We're sell outs and will do anything to be in Hollywood. Anything. So long as it's not illegal.
Welcome to this year's Clarabelle awards.
Nominees are based on the movies that only Kal Kat saw, and sometimes Marx Cards also saw.
Categories are simple and broad, with titles like best comedy, best fantasy, best drama and best science fiction and best thriller, or best action film.
Films in categories at top are just listed, not best or worst.
Fantasy/Science Fiction
The Martian
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Ant Man
Avengers 2: Age of Ultron
The Hunger Games Mockingjay 1 and 2
The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
Ex Machina
Tomorrowland
Terminator Genesys
Jurassic World
Jupiter Ascending
Fantastic 4
Pixels
In this category we have four films, as the two Marvel films nominated were merely good but not excellent.
Comedy/Action
Spy
Trainwreck
Ted 2
Vacation 2015
In this category we have only four to pick from with two of them being bad.
Thriller/Horror
Poltergeist 2015
The Gift
Krampus
The Visit
Victor Frankenstein
American Ultra
Spectre
Mission Impossible Rogue Nation
Furious 7
Although we have not seen Krampus, it could make the list, and the others were just okay, and some were stupid.
Animation/Cartoon/Fantasy
Inside Out
The Good Dinosaur
Home
Two animated Pixar movies are up for best picture! Oh dear.
Friday, December 25, 2015
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Review: "Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens" is Passionate nod to the Classic Series (spoilers)
Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens PG 13
(Major Spoilers). JJ Abrams directs the seventh installment in the Star Wars franchise and takes to the desert planet Jakku running as a rebel character meets with an old man and is given a secret map to the location of a missing Luke Skywalker.
The First Order descends on the base and destroys the village looking for the map, but the rolling 'mech' droid BB8 has already disappeared with it into the night. Then a black clad figure with shiny goggles and a hood tries to get the information out of the Resistance pilot. Unable to do this, he takes him back to the black menacing star destroyer class ship in orbit.
Back on the ship, one of the storm troopers, now trained and not cloned, has a crisis of conscience and decides to free the pilot who had been captured from the evil Kylo Ren's torture center. Kylo is the apprentice of a previous dark lord called Snoke, who is immediately shown via a hologram.
The storm trooper and the rebel escape in a stolen tie fighter, which is painted all black, but it is shot down over Jakku. The trooper has chosen a name, Fin, based on his number, FN2187, which the rebel had quickly chosen for him. Fin could be, but likely isn't, the son or relative of Lando from the series.
Inter playing through this is the story of Rey, a young female force sensitive scavenger who trades in a junk yard that is literally a city on the planet. She crosses paths with Fin in a village shopping area when the storm troopers return looking for the droid, which she has since befriended, as luck would have it. Fin and Rey have instant chemistry and banter back and forth. It is evident right off the Rey is force sensitive and can do things because she has a gift from that, like Anakin in the prequels.
Then having shown the whole card, spoilers abounding, Snoke reveals that Kylo Ren is in fact the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa, really sooner than he should have, but it's done. Then Kylo reveals he has kept Grandpa Vader's melted helmet and skull in his cabin! That's not even some Daddy issues, but some Hamlet going on there, and some Greek tragedy too, as there is some Prometheus and Icarus falls from grace going on. (Spilers).
Kylo is also a hothead and spends the movie getting physically mad at his inaffective troops, made that way because he's a rather conflicted evil leader. This descendant of Anakin is far more realized and interesting than the original, and it makes sense. It seems there's a little Kevin Smith Star War lecture in here. (He's credited with some of this jazz in the credits, which later I was not surprised to see, as it sounded like he and JJ had a chat).
Back on Jakku, Fin and Rey try to fleet the storm troopers and tie fighters coming after them by stealing about a trashed Corellian freighter. Yes, that freighter! The Millennium Falcon is back up and running and flies off, avoiding the enemy by chasing through a downed super star destroyer. (It is a beautifully fully realized set that I had seen online before the film was done buck could not discuss till now)!
The Falcon is later captured in deep space by a larger cargo ship held up by two gangs of pirates, and then suddenly the pirate leader appears! He's Han Solo! Chewbacca is also there! Old Han takes back the ship after some banter, but they have to fight off the pirates that are after his sorry hide first. Fortunately, there are some Rathrats (Chulutlu, or whatnot, a nice touch and a nod to scifi monsters, even if cheesy), on the ship and they accidentally let them out to fight the other gangs. They escape at light speed which destroys the bigger ship.
Then later the evil First Order plots to destroy all resistance from the New Rebulic and their new planets, not including Coruscant, by arming their glorious new Star Killer base planet ship. (Luke Starkiller was the original name of Luke). Also it's nice to know JJ has read my books and included a Tahdemis class Diadem in his movie, although he got how it worked wrong).
The Falcon then journeys to a green planet to find an alien bar where a little orange force sensitive alien tries to give Rey the light saber from Cloud City that Luke dropped 35 years earlier, (and lost a hand), but the planet is shortly under attack by the First Order and decimated. The Resistance rescues them and leading them is General Organa!
Han has little choice then but to find his ex-wife, Leia, and return to the Resistance, which formerly had worked for the New Republic, but recently broke off during the nod to the video games. (JJ didn't make the books canon but did the video games). They still need the map. C3PO and a dormant Artoo are there.
The showdowns in the movie include Han and Kylo, Finn and Kylo and thrn Rey and Kylo, while the planet ship thing is being attacked. The editing there is a bit weird, but it works, even if there';s no way they got inside and outside so quickly.
The movie hits all the right notes and pays homage without literally being a retread. Sure there is really no foreshadowing about Han and Kylo, but the rest is solid, and it has a lot of practical effect, emotion and character development. JJ seems more suited to Star Wars than he was Star Trek. Adam Driver plays a good villain. Daisy Ridley is solid as a sort of Luke relative, archetype. (She is likely Kylo's cousin and Luke's daughter, but it is not said).
Harrison Ford got his wish from long ago when he wanted his character to die. Also his son makes sense as you figure he and Leia can't raise a normal kid. He's going to be messed up.
Review by Adam Browne
(Major Spoilers). JJ Abrams directs the seventh installment in the Star Wars franchise and takes to the desert planet Jakku running as a rebel character meets with an old man and is given a secret map to the location of a missing Luke Skywalker.
The First Order descends on the base and destroys the village looking for the map, but the rolling 'mech' droid BB8 has already disappeared with it into the night. Then a black clad figure with shiny goggles and a hood tries to get the information out of the Resistance pilot. Unable to do this, he takes him back to the black menacing star destroyer class ship in orbit.
Back on the ship, one of the storm troopers, now trained and not cloned, has a crisis of conscience and decides to free the pilot who had been captured from the evil Kylo Ren's torture center. Kylo is the apprentice of a previous dark lord called Snoke, who is immediately shown via a hologram.
The storm trooper and the rebel escape in a stolen tie fighter, which is painted all black, but it is shot down over Jakku. The trooper has chosen a name, Fin, based on his number, FN2187, which the rebel had quickly chosen for him. Fin could be, but likely isn't, the son or relative of Lando from the series.
Inter playing through this is the story of Rey, a young female force sensitive scavenger who trades in a junk yard that is literally a city on the planet. She crosses paths with Fin in a village shopping area when the storm troopers return looking for the droid, which she has since befriended, as luck would have it. Fin and Rey have instant chemistry and banter back and forth. It is evident right off the Rey is force sensitive and can do things because she has a gift from that, like Anakin in the prequels.
Then having shown the whole card, spoilers abounding, Snoke reveals that Kylo Ren is in fact the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa, really sooner than he should have, but it's done. Then Kylo reveals he has kept Grandpa Vader's melted helmet and skull in his cabin! That's not even some Daddy issues, but some Hamlet going on there, and some Greek tragedy too, as there is some Prometheus and Icarus falls from grace going on. (Spilers).
Kylo is also a hothead and spends the movie getting physically mad at his inaffective troops, made that way because he's a rather conflicted evil leader. This descendant of Anakin is far more realized and interesting than the original, and it makes sense. It seems there's a little Kevin Smith Star War lecture in here. (He's credited with some of this jazz in the credits, which later I was not surprised to see, as it sounded like he and JJ had a chat).
Back on Jakku, Fin and Rey try to fleet the storm troopers and tie fighters coming after them by stealing about a trashed Corellian freighter. Yes, that freighter! The Millennium Falcon is back up and running and flies off, avoiding the enemy by chasing through a downed super star destroyer. (It is a beautifully fully realized set that I had seen online before the film was done buck could not discuss till now)!
The Falcon is later captured in deep space by a larger cargo ship held up by two gangs of pirates, and then suddenly the pirate leader appears! He's Han Solo! Chewbacca is also there! Old Han takes back the ship after some banter, but they have to fight off the pirates that are after his sorry hide first. Fortunately, there are some Rathrats (Chulutlu, or whatnot, a nice touch and a nod to scifi monsters, even if cheesy), on the ship and they accidentally let them out to fight the other gangs. They escape at light speed which destroys the bigger ship.
Then later the evil First Order plots to destroy all resistance from the New Rebulic and their new planets, not including Coruscant, by arming their glorious new Star Killer base planet ship. (Luke Starkiller was the original name of Luke). Also it's nice to know JJ has read my books and included a Tahdemis class Diadem in his movie, although he got how it worked wrong).
The Falcon then journeys to a green planet to find an alien bar where a little orange force sensitive alien tries to give Rey the light saber from Cloud City that Luke dropped 35 years earlier, (and lost a hand), but the planet is shortly under attack by the First Order and decimated. The Resistance rescues them and leading them is General Organa!
Han has little choice then but to find his ex-wife, Leia, and return to the Resistance, which formerly had worked for the New Republic, but recently broke off during the nod to the video games. (JJ didn't make the books canon but did the video games). They still need the map. C3PO and a dormant Artoo are there.
The showdowns in the movie include Han and Kylo, Finn and Kylo and thrn Rey and Kylo, while the planet ship thing is being attacked. The editing there is a bit weird, but it works, even if there';s no way they got inside and outside so quickly.
The movie hits all the right notes and pays homage without literally being a retread. Sure there is really no foreshadowing about Han and Kylo, but the rest is solid, and it has a lot of practical effect, emotion and character development. JJ seems more suited to Star Wars than he was Star Trek. Adam Driver plays a good villain. Daisy Ridley is solid as a sort of Luke relative, archetype. (She is likely Kylo's cousin and Luke's daughter, but it is not said).
Harrison Ford got his wish from long ago when he wanted his character to die. Also his son makes sense as you figure he and Leia can't raise a normal kid. He's going to be messed up.
Review by Adam Browne
Saturday, December 19, 2015
Review: "The Peanuts Movie" Is Cute Nod to the Comics
The Peanuts Movie is cute. It hits all the right notes. The child actors used to make the film are on point and about two thirds of the story are excellent. The middle joining part though with the Red Baron is just too long, and the jump to springtime is not necessary. Despite this, the film is about the classic trope of Charlie Brown and meeting the Redheaded Girl. The computer generated figures take some getting used to, but what's there is good and the story is solid.It is a good children's movie that at times makes you long for the comic strips or the holiday specials.
Review by Adam Browne
Review by Adam Browne
Review: "The Interview" is terrible riff of Team America and of Fox News
"The Interview" R
Seth Rogan should not be allowed to be leading man. He over acts. He doesn't know when his third acts lose it and become dark for some reason. This happen in Observe and Report and Pineapple Express, and even somewhat in Zack and Miri and Superbad.
This movie is a riff of the South Park film, Team America, a puppet riff on Fox News and on CNN at the time post Sept. 11. In the new film, Seth and his co star play a news station mogul, and his game show one liner spouting main host.
They are parodies of Donald Trump, Bill O'Reilly, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. This could have worked had it been actually funny. It isn't.
Skylark is a moronic character who has somehow become America's number one entertainment host, but when he is offered the chance to interview Kim Jung Un, the recent son and leader of North Korea, the poo hits the fan.
