In The Weinstein Company's animated film Escape From Planet Earth, egotistical astronaut Brendan Fraser is sent to investigate an SOS from the Dark Planet - Earth.
The Dark Planet is the place where representatives of famous alien races have disappeared, including the Roswell aliens. National hero astronaut Fraser, with his media attention and his marketing, reminds me of an egotistical version of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, while his nerdy Mission Control brother Rob Corddry at BASA wants nothing to do with any kind of adventure. Actually the running joke in the movie was how nerdy Corddry got hot Sarah Jessica Parker to be his wife. When BASA's no-nonsense chief Jessica Alba sends Fraser into deep space to the Dark Planet, Fraser winds up at a 7-Eleven in the middle of nowhere and gets captured by William Shatner - and gets sent to Area 51. Now Corddry must leave his home planet of Baab to go rescue his brother on this strange dark planet called Earth.
This is a nice family film. The film has an impressive celebrity cast for an animated film, although I could barely tell their distinctive voices as I was too caught up in the characters themselves. I was expecting Ricky Gervais, as the computer, to have a larger computer role in the movie and was disappointed in that. 7-Eleven actually had a larger role in the movie than I would have thought. I was expecting just a simple product placement with 7-Eleven, but it actually had several scenes in the movie, with one of those fan-blown balloons becoming one of my favorite characters in the movie. It was rather sad to learn how and why Shatner became a bad guy who wants to wipe out all the aliens. The aliens at Area 51, Craig Robinson, Jane Lynch, and George Lopez were great as Corddry's friends.
In Moscow, high-ranking but corrupt Russian official Sergei Kolesnikov plans on incriminating political prisoner Sebastian Koch without a fair trail when Koch refuses to hand over a secret file believed to have evidence against Kolesnikov. Meanwhile, Courtney - who was arrested for an assasination - agrees to testify against Koch for a shorter sentence. Willis, arriving in Russia for his son arrives at the courthouse - just as Kolesnikov's men attempts their own explosive justice against Koch. Courtney and Koch escape into the streets of Moscow - with Willis and Kolesnikov's men, who are led by Radivoje Bukvic, now after them.
In this fifth installment of the Die Hard movies, this is perhaps the most dramatic Die Hard movie that I have seen, as well as the most dysfunctional family oriented movie in the series. Don't get me wrong - there is still a lot of action in the movie, especially with the car chase and the helicopters. It is a shame that Willis's wife Bonnie Bedelia is not in the movie. I would hope that in the next Die Hard film that Bedelia will be in the movie so that they can have the entire Willis family of Courtney, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Bedelia in a Die Hard film before Willis retires the character. Willis has expressed a desire to do a sixth installment in the franchise and it would be great to see the entire family. My favorite line of dialog in this movie was "the things we do for our kids."
The dysfunctional family dynamics between Willis and Courtney in partnership together, as well as with Koch and his daughter Yuliya Snigir working together were quite interesting - especially when all these characters all interacted with each other. That made these characters much more interesting than bad guy Kolesnikov. Even Kolesnikov's henchman Bukvic was more interesting than Kolesnikov. What happens to Kolesnikov was something out of The Godfather.
There are subtitles when the characters speak Russian, which added to the James Bond-like worldliness feel to the movie. It is interesting to see the evolution of the Die Hard series, from destruction in a claustrophobic building - and going beyond to a world wide scenario with MAD implications. Despite the americanization of taxi cab driver Pasha D. Lychnikoff, Russian security was pretty professional and the use of the military helicopter was intense. It is too bad that you did not see any official Russian response to the situations in the movie, you just saw the terrorist response.
I liked the scenes with the helicopter, the Mi-24 HIND. They actually shot the movie with the HIND firing live ammunition to get the most realistic action. This reminded me of Act of Valor and their live fire use of the Navy SEALsriverine warboats. While the car chase was a great car chase, especially with the Cougar HEV armored truckused by the terrorists, Willis did not care about what he was doing to other people with his cars that seemed very reckless and uncaring to me. What if I was in the cars that he was hitting?
This is the first Die Hard movie that was actually written as a Die Hard movie. The others were actually written as different movies and turned into a Die Hard movie. This is also the first Die Hard film released in the IMAX format.
Rated R for violence and language. Running time: 97 Minutes.
In Relativity Media's Movie 43, filmmaker Dennis Quaid tries to convince movie producer Greg Kinnear to buy his movie script. As Quaid does his pitch of what the movie is about, the film turns into a series of 13 short raunchy films and commercials of what Quaid's movie is supposed to be about.
