Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Wonder Woman (2009)

Dear God it really took over 75 years for Wonder Woman to get a theatrical movie. But this animated one came out almost 10 years before.


So Wonder Woman got her own animated movie. How is it? I quite like it. It does the most famous origin story ripped straight from the comics of a race of warrior women known as the Amazons whose Queen one day fashions a child out of clay and the greek Gods give her life, and through the years she is trained and taught of the evil of man's world. Until one day, a pilot crashes into their island and starts to stir talk of rejoining the world. Meanwhile, Ares god of war escapes imprisonment and declares war on the Earth and gods alike. So the young woman Diana, takes up the mantle of not only their best warrior but ambassador to the world as Wonder Woman. A very good story, that stays true to the mythos and picks the best aspects of several classic Wonder Woman stories. So story wise, it's good but how are the technicals? Well the animation is great, it looks super clean and well drawn, with excellent fight scenes and damn near pitch perfect character models. Voice acting is quite well done with Keri Russel as Diana, and I quite like her and she nails Wonder Woman's character, we even get Nathan Fillion as the pilot Steve Trevor who gets quite a bit of laughs and is a good anchor to the real world. So the two major elements of animated movies are spot on, but it's not a perfect movie. While the fight scenes are very well animated, some things did bug me. Now I understand this is a PG rated movie, but I think the Amazons turned the gore code off cause when they run through people or hell, even lop off heads which happens twice, not evenna drop of blood. Maybe they coat their swords in non-blood stick, would be handy to have I must admit. Second, this is the only sheer stupid thing there is in this movie but my God does it hit hard. So Ares has his army of undead and demons attacking, in the capitol of Washington DC, seriously it has the Lincoln Memorial and The White House, and I was very confused cause at one point a galleon of Amazons charge by siege boats to rally behind Diana. What? In fact, the animation in terms of backgrounds was getting really bad. First, they are in the capitol, then it shows the Amazons approaching to what looks like a Greek temple, so I thought they would be fighting in Greece, but no, other shots still show them in DC. Just....huh??? You know, I've never been to the capitol of my country but I'm pretty sure there's not a fraking ocean leading to the Lincoln Memorial!! And don't tell me it's magic or some shit, because how? They never really established them to be heavily in magic, bits yes but not enough to mass teleport! In fact...how the french toast do they have an invisible jet?! Yeah, Wonder Woman has her invisible jet because Diana couldn't always fly in the comics. This is a society still living in stone buildings with swords and bows, no guns, no modern architecture, nothing to construct an invisible jet! Did the greek Gods give them that just in case along with the bracelets, tiara, and the lasso of truth?? Maybe it was Steve Trevors plane after he crashed and they enchanted that stuff, but still! Are you dead sucking ferious right now? Maybe I missed something but that really brings this movie, if you can call it a movie, it's barely over an hour down a bit. But I have high hopes for the new Wonder Woman movie, Gal Gadot I have no doubt will do the character justice, and it looks like a kickass movie! So expect that review soon, check this movie out if you're curious, Wonder Woman rocks and I'm out!

Friday, May 26, 2017

Pirates Of The Carribean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Oh, Javier Bardem you deserved so much better.














Wow, this movie was underwhelming! I mean damn. I thought On Stranger Tides was worthless! This is a new level. Nothing happens in this movie. At all. Jack has even less standing in this adventure than the last movie which is somehow possible. So basically evil undead pirates have a score to settle with Jack, forcing Will and Elizabeth's son to do something about it that has nothing to do with Jack. Plot done, now onto the stupid. You heard right, Will and Elizabeth (Who are in the movie for maybe 4 minutes.) have a kid, who wants to free his dad from the Dutchman so he seeks Jack's help to....are you ready for this? Find the Trident of the sea god Poseidon. Pills...need pills now. And you know what the worst part is? This movie shouldn't exist. Do not fall for that bait and switch trailer where it treats it like the final Pirates movie, people will die, nothing will be the same anymore, Jack will no longer be alive. Bullshit!! Nothing happens in the movie, and Jack is alive and well at the end. This is the worst possible movie for one reason: there is nothing to talk about. With good movies, you praise them and love talking about them. With bad movies, you bitch at it but it is kinda cathartic and fun, you get to bash a movie and even provide constructive criticism. But with movies like this? There is no material to talk about. So why am I writing this review? Well that's where you are wrong, this is not a review. It is a warning. Do not watch this movie! Spend 2 hours of your time doing something better. You are better than I solely because you have not viewed this massive pile of nothing. I'm done. Goodnight.

