Rating: 4 and 1/2 Shurikens
I went into this movie with no idea what I was going to see. It was the only movie starting at the time I got to the theater, so I took it. I hate walking in even a minute after the movie starts, let alone the trailers. I got into my seat as the screen came up, closer than I wanted to be because the theater was rather packed.
The opening was arresting. The sequence before the credits was a wild visual ride through streets and sidewalks as if someone took a camera and zoomed in a straight line several miles away. It went in the back of car windows, out the fronts, along streets and down sidewalks, into doorways. It was awesome! Sitting close to the screen as I was made it even better. The movie is narrated by the main character, who starts out in a precarious position, ready to jump from a tall building rather than be killed in some heinous fashion by the people who are trying to break down his door.
Eddie Morra is played by Bradley Cooper, who was seen in the recent movies The Hangover and The A-Team. The plot is that the guy is a starving author who is pretty smart, but has no idea what he is going to write about. It isn't clear how he could ever be considered an author, because it seems he hasn't written a thing. His girlfriend, Lindy, is breaking up with him because he is such a loser. Lindy is a beautiful blond, played by Abbie Cornish, who is also in Sucker Punch. She is rising in her career as he is going nowhere, and he reminisces about his very short first marriage, as a way of introducing a couple of people who figure into the story later on. He goes on trying to write his book, and walking around the streets of New York trying to clear his head, he runs into his ex-brother-in-law.
Vernon is played by Johnny Whitworth, who was a costar in 3:10 to Yuma, the remake. He also is to appear in the upcoming sequel to the most excellent Ghost Rider. Anyway, Vernon seems to have run afoul of some bad people, and is dealing in pharmaceuticals. He is like a drug dealer, but the drug is new and isn't illegal, although it isn't approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Vernon gives Eddie a clear little pill, which Eddie takes on the way home. This is where the movie starts to get good. Eddie is suddenly a genius, and everything in his brain works perfectly, and he is able to start his book.
After the drug wears off, he goes back to being normal, and seeks Vernon so that he can get some more. Vernon sends him out on an errand, and when he returns, he finds Vernon dead. He searches the place, which has already been thoroughly torn up, and finds the secret hiding place where Vernon kept the pills. With a supply of the wonder drug, which is called NZT, Eddie becomes a celebrity, and enjoys a new life where everything he does turns out right, because he is really smart when he takes the drug. Apparently, he was already pretty smart to start with, which really helps when taking NZT.
Like most things in life, there is a downside, and that is the dark side of NZT. Eddie learns the side effects, which cause some harm to the body and brain from having such high levels of performance. It's like steroids for the brain, with some consequences. Eddie decides to make the best of it, and tries with little success to use his enhanced brainpower to make money in a down economy. He is forced to see a loan shark, so that he can get seed money for his plan. The loan shark turns out to be a very mean person, one of several plot dimensions that make the story interesting. Robert de Niro plays Carl van Loon, who Eddie needs to help him make the big score. Then there is the mysterious person who seems to be following him around, with bad intent.
The first part of the movie is told in flashback, then comes back to the ledge, where he is ready to jump. But, does he? You'll have to go see it to find out. To say any more would give away too much of the story, and that is not what I am here for. I just want to say that this film has a lot to offer in terms of edginess, intrigue, and even good old-fashioned violence. The story is riveting, and the premise is very interesting. The intro at the beginning and a similar scene in the middle of the movie make a greatly entertainment effect. But, like with the wonder drug NZT, there is a downside, which is a possibly unintended message relating to drugs. The way the story presents a substance that is very much like an illegal drug, might give tacit support to the use of illicit drugs as a way of dealing with life's problems. There is a philosophical side to this story. I am a little bothered by that aspect of the movie. Parental guidance may be in order here.