It seems that the FBI or the CIA want to get rid of the communist leader, so they plot his demise via the producer and his host, going there and somehow offing him. They are unfortunately bungling fools and could not carry out anything let alone an assassination.
What's truly odd though is this is supposed to be a comedy. It is no funny. The two funny scenes revolve around whether or not Kim is a deity who never poops, or if Eminem is gay.
Yeah, that's it. The rest of the movie is the two talk show fools hanging out with Kim in his palace and trying to avoid being pulled into some obvious lies from the communist state.
This film was actually never released due to a Sony hacking by what later turned out to be an ex employee in cohorts with the Koreans, and not the actual angered Koreans. He was just mad he got fired and shut down the movie.
Actually the movie is not worth even seeing, not even of a Riff show.
It is not so much offensive as just plain angry and dumb, and the jokes fall flat in favor of scat humor or of people making fake Asian voices, and going on about how evil it is somewhere.
Their motivations are also insane. Nobody would ask the two fools to do such a thing, and they would have been killed instantly. Yawn.
Review by Anonymous
Seth Rogan should not be allowed to be leading man. He over acts. He doesn't know when his third acts lose it and become dark for some reason. This happen in Observe and Report and Pineapple Express, and even somewhat in Zack and Miri and Superbad.
This movie is a riff of the South Park film, Team America, a puppet riff on Fox News and on CNN at the time post Sept. 11. In the new film, Seth and his co star play a news station mogul, and his game show one liner spouting main host.
They are parodies of Donald Trump, Bill O'Reilly, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. This could have worked had it been actually funny. It isn't.
Skylark is a moronic character who has somehow become America's number one entertainment host, but when he is offered the chance to interview Kim Jung Un, the recent son and leader of North Korea, the poo hits the fan.
It seems that the FBI or the CIA want to get rid of the communist leader, so they plot his demise via the producer and his host, going there and somehow offing him. They are unfortunately bungling fools and could not carry out anything let alone an assassination.
What's truly odd though is this is supposed to be a comedy. It is no funny. The two funny scenes revolve around whether or not Kim is a deity who never poops, or if Eminem is gay.
Yeah, that's it. The rest of the movie is the two talk show fools hanging out with Kim in his palace and trying to avoid being pulled into some obvious lies from the communist state.
This film was actually never released due to a Sony hacking by what later turned out to be an ex employee in cohorts with the Koreans, and not the actual angered Koreans. He was just mad he got fired and shut down the movie.
Actually the movie is not worth even seeing, not even of a Riff show.
It is not so much offensive as just plain angry and dumb, and the jokes fall flat in favor of scat humor or of people making fake Asian voices, and going on about how evil it is somewhere.
Their motivations are also insane. Nobody would ask the two fools to do such a thing, and they would have been killed instantly. Yawn.
Review by Anonymous
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Review: "Spectre" tries for remake of mystery cabal in Bond saga
"Spectre" PG 13
Sam Mendez returns to direct another Daniel Craig Bond film, about 3 years after the last broke the barrier and did some unique things with the character of 007. This time, double crossing bad guys in courtrooms, which was a theme last time in spy films, is replaced by this year's evil masterminds want computer stuff angle. The evil and mysterious Spectre has been a staple since the first Bond films in the 1960s, so this will be a return to form, a remake of sorts. Craig almost channels Connery, and is closer to him than Brosnan was. At times it is more like an old fashioned 1960s Bond film than the others were, which is nice.
The flick opens in Mexico during the day of the dead, which is like Spanish Halloween, and there is Flemming's super spy in a death's head outfit. How appropriate. Then he has to do the whole flying over crumbling building thing, because they did that in the Hobbit movies. Yep, it's called a Ligolas! Then it is off to London where he gets the riot at from the new M, who is a dude this time. He wants to close down MI6 in favor of imitating scenes from Rogue Nation, M15, no actually it's just MI5, but that plot it straight out of that movie also!
Thus 007 must go underground and be off the grid to find the evil mastermind of Spectre, who is held up in a building having a darkly lit board meeting, sort of similar to that Joker scene in Dark Knight, but with a henchman blinding someone instead of the Joker.
The sneaky evil bad guy is chewing scenery because he is evidently some relation of Bond, and wants to torment him into going to his distant and mysterious location. They actually use Google Earth, in England, to find the base because it's not there. That revelation would give too much away.
Anyway, as not to give away too much, Bond must stop the evil Spectre and get the girl all before restoring peace with MI6.
Curiously even though the credits showed a lot of CGI sexy outlines, there are almost no love scenes in this movie! Bond us supposed to be into that, but no, just some making out happens. The 60s version was racier. It could be Daniel Craig at over 40 isn't into being cast in racy roles anymore.
Review by Adam Browne
Sam Mendez returns to direct another Daniel Craig Bond film, about 3 years after the last broke the barrier and did some unique things with the character of 007. This time, double crossing bad guys in courtrooms, which was a theme last time in spy films, is replaced by this year's evil masterminds want computer stuff angle. The evil and mysterious Spectre has been a staple since the first Bond films in the 1960s, so this will be a return to form, a remake of sorts. Craig almost channels Connery, and is closer to him than Brosnan was. At times it is more like an old fashioned 1960s Bond film than the others were, which is nice.
The flick opens in Mexico during the day of the dead, which is like Spanish Halloween, and there is Flemming's super spy in a death's head outfit. How appropriate. Then he has to do the whole flying over crumbling building thing, because they did that in the Hobbit movies. Yep, it's called a Ligolas! Then it is off to London where he gets the riot at from the new M, who is a dude this time. He wants to close down MI6 in favor of imitating scenes from Rogue Nation, M15, no actually it's just MI5, but that plot it straight out of that movie also!
Thus 007 must go underground and be off the grid to find the evil mastermind of Spectre, who is held up in a building having a darkly lit board meeting, sort of similar to that Joker scene in Dark Knight, but with a henchman blinding someone instead of the Joker.
The sneaky evil bad guy is chewing scenery because he is evidently some relation of Bond, and wants to torment him into going to his distant and mysterious location. They actually use Google Earth, in England, to find the base because it's not there. That revelation would give too much away.
Anyway, as not to give away too much, Bond must stop the evil Spectre and get the girl all before restoring peace with MI6.
Curiously even though the credits showed a lot of CGI sexy outlines, there are almost no love scenes in this movie! Bond us supposed to be into that, but no, just some making out happens. The 60s version was racier. It could be Daniel Craig at over 40 isn't into being cast in racy roles anymore.
Review by Adam Browne
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Review: "American Ultra" spoofs slackers and spy capers
"American Ultra" R
This year there have been several parody spoofs of secret agent films, and last year had one or two also. American Ultra though it a weird hybrid with Kirsten Stewart and Jessie Eisenberg as two luckless small town stoners who accidentally activate the sleeper agent of doom.
The story seems like something Kevin Smith would do, a stoner comedy, but also a sarcastic spy caper, but it's not Smith.
The title seems like the brand of cigarettes from the 1980s although the smoke in this is either pot or fireworks. The slacker dude starts off trying to get his girlfriend and engagement trip to Hwaii, but he has a panic attack and doesn't go. Later on when he is working as a clerk in a store, a strange blonde woman comes in, playing a Bond agent or something, and activates him.
He is this store clerk ala Clerks, some toughs come to his store and try to mess with his car, he kills them and then panics and calls his girlfriend to come rescue him. The police then lock him in their jail, but more agents arrive to dispatch the police, and then the secret angets storm into town to stop their rogue asset, the dude.
A little of Pineapple Express is tossed in here, but unlike in that movie, the uneven drama that makes up their second half is present through this whole one, and the tone never turns completely comedic. It stays ironic and brooding.
The girlfriend may not be what she seems, but Stewart is really not up to the acting challenge of playing a convincing plant from another agency, so it is hard to tell what say another actress would have done in the role.
Eisenberg has been playing manic characters for years, so it's natural for him to play another. He seems more used to playing that then playing a super butt kicking action hero.
The story seems to be a spoof on the spy thriller, the X files, and a little of the film Slackers, and any number of Smith's work.
It's not a bad movie and is worth a rental.
Review by Adam Browne
This year there have been several parody spoofs of secret agent films, and last year had one or two also. American Ultra though it a weird hybrid with Kirsten Stewart and Jessie Eisenberg as two luckless small town stoners who accidentally activate the sleeper agent of doom.
The story seems like something Kevin Smith would do, a stoner comedy, but also a sarcastic spy caper, but it's not Smith.
The title seems like the brand of cigarettes from the 1980s although the smoke in this is either pot or fireworks. The slacker dude starts off trying to get his girlfriend and engagement trip to Hwaii, but he has a panic attack and doesn't go. Later on when he is working as a clerk in a store, a strange blonde woman comes in, playing a Bond agent or something, and activates him.
He is this store clerk ala Clerks, some toughs come to his store and try to mess with his car, he kills them and then panics and calls his girlfriend to come rescue him. The police then lock him in their jail, but more agents arrive to dispatch the police, and then the secret angets storm into town to stop their rogue asset, the dude.
A little of Pineapple Express is tossed in here, but unlike in that movie, the uneven drama that makes up their second half is present through this whole one, and the tone never turns completely comedic. It stays ironic and brooding.
The girlfriend may not be what she seems, but Stewart is really not up to the acting challenge of playing a convincing plant from another agency, so it is hard to tell what say another actress would have done in the role.
Eisenberg has been playing manic characters for years, so it's natural for him to play another. He seems more used to playing that then playing a super butt kicking action hero.
The story seems to be a spoof on the spy thriller, the X files, and a little of the film Slackers, and any number of Smith's work.
It's not a bad movie and is worth a rental.
Review by Adam Browne
Friday, August 14, 2015
"Vacation" films have been crossing a road for years
The latest version of "Vacation" quite literally breaks the fourth wall. The new lead, a guy who looks only a little like Chevy Chase from the original, plays Rusty, and is one of a handful of other Rusty's that have played the part. Now he is the Dad, with a smoking hot wife, and his two dippy sons. They decide to go on a road trip to Wally World as the Dad had done as a child 30 years earlier.
I am too bored of this concept to address who the actors really are, and yet, Applegate and Helmsworth are in it, but don't get too much to do.
The original classic John Hughes and Harold Ramis one is so surreal and awesome that they've tried to recapture the magic over and over. In 1983 it was one of many road trip movies, but it made fun of them, mocking the American family story and the summer movie. I was at the time too young to see a R rated film, so it was even more amusing seeing it because I wasn't supposed to be in the theater. (I was about 12). Also John Hughes was the man back then, making all sorts of movies.
Then Hughes and Heckerling decided to talked European vacations in European Vacation, where the Griswalds go to Paris and are out of place. It's a fish out of water but in another country. It had moments of funny, including a Parisian dining scene and a clothing accident, and also a billboard accident.
The 1989 sequel, Christmas Vacation, did for the Holidays what the other did for the summer road trip. Suppose the family was snowed in for Christmas! Yes, and it was great too, although at times not as much fun as the previous one. It was one of the better holiday movies of the period.
Then the Grizwalds were off to Las Vegas in Vegas Vacation, 1997, the least inspired sequel. It actually made vacation in Vegas seem boring. The family getting new cars at the end defeats the purpose of them being losers.
The later one with the red necks having Christmas doesn't count.
Then at last came the recent remake sequel, Vacation 2015, which was like a live action Married with Children. This makes sense if you see it. The critics though were harsh to it. Although it has the staple gross out jokes and suggestive humor, it's not awful, and it's fun to see the cameos. Some of the little jokes are surprising. Sure ther mean stuff falls flat, but there is enough in it going on for later rental or streaming.
I am too bored of this concept to address who the actors really are, and yet, Applegate and Helmsworth are in it, but don't get too much to do.
