Total Recall, Premium Rush, Bourne Legacy

Hey! It's been a while, I know, I know. I apologize sincerely. Anyway. The past month has been a little bit ... lack for movies, in my world, at least. I haven't seen Paranorman or Expendables yet, but I'll get around to them eventually. I did, however, see Total Recall, the Bourne Legacy, and Premium Rush. In that order.

Total Recall was... okay. I mean, I really enjoyed it but I like Colin Farrell and I like science-fiction-futuristic stuff in it. But I'll be the first person to admit that the story had little substance and a lot of pretty people doing cool things like jumping out of buildings and walking away from explosions. Sure, there was a nod (which one would probably miss in passing) to Mars and the ending wasn't actually the ending because there was like an immediate second ending and it was just a little ... ridiculous. The storyline was thin and there just wasn't a whole lot to it. It was pretty. But it was pretty unsubstantial.




Bourne Legacy. I think the problem with this movie was that a lot of people just weren't expecting there to be "another" even though all the ads said that. Seriously, practically every ad said "there was never just one!" so when you get online you see people complaining that Jeremy Renner isn't Jason Bourne -- when it's been made relatively clear the entire time that Jeremy Renner's Aaron Cross is not Jason Bourne. Even people I talked to had this problem—"I want Matt Damon!" But, regardless of what they said, the movie was good--lots of action and Jeremy Renner's a pretty stellar actor, but some of the time it seemed like he was on a hunt for drugs. That's pretty much what the entire movie was about. Going overseas so he could get cured of his need for drugs. "WHERE ARE THE CHEMS?" (said in the spirit of Jack Bauer, may 24 rest in peace). Overall, though, it was a good movie. A bit slow in the beginning but it picked up once they started blowing stuff up and shooting at each other. The story was a little bit ... thin at times, just like Total Recall, but overall, it was very enjoyable.

Premium Rush isn't the kind of movie that draws in tons of audiences. How many people are going to see an ad about bike couriers in New York and be like "wow. That looks like a darn good movie to see." Not a lot, unfortunately. But, the good thing here is that for people who know who Joseph Gordon-Levitt is, they'll probably go see it. We saw Premium Rush about a week after it came out and I almost regretted waiting that long. It was hilarious. Gordon-Levitt's Wilee is a sarcastic, smug bike-messenger who gets stuck delivering the worst package possible because somebody doesn't  want him to have it. The movie has a lot of fast-paced and cringe-worthy action, and a lot of funny moments. There were points in the movie where we were laughing so hard that we couldn't breathe. Out of the three movies listed I think that this one was probably my favourite. It was funny, it went quickly, and sure, the story wasn't absolutely wonderful, but I mean, I'll become a New York bike messenger because it looks like all kinds of dangerous fun.

Upcoming this month: Perks of Being a Wallflower and Looper. I have a lot of feelings about Perks so we'll see how that actually ends up being. Looper looks fantastic.

Bourne Legacy & Total Recall

I think it should be mentioned that this movie is coming out in about a month, and I'm really excited about it. Jeremy Renner is one of my favourite actors and I'm really excited to see him in the next Bourne installment. And Edward Norton.

The trailers are making this movie look pretty amazing. It's been pushed back a week, so now it comes out August 10th, but that's good news for me because that means....

I can dedicate the entire weekend of the 3rd to being stoked about this movie:

Total Recall is one of those movies that I really hope I'm not getting myself too excited for, only to be disappointed. I love science-fiction thrillers. I'm really excited about this movie. Also I just really love Colin Farrell and I'm not sure I could deal with him and Jeremy Renner all in one weekend. Looking forward to both of these!

The Amazing Spider-Man #ASM #AmazingSpiderMan

The Amazing Spider-Man (July3rd, 2012)

Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Martin Sheen, Sally Field, Rhys Ifans, Dennis Leary

I'll be the first to admit: when I heard that they were making another Spider-Man movie, I wasn't entirely convinced. It's only been five years since the last one came out (even though we don't talk about that one, and for good reason), so I had plenty of reason to be completely skeptical. 

And then Andrew Garfield was cast as Peter Parker. 

He was phenomenal in The Social Network and initially I thought he was a bit old for ASM. 

