Up
May 29, 2009 | 2 Comments
Pixar’s annual summer movie is Up, following last year’s WALL-E.
Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner) is a 78-year-old widower, cranky and living in the same house that his wife and he shared all their lives. In their younger days, they dreamed of being explorers, fans of the Professor Challenger-ish Charles Muntz, going to a Lost Plateau in Peru. Carl has slowly watched his neighborhood devoured by skyscrapers, and developers want to tear down his house as well. After an altercation, he’s threatened with being shipped off to a nursing home. So he straps a whole bunch of helium balloons to his house, and sets his sights on South America.
Unfortunately, a boy scout, Russell, who was trying to get his badge for helping a senior citizen, is inadvertently brought along for the ride.
Once they’ve ballooned onto the Lost Plateau, they encounter strange animals and make a nemesis.
Where Pixar stands out is in story and characterization, not just the computer animation. What hooked me on this was the touching extended prologue where we see the guy grow from childhood to an old man with his sweetheart.
This is maybe less ambitious of a movie than the recent Pixar efforts (Ratatouille and WALL-E – a rat going to cooking school and a robot pantomining its emotions) – but it’s a better overall result.
The clever bit here in the action sequences is, after the balloons have lost a bit of buoyancy, the house has ceased being a float that can carry our heroes weight and more of a floating tether that they have to haul around. This leads to a series of inventive and exciting action sequences revolving around what happens when you’re being chased while towing a floating house.
Also, in theaters this is preceded by a Pixar short, Partly Cloudy. There have been plenty of cartoons about how the stork brings babies, but none quite like this one!
Popularity: 47% [?]
Terminator Salvation
May 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Those darn time-traveling Terminators, they’ve been trying to kill John Connor now for four movies, a ride at Universal Studios, and a TV series.
This time, McG directs. And most of the movie takes place in the future post-apocalypse.
Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) is on death row in 2003. He donates his body to science. In 2018 he wakes up to discover the world is a post-apocalypse, and killer robots stalk the ruins. How did he get here?
Meanwhile, John Connor (Christian Bale, who, as we’ve seen on the Internet of late, takes his movie-making ****ing seriously!) leads the Resistance against the robots, getting the few survivors to fight.
Skynet, the killer computer network, has new Terminators at its command; motorcycle-Terminators and underwater-Terminators.
And young Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin, who’s having a good summer, since he also played Chekhov in Star Trek), destined to go back in time to be John Connor’s father in the first Terminator movie, is in danger here, and John Connor has to take steps to save him.
Bryce Dallas Howard is apparently playing the character that Claire Danes played in the third movie.
This is a pretty good action movie. As Terminator movies go, it’s not in the same class as the first two James Cameron ones, but it’s better than the third one (which is still a fun movie).
And, really, the first three movies are all variants on the same basic structure. This one does manage to do something new.
This is the second summer-movie blockbuster in two weeks to revolve around time travel (Star Trek being the other). Without giving spoilers, I think it is arguable that the time travel here doesn’t seem to quite work the way it does in the other movies; but that’s part of the fun of time travel movies; drawing diagrams on a beer-soaked napkin and arguing about what would and wouldn’t work with a completely impossible thing.
Apparently this is going to be a trilogy of movies with Christian Bale. So he’ll be back. And he’ll be back…again.
Popularity: 51% [?]
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
May 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is set a couple of years after the original. Larry has moved on to other things, and is now an inventor whose stuff is sold via Infomercials. But he still misses his job as night watchman at the museum, where everything comes alive at night due to a magical Egyptian tablet.
He learns that many of the figures are being put into storage in Washington to make way for hologram exhibits. So he goes to say goodbye to his pals. But that darn monkey steals the tablet, and so, everything comes alive in the Smithsonian.
Now Larry has to go to the Smithsonian to fix things. But an Evil Egyptian Pharoah (Hank Azaria) has come alive and wants to take over the world.
