Film Review : Godzilla (2014)

IMDB Score – 7.2
Rotten Tomato Score – 73%

Directed By – Gareth Edwards
Starring – Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Juliette Binoche, and Bryan Cranston

The world’s most famous monster is pitted against malevolent creatures who, bolstered by humanity’s scientific arrogance, threaten our very existence.

Finally.

I finally got around to seeing this film. It was my umber one most anticipated movie until I found out about “The Rover” and I decided to wait until the crowd died down to see it. Leaving the theater, I felt both satisfied and a bit underwhelmed, but overly glad I saw it. The film was given mostly good reviews but the bad ones seriously bashed the film for being poorly written, slow, and seriously lacking a gigantic creature from which the title gets it name. While all three are true in their own right, there are a lot of good things that happened in this film that left me wanting to see it again one day, and from hating the shit out of it.

Let me get this out of the way first. Bryan Cranston is amazing. He was easily the best part of the entire film and I’m including all the action, all the monsters, all the everything. The fact that he wasn’t in the film for all that much just goes to show how well he did because his character was the only one that I cared about and it wasn’t because of the writing. It was because of him. He gave a heart wrenching and intense performance. We all know how well he played Walter White. Hell, that character may go down as the greatest television character of all time when all said and done, but the man can flat out kill it in other roles. I hope this run of spotlight roles are an open window to him being used in more films because he alone is worth the price of admission. He was the best part of the film.

Besides him, the cast did what they needed to do. Juliette Binoche was in this for three minutes. “Happy Birthday! Okay, bye.” Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen were acceptable in their roles as a young husband and wife and Johnson did well in carrying the action. They needed a Japanese guy in this film and they got the most Japanese guy who we can almost understand in Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins just kind of followed him around. Cranston shined while the others just sort of glistened every once and a while.

The action! The action was pretty fucking awesome. I think I may have been one of the small minority of people to have actually seen (and own) Gareth Edwards first film aptly named “Monsters”, a low budget sci-fi flick with minimal action but gorgeous scenes of destruction. Well, they did a great job in hiring Edwards because I thought he directed the shit out of this. The film looked great. The pivotal scenes of monster on monster action were incredible and while they were few and far in between, delivered when present. I wish we saw a bit more Godzilla but the end justified the mean because the big fucking lizard out on a show for the last 20 minutes or so. I was almost cheering for ol’ lizard brain to crush more things. The evil monsters also had their own cool moments. They kind of reminded me of the bugs from “Starship Troopers” meets the thing from “Cloverfield”. That’s a good thing. They were both awesome. The reason why I was so excited for the film, the Halo jump, exceeded my expectations in being fucking gorgeous, intense, and creepy as shit. I mean, they used the goddamn music from 2001 when the monkeys discovered the monolith. I believe Wendy Carlos did that score but I’m not sure. It was dark and unnerving and a perfect compliment to the jump sequence. It was my favorite action set piece of the film.

There are faults though. The writing was pretty lazy and all over the place. I’ve always hated bringing in children during an action film for a couple reasons. The biggest reason is that you have to find a way for the damn kid to get saved. You think people wouldn’t get scared when a child is about to get killed because they rarely ever do on screen but no, everybody goes “OH NO. SAVE HIM.” It’s unnecessary and just distracting from the actual plot of the film. Unless you’re going to kill the kid and be original for once, leave that scene on the cutting floor. It’s a cheap way to create tension in a film with HUGE FUCKING MONSTERS THAT COULD CREATE TENSION.

There was also a complete lack of logic and results of a monster destroying an entire city. Everybody just kind of gets up afterwards and was like, “shit, a building just fell on me. That sucks.” This was more towards the end of the film but it still ticked me off.

Overall I enjoyed the film. I was into it any time there were monsters or Bryan Cranston on the screen and meh’d by it when there wasn’t. It still was a great sophomore film by Gareth Edwards and I hope he tackles more action movies in the future.

3/5

Suggested Viewing – The Host, Monsters, Pacific Rim

Film Review : X – Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

IMDB Score – 8.6
Rotten Tomato Score – 92%

Directed By – Bryan Singer
Starring – Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Jennifer Lawrence, Ellen Page, Nicholas Hoult, Halle Berry, Shawn Ashmore, Evan Peters, and Peter Fucking Dinklage,/strong.

The X-Men send Wolverine to the past in a desperate effort to change history and prevent an event that results in doom for both humans and mutants.

