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The Avengers
Like "Transformers," but with a story

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Renner, Samuel L. Jackson, Gwyneth Paltrow and Clark Gregg
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of sci-if violence and action throughout, and a mild drug reference)
Perhaps
the most anticipated summer movie of 2012 has finally arrived. However, did “The
Avengers” live up to the hype? Well, I will answer that question and offer my
comments on the film right now.
I think we all knew this was coming. When “Iron Man” released it was a thought.
When “Iron Man 2” released it was probable. When Marvel announced the releases
of “Thor” and “Captain America: The First Avenger” it was a sure thing.
“The Avengers” starts off in a very big way with Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson)
and numerous government scientists studying a blue cube called the Tesseract, which
controls the portals between earth and other worlds (or something like that).
Out of nowhere Loki (Tom Hiddleston), the villain from “Thor,” appears. In “Thor,”
Loki was thrown off the edge of the universe, but in “The Avengers” he makes
his return. I’m not going to spoil what happened to Loki because I feel like it’s
a big part of the film. Anyway, he forces the scientists to join him. Then he
steals the Tesseract and leaves.
Nick Fury begins to call upon The Avengers.
This is where the film began to drag for me. We get brief introductions of Natasha
Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey
Jr.), Bruce Banner/Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris
Evans). They capture Loki and board him on a plane to hold him until the Tesseract
is retrieved. Then, out of nowhere, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) shows up.
My biggest gripe with the film was that there is a lot more Avenger versus
Avenger action than there is The Avengers versus the bad guys. I also thought
Jeremy Renner sucked as Hawkeye.
I remember seeing the trailer for this film and thinking it looked too similar to
the “Transformers” films to be good. However, this film does something that “Transformers”
didn’t. It starts with a story to actually make you give a shit about the
action.
My favorite part in the film was a back and forth argument between Tony Stark
and Thor, in which Stark goes on to say, "Doth mother know that you weareth
her drapes?"
All in all I would say it was a good movie, and one I would watch again.
Score: 4 out of 5
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The Woman in Black
A decent ending can't save a lackluster screenplay

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Ciarán Hinds, Sophie Stuckey, Alexia Osborne, Alfie Field, Sidney Johnston
Rating: PG-13 (Thematic Material, Violence/Disturbing Images)
Daniel Radcliffe has done it again with another amazing performance; however, great acting is all that this movie has to offer. At roughly 95 minutes in length, The Woman in Black is painful to watch. The story moves incredibly slow in this short film, and vaguely describes what is going on. The viewer will more than likely be confused until about 75 minutes in. At this point, things do pick up a bit, but it is not enough to save the dreadful screenplay.
The plot is vague and confusing at first, and as I stated earlier, it takes the movie about 75 minutes to explain what is going on. Albert Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe), a lawyer from London, arrives in a remote village to take care of the estate of a deceased woman. However, when Kipps arrives, children start randomly dying. That is all we know for most of the movie.
For the most part, The Woman in Black is your typical horror movie. Director James Watkins uses the old horror film tricks to make the audience jump. For example, faces randomly appearing with a loud noise to accompany. Seriously Watkins, these tricks are getting old. Shame on you for making the audience jump with a loud noise. Loud noises do not make a good horror film. When I wet my bed from a horrific nightmare, then I know I have seen a good horror film, and I will not be breaking out the rubber sheets tonight.
Any slow-moving movie that is only 95 minutes in length is a recipe for disaster. Granted that the last 20 minutes are incredibly good, it is not worth sitting for over an hour to get to see something decent. If you are planning to see this movie in the theater, don’t. Save your money for the rental and find a better film to watch on the silver screen. It is hard to say anything that is overall positive about this movie other than that Radcliffe’s performance is great.
Score: 2 1/2 out of 5
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Death Race 2
Fire and sex a good movie does not make

Starring: Luke Goss, Lauren Cohan, Sean Bean, Ving Rhames, Tanit Phoenix, Robin Shou, Danny Trejo
Rating: R (Brutal Violence, Pervasive Language and Some Sexual Content)
Death Race 2 is an action-packed, sex-filled thrill ride that will make you want to puke your guts out after watching this disgrace to cinema. Director Roel Reiné fills the movie with slow motion explosions and fight scenes that drag out this craptacular scumfest. It could be an attempt to make Carl Lucas (Luke Gross) seem “badass,” but this is a failed attempt. In a nutshell, Carl Lucas is sentenced to a fictional prison where apparently prisoners fight to the death in a show known as Death Match to fund a news network. That’s right, a news network. When ratings go down it is up to September Jones (Lauren Cohan), the whorish host of Death Match, to create a more profitable and entertaining show that still involves violent prisoners killing each other; thus, Death Race is born. Lucas’ “badass” skills are often poorly displayed in this movie through a collection of lame special effects, bad acting, and poor cinematography. It is almost laughable at times how lame tough guy Lucas is.