Make no mistake, this is a raunchy film that will have something in the movie to offend everybody. While everyone complains that this is a bad movie, the audience I saw the movie with was laughing throughout the entire movie - so there is an audience that would appreciate this movie, like me. I will admit, however, that the short film I was uncomfortable with was "Machine Kids" which was about children working inside machines. This was especially relevant to me, as we had just replaced a numbers of copiers at work.
While Quaid did lead the movie from one segment to another initially to describe his film - the many film shorts, each one directed by a different director, eventually ran into each other making me feel like I was at home watching TV with commercials coming on. I had to remember - I am in a theater watching a movie.
Apparently the framing story of the movie is different in other countries. Instead of a movie pitch, the films are connected by teenagers searching for the most banned movie in the world apparently online. As a result of which, the title of the movie refers to the forty-third rule of the Internet - you can find anything on the Internet if you are willing to look for it long enough.
While everyone laughed at the movie, no one laughed at the Hollywood jokes except for me. That was mainly because the Hollywood jokes were not raunchy, but more of a satire on Hollywood which only the Hollywood industry people like me would get.
The movie had a lot of stars in the movie. I think one reasons the producers were able to get such an ensemble of stars to act in this movie is because the actors might have liked the idea of doing a short film for their segment, similar along the lines of a student film, which will not take up a lot of time for them to do. Although apparently Richard Gere tried to get out of being in this movie and that the actor's agents did not want their big client actors working for scale. I can imagine how Halle Berry's agents would feel having their beautiful client winding up in huge ugly makeup, or Hugh Jackman with his makeup.
When the end credits start to roll concerning the various short films - stick around as there is one more short film to be shown after the preliminary end credits that stars Elizabeth Banks and a raunchy animated pet cat, which is basically a raunchier version of the movie Ted. Actually when the preliminary end credits started to roll, I felt that the movie was short. The extra short film at the very end filled out the movie, making the entire movie feel like the right length of time to be watching a movie.
Rated R for sexual situations, language, nudity, violence. Running time: 94 minutes.
In FilmDistrict's Parker, Jason Statham is a highly principled thief who wants revenge against the gang who reneged on his share of the booty and tried to kill him.
Based on the novel Flashfire written by Richard Stark, pseudonym of writer Donald E. Westlake, and Produced and Directed by Taylor Hackford, the movie is similar to the movie Payback and which was also a Parker movie/book written by Stark. That is why the two movies are similar as other reviewers have pointed out, although Parker is a different type of film for Hackford since Hackford does not want to get stuck in any type of genre.
After pulling off a heist at a country fair, Statham is betrayed by Michael Chiklis when Chiklis wants to use the money from the heist to fund an even bigger heist. When Statham refuses to go along with the next heist and wants his share of the money, Chiklis has his gang try to kill him. When gang member Michah Hauptman leaves Statham for dead, Statham recovers and plans on getting revenge against Chiklis and his gang.
While Jennifer Lopez was the female lead in the movie and the one promoted for the movie, Emma Booth was Statham's love interest in the movie - especially since Booth's character is a semi-regular in the Parker novels. With Booth as Statham's love interest, Statham certainly did not encourage any relationship with Lopez. As a result, since Booth was the love interest, Statham and Lopez had no real chemistry despite Lopez's efforts. I had mixed feelings about Lopez's character in the movie as she was both a street-smart realtor and a ditsy divorcee at the same time, who seemed desperate to have a relationship after her divorce to take her away from this life. Patti LuPone as Lopez's mother, and their dog, had larger roles than I thought they would.
Michael Chiklis was was appropriately scummy as the leader of the gang doing the heist, although the gang itself were not strong enough characters to really appreciate their individual talents. Nick Nolte as Booth's father was not a strong enough character either to be the central godfather-like character connecting Statham, Booth, and Chiklis in their business - especially since Nolte had such a minor role in the film. I almost pitied Nolte as he has gotten quite old instead of mature, and was rather rundown looking in the movie.
Palm Beach, Florida was a beautiful location for the site of the next heist as Statham checks out hotels, mansions, and beach houses with Lopez and did make me curious as to what kind of heist would be the target at such a rich location.
I liked that Statham's character was highly principled, who conducts himself with a certain moral code, so I could relate to this anti-hero character as he does become the hero after the first act of the movie. As a former diver for the British Olympic Diving Team, Statham performed all of his stunts in the film - including jumping out of a moving car.
I saw the movie at a matinee so there was hardly anybody in the theater, but the audience reacted to the action so I can imagine a larger young evening audience would have reacted just as positively to the movie and had as much fun. For a novel character that has been around for 45 years as of 2013, I thought this was a fun movie.
Rated R for violence, language, nudity. Running time: 118.
In Arnold's first lead role since Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Arnold is a small town sheriff looking forward to a nice quiet weekend after most of the town has gone out of town for the local high school's football game - when escaped drug lord Noriega heads toward his town in order to cross the border.
