Dir: Bryan Singer

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Eleanor Tomlinson, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, Ian McShane, Bill Nighy

Synopsis: The ancient war between humans and a race of giants is reignited when Jack, a young farmhand fighting for a kingdom and the love of a princess, opens a gateway between the two worlds

Fairy tales adaptations have become more popular over the last few years. Whether they are family-friendly, Disney-fied retellings, darker tone myths (Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth could be consider one) and revision from Red Riding Hood or Alice in Wonderland. But now comes Jack the Giant Slayer (originally titled Jack the Giant Killer) which at times feels like a combination of all the previously mentioned but also trying to be it’s own thing.

The movie stars Nicholas Hoult (seen recently in Warm Bodies) as the titular Jack, a farm boy who must rise to the challenge when he inadvertently opens a pathway to the land of the giants, sending his love-interest, Princess Isabelle (Tomlinson), into their dangerous world. When her father, King Brahmwell (McShane) finds out that her daughter is missing and is up the beanstalk he sends her guard Elmont (McGregor) with his men and a shady Roderick (Tucci). Of course Jack offers to help and despite him being a “simple farm boy” Elmont decides to take him.

The performances are generally strong, but like the rest of the movie, they are a mixed bag when it comes to some of the tones. Tomlinson and Hoult have great chemistry as both sharing desire to have some adventure. The always reliable McGregor and Tucci play a bit the comedic roles but also have their moments when they have serious moments. Tucci always plays a great “lovable ass” character and this is no different. I don’t know what it was about McGregor’s Elmont at the beginning but he felt a bit cartoony but changes later on in the movie.

Tomlinson plays the princess that doesn’t want to be stuck in the castle and wants to get to know the people she can eventually rule over. Hoult plays Jack really well and makes us care what happens to him. Hoult shows his acting chops once again and is starting to become one of my favorite actors and that he can be a true star.

Nighy voices the main villain giant General Fallon that despite the giant CG design (I’ll get to that in a bit) creates a dramatic, and in moments legitimately scary, villain. McShane finds the perfect balance between heartfelt, offbeat and funny playing the king/father character which is nice to see.

Now the giants who are…not really that special. There are really only three physical different looking giants; General Fallon, which has two heads (for some reason), a giant with an afro, and an almost not necessary rival to Fallon, Fumm. Besides them all the giants pretty much look the same especially near the end when they’re wearing their armor to fight the humans. The design of the giants works on only a few occasions but other than that the effects are put into the amazing looking landscape of the giant world.

The movie has a pretty interesting a cool opening it that he shows the tradition of storytelling. It opens with Jack and Isabelle listening to the story of the defeat of the giants as told by their respective parents. It even has a pretty cool animated sequence showing the history and what is to happen. That intertwining sequence plays later on in the movie when the two are grown up and talking to their father (Isabelle) and uncle (Jack).

All in all, Jack the Giant Slayer does have some really fun moments and doesn’t fall into “just being for kids” kind of movie. The movie does jump around a lot between genres which makes it hard to really get into because once you get use to one you have to adjust to the other.

Jack the Giant Slayer

3.5 out of 5

fuckyeahmovieposters:

Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises by Frankie McKeever

This are freaking badass

Dir: Steven Soderbergh

Cast: Rooney Mara, Jude Law, Channing Tatum and Catherine Zeta-Jones

Synopsis: Emily and Martin are a successful New York couple whose world unravels when a new drug prescribed by Emily’s psychiatrist - intended to treat anxiety - has unexpected side effects

*Review Note* I’m going to try and review this without giving away too much of the story. So if it feels like I’m not giving you too much to work on there is a reason for it. Also, I wanted to post this sooner but forgot to.

Side Effects has a lot going on, the trailers would make you think one thing but it’s not that entirely, but don’t let that scare you. However, if you’re familiar with Steven Soderbergh’s work (especially his later work like Contagion and even Haywire) you know that’s just the norm. Nonetheless, Soderbergh reunites with Contagion writer Scott Z. Burns to take on pharmacological paranoia and maybe like Contagion is trying to scare the crap out of you to never take a pill again (maybe).

The film is built around Emily Taylor (Mara) who is suffering from severe depression after her husband Martin (Tatum) is released from prison for insider trading. Her depression eventually gets to her and it leads to an event that makes her cross paths with Dr. Jonathan Banks (Law). He eventually puts her in a series of pills that soon turns out to be problematic and leads to some serious problems.

The movie starts off with a nice homage to Hitchcock (Psycho if you need the help), dare I say the whole movie has some Hitchcock elements, and with a very moody score playing throughout it almost sets the mood for at least the first half of the movie.