Thursday, May 25, 2017

Pirates Of The Carribean: On Stranger Tides

Okay, and here we go.....


What happened to pirates getting treasure? Is that too bland for audiences? Oh no, we got to have Jack look for the friggin' Fountain Of Youth, and yes I know it was teased at the end of well...At World's End but still! Okay, one step at a time. This movie is not terrible but boy howdy if you've stuck around this long you've kinda gotten use to this. So Jack is pretty much racing towards the Fountain, with Barbossa, and even Captain Blackbeard on his trail, all fighting for eternal youth. But wait, there's more! You can't just grab a cup and dip it in the fountain, kinda like in The Last Crusade, oh no. You have to (And pay attention there will be a test later.) get two silver goblets, very specific silver goblets created by Ponce de Leon, you have to capture a mermaid, collect said mermaid's tears because they spoil (God give me strength....), use said goblets to reveal the location of the Fountain, fill the goblets with water from the Fountain, then put the tear in ONE goblet, and play the "You must choose, but choose wisely." game in order to finally obtain eternal youth. Ugh!! This whole ceremony is hucking forrible, who's convoluted idea was this? Oh God, but anyway. Cast is fine, Penelope Cruz is boring to say the least, and while Ian McShane when I heard he was going to be Blackbeard I thought that would be awesome! He and Barbossa are the only saving graces in this movie, and quite frankly the only reason to watch the movie. Not much else, not even Jack can help this movie. Why is he in this movie? He doesn't do anything. He doesn't even really feel like he's looking for the Fountain by his own accord, the british government forces him to do it. That's a great protagonist right? Where he has no interest or real goal in the plot, at all? Top notch. I really didn't want to write this review, this is the movie I dreaded the most, not At World's End but this movie. I can remember several scenes from all the movies almost from beginning to end, almost a loose retelling of the whole movie. Not in this movie! Let's count, I remember the whole London escape scene, when Barbossa and Jack get the silver goblets and are captured, the waterfall scene, and the big fight at the end. And the Queen Anne, Blackbeard's ship which does precisely dick in this movie! Great job guys, no ship battle with a legit enchanted magical ship? I applaud your impotence. So let's see that's.......4 SCENES!!! That's got to be some kind of a record for me! I remember almost TOO many things from movies! It comprises 70% of my brain, roughly. But nope, can't remember much from this movie. Just don't watch it. The only reason you should watch any movie between the first movie and this one, is because plot elements come up in the new movie. And even then, you probably don't have to watch the second or third movie! So watch the first, tomorrow I'm seeing Dead Men Tell No Tales, and it better be good!

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Pirates Of The Carribean: At World's End

This was a long ass movie.


Just because you're the third part of a movie franchise does not mean you get a Lord Of The Rings run time. This movie goes on for 3 hours, and I can recap the plot in about 2 minutes. So it's all out war now between the pirate lords of the seven seas, and the british navy, and the Flying Dutchman with our usual cast of pirates smack dab in the middle. Bam, done! An easy story to tell, and it's done quite well. Although, the whole movie is about 2 hours of buildup to the final ship battle, 20 minutes of good action, and 10 minutes of resolution. But, the 2 hours is fine. Kinda. It starts off pretty damn grim though, if I put this opening scene on you would seriously not guess it to be Pirates Of The Carribean. More like Schindler's List mixed with Les Miserables. Yeah. But the movie is fine after that, it has a great size and scale to it, really giving the impression that this is the big finale to the story of the past 2 movies. And it....kinda delivers. Revelations are told, battles commence, people die. You know what, screw it the opening is just the beginning of this movie's darkness. I mean you see people get shot dead square between the eyes, have spikes shoved through people's skulls, the epitomy of a skull f*** if I have ever seen one, and several impalements. Guys, are you dead sucking ferious? This is supposed to be a movie for you know, kids, families, not really adults. You just had to get that PG-13 rating didn't you? Christ. I don't hate this movie, but I got problems with it. A lot of people do, people really did not like this movie. I can kinda see why. My main gripe though is it should have been the end. That should tell you something about the next movie, eh? Everyone's story comes to an end, it should have just ended with Will and Elizabeth together, Barbossa having his crew and ship back, and Jack wandering off to go on more marvellous misadventures. But no! Tune in tomorrow for Jack Sparrow to find the Fountain Of Youth!! I swear it's true! Oh boy, here we go....

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Pirates Of The Carribean: Dead Man's Chest

Sequel time!