This is a good ol' boy version of Jack Reacher and Seven Samurai, but not as intelligent. Although, the characters were quite relatable, even the small town bit townspeople It is too bad that Harry Dean Stanton did not have more to do. He would have been a great town character. It is kind of nice that the movie played up the fact that as a character, Arnold has been out of action for a while and played up his being old. International drug lord Noriega was a character more interested in power than being an intelligent bad guy, and his henchman Peter Stormare is even worse and more over the top as a character. With Noriega driving a modified Chevrolet Corvette C6 ZR1 as his escape car racing towards Arnold's small town and the Mexican border, the movie had a Mad Max type of feeling as well.
Forrest Whitaker is basically wasted in this movie as his character really was not very dramatic or kick ass as Noriega escapes from FBI custody in Las Vegas. It was also disappointing that Whitaker does not interact with Arnold and Arnold's people, except by phone - and that generally being about the legal jurisdiction between the two of them on their manhunt for Noriega. Johnny Knoxville and Luis Guzman were basically the film's eccentric comic relief.
Having the town shootout done with assault rifles instead of your typical six-shooter wild Western shootout was quite fun.
Rated R for graphic violence and language. Running time: 107 Minutes.
In Columbia Pictures Zero Dark Thirty, CIA operative Jessica Chastain conducts a decade long search for Osama Bin Laden after the events of 9/11.
Based on the actual events, and directed by Kathryn Bigelow, this film is more of a drama than a war movie. It is very similar in feel to Argo, especially with Kyle Chandler playing similar roles in both movies, although Argo was a more suspenseful film.
After the opening of 911 calls of 9/11, young CIA operative Jessica Chastain spends her entire career interrogating various detainees to the whereabouts of terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden, or Usamah Bin Laden - otherwise known as UBL. Most of the movie dealt with the years of pursuing leads to Bin Laden, until they finally located the compound where Bin Laden is. Considering how long it took in pursuing those leads during the decade, it made me impatient for the movie to get to the scenes with the U.S. Navy SEALs.
In actuality Zero Dark Thirty was originally about the unsuccessful decade-long manhunt for Bin Laden - and had to be rewritten after the news story of Bin Laden being killed. I think the original story would have been very depressing and unsatisfying to watch for a movie. As a movie, the reality of Bin Laden being killed is more satisfying to experience as a movie-goer. Not that I am promoting killing people, but that the bad guy getting justice was very satisfying in a movie setting. It is curious that the sequence on the raid on Bin Laden's compound is only a few minutes less than the actual SEAL assault. I liked that the stealth Black Hawk helicopters used in the assault came from the secret aerial base Area 51. and the GPNVG-18 (Ground Panoramic Night Vision Goggles) made the SEALs look like bug-eyed aliens. The SEALs added a sense of normalcy to the movie on their downtime. Although I was not happy that the movie did not show the SEALs training on a mock up of Bin Laden's compound.
Zero Dark 30 means the very early morning hours when it is still dark outside and most people are asleep, and is usually said as "oh dark thirty" in the military. This was basically the time when the assault by the SEALs on Bin Laden took place as the assault took place at night.
While the torture scenes in the movie were bad, they were not as graphic as what I have seen in other movies with torture. This was a surprise to me, as due to all the publicity and protests about the torture scenes in the movie, I was expecting something really graphic. I don't know if that means that the U.S. is nicer in their treatment of prisoners than the rest of the world or that Hollywood is pretty sick in making movies. These scenes were especially relevant with a news clip of the President of the United States Barack Obama denying that the U.S. employs torture.
In Universal Pictures Les Miserables, former prisoner Jean Valjean, Hugh Jackman, has been on the run from policeman Javert, Russell Crowe, for decades because Valjean/Jackman broke parole for stealing a loaf of bread for Jackman's starving nephew.
This dramatic movie musical based on the theatrical stage musical of Les Miserables by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg - which has been performing world-wide for over 25 years as of 2012, and is the longest running musical in the world - is a musical where 99% of the dialog is sung. As a result, you have to really listen to the lyrics of the songs to follow the plot of the movie - which is based on Victor Hugo's novel Les Miserables, considered to be one of the longest books ever written. What is great is that instead of listening to a playback of the music and then singing the songs, the actors actually sang the songs while they were acting - thus giving more of a performance for the camera as they sing. Set during the time of the Paris Uprising of 1832, otherwise known as the June Rebellion, the story of Les Miserables follows Valjean/Jackman as he transforms from escaped parolee to prominent mayor who undertakes an obligation to rescue the daughter, Cosette - a young Isabelle Allen and Amanda Seyfried - of his former factory employee Fantine, Anne Hathaway, who was thrown out on the street. Although it was a little confusing for me and took me some time to realize that she was being ostracized by the rest of the factory employees for Fantine/Hathaway sending money to her illegitamate child Cosette/young Isabelle Allen.
