The Green Hornet

For some reason I can't write a well formed review today, so here are my thoughts on The Green Hornet:

I generally find Seth Rogan funny, and The Green Hornet was no exception, I like his goofiness. After a fighting scene, he says something like "That was dangerous". Call me simple, but pointing out the obvious is pretty funny to me.

This sounds kind of mean, but Cameron Diaz is getting a little old to be the hottie love-interest these days. I really liked her as the mom in "My Sister's Keeper" and she should be looking to do more stuff like that. In all fairness, they do make fun of her age in this movie. Seth Rogan says "we'll have to install a ramp" when she reveals she's 36 during her interview. I laughed.

One of my favourite more recent movies is Inglourious Basterds, I loved Christoph Waltz in it and thought he more than deserved the Oscar for his role. With that being said, I was looking forward to seeing Waltz in another film, but knew The Green Hornet would not provide him with an Oscar winning performance. I liked listening to his voice in this movie, but he wasn't very funny, and a pretty one-dimensional villain, all not his fault though I would say. Kudos to him for trying a comedy.

The action was a little much, ok a lot much. There was a huge fighting scene at the end with lots of guns and stuff, and I found it entirely unnecessary. There was also not a lot to the plot, if there really was one - it was just kind of establishing characters and setting up for the conflict at the end. And I never really got how the "pretending to be bad, but doing good" really accomplished anything at all.

Seth Rogan was funny enough, but there are way better superhero movies out there.

Country Strong

I'm not a big fan of Gwyneth Paltrow - I find her acting and voice generally weak. I am also not a fan of Leighton Meester - even though I have never watched an episode of Gossip Girl I don't like her or it (I know, something about books and covers.) But I actually really enjoyed both of them in Country Strong. This story isn't really anything we haven't seen before, in the movies or even in celebrity real life: a star struggling with addiction, the controlling manager, the kind, young, other man, the threat of a hot up-and-comer. But it's a good story, and done beautifully in this movie. The acting is solid, the relationships are interesting, and even though country is not my favourite genre, the music is good, really good.

Shout-outs to Tim McGraw, who has a very different role from that in The Blindside, and Garrett Hedlund, who I was pretty sure was the kid from Tron, but only just confirmed it. Hedlund is the shining star in this one, he plays his character with love and care, and his singing is top notch.

A good one even if country isn't your thing.

13

So I recognize the irony in that the last movie I watched was titled "Twelve" and this one is "13". Well, the twelve in "Twelve" is not the number twelve, but the name of a drug. And the thirteen in "13" is the number the guy is given for the game they play. So really, the titles are not similar at all. Onward!

13 stars Sam Riley, Ray Winstone, Mickey Rourke, Jason Statham, and Fiddy Cent (ok, so maybe Twelve does have something in common with 13). David Zayas (Angel from Dexter) and Alexander Skarsgard (Eric from True Blood, and the delicious reason why I watched this movie) also have small parts. The plot is that Sam Riley (Vince/13) assumes the identity of a dead guy when he hears that the dead guy is involved in something that could get him lots of money. Vince needs the money because his family is going to have to sell their home to pay for his father's medical bills. So Vince finds himself at a fancy house where rich guys place huge bets on essentially a big game of Russian Roulette.

Now, the concept is pretty interesting, but I kept thinking to myself "who the heck would sign up for this?" surely there are better ways for people to make money (at least for the ones whose lives are at risk).

The scene at the beginning is also problematic to me. It shows Vince pointing a gun at someone and someone pointing a gun back at him. So once we get into the movie and realize what's happening, we think back to that first scene and realize that Vince is not going to die in the first few rounds, which kind of ruins the suspense. I suspect that that scene was used to keep our attention and makes us stick with the movie while the first 20 minutes drag on. There are also a few other things that I wish were different with this movie that may have made it better. I wish that in between the rounds we got to know the players a little better, even after all the time spent between Mickey Rourke and Fiddy, we still have no idea why Mickey is there, and why he plays the first round without protest (we and him later learn it's dangerous to protest), we also never get a solid reason why Ray WInstone is in a hospital, because he doesn't seem sick or crazy. I also wish there was more Alexander Skarsgard, not so I could just delight in his handsomeness, but also because we don't really have any idea what is function is - what his motivation is. I also wish there was more of a resolution to the police investigation.

As a whole, I thought this movie was interesting and enjoyed the unconventional ending. (They can't all be happy! Although you could also almost argue it was kind of a happy ending...)

Not without it's faults, but kind of fascinating.

Twelve

I didn't hate it, but there wasn't much to it either.

Twelve is the story of rich high school students and their forays into sex, drugs, and crime. Starring Chase Crawford, Emma Roberts, Fiddy Cent, and one of the Culkin boys. First of all, is this what life is really like for the wealthy in New York? These actors are supposed to be 16, 17, and 18, and maybe I am just naive, but trying to imagine this stuff actually happening to kids in grade 11 was kind of a hard sell for me.