Okay second film in the Pirates series, which I actually quite like even though it was quite literally written as it was being filmed. Oops. But anywho, story time! Jack has a debt to pay to the infamous Davy Jones, and in order to get out of it Jack as well as several other parties search for the eponymous dead man's chest. Not as hard to describe the plot as the last movie is it? Plot's pretty straightforward all things considered. Acting is still just as fine as ever, although Bill Nighy is quite engaging as the captain of The Flying Dutchman, in fact Davy Jones is my favorite part of the movie. His character beyond superstitous talk and legend of him and what power he wields in the seas, is actually a mystery. And I love the design of him and his crew, cursed men which have morphed with various sea life, for example a man has a normal body but has the head of a hammerhead shark, Davy Jones is a man with tentacles for a beard and a crab leg and arm attached to a human body. Sounds pretty great and it looks outstanding too. Surprisingly there's not much action wise, but when you look back at the first movie we had, a town raided, a ship chase, and the final fight between Jack and Barbossa. In this movie we have this very bizzare escape from an island filled with cannibals (Don't look at me, I didn't write it!), two attacks by the Kraken, one long ass swordfight which I have no doubt goes on for about 15 or 20 minutes which is the only swordfight by the way, and a brief ship chase. Yeah....not quite the action masterpieces our memories had of these movies. But action isn't everything if the story is good, and we like the characters. The story isn't that great, but I still like it just for the villain. Jack and company are still fun to be around so I can't say the film has truly flopped. But tomorrow, we talk about the film most people consider to be the absolute worst and I have not seen that movie for years so it will be interesting to say the least. So tune in tomorrow where we meet our cast At World's End.

Monday, May 22, 2017

Pirates Of The Carribean: Curse Of The Black Pearl

We're devils and black sheep, we're really bad eggs.....


A whole week of Pirates, huzzah! First movie that kicked off the franchise way back in 2003. Crazy it's been that long huh? Hell of a movie to kick things off! The story is....quite complicated for the first movie. I find it difficult to compress this film into a synopsis, I'd almost have to tell it step by step but that would ruin the movie. So let's attempt to recap here, so the movie follows three main characters, Captain Jack Sparrow a pirate, Will Turner a blacksmith, and Elizabeth Swan the daughter of a governor who pretty much gets kidnapped by pirates and Jack and Will set off to save her. There's a hell of a lot more to it than that so don't let this review fool you. Now to the cast, I can sum it up in one word. Awesome! Johnny Depp is awesome as a pirate, Orlando Bloom does okay though I prefer him more as an elf in Middle Earth, Keira Knightley is really no nonsense in this movie which I enjoy, but...I think Geoffrey Rush as Barbossa steals the show. He is so wickedly amazing and devilishly cool, he really seals this movie as a damn good movie in my eyes! The action is terrific, with well choreographed sword fights and ship battles. The sets are incredibly well done, it is a period piece obviously, I'm guessing late 1600s or early 1700s, either way the film looks great in terms of costumes and set design. The music which was composed by Hans Zimmer is fun, that's the best way I can describe it! It has mystery and intrigue, all out swashbuckling action, and even comedy! However, there is certain flaws with this movie. One, Commodore Norrington is planning on marrying Elizabeth. Fine! No problem, if he you know, didn't age I mean, at all,  and he looked about 27 when she was maybe 10. Eww. Seriously, dude didn't age a day in about what, 15 years? Bugs me. Two, how did Will get the medallion? In fact, why and how was his shipped attacked when he was a small boy? If Barbossa was looking for the medallion, how did he know it was on that ship and/or not find Will? Third, boy that ceremony seemed complex. Not as complex as the whole mermaid thing in the fourth movie, but one step at a time here. All in all, it's a fun movie, it's highly enjoyable, a popcorn movie if there was one, and I give it two thumbs up!

Tomorrow, Jack meets the devil of the seven seas himself....

Friday, May 19, 2017

Alien: Covenant

First Alien movie seen in theaters, how was it?


It was good, it wasn't great nor was it terrible. It picks up 10 years after Prometheus (Which I have not seen, so I was not fully prepared for it.) with a colony ship en route to a new world, get sidetracked by some bizzare transmission, it's not an SOS, it's not a beacon of some form, and they decide let's go. I'm sensing a pattern here. So they get to this planet that has no form of animal life on it, they find the ship from Prometheus and encounter a character from it, and that's when the story kicks off. I dare not delve deeper. So we have Ridley Scott directing again, and he does fine work as always, nothing really spiked on my bullcrap meter...kinda. But that's my own doing by not seeing Prometheus, which I was hoping I did not have to see in order to get this movie. But anyway, everything is fine about the movie, actors are likable 90% of the time, the sets look great cause they are real, action wise nothing much occurs really except for a few shootouts, the music elludes to the original Alien, and I had fun watching it. But all in all, you gotta be a fan of the series to enjoy this movie. You can't just come in there willy-nilly, you have to be informed. I was mostly informed, so maybe if I watch Prometheus I can enjoy it more but if you are not a fan I doubt you are going to see this movie. Although it's good to see some Alien action again. That sounded bad, I apologize for that. So I best shut up now before I keep rambling. Till next week!

