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Trailer for The Conjuring (2013)
The Conjuring (2013) (Click on the title for my full review)
I have mentioned before that I am not a huge fan of horror movies. They are a dime a dozen these days and usually slasher films that lack a plot or a point. That being said, I recognize when a movie looks like it could be scary and I do appreciate a horror movie if it is done right. James Wan has shown us that he is capable of making brutal bloodbaths that he calls movies i.e. Saw (2004) and Dead Silence (2007). But, when Wan directed Death Sentence (2007), he proved that he was very capable of making an awesome thriller.
From the preview, it appears that Wan has toned down the blood and decided to go more for the thrills. It shows that it might have some potential.
The cast includes the likes of Lily Taylor, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, and Ron Livingston.
The film is set to hit theatres on 7/19/13. Should be a good movie to bring the wife to.
Django Unchained (2012)
Django Unchained (2012)
Django Unchained was a bloody masterpiece in film making. Quentin Tarantino did a fantastic job writing and directing the film. He even gave himself a fun cameo appearance in the film as he often likes to do in his movies. He has a tendency to choose the perfect actor for each role in his films. Somehow Tarantino seems to have the power to obtain the best possible performances out of each and every actor in all of the movies that he makes and Django Unchained was no exception.
As with most of Tarantino’s films, Django Unchained was a carefully executed and well scripted exercise in goriness and vulgarity. I think that this excitement and intensity that is shown in previews often will actually turn a person off from seeing the film. They may think that the film looks too violent or too R-rated.
These days there are so many straight-up violent movies filled with so much unnecessary blood, torture, cussing, and pure evil such as Hostel (2005) and its sequels, or Saw (2004) and its almost yearly sequels. It seems like the main intention of those films is to see how far they can push the envelope in gruesomeness. They always have to one-up the previous film of its kind.
When Quentin Tarantino first started making movies it seemed like they were almost strictly for shock value i.e. Reservoir Dogs (1992) or Pulp Fiction (1994). Don’t get me wrong, both of those films were solid movies in their own right, but they lacked meaning and story. They did however, have great characters portrayed by superb actors spouting very colorful dialogue.
In recent years Tarantino has perfected his craft. He has successfully penned films with true meaning and spectacular stories. His best example of this is Inglourious Basterds (2009) and I believe Django Unchained to be his second best film. Although his films continue to be extreme, they are no longer strictly for shock value. They are very edgy, but they will entertain you if you give them a chance.
Django Unchained is about a freed slave (Jamie Foxx) who teams up with a bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) to try to reunite with his wife and free her from slavery.
Christoph Waltz delivers an unquestionable Oscar worthy performance in Django Unchained. The funny thing about that is that I thought his performance in Inglourious Basterds was also without a doubt, valuable enough to receive an Oscar. Waltz did in fact; win back to back Best Supporting Actor Oscars for both Tarantino films. At the rate that he is going, I would not be surprised if Christoph Waltz wins another Oscar in a Tarantino movie in the future.
In Django Unchained Waltz stole the show. Jamie Foxx did a wonderful job as Django, but his performance was overshadowed by Waltz. Leonardo DiCaprio would have won a Best Supporting Oscar for his role in the film if Christoph Waltz wasn’t in it. If Dicaprio had given the same supporting performance in a different movie in any other year besides 2009 or 2012 he would have won the Oscar. Arguably the only performance better than that of Christoph Waltz in Django Unchained was that of Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds.
There were so many excellent actors in this film, that if I tried to list them all, I would certainly miss a few. A few more certainly worth mentioning were Samuel L. Jackson, Don Johnson and James Remar. James Remar (probably most known as Dexter’s adopted father in the television series Dexter.) actually played two different characters in the movie, but nobody seemed to notice. I caught it right away though and I thought that it was a little weird.
Django Unchained is a new-age Spaghetti Western of epic proportions with heart and soul, splattered with lots of blood and violence throughout. It definitely deserves an R-rating, but it also definitely deserves a watch. I have wanted to see the movie for a long time and I almost went to it about a dozen times in the last couple of months. I’m glad that I finally saw the film.
I rate this movie a 10 on a scale of 1-10.
Buy, rent, or run? Buy.
