2013 - BEAUTIFUL CREATURES , gothic southern teen love story stuff

We're south of the Mason Dixon line in South Carolina where sensitive teenager Ethan Wate is about to fall in love.  How do we know he's sensitive?  Well he's reading Charles Bukowski and Kurt Vonnegut and it's not even on the assigned reading list for his high school English class.  Into his life comes transfer student Lena Duchannes from the far way land of New York City.  Ethan is immediately smitten with her and vice versa.  But Lena has a big secret she is secretly a "caster" (witch) who has magic powers.  When she turns 16 she will either become a good caster or an evil caster.  Can Mason stop Lena from turning into an evil caster?  He will have to fight the powers of darkness to keep this from happening.  I guess that means Mason needs to read more Charles Bukowski novels or something.

 

So what we have here is a variation on the Twilight series except this time it's a girl with supernatural powers instead of a boy.  The viewer has to sit through a lot of mumble jumble about casters, reincarnation, magic spell books and mysterious magic people who secretly co-exist with us mortals.  I am reluctant to say this film reminds me of the old Elizabeth Montgomery TV series Bewitched because that would be wrong.  However it does remind me of the spinoff to Bewitched, Tabatha who was Elizabeth Montgomery's witch daughter. 

 

The cast of this film is the usual bunch of actors in their 20's trying to pass for 15 year old teenagers.  Somehow Jeremy Irons, Emma Thompson and Viola Davis also got roped into this foolishness and they really should have known better.   The writer/director Richard LaGravenese was the one responsible for this southern gothic young adult fiction nonsense.  He's usually a competent writer but in this case he should have known better.

 

Beautiful Creatures stumbles through it's contrived teenage love story trying to create it's magical world  but in the end the world building is just tiresome and dissatisfying.  Beautiful Creatures is part of a four book series and clearly the intention was to make another Twilight series.  But the movie was an under performer and that put an end to the studio's money making dreams.  My advice would be to dig out your copy of The Wizard of Oz and watch that again.

The running time of this film is 124 long minutes.  

2013 - HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS, consider the title

As children Hansel and Gretel survive the evil witch in the gingerbread house.  They grow up to be a pair of witch hunters who kill witches for a bounty.  They end up in a small village which is being attacked by a really tough evil witch and her coven.  The really tough evil witch wants Gretel's heart so she can perform a ritual that will make all witches immune to fire.  Let the violence and the bloodbath commence.

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters is a very silly movie to put it mildly.  The intention appears to be to go down the same road as the John Landis horror comedy An American Werewolf in London.  That film mixed humor and what was at the time trendsetting gross out effects.  Well they got the gross out part right they just couldn't seem to get any clever humor out of their silly story. 

The film was shot in Europe mostly with European actors.  However the leads were American actor Jeremy Renner as Hansel, taking a break from playing Hawkeye from those Marvel superhero movies. However you wouldn't really know it since he basically plays Hansel and Hawkeye as the same character.  British actor Jemma Arterton is Gretel who in this case is taking a break from playing a credible performer in her career. The writer of this epic didn't even attempt to explain their mishmash of American and British accents. 

 

The film was produced by one time comedy partners Will Farrell and Adam McKay and I get that everyone involved in this production had their tongues really in their cheeks.  But for a film like this to succeed you really need to be a lot wittier spoofing this fantasy stuff and while the gross out bloody humor is in abundance, the actual amount of cleverness is sorely lacking.

 

Of course after criticizing the stupidity of this film I do have to report that it made a bumch of money for the studio.  There was a lot of discussion about filming a Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters 2 but as of this date it never came to pass.  Kind of surprising since Hollywood never passes on an opportunity to beat a film concept to death if there are bucks involved.  Even though this film made a lot of money it's still a piece of crap.

The film was written by the director Tommy Wirkola, the running time is 88 minutes. 

2013 - THE LAST STAND, entertaining action film

This film was made in the later part of the career of Arnold Schwarzenegger after his successful run of action/science fiction films in the 1980's.  The big news was that this was the first American film from the Korean director Kim-Jee Wong who has a reputation for violent action films and intense extreme dramas from Korea.

Really there's nothing new here.  Arnold is a small town sheriff who along with his deputies has to take on a ruthless drug kingpin and his gang who are escaping from the FBI.  It all comes down to a violent showdown in Arnold's town.  The film is basically a western set in a modern environment,  kind of a contemporary version of High Noon with machine guns I guess.