The original classic John Hughes and Harold Ramis one is so surreal and awesome that they've tried to recapture the magic over and over. In 1983 it was one of many road trip movies, but it made fun of them, mocking the American family story and the summer movie. I was at the time too young to see a R rated film, so it was even more amusing seeing it because I wasn't supposed to be in the theater. (I was about 12). Also John Hughes was the man back then, making all sorts of movies.
Then Hughes and Heckerling decided to talked European vacations in European Vacation, where the Griswalds go to Paris and are out of place. It's a fish out of water but in another country. It had moments of funny, including a Parisian dining scene and a clothing accident, and also a billboard accident.
The 1989 sequel, Christmas Vacation, did for the Holidays what the other did for the summer road trip. Suppose the family was snowed in for Christmas! Yes, and it was great too, although at times not as much fun as the previous one. It was one of the better holiday movies of the period.
Then the Grizwalds were off to Las Vegas in Vegas Vacation, 1997, the least inspired sequel. It actually made vacation in Vegas seem boring. The family getting new cars at the end defeats the purpose of them being losers.
The later one with the red necks having Christmas doesn't count.
Then at last came the recent remake sequel, Vacation 2015, which was like a live action Married with Children. This makes sense if you see it. The critics though were harsh to it. Although it has the staple gross out jokes and suggestive humor, it's not awful, and it's fun to see the cameos. Some of the little jokes are surprising. Sure ther mean stuff falls flat, but there is enough in it going on for later rental or streaming.
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
The Terminator films are incresingly confusing till doomsday
The Terminator and the sequels are confusing due to time travel, causality, and the probable never occurring in another universe.
Let us start with the first one, "The Terminator" 1984. Aside from it ripping off Harlin Ellison, the film is about a super cyborg from a future war in 2029, sent back in time to 1984 to kill John Conner's parents before they mate, stopping him from being the resistance. In the future, the big bad scary is a computer machine AI essentially called Skynet that has caused World War III using nukes, as in the 1980s, the cold war made America worried about that. The film was a product of the time. It was also no coincidence they cast a young Arnie as the mysterious robot. Eventually, Kyle Reese has been sent back to 1984 to stop the Terminator and mate with Sarah Conner, so that the future will happen.
Let's call this timeline A because clearly once the robot is destroyed in the first film, the judgment day never occurs, and there is no possible sequel. The people in 1984 do not have the tech to create the cyborgs. Kyle has died though and Sarah has already become pregnant apparently.
Then we come to "Terminator 2" 1991. Due to the fall of the wall, and the end of the cold war, they were not able to use that plot in the sequel, instead implying that SkyNet would come online and destroy the world in 1997. Then in 2026, John Conner sends a new Terminator back to stop the T 1000, a liquid metal transformer. Then in 1997, the new Terminator befriends Sarah Conner's son, young John, who should actually only be 13. He acts like he's much older, perhaps 16. The Terminator defeats the newer one, despite some obvious wrinkles in the story, and it being kind of a reboot. Computers were newly becoming more connected so it's implied in the 1991 film that the sky net is the Internet. They also stop the creator of Sky Net, who is a totally different guy than in the other films. It was the better movie. The first movie was okay, but the second was more action packed and kinetic. It also was less like Ellison and more like a roadie movie with a robot and a series of stunts. (I know it was Cameron). They also called it Cyberdyne.
Let's call this timeline B. How the liquid Terminator got created at all is never explained. If the timeline ended, then there would be no reason to create him. Also how? They never explain this, or how the time machine is so accurate being nearly wrecked.
Then came "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" 2003. The film was nearly 8 years following the others, so the timeline was moved up. John Conner and his wife are to be killed by the female T X, a new machine sent back into time to the then present. The judgment day has been moved to 2011, due to it being later literally, not plot wise. The young man Conner must stop the machines before they can start the war, but in this one it happens anyway, about in 2004.
Timeline C is a mess as there doesn't seem to be much point in the future machines trying to bag John Conner if they could just as easily continue in any timeline, for any reason. All they need to do is move up the date. It begs the question, why would they even bother? They are also god like and can tell other timelines, or something, so what does that make them? Also why make a dominatrix terminator? Yeah sure, eye candy, but that's dumb. Really. At least it was trying not to reboot the other ones though. It was more like
And then came the most confusing one, "Terminator Salvation" 2009, thus far. The war has started and it is the early 2020s, and the machines have won. Most of the film is spent preventing the future Cyberdyne from making the AI that they already had, to build the Terminators, to go back into time, for some reason. The story also has a ridiculous love angle where the hero lady immediately dumps the love of her life, when he is killed, for the cute rebel hard body guy, like immediately. Uhg. The studio didn't learn their lesson from McG's other films. Don't let this guy direct.
"The Sarah Conner Chronicles" with young John Conner and the Summer Terminator are considered yet another parallel timeline! We'll call it timeline D. It seems canon with T2 but not the others. In there, judgment day is in 2011.
At last thus far, we come to "Terminator Genesys", a form reboot of the T1 and T2 films where it essentially is the time of the original timeline, and we'll pretend those last two movies never happened! In the film, in 2029, Conner sends Kyle Reese back to 1984 to find Sarah, and hopefully to mate with her, so he can be born. Also there is this pesky Terminator waiting there for them. In the altered timeline though, a newer Terminator has appeared at the time machine and injected Conner's face before he transforms or something.Then it is 1984 and the timeline has been radically changed, so that a much older Terminator, the one from 1991, has gone back to 1984 to befriend Sarah and protect her from the liquid Terminator, who is now Asian looking. (He was originally white looking). But it's not 1997, it's 1984, and they use the machine the old Terminator has built, calling himself Pops, to take the two to 2017, but he will wait around and make plans.
In 2017, a few years from our time, the Genesys Internet skype game thing will activate and destroy the world using AI. Okay, this is the fifth time that a movie has done this plot this last 5 years! Really guys. Come on. Is this the new judgment day?
If they mate in the future, because they seem trapped there, John will never be born, because in the messed up future, John has been turned into an evil nanobot infected robot Terminator thing. Aslo, Pops gets an upgrade in the liquid metal pool they happen to have at Genesys just lying around. Yes,and they have a time machine too, but that has to be stopped too. Now if John is born he will only be 11.
This is the E timeline. It makes no sense at all. If the Old T800 went back, there is no judgment day. They can go back. They can prevent even that from happening. The time machine at the complex wasn't ready, but they could have rebuilt it before they decided to destroy it, again, and again. The blast would likely cause an incident rippling through time. San Francisco is featured in it but it doesn't look right. Sarah doesn't act like that yet. It's like 1997 is fused with 1984. Why doesn't Cyberdyne just go back to before all of them are born and kill them? Why should it need to? Cyberdyne can go into other timelines where it happened that it won. Having the infected John try to explain it away as he cheated is just sloppy. And there is no way old Arnie's robot survived all that!
So the timeline is a mess and ther is likely no way to consolidate it to make sense.
They could have just said it is an alternate future and it still is 1997, or have not done that at all.
The sequels are baffling and the dialog is improbable, next to flaky, and the new ones just make light of the first two. The latest one makes it seem like the first were brilliant, when they really were just very good compared to them. Genesys is not the dumbest one. That was probably the Salvation one.
I have seen all of them. I just chose not to review only Genesys.
We do not have cybernetic warrior robots in 2015, so it is not likely we will have them in only 2 years.
Let us start with the first one, "The Terminator" 1984. Aside from it ripping off Harlin Ellison, the film is about a super cyborg from a future war in 2029, sent back in time to 1984 to kill John Conner's parents before they mate, stopping him from being the resistance. In the future, the big bad scary is a computer machine AI essentially called Skynet that has caused World War III using nukes, as in the 1980s, the cold war made America worried about that. The film was a product of the time. It was also no coincidence they cast a young Arnie as the mysterious robot. Eventually, Kyle Reese has been sent back to 1984 to stop the Terminator and mate with Sarah Conner, so that the future will happen.
Let's call this timeline A because clearly once the robot is destroyed in the first film, the judgment day never occurs, and there is no possible sequel. The people in 1984 do not have the tech to create the cyborgs. Kyle has died though and Sarah has already become pregnant apparently.
Then we come to "Terminator 2" 1991. Due to the fall of the wall, and the end of the cold war, they were not able to use that plot in the sequel, instead implying that SkyNet would come online and destroy the world in 1997. Then in 2026, John Conner sends a new Terminator back to stop the T 1000, a liquid metal transformer. Then in 1997, the new Terminator befriends Sarah Conner's son, young John, who should actually only be 13. He acts like he's much older, perhaps 16. The Terminator defeats the newer one, despite some obvious wrinkles in the story, and it being kind of a reboot. Computers were newly becoming more connected so it's implied in the 1991 film that the sky net is the Internet. They also stop the creator of Sky Net, who is a totally different guy than in the other films. It was the better movie. The first movie was okay, but the second was more action packed and kinetic. It also was less like Ellison and more like a roadie movie with a robot and a series of stunts. (I know it was Cameron). They also called it Cyberdyne.
Let's call this timeline B. How the liquid Terminator got created at all is never explained. If the timeline ended, then there would be no reason to create him. Also how? They never explain this, or how the time machine is so accurate being nearly wrecked.
Then came "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" 2003. The film was nearly 8 years following the others, so the timeline was moved up. John Conner and his wife are to be killed by the female T X, a new machine sent back into time to the then present. The judgment day has been moved to 2011, due to it being later literally, not plot wise. The young man Conner must stop the machines before they can start the war, but in this one it happens anyway, about in 2004.
Timeline C is a mess as there doesn't seem to be much point in the future machines trying to bag John Conner if they could just as easily continue in any timeline, for any reason. All they need to do is move up the date. It begs the question, why would they even bother? They are also god like and can tell other timelines, or something, so what does that make them? Also why make a dominatrix terminator? Yeah sure, eye candy, but that's dumb. Really. At least it was trying not to reboot the other ones though. It was more like
And then came the most confusing one, "Terminator Salvation" 2009, thus far. The war has started and it is the early 2020s, and the machines have won. Most of the film is spent preventing the future Cyberdyne from making the AI that they already had, to build the Terminators, to go back into time, for some reason. The story also has a ridiculous love angle where the hero lady immediately dumps the love of her life, when he is killed, for the cute rebel hard body guy, like immediately. Uhg. The studio didn't learn their lesson from McG's other films. Don't let this guy direct.
"The Sarah Conner Chronicles" with young John Conner and the Summer Terminator are considered yet another parallel timeline! We'll call it timeline D. It seems canon with T2 but not the others. In there, judgment day is in 2011.
At last thus far, we come to "Terminator Genesys", a form reboot of the T1 and T2 films where it essentially is the time of the original timeline, and we'll pretend those last two movies never happened! In the film, in 2029, Conner sends Kyle Reese back to 1984 to find Sarah, and hopefully to mate with her, so he can be born. Also there is this pesky Terminator waiting there for them. In the altered timeline though, a newer Terminator has appeared at the time machine and injected Conner's face before he transforms or something.Then it is 1984 and the timeline has been radically changed, so that a much older Terminator, the one from 1991, has gone back to 1984 to befriend Sarah and protect her from the liquid Terminator, who is now Asian looking. (He was originally white looking). But it's not 1997, it's 1984, and they use the machine the old Terminator has built, calling himself Pops, to take the two to 2017, but he will wait around and make plans.
In 2017, a few years from our time, the Genesys Internet skype game thing will activate and destroy the world using AI. Okay, this is the fifth time that a movie has done this plot this last 5 years! Really guys. Come on. Is this the new judgment day?
If they mate in the future, because they seem trapped there, John will never be born, because in the messed up future, John has been turned into an evil nanobot infected robot Terminator thing. Aslo, Pops gets an upgrade in the liquid metal pool they happen to have at Genesys just lying around. Yes,and they have a time machine too, but that has to be stopped too. Now if John is born he will only be 11.