Dear 15 year old girls who walked into our theater half way through our movie,

I hate you. I don’t know who the hell your parents are, but they did a horrible job raising you. They probably did drugs and had you watch because only in that environment would two people learn such evil. First of all, how the hell did you even pay for this film? It’s New York City so on top of the $13 ticket you had $4 for 3D and $2.50 for super awesome sound. That’s an almost 20 dollar ticket. You either snuck in or had your horrible parents drop you off with their drug money because it’s the only reason to explain your behavior. You obviously don’t like X-Men because you missed the entire first half of the movie and instead of trying to catch up on the insane plot, you immediately sat down and started…fighting? You were slapping each other and yelling for the other to get off you. What the hell? There was about 150 people in there that put up with your bullshit but I wasn’t having it and neither was the person with me. We saw through your bullshit. You sat down next to the wrong people motherfuckers. At first we just stared at you hoping our demon eyes would stop your bullshit, but no. You had to pull out your fucking cellphones. Who the hell watches youtube videos, in a theater, with 150 people who paid to see it? Did you think that our parents gave us drug money as well? That’s not how life works and I’m sorry for your future. I had enough and yelled at you to shut up, and you did, for twenty minutes. By that point I just had enough and blocked you out mentally just like your parents blocked the love from your lives in which turned you into horrible douchey 15 year old girls. You may have ruined some of my movie, but I won at the end of the day because I will grow up with a happy life.

Don’t procreate.

So, I had to get that out of the way. It just had to be said and I’m sorry for the bad language but this is my website and I’ll do what I want. Now, let me say that my only experience with the X-Men franchise has been the movies, which I’ve only seen once a piece, and the Sega Genesis game in which Gambit was my favorite character. Did they use Gambit in any of the films? Yes, once, in the worst film of all time. So, two years or so ago when the “reboot” happened I was reluctant to go but it ended up being a good film mostly due to the fact that I have a man crush on Michael Fassbender. The sequel to the reboot was one in the same, perfectly acceptable and entertaining.

Now I’m not even going to try to re explain the plot. The whole first ten minutes of the film was spent by me trying to figure out what the fuck was going on and I wasn’t the only one in the theater to be in that situation. Various excalmations of “Huh?” “What?” and “Wait…wha?” were heard from the crowd. Slowly it started to take shape in my brain and I was able to enjoy the film. I’ll just explain a few things that the IMDB plot I ripped off doesn’t. Time Travel. Crazy future robots. Tyrion Lannister mustache. Drug addict Prof. X. Portal Girl. There you go, that’s the beginning of the film. What followed next was a serious genre flick that had very few holes and a lot of awesome shit to see.

I can’t tell you how long it took me to get over Peter Dinklage’s mustache in the film. I don’t know who decided to cast him as the “villain” but whoever did deserves a raise. I have no idea whether his character is an actual character in the Marvel universe and if he’s a midget but the use of Dinklage was just awesome. He’s my favorite part of Game of Thrones and any chance to see him on the big screen is amazing. I don’t think I’ve gotten over the mustache though. I laughed every time he came on screen for the first hour and I think I may have snickered for the second. Dinklage was great though. Seriously though, look at his fucking mustache…

I know. I’m twelve.

So along with the normal crowd of mutants, the film introduced us to possible the best one of all not named Magneto. Evan Peters plays Quicksilver in the film and I’ll be writing Marvel a letter urging them to make a film just about him. His parts in the film were my favorite of the whole movie. Without giving too much away, the jailbreak scene was one of the funniest and mesmerizing action scenes I’ve ever seen. The effects were gorgeous, the payoff was brilliant, and the gags were earned and not forced. Brilliant stuff there. I was disappointed that we didn’t get to see Quicksilver much after that though. He’s a great character and Evan Peters played him perfectly.

Hugh Jackman basically is Wolverine and one of the greatest casting choices of all time so I don’t have to explain why he was awesome in this movie. The other two leads, Magneto and Prof. X, played by four people, were also top notch, highlighted by the younger two of the four. I love Ian Mckellen, but Michael Fassbender is a much more frightening Magneto. Every time he is one screen I feel somebody is going to get hurt. He has the most control over his powers and when he uses them you actually feel hopeless. That is a seriously evil trait to possess. I’m not a big Prof. X fan but James McAvoy knows how to act and act he did. I thought he did a fantastic job. The old fellas did well although the film had a lack of Mckellen which disappointed me. It was one of the movies few faults.