Robot & Frank (2012)
Robot & Frank (2012)
In the near future an aging retired thief (Frank Langella) receives a robot from his son (James Marsden) that can help assist him with cooking, cleaning, and chores around the house. The thief decides to come out of retirement when he realizes that the robot can assist him in other things like stealing.
The casting of Marsden, Liv Tyler, and Susan Surandon are all pretty much after thoughts in Robot & Frank. The true stars of the show are in fact, the giant Lego man-like Robot and Frank Langella. The movie is witty and original. The interaction between Langella and the Robot (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard) is priceless.
The advancement of robot technology that is depicted in the film makes me wish that I had a robot to help me with my everyday chores around the house. The robots that are in the movie seem so real that they make me believe that this could one day be a possibility.
Obviously if robots were truly capable of what is seen in the movie, then everybody and their mother would own one by now. They would be flying off of shelves like bottled water after forecasted news of impending doom from an upcoming natural disaster. The fact that Robot & Frank takes place in the future is a contributing factor in why the viewer is able to suspend their disbelief that robots are not able to do what is seen on screen. We do not know what the future holds and therefore cannot question technological advances in robotic technology that is portrayed in the film. In fact, the movie itself plays on the excitement of guessing what robots of the future could be like.
I hope that the improvements of technology in general that are shown in the film are one day possible. This would make the world a better and more fun place to live.
Bravo to this truly unique film. It was a little slow at times, but amusing to watch. I had a blast!
I rate this movie a 7.5 out of 10.
Buy, rent, or run? Rent.
Mama (2013)
Mama (2013)
Mama was a sophisticated attempt to terrify with a lack of follow-through. The film got my attention right out of the gate. The story grabbed me and sucked me in. As is standard with most scary movies, there were a few lulls as events unfolded on screen. But, for the most part my eyes were pretty much glued to the screen. I wanted to know who this Mama character was.
I am not afraid to admit that I was a little jumpy when Mama made her appearance. I actually did get chills running down my spine.
The movie was effectively scary. It did an excellent job of toying with my emotions; letting me know when something frightening was going to happen and then taking its time to get to that point. When it was finally time for something to jump out at me, I was not ready for it because my anticipation had ceased. It waits for you to let your guard down and then it attacks. After using this maneuver successfully a couple of times, you might think that I would get used to it, but I couldn’t.
The special effects in this film were incredible and I think that is a major contributing factor in why the movie was actually able to be horrifying. It was very realistic. It was so real that it was creepy, literally.
In my previous horror movie review of The Possession (2012), I mentioned what seems to be the basic horror movie outline these days. Mama was refreshing because it only very loosely followed that outline and that was a nice change of pace.
As the film reaches its climax, the story begins to unravel. Things stop making sense and many questions go unanswered. Amidst all of the confusion, the movie as we know it up until that point, basically takes a nosedive off of a cliff and kills itself. It was a shame because it really had a lot going for it until then. In my mind I was starting to compare it to The Ring (2002). The Ring was probably the last movie that scared me the way this one did. Except that The Ring had a quality ending. The ending of Mama was a travesty to the movie as a whole. It took something really good and destroyed it.
I rate this movie a 6.5 on a scale of 1-10.
Buy, rent, or run? Rent.
Maybe if we are lucky, the DVD will have an alternate ending. Maybe the theatrical ending was just a joke. It was really that bad.
Side note: Jessica Chastain was hardly recognizable in Mama. Because of her short, cropped black hair, tattoos, and punk rock clothing, I didn’t even know that it was her until the credits were rolling at the end.
The Possession (2012)
The Possession (2012)
It is not often that I watch a horror movie. My reason behind this is not because I have anything against the genre. I watch a horror movie because I want to experience the rush of being scared. I crave the feeling of chills running down my spine as something eerie is taking place in front of my eyes. I long for the moment when I am so absorbed in what is happening in a film that when something jumps out at the screen it causes me to shoot out of my seat like I was fired from a cannon. When the show is over and there is complete and utter silence, I desire the paranoia that ensues as I fear that something is out there in the murky darkness and coming to get me. That is the whole point, right? A scary movie is meant to scare you.
