Month: December 2014

Movie Trailer

Released: March 2014

Director: David Ayer

Run Time: 109 Minutes

Rated: R

Cast:
Arnold Schwarzenegger: John Wharton
Sam Worthington: James Murray
Josh Holloway: Eddie Jordan
Terence Howard: Julius Edmonds
Mireille Enos: Lizzy Murray
Olivia Williams: Detective Caroline Brentwood
Harold Perrineau: Jackson

It used to be that when Arnold Schwarzenegger headlined a movie, it put people’s butts in movie theater seats.  How could it not?  This is Arnold Schwarzenegger.  This is the Austrian Oak, Mr. Universe, and The Terminator.  When The Terminator hit movie theaters in 1984, Schwarzenegger became a household name overnight, despite how unpronounceable his name was at the time.  His first real break was Conan: The Barbarian in 1982, but it was The Terminator that made him a star.  Ever since, he’s been one of the most bankable and successful action movie stars in cinema history.  With films like Commando, Predator, Twins, and Total Recall, Arnold has had some of the biggest hits.  Not all of his films have been successful, but none of his movies have gone direct-to-video.  After 2003’s Terminator 3, Arnold took a break from the film industry to pursue two terms as California’s governor.  He’s made some cameos after 2003, but it wasn’t until 2010’s Expendables, that he was considering returning to the acting field.  While his appearance in The Expendables was brief, it was memorable.  He was given a much larger role in the second film.  After The Expendables 2 came out, his first lead role in nearly a decade was LionGate Studios’ The Last Stand in which he played a small-town sheriff.  It was a moderate success, but it was far from the smash hits that Schwarzenegger was used to having on a regular basis.  It wasn’t a bad effort.  Earlier this year, Schwarzenegger starred in the gritty action-thriller, Sabotage.

The film opens with a bang as D.E.A agent John Wharton and his team infiltrate a drug cartel’s hideout in search of a 10 million dollar payout.  After successfully eliminating the gang, the team decides to take their cut of the money.  After sneaking the money out through a drain, they discover that the money is gone.  After 6  months of being scrutinized by the D.E.A., Wharton and his rag-tag team of misfits are back in action only to find themselves targets of a mysterious assassin.  I kind of figured it would take Arnie a while to get back into the swing of things.  While The Last Stand was surprisingly a decent action film, Sabotage is a mixed bag.  Don’t get me wrong, I love gritty action movies, and Sabotage has plenty of grit.  There’s just a few problems here.  Okay, there’s more than a few problems.

Let’s talk about the characters:  There’s not one person here who’s likable.  Even Arnold’s character, John, comes across as a bit of a dirtbag.  The way these characters interact with each other is like putting a bunch of schoolyard bullies in a room together.  It’s not pretty.  These characters are supposed to be professional undercover D.E.A agents.  So, why don’t they act like it?  The performances by the actors are fine, particularly from Sam Worthington, but it doesn’t matter because the characters are poorly written.  Because of that, Sabotage inadvertently telegraphs who the problem child is a mile away.  This is one of those movies that is totally predictable, and you pretty much know who is responsible for the chaos almost right from the get-go.  That should never happen in a movie like this.  Arnold’s character suffers from having the cliche of losing his family to a violent gang in his past, so he’s pretty grumpy throughout the whole thing.

The action in Sabotage is pretty intense, but it suffers from being too excessive.  Were they trying to make an action movie or a horror movie here?  There’s plenty of gunfights and butt-kicking to be had, but Sabotage is gory.  It really is.  This is probably the goriest Schwarzenegger film I’ve ever seen.  I’m a gore-hound, so stuff like this doesn’t really bother me, but I think they went WAY overboard with it.  If David Ayer was trying to go for realism, he failed miserably.  It’s like the filmmakers wanted to see how far they could push the envelope.  They certainly pushed pretty hard.  I think that’s also a complement because it’s actually nice to see a movie not shy away from brutal violence like I’ve seen before.  Also, the film moves at a fairly brisk pace, so it doesn’t slow down a whole lot.  It’s also nice to see Sam Worthington do a movie that’s a little more hardcore than what I’ve seen him in.  I like Worthington as an actor, I really do.  I think he’s honest in what he does.  Is he the greatest actor?  No, but he’s a lot of fun to watch.  Seeing him take on a role like this is refreshing, because he’s not the hero of the film.