Otherwise, I rate this a "See". I give it 4 and 1/2 Shurikens, for a captivating story, good acting, and all-around good entertainment value for the ticket price.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Rango
Rating: 4 Shurikens
Animation these days is quite amazing, at least the CGI stuff they put on movies. Some of the cartoons they put on television are sheer crap, but I digress. This is about Rango, the story of a terrarium lizard whose home is smashed on the road in the middle of the desert, leaving him lost and without direction. He stumbles upon a girl lizard of a similar but different species, who takes him to the town of Dirt. There, he finds adventure, heroism, a purpose to his life, and love.
The setting is the deserts of the American Southwest, and the time is the present. Johnny Depp does the voice of the Lizard called Rango, and it may be some of his best acting work ever. He was pretty decent in What's Eating Gilbert Grape and Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and I enjoyed The Legend of Sleepy Hollow quite a lot, but his Jack Sparrow is weak and not very heroic. In Rango, he is convincing and brings a realistic voice to his character.
The story is a distillation of many recurring themes of Western movies across time. The characters are all animals, but they all have human archetypes, like the robber baron mayor, the western banker, hillbilly townsfolk, and gunslinging outlaws. Rango arrives in town, and tries hard to blend in and be accepted. In the middle of a drought, someone is buying up all the land. Only one landowner is left, and she won't sell the land left to her by her father. There isn't any hope, and the town is becoming more deserted by the day.
Rango, in his enthusiasm to win friends, weaves a tall story, convincing the people in the town bar that he is a dangerous outlaw himself. Somehow, Rango manages to defeat a serious threat to the town, and ends up a hero.When the bank is robbed of the last of the town's water, Rango forms a posse, and they ride into the desert. The mystery of what has happened to all the water for has to be solved, and Rango has to confront things that are far bigger than he had ever thought possible.
I'm not saying too much here, this is just the basic plot stuff. There are a lot of laughs as many Western movie cliches are exploited for their humorous potential, and there is really a good story with plot character interactions that make it a good story for all ages. The depiction of the Western skies at sunset and the star-filled night skies is fantastic. I have seen sunsets that were not as pretty. The desert locations reminded me of Death Valley. Visually, the backgrounds are true art.
The characters were not as appealing, being all grimy, but that would be the case in such dry conditions. The fur effects, eyes, and teeth were very realistic, and the mouth movements followed the speech perfectly. Mouth movements have got to be the most difficult task for animators. There were a few stereotypes in the movie, such as the little mariachi-singing birds who were convinced that Rango would not live to see the end of the movie, or the crow that was supposed to be an Indian. They didn't seem all that offensive to me, but some people might have thought differently.
There were some well-known voices behind the animals, like Ned Beatty, who played Lex Luther in the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, as The Mayor. There was Harry Dean Stanton as Balthazar the Banker, who played in the original Alien in 1979, and was the holograph from the future in the Quantum Leap TV series. Then, there was Timothy Olyphant voicing the Spirit of the West, a character that is obviously patterned after Clint Eastwood. We just saw him in I Am Number Four. Isla Fischer, who I have never heard of, but still famous to others. does the voice of Beans, the girl lizard that Rango seems to fall for. And finally, Alfred Molina, who played Horvath in The Sorcerer's Apprentice is the voice of the armadillo that has been run over while trying to cross the road.
Rango is a pleasant animated comedy, with lots of satire and quite a bit of slapstick comedy, and some deeper humor. It is a good film, but I think it would have been over the heads of most young children. The nice thing about animated features is that they can be made to appeal to larger audiences. They can have things happen in them that can't be done with live action, like talking animals riding chickens as horses. Unfortunately, having talking animals is not enough to entertain little kids for almost two hours. I just didn't see this as a movie that I would want to take a five year old or younger to see, and possibly not even up to seven years old. For myself, I think it was quite entertaining, and it was worth the time to see it. It gets four Shurikens for a good story, some decent laughs, and animation artistry.
