After Earth - DVD Review

Starring Jaden Smith and Will Smith.
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

★½

M. Night Shyamalan has had a baffling career. If we pretend The Sixth Sense was his debut, then every movie he's made has been a little bit worse than the one before, until we get to the twin terribles of The Happening and The Last Airbender. While The Happening was silly, and The Last Airbender derivative, After Earth is just dull.  There's no sense of wonder involved. It feels more like Obstacle #3 before you can meet Lord Xenu.

Will & Jaden Smith play father and son Cypher and Kitai Rage, the former being a world-famous ranger, the younger living in his shadow. They are sent on a mission to Earth, a planet humans abandoned 1000 years ago. Their ship crashes, and Cypher's legs are broken, so Kitai must travel from point A to point B to retrieve a beacon so they can be rescued.

Some animals have evolved over those thousand years. They're more predatory. Most of the movie is Jaden Smith running through the jungle avoiding such animals. It made me think of the superior jungle scenes in Avatar or Apocalypto, movies made by much better directors than Shyamalan.

The film's central theme is about overcoming fear. Danger is real but fear is a choice. It leads to a fairly anticlimactic conclusion.

The Walking Dead - "The Grove" - TV Review

Some of the one-plot episodes work better than others, and this is one of the ones that worked better than others. We have six different satellite groups now. There's the Grimes group of Rick, Carl and Michonne; the Maggie group of Maggie, Sasha and Bob; the Glenn group of Glenn, Tara and the Abraham 3; Daryl & the Bad Guys; Beth in the trunk of a car; and the Carol Bunch, with Carol, Tyreese, and three little girls.

This episode was 100% dedicated to the Carol Bunch, with the omipresent tension of "Will Tyreese find out that Carol killed Karen?" But we're further off-kilter by Lizzie. We know she likes to kill varmints and rodents, and we know she likes to treat walkers like pets, but we also know she almost suffocated baby Judith, so even though everyone knows she's a little off, they don't realize just how off she is.

Carol's concerned the girls are still too soft, especially Mika. She knows Lizzie has something killer about her, but she's trying to make sure they're equipped to survive. (Such a mournfully good performance by Melissa McBride this week as Carol.)  When they find a house with a propane tank and a deep well, they decide to stay for a while. Tyreese sits back in a chair in a living room for the first time in forever, and you can see the relief on his face, the pocket of normalcy they allow themselves.

But all can't stay well, and Lizzie decides to prove a point with Carol by killing Mika, to show that she'll turn into a walker but it'll still be her. Carol and Tyreese see the hard-wiring in Lizzie is beyond fixing, and they do the only thing they can do in that situation. #OfMiceAndMen

Once that nasty deed is done, Carol gives Tyreese a gun and then confesses, ending with "Do what you gotta do." Tyreese goes through the avalanche of emotions, and it's mostly through Chad Coleman's face and body language, but he comes to a believable conclusion. He forgives her, and the three of them abandon the house and get back on the road to Terminus.

(Those who've read the comics figured this time would come, though in the comics, it's two boys, and a younger Carl is the one who steps up and kills the "Lizzie" boy.)

Only two episodes left. Are any of these groups going to converge? Are we going to find out what happened to Beth?

300: Rise of an Empire - Movie Review

Starring Sullivan Stapleton, Eva Green, Lena Headey, Rodrigo Santoro, Hans Matheson, David Wenham and Callan Mulvey.
Directed by Noam Murro.

★★

This is a prequel and sequel all in one. In fact the majority of the action takes place during the same time as the events in the first 300 movie. We get a couple shots of Gerard Butler's face but otherwise the movie dances around not having their main star from Part 1.

Part 2 revolves around Themistocles, an Athenian who wants to unite Greece against the Persian invasion. He's played by Sullivan Stapleton, an Australian actor best known (if he's known at all) as one of the leads on Cinemax's series Strike Back. He doesn't have the same wattage as Butler.

