2011 Wrap up and 2012 Stuff

Where did that year go? Seems the older you get the faster time goes by. But I did make a pretty epic new years resolution list:

New years goals: 

1. Kiss a married woman

2. Use the phrase "say whaaaaa?" more

3. Nuzzle more

4. Have lunch with the Barefoot Contessa 

5. Milk something 

6. Join a fancy country club

If I can get half of those knocked out 2012 will be a pretty sweet year. I will be sorely displeased if the world ends before I can knock them all off.

Back to movies, there are a few I did not get around to writing full reviews for so to give a very quick rundown:

The Adventures of Tintin: A fun film that plays like Indians Jones for small kids, I enjoyed it enough to recommend it. 3/4 Stars

War Horse: For what it was trying to be it worked well, the problem it was trying really hard to milk all the emotion out of you, easy pass if you are on the fence about seeing it. 2/4 Stars

Hugo: This is tricky, I feel that I should have enjoyed it much more than I did. Don’t let the ads fool you this is by no means a children’s film, it more closely resembles an art film. That said, I did not find it succeeded very well telling a story, I know I’m in the minority here but I’m sticking to my opinion. 1/4 Stars.

And that’s it for 2011. I saw more films in December than I care to admit…I’m not going to do a best of list because I don’t like ranking the best films. I might do an Oscar post around awards time though, and scoff at the Golden Globes.

Onto the new year. I’m looking forward to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; it seems to be fiercely diving critics so I look forward to seeing what the fuss is about. After that I have huge doubts about The Hunger Games and The Avengers, both are two movies I see going either way. Lionsgate seems to have put the Twilight sticker on Games and Marvel has settled into mediocrity with its films. So its either going to be a huge success or a harsh wake up call for either of them.

Have a catchy tune to start your 2012 off right.

The Girl With The Dragoon Tattoo Review

Visceral, Relentless and often uncomfortable but never failing to be engaging. Director David Fincher’s A Girl With A Dragon Tattoo is a masterful piece of film.

I became a big fan of the book mainly because of the draw of the character of Lisbeth Salander. Here we have a female lead who can be both the victim and the tormentor, the sex appeal and the alien, there really is no other character out there to compare her to, and Rooney Mara hits the nail on the head. In Hollywood its too common to see the girl who waits for her knight in shinning armor to save her, or the girl who needs a man to feel happy and complete, frankly its sickening and I have had enough of it, that’s why I was so happy to embrace a character like Salander, who breaks all conventions.

The story is about disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, (Daniel Craig). Craig has the sense here to step down and let Rooney Mara take the spotlight. Blomkvist is recruited by reclusive Swedish tycoon Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to come out and investigate the murder of his niece. Vanger is convinced someone in his family of detestable characters murdered his niece back in the 1960s. Blomkvist recruits the help of the talented computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to find the murderer. By itself this plays out as a close door type mystery, the list of suspects are few and their motivations fewer.

What makes Dragoon Tattoo unique here is the focus on Salander with the backdrop of violence against women and what it means to be a victim and how one takes control of one’s own life. One disadvantage of the adaptation to cinema is the lack of time to pause on these situations and take them in, even with a runtime of 2 and a half hours the breakneck pacing leaves no time to reflect.

This isn’t to say Dragoon Tattoo is a perfect film; it suffers from an unbalanced 3rd act that will leave people wondering why the credits did not roll 20 minutes before.

To add a slight disclaimer, this movie contains some very uncomfortable scenes, namely a brutal rape scene. The scene is a testament to the sensibilities of Fincher, as what we don’t see in frame is felt heavier than what we do see; yet the scene still remains brutal to watch.

3 ½ / 4 Stars

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows Review

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

I have to say I was pretty impressed by the first Sherlock Holmes, and what was there not to like? A dark London setting, an eccentric Robert Downey Jr. who just looked like he was having fun in every scene. The follow up film however…meh.