Rooney Mara once again proves that she can hold her own with the best the Hollywood has to offer and makes feel for Emily as she’s taking all these pills in order to live a normal life again. However, the movie is really about Jude Law’s Jonathan Banks character as his life is turned upside down from what happens after Emily. He almost becomes obsessed himself trying to figure out how all this could have happened to him and to Emily. Catherine Zeta-Jones pops up as Emily’s previous doctor and is really the one that gives Banks the new medication that leads to the whole movie’s outcome.

I think some people will find this movie tough to stick with for the reason that Soderbergh likes to drag some scenes out. But when you see the end result it’s pretty much worth it. The movie has a lot going on and hopefully, if you pay attention to everything, you can get what the hell is and was going on. Stick with the movie and don’t give up.

All in all, Side Effects is filled with great performances and plays with your views on the movie up until the very end

Side Effects

4 out of 5 

Dir: John Moore

Cast: Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch, Radivoje Bukvic and Yuliya Snigir

Synopsis: John McClane travels to Russia to help out his seemingly wayward son, Jack, only to discover that Jack is a CIA operative working to prevent a nuclear-weapons heist, causing the father and son to team up against underworld forces.

So how do you freshen up a series that some believe is pushing it? Add some new blood. Now sometimes this works (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol) and sometimes it doesn’t. With A Good Day to Die Hard, the fifth installment of the Die Hard series, it has its moments were it does work.

The movie starts by following the new blood to the series, Jack McClane (Courtney), killing someone in Russia and gets himself caught to get close to a political prisoner Uri Komarov (Koch) to get a file for the CIA. Of course this gets to his father John McClane, once again played by Bruce Willis, and he flies to Russia to try and save his son that he hasn’t seen in years. Of course once he gets there everything goes crazy and the McClane’s have to team up and as John puts it “kill all the bad guys.” 

Now it’s been a while since we’ve had John McClane in our lives and when he gets to Russia we get the fish-out-of-water gags as John’s New York’s tough cop struggles to fit in to Moscow. Once John finally tracks Jack down, it’s not the happy family reunion that you would assume. In fact John is the last person that Jack wants to see in Russia, or pretty much ever.

The movie has some twists and turns that you can probably see coming once it finally develops or kind of don’t care about it. A Good Day also tries to pay some homage to the previous movies and if you’re a die hard Die Hard fan (yeah I know) then you might catch them. 

I briefly mentioned Willis return as McClane but the some people will look at Jai Courtney as Jack. Courtney has his moments to shine as the younger McClane but other than that he doesn’t really get past the “I hate my dad” attitude until almost the end of the movie when the two finally set their differences aside and becomes the A-Team wrecking crew.

The action here is not that bad, starting with a long car chase that seems like it takes place all over Moscow. While at times a bit confusing and some cheesy dialogue from Willis it shows how the series has gone from the “real” action experience to the common over the top action that we see a lot now, although at least for me its not all that bad. 

All in all, A Good Day to Die Hard might be the weakest of the Die Hard series but it does have its brief moments where it is good. If Courtney is indeed the “future” of the Die Hard series then I think they should bring him in for one more (which I’m pretty sure we’ll get) and flesh out his character a bit.

A Good Day to Die Hard

3 out of 5

Dir: Walter Hill (The Warriors, 48 Hours, Last Man Standing, Undisputed)

Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Sung Kang, Sarah Shahi, Jason Momoa, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje

Synopsis: After watching their respective partners die, a New Orleans hitman and a Washington D.C. detective form an alliance in order to bring down their common enemy

Bullet to the Head tries to be multiple things at once. It has some elements of a buddy crime movie, a revenge movie and a graphic novel adaptation. Why a buddy crime movie? Well Hill is arguably one of the directors responsible for making that genre popular with 48 Hrs. This time we have the pair of the Sly Stallone and Sung Kang (from the last Fast & Furious movies).

The graphic novel it’s based on is a French graphic novel by Matz, of the same name that has the same story. A cop is forced to partner with a criminal in order to take down a crime syndicate.

Stallone stars as Jimmy Bobo, an tough as nails New Orleans-based hitman. Bobo doesn’t have any faith in cops (even hates them), and so he does his own form of justice: a bullet to the head. So why does he team up with detective Taylor Kwon (Kang)? Because the two want the justice but of course they want to do it their own way. 

The movie starts out with Bobo and his partner Louis (Jon Seda) performing a hit but during it Jimmy lets a witness to the murder live, for a reason I won’t spoil in the review. From that moment on events begin to spiral out of control, and Jimmy realizes he’s being set up. The only person who can help him is a reluctant Kwon. Why is Kwon that way? Kwon has his own reasons for being in New Orleans and can be classified as “by the book” but he also doesn’t agree with Jimmy’s form of justice.