This is the E timeline. It makes no sense at all. If the Old T800 went back, there is no judgment day. They can go back. They can prevent even that from happening. The time machine at the complex wasn't ready, but they could have rebuilt it before they decided to destroy it, again, and again. The blast would likely cause an incident rippling through time. San Francisco is featured in it but it doesn't look right. Sarah doesn't act like that yet. It's like 1997 is fused with 1984. Why doesn't Cyberdyne just go back to before all of them are born and kill them? Why should it need to? Cyberdyne can go into other timelines where it happened that it won. Having the infected John try to explain it away as he cheated is just sloppy. And there is no way old Arnie's robot survived all that!
So the timeline is a mess and ther is likely no way to consolidate it to make sense.
They could have just said it is an alternate future and it still is 1997, or have not done that at all.
The sequels are baffling and the dialog is improbable, next to flaky, and the new ones just make light of the first two. The latest one makes it seem like the first were brilliant, when they really were just very good compared to them. Genesys is not the dumbest one. That was probably the Salvation one.
I have seen all of them. I just chose not to review only Genesys.
We do not have cybernetic warrior robots in 2015, so it is not likely we will have them in only 2 years.
Monday, June 29, 2015
Review: "Inside Out" is cutest Pixar movie of the year
Inside Out PG
The trailers made the movie look like it was borderline personality comedy, the movie, with a little girl who hears voices in her head that do wacky comedy. The actual film was far more interesting.
When watching the movie you first get a shortm 'Lava' which is about a lonely volcano singing about love. Then his loved one ruses from the sea. It is one of the cutest and most catchy tunes ever. The guy performing is not from Hawaii, but he copies some of the voice all right and comes out as at least a fan.
Then it's on to the Andersons and their move from Minnesota (possibly Minneapolis) to San Francisco (near the waterfront row houses possibly), as they could not afford the immediate waterfront, or in the middle of the city. Maybe they are in the Tenderloin but on the other side.
The little girl in the story and central to it is Riley, a hockey playing and creative, possible misfit, who hears voices in her head. She is likeable if not pouty, bordering on puberty but not there yet, so she doesn't have the intense emotions of that, and Joy appears to be the surrogate for later emotions, (even though really Love could have been there as unconditional or family love, and not meant anything).
She also has Anger, a male persona who sounds like a hotheaded uncle.
Then there is Fear, a skinny male character who has googly eyes.
Then there is Disgust (which could later become envy), who is grossed out by everything, especially vegetables.
Joy and Anger seem to run the brain, but a mix up happens, and it is because of Sadness. Sadness wants to be sad and Joy just won't let her. This leads to essentially a mental breakdown. (Only since it's Pixar it's cute and involves little glowing colored bowling balls with memories in them).
Last there is Sadness, a short and squat female character (later Depression), who has messed up happy brain land by leaving her blue touch trails everywhere, forcing Joy to go with her to find her core memory, leaving the rest of them to run her brain.
Joy and Sadness meet up with imagination characters including her silly and obviously gay imaginary friend, Bongo, (who is a pink chimera of things) and would fit in well in the city, and a unicorn, a fake boyfriend, and various other things.
Eventually Joy and Sandess learn the vailue of each other and try to overcome the obstacles to get back to the brain control tower, as they have lost track of the other memories.
The movie is ultimately about moving to another place and being sad about it, surely something people can understand. Pixar is good at pulling on emotions, so they decided on making them manifest in reality.
It still is a bit like she's schizophrenic or if nothing else, seriously obsessive compulsive. Will the sequel be about the new emotional policeman called Ritalin, or Prozac? That's would be messed up.
It is a very good movie and one of Pixar's finest since Toy Story 3. Go and see it in theaters.
Review by Adam Browne
The trailers made the movie look like it was borderline personality comedy, the movie, with a little girl who hears voices in her head that do wacky comedy. The actual film was far more interesting.
When watching the movie you first get a shortm 'Lava' which is about a lonely volcano singing about love. Then his loved one ruses from the sea. It is one of the cutest and most catchy tunes ever. The guy performing is not from Hawaii, but he copies some of the voice all right and comes out as at least a fan.
Then it's on to the Andersons and their move from Minnesota (possibly Minneapolis) to San Francisco (near the waterfront row houses possibly), as they could not afford the immediate waterfront, or in the middle of the city. Maybe they are in the Tenderloin but on the other side.
The little girl in the story and central to it is Riley, a hockey playing and creative, possible misfit, who hears voices in her head. She is likeable if not pouty, bordering on puberty but not there yet, so she doesn't have the intense emotions of that, and Joy appears to be the surrogate for later emotions, (even though really Love could have been there as unconditional or family love, and not meant anything).
She also has Anger, a male persona who sounds like a hotheaded uncle.
Then there is Fear, a skinny male character who has googly eyes.
Then there is Disgust (which could later become envy), who is grossed out by everything, especially vegetables.
Joy and Anger seem to run the brain, but a mix up happens, and it is because of Sadness. Sadness wants to be sad and Joy just won't let her. This leads to essentially a mental breakdown. (Only since it's Pixar it's cute and involves little glowing colored bowling balls with memories in them).
Last there is Sadness, a short and squat female character (later Depression), who has messed up happy brain land by leaving her blue touch trails everywhere, forcing Joy to go with her to find her core memory, leaving the rest of them to run her brain.
Joy and Sadness meet up with imagination characters including her silly and obviously gay imaginary friend, Bongo, (who is a pink chimera of things) and would fit in well in the city, and a unicorn, a fake boyfriend, and various other things.
Eventually Joy and Sandess learn the vailue of each other and try to overcome the obstacles to get back to the brain control tower, as they have lost track of the other memories.
The movie is ultimately about moving to another place and being sad about it, surely something people can understand. Pixar is good at pulling on emotions, so they decided on making them manifest in reality.
It still is a bit like she's schizophrenic or if nothing else, seriously obsessive compulsive. Will the sequel be about the new emotional policeman called Ritalin, or Prozac? That's would be messed up.
It is a very good movie and one of Pixar's finest since Toy Story 3. Go and see it in theaters.
Review by Adam Browne
Review: "Ted" series tries too hard for funny but just shocks
"Ted" 2012, R
Seth MacFarlane clearly intended to make a Teddy Ruxpin movie and couldn't get the rights. A lot of 80s generation kids, including myself, imagined the talking bear as a foul mouthed jerk as a joke, and what it would do to children if it talked like that.
The premise literally is Ted can cuss. Great. Not only that, Ted can smoke pot and work as a clerk at a store, and also be a ladies man, and alongside Mar Walhberg can appear to be his alter ego. It's Burns and Allen with cussing and with a bear.
Oh and Ted sounds like Perter from Family Guy. That's the joke. The rerst of the movie is an excuse for jokes like that show, and about being obnoxious.
"Ted 2" 2015, R
Seth returns for the sequel and brushes off any charm from the last movie, referencing a live action show tunes Oscar gag from the Ted at the Oscars bit, and a wedding, and the bear and the girl wanting a baby. Yep, they want to completely stop the franchise by having a baby. Suddenly it's about family values.
The twists and turns that lead Whalberg and Ted to a sperm bank and then to a lawyer to see if they can grant Ted person hood sometimes have funny scenes. Mostly though they're gross out jokes. In one scene a large rack of sperm samples falls on a guy. In another, the old gag about the penis bong appears, and is used to comic redundancy.
One of the truly surreal bits is a crazy Hasbro exec dealing with an evil janitor who liked urinal cakes as his code word, which is bizarre, and another is an improv joke where they attend a comedy night and shout out inappropriate comedy suggestions.
The trouble with Ted 2 is meanly in the delivery. The pot jokes are funny mostly. They have a Jurassic Park moment even, although oversold, as usual.
The internet porn and google search jokes are funny.
It's worth a rental but they miss the obvious, never ever include a baby, and the obvious joke, why wasn't the villain Teddy Ruxpin?
Also why did they not have a Boston Legal joke in there, as they're in Boston and it was one of the most celebrated law comedies of modern times? It would have been hilarious if they got Shatner instead of Morgan Freeman.
Review by Adam Browne
Seth MacFarlane clearly intended to make a Teddy Ruxpin movie and couldn't get the rights. A lot of 80s generation kids, including myself, imagined the talking bear as a foul mouthed jerk as a joke, and what it would do to children if it talked like that.
The premise literally is Ted can cuss. Great. Not only that, Ted can smoke pot and work as a clerk at a store, and also be a ladies man, and alongside Mar Walhberg can appear to be his alter ego. It's Burns and Allen with cussing and with a bear.
Oh and Ted sounds like Perter from Family Guy. That's the joke. The rerst of the movie is an excuse for jokes like that show, and about being obnoxious.
"Ted 2" 2015, R
Seth returns for the sequel and brushes off any charm from the last movie, referencing a live action show tunes Oscar gag from the Ted at the Oscars bit, and a wedding, and the bear and the girl wanting a baby. Yep, they want to completely stop the franchise by having a baby. Suddenly it's about family values.
The twists and turns that lead Whalberg and Ted to a sperm bank and then to a lawyer to see if they can grant Ted person hood sometimes have funny scenes. Mostly though they're gross out jokes. In one scene a large rack of sperm samples falls on a guy. In another, the old gag about the penis bong appears, and is used to comic redundancy.
One of the truly surreal bits is a crazy Hasbro exec dealing with an evil janitor who liked urinal cakes as his code word, which is bizarre, and another is an improv joke where they attend a comedy night and shout out inappropriate comedy suggestions.
The trouble with Ted 2 is meanly in the delivery. The pot jokes are funny mostly. They have a Jurassic Park moment even, although oversold, as usual.
The internet porn and google search jokes are funny.
It's worth a rental but they miss the obvious, never ever include a baby, and the obvious joke, why wasn't the villain Teddy Ruxpin?
Also why did they not have a Boston Legal joke in there, as they're in Boston and it was one of the most celebrated law comedies of modern times? It would have been hilarious if they got Shatner instead of Morgan Freeman.
Review by Adam Browne
Review: "Spy" is a female Austin Powers more so than Bond
Spy R
Not being a fan of McCarthy movies, this one was going to be a tough one to credit, but it ultimately was a funny movie. The SNL heavy movie has some practical and funny juxtaposition jokes, even if the main joke is mean.
The story centers on a secret agent and his desk bound agent operative, whereas she likes him and he is not interested, because she's slovenly and heavy. That's literally the joke. They carry this to the hilt, although not using a girl in a fat suit, but by actually casting someone plus sized. Then she self humiliates throughout the movie.
The James Bond type man is supposedly killed, leading the agent lady and her own sidekick, a tall Brit lad, to go and stop the assassin, who happens to be another spy woman. Along the way is another agent who is dogging them and they find him obnoxious.
The movie plays like a girl version of Austin Powers from decades ago, but with the mojo being estrogen, and the jokes being about loser stereotypes. In the end it's not a particularly good message, and the story is meant to prove that although the underdog triumphs, she does to at the expense of her self image. That is messed up.
It's not as good as critics claim and is probably at best a funny background rental movie when it comes out on bluray. It isn't bad, but it sure isn't great.
Review by Adam Browne
Not being a fan of McCarthy movies, this one was going to be a tough one to credit, but it ultimately was a funny movie. The SNL heavy movie has some practical and funny juxtaposition jokes, even if the main joke is mean.
The story centers on a secret agent and his desk bound agent operative, whereas she likes him and he is not interested, because she's slovenly and heavy. That's literally the joke. They carry this to the hilt, although not using a girl in a fat suit, but by actually casting someone plus sized. Then she self humiliates throughout the movie.
The James Bond type man is supposedly killed, leading the agent lady and her own sidekick, a tall Brit lad, to go and stop the assassin, who happens to be another spy woman. Along the way is another agent who is dogging them and they find him obnoxious.
The movie plays like a girl version of Austin Powers from decades ago, but with the mojo being estrogen, and the jokes being about loser stereotypes. In the end it's not a particularly good message, and the story is meant to prove that although the underdog triumphs, she does to at the expense of her self image. That is messed up.