Rodrigo Santoro is back as the 8-foot-tall god-king Xerxes, but since he has to be gone most of this movie dealing with the events of the other one, his army is led by Artemisia, played with unbridled gusto by Eva Green (Dark Shadows). Indeed, this movie would have been much harder to sit through if it wasn't for her.

The "story" is slimmer this time around, the gore just as splashy and cartoonish, the substance is at zero. There are a couple points where Themistocles gives a troops-rousing speech and I felt a little embarrassed. How many troops-rousing speeches have been committed to film over the years? Hundreds, and most of them were better than these.

I hope the eventual 300: Fall of an Empire is a musical.

Last Vegas - DVD Review

Starring Michael Douglas, Robert DeNiro, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline, Mary Steenbergen, Romany Malco, Jerry Ferrara, Roger Bart, Joanna Gleason and Michael Ealy.
Directed by Jon Turteltaub.

★★

A movie with this cast would have been the must-see movie of 1989. Nowadays we know what we're going to get. Its humor is broad and safe. It reminded me of when Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas had their one last hurrah in 1986's Tough Guys. Nothing too demanding, and a lot of that may be because Hollywood has no idea how to write good parts for older people unless it involves dying.

So these four Academy-Award winners play four old friends who reunite for a bachelor party when the one of them who's never been married is finally getting married. Douglas is the lifelong playboy marrying a woman half his age; DeNiro is the widower who's closed himself off from life; Freeman's the bored grandpa who's tired of taking it easy after his stroke; and Kline is the persnickety one whose wife tells him he can have a freebie if he wants (as long as he doesn't tell her about it.)

So they party, they get drunk, they each have their epiphany, and we probably would have been more entertained listening to the four of them swap movie-making stories for two hours.

300 is #1, Mr. Peabody is #2 at Box Office

300: Rise of an Empire came seven years later, without the original star (Gerard Butler) or director (Zack Snyder), and while it didn't open at near the level of its predecessor, Warner Bros. has to be thrilled with a $45 million domestic opening. In fact, its worldwide gross is already at $132 million.

DreamWorks Animation partnered with Fox to distribute Mr. Peabody & Sherman. It was a risky venture, taking a 50-year-old cartoon. It wasn't even its own cartoon; it was part of the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show. I'm surprised the budget went as high as $145 million on it, but like 300, it should do well overseas.

300: Rise of an Empire #1 on Friday

I have TornBySports and TaxiSquadShow for my sports stuff, UtahPoliticoHub for my political stuff, and now I have FlickSided where I'll be putting some of my movie stuff.

300: Rise of an Empire was #1 this weekend. I expect that even though Mr. Peabody will get a big Saturday boost, it won't  be enough to take the #1 spot away from 300, which showed wisdom beyonds its years moving from Summer 2013 to this weekend.

A Good Day to Die Hard - DVD Review

Starring Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Cole Hauser.
Directed by John Moore.

★

The script is so bad, I'm surprised no one ever yells, "Look's like today's a good day to die hard!" before chomping a cigar and giving a thumbs-up to the camera.

The directing is so bad, there isn't a single interesting action sequence. It's all buried in this dark-blue sheen that John Moore (Max Payne) seems to relish.

There is no chemistry between Bruce Willis and Jai Courtney as father and son.

I could go on. Don't mind if I do.

John McClane is going on vacation to visit his estranged son. Turns out his son is a spy and is in the middle of staging a prison-break with a high-profile political prisoner. McClane takes it in stride, stealing a truck and crashing through traffic, trying to talk to his kid. "Hey! What's going on!"

This isn't a Die Hard movie.  This is a generic, brainless, action superhero movie where the bad guys can't shoot but the good guys can. This might as well have starred Dolph Lundgren.