Unlike Arnold with The Last Stand, Sly doesn’t really have any rust when it comes to acting. He’s obviously stayed around after Arnold left but this is from what I can remember his first movie without any heavy hitters like his Expendables cast. However, this doesn’t mean Sly is giving award winning performances but sometimes that doesn’t matter. Sly is pretty intimidating with his physique despite being 66 years old and it’s in full effect when he shows up shirtless at a bath house. But what Sly lacks in acting (sounds means but I don’t mean it in that way) he makes up with humor. There is some back and forth between Jimmy and Kwon although not all of it works. 

Kang does pretty good with Kwon and if it were anybody else it would probably been a one-dimensional characters. Shahi who plays Sly’s daughters does okay with her role too but really has nothing to do other than tell Kwon that her fathers isn’t really a bad guy. The criminals are an odd group. Christian Slater has a cameo as a financier who holds vital information but he’s meh. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is the criminal kingpin Morel who has the chance to say some pretty cheesy lines.

Then there his henchman Keegan played Jason Momoa who is the real villain in the movie. His attitude is to fight now and think later. Momoa, despite his appearance in the Conan The Barbarian remake and Game of Thrones, still lacks a bit of the charisma of action stars, such as Arnold, Sly, and Bruce Willis. But, he still holds his own but with the other villains still isn’t enough. He does have his moments when he goes into a bar and takes out a bunch of guys by himself and then fighting Sly with axes. 

All in all, Bullet to the Head has some cheesy moments and although it isn’t perfect it does have it’s moments of good action.

Bullet to the Head

3.5 out of 5

Dir: Jonathan Levine (The Wackness, 50/50)

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, Rob Corddry, Dave Franco, Analeigh Tipton and John Malkovich

Synopsis: After R (a highly unusual zombie) saves Julie from an attack, the two form a relationship that sets in motion a sequence of events that might transform the entire lifeless world

Over the years Hollywood has been trying to do some new things to “re-mold” zombies movies. From slow zombies, fast zombies, and yes, even pet zombies but Warm Bodies has a take on the genre that’s, at least from I can recall, entirely new: a zombie rom-com told from a zombie’s perspective 

Based on the novel of the same name, the story centers on R (Hoult), a zombie who besides have inner monologues is bored with his life, which involves shuffling around an abandoned airport and having grunting conversations with his best friend M (Rob Corddry).

They eventually run into a group of humans, including Nora (Tipton), Julie (Palmer) and her ex-boyfriend Perry (Franco). R soon falls for Julie, saves her, and keeps her in his hideout plane. His love looks to restarts his heart, setting off a change that could affect the whole post-apocalyptic world. 

Now, on the surface the movie may seem like another Twilight-esque film about the love between a human and a monster, but to the credit of author Isaac Marion and writer/director Jonathan Levine, the story has much more to it. At its core, Warm Bodies is a teen film, good or bad. It borrows from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, though thankfully, apart from one scene, it doesn’t do so heavy-handily.

As with many films in the zombie genre (or any genre really), Warm Bodies has a touch of social commentary. There’s a funny observation about technology turning us into zombies, how we are more connected yet less personal with each other. The movie also has a clever switch that sees R terrified in the human world, mirroring Julie’s experience in the zombie one when he’s at the airport. 

Majority of the humor comes from R’s inner thoughts and some of it when he talks about his zombie appearance. R is a sort of emo teen zombie and Hoult does a great job at being a likable guy (yes even as a zombie). Palmer’s Julie isn’t necessarily the damsel in distress here. She holds her own against the first zombie attack but she also has this very likably quality about her which makes you believe why R’s falls in love with her. Malkovich plays Julie’s father, the tough General Grigio, who leads the remaining human race and doesn’t think twice about killing zombies, his opinion of them is tainted from a previous event that you can’t blame him for.

The one thing Warm Bodies does not bring is the massive gore and blood that we have come to know with the genre. Even with the PG-13 rating, there are a few moments that should make zombie fans happy but nothing huge. However, even with all that the movie does not really need the gore and massive bloodshed. There are some few intense scenes and some thrills with the evil zombies, called ‘the bonies’, who are skeleton-like creatures, and though the CGI on them doesn’t always look good, there are a couple of moments where they’re quite scary. 

All in all, Warm Bodies is pretty fun and should be viewed in that manner. If you go into the movie thinking it’s just Twilight, you probably won’t like the product. The movie does do a few interesting things that some will probably be surprised with (if you haven’t read the book that is) but I don’t think it will necessarily change the genre.