Animation these days is quite amazing, at least the CGI stuff they put on movies. Some of the cartoons they put on television are sheer crap, but I digress. This is about Rango, the story of a terrarium lizard whose home is smashed on the road in the middle of the desert, leaving him lost and without direction. He stumbles upon a girl lizard of a similar but different species, who takes him to the town of Dirt. There, he finds adventure, heroism, a purpose to his life, and love.
The setting is the deserts of the American Southwest, and the time is the present. Johnny Depp does the voice of the Lizard called Rango, and it may be some of his best acting work ever. He was pretty decent in What's Eating Gilbert Grape and Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and I enjoyed The Legend of Sleepy Hollow quite a lot, but his Jack Sparrow is weak and not very heroic. In Rango, he is convincing and brings a realistic voice to his character.
The story is a distillation of many recurring themes of Western movies across time. The characters are all animals, but they all have human archetypes, like the robber baron mayor, the western banker, hillbilly townsfolk, and gunslinging outlaws. Rango arrives in town, and tries hard to blend in and be accepted. In the middle of a drought, someone is buying up all the land. Only one landowner is left, and she won't sell the land left to her by her father. There isn't any hope, and the town is becoming more deserted by the day.
Rango, in his enthusiasm to win friends, weaves a tall story, convincing the people in the town bar that he is a dangerous outlaw himself. Somehow, Rango manages to defeat a serious threat to the town, and ends up a hero.When the bank is robbed of the last of the town's water, Rango forms a posse, and they ride into the desert. The mystery of what has happened to all the water for has to be solved, and Rango has to confront things that are far bigger than he had ever thought possible.
I'm not saying too much here, this is just the basic plot stuff. There are a lot of laughs as many Western movie cliches are exploited for their humorous potential, and there is really a good story with plot character interactions that make it a good story for all ages. The depiction of the Western skies at sunset and the star-filled night skies is fantastic. I have seen sunsets that were not as pretty. The desert locations reminded me of Death Valley. Visually, the backgrounds are true art.
The characters were not as appealing, being all grimy, but that would be the case in such dry conditions. The fur effects, eyes, and teeth were very realistic, and the mouth movements followed the speech perfectly. Mouth movements have got to be the most difficult task for animators. There were a few stereotypes in the movie, such as the little mariachi-singing birds who were convinced that Rango would not live to see the end of the movie, or the crow that was supposed to be an Indian. They didn't seem all that offensive to me, but some people might have thought differently.
There were some well-known voices behind the animals, like Ned Beatty, who played Lex Luther in the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, as The Mayor. There was Harry Dean Stanton as Balthazar the Banker, who played in the original Alien in 1979, and was the holograph from the future in the Quantum Leap TV series. Then, there was Timothy Olyphant voicing the Spirit of the West, a character that is obviously patterned after Clint Eastwood. We just saw him in I Am Number Four. Isla Fischer, who I have never heard of, but still famous to others. does the voice of Beans, the girl lizard that Rango seems to fall for. And finally, Alfred Molina, who played Horvath in The Sorcerer's Apprentice is the voice of the armadillo that has been run over while trying to cross the road.
Rango is a pleasant animated comedy, with lots of satire and quite a bit of slapstick comedy, and some deeper humor. It is a good film, but I think it would have been over the heads of most young children. The nice thing about animated features is that they can be made to appeal to larger audiences. They can have things happen in them that can't be done with live action, like talking animals riding chickens as horses. Unfortunately, having talking animals is not enough to entertain little kids for almost two hours. I just didn't see this as a movie that I would want to take a five year old or younger to see, and possibly not even up to seven years old. For myself, I think it was quite entertaining, and it was worth the time to see it. It gets four Shurikens for a good story, some decent laughs, and animation artistry.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
I am Number 4
Rating: 4 Shurikens
This was an interesting and actually quite enjoyable film, very much like a comic book series. The main character is one of nine young people sent to Earth after their own world is plundered by some very mean biker-looking aliens. The evil aliens are hunting down the nine survivors, killing them one-by-one. The third one has just been terminated when the movie begins, thus the title. Number Four is John Smith, not his real name, the young alien who is discovering special gifts, much like what we would call Super Powers.