The second film picks up in the middle of a cat and mouse game (its mostly cat) between Holmes and Professor Moriaty (played by Mad Men’s Jared Harris). Moriaty is plotting to start a world war so he can reap the financial benefits of the destruction. Holmes is joined by his friend Dr. Watson (Jude Law) and for some reason Noomi Rapace is along for the ride (seriously, leave a comment on this post if you can tell me why she is here). I guess Rachel McAdams could only spare 5 minutes to shoot this since that’s all the screen time she has.

My big problem with Game of Shadows is the plot. There is nothing new or inventive about it, it deals with bombings, arms deals and a plot to start a world war. By itself it’s not a particularly terrible idea, but in a film titled Sherlock Holmes you would expect there to be some kind of mystery involved, but there just isn’t. It’s a story that would be better served in a James Bond film. As a result the sequel plays as some kind of dumb action movie. In the first film much was forgiven because Downey was so charming in his character, but because of the plot restrictions Holmes is little more than a clever action movie star so he has very little to do with the material he has. As a result his performance this time seems phoned in.

On the other side of the game Jared Harris plays a perfectly convincing Professor Moriaty, his threats carry consequences and he generally seems menacing. In the end he has the same restrictions, as does the rest of the cast, a plot that was not meant for them.

In the end A Game of Shadows delivers some good things, its slow motion start/stop action sequences are fun to watch, and would be rather impressive if not for the fact this does not work as an action movie.

If you were a big fan of the first one, check this out if you feel so inclined. If you had lukewarm feelings about it, this is an easy pass.


2/4 Stars

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol Review

This summer we saw plenty of franchises that were clearly running out of gas (I’m looking at you Pirates of the Caribbean). It’s refreshing to see that on its fourth installment the Mission Impossible franchise manages to keep itself fresh.

Lets get the mediocre out of the way first, the plot. Its pretty standard, almost disappointingly so. Some Russians are out to start nuclear war and set the world into chaos. We are never really told their intentions for doing so, other than to be just plain evil I guess. So Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his band of recently disavowed secret agents must stop them, all while using the coolest gadgets they can get their hands on. It’s just that this story is so shallow and has been done to death, even this year with X-men First Class. It’s a shame director Brad Bird did not have something more original to work with.

What Bird lacks in story he makes up for in the telling. Ghost Protocol is visually a well-told story. After a summer of bloated action films that were filmed so incomprehensively it was near impossible to follow the action happening on screen. Bird frames his action scenes so cleanly it was easy to forget the plot was paper-thin and get wrapped up in what was happening. There is a prison fight scene early on in the film that suffers from the camera being too zoomed in on the action, on a bigger screen it becomes more of a problem as the image becomes almost too uncomfortable to watch. But in the grand scheme of the film it’s a forgivable offense. In later action scenes the camera is placed properly.

Bird makes his first jump into directing live action feature films with Ghost Protocol and shows he is just as competent with it as he is animation, Bird’s previous films being The Iron Giant and Pixar’s The Incredibles. In fact on that note I’m pretty sure the “Your mission…if you choose to accept it…” voice is the same radio voice Bird used on The Incredibles.

Tom cruise leads the cast doing what he does best. He is joined this time by Paula Patton, Simon Pegg (who serves remarkably well as the films obvious comic relief) and Jeremy Renner, who does a fine job of it. We will be seeing more of Renner in this type of role plenty in the future, in Marvel’s The Avengers and the new Bourne films. Unlike MI: 3 there is no strong leading villain in Ghost Protocol, and that’s regrettable but not to be considered a deal breaker.

In the end what we have is a strong film that compared to other action films this year, is near the head of the pack. A solid cast that shares a strong chemistry and a production that is well though out and solidly executed. It’s not a perfect film by any means, but it’s one of the strongest the franchise has to offer.

3/4 Stars

Note: I saw this film in an Imax theatre and it makes good use of the format. Especially during an intense sequence where Tom Cruise has to scale a few stories of the tallest building in the world. So if you are interested in that kind of thing (and you should be) then I recommend checking it out in Imax.