One of the problems I found was that there were too many characters and in the 90 minutes plus, we don't learn enough about any of them to really care about what happens to them. The ending doesn't come off as sad or an outrage because we don't really know enough about Claude to understand him, or enough about everyone else to care if they live or die. 

I liked the structure of the film - how it went from character to character. I even warmed up to the weird narration. Sure the narrator says things that are unnecessary, and Keifer Sutherland's voice is perhaps a little to strong and low for the mood; but there was something to those short and simple sentences and an omniscient narrator that was interesting.

Directed by Joel Schumacher, who was responsible for the abomination that was Batman and Robin, but also the classic that was A Time to Kill, something is just missing in this one, and I think it is depth. There is an interesting story to be had here, but not enough is said, and not enough is done to develop the characters.

Shout-outs to Emma Roberts, who I have always been fascinated by because of her famous Aunt, and Fiddy, who is actually a pretty good actor. Also keep an eye out for Erik Per Sullivan (Dewey from Malcolm in the Middle) who is all grown up.

Like most of the characters, this one is shallow.

MacGruber

When you say a comedy is "funny", it's generally a positive thing. When you say a comedy is "silly", generally, a not so positive thing, and not usually what the movie makers are going for. If a comedy is "stupid", that pretty much speaks for itself. I am going to say MacGruber was "goofy".

Starring Will Forte as MacGruber and Kristen Wiig and Ryan Phillippe as his sidekicks. This a film adaptation of the recurring SNL skit by the same name, which is a parody of MacGyver. Forte's MacGruber was almost lovable in is idiocy and heroics. Kristen Wiig was the shining star in this one, she was absolutely hilarious. You don't see Phillippe in many comedies, but he redeems his stiffness and lack of comedic timing with a celery gag at the end. I have watched a few Monday night RAWs in my time, and a cameo by a bunch of the WWE Superstars was pretty cool.

The storyline is pretty simple, there is a lot of cursing, the sex scenes were weird and unfunny, and Val Kilmer was a pretty generic villain, but...

If you are a fan of SNL humour, you probably won't be disappointed.

The Experiment

At times, I hated watching this movie. I'm not sure if it was because Forest Whitaker was such a convincing villain or because the storyline made me uncomfortable. Maybe both. There is a lot to be said about injustice and humanity in this movie, and I can't decide if I am having negative leanings towards this movie because I don't like what it has to say or because the movie itself was bad.

Starring Oscar winners Adrien Brody and Forest Whitaker, The Experiment is the story of a group of guys who agree to undergo a psychological experiment with the promise of a large payout in the end. The experiment itself requires these men to live in a prison for two weeks. A handful of them are chosen to be guards and the rest are prisoners. The guards struggle to maintain their authority when they are challenged by the prisoners but cannot respond with violence. Forest emerges as the leader of the guards and Brody as the leader of the prisoners.

I must admit my own bias here: I hate how having Academy Award winners can skew my out look of a movie. Because this one has TWO winners, I came into the movie assuming that it had to be good because they were in it, and now find myself confused. I still can't decide if I enjoyed this movie as a whole. I like the premise and I enjoyed considering if how the experiment panned out in this movie would be similar in real life. What if it was a group of women? What if the rules were different? This movie paints a pretty bleak picture of human nature, and does little to reassure us that we have redeeming qualities at the end. Forest was especially unnerving, which I guess is good from an acting standpoint, but his character was really awful. The first hour and a bit were also pretty slow moving.

A shout out to all my Lost fans, here we are reunited with Shannon (Maggie Grace) AND Minkowski (Fisher Stevens). I miss Lost.

I need to watch a comedy after this one.

Burke and Hare

I really enjoyed this movie; it wasn't silly or cute, it was funny - an actual funny movie! I don't know if I would go as far as to say it was hilarious, but I would definitely consider it.

Starring Simon Pegg, Andy Serkis, and Isla Fisher, Burke and Hare is the story of two Irish friends trying to make money in early 19th century Scotland. After discovering they can make big money selling cadavers to the local medical university, Burke and Hare realize the only way they will stay in business is to, well, murder people. Needless to say it is a bit of a dark comedy, and there are moments that felt Monty Python-esque in their goofiness.

You may remember Andy Serkis as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings films, and Simon Pegg is gaining notoriety for his comedy, and can most recently be seen in that alien movie Paul. Both Serkis and Pegg are perfect in their roles. Unfortunately, Isla Fisher and her story line were kind of annoying, and her accent was not very successful. Also, Tim Curry has a small role too but I kind of found myself begging for more scenes with him in it. He has such a magnetism it was certainly a pity to give him such a small role, I think he would have been more suited as Dr. Knox.

The movie begins with a screen that says: "This is a true story... Except for the parts that are not" ...if that is any indication of the type of movie you are about to watch. Also watch until the end of the picture credits because there is an interesting twist that will make you want to do some research afterwards. Yes, there was actually Burke and Hare murders in the 1820's, and yes, 17 people were actually murdered, but who's to say that the real Burke and Hare weren't as sympathic as the movie ones?

And who's to say murder can't be funny?