But then I actually saw the movie. 

Let me just say that for being in his late twenties, he can pull off a seventeen-year-old high school student very well. He plays the shy brainiac very well—that awkward part of high school where everyone's a little awkward was portrayed pretty well in the film. It's not awkward for the audience, though—sometimes I almost felt bad for laughing at Peter Parker's very obvious discomfort and awkwardness around Gwen, but his curiosity was something that got the audience interested in his life. As Spider-Man, there are some very touching, moments in the film (like the car off the bridge scene), lighthearted times as he is looking for a costume and testing out his own webbing, and then there are some other portions that are dark and intense as he's trying to conceal his identity from Captain Stacy. The movie is funny, intense, touching, and quickly draws its audience in with Peter's quick wit and awkward tendencies.  

Obviously the movie has its problems, but overall, it was very enjoyable and very funny. There's a point where you can see who Spider-Man really is that comes about halfway through the film that just makes the movie absolutely wonderful. The CGI was okay--I think some things could have been done a little better but overall it was enjoyable. Emma Stone was cute and enjoyable and I'm not sure if I want her character, Gwen Stacy, to be killed off like she was in the comics, but I suppose we'll find that out in the future. 

OH. There's a couple of great scenes between Peter and Flash that just kills me every time. Ironic tension that's supposed to be there is kind of there. It's pretty great. 

Anyway. Go see it. It's good in 3D. 

The #Avengers is a comic nerd's dream. #LokisArmy

Oh, hey. It's been a while. I know it's been a while since we've talked, but I feel I should let y'all know ....

The Avengers came out last night.

And it was bleeping amazing.

There are so few movies that have been able to genuinely impress me lately (cough the suckfest that was Hunger Games cough), but I can honestly say that this is probably my favourite movie ever made. Early predictions are slating it to take over as one of the biggest grossing weekends ever, and I'm sure that that'll come from me somewhat since I'm seeing it a few times this weekend.

I am against spoilers. Therefore I won't post what happens in the movie until a few weeks from now, but I just want to preface the movie for you: all of my friends and I are huge comic nerds. Really, we could probably write a book called "Nerdism Amongst The Corn" because I really think we were the most obsessed people in the theater that night. I'm going to skip straight to the end (side note: stay all the way through the credits), but two of my friends and I let out a collective three-person-consecutive gasp when we saw the proceeding scenes. You don't understand. Now we have to wait for Avengers 2 to come out, even though we've already planned out what's inevitably going to happen in this movie.

This movie was so well done. All hail Joss Whedon. It's the kind of movie where it got out at 2:30 am and we stood around outside the theater and talked until 5am. Everything about this movie thoroughly impressed me. We laughed. We cried. I screamed a few times and I hit one of my friends when something really upsetting happened.

The Avengers movie was the kind of movie that had very serious undertones--we're talking about the destruction of our world, here--but then there's people like Tony Stark who have an inability to take things seriously until shit gets really real, but who will do anything to save people. We have Thor, for whom this battle is considerably more personal than for everyone else. Hulk, who befriends one of the Avengers as we see at the end of the film and despite his previous saying of "we're not a team, we're a time-bomb", ends up having that view challenged. Captain America, who has some of the funniest comic-relief lines because, well, he's from the forties. Hawkeye, who gets a considerable amount of screen time and is proven to be an integral part of the team and Black Widow, a formidable assassin who, under her tough-girl exterior, exhibits true fear in the face of death.

And then there's Loki. Before I get into Tom Hiddleston's performance,  I have to preface this by saying that Loki is my favourite Marvel character ever. And this is a girl that loves Thor and loves Iron Man, for me, it will always be Loki as my favourite character. It is incomprehensible how much I love Loki. In the film, Loki is perfect. Loki is flawless. In Thor, we're introduced to this 'son' of Odin who is somewhat timid, living in the shadow of his older brother. Loki's descent (or ascent) into the powerful being that he appears as in Avengers is a completely different character from what we see in Thor. It's still very distinctly the trickster, but it's more the Loki we see towards the end of the film. It's the sarcastically callous and yes, evil, god that we are introduced to in this film. I always think back to Thor when I look back on this movie now, because there's a scene in that movie where Loki is speaking with Odin, and the conversation goes:

Odin: You're my son. I wanted only to protect you from the truth.
Loki: What, because I am the monster that parents tell their children about at night?
And then, right here is where we see the anger:
Loki: It all makes sense now, why you favoured Thor all these years. Because no matter how much you claimed to love me, you could never have a frost giant sitting on the throne of Asgard.