Arnold brings his usual characterization to the film the loner who is a lot tougher than he seems. I can't say that Arnold would ever be considered an award winning actor but like John Wayne he knows his character and always plays it very well.

 

The director Kim-Jee Wong does a good job staging the action scenes the small town setting is a nice change of pace from the usual urban scene. The Last Stand is an entertaining action film which knows enough not to stretch the story out unlike the latest bloated films in this genre.  I'm calling you out, Indiana Jones, the Fast and Furious franchisee and the overlong Mission Impossible films.

The film was written by Andrew Knauer, the running time is 105 minutes.

2013 - G.I. JOE RETALIATION, the follow up to G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Any movie based on a line of toys and a crappy limited animation cartoon series that ran in syndication is probably not going to be a very good one.  I believe this is the situation here. G. I Joe Retaliation is very stupid but is also very entertaining.  If it's a choice between Olivier's Hamlet or this, I believe I will come down on the side of the Joe's.

Picking up where the last film left off, the President of the United States has been replaced by an imposter from the evil organization COBRA.  COBRA plans to take over the world with a series of satellites that can shoot radiation beams or something at major countries around the world. This is essentially the same plot as in a couple of James Bond movies, Die Another Day and Goldeneye, so much for story originality.  The G.I. Joe team is betrayed and only three members survive, "Roadblock", played by Dwayne Johnson, "Lady Jaye" played by Adrianne Palicki and "Flint," played by some guy.  Meanwhile two Ninja guys battle it out in the Himalayas for some reason racing up and down mountain tops.  It's all clearly created with CGI but the scene is highly entertaining.

Well everyone shows up back in Washington D.C. where they team up with paycheck actor Bruce Willis phoning it in as usual.  There's lots of fights and goofy gadgets (more James Bond movie stuff ripoff).  The Joe's save the world with the exception of London and we are set up for yet another chapter in this series that apparently will never be made.

 

Okay what does this movie have going for it.  Well the action scenes for the most part are very entertaining.  Dwayne Johnson makes a good leader and the film does clip along at a decent pace.  The director Jon M.Chu is usually associated with musicals and there is kind of an approach to staging each shoot-em up like it was an old MGM musical number.  The film is a very entertaining time killer and there's nothing wrong with that.

 

Amusingly Channing Tatum was in the first G. I. Joe movie but wanted out probably after reading the screenplay so they killed him off towards the beginning of the film.  All the better, Dwayne Johnson is more than manly enough to take over his job.

The film was written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick who specialize in these kind of films, the running time is 110 minutes.

2013 - THE FAMILY, mix of action/comedy, make that black comedy

 Robert DeNiro and Michele Pfeiffer are a husband and wife who along with their two children are on the run from mobsters and hiding out in France as part of the witness protection program.  The ever scowling Tommy Lee Jones is the FBI agent in charge of watching over them.  The humor comes from the fact that DeNiro, Pfeiffer and their children are basically a bunch of hoodlums who have to integrate themselves into the gentile lives of a small French village.

The director is Luc Besson, you can find fault with a lot of the films he has directed, but you have to admit he is a good technician very good at staging action scenes.  However this film is all over the place.  There is some comedy, some black comedy and a very violent action finale.  It doesn't appear that Bresson ever found the right balance for this story.

The acting is decent,  DeNiro and Pfeiffer are professionals after all.  Tommy Lee Jones plays his usual grumpy guy character but he does play it fairly well.  There is a silly Goodfellas joke obviously stuck in the film because DeNiro was in that film.  Martin Scorcese of all people has an executive producer credit on the film, since this is basically a gangster movie and he's an expert on gangsters in the movies.  The Family is a well made but kind of hollow and silly film for the most part but an okay time killer.

 

The film was written by Luc Besson and Michael Caleo, the running time is 111 minutes.

2013 - RUSH, around and around they go

Rush supposedly tells the true story about the rivalry between to formula one race drivers James Hunt, played by Chris Hemsworth and Niki Lauda played by Daniel Brühl.  Hunt is the devil make care guy who drives like a madman and off the track leads a wild life of "wine, women and song."  Niki Lauda is the more cautious driver who weighs the odds worried about how safe the tracks might be for the drivers.  However as presented in this film both of these guys seem really unlikable. 