In spite of everything previously stated, Death Race 2 does offer something that I did not think was possible. It rivals Michael Bay’s Transformers series in how much action it brings to the table. If there were an award for directing the most action-packed movie, Roel Reiné would take Michael Bay any day of the week; however, we must remember that lots of action does not make a good movie. In fact, it usually makes an incredibly bad movie.
I believe this movie was made to be a guy’s dream movie; however, it turned out to be a complete nightmare for everyone. I pity those who have watched this movie. If you like sex-filled action movies, go find another movie other than this one because I refuse to recommend it to anyone.
Score: 1 out of 5
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Bridesmaids
Women can be just as crude (and funny) as men
Starring: Kristen Wiig, Rose Byrne, Maya Rudolph, Chris O'Dowd, Melissa McCarthy, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ellie Kemper, Jill Clayburgh, Rebel Wilson, Matt Lucas, and Jon Hamm
Rating: R (Some Strong Sexuality, and Language Throughout)
I was excited to see Bridesmaids when I saw that it had Kristen Wiig in it because I am a big fan of Saturday Night Live and, let's be honest, she is the best thing about that show. It wouldn't be the same without her. And Bridesmaids wouldn't be the same movie without her. Sure, it is really funny, especially the airplane scene, but it's Wiig's comedic flair that drives that particular scene as well. She deserves to be in more movies. Rose Byrne as Helen is probably my other favorite performance of the movie but I like Maya Rudolph as Lillian and Melissa McCarthy as Megan as well.
My absolute favorite thing about the movie, though, is how SERIOUS it is. This isn't just raunchiness for raunchiness's sake. There's an actual HUMAN element to the film. For example, Megan isn't just a silly overweight woman who is in Bridesmaids to make us laugh; she reveals herself later on in the movie to be quite a good friend to Annie (Wiig). It's the little things that count in a movie like this and there are plenty of memorable scenes that weren't humorous in the least. I could see some people crying because of some of the scenes in Bridesmaids but I wasn't one of them.
Crude humor isn't just for the boys anymore. Bridesmaids proves that. There are scenes in this movie that are just as dirty as the dirtiest scene in a movie like The 40-Year-Old-Virgin. Is that a coincidence? Well, Judd Apatow directed that film and he produced Bridesmaids so I doubt it. I have really liked all of Apatow's movies except a select few craptacular ones like Drillbit Taylor, You Don't Mess with the Zohan, Step Brothers, and Year One. Add Bridesmaids to the ones that I somewhat loved. Despite a few jokes that fall flat, Bridesmaids is really a great movie, and one of the funniest I have seen in a while. I mean that.
Score: 4 1/2 out of 5
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Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
You know that feeling you get when you see a really great movie? I don't have it
Starring: Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Geoffrey Rush, Ian McShane, Kevin McNally, Sam Claflin, Astrid Berges-Frisbey, Richard Griffiths, and Keith Richards and Judi Dench, both for less than a minute
Rating: PG-13 (Action/Adventure Violence)
I went into Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides expecting to be blown away. I wanted a plot that made sense (that's asking a lot out of the Pirates movies). I wanted awesome fight scenes. I wanted Will and Elizabeth. I wanted Captain Barbossa. Instead, what I got was very little if any ingenuity, a nonsensical story about the Fountain of Youth and mermaid tears, swords crashing against each other so loudly that they sounded like gongs, no Will or Elizabeth, a cranky Barbossa that I hated, and, in my opinion, the third best movie in the series (it's slightly better than At World's End).
Don't get me wrong. It may sound as if I hated the movie but I did not. I liked it, but I found it merely decent. I do, however, hold the belief that the only reason people keep watching these movies is because of Johnny Depp. Who can blame them? I myself love Depp and I love his Jack Sparrow character. When I bashed the other Pirates movies for whatever reason, it wasn't because of him. He is fantastic. Sparrow is one of the few characters throughout film history to completely transcend the movies surrounding him. This is because of Depp's greatness and his dedication to the role.
