Jan 11, 2013

Movie Reviews @ The Temple

The Hobbit – Loved it. It’s not perfect by any means, and not as good as the LotR movies, which had a great deal more epic-ness to them. I don’t know why people think it’s too long, I was never bored. The characters are mostly great, the fighting is always great, the CGI is fantastic most of the time, with a couple pretty shitty exceptions. I’m thinking particularly when they are all standing on top of a little rock after being saved from something, it looked really lame. The only really bad thing about the movie was the humor. There was some charming subtle humor, and that was good. But there was MUCH more obnoxious, over-acted, over-the-top, corny humor. A lot of awful one liners and pathetic slapstick stuff, I really really didn’t like it. Oh, and Radagast was a completely waste of time (and the worst of the physical humor, what is he, dick van dyke?). But let’s not dwell on that, because the rest of it was awesome.

Wrath of the Titans – Not bad, not great. Better than the last one, definitely. The fighting is a bit more interesting, though still not that amazing. The CGI is way better, it’s pretty great throughout. With the GLARING exception of anytime the pegasus showed up. That honestly looked like college freshman level animation, it was really really bad. Nothing particularly memorable otherwise, but an okay movie.

The Bourne Legacy – I’ve never been a huge Bourne person. I like them fine, the quick style fighting is a welcome addition to the genre, but all the conspiracy/mystery stuff was boring and over wrought. So now we have a Bourne movie without all the mystery, just fighting. I’m kind of okay with that. It’s not as slick as the previous movies, to be sure. Probably that’s on purpose. In the end it’s a fine action movie, nothing wrong with it, but nothing super memorable either.

Brave – This is a very fun, very sweet, very pretty movie. If it was a Disney movie, I’d say it was one of the best in quite a while. It is not special, though, in the way Pixar movies have been. It didn’t have that extra magic that those moments in Up and Wall-E (and others) had. But it’s still very nice.

Ruby Sparks – This is a pretty cute movie. It’s painfully hip and cool, but otherwise very enjoyable. The conceit of it is pretty disturbing, and fortunately they are not afraid to push it to it’s logical extreme. Sadly they do puss out in the end with a completely non-sensical (and/or completely non-sustainable) ending. But everything else about the movie is pretty good.

Lawless – This seemed cool in the ads, but good lord was I bored. I just couldn’t give a shit about anything that happened in it. I’m getting the same feeling about Justified lately. Maybe I just can’t get into that southern gangster (20s or modern) style.

Backbeat – This is about the “5th Beatle” who isn’t the producer, but this guy Stu Sutcliffe who was with them in the very early days. I didn’t know any of this history, so that was cool. The acting isn’t very good, the accents are kind of awful. But the music is great. And seeing the story is cool.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter – Man, why does reality have to ruin great internet ideas? Besides giving us some axe-wielding action, which isn’t something we’ve really seen before, this movie brings absolutely nothing to the table. No story, no acting, no writing, and no non-axe action to care about. I have the book too, but I really don’t want to read it now.

The Amazing Spider-Man – I don’t know. Some parts of it are good. I agree with everyone, the quippy jumping kind of obnoxious spiderman is done much more true to the source in this one. Yes, Andrew Garfield is too cool to be a nerd, so that’s out of place. But he is at least a bit of a nerd in real life, so that helps. The movie does most of the things it is supposed to, but maybe I’m spiderman’d out, or maybe it’s just not compelling. I’m glad he’s around, I hope with everyone else he gets folded into the greater Marvel movie universe. That would be the movie’s largest contribution, probably.

Case de mi Padre – Holy shit. I absolutely always finish movies. Even if they are god awful, I finish them because I have a disease. But I didn’t finish this one. So bad, not funny, not anything. If it was in english and I could ignore it while I played a game, I might have let it play. But having to read the horribleness was just too much. Jeez.

Machine Gun Preacher – Eh, I guess this movie was fine. I guess it’s a true story about some deadbeat who turns his life around and becomes a preacher, then goes to africa to help some kids, and ends up killing some dudes (with a machine gun, I guess). If it wasn’t true, it’d be less interesting. But it’s done pretty well.

The New Daughter – This is a horror-ish movie where Kevin Costner moves to some house with his kids and crazy stuff starts happening. It’s a lot better than I thought it’d be. That’s probably giving it more credit than it would otherwise get, but it’s decent enough. It’s not really spooky or anything, but it has a little bit of thrills.

Indie Game: The movie – This is pretty cool. It’s neat to hear the backstory on these games that I’ve played. It also makes perfectly clear that some of these guys are raving assholes. The Super Meat Boy guy is pretty cool. The Braid guy is kind of a douche. The Fez guy seems like a horrendously obnoxious person. Hard to say, I guess, they could edit the worst moments here and the best moments here. I’ve been pretty obnoxious at times in my life, after all. Besides that, interesting to see some of the business & the behind the scenes.

Act of Valor – Jeez, this seemed like it would be totally bad ass, right? The baddest of assest moments were shown in the trailer. The thing where the guy shoots the guy and the guy catches the guy as he falls. That’s as cool as it gets, so don’t expect more. I guess they used real military guys, so the acting isn’t very good. But it’s not all their fault, some of the writing is pretty bad too. By the way, FPS was lame in Doom, it’s still lame, sorry.

Mirror Mirror – What the fuck, why is this good? Remember when the two Snow White trailers came out and one looked god awful and one looked pretty cool despite Kristen Stewart? What happened to that? The Huntsman movie was pretty crappy, and this movie is pretty fun! I mean, it’s not genius or anything, and Julia Roberts is mega-annoying. But at least she’s SUPPOSED to be annoying. And the visuals are fantastic, the story is fun, the heroine is sympathetic, and the humor is humorous. Huntsman was none of those things, and had barely any action to show instead. I’m confused.

Ted – It’s pretty funny. It’s true that the funniest parts of the movie are in the trailer. But there’s, let’s say, an equal number of just as funny parts throughout the rest of the movie. And them a bunch of kind of funny parts. It’s not laugh my balls off funny, I don’t need to see it again like a really hilarious movie. But it was certainly fun to watch.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World – Welllll, I guess it’s good. The problem is that it’s really stupid. Not just the fact that something is going to happen to the Earth that engulfs the entire planet in fire. I guess that’s possible, but I’m thinking of something that big hit us, there wouldn’t be much to light on fire, but maybe I’m wrong. No, the real stupid part is where the 25 year old falls in love with the 45 year old and they are perfect for each other. It’s sweet, I guess, but it just seems so dumb. If you accept the fact that you make a great couple for 2 weeks, cool. But pretending like you were always meant for each other when you couldn’t be more different is just goofy. I suppose I’m taking it all too seriously, but the end really did kind of cause involuntary guffaws. But, ignoring all that, it was fun to watch.

Trek Nation – Documentary made by Gene Roddenberry’s son, I thought it was pretty good. It’s true that Eugene (the son) is very annoying. He really should have ctrl+f’d “I wanted to learn what kind of man my dad was” and deleted all but one. I think that would have cut 10 minutes from the movie. But besides his awkward, most often unnecessary narration, the movie is cool. I didn’t know much about Roddenberry, so hearing it all was really neat. Probably nothing here for a non trekkie, but for me it was cool.

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