Category: Previews

When I preview a movie, I generally show a trailer or something to start the post with.  Not this time.  I decided to show you a clip from the movie, Jaws.  This little scene is Quint’s personal story of his time aboard the USS Indianapolis.  It’s a very haunting speech, and while not 100 percent accurate, really details the despair and the fear that Quint felt during that time.  What a lot of people who aren’t familiar with certain particulars of World War II realize is that the sinking of the USS Indianapolis actually happened.  The ship was on a top-secret mission to deliver parts of the atomic bomb to the island of Tinian.  On July 30th, 1945, the Indianapolis was struck on her starboard bow by two Japanese torpedoes.  There were 1,197 men aboard that ship.  300 went down when the ship sank.  A week later, only 317 men came out alive.  The rest were taken by exposure, sharks, and starvation among other things.  It’s a very grim story.  This was one of the US Navy’s worst disasters on record.  I was very surprised to hear that they were going to make a movie about the Indianapolis.  Even more intriguing is that they cast Nicolas Cage as Captain Charles B. McVay III.  Indianapolis: Men of Courage is directed by Mario Van Peebles and is scheduled to be released on Memorial Day, May 30, 2016.

My opinion?  I’m really curious to see how this turns out.  The story of the USS Indianapolis is an extraordinary tale of survival, so anybody who is familiar with it is probably going to know how the film ends, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  This may actually shed some light on one of the worst disasters in Naval history.  I’m just hoping that Nicolas Cage will put away his crazy and actually bring a down-to-earth performance as McVay.  I know he’s capable of it.  Cage has done some amazing work in the past.  The film also stars Thomas Jane, Tom Sizemore, and Cody Walker in his feature film debut.  The rating of the film is unknown at this point, but I would honestly hope they go with an R-rating, so they can adequately convey the seriousness of the situation.  Overall, I think it looks good and I’m very interested in seeing this.

After Revenge of the Sith, I was not expecting to see another film set in the Star Wars universe at all.  At least, not as long as George Lucas held on to the franchise.  In 2012, Lucas sold his company along with Star Wars and Indiana Jones to Disney for 4 billion dollars.  The moment that happened, I KNEW we were going to get a new trilogy.  The first of that new trilogy, The Force Awakens is here and it is AWESOME!  Bring on Episodes VIII and IX.  Here’s the thing, though:  Disney announced that they were going to be doing a new Star Wars film each year for the foreseeable future.  I was initially concerned, but after Episode VII was released, I started changing my tune.  I’m surprisingly okay with it now.  The first spin-off film is due to hit theaters this December: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.  The story of the film is set between Episodes III and IV.  Basically it follows a rag-tag group of soldiers who are tasked by the Rebellion to discover the nature of the Empire’s latest weapon and find a way to destroy it.  While the idea of finding the plans to the Death Star was done in a video game called Dark Forces, that wasn’t the focus of the game.  Finding the plans to the Death Star seems to be the focus of this new film.  The teaser for Rogue One hit the interwebs this morning.

Wow.  And I mean, wow!  This looks amazing.  It looks like a gritty war movie, which you would hopefully expect from a movie call Star WARS.  The aesthetic of the film so far, is great.  It has the look and a design that seems to be straight out of the 1977 movie.  The storm-trooper designs look exactly like they were pulled from the Original Trilogy.  The Star Destroy looks more like a model than CG, which is a great accomplishment.  We also get a look at some character moments involving Mon Mothma, who made her first appearance in Return Of The Jedi.  We also get a good look at Forest Whittaker’s character, and we get to take a look at Donnie Yen’s character mixing it on up on the battlefield.  The action looks amazing, and we can see what’s going on because the camera-work looks great.  These are my initial impressions of the trailer, but I’m really liking what I’m seeing here.  The film is being directed by Gareth Edwards, the man who brought us the 2014 Godzilla, which was freakin’ awesome.  This is a great time to be a Star Wars fan.  I recently wrote a post on why I loved the franchise, but even so, I’m really excited for what Disney has planned.  If this spin-off is ANY indication, we may end up getting an awesome Boba Fett movie, and hopefully a great Han Solo movie.  There’s so much to the universe of Star Wars, I don’t know where to begin.  I really want this movie to be good, and I think it will be.

