected to return but not Grodin.
3.  Jessica Biel will play Vera Miles in Alfred Hitchcock & the Making of Psycho, starring Anthony Hopkins (Hitchcock), Helen Mirren (his wife), James D'Arcy (Anthony Perkins), Scarlett Johansson (Janet Leigh) and Michael Stuhlbarg (agent Lew Wasserman).
4.  Ron Howard's production company Imagine Entertainment is developing another big-screen treatment of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

21 Jump Street - Movie Review

Starring Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Brie Larson, Dave Franco, Ice Cube, Rob Riggle, Ellie Kemper, Jake Johnson, Chris Parnell and Nick Offerman.  Directed by Phil Lord & Chris Miller.

★★★½

When I first saw the trailer a few months ago I thought it looked terrible, like a candidate for worst movie of the year.  And yet, it's the funniest movie I've seen in several months.

Let me first speak to Channing Tatum.  With his body, he has to do action pics, but in such movies like GI Joe and The Eagle, I don't find him that compelling.  He's had success in chick flicks (Dear John, The Vow), but after being the funniest part about The Dilemma, and now this, I'm convinced Tatum's strength is comedy.

He and Jonah Hill make a great team.  We start in 2005, when the two were in high school.  Hill plays Schmidt, the insecure nerdy outcast, and Tatum is Jenko, the dumb bullying jock.  They meet again in police academy and decide to be friends.  Schmidt helps Jenko with studying, Jenko helps Schmidt with physical training.

Flash-forward to 2012, and the two are enlisted in the recently resurrected Jump Street program, where young-looking cops infiltrate high school as narcs.  Thos who remember the show will recognize in-jokes here and there, but those who haven't seen it will never feel lost.

The movie plays on stereotypes and expectations and subverts them over and over.  Directors Lord & Miller, of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs fame, have no problem transitioning their chaotic sense of humor to live-action.  There's also several fun small roles for TV comedy vets like Ellie Kemper (The Office), Nick Offerman (Parks & Recreation), Jake Johnson (New Girl), Chris Parnell (Suburgatory), and so forth.

Random Movie Stuff - 12/26/11

- Here's the first photo from Magic Mike, a male-stripper comedy from director Steven Soderbergh.  It stars Matthew McConaughey, Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer (Beastly), Matthew Bomer (USA's White Collar), and Joe Manganiello (HBO's True Blood).  It's loosely based on Tatum's experiences as a stripper before his acting career took off.  The movie's scheduled to open June 29.  Soderbergh also has Haywire opening next month.

- Dan Aykroyd has joined the cast of Dog Fight, a political satire starring Will Ferrell and Zack Galifianakis as two warring candidates.  It also stars Jason Sudeikis, John Lithgow, WIll Forte and Brian Cox.

- Alan Taylor, whose directorial efforts mainly comprise of HBO fare like Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire, will be the new director for Thor 2.  Kenneth Branagh directed the original.

- Seth Rogen will star in The B Team, about a master spy who is kidnapped, so his support team must go in to save him.

- What do Tom Hulce (Amadeus), Jon Polito (Miller's Crossing), Derek Jacobi (Anonymous), Wesley Eure (TV's Land of the Lost), Guillermo Diaz (TV's Weeds), Sean Maher (Serenity), Roger Rees (TV's Cheers), Denis O'Hare (TV's True Blood), Jonathan Slavin (TV's Better Off Ted), and Luke Evans (Clash of the Titans) have in common?

- The Top Ten Movies according to Christy Lemire, of Ebert Presents At the Movies:

1.  Martha Marcy May Marlene
2.  50/50
3.  The Myth of the American Sleepover
4.  The Tree of Life
5.  Bellflower
6.  Melancholia
7.  Take Shelter
8.  Hell & Back Again
9.  Beginners
10. Bridesmaids