House of Cards Season 2 - Netflix Review

With Breaking Bad out of the way, it may be time for Kevin Spacey to get an Emmy for his role as the conniving Vice-President Francis Underwood.  I watched all of season 2, and it's darker and sudsier than season 1. We knew Frank was evil last season when he murdered his "friend" Peter Russo, but in the first episode of season 2, we see just how far his evil will go.  We also know his wife (Robin Wright) is Lady Macbeth, and in season 2, we see just how hand-in-hand she is with Frank's schemes. They're a model marriage. They tell each other everything.

Stand-outs this year include Molly Parker as an Iraq War vet and the new Majority Whip of the House, Jimmi Simpson as a hacker caught in his own web, and Gerald McRaney as the increasingly dangerous billionaire Raymond Tusk who always has the President's ear. And while Underwood is evil, I can see why he's so admired in Washington in a guilty pleasure way.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - Movie Review

Starring Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Ken Stott, Evangeline Lilly, James Nesbitt, Aidan Turner, Lee Pace, Orlando Bloom, Ken Stott, Luke Evans, Stephen Fry, Jed Brophy and Benedict Cumberbatch.
Directed by Peter Jackson.

★★★

Caught this at the discount theater.

This trilogy, even though it has the same budget and running time, feels like Lord of the Rings Lite. And it is. The Hobbit was a one-volume kids book, and now it's been blown up into an eight-hour three-movie event. And while the sets are as daunting, the battles as decapitating, and the special-effects as all-consuming, it's still just an excuse to hang out in Middle Earth for another round. Fine by me.

When we last left Bilbo, Gandalf, Thorin and twelve other dwarves we can't tell apart (I wish I'd reviewed this slideshow before going in) had flown on giant eagles to a safe spot away from the orc army but still a few days' journey away from the Lonely Mountain. The orc army catches up rather quickly, so they have to make haste and go through a haunted forest. Now Gandalf gets some news, so he says he has to leave them for a time, but he'll meet them at the Mountain.

Why the dwarves couldn't just stick with Gandalf? It apparently would take the same amount of time. No matter. They make their way through the wood and encounter giant spiders, and the adventure continues from there.  Now somewhere in there the dwarves come across two Elves - Legolas (Orlando Bloom, coming full circle) and an actual female named Tauriel (Lost's Evangeline Lilly), and there's actually some flirting between her and the cutest dwarf Kili (i.e. the one with the least amount of makeup).

The third act was my favorite part, when we finally meet Smaug the dragon (voiced with delicious villainy by Benedict Cumberbatch). (Hey, I just realized the dragon and the hobbit were Sherlock and Dr. Watson talking.)

It ends about as abruptly as a 2-hour 40-minute movie can, so I imagine the third one will be about as long, fleshed out nicely. And I will see that on the big screen too. I like hanging out in Middle Earth.

DVD Roundup - All Is Lost, The Spectacular Now, The Hunt

ALL IS LOST (★★★)
Starring Robert Redford. Directed by J.C. Chandor.

This bare-bones tale of survival never gets dull, even with very little dialogue and only one actor. Redford could be playing himself, but in this stripped down atmosphere, he's good enough. He's a man at sea when his boat springs a leak. For the next 80 minutes, it's just him trying to survive, trying to find a way to get another boat's attention before his own sinks.

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THE SPECTACULAR NOW (★★★½)
Starring Miles Teller, Shailene Woodley, Brie Larson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kyle Chandler and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Directed by James Ponsoldt.

It's one of those high school movies that actually has a brain and heart behind what it's doing. It's about a popular but listless bad boy named Sutter (Miles Teller), who falls for an unconventional nice girl (Shailene Woodley) who starts to be the better influence on him than he is a bad influence on her.

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THE HUNT (★★½)
Starring Mads Mikkelsen. Directed by Thomas Vinterberg.

This was a difficult movie to sit through, to the point that my wife quit watching and when I told her the rest of the movie, she said she has no regrets. This Danish film is about a good guy who volunteers at the kindergarten who is then accused of molesting one of the kids. We know right off the bat he is innocent, and so the increased tension from his home-town who start to view him as a monster... well, it's excruciating. Mads Mikkelsen (Casino Royale, NBC's Hannibal) is very good as the wronged man, and it seems intended to remind of the cases of the McMartins, Friedmans, or West Memphis Three, where a Salem-esque hysteria surrounded the accused. It gets a little too manipulative in this vein, but Mikkelsen saves it.