I really like Arnold Schwarzenegger.  I really do.  I like the fact that he plays a human being in Sabotage and not a comic book-style superhero.  I think that his performance in this movie is one of his better ones, but that doesn’t make it a particularly good movie.  But the fact of the matter is, is that Arnold isn’t the draw that he used to be.  I’m not going to blame him for getting older, it happens to everybody, I just don’t think he can really headline an action movie like this anymore.  He’s clearly still in great shape, though, don’t get me wrong.  I just feel that his time is getting close to being done.  Schwarzenegger’s got a few more big movies on the way: Terminator: Genisys, Triplets(sequel to Twins), and a new Conan movie is in the works.  If Arnold decided to to retire after doing The Legend of Conan, it would be awesome, actually, seeing as how he would bring his career full circle.  It was Conan that put Schwarzegger on the map, and Conan could be his last film.  I think that would wrap up an amazing career.  But that’s just speculation on my part.  As far as Sabotage goes, I may have to watch it again, but I can’t honestly recommend this movie unless you are a major fan of Arnie’s and of brutally violent films.  Personally, I enjoyed it despite its problems, and I don’t think it Sabotaged Arnold’s career(Ha, I’m so funny.).  I’m giving this one a 7/10.

Released: February 2014

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson

Run Time: 105 Minutes

Rated: PG-13

Cast:
Kit Harington: Milo
Kiefer Sutherland: Corvus
Carrie-Anne Moss: Aurelia
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje: Atticus
Jared Harris: Severus

I love gladiator movies like Spartacus, Ben-Hur, and well……..Gladiator.  I also like disaster movies such as Dante’s Peak, Volcano, and 2012.  So, what happens when you combine the two?  You get Pompeii.  This is not the first piece of fiction dealing with the city.  Some books and movies were made specifically about Pompeii.  The most famous of which is The Last Days of Pompeii.  That one started out as a book and was adapted for film multiple times.  Director Paul W.S. Anderson was given the opportunity to create a film based around the events of the Mount Vesuvius eruption of 79 AD.  Historically, this particular eruption was one of the most destructive and catastrophic disasters in European history.  Trying to create a movie around such an event is tricky, since anyone familiar with history already knows the outcome.  So, making a movie specifically about Pompeii wasn’t really in the cards.  So, they came up with a sort of Gladiator-style spectacle and story that led up to the eruption.  The result is a movie that suffers an identity crisis.  Is it trying to be a gladiator epic or a disaster movie?

Pompeii opens in 62 AD as a squad of Roman soldiers led by general Corvus put down a Celtic rebellion in Britannia.  Only one survived: Milo.  Sold into slavery as a child, Milo grows up to become a vicious gladiator.  Later, he’s brought to Pompeii with other gladiators to fight for the entertainment of now-Roman Senator Corvus, who has arrived to see if the city is worth investing in.  Milo captures the eye of Cassia, the daughter of Pompeii’s mayor, Severus.  Little does Milo know that Corvus has also taken an interest in Cassia.  At this point, the story just serves to move the film from one action set-piece to another, up to and including the volcanic eruption.  It’s really hard to tell what kind of movie Pompeii wanted to be.  Half of the movie wants to be a gladiator epic, and the other half: a disaster movie.  The combination of the two doesn’t quite work as well as Anderson hoped, especially in its 105 minute run time.  It doesn’t really leave room for character development, just lots of action.  Paul W.S. Anderson knows his way around an action movie, and he doesn’t really disappoint here.  I’ll get to that a little later.

So, what went wrong?  First of all, let’s talk about the cast.  Kit Harington of Game of Thrones fame lands the lead role of Milo The Gladiator.  It seems he’s brought his grumpiness and bad temperament from Game of Thrones with him.  He’s not bad, he’s certainly can handle a sword or two.  He’s just not given enough room to develop as a hero.  Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje plays Atticus, the gladiator who gets to fight one more time before becoming a free man.  I can see Agbaje doing that.  I can even see Carrie-Anne Moss as Roman nobility.  What I can’t see is Kiefer Sutherland as Corvus.  Don’t get me wrong, Kiefer Sutherland is a fantastic actor, rivaling his own father at times.  He was terribly miscast here.  Looking at his filmography, he’s not cut out to play a corrupt Roman leader.  He’s the mustache-twirling villain of the film.  Honestly, he comes off across as a bit cartoon-ish.  I don’t know if it’s because he’s out of his depth, or the character was so poorly written, but Corvus is not a good villain.