It's not as good as critics claim and is probably at best a funny background rental movie when it comes out on bluray. It isn't bad, but it sure isn't great.
Review by Adam Browne
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Review: "Jurassic World" is epic nod to the cloned dinosaur genre
"Jurassic World" PG 13
Chris Prat stars as a raptor wrangler in the fourth installment of Spielberg's Jurassic Park series, based on the books by Michael Crichton. This one is not from the books though, as in the re imagined version, of which re imagining has become cliche. The park is actually opened for business since 2005 and patrons to the park was dropping. In order to drum up new people, including Bryce Dallas Howard, the park leaders create a hybrid dinosaur monster with obvious results, she gets out.
The movies harken to the fun house flicks and monster movies of old, especially Godzilla, Land of the Lost (the TV show) and any number of classic dinosaur stories. The two sequels before had a lot of dinosaurs chasing people but were weaker than the first. This movie is better than those two sequels. It took 14 years for that to happen. Although there is no Tokyo in the story, the idea of it being like Godzilla still works, as it is a rampaging dinosaur.
The park people in the story have a military group on the island led by a crazy obese colonel who wants to train dinosaurs, raptors and the like, as soldiers, which is one of the lame ideas from the earlier script they kept. The wrangler doesn't like this idea and wants him nowhere near his raptor pack. Then the crazy penned up dinlo escapes and the military guy takes over, and the park patrons are trapped.
The boys in the story are two rather unexciting and bored kids sent to the island while their parents go through some issues, and they are supposed to be watched, but the aunt lady, who happens to run the park, pays no attention to them and sends them off with a nanny who is distracted a lot. They're not so important except to be the ones current millennial kids will relate to. Since they remain elusive and bored the audience might also be elusive in return.
The hacker guy is not supposed to be connected to the original Lex or her brother Tim. He is just a bit like Lex in character. Since technology has so vastly improved there is no need for him to marvel at setting up restart on a Unix based security system.
The boys have to escape the hamster ball of doom when the white washed hybrid dino chases after it.
Then later they hotwire and resoptre a classic 1993 jeep from the first one. Now since it's a movie with cloned dinos, this being a little silly is really not an issue. Perhaps th park people left it nearly functional as it sat there in the garage, in the hope of restoring it.
Yes there are silly moments, but after checking in your brain as the film rolls, it's a lot of fun. It isn't due over analysis.
The aviary scene is fantastic, when the flying dinos get broken out as a copter crashes into it and go around dragging off people.
Some critics on the net complained that it wasn't realistic or didn't have enough gore, but it's PG 13 and it doesn't need all that. If they want reruns of Jurassic Fight Club then go watch that.
Chris Prat chews scenery more than his raptor pack tries to chew at him. He seems to enjoy the part. The military guy has fun too. The redheaded leader lady spends some time playing like she's Ellie when she's obviously not.
I will not give away what happens to everyone as that would be a spoiler fest.
See it on the big screen.
Review By Adam Browne
Chris Prat stars as a raptor wrangler in the fourth installment of Spielberg's Jurassic Park series, based on the books by Michael Crichton. This one is not from the books though, as in the re imagined version, of which re imagining has become cliche. The park is actually opened for business since 2005 and patrons to the park was dropping. In order to drum up new people, including Bryce Dallas Howard, the park leaders create a hybrid dinosaur monster with obvious results, she gets out.
The movies harken to the fun house flicks and monster movies of old, especially Godzilla, Land of the Lost (the TV show) and any number of classic dinosaur stories. The two sequels before had a lot of dinosaurs chasing people but were weaker than the first. This movie is better than those two sequels. It took 14 years for that to happen. Although there is no Tokyo in the story, the idea of it being like Godzilla still works, as it is a rampaging dinosaur.
The park people in the story have a military group on the island led by a crazy obese colonel who wants to train dinosaurs, raptors and the like, as soldiers, which is one of the lame ideas from the earlier script they kept. The wrangler doesn't like this idea and wants him nowhere near his raptor pack. Then the crazy penned up dinlo escapes and the military guy takes over, and the park patrons are trapped.
The boys in the story are two rather unexciting and bored kids sent to the island while their parents go through some issues, and they are supposed to be watched, but the aunt lady, who happens to run the park, pays no attention to them and sends them off with a nanny who is distracted a lot. They're not so important except to be the ones current millennial kids will relate to. Since they remain elusive and bored the audience might also be elusive in return.
The hacker guy is not supposed to be connected to the original Lex or her brother Tim. He is just a bit like Lex in character. Since technology has so vastly improved there is no need for him to marvel at setting up restart on a Unix based security system.
The boys have to escape the hamster ball of doom when the white washed hybrid dino chases after it.
Then later they hotwire and resoptre a classic 1993 jeep from the first one. Now since it's a movie with cloned dinos, this being a little silly is really not an issue. Perhaps th park people left it nearly functional as it sat there in the garage, in the hope of restoring it.
Yes there are silly moments, but after checking in your brain as the film rolls, it's a lot of fun. It isn't due over analysis.
The aviary scene is fantastic, when the flying dinos get broken out as a copter crashes into it and go around dragging off people.
Some critics on the net complained that it wasn't realistic or didn't have enough gore, but it's PG 13 and it doesn't need all that. If they want reruns of Jurassic Fight Club then go watch that.
Chris Prat chews scenery more than his raptor pack tries to chew at him. He seems to enjoy the part. The military guy has fun too. The redheaded leader lady spends some time playing like she's Ellie when she's obviously not.
I will not give away what happens to everyone as that would be a spoiler fest.
See it on the big screen.
Review By Adam Browne
Sunday, June 7, 2015
Review: "Tomorrowland" is strangely dated future vision
"Tomorrowland" PG
Disney has a habit of trying to make their rides into movies. Taking on the success of Pirates and the failure of Haunted Mansion, the newest ride movie is somewhere in between spaces. It seems like it wants to be Indiana Jones too, and can liberally make Star Wars references if it likes. Ditrect Brad Bird and Damon Lindehof, (yes from Prometheus). take the chosen one story to another dimension where a fantasy city is hidden in plain sight.
Somehow the 1960s world's fair includes Disneyland itself, where a boy tries to show off his rocket pack. The boy follows a Britsh girl's lead to another world. The boy finds that It's a Small World leads into an elevator that takes him there in the beginning, he doesn't fly in a rocket. This comes intro play later.
Then it's off to the present day as some kind of voice over of Clooney and some unknown girl are making a speech about the possible end of everything. Then the girl and her sabotage of a dismnatled rocket site in Florida is seen, and her eventual discover of a pin that takes her to an alien dimension where it's cheery and sunny, even fore so than in Florida.
The girl must meet up with the little girl robot, who hasn't aged a day since the 1960s, as she's a robot, and they must escape assassin robots that are trying to kill them, in a Disney movie.
The heroe's journey is as classic as Greek myth. Fantasy is based upon many tropes like that. This is no different. Modern scifi, such as Star Wars, uses this trope also.
They act like this trope is original, but it isn't, as anyone who has seen science fiction classics like Metropolis and Buck Rogers clearly knows the mantra. A disillusioned sage thinker has made his hose a fortress after being kicked out of dream land, and when he is visited by a teenage girl chased by robots, he must return with her to the other place to fix something.
In the future world, or other dimension, the greatest thinkers have made a robot controlled utopia of flying jet packs, monorails, ray guns and spire like shiny buildings like right out of the world's fair that Walt saw so long ago and made into his attraction.
Originally everyone was white and American, but this being the future he predicted, they had to toss in all sorts of ethnic groups at the end to cover up the obvious white washing. A little Bitritish moppet does not count!
Actually some of the movie is unexpectedly creepy. Clooney plays the doe-eyed boy who grew up, and is now over 50 inventor and mentor, while a relative unknown plays his robot mentor, still a little girl, as he was when he was a little boy, because she's a robot.
The teenage girl who has new ideas goes to his stalker looking farmhouse with booby traps and cameras all over to escape the robots and androids, and they escape through a bathtub while laser ray guns fire and blow up things.
The inventor and the girl then take a ride in a rocket under the Eiffel tower, because it so is a space rocket launcher, and fly to the other dimension. They didn't have to do this.
Getting to the utopia, it has become a dystopia, another trope of science friction. It is not a coincidence the actress was in Divergent, another such thing.
It's so so much Ayn Rand, which is boring, as it is Metropolis meets Tomorrowland. It's not boring so much as needlessly complicated. It was good how they handled trans-dimensional gates and such bvy just saying, it works that way, instead of making a long speech. Instead they make long speeched about doomsday and global destruction, which turn the movie into a forces message.
When you go to a movie you want escape, not reality.It should not have been about lecturing us on wars and climate change. It should have been a coming of age Disney princess movie.
Still is is kind of creepy Clooney plays the prince, as he's older than the father figure. Yeah sure he's like Obi Wan, but it comes off as he's more like her new boyfriend in the story.
Review by Adam Browne
Disney has a habit of trying to make their rides into movies. Taking on the success of Pirates and the failure of Haunted Mansion, the newest ride movie is somewhere in between spaces. It seems like it wants to be Indiana Jones too, and can liberally make Star Wars references if it likes. Ditrect Brad Bird and Damon Lindehof, (yes from Prometheus). take the chosen one story to another dimension where a fantasy city is hidden in plain sight.
Somehow the 1960s world's fair includes Disneyland itself, where a boy tries to show off his rocket pack. The boy follows a Britsh girl's lead to another world. The boy finds that It's a Small World leads into an elevator that takes him there in the beginning, he doesn't fly in a rocket. This comes intro play later.
Then it's off to the present day as some kind of voice over of Clooney and some unknown girl are making a speech about the possible end of everything. Then the girl and her sabotage of a dismnatled rocket site in Florida is seen, and her eventual discover of a pin that takes her to an alien dimension where it's cheery and sunny, even fore so than in Florida.
The girl must meet up with the little girl robot, who hasn't aged a day since the 1960s, as she's a robot, and they must escape assassin robots that are trying to kill them, in a Disney movie.
The heroe's journey is as classic as Greek myth. Fantasy is based upon many tropes like that. This is no different. Modern scifi, such as Star Wars, uses this trope also.
They act like this trope is original, but it isn't, as anyone who has seen science fiction classics like Metropolis and Buck Rogers clearly knows the mantra. A disillusioned sage thinker has made his hose a fortress after being kicked out of dream land, and when he is visited by a teenage girl chased by robots, he must return with her to the other place to fix something.
In the future world, or other dimension, the greatest thinkers have made a robot controlled utopia of flying jet packs, monorails, ray guns and spire like shiny buildings like right out of the world's fair that Walt saw so long ago and made into his attraction.
Originally everyone was white and American, but this being the future he predicted, they had to toss in all sorts of ethnic groups at the end to cover up the obvious white washing. A little Bitritish moppet does not count!
Actually some of the movie is unexpectedly creepy. Clooney plays the doe-eyed boy who grew up, and is now over 50 inventor and mentor, while a relative unknown plays his robot mentor, still a little girl, as he was when he was a little boy, because she's a robot.
The teenage girl who has new ideas goes to his stalker looking farmhouse with booby traps and cameras all over to escape the robots and androids, and they escape through a bathtub while laser ray guns fire and blow up things.
The inventor and the girl then take a ride in a rocket under the Eiffel tower, because it so is a space rocket launcher, and fly to the other dimension. They didn't have to do this.
Getting to the utopia, it has become a dystopia, another trope of science friction. It is not a coincidence the actress was in Divergent, another such thing.
It's so so much Ayn Rand, which is boring, as it is Metropolis meets Tomorrowland. It's not boring so much as needlessly complicated. It was good how they handled trans-dimensional gates and such bvy just saying, it works that way, instead of making a long speech. Instead they make long speeched about doomsday and global destruction, which turn the movie into a forces message.
When you go to a movie you want escape, not reality.It should not have been about lecturing us on wars and climate change. It should have been a coming of age Disney princess movie.