The 2013 Academy Awards - TV Review

Ellen DeGeneres brought some friendly, safe blandness back to the Oscars after last year's misogynist show with Seth MacFarlane. It wasn't that funny or exciting but it had its own pleasures.

Highlights:
- The actual speeches. My favorites were Lupita Nyong'o, Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto, and the Lopezes.
- The Best Selfie Ever.
- In Memorium. Tastefully done.
- The running pizza gag.
- The Best Song nominees. All four were actually good songs (the fifth would have been too if the Academy didn't decide to later disqualify it.)
- Bill Murray's quick tribute to Harold Ramis.
- Pharrell getting Meryl and Amy Adams to dance.
- The surprise come-from-behind Best Picture win for 12 Years A Slave.

Lowlights:
- Montage tributes to "animation" and "heroes." Why?
- Bette Midler's "Wing Beneath My Wings."
- Ellen walking through the crowd with comments that didn't lead anywhere.
- Not seeing more of the award ceremony that gave Oscars to Angela Lansbury, Steve Martin and Angelina Jolie. Would much rather have watched that than Midler and montages.
- John Travolta's silly hairpiece and pronouncing "Idina Menzel" as "Adele Dazim."

Looking forward to what Tina Fey & Amy Poehler do with it next year.

2013 Academy Award Winners

BEST PICTURE - 12 Years a Slave
BEST DIRECTOR - Alfonso Cuarón, Gravity
BEST ACTOR - Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
BEST ACTRESS - Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR - Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS - Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY - John Ridley, 12 Years a Slave
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY - Spike Jonze, Her
BEST ANIMATED FILM - Frozen
BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM - 20 Feet from Stardom
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM - The Great Beauty, Italy
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY - Gravity
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN - The Great Gatsby
BEST COSTUME DESIGN - The Great Gatsby
BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING - Dallas Buyers Club
FILM EDITING - Gravity
BEST ORIGINAL SONG - "Let It Go", Frozen
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE - Steven Price, Gravity
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT - The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life
BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM - Mr. Hublot
BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT FILM - Helium
BEST SOUND EDITING - Gravity
BEST SOUND MIXING - Gravity
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS - Gravity

Total Wins:
Gravity - 7
12 Years a Slave - 3
Dallas Buyers Club - 3
The Great Gatsby - 2
Frozen - 2

My Academy Award Predictions

First and second place guesses on who I think will win.

BEST PICTURE - Gravity
12 Years a Slave

BEST ACTOR - Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street

BEST ACTRESS - Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Amy Adams, American Hustle

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR - Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS - Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave
Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle

BEST DIRECTOR - Alfonso Cuarón, Gravity
Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave

BEST ANIMATED FILM - Frozen
The Wind Rises

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY - Gravity
Nebraska

COSTUME DESIGN - American Hustle
The Great Gatsby

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE - The Act of Killing
20 Feet from Stardom

DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT - CaveDigger
Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall

FILM EDITING - Gravity
Captain Phillips

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM - The Great Beauty, Italy
Omar, Palestine

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING - Dallas Buyers Club
The Lone Ranger

ORIGINAL SCORE - Gravity, Steven Price
Her, William Butler & Owen Pallett

ORIGINAL SONG - "Let It Go" from FROZEN
"The Moon Song" from HER

PRODUCTION DESIGN - The Great Gatsby
Gravity

ANIMATED SHORT FILM - Get a Horse!
Mr. Hublot

LIVE-ACTION SHORT FILM - The Voorman Problem
Avant Que De Tout Perdre (Just Before Losing Everything)

SOUND EDITING - Gravity
Lone Survivor

SOUND MIXING - Gravity
Inside Llewyn Davis

VISUAL EFFECTS - Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY - 12 Years a Slave, John Ridley
The Wolf of Wall Street, Terence Winter

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY - American Hustle, Eric Warren Singer & David O. Russell
Her, Spike Jonze

The Walking Dead "Chained" - TV Review

It's not Carl's fault there's no one his age in the whole world.

