Real Steel

Real Steel takes place in the not-so-distant future, where people don't box anymore, robots do, and I guess the sport is pretty popular. I'm going to be lazy and tell you the IMDB says: A struggling promoter feels he's found a champion in a discarded robot. During his hopeful rise to the top, he discovers he has an 11-year-old son who wants to know his father. This synopsis is not very accurate, but close enough. Starring Hugh Jackman, Evangeline Lilly, and Dakota Goyo as the kid, Max.

Hugh Jackman starts off as a pretty awful guy, and it's hard to believe that he can be so mean and uncaring to his own son. At least he looks good doing it, and there's a kind of silly part at the end where he tries to tell his kid that he loves him. Other than that, it's cheesy family fun, and the robot fighting is pretty cool.

One part that seemed important, but is never really developed is the humanness of the robots. At one point we are lead to believe that Atom (the robot) could maybe be able to think autonomously, but it never really goes anywhere. So instead of being a movie about how robots and humans treat one another, in say, like AI, it's about a father/son relationship. Nothing wrong with that I guess, it's just more of a family/action film than a sci-fi.

50/50

Adam finds out that he has a rare form of cancer, and even though he is only in his late twenties he only has a 50% chance of surviving the cancer. Starring Joseph Gordon Levitt, Seth Rogan, Anna Kendrick, and Bryce Dallas Howard.

This is one of the best movies I've seen a while, I can't remember the last time a movie made me laugh so hard, but also cry like a baby. This movie is such a realistic look about a young man dealing with cancer and the gamut of emotions that follow and how his illness affects his friends and family.

I don't want to ruin the ending, but there were certainly some things you should see coming from a mile a way. Adam's relationship with Katherine shouldn't come as a surprise, and the ending is a little too typical, but it ends the way it does because that's how we want it to.

JGL is adorable, I couldn't stand his long hair when he was Tommy from Third Rock from the Sun (good show, oh how I love John Lithgow). But I am really happy that he is getting some good roles these days. Seth Rogan was really funny in this movie, he's back to Knocked Up form when we first saw him on the big screen and laughed and laughed. Bryce is a beautiful woman, she could have done more with her character, but it works. And Anna Kendrick we first saw in Twilight, but she is becoming much more than the franchise. She was nominated for an Oscar for her Up in the Air performance, and she was sweet and funny and vulnerable in 50/50. She has this Kristen Wiig sort of delivery that is short and awkward and fast and lovable.

A really good movie.

2011 Wrap-up

So, looking over all the movies I've reviewed this year, none really stood out and made me think "That movie was super amazing!". With the being said, there were a few movies that I reviewed earlier in the year that I thought were good enough to mention, and possibly warrant a rewatch (I realize some may have been originally released in 2010, but I watched them in 2011, darnnit!):

127 Hours
Never Let Me Go
13

And the three movies that I've watched recently that I enjoyed were:

Crazy, Stupid,  Love
X-Men: First Class
Contagion

And probably the movie I enjoyed the most this year:

Despicable Me

Also note that the most awesome movies usually come out at the end of the year (something to do with being fresh in the mind's of Oscar voters) and I have not seen them yet. So, the movies I am looking most forward to watching eventually in the new year are:

The Descendants
The Tree of Life
Melancholia

Playing Catch-Up

Once again, the movies have been piling up, and I will be doing a half-assed review of the past few movies I've watched.

Straw Dogs
Starring Alexander Skarsgaard, Kate Bosworth, and James Marsden. A Hollywood couple move back to her small southern town for some quiet while he writes his next screenplay. I guess this movie has to do with what it takes for a passive person to become violent and stand up for them self. It is kind of slow, and uncomfortable at times, but I think it's supposed to be, you should be asking yourself "What would I do?" "Would I speak up?". The ending is incredibly violent, but the movie as a whole was an interesting examination into our behaviour. As a person who tries to avoid conflict, I like to think I would have been pissed off way earlier than Marsden was. James Woods was awful, but wonderful.