In all these years, I had never seen the musical Les Miserables or read the book. I have only heard clips of the music and knew of the general story of Javert's manhunt of pursuing Valjean. While my musical theater family and friends were not happy with the stars singing performances in the movie - and with good reason, especially with Crowe's singing - they loved the ensemble cast. It seems like the producers just got stars to make the movie so they can have a greater movie audience. Personally, I accepted the stars, except for Crowe's singing. At least the movie did have some of the Les Miserables stars from the musical production performing in the movie, and the ensemble cast throughout the movie were great. Several of the ensemble cast had performed in various stage productions of Les Miserables, so it was great to have them performing in the movie.
I was blown away by Hathaway's emotional performance of the song "I Dreamed A Dream." I could feel her pain of hitting rock bottom in her life and never climbing out of the hole that she is in - even if her singing might have been a little rough, but that roughness added to the emotion of the song for me as Hathaway did not want to sing it pretty considering the scene. Hathaway supposedly blew everyone away at her audition, leaving them in tears, and I would not be surprised if she had used this song for that audition. Hathaway also cut her hair and lost weight for the role as the sickly Fantine. Make no mistake, this is not a pretty Broadway movie - but a dark historical movie, dealing with the various castes of historical France as well as the bloody Paris Uprising of 1832 from which Hugo's novel is about. Having Hathaway's mother, stage actress Kate McCauley Hathaway, being the first Fantine in the First U.S. National Tour of Les Miserables makes a nice continuity touch with Hathaway portraying Fantine in the movie. Young Isabelle Allen as the young Cosette was very good for her age when she performed. Young Daniel Huttlestone was also good as the young Revolutionary urchin Gavroche.
Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter as Samantha Barks/Eponine's parents - and cruel guardians of the now motherless Cosette/Isabelle Allen - added to the comic relief to the movie, which was a nice contrast to the darkness of the rest of the movie, thus giving their part of the movie a Sweeney Todd type of feel to the movie.
I felt the sudden romantic triangle with Cosette/Seyfried, Marius/Eddie Redmayne, and Eponine/Barks was an obligatory love story - especially when Marius/Redmayne spots Cosette/Seyfried across the way and it is love at first sight, which totally made this plot point unreal for me. Having Cosette/Seyfried losing the hardness of her childhood and becoming seemingly innocent again was also unreal for me. I felt she should have kept her cynisism when initially meeting Marius/Redmayne. But eventually this romantic triangle became an integral story plot to the rest of the movie and made sense, however it did take awhile for this love story to become acceptable to me. I was not happy that the revolutionaries were too well off to be downtrodden citizens, especially Marius/Redmayne with his rich uncle. The revolutionaries were basically liberal college students protesting against the conservative establishment rather than being real downtrodden citizens. The revolutionaries became acceptable to me when they were singing their song of revolution "Do You Hear the People Sing" with the citizens, but otherwise the revolutionaries were still liberal college students instead of poor French citizens.
I was surprised that the movie was not in 3D, but Director Tom Hooper felt that it would not receive a wide enough audience if the movie was in 3D. From the opening shots, the movie would have been great in 3D and would have been one of the first 3D musicals - if not the first 3D musical. As it is, the movie was very visual for material originally developed for the theatrical stage. The Paris Uprising in the movie were actual battles, and not a light show such as shown in the 25th anniversary concert that I had seen on PBS, although the movie uprising was not as graphic as a real uprising would have been. Having Javert/Crowe leading the French soldiers seemed quite appropriate as the symbol of the oppressive establishment, especially as he goes after Valjean/Jackman. What I did not like about the story was that there was no reference to Valjean/Jackman's nephew or sister years later. They were the reason he went to prison. What happened to them? Instead of being with his family, Valjean/Jackman creates a new family with Cosette/Seyfried.
With Valjean/Jackman encountering the Bishop Colm Wilkinson, thus experiencing compassion for perhaps the first time in his life, Valjean/Jackman begins his journey to redemption for his sins of being a thief. This religious encounter basically transforms the rest of Valjean/Jackman's life as he takes on numerous responsibilities for himself and for other people's lives. Valjean/Jackman's redemption is perhaps my favorite theme of the movie - even as Valjean/Jackman struggles with moral consequences, especially when someone is arrested believed to be him - as Valjean/Jackman continuously turns to the God for help and I am glad the movie ended with this theme. I will admit that at the end of the movie, I teared up - which I think was mainly due to this theme, and I am glad of that.
After the movie was over, the audience applauded.
Rated PG-13 for violence and sexual situations. Running time: 157 Minutes.
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