Joining Depp this time is the gorgeous Penelope Cruz as his former lover Angelica. Cruz is quite good in the part and the chemistry between her and Depp is electrifying. They provide some of the most memorable back-and-forth scenes in the movie. I was extremely let down by Geoffrey Rush this time around as Barbossa but I disliked more the direction his character takes than Rush's acting. Barbossa was already mean enough, the right sort of mean, and for some reason the screenwriters decided to make him even more mean and it's the wrong sort of mean. I grew to despise him with a passion over the course of the film. I enjoyed Ian McShane as Blackbeard but he started to sound like the bad guy from a really cheesy SyFy movie after a while.
The mermaids are very cool but the part of the plot that involves extracting one of their tears is not. Are...you...freaking...kidding...me? Remember in the last sentence of that last paragraph where I said the thing about cheesy SyFy movies? Extracting a tear from a mermaid in order to drop it into the water from the Fountain of Youth so that it can become more potent sounds like something from a really cheesy SyFy movie. So did Aztec gold that turned people into skeletons at nighttime, Davy Jones being a squid and keeping his heart in a box, and a gypsy that turned into a giant and then dissolved into a bunch of crabs. That last one didn't just take the cake; it stole the whole damn bakery.
But hey, who cares really? We all go to these movies to see, as I said, Jack Sparrow but also to see what crazy fight scenes the filmmakers will throw at us next. I'd say that in On Stanger Tides, it's about half-good and half-awful. Most of the swordfights are too loud and frantic and one in particular gave me a splitting headache. Throwing in some crappy CGI did not help matters any. What happened to that great hamster wheel scene from Dead Man's Chest? There is absolutely nothing in On Stranger Tides that is as memorable as that. Still, I found myself entertained by a few of the action sequences. The chase scene toward the beginning of the movie in which Sparrow is attempting to escape from King George's (Richard Griffiths) guards is very well-done and really funny.
When I dug deep enough, I found that there was a large amount of enjoyment to be found in On Stranger Tides. If there is a Pirates 5 (God knows what the subtitle will be) in the works, as the end of On Stranger Tides suggests, I hope that a lot of work is put into the script and that the action sequences are handled with more care than in this one and At World's End. Orlando Bloom I could do without (he's more up my friend Jennifer Cortina's alley) but I want my Keira Knightley back. It was such a joy to see her in last year's Never Let Me Go and I really want to see her new film Last Night. It would also be nice to see Penelope Cruz return for the next installment. Know what else would be great the next go-around? BRING BACK THE OLD CAPTAIN BARBOSSA!
Score: 3 1/2 out of 5
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Scream 4
Welcome back, Sidney Prescott
Starring: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Alison Brie, Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere, Marley Shelton, Justin Michael Brandt, Rory Culkin, Anthony Anderson, Adam Brody, Kristen Bell, Anna Paquin
Rating: R (Strong Bloody Violence, Language, and Some Teen Drinking)
I generally hate any slasher movie with their horrible special effects and their dumbass characters (here’s looking at you, Friday the 13th) which is why I have enjoyed the Scream series so much: it turns slasher movies on their asses. The witty dialogue written by Kevin Williamson is something else: it manages to be both obvious and unexpected at the same time. A knife piercing someone’s flesh has never been so clever. Scream 4 follows in that great tradition. I don’t necessarily want to see a Scream 5 (or 5cream or whatever) but it wouldn’t bother me too badly either. Scream 4 is the first Scream sequel in over 11 years (Scream 3 was released on February 4, 2000) and Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson knew that making a fourth movie was a risk, and it unfortunately has not paid off critically. Scream 4 has a Metascore of 52 on Metacritic.com and 56% of critics liked it on RottenTomatoes.com. The user scores are somewhat better (a 7.0 on Metacritic and 64% on RottenTomatoes). I guess that I’m squarely in the user column because I liked it.
The real draw of the movie for me was the return of Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott. It’s great to see Neve back in that role she’s so familiar with. She doesn’t disappoint the fourth time around. She underreacts and hams it up and I loved it. It’s also very nice to see David Arquette and Courteney Cox back after their questionable movie choices (they were in the completely humorless See Spot Run, the awful Zoom, and they both were in the ridiculous 3000 Miles to Graceland) since the other Scream films. Arquette has never been all that great of an actor but he is a likeable one and I just don’t understand at all how Cox is not a bigger star because I have always loved her. Why am I going over the acting? The Scream movies don’t have a thing to do with great performances. Let’s move on.