This conversation is the turning point in Loki's character development. There is a moment in Avengers where we briefly see his good side again but it's very brief. In Avengers we see a dark side of Loki that was only slightly explored in Thor. He's a wonderful villain. The best.

And oh my. I had my doubts about Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk, but he was so, so impressive. I loved his performance through and through, and furthermore, I rescind my previous doubts because he erased them all. He was funny in a very deadpan way--he had a certain kind of self-depreciating humour.

I can't say enough about this movie. Which means that it's time to go and see it again. The Avengers Assembled and they were great.

Looper.

Seriously, I can't even recognize Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
This movie looks great, yo.

I was going to make a giant master post regarding Gary Ross leaving the Hunger Games franchise, but I deemed this more important. There is a movie that's coming out called "Looper". Look at this BAMFing poster.

Looper. You can watch the trailer here since it's on Apple Trailers and I can't find a trailer on youtube.

I'm all for futuristic movies where things are kind of old school and instead of progressing we've regressed. Needless to say, it looks awesome. This is the reason I wish I could go to all the film festivals and see these movies ahead of time. Regardless, I'm looking forward to it. Comes out in September. I can barely recognize Joe Go Levitt in the trailer--half the time he was on the screen I wasn't sure that it was actually him and I had to do double takes! The synopsis provided on Apple Trailers goes as such:

In the futuristic action thriller Looper, time travel will be invented - but it will be illegal and only available on the black market. When the mob wants to get rid of someone, they will send their target 30 years into the past, where a "looper" - a hired gun, like Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) - is waiting to mop up. Joe is getting rich and life is good... until the day the mob decides to "close the loop," sending back Joe's future self (Bruce Willis) for assassination. The film is written and directed by Rian Johnson and also stars Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, and Jeff Daniels. Ram Bergman and James D. Stern produce.

SEE DOESN'T THAT SOUND AWESOME?! Yes. Yes it does.

Total Recall: first full-trailer.

This looks too AWESOME. It's like Minority Report but with Colin Farrell playing Tom Cruise's character and the snowsuits from Inception. Looks good. But you have to remember that I'm a crazy sci-fi/future junkie so of course it's gonna look awesome to me.

I'm just tired of movies doing this Inception bullshit where they release a trailer for the trailer using footage from the trailer. BRAAAAAAAAMMMMMMM.

The Hunger Games Left Me Empty

So I saw the Hunger Games. If you know me, and a lot of you probably don't personally, I'm a huge Hunger Games fan, having read the first 2 books over 10 times each. Mockingjay is the redheaded stepchild of the series that I pretend doesn't exist. But okay, so, I saw the Hunger Games. Midnight showing. Super excited. Put my phone away, determined I wouldn't need it because this movie was going to be SO AWESOME and SO EPIC and SO AMAZING and I would be BLOWN AWAY and ALL KINDS OF OTHER THINGS THAT DESERVE CAPITAL LETTERS.

But by the time I walked out of there, I think one of the first things I did was text my friends, and then I told them (and the world, via twitter), a variation of the following:

"That movie was effing terrible."

Because, in my world, it was.

Now, also in my world, I don't think that book-to-movie translations should have word-for-word interpretations of the script. That gets annoying, really fast. Making a small comparison here, in Harry Potter, some of the dialogue was adapted. For example, "NOT MY DAUGHTER YOU BITCH" HAD to be in the movie because really, it's one of the best parts of that book. But there are some clear differences between the books and the films which separate them as so. It makes it so much easier to appreciate both the book and the film separately.

Hunger Games didn't do that. It was almost as if the screenwriter took the book, put "KATNISS" in front of all the Katniss lines they wanted, put the action into brackets, and then handed it to the actors. Or, even better, handed the book to the actors and said "here, memorize this."