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Aliens (1986)

Is this movie better than the first? Well it all just depends, do you like horror or action more?

So Aliens takes the franchise into an action territory with stellar results. The movie takes place 57 years after the original Alien, with Ripley found by a salvage team still in cryo-sleep. She awakens to find that the original planet that her crew found the alien has been colonized, and they've lost contact. So send in the marines, with Ripley as their advisor to clean house, and rescue as many as people as possible. Yeah right. I can't even explain how the base looks on the planet, it's beyond description. The only thing I can say is, it's bad. But that doesn't cover it. The tension is brought on tenfold from the first Alien movie, since you know there isn't just one alien but hundreds if not thousands. Now the marines are the best part and it shows because even today they have a stallwart and heavily devoted fanbase, each marine brought on the force feels like real soldiers, they badmouth and talk shit to each other, but in the end you still know they are a tight team. Vasquez is one bad ass motherfraker, Hudson is just awesome (Thank you Mr. Bill Paxton for continuing to be awesome!), and the surprising thing is that there isn't tok much action in the movie. We have the initial encounter with the aliens, the fight in the nest which takes out damn near every marine, and then the escape from the planet, and the fight with the queen. And that kind of pisses me off, how easily almost all the marines are wiped out. Now I know the reason why, these guys are way too confident and are over their heads, not even slightly prepared for the threat. Acting wise, leaps and bounds better than Alien, not just with the character interaction with the marines but Ripley herself. I mean after all that crap she put up with in the first movie she is fed up with the bullshit, and she kicks ass! Obviously it goes deeper than that but we got to move on. Sets....whew. The sets, first movie ain't got nothing on this film. You thought they were ipressive before? You don't even know. The design is still the same even though we jumped ahead almost 60 years, which is fine but the less I say about the look of the film the better I think you will enjoy it. A feast to the eyes if I've seen one. The climax is impossible to forget, the action is great, characters are memorable, and many people consider this to be superior than the first. In fact, you could argue more people saw this movie than the first, due to it being a popular VHS rental so more people saw the sequel first. Action is more accesible than horror for most people, which is fine. I get that. I took me until I was about halfway through my teen years to start loving horror movies, I was a pansy as a kid. But interests grew through years and years of slowly being exposed to it, to the point where I greatly enjoy it. And I hope you enjoy these movies too, and look forward to seeing Alien Covenant in theaters tomorrow. I know I certainly am, first Alien movie I'll see in theaters. Well that's it for now, game over man. Game over.

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Alien (1979)

Yeah, yeah I know! It's not October, but it had to have happened some time. So here we go.


Alien, classic science fiction movie directed by Ridley Scott. Need I say more? Well just for the sake of this review, let's talk about it. It's still really good! Despite being made almost 40 YEARS AGO, let that sink in for a minute, it still holds up damn near perfect. The sets are magnificent, the atmosphere and horror is memorable, the characters all have their time to develop, the design for the alien is perfect, and Ridley Scott just killed it in this movie. I still say this is my favorite movie of his! So, story time, alright so the movie centers around this mining crew, and they recieve a distress signal on an uninhabited planet, they investigate and find a derelict spaceship that has been crashed on the surface for centuries. While investigating one of the crew finds these eggs that in no way resemble a vagina when they open and in the name of science he puts his face in it! This is wrong. So he gets this thing stuck on his face which then implanted an egg down his throat (Gross.) and he gets brought on board. What follows, is quite possibly the most disturbing thing I have ever watched on film, when an alien bursts out of a man's chest which takes about 3 minutes to occur to drag this horror out to near unbearable levels. Now we got an alien loose on the ship. Don't you hate it when that happens? So they got to track it down, which will no doubt end with one character surviving to kill the alien. A tiny bit slasher movie, but hey I dig that stuff! The cast is quite good, Sigourney Weaver gets to be a badass, Ian Holm is....enigmatic to me even to this day, and special thanks to John Hurt for quite literally birthing this series. He deserves special recognition for his sacrifice. The music I have to say is not what you would expect, it's entirely symphonic but still lays on the dread when stuff starts going down. A huge part of this movie is it's design, most of which created by H.R. Giger giving the spaceship a claustrophobic feel coupled together with Amiga computers, obviously showing the time of when the movie was made but it doesn't date the film at all. Major props to that. And then we have the alien spacecraft that has this whole living organism look to it, and it looks jaw droppingly awesome. So highly detailed, and vast in scale. 11/10 from me. But we have at least one more movie to review before Alien Covenant, so join me tomorrow for the action side of the Alien franchise.