I knew who at least one of the killers was before the movie even started (I guessed the other before they were revealed). I have seen the first three films so it was pretty easy. The twist of who the killer(s) were from the first three movies was a surprise (and, in the case of Scream 3, also stupid). This time around, the surprise came from the sudden change that one of the characters goes through after being revealed as one of the people behind the Ghostface mask. What commences after that revelation is one of the best scenes in the movie.
I did not care for the scene that came right after that one or the rest of the movie for that matter because the ending felt strange and out of place. I noticed some bad things in the rest of the movie as well. There are several recycled elements from the previous Scream films despite the movie’s tagline of “New decade, new rules”. Scream 3 was in a new decade from the previous two movies as well and one of its taglines was “The scariest scream is always the last”. Whoops. That wasn’t true and neither is this “new rules” thing. This Scream plays by the same rules as the others did and doesn’t make an attempt not to. I’m glad it didn’t in a way.
Call me crazy, but the original Scream is one of my favorite movies. I have seen it several times over the course of my lifetime and I never grow tired of it. I saw Scream 2 again just the other day and still enjoyed it but I could go without watching it again for a while. I want to see Scream 3 again, even though I barely liked it (which is mainly the reason why I haven’t watched it in a while). If I reviewed these movies on here, my scores would be as such: Scream – 5 out of 5; Scream 2 – 4 ½ out of 5; Scream 3 – 3 out of 5. Scream 4’s score is below. I liked it much better than the third but not nearly as much as the first two. None of them are as great as the original, nor do I think that if Wes Craven decides to do another that it will be either. As pertains to that statement, I will close with a quote from Scream 4, spoken by Sidney Prescott:
“Don’t fuck with the original.”
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On DVD now:
Due Date
A road trip to nowhere
Due Date starts out with a guffaw, settles to a snicker, and then dissolves into silence and nothingness. It’s as if halfway through the screenplay the writers went, “Okay, that’s enough comedy. Let’s just throw in a bunch of random stuff and see how people respond.” It doesn’t work. I won’t lie; I laughed at quite a bit of the lines in the movie. That does not, and I repeat DOES NOT, make it good. What the main characters, Peter Highman (Robert Downey Jr.) and Ethan Tremblay/Ethan Chase (Zach Galifianakis), say is funny from time to time but the plot is falling apart around them.
I covered my eyes in frustration as Tremblay/Chase fell asleep at the wheel of a car and it careened off a flyover, nearly killing him and Highman in the process. That was ridiculous and unnecessary. Another example would be the scene involving the two getting high and unintentionally arriving at the Mexican border. Tremblay’s explanation to Highman? “I thought that said Texaco. We’re low on gas.” That line is kind of funny but the situation surrounding it, not so much. It doesn’t even make that much sense. About half of Due Date doesn’t make any sense.
Downey isn’t even really trying and the script doesn’t require him to. He isn’t bad or anything but this is far removed from what we saw in Tropic Thunder. Galifianakis does what everyone has grown accustomed to him doing: acting goofy and being random. His best performance to date was in what I consider to be an extremely underrated movie, It’s Kind of a Funny Story. Still, he probably is the best thing about Due Date. I had to laugh at the Sheila Pimples line and when he said, “I got ninety friends on Facebook, twelve of them are pending, but I got ninety friends.” Galifianakis can make me laugh anytime he wants to.
So I didn’t like Due Date. There will be people who do like it. More power to them, I say. But I prefer my comedies to make a little more sense. I want more of an explanation for why the characters are doing what they are doing. I want to laugh much more often. I recently saw a movie called (500) Days of Summer. That is an example of a great comedy with a great plot. I wish Due Date had more of its qualities. I am a huge fan of both Downey and Galifianakis, but if I want to see them in a comedy again, I’ll watch Up in the Air or Bowfinger instead.
Score: :(:(1/2
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Somewhere
Actors have it tough
There are going to be people that like Sofia Coppola's Somewhere and there are going to be people that hate it. I liked it a good bit. I could imagine my brother Caleb calling it "boring" as he so often has a habit of doing with many movies (I think that has something to do with his intellectual prowess because he liked Rob Zombie's Halloween II and I found it to be extremely boring). In this case, he would be right in a couple of scenes. As we get a glimpse of Johnny Marco's (Stephen Dorff) wild life, I found myself fading out every now and then. But in the scenes that really matter, especially the ones involving Johnny and his daughter, Cleo (Elle Fanning), I found myself glued to the screen, usually smiling.
I can say one great thing about the movie: it features Stephen Dorff's most impressive performance ever. This has been said many times, but he was born to play this role. I'm surprised he was cast at all. He's been a little under the radar lately (his last two films were Felon and Public Enemies, one of which many people have never even heard of) but he explodes onto the screen in Somewhere. I'm glad Coppola took notice of his considerable talents and let him have his way with the Marco character. It's a shame that the Academy didn't take notice as well.