Scary movies do not scare me anymore. At least most of them don’t. They just are not made like they used to be. The Possession is no exception. The film did not frighten me in the slightest. At best, the little girl in the movie who was supposed to be possessed (Natasha Calis) did a pretty good job of acting creepy. There were a few scenes that had things jump out at you, but they were too predictable. Not only was the movie predictable, but it was also not very original or surprising. As the film neared the end, it became more and more impossible.
The movie followed what seems to be the basic horror movie outline these days. It starts out at a scene that tries it’s best to be intense and attention grabbing. When that scene is over, the mood lightens and the story starts at a snail pace. Characters slowly develop and after a while, little by little, weird crazy things start happening. These things are often overlooked as a fluke until they get more and more intense. Usually not everybody realizes that there is some sort of problem until it is so blatantly obvious that you would be stupid not to see that something is wrong.
Finally when everybody understands that there is a predicament, somebody actually gets the idea to run from it or do something about it. This just makes the issue worse and it becomes more powerful. When the story reaches its climax, the problem gets solved. Everyone starts feeling better and they go back to leading their normal lives. Or do they?
That outline just about sums up The Possession and the majority of all of the other horror movies that are out there. There is the occasional scary movie that will surprise you. This was not one of them. It did not make me jumpy, nor did I get the chills. I never felt scared during the film at all. After the movie was over I did not get paranoid. I went to bed and slept like a baby.
I rate this movie a 4 on a scale of 1-10.
Buy, rent, or run? Run.
Dredd (2012)
Dredd (2012)
Clever, yet cheesy and intriguing artistic special effects give Dredd a late 1980s or early 90s feel. This is fitting and obviously intentional because Dredd (2012) is sort of a remake of Judge Dredd (1995). The distant future in Dredd (2012) feels similar to what filmmakers in the 80s and 90s thought the distant future would be like. So, in a sense, the movie takes you back in time but to their future.
The entire film seems to be a satire on the action movie era during the time when Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis ruled the genre. No acting skills are necessary, only gratuitous amounts of bloody, gory violence, corny one-liners, and an endless supply of bullets. Of course, the main characters are severely outnumbered and always appear to be bulletproof, while countless numbers of bad guys get obliterated. It is absolutely a popcorn movie.
It was mildly humorous, but quite entertaining throughout to watch a movie that mocked it’s out genre. It’s almost as if the creators wanted to prove that they could do a better job at 80s and 90s filmmaking than the actual filmmakers of the 80s and 90s. Adding a little twist to that concept, the movie went back and forth between cheap special effects and present day awesome special effects.
The cheap technology was used during most of the very gruesome scenes and as a result, those scenes were easier for the viewer to watch because the overuse of blood and gore would make the scene look pretty fake. There was the occasional scene that looked awfully realistic and it would sort of sneak up on you.
The main character (Judge Dredd) was played by Karl Urban, but it didn’t really matter because he wore a mask the entire movie and you never saw his face. Anybody could have been under that mask. Urban did supply his character with a high-quality tough guy voice, to his credit. Have you ever heard of the guy though? Me neither. He is a character actor whom I would recognize, but has never been important enough to remember.
I think that Dredd is worth watching as long as you know what you are getting yourself into. Don’t expect much and you might be pleasantly surprised. It’s not great, but it is enjoyable.
I rate this movie a 6.5 on a scale of 1-10.
Buy, rent, or run? Rent.
Coming Soon
I am familiarizing myself with how to set up this blog. Once it is set up to my liking, my goal is to start adding a movie review for each movie that I watch from now on. I will eventually go back and review movies that I have already seen, one by one.
Hopefully my reviews will help you decide if a movie is worth seeing or skipping. Maybe a movie is not worth your money to see it in the theatre, but maybe worth waiting until the movie is available on DVD, or Blu-ray, or streaming, or whatever format you enjoy viewing at home.
If you would like a movie recommendation, feel free to comment and I will try to respond in a timely manner. I love to recommend movies, but it is easier to do if I know what types of movies you like in the first place.
Everybody has their own tastes in movies and I don’t pretend to think that if I like it, then you will too. But, if I get a feel for what movies you do like, then I am usually pretty good at recommending other movies that you might like also. This is true even if I do not personally like the movies that I am recommending.
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