Alex Petyfer plays John Smith, our hero. He's a reasonably good actor, and very good looking, which was evidenced by the large number of girls in the theater when I went to see it. You don't usually see girls in such numbers at sci-fi and comic book movies. The performance is pretty good, in that he delivers believability to the fantasy component, and also a realistic teenager in high school as the new kid who is chosen as a target of the big man on campus.
John has a guardian, who is a warrior from his home world, who keeps him a few steps ahead of the Magadorians. Timothy Olyphant, who has not seen any really big movie roles yet, plays Henri, who is the voice of reason and surrogate father to Number Four. He relies on his smarts and experience, because he doesn't have any interesting abilities, kind of like Batman's butler, Alfred. The Magadorian leader is played by Kevin Durand, who played Little John in last year's Robin Hood, which was reviewed here previously. Durand also has been seen in the Lost TV series, and as Blob in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
John and his guardian are on the run from the Magadorians, like John Connor and his mother, Sarah in the late Terminator TV series. As the movie begins, John is being flamboyant and drawing attention to himself so that Henri realizes that it is time to move on. The destination he has chosen is a town in Ohio, where there is something that needs to be revisited from the past. When they get there, John signs up to go to High School, where he meets Sarah, his love interest, and Sam, the nerd who is always being picked on because his father, who believed in UFO's, left him when he was a young boy and he believes his father was abducted by space aliens.
Sarah is played by Diannam Agron, a very pretty girl who is also a star of the popular Glee television series, which I have never watched. Her role doesn't do much to test the skills of an actress, but she does portray a likable and sympathetic character. Sam is played by Callin McCauliff, who was in a movie called Flipped, which was a nostalgic love story which I couldn't bring myself to watch. He makes a good sidekick for John, and adds a couple of good laughs to the movie. As a nerd, he does well.
Then, there is the other minor villain of the piece, Mark, the Big Man on Campus, the bully who picks on the nerd, the quarterback on the football team, and the ex-boyfriend of Sarah, who hasn't quite given up on her, even though she is not with him anymore. Mark is played by another near-newbie to the big screen, and delivers a good performance as a typical very-unlikeable high school bully.
When Henri and John run from the house on the beach at the opening of the movie, they burn a lot of personal effects, and then leave in a hurry. After they leave, another blond girl shows up on a motorcycle, and searches their place. After she finds something or another that tells her she is on the right track, she sets the place on fire, and leaves. As it explodes, she seems to have some sort of force field that protects her from the huge flaming explosion of the house. It turns out that she is Number Six!
We never get a name for Number Six, but she is played by Teresa Palmer. It may be recalled that she was in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which is another movie I reviewed before. As Becky, she was helpless but brave, but as Number Six, she is confident and quite powerful. She comes to the scene closer to the end, with knowledge of her abilities that provides a nice counterpoint to John's inexperience.
Rounding out the cast is the shape shifting creature called a chimera. It is first seen as a salamander that jumps into the car when Henri and John set out for Ohio, the morphs into a cute beagle that suddenly appears as a stray, which John adopts. This reminds me of a vehicle from the Saturday morning cartoons, The Cute Animal. Johnny Quest had bandit, Space Ghost had the cute monkey, The Jetsons had Astro, and on and on. The chimera is just that sort of character, and it plays a pivotal role in the resolution of the story.
I am Number Four is well worth the time spent, and is among the top 3 movies of the week. The story is satisfying, the good guys win, the bad guys lose, the hero gets the girl, and the ending cries out for a sequel. What more can a moviegoer ask for? Four Shurikens.