Yes, this is pretty much the same movie in a new museum, but it’s a cooler museum, America’s Attic. It’s a kid’s movie, but a pretty good one. Museums are cool, and spooky, and there’s probably not a night watchmen in any museum who hasn’t paced the halls at night, wondering, what if all this stuff started moving?
Amy Adams really steals the show as Amelia Earhart. She’s so spunky there should be, and probably is, an Action Figure. It’ll be interesting to compare her Amelia Earhart with Hilary Swank’s in October when the movie Amelia comes out.
Now, if I found myself speaking to Amelia Earhart, there’s probably a question I’d want to ask of her: What the heck happened to you? But, since these museum figures, despite their preternatural animation and sentience, only know what history knows (they’re not the “real thing”), maybe that’s why Larry never pops that question.
One cool addition in this is the Modern Art sculptures coming alive. Also, paintings and pictures come alive, Harry Potter-style. Not sure what Edward Hopper’s NIGHTHAWKS is doing in the Smithsonian rather than the Art Institute of Chicago, but there it is.
I note for the record that a pretty scary horror movie could be made on this same concept – especially the idea of trapped sentience in the inanimate made animate. But, this is not that movie!
Popularity: 48% [?]
Star Trek
May 10, 2009 | 1 Comment
Star Trek is back, and this time they did not bring along any androids singing Gilbert and Sullivan or not so subtle tree hugging messages. Instead, they brought a couple of star freighters full of whoop-ass.
This version of Star Trek comes from director J.J. Abrams of “Lost” fame. Don’t worry, no smoke monster here. What he does do is bring a much needed reboot to the Star Trek franchise that I would liken to what happened to the Batman franchise starting with Batman Begins. Basically he threw out all preconceived notions of the franchiase and make a movie for today’s audience. He does stay true to the characters for the most part, they are all quite recognizable with their trademark quotes, etc. And the NCC 1701, the original Enterprise looks as you would expect, so nothing too radical there, but he does not limit himself to the known history of the existing franchise.
So what you end up with here is the original crew in their youth as they assume their roles on the Enterprise, but you also get a solid reboot of the whole franchise. All of the new actors give great nods to their predecessors, playing off of some of their stereotypes and catch phrases. They have a little fun with it and go tongue in cheek but stop well short of being campy. I was worried about some of the casting. I mean, I have to admit there were times that I was expecting to see John Cho (from Harold and Kumar) as Sulu plot a course for White Castle. But it worked surprisingly well, I didn’t even hear ticking whenever I would see Sylar as Spock after a while.
This would be an easy movie to spoil. I think you’ll enjoy it most by going in not really knowing much about what to expect and just sit back and enjoy it, so I’m not going to go into the storyline much. What I will tell you is to expect a lot of absolutely killer effects, stunts, fighting and good old fashioned space battles.
We’ll bottom line it for you. 5 stars. Go see it, then buy it on Blu-ray as soon as it’s out. I don’t care whether you are a previous fan or a hardcore trekkie fanboy, if you love SciFi movies, I cant see how you could possibly not have a blast watching this movie.
Popularity: 58% [?]
LOOK on DVD; interview with director
May 5, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Look comes out on DVD today. It’s a narrative filmed as if from the point of view of surveillance cameras. A bunch of interlocking stories (ala Crash, etc.), it follows characters as they’re observed on camera in malls, parking lots, schools, traffic cams, elevators, the office, and so on.
DVD extras: Alternate ending, deleted scenes, outtakes, TV spots, documentary “A LOOK Behind the Scenes”, audio commentary with writer/director Adam Rikfin, producers Brad Wyman and Barry Schuler, and actor Hayes MacArthur.
In December 2007 when the movie was released in theaters, MoviesForGuys.com interviewed the director, Adam Rikfin, about the film. You can read the interview here.
Popularity: 40% [?]
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Gun Play
Blood & Gore Car Chases T&A Chuckles |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