Hunt marries a model named Suzy Miller (Olivia Wilde), but she ends up leaving him for the actor Richard Burton.   Lauda also marries a woman named Marlene Lauda who at one time had been the girl friend of actor Curd Jurgens.  Now these two women would have probably made an interesting story on their own.  As usual the wives in these racing films are usually relegated to the role of worrying about their racer husbands, i.e they are dull and rather uninteresting.  Wilde's part is really small she's barely in the film.

The writer of Rush is Peter Morgan known primarily as the man behind the Netflix series The Crown.   Since I don't know much about the real story behind the rivalry between Hunt and Lauda I have to rely on Morgan's script and Morgan has been known to bend the story of the Windsors considerably in The Crown.  So the viewer might want to take this "true story" with a big grain of salt.

 

Rush is directed by the ever reliable and boring filmmaker Ron Howard.  The film is well made and the acting is decent.  The problem is that the film has a seen it all before feel to it.  John Frankenheimer's Grand Prix essentially has the same dramatic situations  and for my money the racing scenes in Grand Prix are more exciting. 

Running time 123 minutes.

2013 - JOURNEY TO THE WEST: CONQUERING THE DEMONS, has everything but the kitchen sink thrown in.

 This film by one of Hong Kong's best filmmakers is a large scale epic which combines horror, comedy, drama and fantasy.  In other words this is an extremely ambitious film from Stephen Chow.

The crazed story line has a Buddhist monk in training, Tang Sanzang battling all sorts of monsters(demons), while attempting to reach spiritual enlightenment.  Along the way he meets another demon hunter Duan who competes with him in the monster hunting business and after a while decides she is in love with him.

 

Only someone like Stephen Chow could mix all of these genres and come up with a very entertaining film which in some ways is almost one of it's kind.  The high voltage action scenes blend fairly well with the computer effects.  The comedy may get a little silly at times but it certainly doesn't affect the entertainment value of the film.

 

Stephen Chow, Derek Kwok, Xin Huo, Yun Wang, Fung Chih Chiang, Lu Zheng Yu, Lee Sheung Shing and Y.Y. Kong worked on the story and screenplay, the running time is 110 minutes.

2013 - THE LONE RANGER, another revisionist western

 Somewhere in this mess of a movie is a decent film trying to get out.   White guy Johnny Depp, apparently wanting to add another off beat character to his resume is Tonto.  Disgraced actor Armie  Hammer is The Lone Ranger.  The white horse Silver does make an appearance and there are silver bullets involved.  That's about it for the legend of The Lone Ranger.

The film has so many subplots and for want of a better word, stuff going on that after a while it is almost impossible to track what is going on and who is doing what to whom.

The film wants to be a comedy, then takes a turn as a violent western almost like Peckinpah.  At some point the film is about the plight of the Native Americans and how they are victimized by the United States Army.  Then the film decides it wants to go down some sort of supernatural story line with The Lone Ranger and Tonto having visions about their futures. Moving along we have a plot involving the building of the transcontinental railroad and finally there is a love story between The Lone Ranger and his late brother's wife.

 

Obviously the screenplay is really the chief problem here.  There are at least three writers (Jusine Haythe, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio), that I know about involved in this mess and I would suspect probably more that I don't know about.  

I'm a little surprised this film is so messed up.  The producer Jerry Bruckheimer and the director Gore Verbinski are experienced commercial filmmakers.  It 's hard to believe they didn't see the problems with this film.

 

Anything to recommend it?  Well the action scenes are generally well done.  The film has some nice scenery of the Southwestern United States and it's fun to hear the William Tell Overture played over the action climax.

Running time an incredible 149 minutes.  I guarantee there will be no sequels to this film.

2013 - HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER SEASON 9, the final season

The last season of HIMYM, is sort of a last hurrah for the cast and guest stars.  Almost everyone who appeared in the series takes a sort of bow. All of Ted's old girlfriends appear and almost every goofball, (The Captain, Robin Scherbatsky, Sr.,The Bartender etc.). among others make a final appearance.

The writers tried something different in this season.  The episodes were set over the 3 day period of Barney and Robin's wedding.  In theory this was sort of clever, in reality kind of unwieldy.  

 

The plan was to finally bring Ted and Robin together after her divorce from Barney.  But a funny thing happened on the way to the last episode. The actress they hired to play Ted's unseen wife, Cristin Milioti was so likable that fans of the series resented killing her off to make way for Robin.