This was an interesting and actually quite enjoyable film, very much like a comic book series. The main character is one of nine young people sent to Earth after their own world is plundered by some very mean biker-looking aliens. The evil aliens are hunting down the nine survivors, killing them one-by-one. The third one has just been terminated when the movie begins, thus the title. Number Four is John Smith, not his real name, the young alien who is discovering special gifts, much like what we would call Super Powers.
Alex Petyfer plays John Smith, our hero. He's a reasonably good actor, and very good looking, which was evidenced by the large number of girls in the theater when I went to see it. You don't usually see girls in such numbers at sci-fi and comic book movies. The performance is pretty good, in that he delivers believability to the fantasy component, and also a realistic teenager in high school as the new kid who is chosen as a target of the big man on campus.
John has a guardian, who is a warrior from his home world, who keeps him a few steps ahead of the Magadorians. Timothy Olyphant, who has not seen any really big movie roles yet, plays Henri, who is the voice of reason and surrogate father to Number Four. He relies on his smarts and experience, because he doesn't have any interesting abilities, kind of like Batman's butler, Alfred. The Magadorian leader is played by Kevin Durand, who played Little John in last year's Robin Hood, which was reviewed here previously. Durand also has been seen in the Lost TV series, and as Blob in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
John and his guardian are on the run from the Magadorians, like John Connor and his mother, Sarah in the late Terminator TV series. As the movie begins, John is being flamboyant and drawing attention to himself so that Henri realizes that it is time to move on. The destination he has chosen is a town in Ohio, where there is something that needs to be revisited from the past. When they get there, John signs up to go to High School, where he meets Sarah, his love interest, and Sam, the nerd who is always being picked on because his father, who believed in UFO's, left him when he was a young boy and he believes his father was abducted by space aliens.
Sarah is played by Diannam Agron, a very pretty girl who is also a star of the popular Glee television series, which I have never watched. Her role doesn't do much to test the skills of an actress, but she does portray a likable and sympathetic character. Sam is played by Callin McCauliff, who was in a movie called Flipped, which was a nostalgic love story which I couldn't bring myself to watch. He makes a good sidekick for John, and adds a couple of good laughs to the movie. As a nerd, he does well.
Then, there is the other minor villain of the piece, Mark, the Big Man on Campus, the bully who picks on the nerd, the quarterback on the football team, and the ex-boyfriend of Sarah, who hasn't quite given up on her, even though she is not with him anymore. Mark is played by another near-newbie to the big screen, and delivers a good performance as a typical very-unlikeable high school bully.
When Henri and John run from the house on the beach at the opening of the movie, they burn a lot of personal effects, and then leave in a hurry. After they leave, another blond girl shows up on a motorcycle, and searches their place. After she finds something or another that tells her she is on the right track, she sets the place on fire, and leaves. As it explodes, she seems to have some sort of force field that protects her from the huge flaming explosion of the house. It turns out that she is Number Six!
We never get a name for Number Six, but she is played by Teresa Palmer. It may be recalled that she was in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which is another movie I reviewed before. As Becky, she was helpless but brave, but as Number Six, she is confident and quite powerful. She comes to the scene closer to the end, with knowledge of her abilities that provides a nice counterpoint to John's inexperience.
Rounding out the cast is the shape shifting creature called a chimera. It is first seen as a salamander that jumps into the car when Henri and John set out for Ohio, the morphs into a cute beagle that suddenly appears as a stray, which John adopts. This reminds me of a vehicle from the Saturday morning cartoons, The Cute Animal. Johnny Quest had bandit, Space Ghost had the cute monkey, The Jetsons had Astro, and on and on. The chimera is just that sort of character, and it plays a pivotal role in the resolution of the story.
I am Number Four is well worth the time spent, and is among the top 3 movies of the week. The story is satisfying, the good guys win, the bad guys lose, the hero gets the girl, and the ending cries out for a sequel. What more can a moviegoer ask for? Four Shurikens.
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