The action is where the film shines.  We’ve got some good sword fights and potential gladiator epicness, but it isn’t fully realized.  We do get to see what’s going on, most of the time.  We can thank Paul W.S. Anderson not overusing the shaky-cam technique.  The real spectacle of Pompeii begins when Vesuvius erupts.  Wow.  The views of the volcano, even before it erupts are spectacular.  We do get to see a rare glimpse inside the volcano when it starts to act up.  I honestly haven’t really seen that in a volcano movie before.  When it explodes, all hell breaks loose, and that’s where the movie kicks into high gear.  The visual effects are simply astounding.

For those of you who don’t know, Pompeii was destroyed in a cataclysmic eruption in 79 AD.  The reason we know for sure that the volcano erupted came from the writings of Pliny The Younger, who was a Roman magistrate and author.  He actually witnessed the eruption 22 miles away from the mountain.  Okay, Spoiler Alert: The volcano erupted and people died.  Not well, either.  They suffocated, burned and basically everything in between during the eruption.  The way the volcano erupted basically annihilated everything in its path, covering everything in mud and ash.  We have pictures of plaster-shaped people who were buried.  The people who were killed left impressions in the ash.  We learned that when the city was rediscovered in 1599.  More of it was uncovered in 1748.  People of all ages were found to have been buried.  11,000 people died in Pompeii during those days, and 5,000 more in a nearby city at the same time.  So, the history surrounding Pompeii is actually very interesting.  Because of Pliny The Younger, we have a much greater understanding of what happened during those last few days.

When all is said and done, Pompeii isn’t a bad movie.  It really isn’t.  It’s a decent film that just failed to decide what it wanted to be when it grew up.  Kiefer Sutherland was laughable bad in this one and the rest of the cast just failed to really come together.  The story isn’t terrible, but it’s a mish-mash of better films.  As I said earlier, the film’s real bright spot comes when the volcano blows its top, and its a non-stop ride from there.  Pompeii doesn’t really bring anything new to the gladiator or disaster movie genres.  It’s just…there.  It’s still better than The Legend of Hercules, though.  But, I don’t think that’s really hard to do.  Pompeii is just mediocre.  7/10.

Released: May 2014

Director: Marc Webb

Run Time: 142 Minutes

Rated: PG-13

Cast:
Andrew Garfield: Peter Parker/Spider-Man
Emma Stone: Gwen Stacy
Jamie Foxx: Max Dillon/Electro
Dane DeHann: Harry Osbourne/Green Goblin
Sally Field: Aunt May

After Spider-Man 3 was released to theaters, it was a financial success.  Big time.  Critically, though, it got hammered and rightfully so.  Too many villains, too many subplots, they cast the wrong person to be Venom, who didn’t get nearly enough screen time and went out like a punk, turning Peter Parker into an emo punk, and finally: Those dance numbers.  I don’t know what Sam Raimi was thinking, but those dance numbers really had no place in a Spider-Man movie.  Despite all that, it was a successful film, so it was to be expected that a fourth film would follow, and it was expected that Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire would return for the next film.  Nobody would expect that Sony would reboot the live-action film series, at all.  When The Amazing Spider-Man was announced, it took people by surprise and rightly so.  Less than a decade had passed since the first Sam Raimi film was released.  Who in their right mind would risk rebooting a film franchise that was barely ten years old?  Sure enough, with a new cast and director they started over from scratch.  The Amazing Spider-Man was another origin story.  Instead of Tobey Maguire, they cast British actor, Andrew Garfield in the role of Peter Parker, Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, Rhys Ifans as Dr. Curt Connors/The Lizard, Denis Leary as Captain Stacy, Martin Sheen and Sally Field as Uncle Ben and Aunt May.  Surprisingly, it was fairly well received and was very successful.  So, the logical thing was to start on a sequel.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 begins with a bang as we see Spider-Man/Peter Parker(Andrew Garfield) swinging through the streets of New York City, fighting crime as he does.  Incidentally, he rescues an absent-minded employee of Oscorp, Max Dillon(Jamie Foxx), who eventually becomes obsessed with Spider-Man.  One night at Oscorp, Dillon has an accident in which he ends up in a vat full of electric eels.  Instead of dying, he absorbs electrical energy and becomes Electro.  Meanwhile, an old friend of Parker’s, Harry Osborne(Dane DeHann)returns from some boarding school on the news that his father is dying due to a genetic disease, which Harry has inherited from his father.  That revelation leads Harry on a collision course with Spider-Man.