Still is is kind of creepy Clooney plays the prince, as he's older than the father figure. Yeah sure he's like Obi Wan, but it comes off as he's more like her new boyfriend in the story.
Review by Adam Browne
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Review: "Mad Max: Fury Road" is a postwar epic chase picture
"Mad Max: Fury Road" R
George Miller returns to Mad Max ion the fourth installment in the movie series, a sort of reboot, as it has been 26 years since the last one. Tom Hardy steps into the role originated by Mel Gibson decades ago, as Mad Max, the ex cop turned drifter in a post nuclear war ravaged Australia. Charlise Theron and Rosey Whitley are there also.
The evil master of a strange gear head city state in a harsh canyon system is keeping slave women to produce offspring and milk for their survival, but when the slaves are broken out of prison in a rumbling tanker truck machine, the evil warlord chases after them with relatives from various local tribes of warrior gear heads! Theron is the driver of the wear machine, with Max along for the ride. Max is meant to pass for the universal donor slave, but he got free and joined the rebels, and befriends them on the road.
Everyone in the movie is insane and loving it, spouting lines about lovely destruction and enjoying rushing into a sandstorm that looks like a nuke went off. The driver, Furina, wants to take the freed women to the green place, and Max and a stowaway are not part of the plan, but they make it to a distant tribe of old biker ladies and they have a mad plan to end it all.
The story is better paced than all of the Fast and Furious movies, and really looks like it works, and each vehicle is different enough you can tell them apart. The villains are interesting and the desperation works well, as it is clear everyone us trying to survive in it and has lost all of their marbles.
Review by Adam Browne
George Miller returns to Mad Max ion the fourth installment in the movie series, a sort of reboot, as it has been 26 years since the last one. Tom Hardy steps into the role originated by Mel Gibson decades ago, as Mad Max, the ex cop turned drifter in a post nuclear war ravaged Australia. Charlise Theron and Rosey Whitley are there also.
The evil master of a strange gear head city state in a harsh canyon system is keeping slave women to produce offspring and milk for their survival, but when the slaves are broken out of prison in a rumbling tanker truck machine, the evil warlord chases after them with relatives from various local tribes of warrior gear heads! Theron is the driver of the wear machine, with Max along for the ride. Max is meant to pass for the universal donor slave, but he got free and joined the rebels, and befriends them on the road.
Everyone in the movie is insane and loving it, spouting lines about lovely destruction and enjoying rushing into a sandstorm that looks like a nuke went off. The driver, Furina, wants to take the freed women to the green place, and Max and a stowaway are not part of the plan, but they make it to a distant tribe of old biker ladies and they have a mad plan to end it all.
The story is better paced than all of the Fast and Furious movies, and really looks like it works, and each vehicle is different enough you can tell them apart. The villains are interesting and the desperation works well, as it is clear everyone us trying to survive in it and has lost all of their marbles.
Review by Adam Browne
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Review: "Avengers 2: Age of Ultron" is slick fantasy twist on comic book villain
"Avengers 2: Age of Ultron" PG 13
The second Marvel collection is nearly over, as Ant Man will be out next to finish the next wave, but there will be more. It's time again for another Avengers from Joss Whedon. This time the gang returns and knocks over the hideout of a notorious bad guy seen in the Winter Soldier, which means you have to have seen it. I have seen it. The story become complicated when Iron Man and Banner/Hulk decide later to just create artificial intelligence over night, rather than Ant Man doing it in his lab as in the comic. Using Jarvis the AI, they hack into the Loki scepter stolen from the raid and activate some kind of brain inside it. This never occurs to them, or to Thor, to be a very bad idea. The energy crystal in it is one of the Infinity Gems from the comics, which also leads somewhere else. The energy is somehow conscious and alive, and it soon breaks out.
Later on the guys are having a party, Black Widow is flirting with Hulk, for no apparent reason at all, as she flirted with Captain America in Winter Soldier and it meant nothing. Although she makes a case for being a bad butt kicking super spy allegedly sterilized by the secret order, she is clearly a few months pregnant. The actress is that is. (She was actually but the character was not supposed to be). Actually in the comics she is not sterile.
The boys joke about lifting Thor's hammer as though it is a sex joke, which is something they would do, while drinking, and that's when Ultron appears as a butt kicking robot that kicks the tar out of the room and then declares he will pull off his strings and end the tyranny of the Avengers and of Stark, or Iron Man. Then he leaves.
Later he hacks into the internet, which is not self aware, and attempts to create a new body for himself to destroy humanity, while programming and building a city sized 'vibranium' alien metal rock asteroid thing out of a city so he can later chuck it at the Earth. You know, stuff villains do.
The cocoon or pod the Avengers try to capture eventually becomes important to the team and to the possible defeat of their nemesis. (No spoilers).
The story is sharp but not quite as fun as the last one, Winter Soldier or Thor the Dark World. Guardians of the Galaxy though was brilliant. The move can be best enjoyed on big screens though.
Review by Adam Browne
The second Marvel collection is nearly over, as Ant Man will be out next to finish the next wave, but there will be more. It's time again for another Avengers from Joss Whedon. This time the gang returns and knocks over the hideout of a notorious bad guy seen in the Winter Soldier, which means you have to have seen it. I have seen it. The story become complicated when Iron Man and Banner/Hulk decide later to just create artificial intelligence over night, rather than Ant Man doing it in his lab as in the comic. Using Jarvis the AI, they hack into the Loki scepter stolen from the raid and activate some kind of brain inside it. This never occurs to them, or to Thor, to be a very bad idea. The energy crystal in it is one of the Infinity Gems from the comics, which also leads somewhere else. The energy is somehow conscious and alive, and it soon breaks out.
Later on the guys are having a party, Black Widow is flirting with Hulk, for no apparent reason at all, as she flirted with Captain America in Winter Soldier and it meant nothing. Although she makes a case for being a bad butt kicking super spy allegedly sterilized by the secret order, she is clearly a few months pregnant. The actress is that is. (She was actually but the character was not supposed to be). Actually in the comics she is not sterile.
The boys joke about lifting Thor's hammer as though it is a sex joke, which is something they would do, while drinking, and that's when Ultron appears as a butt kicking robot that kicks the tar out of the room and then declares he will pull off his strings and end the tyranny of the Avengers and of Stark, or Iron Man. Then he leaves.
Later he hacks into the internet, which is not self aware, and attempts to create a new body for himself to destroy humanity, while programming and building a city sized 'vibranium' alien metal rock asteroid thing out of a city so he can later chuck it at the Earth. You know, stuff villains do.
The cocoon or pod the Avengers try to capture eventually becomes important to the team and to the possible defeat of their nemesis. (No spoilers).
The story is sharp but not quite as fun as the last one, Winter Soldier or Thor the Dark World. Guardians of the Galaxy though was brilliant. The move can be best enjoyed on big screens though.
Review by Adam Browne
Saturday, April 25, 2015
Review: "Ex Machina" is love letter to "AI" and "Frankenstein"
"Ex Machina" R
So far this year there have been very few movies on the radar. This one is a modern day Frankenstein story with some of the feel of 'Ghost in the Shell', 'Simone' and 'AI' (only in that there's an AI and an escape attempt) and a nod to various sexy robot movies and cartoons.
The story opens with a young hotshot programmer being accepted into the Blue Book company's contest. Blue Book in this is Facebook and Google stuck together, but also Project Blue Book, the alien fringe thing. In the film, this wacky inventor, Nathan, and drunken scientist lives in a Swedish mountain chalet, even though it is supposed to be Alaska, where he invited employee Caleb to check out his new robot AI named Ava.
The strange man lives alone with a house girl that doesn't speak, which should be a tip off that he's nuts, but then he boxes and gets drunk and claims he has all kinds of time. He also wants to be a cyber god. Yes, ego is not his problem.
Through Caleb and Ava's conversations he is trying to pass the outdated Turing test model for intelligence, which was developed before modern computers, and would be like telling a toaster from a smart phone. Even so, the movie is rife it references to movies, the Internet, and the shocking kinks people might be into through that.
The movie though never actually goes there with the kinks. They keep implying the robot is great for a love doll but they never do this. The R rating is merely for nudity and for the F bombs uttered every now and then when the nerd talk becomes banal and hard to follow or the drinking talk gets too garbled. In fact, most of the nudity is modest and really where this 1990 it would be PG 13. Besides, three of the nudes are robot nudes in a closet, so technically a nude android is not a nude.
The strange tropes start with Nathan's obsession with proving his new model is the best ever, coupled with Calbel's complete obliviousness to being in a house with an older version of the guy from Disturbia crossed with Doc Frankenstein himself. (The monster wasn't named Frankenstein). Then it's onto the main plot about Ava's clear desire to run off into the woods the next chance she gets. She can't be blamed for this as she had been locked up inside that weird underground house all that time.
As this movie just came out, this review cannot include spoilers about who's a robot and who isn't, but let it be said first here that the scene in the trailer with the cutting at the mirror part is not what you think.
So is it a good movie? It has promise but it's no spectacular. Sure it's nice to have some fem bot played by a Swedish actress. Most of that though they CGI over to make her look uncanny so it's not at all hot. (The nudity is later).
So Caleb being a self respecting nerd refuses to go on his boss's suggestion and take the robot for a spin, even though he likes her. Where is Frank Zappa when you need him to bust into song? He not only sung of magical cyborg pigs, but also of artificial Rhonda...So there ya go, ahead of his time. Maybe he was a robot?I've been waiting for several reviews to actually use that joke and make it apply totally. It does!
The villain is pretty obvious from the start but the hero is equally clueless and unable to figure it out, until his mirror watching moment. Aside fro the leaps of logic, it's not a bad thriller.
Review by Adam Browne
So far this year there have been very few movies on the radar. This one is a modern day Frankenstein story with some of the feel of 'Ghost in the Shell', 'Simone' and 'AI' (only in that there's an AI and an escape attempt) and a nod to various sexy robot movies and cartoons.
The story opens with a young hotshot programmer being accepted into the Blue Book company's contest. Blue Book in this is Facebook and Google stuck together, but also Project Blue Book, the alien fringe thing. In the film, this wacky inventor, Nathan, and drunken scientist lives in a Swedish mountain chalet, even though it is supposed to be Alaska, where he invited employee Caleb to check out his new robot AI named Ava.
The strange man lives alone with a house girl that doesn't speak, which should be a tip off that he's nuts, but then he boxes and gets drunk and claims he has all kinds of time. He also wants to be a cyber god. Yes, ego is not his problem.
Through Caleb and Ava's conversations he is trying to pass the outdated Turing test model for intelligence, which was developed before modern computers, and would be like telling a toaster from a smart phone. Even so, the movie is rife it references to movies, the Internet, and the shocking kinks people might be into through that.
The movie though never actually goes there with the kinks. They keep implying the robot is great for a love doll but they never do this. The R rating is merely for nudity and for the F bombs uttered every now and then when the nerd talk becomes banal and hard to follow or the drinking talk gets too garbled. In fact, most of the nudity is modest and really where this 1990 it would be PG 13. Besides, three of the nudes are robot nudes in a closet, so technically a nude android is not a nude.
The strange tropes start with Nathan's obsession with proving his new model is the best ever, coupled with Calbel's complete obliviousness to being in a house with an older version of the guy from Disturbia crossed with Doc Frankenstein himself. (The monster wasn't named Frankenstein). Then it's onto the main plot about Ava's clear desire to run off into the woods the next chance she gets. She can't be blamed for this as she had been locked up inside that weird underground house all that time.
As this movie just came out, this review cannot include spoilers about who's a robot and who isn't, but let it be said first here that the scene in the trailer with the cutting at the mirror part is not what you think.
So is it a good movie? It has promise but it's no spectacular. Sure it's nice to have some fem bot played by a Swedish actress. Most of that though they CGI over to make her look uncanny so it's not at all hot. (The nudity is later).