A show's plot should always feel organic. These events lead to these events, which lead to these events... The best shows never feel like they're forcing something to happen just so they can get to this next plot point, which is the one they really believe in. Unfortunately, that happened in this episode.

We only follow two groups in this episode - the Rick & Carl show with Deadly Aunt Michonne, and then Glenn & the Newbies.  Michonne and Carl go on a supply run while Rick stays home to recouperate from his wounds. Timeline-wise, it's still only been 2-3 days since the Governor's final attack. The bonding time between Carl and his new mother figure (big sister figure?) reveals more about Michonne than we've been allowed to learn in three seasons. Back at home, though, Rick has to avoid a band of armed brothers who've picked his house - of all houses! - to poke around and take naps.

I find it interesting that Jeff Kober played the leader. We barely see him, which makes me believe his crew's going to meet up with Rick down the road.

The other storyline was the most problematic one. Abraham, Rosita and Eugene are here. Now what? It just had this lurching quality to it. Glenn wakes up. He freaks out and gets Abraham to stop the truck. Glenn and Abraham fight long enough for Eugene to grab a machine gun and shoot everything including the truck's gas tank when no one else is noticing the approaching walkers. Eugene says he knows how to fix the zombie crisis but won't give anyone the details because it's "classified." And no one presses him on this.

So their tale ends with the five of them (Tara's here too!) walking south to find Maggie and the bus, and we know that it's about 150 miles south of where they are now.

I don't know why they dyed Michael Cudlitz's hair red when his mustache is staying blond. I just hope they make better use of them in future episodes so their presence and actions don't feel so forced.

I also think from now on, as long as they're separated, I'm going to refer to each group Game of Thrones style.  Today we followed House Rick and House Glenn. Hopefully next week we'll see where House Daryl, House Tyreese, and House Maggie are doing. I like Jim Gaffigan's suggestion at changing the opening credits to show us who is where at the beginning of each episode.

Jackass Presents Bad Grandpa - DVD Review

Starring Johnny Knoxville and Jackson Nicoll.
Directed by Jeff Tremaine.

★★

I confess I have never seen a Jackass movie. I've seen an episode or two of Johnny Knoxville and his merry crew back in their MTV days. This movie is odd because it fits a narrative around a series of stunts, so that the grandfather and grandson are actual characters.

A movie like this though lives or dies on how many laughs it can illicit, and this one just isn't that funny. In fact, the part that made me smile most was the closing credits when they show the reactions of people who learn the crazy stuff they just witnessed was part of a Johnny Knoxville movie.

The most memorable stunt is when they have a guy playing the abusive father to the grandson in a bar, surrounded by BACA - Bikers Against Child Abuse. That's when you feel the tension rise and worry for the safety of the pranksters. Most of the time though, you just see passersby act surprised at something they just saw, then move on. It's like they can sense there's a camera hidden somewhere.

But hey, it's nominated for Best Makeup this year, so I can cross another Academy-Award nominee off my list!

Lego Movie #1 again

For the weekend of February 21-23, 2014, The LEGO Movie once again reigned supreme. Neither of the new offerings tempted viewers much, but Kevin Costner's 3 Days to Kill fared a little better than the much more expensive Pompeii.  In fact, 3DTK's opening wasn't that far behind that of Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit from last month.

The biggest surprise to me was how steep a drop the three date movies took in their second week. I don't think I've ever seen a week where three of the four wide releases all drop 70% in their second week. So by that measure, RoboCop has to be feeling lucky.