Warm Bodies

4 out of 5

Dir: Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow)

Cast: Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, Famke Janssen, Pihla Viitala, Thomas Mann, Peter Stormare

Story: In this spin on the fairy tale, Hansel & Gretel are now bounty hunters who track and kill witches all over the world. As the fabled Blood Moon approaches, the siblings encounter a new form of evil that might hold a secret to their past.

Have you ever thought about what happened to Hansel and Gretel after they escaped the evil witch’s gingerbread house? Maybe, I know I have, and Norwegian writer/director Tommy Wirkola did as well, and in his world the pair grew up to be witch hunters, complete with leather and some pretty cool weapons.

The beginning of the movie shows the story we know, at least to some point. Hansel and Gretel are lead into the woods by their father and end up in the infamous witch house. They end up in a little fight with their first witch and shove her into an oven that starts a cool animated opening sequence that shows what they’ve done in their hunting. The movie then picks up 15 years later, where the grown-up pair (played by Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton) has been bought to a mountain village to deal with missing children. Along the way they meet the witch responsible, Muriel (Janssen) who has a greater plan then just kidnapping kids and the Sheriff of the town (Stormare) who doesn’t like Hansel and Gretel.

Now before I get more into my review I want to say this. I know the idea seems silly to some and I’m not saying the movie is perfect either. The movie has its moments where it does seem maybe a little cookie cutter and predicable at some points but it’s still a lot of fun to watch. While the trailers make the movie seem like a pure action thriller, there is a lot of humor. Of course this is probably with the help of Wirkola who has managed to bring some not over the top or spoof humor, but well timed humor that makes sense to the movie. The action is also a lot gorier and brutal than you may expect, again something Wirkola brings to the table. The movie does fall into CG blood in areas but most of the work, makeup wise, looks particle.

Performance wise, Renner and Arterton give great performances when they are bonding as siblings and not hunting. The first time we actually see them they are addressing a large crowd and I don’t know what it was but Renner’s speech felt a little awkward to watch. When there not together they have some brief moments to shine, both eventually becoming love affections to characters. Renner to a woman he saved from being burned earlier in the movie (Viitala) and Arterton to a Ben (Mann) who wants to become a witch hunter and is maybe a little too obsessed with them.

The weak link in the movie is unfortunately Famke Janssen. She brings a weird accent to her character and just gives a bad performance (she has said in a past interview that she took a break from acting before doing this to pay for a mortgage after running out of money while working on her directorial debut).

All in all, Hansel & Gretel is cheesy at times but has some really fun moments. The movie does a possible set-up for a possible franchise or sequel, which will depend on the box office haul of course. However, that seems unlikely anyway since they delayed the movie almost a year.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

3.5 out of 5

Dir: Andres Muschietti (directed the short Mama)

Cast: Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Isabelle Nelisse, Megan Charpentier, Daniel Kash

Synopsis: Annabel and Lucas are faced with the challenge of raising his young nieces that were left alone in the forest for 5 years…. but how alone were they?

Hollywood has found some new ways of finding “inspiration” for movies. Besides remakes and reboots of old movies and franchises they have started to move to different mediums. Young Adult novels are now the craze with The Hunger Games and Twilight but they are starting now to adapt short films that pop out online. Mama is one of the examples. However, instead of giving it to somebody that would most likely mess it up it’s produced by the master of freaky ghost stories himself Guillermo Del Toro, and directed by the shorts director Andres Muschietti. Here, Del Toro and Muschietti take that premise of the short and expand upon it.

Mama starts with Game of Thrones Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, as Jeffrey, taking away his two young daughters (Victoria and Lilly) in a fit of disarray. They wind up in a cabin in the woods, where a mysterious force comes out of the shadows and takes out Jeffrey, leaving the two girls by themselves. From there, a typical del Toro beautiful opening credits sequence lays out the five years of the children’s lives through a series of kids’ kind of creepy drawings.

Cut to the present and we see that Jeffrey’s twin brother Lucas, also played by Coster-Waldau, has been trying to find his nieces since their disappearance, while his gothy girlfriend Annabel (a barely recognizable Chastain) tries to support him in the search. When the kids are found they live with Lucas and Annabel and of course the adults don’t know that Mama came with them

From here Mama becomes a horror ghost story that only del Toro can bring to the big screen. The atmosphere of the house is kind of eerie knowing that Mama is there but you have the mystique of del Toro and Muschietti bringing the same atmosphere he did in the short. Both of those things help the movies creep factor go to high but also makes the typical horror movie clichés be almost okay.