The WB Plays Superhero Roulette

Since a lot of news has been coming out of cinema-con (formerly known as showest) I thought I’d make some comments about the bombs that the WB dropped there. As most of you are well aware WB is the rights holder of many DC super-hero franchises. Nolan’s Batman films being the most notable. Plans are in place for The Green Lantern this summer, judging strictly by trailers this looks like a bit of a drag. I’m curious to see if Ryan Renolds is still going to stick with his “Deadpool” movie with the Marvel camp, we shall see. It will be odd to see him starring in two different comic book movies. Then of course Zack Snyder is going to tackle “Man Of Steel” in 2012. Success is something that has been hard to find for Snyder since 300, Watchmen did relatively poorly among fans and critics alike, and everyone was not a fan of Snyder’s latest film “Sucker Punch”.

But the big revelation was that there are indeed plans for a “Justice League” film. The kicker is that it wont involve the actors from the other franchises, Christian bale and Ryan Renolds wont show up as Batman and Green Lantern, but someone else will. This is something that’s in direct contrast to marvels “The Avengers”. As you might expect this upset a large number of fans, and to be honest, it sounds like a terrible idea. I’m not sure why the WB chose this route, I have a sneaking suspicion it could have something to do with the way Nolan chooses to end his final Batman film (they were already talking about rebooting that also). Ignoring Batman, the DC comic movies have always seemed to struggle for the success that Marvel has had. It seems like Marvel unleashed a new hero every other year (in 2011 they will give us 2). I don’t see why DC can’t do the same, its not like there is a shortage of characters (the Flash. anyone?). Could be that unlike Marvel, who has its properties spread out across several studios, the WB is the sole holder of all things DC comics. And by the looks of things, it’s buckling under its own weight.

Capt. America trailer is here!

Called it! Now where is that trailer for Harry Potter 7 part 2...

UPDATE: Marvel put the official trailer online so I removed the old link and put this up.

Capt. America re-shoots and where is Tron 3?

First things first, how sweet is this picture? Footage has slowly been coming online from the Capt. America trailer, in fact a new clip came online as I was writing this post. http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=75475, check it out there, its a 6 second clip of a pre-super soldier Steve Rodgers fighting off a bully with a garbage can lid. But enough geeking out, lets get to business. Last week we heard that Capt. America was going back to England to do some re-shoots, its pretty common for a movie this big to have re-shoots, its a bit of a non-story actually. But apparently not so for internet fan boys across the country, as news of re-shoots have somehow lead to speculation that this is the studios attempt to "fix" the movie that is somehow broken. Take a collective sigh of relief and try to relax. Put this in perspective, every movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy had months of re-shoots. Again, its no big deal. I also expect we can see a full trailer within the week, its way overdue.


Second item of business for today is about Tron 3. (Slightly off-topic, but who is excited to see what Tron looks like on blu-ray?) I'm seeing over the Internets many are curious as to why there has not been an official announcement. I'm going to throw out my own speculations as to why this is, take everything with a grain of salt of course...this is the internet after all.


Tron Legeacy made $171,590,201 in the US alone, that's only slightly higher than its estimated production budget, granted it made more than that amount overseas, but add in the advertising costs and the numbers are not so hot. It only has a rating on rottentomatoes of 50%, again, not so hot. For any other studio this would have been seen as a success, but Disney works very differently than other studios out there. Remember, they dropped the Narnia franchise after Prince Caspian made $141,621,490 domestically. So I think that Tron, despite being popular with audiences was seen as a disappointment at Disney. I think their target was somewhere in the $250-$300 million mark. 

But despite this, I suspect that the process of Tron 3 has already began to roll out at Disney. It could be that they are waiting to see the sales of the DVD/Blu-ray on April 5th. Speaking of that, there is a special feature on Tron Legacy called "the next day" or something like that, its on youtube so you can watch it, its supposed to link Tron 2 and 3 together. At least that's what fans said, I didn't think so, in fact I thought it was kinda boring but you can judge for yourself. Personally I liked Tron Legacy, and would gladly welcome a sequel. I think Disney would enjoy turning this into a full blown franchise ala Pirates (lets hope they just don't milk it till its dry then force more down our throats, but its Disney after all...) With a animated show planned to premier next summer and constant rumblings of a sequel, the future for Tron looks bright.