I'm still baffled that someone actually gave $100 million to a Paul WS Anderson movie. It doesn't matter what the material is. He has never made a movie that grossed over $100 million. He's had some that could have, if he wasn't such a bad director.  People moan about Michael Bay or Brett Ratner, but I'd take 3-5 films each from them before anything from Anderson.

The LEGO Movie - Movie Review

Starring the voices of Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Morgan Freeman, Will Arnett, Liam Neeson, Nick Offerman, Alison Brie, Charlie Day, Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill.
Directed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller.

★★★★

Everything is awesome about this movie on so many levels. The message, the humor, the subtext, the characters, the creativity... All of it works.

Chris Pratt, who plays the guileless Andy on NBC's Parks & Recreation, brings that same dim-bulb wonderment to the voice of Emmet, a construction worker in Legoland. Emmet is chirpy, positive, and part of a team, a team that Reads The Instructions and builds buildings. The movie has this shrewd animation style that looks like it's a combo of stop-motion and CGI (I'm guessing it's more CGI than stop-motion).

This Lego universe is run by President Business (Will Ferrell), head of the government and most coroporations. Behind closed doors, he's Lord Business! (Think Chancellor Palpatine and Darth Sidious). Lord Business is determined to control everything, and he has a doomsday device called the Kragle which will allow him to usurp freedom forever. Ah, but there's this prophecy that someone called the Special will come forth with a Piece of Resistance and stop Lord Business.

Emmet accidentally stumbles upon the Piece of Resistance, and he becomes the unwitting fulfiller of prophecy. An underground resistance movement hails him as the Special, even though he's not smart or unique in any discernible way.

This movie isn't left- or right-wing, it's probably the most centrist pro-liberty movie ever made. It celebrates community not conformity, knowing when to break out and when to be safe, respect for yourself and others, and above all, it's good to let your imagination run wild.

Part of the freedom of this movie is how much it's able to borrow from others to create something new.  Characters from Star Wars and Harry Potter pop up, and one of the main supporting characters is Batman. The evil micro-managers that serve Lord Business look and behave an awful lot like the squid-robots from The Matrix. (Micro-managers! Ha! Surprised there weren't two henchmen named Sarbanes and Oxley).

It truly is a "whole family" movie. Plenty of laughs for kids and adults. Surely the front-runner for Best Animated Film of 2014, the other candidates sight unseen.

About Last Night - Movie Review

Starring Kevin Hart, Michael Ealy, Regina Hall, Joy Bryant, Christopher McDonald, Joe La Truglio, Adam Rodriguez and Paula Patton.
Directed by Steve Pink.

★★½

I never saw the original movie with Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, James Belushi and Elizabeth Perkins. I do remember reading some of David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago, the original play on which it's based, but that was over 20 years ago, so I still went in not knowing much more than the average ticket-buyer would.

It starts out fine, where we meet Bernie (Kevin Hart) and Danny (Michael Ealy) talking about Bernie's recent sexual conquest, and we also hear the other side from Joan (Regina Hall) telling Debbie (Joy Bryant) her side of the story. It looks like we're going to build on the he-said, she-said aspect of hook-ups. That gets abandoned as the story shifts more into the relationship between Danny and Debbie, the bland couple. Bernie and Joan become the peripheral, off-again/on-again, more entertaining couple.

I'm glad I'm not single. Is this really the order people go in nowadays?
1. Have sex.
2. Move in together.
3. Say "I love you."
4. Kids and/or marriage are still years away.

There are plenty of laughs in the movie, mostly thanks to Bernie and Joan. I wish the ups and downs of Danny and Debbie's relationship didn't feel so forced. And there's something funny going on with movies these days where they're leaving out key pieces of character development. The Monuments Men was a good example of that, and now here's this movie. About a third through, we learn Danny hates his job and wants to pursue his dream. But he never says what that dream is. We see him getting turned down at some job interviews, but we have no idea what kind of job he's applying for. What's his dream? The movie never says, as he later finds a new source of happiness.

I don't mind that I saw it, but it's probably more of a Redbox movie than a pay-full-price affair.