Speaking of faults, there really weren’t many to seriously downgrade the film and the few there were have already been mentioned. I wish there was more time with all of the characters and the only reason there wasn’t was because the plot was really complex which left little room for fun. I’m not a huge comic book nerd so I go to these movies for fun. There just could have been a little bit more but it certainly didn’t detract from the film. It’s a great action film and really lifted the superhero genre back to its feet after the Thor movies failed to impress me and since the debacle of Iron Man 2. I’ll look forward to the next installment, hopefully with more Dinklage, but there won’t be.

That fucking mustache.

4.5/5

Suggested Viewing – The Avengers, Peter Dinklage in anything, Hugh Jackman naked

Film Review : Return of the Dragon (1972)

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IMDB Score – 7.3
Rotten Tomato Score – 100%
Netflix Watch Instant

Directed By – Bruce Lee
Starring – Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, Nora Miao, Ping Ou Wei, Chung-Hsin Huang, Tony Liu, and Jon T. Benn

A man visits his relatives at their restaurant in Italy and has to help them defend against brutal gangsters harassing them.

Okay, I’m going to have to admit something here. This is the first time, in my life, that I watched a Bruce Lee film from start to finish. You can now take the time to yell at me through your screen because I most certainly deserve it. The thing is, I haven’t really been into film my entire life. I first started getting into movies in high school and by then the television was so flooded by MTV crap that reruns of old Kung Fu movies just wasn’t readily available. I’ve known about the story behind the man and the events surrounding his death, as well as his sons death, but just haven’t been able to sit in front of the tube and watch his films. Hopefully now that most of them are available on Netflix, I’ll be able to view most of them. However, I must say, this movie was really bad.

Hear me out.

Did I enjoy the film? Hell yeah. Was it horribly dubbed, acted, written, and shot? Hell fucking yes it was. Oh my god was it bad. I didn’t expect Scorcese but my god it was like ever single film that ever parodied any Kung Fu movie. I guess that’s why the parodies exist. I just didn’t expect them to be so spot on. The dub over was so comically bad that I had trouble holding in my laughter throughout the course of the film. Have you ever seen “Kung Pow: Enter the Fist”? That’s one of my childhood movies that I know every line to. I remember thinking that they must have found the worst Kung Fu movie to parody cause there is no way films like that actually existed but I think this may be worse. Every line from any character was dubbed over like they were trying to make it sound horrible

I FUCKING LOVED IT.

Seriously. It was like a bad bad movie mixed with amazing Kung Fu from the legend himself. I wish I had gotten drunk while watching it because it would have made it that much better. By the way, watching a whole film amazed me more than watching a few youtube clips of Bruce Lee. The man was just a lightning bolt and seemed to have super human physical ability. The nun chuck scene and the final fight with actual Chuck, Chuck Norris, were both amazing and it was great to see them in the actual film rather than on the internet. I could have watched those two fight all day and the way Bruce Lee kicked the living shit out of the most inept henchmen every assembled left me in stitches. It was a blast.

This is going to be hard to rate because the movie from a film nerds point of view was a piece of shit, but from an entertainments point of view was amazing. Just watch it if you haven’t already because it’s a lot of fun.

1/5 Film rating
5/5 Fun rating

Film Review : Backdraft (1991)

IMDB Score – 6.7
Rotten Tomato Score – 73%
Netflix Watch Instant

Directed By – Ron Howard
Starring – Kurt Russell, William Baldwin, Robert Deniro, Scott Glenn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Donald Sutherland, JT Walsh, and Rebecca De Mornay

Two Chicago firefighter brothers who don’t get along have to work together while a dangerous arsonist is on the loose.

Before I talk about this movie, let me preface this by saying that I grew up in a fire house. My father and brother are firefighters and ever since I was born I have been around the men and women who dedicate their lives to this profession. I just wanted to state that to give my comments context.

This movie kind of sucked. However, this was not due to anything fire related.

First the good. There aren’t many firefighter films but this may be the most accurate in depicting what the job is like. Sure every example on screen is an extreme one, but those events do happen and I’ve seen it myself. The gigantic buildings covered in flames were a real representation of what it’s like when a fire starts eating everything in its path. Why am I explaining fire to you? Have you seen “Ladder 41”? Holy shit, it was like they wanted to make ever single fire look as crazy as humanly possible. Now, did Backdraft do this? To some degree yes it did, but the scenes of the aftermath including the charred remains and the effect fire has on the surrounding buildings…that shit was real. I was impressed with the way Ron Howard did his homework. They also captured the lingo, attitudes, looks, and environment that surrounds living/working in a fire department. None of the characters were really likable and that describes what a family is. A bunch of people who hate each other but will die for one another within a moments notice.

