OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN

Film District

Rated R

Running time: 120 Minutes



Click below to watch the Olympus Has Fallen trailer.



In Film District's Olympus Has Fallen, disgraced former head of Presidential Detail Secret Service agent and former U.S. Army Ranger Gerard Butler is on his own - when terrorists attack the White House and kidnap Aaron Eckhart, the President of the United States.

Directed by Antoine Fuqua, this is an action-packed political thriller that was a lot of fun for me to watch. It was basically Die Hard at the White House, although there were worldwide implications that were shown for the events that were happening in the White House. You got to see the security of the White House at work as well as Camp David as the Presidential family, including Ashley Judd and Finley Jacobsen, relaxes there. This is the most that I have seen Camp David in a movie, although I still would like to see more of Camp David in a movie some day.

While President Eckhart is having a meeting with the South Korean Prime Minister, a cable of North Korean terrorists, led by ex-North Korean terrorist Rick Yune invade the White House by air and ground. Working at the Treasury Department within eyesight of the White House, Butler rushes in to help to defend the White House - and winds up being forced back inside the White House. Butler then uses his Ranger skills as he goes up close and personal amongst the terrorists, while President Eckhart is trapped inside the White House bunker.

Angela Basset once again is the head of a government organization, this time she has a more meaty role to apply to an organization such as the Secret Service. Speaker of the House Morgan Freeman, as an actor also once again - due to the Presidential Line of Succession - acts as President. It has come to the point that I like these two worthy actors in these roles and I look forward for Basset to be an action hero in a similar role some day. Melissa Leo was great as the Secretary of Defense and reminded me that she is a lady I would not like to piss off.

Before North Korea became a topical enemy, the producers choose them because of their political mysteriousness years ago - as well as because the Middle East has been done to death as an enemy. As a result, I accepted North Korea as the enemy as well as being less obvious a security threat to the Secret Service.

What I did not like was that there were no U. S. Marines on Presidential Guard Duty at the White House, everyone was all Secret Service. It also appeared that there was only one anti-aircraft weapons system in place. You would think that there would be at least two anti-aircraft systems. I liked the fact that the civilian District of Columbia Metropolitan Police tried to back up the White House personnel and that the local military forces were sent in to back up the White House. Although you do not see what happened to the heavy terrorist forces that were outside. I also liked the fact that Butler's wife Radha Mitchell is a nurse and was dealing with the civilian victims of the attack at her hospital as the aircraft that attacked did strafe the surrounding territory around the White House - showing that there were consequences to the events, rather than just shooting up everything.

Rated R for violence and language. Running time: 120 Minutes.

Pancho 
All people smile in the same language.

 Pancho's Movie Reviews

OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL

Walt Disney Pictures

Rated PG

Running time: 130 Minutes




Click below to watch the Oz the Great and Powerful trailer.




In Walt Disney Pictures Oz the Great and Powerful, James Franco is Oz, a con artist carnival magician who gets caught up in a twister - and winds up in the Land of Oz.

Based on the works of L. Frank Baum and directed by Sam Raimi with music from Danny Elfman, this is a prequel to The Wizard of Oz from 1939 as elements from The Wizard of Oz is explained in Oz the Great and Powerful. Like The Wizard of Oz, at the beginning of the movie Oz the Great and Powerful, the movie starts out in black and white when it is set in Kansas - and turns into color when Franco/Oz arrives at the land of Oz. The aspect ratio of the movie also changes to the wider widescreen format and goes from monaural sound to surround sound when the movie is in the Land of Oz. And just like the original The Wizard of Oz, several characters from the black and white Kansas play characters in the land of Oz, such as Michelle Williams, Zach Braff, and Joey King.

After an unsuccessful magic show in a traveling circus, Franco/Oz gets caught in a twister while riding in a hot air balloon. When he arrives in the Land of Oz, Franco/Oz gets mistaken to be the Wizard that was described in prophecy. Franco/Oz soon gets recruited to save the Land of Oz from the wicked witch who had killed the king of Oz.

I liked the fact that the opening credits were created more like practical credits in line with the time of the movie instead of CGI credits and that practical sets were mostly used in the film. Elfman's music gives the movie a classic Hollywood movie feel to the movie. The song Almost Home from Mariah Carey is used during the end credits of the movie and is the only contemporary song in the movie. This is not a musical with characters breaking into song like in the original Wizard of Oz or as Disney musical animated fairy tale films tend to do.

While it has been years since I have read Baum's Oz series, and I have never seen the theater musical play Wicked, this felt like a true prequel to the movie The Wizard of Oz as we got to know much more of the characters from the original The Wizard of Oz movie. The story is such a tragedy, but the movie does set up the events to The Wizard of Oz movie that is set 20 years later.