Although Victoria and Lilly are Lucas’s nieces we mostly follow Annabel who isn’t too thrilled with have children coming into her life. Matter of fact, the first time we see Annabel she’s taking a pregnancy test and celebrates the negative results. Then Annabel starts to see that Victoria and Lilly are acting strange even after what they have been through. Of course that is the complete opposite of Mama, who will do anything she can to take care of children that aren’t even hers. Don’t get me wrong, Mama does cause some trouble to people that she thinks are unsafe around Victoria and Lilly but she’s doing it for other reasons as well.

While pretty creepy in her CGI design Mama is actually given a back-story that, depending on how you view the situation, makes her more of a sympathetic spirit. This also makes her a more interesting and even makes the viewer understand why she cares for these kids. Speaking of the kids, they are not your typical horror movie kids either. One of the things I love about del Toro’s movies, even the ones he produces, is the way he handles children. Victoria and Lilly have been through this terrible situation and then are thrown back into the “real” world. They have to deal with the fact that they have other people to support them now and not just Mama. Muschietti handles this very well for a first time director and it’s a sign of a good director that can make children believable in movies.  

The whole movie builds to a somewhat poetic ending that I think more del Toro fans, or open minded viewers, will appreciate. It’s nice that they went in the direction that they did and it actually took me a bit by surprise that Muschietti would take the route.

All in all, Mama was a creepy ghost story that did a pretty good job expanding a story that was told through an equally creepy short.

Mama

4 out of 5

Dir: Kim Jee-woon (A Tale of Two Sisters, The Good the Bad the Weird, I Saw the Devil)

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Forest Whitaker, Peter Stormare, Eduardo Noreiga, Luis Guzman, Jaimie Alexander, Johnny Knoxville, Rodrigo Santoro

Synopsis: The leader of a drug cartel busts out of a courthouse and speeds to the Mexican border, where the only thing in his path is a sheriff and his inexperienced staff.

It’s been about ten years since we’ve seen Arnold lead a movie (his roles in The Expendables are really cameos) so it’s understandable that there would be some hesitation about seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger, now 65, trying to reclaim his action hero title with this. And while there is no denying he’s pretty rusty at many points, The Last Stand still manages to deliver exactly what you would suspect in a Arnold action movie.

Schwarzenegger plays Ray Owens, a former LAPD narcotics officer who left after an incident to become the sheriff of the sleepy New Mexico border town of Summerton Junction. As you expect with a small town nothing really much happens there, but that’s about to change. In a bit of Western fashion, the villain is headed their way and it’s up to the sheriff and his deputies to stop him and protect their town.

That bad guy is notorious drug lord Gabriel Cortez (Noriega), who escapes from FBI custody and is making his way towards the Mexican border in a specialized Corvette ZR1 (aka one of the fastest cars on the planet). The FBI task force boss Agent Bannister (Whitaker) thinks it’s a slim chance that Cortez will pass through Summerton, but there would be no movie if he were correct.

The rest of the cast is rounded up by Luis Guzman who plays pretty much one of the sidekicks. Jaimie Alexander (Thor) holds her own being the only real female role in the movie. Rodrigo Santoro (300) plays someone that has connections to Alexander’s character and gets a shot at redemption by helping out the crew. Peter Stormare plays his typical bad-guy role as one of Cortez’s henchman. Then there is Johnny Knoxville as the village idiot and weapons museum curator whose odd collection of weapons helps our outnumbered and outgunned heroes to save the day. He may be there as the movie’s comic relief, but its Arnold who actually gets the best funny lines (and of course his classic one liners)

As I mentioned before, Schwarzenegger has a little rust but the movie plays up that he’s getting older, perhaps not as much as The Expendables 2 did but it’s still there. Arnold is still physically imposing which helps him pass the action hero role still. Eduardo Noreiga plays kind of the cheesy movie villain giving weird and almost over dramatic performance while Whitaker tries to make his character seem more interesting than he really is. He’s really just there to provide exposition about the bad guy and to create a push and shove relationship with his character and Arnold’s small town lawman.

However, for me one of the stand outs was director Kim Jee-woon who makes his stateside debut with The Last Stand and manages, at least from what I noticed, to avoid some mistakes that some foreign filmmakers make on their first big Hollywood movies. He understands exactly what kind of movie he’s been hired to make, yet he manages to compose a few artfully staged action set-pieces, some of which involve Cortez’s corvette and some of the shootouts. 

All in all, while The Last Stand is not going to win any awards for acting, it had some brief good acting scenes, it’s probably not the reason you’re really watching this movie. It’s still a ton of fun to watch and seeing Arnold back on the big screen leading a movie isn’t too bad either.

The Last Stand

4 out of 5