The actual story behind the film, give me a break. I understand this was the 90s, and a little cheese was needed but my god did the script suck. It was cliche after cliche after cliche. There was no originality in the story whatsoever and there were more plot holes than I could count. The last half hour of the film, while stunning in how it was shot, was completely stupid and rushed. The person we have been chasing the entire film for starting these fires had no real reason to do so and didn’t have an actual chance to explain until he was gone. We were told who did it, let it sink in for 27 seconds, and then BOOM, action set piece to end the film that was only used in the film for emotional impact, and there was none, cause none of the characters were likable in any way. I didn’t care. It was a horrible script.

Where did that Baldwin go by the way? Alec is off getting arrested for boozing while still turning in good work on TV. Stephen’s best work was in “The Usual Suspects” but that is compared to his work in “Biodome”. Daniel is a boozer without turning in good work on anything. What happened to William? It’s just kind of weird. Also, Robert Deniro, as high profile an actor as he is, did not get enough screen time. It’s a crime to use him as much as they did. As for Russell, I only like him when Aliens or eye patches are involved.

Don’t watch the film if you’re looking for a gripping thriller. Watch the film if you want to know how fire fighters live their lives when the shit hits the fan. Ron Howard certainly has better films, but as far as pure action goes, this may be his best pure action film. That isn’t saying much though.

2.5/5

Film Review : A Lonely Place to Die (2011)

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IMDB Score – 6.3
Rotten Tomato Score – 77%
Netflix Watch Instant

Directed By – Julian Gilbey
Starring – Melissa George, Ed Speleers, Alec Newman, Karel Roden, Kate Magowan, Garry Sweeney, Sean Harris, Stephen McCole, and Holly Boyd

A group of mountaineers in the Scottish Highlands discover a kidnapped girl and are pursued by her captors.

Being an adult is hard. I’ve been so busy lately that I’m starting to unintentionally neglect my hobbies which includes things like reading, writing, film, and music. Luckily for me, The week is going to be rainy and my workload had been light. I started off my lazy hobby life again by getting back to the service that I shell out twelve dollars a month for, Netflix. I’m somewhat of a movie hoarder. I always have the maximum amount of films on my Netflix queue and while it helps me keep unknown films in mind, it also gives me the horrible dilemma of choosing what to watch. I ultimately went for a shorter film towards the front of my queue and we landed on this, a thriller about mountain climbing and the perils of such an activity that includes murder and kidnapping. I never knew these fun activities were associated with each other but now I do. Thanks movies, now I’ll never go to Scotland.

The movie starts out pretty tame but soon accelerates into full on thrill ride. I’ve always enjoyed films that depict crazy events happening out in the middle of nowhere. This is where you get to see some creative story telling because James Bond can’t just pull a pen out of his ass and have it turn into a helicopter. This group of mountain climbers, led by Aussie actress Melissa George, stumble upon a girl who has obviously been kidnapped due to the fact that she was found in a hole with nothing but a breathing tube. The climbers are then tasked with outrunning the kidnappers while carrying along this little girl who while I understand is pretty exhausted, couldn’t be more of a pain in the ass.

I ended up liking the film. The middle act ended up being a pretty balls to the wall thriller that rarely let up. I’ve always been into those kind of films. The fact that it took place in the beautiful Scottish highlands also was an added plus because goddamn is it gorgeous out there. The cast did their jobs well and while the film certainly fell apart near the end I can’t really complain too much given the nature of the story. It could have been worse, but the end just seemed cliche and countered the uniqueness of the first two thirds. The film also happens to fall victim to having the badass evil villains be way to badass for their own accents. You know how Clint Eastwood stares down the people he is talking to and speaks in a tone of voice that screams how he doesn’t give a shit if you can understand him or not? Well, Clint is an American. The villains in this film have that hard and cold way of speaking, but since their Scottish I can’t understand a damn word of what they were saying. I had to turn the subtitles on and I hate having to do that when the language I’m listening to is English.

It was a completely serviceable movie though, with some great actions scenes including a couple falls where they either actually threw somebody off a cliff or they had a really awesome stunt dummy because it shocked me how real it looked. Certainly worth a watch on Netflix.

3/5

Suggested Viewing – Frozen (2010, not the animated one, the one with the ski lift), Touching the Void, The Loneliest Planet, Vertical Limit, Cliffhanger