Public Enemies

Movie Poster

Just saw this tonight. The story of famous bank-robber John Dillinger, played by Johnny Depp. Christian Bale (the Batman) plays FBI agent Melvin Purvis who is after Dillinger and other famous gangsters like Baby-Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd.

Overall, I’d say the movie was good. However, this was certainly not Depp’s best performance, in my opinion.

One thing that really pissed me of and stood out oh-so-often was the camera work. In some places, it just seemed damn-near amateurish. And a lot of scenes had the shitty “looks like a soap opera” kind of cameras. I don’t know how to describe it, but I’m sure you know what I mean.

Taking of Pelham 123

Last night, I continued the normal summer tradition of going and seeing a movie with friends.

Poster

The movie this time was “The Taking of Pelham 123”. Hadn’t really heard much about it besides the ad I saw before Star Trek (maybe, it was one of the movies I’ve seen before this summer). Turned out that it was pretty good, though. Had John Travolta and Denzel Washington. They’re pretty cool guys. One says motherfucker a lot and doesn’t afraid of anything.

Washington is Walter Garber, a bribe-taking, cool-headed motherfucker who ends up talking to Ryder (Travolta), a bad-ass stock trader who takes over a subway car to extort the City of New York.

Overall, it was pretty decent. I give it a B+.

Summertime

Aye, it’s that time again (actually, for me, has been for nigh on two weeks), which indubitably means that it’s movie-watching season.

The trend has begun again, and the movie this time was the new Star Trek movie, which I saw on Saturday. I’m not a Star Trek fan (nor am I a Star Trek hater), yet I was still easily impressed with this movie. J.J. Abrams of Lost and Cloverfield fame did quite well, in my humble opinion. I would say more, but I’ve slept since then. :P Disappointing, I know. :(

In other news, I may have a pretty cool job this summer, but I’m not sure on the details, yet, so I’m not pushing my luck by saying I have a job lined up or something like that. We’ll see. *hopes*

Movie: The Happening

Quick note: Since I’m lazy, I’ve been putting off writing some of these movie articles for a while. There are three movies I’ve seen and made articles about, so be sure to scroll down a bit and read them all. =) With that said, back to the movies!

The most recent movie I went to see was The Happening, M. Night Shymalan’s newest big-screen debut. It’s also one of the worst movies I’ve seen in recent times.

Since I’ve already said is sucks, I’m not going to not spoil the movie, so if you actually intend to see it (I highly recommend against it), then GO AWAY.

You’re still here? Good. OK, the movie opens with people in New York’s Central Park committing suicide. One person stabs a hair pin into her neck, construction workers just jump off the building they’re working on, the works.

Cut to a school in Pennsylvania. Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) is the teacher. Pretty sweet, right, bet you’d like Mark to be your teacher, huh? Wrong, he sucks at playing a teacher. It’s so unbelievable. Bad Part #1. He’s also having problems with his wife (Zooey Deschanel [anyone else think that’s one of the weirdest names they’ve seen?]), apparently.

Now, with all this talk of “terrorist activities” or whatever may be causing these suicides (“experts” on the TV are saying it’s some chemical that causes the basic human instinct to live to basically stop working, thus the suicides. In some way, they’re right. More on that later, though.), Elliot, Alma (the wife), his friend Julian (John Leguizamo), and Julian’s daughter board a train to Julian’s gandmum’s (ostensibly somewhere out in Bumfuck, PA where “terrorists” wouldn’t want to attack). The train stops in the middle of the line, and the characters learn that these “terrorists” are attacking smaller and smaller groups of people. Learning this, people start dissipating via cars and whatnot.

And this is where the movie takes a break from “normal” M. Light movies you see (I.E. you don’t figure out “what’s really happening” until the very end of the movie). Here (and this is barely thirty minutes into the movie) you learn the real reason to these suicides, but you don’t believe it at this point. You simply think, “No way, that’s dumb.” But it’s the truth. Wanna know what it is: IT’S THE GODDAMN PLANTS. Yes, the cause of the mass suicides is a chemical plants are releasing that acts like those described above.

Fucking plants. Bad part #2.

So, the rest of the movie is basically Wahlberg and Deschanel making up for their domestic problems, and getting farther and farther into the countryside with fewer and fewer companions (Julian and his never-seen-on-screen wife are long dead by now, leaving the daughter with the Moores). They finally end up at some Exorcist-inspired countrywoman’s house who is fucking nuts.

Long story short, the house used to be a stopping place on the Underground Railroad or equivalent, so a voice tube connects the main house to a shed in the back. Another long story short: the “plant attack” is supposed to peak that morning, and then suddenly drop off. Bad part #3. Well, as you can assume, the crazy old broad happens to go outside when the attack is at the peak, kills herself, all while Walhberg and company are staying inside. Wahlberg is in the main house, while the wife and kid are stuck in the shed thing. The communicate via the voice tube, and the guy decides that he doesn’t care that he might die, he wants to see the wife one last time. Luckily enough, the “attack” has stopped by this point, and they all live happily ever after.