 

The DVD release offered 2 versions of the final show, one where the mother is alive and married to Ted and one where the mother is dead and Ted finally ends up with Robin. My vote is he should have stuck with girlfriend Victoria from season 1

Well that's showbiz.

24 episodes, 516 minutes.

2013 - NOW YOU SEE ME, seen it.

 The first in the Now You See Me series followed by the sequel Now You See Me 2.

 

It's got a good cast, Michael Caine, Mark Ruffalo, Ilsa Fischer,Woody Harrelson to name just a few

Since I saw Now You See Me 2 ,  before I saw this film I can report these two films are the exact same picture.

115 minutes, written by Ed Solomon, Boaz Yakin, and Edward Ricourt.

2013 - 47 RONIN, is a weird mix of samurai and oriental fantasy film

Obviously looking to rehash some of Keanu Reeves Matrix moments and make some money at the same time.  Somebody dreamed up the idea of mixing the legend of the 47 Ronin with lots of monsters and mysticism.  As if the original idea of samurai warriors avenging their dead master wasn't dramatic enough this film adds lots of substandard CG monsters and witches to the mix. 

 Casting Reeves was an attempt to add some international box office insurance to what is a national legend in Japan.  However I would argue people don't line up to see Keanu Reeves films (if they line up at all for any film these days).  Studios who spend lots of money on elaborate fantasy films better know what they are doing.  There are any only so many Lord of the Rings epic type stories floating around out there.

The only somewhat redeeming feature of this film is the action stuff and after a while even that gets tiresome.  Obviously Keanau is going to defeat all of the phony looking monsters since a plot point is that Keanu can sense magic or in this case computer magic.

The film is trying for a sense of epic tragedy but it's only a tragedy of wasted time in front of the TV.

118 minutes written by Chris Morgan and Hossein Amini.

2013 - THOR: THE DARK WORLD, a sequel to THOR

Follow up to Thor and not horrible.  This time Thor has to take on a bunch of evil Elves.  They want to return the universe to the "dark era" whatever that is.   The film has lots of action and hammer throwing.  Chris Hemsworth is the stud god, his earthling girl friend is played by Natalie Portman.  Kat Dennings and Stellan Skarsgard are the comedy relief.  Tom Hiddleston is back as Thor's evil step-brother Loki.  The topper in the cast is Anthony Hopkins playing Thor's dad Odin sort of like a Norwegian King Lear.

These Thor movies are a strange mixture of Norse mythology, sort of science fiction, sort of fantasy all channeled through the Marvel movie universe and not the Marvel comic universe which probably had an even more convulted story line with this character than these silly movie time lines.

I actually kind of enjoyed this fight the elf nonsense loaded with it's overblown dialog and a lot of the cast running around in silly Viking outfits.  It's more of a comic book film then the overly serious Ironman and the self important Captain America because when you get down to it Marvel movies are basically silly comic book movies.

112 minutes, screenplay by Christopher Yost, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.

2013 - IRON MAN 3, more of the same

If you've seen the first couple of Iron Man films you've seen this.

 

Downey still plays Tony Stark as a wise ass, Gwyneth has dieted herself down to nothing so a 40 year old woman can look like a 20 year old woman.  The rest of the cast is made up of decent actors who are clearly in it for a paycheck.

The plot is basically the same as the first two films.  There is an evil genius.  He has an army of followers.  They have strange super powers that could probably destroy Iron Man.  There is a lot of action.  Everything blows up towards the end of the film. 

130 minutes. Screenplay by Shane Black and Drew Pearce but it follows the same old Marvel formula.

2013 - NEBRASKA, a family drama very well made.

Bruce Dern is actually restrained for a change in Nebraska.  Usually Dern is all over the place playing his usual eccentric weirdo character in films.  The director Alexander Payne has Dern and all the actors keep the acting under the radar as benefits this very low key film.  Payne even got away with shooting the film in black and white.

The story is one of those family dramas that the movies like to make, cheap and possible award bait.  Payne cast a lot of the actors against type.  Will Forte and Bob Odenkirk are usually thought of as comedians not low key dramatic actors.  Stacey Keach and Rance Howard are old time Hollywood personalities but it's amazing that Payne was able to get a cast like this to actually stay in character

The Midwestern country of Nebraska and Montana looks mighty grim and I would have to say that after actually driving through it this film has certainly captured the bleakness of that landscape.  The landscape in many ways is as important as the characters in this film.