I fully support any movie that gives us an inside look at how somebody does their job. In this case, Johnny Marco is an actor. We get to see how he deals with that fact. We get to see how an actor handles raising a child. Somewhere may not be all that genuine, but it feels that way, and that's all that one can hope for out of a movie. There are many movies that feel overtly phony in execution and there are many that are so realistic it's unbelievable. Somewhere falls somewhere around the middle.
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Rabbit Hole
The sting of loss
There are a few scenes in Rabbit Hole that fall flatter than a G chord on a guitar that is out of tune but overall I found the film to be very engaging and pretty honest about human nature. There is nothing wrong with making a movie about losing a child. It has been done several times in the history of cinema. Some of the movies were good (The Orphanage) and some were bad (Reservation Road). I think that it all boils down to how interesting the characters are. Rabbit Hole nails that little detail.
Becca and Howie Corbett are two such interesting characters played by two great actors, Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart. Their son, Danny, was struck by a car while chasing his dog and died. They don't quite know how to deal with this loss. Do they blame themselves? Do they blame the boy who hit Danny with his car despite the fact that he was doing nothing wrong? Do they find consolation in themselves or in other people? Is there an easy way to get rid of the pain? The film answers all of these questions as much as the screenplay allows it to and it does so very beautifully, I think. There are several instances where I said to myself, "I would respond the same way."
Anybody who has ever had a child or lost one should see Rabbit Hole. There is something so picturesque about it. It is both funny and heartbreaking at the same time, often at exactly the same time. Few movies can achieve that. Few movies can achieve a lot of the things that Rabbit Hole does. I'm glad I saw this largely overlooked film. The fact that it was overlooked is a damn shame. It deserved more attention because it is a unique and thought-provoking experience.
Score: :D:D:D:D1/2
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127 Hours
More films should emanate from between a rock and a hard place
127 Hours is the most surprisingly great movie of 2010 and I say that because the whole movie basically revolves around one man stuck in one place for over five days. I hope that statement doesn't scare anyone away from seeing it. Because even though, yes, it is about a man stuck in a canyon, it is also about hope and how valuable life is. The hope in Aron Ralston's (James Franco) mind comes from memories of his past as he comes to the sudden realization that he has taken his life for granted. He uses this insight to push himself to do something that is very disturbing....okay, everybody in the world knows this by now, so I'll go ahead and say it: he cuts off his arm. Everyone at this point knows that 127 Hours is based on a true story and how that story ended.
There is one scene in the film in which Ralston has a flashback of himself as a child with "If I Rise" by Dido and A.R. Rahman playing in the background that nearly made me break down in tears (no easy feat to accomplish). It is just so beautiful. There are several beautiful scenes in the film. They are mostly hauntingly beautiful but there are a few that are visually stunning as well thanks mainly in part to the wonderful cinematography work done by Anthony Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak. The editing work done by Jon Harris is also quite good. It seems as if he may have had his job cut out for him and he pulled it off.
The film has a majestic score. I want a copy of the soundtrack. I could feel the music like it was inside my veins in certain scenes. I had to go back and double-check (shame on me) but the movie was indeed nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score and the aforementioned song, "If I Rise", was nominated for Best Original Song, and both deservedly so. I say that this movie had the finest score out of any movie last year. I also really liked Inception's score. The fact that the lead singer of Nine Inch Nails (a great band) won the award for The Social Network's score is a travesty. Outside of that one main theme nobody can remember a single bit of music from the movie.
There is no need to comment on the acting outside of Franco's amazing performance. I am so, so happy that he was nominated for Best Actor because as I see it he is one of the most under-utilized and underrated talents in the movie industry. I wouldn't say that this is his strongest work to date because I haven't seen many of the films that he's been in but I will say that it's his strongest work to date that I have seen. I saw him in the Spider-Man trilogy, Tristan + Isolde, Annapolis, Pineapple Express, and Eat Pray Love and not one bit of his acting in any of those films came close to matching that in 127 Hours.
The real Aron Ralston was very pleased with 127 Hours after he had seen the finished product. He disagreed with one or two scenes here and there, as I did, but overall we both loved the bigger picture. Mr. Ralston would certainly know more about this subject than I would, so I'll take his word for it. I'm just happy that he thought so highly of 127 Hours because I do as well. It's one of the best movies from 2010.
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