The movie ends with the wife finding out she’s preggers and a news cast asking why the attack only happened in Northeastern US. Fade to France, where the movie ends with basically the same thing that opened the movie, only in Paris, not New York.

Another thing: I heard that the movie was supposed to be scary, but I didn’t think that it was at all. Sure there were some points, but it was more of “that’s gross” than “that’s scary”. The guy getting run over by a lawn mower, for example. Bad point #4.

I will also admit, there were some points when something casually mentioned turned out to be nice foreshadowing (like, when the crazy old bat mentioned the voice tube, or when the “scientist” on the TV said that attacks such as this one usually fall off very quickly after peaking). I enjoyed those parts, but overall, the movie was just bad.

Don’t waste your money on this one.

Rating: D-

Movie: Get Smart

The second cinematic adventure partaken with my friends was to the local cinema to see Get Smart. This movie was awesome. As expected, there were lots of spy v. spy action and one-liners from Mr. Carell.

Maxwell Smart (played by Carell) is an agent who works for the top-secret organization CONTROL. He is considered by his superiors an amazing analyst of data, but his real desire in life is to be a field agent. Even when he takes the field agent exam and does superbly, the Chief decides to not promote Smart due to his abilities as an analyst. Things are turned upside down, though when KAOS (the bad guys, obviously) find CONTROL’s base and ransack it. All the field operatives are compromised except Smart and #99 (played by Anne Hathaway), an agent who underwent cosmetic surgery to continue as a field agent.

Without going much more into detail, Smart and 99 are after KAOS’s top dog, Siegfried, who has control of many nukes, and isn’t afraid to show that he means business.

Overall, it was a really good movie and I enjoyed it greatly. Go watch it!

Rating: B+

Movie: Indiana Jones

Yes folks, it’s that time again. “that time” being summer, which means my friends and I are getting together for cinematic adventure. The first of these cinematic adventures, as I hope you can tell from the Title and picture above is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, AKA Indy 4.

First of all: I’m going to have to slap the haters. I really liked this movie, and I thought it was a good addition to the Indy series. Yes, it’s certainly not “up to par” with the first three, but still a pretty good movie.

OK, so with that out of the way, I do have to say I’m a bit disappointed with the storyline. Not giving away the ending, but seriously, George? Is that the best you could come up with for the ending. Still “fits” in an Indy movie, but another reason would have been far better.

Overall, the movie was really good. Good characters, good effects, good music. Everything was good, but definitely could have had improvements. Overall, as I said, this is deserving of the name Indiana Jones (and possibly better than Temple of Doom), but there was definitely room for improvement as well.

Rating: B

I Can Has Moives?

So, this article has taken forever to get up (sorry to the guest writer, whose article will be up after this one sometime), but here it finally is!

Last week, I went over to my friend Will’s house to do some regular “Hey, I’m bored, and so are you… let’s be bored together!” thing, when we decided to go see a movie. This particular move was “Forbidden Kingdom“. However, we missed the showing, so we ended up hanging out around Little Rock.

We decided to try again the next day at the local movie theater, only to be distraught when learning that they only show movies at 9:00 on Friday or Saturday. =/ So, Will and I, with Jason in tow decided to rent a movie instead. After perusing the aisles at the local Rental Centre, we decided on “The Prestige” (it’s one of those two movies about magic that turned up around the same time, the other being “The Illusionist“, which I haven’t seen). A quick trip to Will’s house provided us with a large plasma screen to view said movie on. The Prestige turned out to be a really good movie, but it was also fairly weird in it’s use of non-continuous plot presentation. There were multiple times throughout the movie where you would suddenly go back or forward in time, and it would take a while to realize it. Despite the drawback, the story was really good, and I would definitely recommend it.

Movie One (The Prestige): B+

Being a bit disgruntled at not being able to see The Forbidden Kingdom two days in a row, Will, Jason, and I made a pact to be sure and see the movie at 7. So, on Wednesday, we all went to the Morrilton theatre and paid our $6 to get in (which is rather disappointing, that theatre has charged $5 for non-matinée movies as long as I can remember). It turns out that our determination to see the movie was well-rewarded, because the movie was really good. Of course, it’s the normal “over-the-top” kung-fu movie, but that would detriment is overtaken by the fact that it has both Jackie Chan AND Jet Li. =O

Basically, what I’m saying is that the story elements were a bit lacking, at best, but the martial artistry was in full force, and the choreography was top-notch. Definitely a good movie to see.

Movie Two (The Forbidden Kingdom): A-

Also, it turned out that the next day, The Forbidden Kingdom was no longer showing at the Morrilton theatre, so we lucked out. =)