I felt that Franco/Oz's relationships with the women in the beginning of the movie were a little too long to get to the story - but when Franco/Oz first arrives in the Land of Oz, it feels like riding in an attraction at Disneyland, which is quite appropriate as the movie was produced by Walt Disney Pictures. Disney had been trying to produce a film based on the Baum's Oz books since the late 1930's. Producer Joe Roth was happy to finally have a fairy tale with a male protagonist, such as the male protagonist in the origin story of Oz the Great and Powerful. Franco/Oz's desire to be a great man, obviously leads to him becoming Oz the Great and Powerful. Franco received magical training with magician Lance Burton in preparation for the role of a magician in this film. Franco and Braff reminded me of Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane. In fact, I could see Broderick and Lane doing their roles.

The twister was much more intense and violent than the twister in The Wizard of Oz. It was more like the movie Twister than the sanitized fantasy version that was shown in The Wizard of Oz. In fact there were several times that I expected Franco/Oz to be seriously injured during the various episodes of the movie.

I saw the movie in regular 2-D, but the movie was obviously designed as a 3-D movie. The movie does have some scary scenes that Raimi had to edit down to get a PG rating, which is Raimi's first PG film. For those of us who were scared as children from the original The Wizard of Oz, Oz the Great and Powerful is a scarier movie for children - especially the flying baboons. I am sure the movie is even scarier in 3-D.

Rated PG for violence. Running time: 130 Minutes.

Pancho 
All people smile in the same language.
 

WARM BODIES

Summit Entertainment

Rated PG-13

Running time: 98 minutes



Click below to watch the Warm Bodies trailer.



In Summit Entertainment's Warm Bodies, Nicholas Hoult falls in love with Teresa Palmer - the problem is Hoult is a zombie.

Based on the novel by Isaac Marion, this is a different kind of zombie film with a "dead boy meets girl" plot, which is actually a loose retelling of Romeo and Juliet. I like that Palmer's best friend Analeigh Tipton is a nurse, similar to Juliet's having a nurse, as well as having an "R" and Juliet balcony scene in the movie. Warm Bodies is also told from the zombies point of view with Hoult's voice overs, which I do not think I have seen before. Usually it is zombies just walking around eating people, and there is some of that in the movie - including Palmer's boyfriend Dave Franco. I don't think I have ever seen zombies starting to be cured before and regaining their humanity. These elements make the movie different from what someone may expect from a regular zombie movie. What is curious from a movie making aspect, is that the zombie actors chose not to blink on screen, until they started to become more human.

I think my favorite scene in the movie, aside from Hoult's first meeting with his best friend Rob Corddry as "M", was the Pretty Woman scene with Roy Orbison. Music was a very important part of Hoult being a zombie, and probably added the most humanity to me aside from Hoult's relationship with Palmer. Having Hoult's home being at an airport was an interesting location for zombies that I never considered before.

John Malkovich was great as the para-military Colonel of the surviving humans defending their enclave amongst the zombie outbreak, almost despotic in his zeal of protecting his people and with killing zombies. I liked his video about zombies. The Bony zombies - zombies that are all muscle and bones - were appropriately scary and were definitely the horror part of the movie. I just wish the Bonys were more graphic as well as the child zombies.

I would not be surprised if Warm Bodies becomes a cult classic.

Rated PG-13 for violence and language. Running time: 98 Minutes.

Pancho 
All people smile in the same language.

  Pancho's Movie Reviews

ESCAPE FROM PLANET EARTH

Rainmaker Entertainment

Rated PG

Running time: 89 minutes




Click below to watch the Escape From Planet Earth trailer.

 

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.

Rated PG for violence. Running time: 89 Minutes.

Pancho 
All people smile in the same language.
 

A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD

Twentieth Century Fox

Rated R

Running time: 97 minutes



Click below to watch the A Good Day to Die Hard trailer.



In Twentieth Century Fox's A Good Day to Die Hard, NYPD cop Bruce Willis leaves his home in American and travels to Russia to retrieve his wayward son Jai Courtney from a Moscow prison - and gets involved with Russian terrorist intrigue and the CIA.

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 SEALs riverine warboats. While the car chase was a great car chase, especially with the Cougar HEV armored truck used 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.

Pancho 
All people smile in the same language.

 Pancho's Movie Reviews


 

MOVIE 43

Relativity Media

Rated R

Running time: 94 minutes



 Click below to watch the Movie 43 trailer.

 

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.

Pancho 
All people smile in the same language.

Pancho's Movie Review
 

PARKER

FilmDistrict

Rated R

Running time: 118



Click below to watch the Parker trailer.

 

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.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.