So Caleb being a self respecting nerd refuses to go on his boss's suggestion and take the robot for a spin, even though he likes her. Where is Frank Zappa when you need him to bust into song? He not only sung of magical cyborg pigs, but also of artificial Rhonda...So there ya go, ahead of his time. Maybe he was a robot?I've been waiting for several reviews to actually use that joke and make it apply totally. It does!
The villain is pretty obvious from the start but the hero is equally clueless and unable to figure it out, until his mirror watching moment. Aside fro the leaps of logic, it's not a bad thriller.
Review by Adam Browne
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Review: "Killing Jesus" is a mockery of Christianity in guise as history
Killing
Jesus movie review
“Killing
Jesus” TV 14
Normally
this critic does not do TV movies, but this one had to be done, as there needed
to be a fair and balanced riff on this train wreck of a movie. Clocking in at 3
hours with commercials, about 180 minutes without, the National Geographic
channel’s highest rated TV movie ever comes off as a stellar set piece and costumed
Passion play. What it lacks though is the very message of Jesus Christ the Nazarene.
Starting out in ancient Palestine about two years after Jesus was born, King Herod in a bad fright wig (Kelsey Grammar of Frasier and X Men and Cheers) is distraught when he has a bad hallucination dream and imagines magi telling him about the Christ child. He then orders his men to kill all the babies.
Somehow, Mary and Joseph are warned to go to Egypt with baby Jesus who is clearly tan, and to not hang out with their pregnant aunt, Elizabeth, who will began John the Baptist. No mention is made of Joseph’s boys from the previous marriage from scripture, because this is a Catholic interpretation, sort of.
Old Herod dies and his son, Agrippa takes over, and he is so badly acted that he might as well have a handlebar mustache and snicker every other line.
Later on Pilate and his wife are coming to town commenting on Jews having a foolish belief in an invisible God, so there’s a not do atheism in the play, which is wrong. Pilate was Roman so he believed in Roman gods.
Nothing wrong with Jesus being played by a Muslim but the acting, even if he had been another nationality, is just passable. He comes off as more of an ineffective preacher than the Son of God and man that the scripture reports.
John the Baptist comes off as a crazed hippy lunatic in the story, and his baptizing of Jesus seems to be more of a service than divine. In fact, the story skirts over any major miracles or divinity, making it appear as though the natives were just going by wishful thinking. This is both incredibly pretentious of the director, and kind of heresy. The followers then are made out to be rough necked rebels who want merely to crush Roman rule and they seem to force Jesus to go places with them, instead of his asking. It’s like he’s running for president, not making sermons. He’s not of the Tea Party. He’s a Barack Obama metaphor.
If anything, the Romans are of the Tea Party in the story, blabbering about various conspiracies they intend to hatch, working with the sneaky teachers of the day, Pharisees and Sadducees. More than 80 percent of the movie is spent politically playing ball with the conspiracy, whereas in scripture it is really a kind of footnote. They basically plot to kill him and then try him and kill him. That’s it. But no, this movie wants to somehow force the ideas of modern American democracy onto the imperial occupied state, Judean Israel, millennia before modern democracy, Rome under Israel in the first century. Rome is not the US, but the writers want you to think that. Palestine is thus not Iraq, but they want to convey that.
Also offensive is that the women are all portrayed as either needing a man, or as conniving sneaky evildoers, but there are no women in between, until the saintly nuns show up at the end. They’re supposed to be Mary and the other ladies, but their clothes look like nun clothes in the movie.
Then even more offensive is that they made it look like the poor and the lesser class is not important, but rich people are better, because of breeding, and that the poor are apparently just not smart enough to have evolved like they. The villagers are portrayed as mentally lesser than others, having delusions of God, which is somehow extremely against religion, and the teachers in it are equally over the top evil and smarter in the other direction.
Only the tax collectors and money changers get a fair deal.
It’s not killing Jesus without the resurrection, but so they imply that the body was just stolen. The narration at the end implies 2 billion people are Christian, but it offends the right wing base they’re trying to court.
The back lash online should really be larger. This movie should be shown at churches as what it’s not about! If you include the meek shall inherit the Earth and then claim the rich are better, it’s insane and doesn’t make sense. The rich people are supposed to be the bad guys, but here they are kind of given a status of the ones the audience should root for.
The director then tosses in the stories of Jesus but minus miracles, except for two fish scenes, and an exorcism.
They also don’t seem to understand how Jewish law, commerce and customs worked back then, which for a claimed history novel to movie adaptation they should know. At one point they are baffled at the foot washing scene for the wrong reason, because the real reason is a rabbi guest should not act as a servant, but in the movie it’s treated as oh those silly men and their customs. What? This movie is actually quite offensive.
The movie offends Jews and women, minorities and the poor, and suggests Jesus wasn’t even divine, so it’s a mockery of Christianity, and offends them too.
As a moderate Christian I am insulted that this movie was filmed and exists, and that Bill O’Reilly seems to believe he is right about everything to do with Jesus and everyone else is wrong. It shows a genuine pathos and an ego large enough to offend the Christians he claims to tout with the guy. The director could be to blame for some of this. The film is not recommended and gets one star. That is fair and balanced.
Review by Kal Kat
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Review: "Cinderella" live action remake fits pefectly
"Cinderella" (2015) PG
Based upon two fairy tales about Ella the ash faced girl, this 1950 Disney animated movie is recreated point by point into a live action film, complete with the use of CGI to include transforming pumpkin to carriage, lizard to coachman, goose to driver, and mice to horses. The story is set long ago, possibly about 1700, in what appears to be coastal France, where there is a tiny kingdom and forest. In a comely cottage lives a blonde and blue eyed family and their girl Ella, who grows up learning of love, and then tragedy strikes when her Mother dies,and her Father remarries a creepy woman with two daughters, and then her Father later dies. Then the wicked stepmother and sisters turn her into a servant girl. One day she rides off with her horse and encounters a prince hunting in the woods and falls for him. The prince, in turn, falls for her, buit cannot find her, so he throws a ball to attract all the eligible maidens in town to come. The stepmother and sisters try to keep her from attending, but she escapes and meets her Fairy Godmother, who gives her the classic items to attend the ball, with the warning that at midnight it will all go away, except for the glass slippers.
This cute adaption of the animated movie bustes all the right Disney buttons and even references asre made to other stories, such as hidden Mickeys, hidden ball attendants looking like other princesses from Disney, and the stunning soundtrack.
It seems to be fun for the family and also has some interesting new actors, including the lead, who I haven't heard of, with some old favorites. Directed Kenneth Bragnah is well known, Kate Blanchette plays the stepmother, and Helena Bonham Carter plays the godmother.
Although not Oscar material, it is a contender of the popularity awards in 2015 and will be counted at the Clara Movie Awards blog show.
Review by Adam Browne
Based upon two fairy tales about Ella the ash faced girl, this 1950 Disney animated movie is recreated point by point into a live action film, complete with the use of CGI to include transforming pumpkin to carriage, lizard to coachman, goose to driver, and mice to horses. The story is set long ago, possibly about 1700, in what appears to be coastal France, where there is a tiny kingdom and forest. In a comely cottage lives a blonde and blue eyed family and their girl Ella, who grows up learning of love, and then tragedy strikes when her Mother dies,and her Father remarries a creepy woman with two daughters, and then her Father later dies. Then the wicked stepmother and sisters turn her into a servant girl. One day she rides off with her horse and encounters a prince hunting in the woods and falls for him. The prince, in turn, falls for her, buit cannot find her, so he throws a ball to attract all the eligible maidens in town to come. The stepmother and sisters try to keep her from attending, but she escapes and meets her Fairy Godmother, who gives her the classic items to attend the ball, with the warning that at midnight it will all go away, except for the glass slippers.
This cute adaption of the animated movie bustes all the right Disney buttons and even references asre made to other stories, such as hidden Mickeys, hidden ball attendants looking like other princesses from Disney, and the stunning soundtrack.
It seems to be fun for the family and also has some interesting new actors, including the lead, who I haven't heard of, with some old favorites. Directed Kenneth Bragnah is well known, Kate Blanchette plays the stepmother, and Helena Bonham Carter plays the godmother.
Although not Oscar material, it is a contender of the popularity awards in 2015 and will be counted at the Clara Movie Awards blog show.
Review by Adam Browne
Sunday, February 22, 2015
87th Academy Awards results and why with Kal Kat
The winners!
Imitation Game
Best Adapted screenplay
Still Alice
Best Actress, Julianne Moore
Theory of Everything
Best Actor, Eddie Redmeyen
Selma
Best song, Glory
Birdman
Best Picture!
Best director, Alehandro Gonzales Inarritu
Best Cinematography
Best Original Screenplay
The Oscars listened to the critics that liked both Boyhood and Birdman and possibly to Kal Kat, and decided that even though Boyhoood was a tie for best, it was late, and Birdman was on time, so it got the win!
Grand Budapest Hotel
Best makeup
Best costumes
Best production design
Best original score
Won't get movie but will get something, but really Guardians of the Galaxy should have been nominated for this. They had a lot of good makeup on Zoe Sandara and others.
Costumes? They were better than the ones in Boyhood? Okay.
Well it is a close tie for production design, as it was pretty cool in both Boyhood and this film. Boyhood gets is really just for the years it took finishing it. Nope though, as Oscar liked this other one.
American Sniper
According to wiki long before results, best picture, best actor, Bradley Cooper
Best Sound editing
Well, when they win this it is possible they won't win the big one.
If it gets best picture, it's because it ends depressing, not because of the hype about the trail of the dude who killed him afterward, after he took a mentally troubled friend to the target range, and his friend wigged out and killed him. The hype should not have sold the movie to Oscar. It hasd to be the closing credits depressing part. Oscar loves that.
Birdman also had a downbeat ending but a better one, more Black Swan than There Will Be blood.
Kat likes movies not based on reality. He wants to be entertained not see reality. Reality is everywhere. Boyhood also was kind of a 'reality' flick, but more of a Mary Sue fable.
Boyhood
Best supporting actress, Patricia Arquette
Winning this sometimes clinches the title of best picture, except for last year.
Whiplash
Best supporting Actor, J K Simmons
Sound mixing
Film editing
When did this movie even come out?
That's a bold one, film editing, when Birdman is one long continuous awesome film take, and Boyhood took over a dozen years!
Big Hero 6
Best animated film
No, the Lego Movie was way better, but it's Pixar here, so they win without trying. Lego was not even nominated. Technically Guardians of the Galaxy had way better animation, including a fully CGI bionic raccoon.
Interstellar
Best Visual effects
This was expected as if they're going with scifi they will pick effects, even though Guardians of the Galaxy which wasn't nominated is a close tie.
Imitation Game
Best Adapted screenplay
Still Alice
Best Actress, Julianne Moore
Theory of Everything
Best Actor, Eddie Redmeyen
Selma
Best song, Glory
Birdman
Best Picture!
Best director, Alehandro Gonzales Inarritu
Best Cinematography
Best Original Screenplay
The Oscars listened to the critics that liked both Boyhood and Birdman and possibly to Kal Kat, and decided that even though Boyhoood was a tie for best, it was late, and Birdman was on time, so it got the win!
Grand Budapest Hotel
Best makeup
Best costumes
Best production design
Best original score
Won't get movie but will get something, but really Guardians of the Galaxy should have been nominated for this. They had a lot of good makeup on Zoe Sandara and others.
Costumes? They were better than the ones in Boyhood? Okay.
Well it is a close tie for production design, as it was pretty cool in both Boyhood and this film. Boyhood gets is really just for the years it took finishing it. Nope though, as Oscar liked this other one.
American Sniper
According to wiki long before results, best picture, best actor, Bradley Cooper
Best Sound editing
Well, when they win this it is possible they won't win the big one.
If it gets best picture, it's because it ends depressing, not because of the hype about the trail of the dude who killed him afterward, after he took a mentally troubled friend to the target range, and his friend wigged out and killed him. The hype should not have sold the movie to Oscar. It hasd to be the closing credits depressing part. Oscar loves that.