Although the film is kind of a downer this is an impressive family drama

114 minutes.

2013 - THE CHRISTMAS CANDLE, 1st of the 12 films of Christmas project

The rules for the posts this month.  Only Christmas movies.  No movie can be one that is already considered a classic such as It's A Wonderful Life or White Christmas.  You have been warned.  Let's start with The Christmas Candle a piece of religious slop from last year.

In this film, an angel appears every 25 years to a candlemaker's shop and turns one of his candles into a magic candle which will grant wishes to whoever lights it.  The film is set in a town in jolly old England.  The town is run by a rich woman who seeks out a minister for her Church and who will buy into this magic candle stuff.  The town lives in a state of poverty but the lady "to the manor born" wouldn't think of giving money to anyone when she can get these people to run around chasing their tails looking for a magic candle.

Well into this cheery little scene comes a minister who has sort of lost his faith in God after his wife and daughter have died of consumption, a noted movie disease.  Guess who ends up getting the magic candle, gets his faith restored and for good measure gets the only hot chick in the village.  It really was a magic candle after all.

The film is a who's who of English actors who I have never heard of and don't have a clue about.   The exception is the very scary Susan Boyle that well known warbler of "I Dreamed a Dream." In this film she sings a song about a magic Christmas candle of course. 

There is nothing really all that bad about this film.  The problem is that there is nothing particularly special or good about it either.  I don't doubt the sincerity of the makers of The Christmas Candle  I just question their choice of material and the way they handled it.

100 minutes, written by Candace Lee and Eric Newman.

2013 - MACHETE KILLS, a failed B-movie spoof

Hispanic filmmaker Robert Rodriguez can't seem to let go of the Machete character he created for the Grindhouse film he and Quentin Tarantino directed in 2007.  The first film Machete was over the top with it's silly violence and comedy bits.   But the film also had a bizarre cast which included Lindsey Lohan, Cheech Martin, Steven Seagal and Robert De Niro of all people.

Going back to the well with the same silly formula as the first film just shows how tired his exaggerated B movie concept has become.  Rodriguez pulled together another eccentric cast and has lots of over the top violence but it all seems kind of stupid this time. 

As the lead Rodriguez again uses Danny Trejo an actor who is so physically stiff he seems like he can barely walk across the set much less hack people to death with a really big knife.  Rodriguez managed to talk Mel Gibson into appearing in his film and talk about how the mighty have fallen.  At least Gibson managed to inject some humor into this turkey but it's kind of painful to see him in this "bow wow" of a film at all. 

Toward the end of Machete Kills, Rodriguez steals the plot of Moonraker with a space station in orbit ready to start a new world order.  It was at this point in the film I finally realized what I was watching was a very cut rate James Bond film.

108 minutes, written by Kyle Ward.

2013 - FROZEN, a minority opinion

Vomit.

No sale.

102 minutes.

2013 - SAVING MR BANKS or portrait of an artist as a terrible person.

If you having a burning desire to watch a film about the creation of the Disney version of Mary Poppins, this film is for you.  Saving Mr. Banks is a long trudge back and forth between the author P.L. Travers tragic childhood in Australia and her bitchy behavior with Disney's creative team during the making of Mary Poppins.

It's pretty clear as the film goes on with it's crisscross story structure that the audience is going to understand why Travers ended up the way she did. In this film Travers finally sees the light when the Sherman Brothers the composers of Mary Poppins stick in the "Lets's Go Fly a Kite" song which brings Travers around.  After about 90 minutes of setting up what an emotionally damaged person Travers is this seems kind of like a cheat to wrap up the story.  Only in a Hollywood movie and particularly a Disney movie, could the core issue of P. L. Travers tragic relationship with her alcoholic father be resolved with a song

Andrews, Disney, Travers

 

The film has a good cast.  Tom Hanks is a likable guy who plays the likable Walt Disney.  Emma Thompson is a pro and does what she can do to soften the character.  The rest of the cast is filled in with decent actors like Paul Giamatti and Colin Farrell.  The director John Hancock has done a decent job keeping a way to long movie perking along.

However, 20 minutes digging around on the internet reveals that Travers was a lot nastier person than she was as portrayed by Emma Thompson.  In particular she mostly ruined the life of her adopted son and apparently was shunned by her family towards the end of her life. 

125 minutes.