Also, highly recommend you watch the trailer for this movie. Whether you've seen the movie or not, watch it. Just maybe not in a dark room, cause I did that and....yeah, I was paranoid for the next 3 hours.

Saturday, May 13, 2017

King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword

Alright, and I'm back with a brand new movie on a timeless legend.

So King Arthur The Legend Of The Sword is an iteration on Arthurian Legends and tales so how does it hold up? Well...I'm kind of split on it. When the trailer first popped up, I thought nothing of it but I soon saw it on television and the second The Lady in the Lake grabbed Excalibur and the sword caught on fire? You have my attention! Now granted King Arthur is a hard movie to make without the magical elements in it. So I was excited knowing there was going to be straight up magic in this movie, and it was great! Now onto the movie, so the film kinda jumbles the mythology a bit, in the stories Mordred an evil knight was trying to disband the Round Table and take the throne for himself, in the movie Arthur's father fights Mordred and defeats him in the first few minutes. Which is fine, it doesn't destroy the story of Arthur and his knights so no worries there, but as it happens Arthur's uncle stages a coup, takes over Camelot and forces Arthur to flee the kingdom but at the cost of his parent's lives. So now we kind of have an everyman story where he rises to do great things and take his rightful place as whatever, in this case king. What follows is the undoubted stroke of the editor. It takes the movie a grand total of maybe a minute to cover the expanse of time from when Arthur was a small child to adulthood, the shots last a second at most. It is un-flippin'-believable! It moves so fast and yet somehow I was able to stay with it, but that can't be the case for other people! So Arthur has his own thing going on, but enemy soldiers invade his town, and by what I swore to God was almost a massive coincidence, he gets taken to Camelot by said enemy soldiers and his forced to remove the sword in the stone. At first I thought I stumbled on a film breaking plot hole, how by pure coincidence Arthur is taken to the sword in Camelot on a boat, is then forced to pull the sword out, and then the movie really begins. But then I just stopped and thought, well rumors have been spreading about the true heir to the throne so it actually makes total logical sense to round up every guy from his mid 20s to early 30s and have him attempt to pull the sword. The guy who does it, congratulations! The bad guys can execute him, and keep the evil king in power. Sort of like The Ten Commandments. But, I don't know it just really threw me off a bit, but not as much as Jude Law who plays Arthur's uncle and his inability to age! Dude looks the same when he was a kid and when he is an adult! Now he does practice magic but somehow I doubt he found that particular spell. Anyway, so Arthur gets the sword, breaks out, joins a resistance, and leads them in regaining Camelot. Not much to write home about but it's nothing less than what I expected. I mean the whole movie is really just okay. The acting is okay but there's one tiny scene with Jude Law that really speaks volumes, Arthur is no longer the kind and noble king, he's a bit of a snarky bastard. Scratch that, he's a massive smart ass! But Charlie Hunnam does well, as does the rest of the cast. The action scenes are very um...videogame-ish. I mean the second Arthur grabs that sword, it's like god mode! Excalibur breaks every sword, everything slows down to matrix bullet time, I'm pretty shure that damn sword threw a Hadouken at least twice! So sometimes the special effects look ripped from a video game, but these sets are pretty damn good. If you stop and look at these massive sets they built the film must be commended, and there was even use of miniatures. Now how many movies can you say that about in 2017? All in all, King Arthur is an average movie and could only be recommended to the most hardcore of fantasy and medieval movies. There's even a hilarious in-joke where Arthur has to fight giant rats and bats as training. Gee, I wonder why that sounds SO damn familiar! Well that about does it for me, more movies to review next week. Many more weeks, many more movies. Take care everyone!

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

So Near And Yet So Far Away

God why can't this school year just end already?

Update time! Almost done with school, finals are nearing, and there is so much to do. I hope you can forgive this week and the next week too, for studying is a very time consuming goal. But rest assured once I am done, the week afterwards will be filled with fun. My apologies once more I feel I should insist, but at least movie sign still exists. Have I made a rhyme?