Apologies, I haven’t been doing this for a while, since I’ve been sick for the better part of two weeks.  Don’t do it.  It’s not fun.  No, I’m making this post because this week we have our first trailer for the new Ghostbusters film.  The new film stars Kristin Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones as the titular Ghostbusters.  Chris Hemsworth plays the receptionist.  The idea of a third live-action Ghostbusters has been floating around since the release of Ghostbusters II.  When the original film came out, it was a blockbuster sensation.  It was a phenomenal comedy that was infused with paranormal and supernatural elements making the film a one-of-a-kind experience.  It was written by Dan Aykroyd and the late Harold Ramis, and featured the exceptional talents of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Harold Ramis, Rick Morranis, and Sigourney Weaver.  With sharp and witty writing combined with state-of-the-art(at the time)special effects, the original Ghostbusters film was massive hit with fans world-wide.  It has since spawned one sequel, multiple video-game adaptions(only one of them was any good: The 2009 game), several cartoons and now, a full-on reboot.  It was announced about a year or so ago, that a new film was going to be made with female characters in the lead roles instead of men.  Okay, I can deal with that.  I like strong female characters, even in comedies.  Now, we have a new trailer for the new film and….holy shit, and not in a good way.

What really made the original film work, and to a lesser extent, its sequel, was the perfect balance between comedy, visual effects, story and writing.  The visual effects were a combination of miniatures and stop-motion animation.  It also had some genuinely scary things in it, like the demon dogs.  Those fuckers gave me nightmares when I was a kid, and even today they give me the creeps.  The ghosts and proton pack effects were absolutely amazing.  You also can’t forget Slimer.  The 1984 film was a perfect storm of a movie that holds up even today.  I consider the original Ghostbusters film to be one of my favorite films of ALL time, and many people would agree with that assessment.  So, what is it about the new film and its trailer that puts me off?  First off, the casting of the female actors feels less like a natural progression and more like Paul Feig caving into the demands from several Social Justice Warrior groups.  That’s what it feels like to me.  The only female character that actually looks the least bit interesting is the blond girl, who suspiciously looks like the female version of Egon.  At least she has some personality.  Next, the neon-style CGI:  Oh. My. God.  The CG looks incredibly awful.  Lastly, the humor:  That image is basically me reacting to the whole trailer.  I’m not alone in this.  Basically, the whole damn Internet is basically saying that this trailer is garbage.  A good film trailer is supposed to get you excited for the movie that it’s previewing, and we’ve had MANY examples of that.  We’ve also had many examples of really bad trailers.  The first trailer for Ghostbusters 2016 falls squarely into the bad trailer category.  This is NOT how you get people excited for your reboot of a classic film.  That being said, if the film actually ends up being really good, I’ll eat my words, because we’re not really given a lot of information on what’s actually happening in the movie.  There is a possibility that the new film could be really good.  You shouldn’t really judge a movie by the trailer, but it does give you some kind of insight as to how the final product will be.  I’m crossing my fingers, and hoping that this trailer is just a bad fluke, and that the new movie is going to be at least passable.  This is just a really poor first impression, and I think it will damage the final film in some way.

I’m a HUGE fan of mythology.  I know some stuff about Greek, Norse and some Christian mythology.  I have to confess that I don’t know much about Egyptian mythology, but from what I have read, it’s pretty epic.  But I’m pretty sure it didn’t look anything like Alex Proyas’ Gods of Egypt.  Gerard Butler plays Set, the Egyptian god of Chaos: A very, very evil and naughty god.  Set is well….set in his ways to conquer the world and drown it in chaos, as gods of chaos like to do.  Standing in his way is Horus, played by Jamie Lannister…I mean, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and a mortal named Bek, played by Brenton Thwaites.  The problem is, is that Set has armies of gods, demons and other nefarious villains at his beck and call.  What does Horus have?  Bek.  I’ll be truthful, this movie looks wildly awful.  It looks like the Egyptian version of Clash of the Titans.  Visually, it looks wild and fun.  I have no illusions that this movie is not going to be good.  I will give it the benefit of the doubt, however, as it is being directed by Alex Proyas.  Alex Proyas gave us The Crow, which was one of the best comic book movies ever made, as well as the sci-fi noir film, Dark City.  He also gave us I, Robot and Knowing.  He might pull a rabbit out of his hat with this one.  As someone who thoroughly enjoyed the 300 and Clash of the Titans films, this is one I will be looking at.  You can tell right from the get-go that this is clearly a visual effects film.  The amount of CGI on display is extraordinary.  Some of it looks pretty good, but some of it looks really, really bad.  This isn’t the first time that Gerard Butler has played a legendary character.  He played Leonidas in 300, so this really isn’t that much of a stretch for him.  I just never figured on Set having a Scottish accent.  Bizarre, no?  Brenton Thwaites is starting to make a name for himself with Maleficent, The Giver, and Oculus under his belt.  He will also be starring in the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.  Geoffrey Rush will be playing the sun god, Ra.  Two actresses from the amazing Mad Max: Fury Road are also making an appearance: Courtney Eaton and Abby Lee.  Bryan Brown, Rufus Sewell and Bruce Spence are also showing up.  The movie has quite the cast, I just hope that Alex Proyas knows what he’s doing.