When Spider-Man 3 was released, it was derided for having too much in it, particularly in terms of villains and subplots.  The first two Sam Raimi films were successful because they had only one major villain and the movies revolved around those villains.  That was also why the first Amazing Spider-Man was successful.  One villain=more screen time for said villain.  So, story-wise, Amazing Spider-Man 2 has a little too much in it.  Again, too many subplots, and too many villains.  However, it’s done in a way that’s not entirely ludicrous, except maybe for Electro.  So…story-wise, Amazing Spider-Man 2 flounders a little bit.  Everything else, it seems to get right.  Let’s talk about the casting.  When Andrew Garfield was first cast as Peter Parker, I was really surprised that he gave the character a less-geeky approach and made him a little more self-confident.  It makes for a much stronger character in the long run and really amplifies the character when he puts on the mask.  Brilliant casting in that department.  Emma Stone is fantastic as Gwen Stacy.  She’s beautiful, intelligent and funny and is someone that Parker would love to spend the rest of his life with.  The chemistry between Garfield and Stone is outstanding and their relationship with each other is one of the best parts of the movie and really gives the movie an emotional impact.  Jamie Foxx does what he can as Max Dillon, who isn’t that much of a likable character.  He’s kinda creepy.  But when Dillon becomes Elector, Foxx brings his A-game and really lights up the screen….literally.  Dane DeHann is a revelation as Harry Osborne.  This is a character who’s driven to desperation because of his disease and DeHann goes from someone you wouldn’t mind hanging out with to someone you don’t want to cross at all.  He becomes totally ruthless in his pursuit of a cure, and DeHann really gives the character surprising depth and sympathy.  The performances in this film are fantastic.

As good as the action was in the first movie, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 really turns up the heat.  The scenes where Spider-Man is swinging through the city are exhilarating.  You get a real sense of vertigo and speed when he’s zipping around NYC.  Some of the fight scenes are spectacular, especially when Electro goes berserk.  His fight with Spider-Man is one of the most spectacular I’ve seen in a Spider-Man movie.  It’s a total ride.  The music is done by Hans Zimmer and The Magnificent Six which was a band he had formed.  It gives the film a real epic scale.

Now, when I said that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 had too many villains, I’m referring to The Green Goblin and Rhino who is played by Paul Giamatti in a very limited but spectacular role that seems to set up the next film.  This movie wasn’t just a journey for Peter Parker, but Harry Osborne as well and his transformation into the Goblin.  Too many, but they’re independent of each other, so it isn’t THAT much of a problem.  DeHann actually does a great job as the Green Goblin, but again, it’s a set-up for what’s to come.  There is an issue with which both fans of the comics and the movies have a problem, and that’s with what happens with Gwen Stacy.  I won’t spoil it here, but I will say that, because of the relationship between Parker and Stacy and the performances of the respecting actors, that it really lands an emotional sucker punch.

Overall, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a visually spectacular film that really feels like a comic-book and that’s a good thing.  The performances, especially by Garfield and Stone, really help sell the characters as people who have real problems, and the rest of the cast are fantastic as well.  Yeah, the film could have used a few less villains, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as Spider-Man 3.  So, I’m looking forward to the next film.  Unfortunately we won’t see The Amazing Spider-Man 3 until 2018.  Which is too bad.  These last two movies were awesome, exciting and spectacular.  I’m giving this film a solid 9/10.

Agree or Disagree?  Comment below and no web-slinging.