Now, before you get all angry, I'll say that I saw the movie twice and I liked it much better the second time around, but that was because I knew what to expect. There were some key things in the book that didn't make it into the film that I think should have, because the pacing in the movie was all weird.

Here's a list of the things that could have been included, changed, edited, for my sanity and to give the movie a little bit more ... depth. (WE MUST GO DEEPER.)

• Make District 12 a little less Frontierland and a little more impoverished hole. I felt like I was watching 3:10 to Yuma. 
• Katniss doesn't have to say "little duck" more than once. Really.
• Haymitch, I loved you, you were great, but you don't have to say 'sweetheart' at the end of every sentence. Otherwise, you were awesome and I adored you. #DrunkHaymitch!
• I wanted to see Katniss's disgust with the stylists. Because they have pretty 'big' roles in the next two books, I just hated that they were cut out.
• Katniss, this is Peeta. Peeta, Katniss. You're supposed to be pretending to pretend to be in love, unless you're Peeta, in which case you're actually in love.
• I feel like this movie would've been better if we didn't stick to Katniss's POV. Show us what's going on with Peeta. Show us how he convinced the Careers that he was worth their time.
• Speaking of the Careers, whenever they were around I felt like I was watching a fraternity. 
• Where was the lamb stew?
• Why did the arena make me think of my backyard? Because I swear that that's where it was filmed.
• On another note, make the fire costumes a little more believable next time.. The fire is supposed to look real. I could tell 100% that it was fake. Didn't even have me halfway convinced. 
• Everything was so corny! Look, I know that the Capitol is supposed to be over the top and ridiculous but everything just seemed so ... half-assed. Badly CGI'd. 
• WHERE. WAS. THE. BLOOD? This is a series about children killing children. I got more of a sense of urgency from that from the 5 second clip they showed of Games from a DIFFERENT year where some kid is about to fuck another kid up with a brick. That would be awesome to see.  The first thing at the cornucopia is supposed to be a BLOODBATH. I wanted brutal! I wanted pain! I wanted death. Which sounds terrible, but seriously, what's with the weakass violence, Gary Ross? 
• Where was the lamb stew? I already said this but now I'm seriously wondering why they cut that out. The whole feast with Katniss and Peeta set the standard for their in-love dealio. I was no more convinced that they were in love than I am convinced that rocks can turn into flowers. 
• "Damn you!" is a terrible line and should never be used. Ever. 
• So ..... why didn't Peeta lose his leg? Why did the last 70 pages of the book get completely rushed through in the movie?

Once I got over those, I was able to enjoy the movie the second time around. And I might enjoy it later on if I see it again. But I just really hated it the first time around, maybe because I was nitpicking or something. I think it could have been done so much better and that they tried so hard to stay true to the book that it felt forced, with no individuality. Maybe it'll get better. But it probably won't. 

On DVD/Blu-Ray/Why Don't We Have VHS Anymore Today

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I never posted a preliminary review of this when it was in theaters but to say that this movie was fantastic is an understatement. It won the Academy Award for editing and I think it was very well-deserved. Stellar performance given by both Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, who completely transformed herself for the film. It was beautifully made and the kind of movie that I would love to watch over and over again.

The movie gives off an air of not only mystery and suspense, but also a sheer sense of terror. It is, by no means, a horror movie, but by the time that the viewer really figures out what's really going on, (provided they haven't read the book), the subject matter of the film can chill people to the bone. The mystery unravels itself throughout the course of the film and keeps viewers on the edge until the very end. For both the informed viewer and the first-introduction viewer, the movie is a dead ringer of what a thriller should be. Dark, dangerous, frightening, and engaging to the very last scene.

Unfortunately I watched this in a dark room in the dead of night and needless to say I was a wee bit scared to go to bed that night. Lisbeth Salander (Mara) is brilliant in every sense of the word and not the kind of person that you want going after you. Daniel Craig, on the other hand, is a beautiful soul and deserves all the awards for that face of his and can come after me any day that he wants. (Rooney Mara is beautiful too, obviously, but I still wouldn't want her coming after me while she's playing Lisbeth.)

You can buy Dragon Tattoo on DVD and Blu-Ray and probably some amount of stupid digital copy today.