Birdman also had a downbeat ending but a better one, more Black Swan than There Will Be blood.
Kat likes movies not based on reality. He wants to be entertained not see reality. Reality is everywhere. Boyhood also was kind of a 'reality' flick, but more of a Mary Sue fable.
Boyhood
Best supporting actress, Patricia Arquette
Winning this sometimes clinches the title of best picture, except for last year.
Whiplash
Best supporting Actor, J K Simmons
Sound mixing
Film editing
When did this movie even come out?
That's a bold one, film editing, when Birdman is one long continuous awesome film take, and Boyhood took over a dozen years!
Big Hero 6
Best animated film
No, the Lego Movie was way better, but it's Pixar here, so they win without trying. Lego was not even nominated. Technically Guardians of the Galaxy had way better animation, including a fully CGI bionic raccoon.
Interstellar
Best Visual effects
This was expected as if they're going with scifi they will pick effects, even though Guardians of the Galaxy which wasn't nominated is a close tie.
Kal Kat best pictures diffier greatly from 87th Academy Awards in 2015
The 87th academy awards will be about 2014 movies, many of which weren't even seen, so it is quite hard to come up with a reasonable best director, actor, or actress, so the review does not go there.
Best picture will fall to Boyhood as in the end the academy doesn't get movies like Grand Budapest Hotel or Birdman. Budapest is still too long ago (February 2014) and too niche to make any kind of win. Birdman makes fun of Hollywood through theater and for that reason they will likely be squeamish to give it a nod for that.
However, Michael Keaton might very well win best actor.
Each year the action picture and the science fiction picture are left out, and that has not changed. Even though Interstellar and The Lego Movie and Guardians of the Galaxy were better than anything dramatic or boring (old codger stuff) this year, they were all not nominated. Interstellar could win something small like sound our visuals, but it will not make any waves otherwise.
Like call in American Sniper, Foxcathcer and others are just there to pad the thing. Sniper is too niche also, appealing ambiguous about snipers and 'realistic' movies where there are no Hollywood endings. (Cowboy movies of the past, like that one about blood did this). Sure Oscar likes those kinds of movies, but it is too soon (wide release late December), and also seems to be not liberal enough. Favored among old conservative Fox watchers, it will not make best picture. That's Boyhood. (Kat has not seen Sniper and could not rate it and he did not see Foxcatcher or Nightcrawler either).
Foxcatcher would be odd if it won anything.
The Grand Budapest Hotel, Kat's choice for best picture, best comedy, and best original story, is noted but he is not the old Oscar people.
The Lego Movie will get an honorable mention in Kat's review as he left it out.
The Guardians of the Galaxy will not get anything, but it is best science fiction film, best superhero film, and best comedic fantasy of the year as Kat's reviews indicated. Making a special category for fantasy makes sense.
Interstellar wasn't really worthy. It had cool visuals but it's no best picture, and certainly not best actor or actress material.
Birdman gets Kat's review for best drama and best actor if they had one. It is possible eaton might win best actor for that film.
Worst pictures were off also, because the only bad movies this year Kat saw were Terenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 5 and Transformers Age of Extinction. They were nominated for Razzies! (Kat is not in the Razzies).
Best picture will fall to Boyhood as in the end the academy doesn't get movies like Grand Budapest Hotel or Birdman. Budapest is still too long ago (February 2014) and too niche to make any kind of win. Birdman makes fun of Hollywood through theater and for that reason they will likely be squeamish to give it a nod for that.
However, Michael Keaton might very well win best actor.
Each year the action picture and the science fiction picture are left out, and that has not changed. Even though Interstellar and The Lego Movie and Guardians of the Galaxy were better than anything dramatic or boring (old codger stuff) this year, they were all not nominated. Interstellar could win something small like sound our visuals, but it will not make any waves otherwise.
Like call in American Sniper, Foxcathcer and others are just there to pad the thing. Sniper is too niche also, appealing ambiguous about snipers and 'realistic' movies where there are no Hollywood endings. (Cowboy movies of the past, like that one about blood did this). Sure Oscar likes those kinds of movies, but it is too soon (wide release late December), and also seems to be not liberal enough. Favored among old conservative Fox watchers, it will not make best picture. That's Boyhood. (Kat has not seen Sniper and could not rate it and he did not see Foxcatcher or Nightcrawler either).
Foxcatcher would be odd if it won anything.
The Grand Budapest Hotel, Kat's choice for best picture, best comedy, and best original story, is noted but he is not the old Oscar people.
The Lego Movie will get an honorable mention in Kat's review as he left it out.
The Guardians of the Galaxy will not get anything, but it is best science fiction film, best superhero film, and best comedic fantasy of the year as Kat's reviews indicated. Making a special category for fantasy makes sense.
Interstellar wasn't really worthy. It had cool visuals but it's no best picture, and certainly not best actor or actress material.
Birdman gets Kat's review for best drama and best actor if they had one. It is possible eaton might win best actor for that film.
Worst pictures were off also, because the only bad movies this year Kat saw were Terenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 5 and Transformers Age of Extinction. They were nominated for Razzies! (Kat is not in the Razzies).
Thursday, January 15, 2015
The 2015 (2014 movies) 87th Academy Awards Nominees
The 2015 87th Academy Awards Nominees
Best Picture
“Birdman” – 9
“The Grand Budapest Hotel” – 9
“The Imitation Game” – 8
“Boyhood” – 6
“American Sniper” – 6
“Whiplash” – 5
“Interstellar” – 5
“Foxcatcher” – 5
List from the Washington Post
The buzz here is that Imitation Game is pretty good, but best picture? Foxcather? No. Not best picture. Okay, but not. Never even heard of Whiplash.
Boyhood we've seen. What a boring piece of crap. Not even worth a nod. So it's neat to show some kid go through puberty, for hours. That doesn't mean I have to sit through this again. Sure Oscar will give it best picture.
The caper movie is way more fun and interesting, with great acting, (Budapest Hotel), which I;m surprised they even remember. But they like long tired drawn out movies.
The only saving grace might be that Birdman gets it, except it mocks Hollywood and thus might no. Maybe they will decide they hate teenagers and not give Boyhood anything because they don't like them. I doubt this. They will likely nominate it just to piss everyone off.
Movies the Clara Awards and Kal Kat saw:
Birdman
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Interstellar
Guardians of the Galaxy
They snubbed Guardians of the Galaxy.
Oscar did this because they are old codgers and have no patience to sit through fun comic book movies, and comic books have always been shoved off somewhere.
It was only a few years ago that a Batman movie won an Oscar, for Heath Ledger in the Dark Knight, and that film was best picture in some circles too. They may not go through that again.
Marvel movies are probably an acquired taste, but still.
They snubbed it also because it was too strange. The idea of a CGI tree man and a raccoon is just on another plane from the, and you can't give an Oscar to a CGI creature. But it could have been in the animated category and then you can. So there.
Hence the need for best fantasy film, Guardians of the Galaxy, of which you could also include Interstellar. Remember it best of the year, not best ever. Even Harry Potter won some awards for fantasy films.
The new Hobbit movies weren't even mentioned. This is a snub. They were kind of a broken long bloated mess, but at least a nod would have been nice. If only there had been just two, or if not, 3 movies but they were only 90 minutes each and they cut out the extra boring stuff. Yes, a snub, but at least they needed mention. How about sound or special effects, or location set design. On that front they were brilliant. I guess the high frame rate bothered the old guys too much.
Animated Film
“Big Hero 6”
“The Boxtrolls”
“How to Train Your Dragon 2”
“Song of the Sea”
“The Tale of the Princess Kaguya”
List from The Washington Post
The last two on this list don't make any sense paired with the others. They're non events. Nobody has heard of them. How Oscar heard of them is curious.
The Lego Movie should get a nod for animated CG film and for song, "Everything is Awesome" in league with the Kids Choice Awards. But even the Clara decided it was simply too long ago and too obvious for old Oscar fogies, perhaps even too strange for them to get. Best picture it is not. Best fun original film it is at times. Best children's movie of the year it definitely ranks at.
Best Animated Film nominees Clara Awards or Kal Kat saw:
Boxtrolls
Big Hero Six
How to Train Your Dragon 2
They snubbed The Lego Movie, but in January so did we.
We did not rate Best Director, Actor, Actress, production, make up, song, design or any of that.
Our call for Best Picture of the Year was Guardians of the Galaxy.
Oscar will pick Boyhood because it is long and plodding and boring.
Our choice for drama of the year was a split decision. Birdman won for dark comedy and drama, while Grand Budapest Hotel walked away with straight up comedy.
We were fairly in line with the Golden Globes on that.
Best Picture
“Birdman” – 9
“The Grand Budapest Hotel” – 9
“The Imitation Game” – 8
“Boyhood” – 6
“American Sniper” – 6
“Whiplash” – 5
“Interstellar” – 5
“Foxcatcher” – 5
List from the Washington Post
The buzz here is that Imitation Game is pretty good, but best picture? Foxcather? No. Not best picture. Okay, but not. Never even heard of Whiplash.
Boyhood we've seen. What a boring piece of crap. Not even worth a nod. So it's neat to show some kid go through puberty, for hours. That doesn't mean I have to sit through this again. Sure Oscar will give it best picture.
The caper movie is way more fun and interesting, with great acting, (Budapest Hotel), which I;m surprised they even remember. But they like long tired drawn out movies.
The only saving grace might be that Birdman gets it, except it mocks Hollywood and thus might no. Maybe they will decide they hate teenagers and not give Boyhood anything because they don't like them. I doubt this. They will likely nominate it just to piss everyone off.
Movies the Clara Awards and Kal Kat saw:
Birdman
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Interstellar
Guardians of the Galaxy
They snubbed Guardians of the Galaxy.
Oscar did this because they are old codgers and have no patience to sit through fun comic book movies, and comic books have always been shoved off somewhere.
It was only a few years ago that a Batman movie won an Oscar, for Heath Ledger in the Dark Knight, and that film was best picture in some circles too. They may not go through that again.
Marvel movies are probably an acquired taste, but still.
They snubbed it also because it was too strange. The idea of a CGI tree man and a raccoon is just on another plane from the, and you can't give an Oscar to a CGI creature. But it could have been in the animated category and then you can. So there.
Hence the need for best fantasy film, Guardians of the Galaxy, of which you could also include Interstellar. Remember it best of the year, not best ever. Even Harry Potter won some awards for fantasy films.
The new Hobbit movies weren't even mentioned. This is a snub. They were kind of a broken long bloated mess, but at least a nod would have been nice. If only there had been just two, or if not, 3 movies but they were only 90 minutes each and they cut out the extra boring stuff. Yes, a snub, but at least they needed mention. How about sound or special effects, or location set design. On that front they were brilliant. I guess the high frame rate bothered the old guys too much.
Animated Film
“Big Hero 6”
“The Boxtrolls”
“How to Train Your Dragon 2”
“Song of the Sea”
“The Tale of the Princess Kaguya”
List from The Washington Post
The last two on this list don't make any sense paired with the others. They're non events. Nobody has heard of them. How Oscar heard of them is curious.
The Lego Movie should get a nod for animated CG film and for song, "Everything is Awesome" in league with the Kids Choice Awards. But even the Clara decided it was simply too long ago and too obvious for old Oscar fogies, perhaps even too strange for them to get. Best picture it is not. Best fun original film it is at times. Best children's movie of the year it definitely ranks at.
Best Animated Film nominees Clara Awards or Kal Kat saw:
Boxtrolls
Big Hero Six
How to Train Your Dragon 2
They snubbed The Lego Movie, but in January so did we.
We did not rate Best Director, Actor, Actress, production, make up, song, design or any of that.
Our call for Best Picture of the Year was Guardians of the Galaxy.
Oscar will pick Boyhood because it is long and plodding and boring.
Our choice for drama of the year was a split decision. Birdman won for dark comedy and drama, while Grand Budapest Hotel walked away with straight up comedy.
We were fairly in line with the Golden Globes on that.
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