Contagion
Starring Matt Damon and Kate Winslet. A highly contagious disease spreads throughout the world while scientists try to figure out where it originated and how to cure it. This movie was captivating, it was subtle and quiet, but strong and powerful. But above all, it seemed realistic, the explanation at the end was simple, but alarming, and what I appreciated the most was that it wasn't sensationalized. A good movie.

Date Night
Starring Steve Carell and Tina Fey. A married couple looking to get out of a rut, find themselves wanted after taking another couple's reservation. Was the plot ridiculous? Absolutely. But this movie was also really funny, there were enough laugh out loud moments to leave me satisfied and Carell and Fey play their characters as straight as possible. Some hilarious characters played by Mark Whalberg, James Franco, Ray Liotta, and Mila Kunis, and outtakes during the credits were unexpected gems.

Moneyball
Starring Brad Pitt and Jonak Hill. Based on a true story, after losing some key players, Billy Beane (Pitt) rebuilds the Oakland Athletics with the help of Peter Brand (Hill) on a shoestring budget using strictly cost-benefit analysis and not intuition. I didn't like this movie as much as I thought/hoped I would. I definitely appreciated all the dialogue and the business side of baseball that you don't see in a conventional sports movie. It wasn't about a team winning by teamwork, it was about math and science. The actual players are generally insignificant, and Pitt's character was well-developed, which was nice, but it was still too much about baseball for me. My guy loved it, he got what was happening, could remember back to 2002 and appreciate all the back story the movie gave, but for me, it was a little boring. No doubt a good movie, but just didn't live up to all the buzz for me.

Fright Night

Starring Colin Farrell and Anton Yelchin. People start disappearing, and then a vampire moves in next door. I have not seen the original. I don't know if that matters.

This movie was both fun and scary. The beginning scene promises a lot more scares than the rest of the movie delivers, but there were legitimately scary moments, and it has a good sense of humour too. I would compare it to Zombieland, but not quite as clever. Yelchin is still a cutie, and Farrell is satisfyingly creepy. A more complex plot might have been nice, but as is, a good movie if you're feeling like a light horror and some laughs, definitely entertaining.

The Help

An aspiring author during the civil rights movement of the 1960's decides to write a book detailing the African-American maid's point of view on the white families for which they work, and the hardships they go through on a daily basis. Starring Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Octavia Spencer.

So, I assumed this would by the type of movie I would really like. And I did like it. It was kind of slow, and I didn't cry at all, but it was a good story, and there were a lot of different characters that you get to know well. It's pretty rare to have a half-dozen or so characters so well developed. Celia Foote is such a ray of sunshine, Abileen is stoic, and Minny is sassy. Hilly is easy to hate, and Skeeter is the glue.

The history person in me was a little disappointed, however. The subject matter was handled very safely and positively. The Help would definitely be a good starting point for opening dialogue with children about black history. The 1960's was a very turbulent time for black people, and this movie doesn't try to convey just how difficult it was. It results in a feel-good movie where we are uplifted about how much the black people achieve, and are reminded that not all white people were racists. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this is a safe movie about black people in the 60's, which is fine, but maybe go and watch "A Time to Kill" afterwards for a bit of a harder edge on the issue.

Cowboys and Aliens

So, it's about what the title suggests: cowboys and aliens. It's 1873, and the wild West is being attacked by aliens. Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, and Olivia Wilde come to the rescue.

Combining the western and science fiction genres was a very interesting move. I can't say if this has been done before, but the sheer novelty of having old school cowboys fight futuristic alien was enough to keep me watching. It is silly in some parts, like when they shoot their pistols at these big scary aliens like it's going to do something, but for the most part, the combination was fascinating. You have all the standard elements of a Western, and then these spaceships appear. There is mention among the cowboys that these aliens could be "demons", and not a whole lot more is discussed. I would have liked some more insight into the cowboys' thoughts on these aliens, and their technology

I like Daniel Craig, I may be blinded by his unnaturally blue eyes, but he seems to be a good actor. For some reason I wasn't too fussy on Harrison, he just doesn't come off as a hard-ass to me. Wilde's character is interesting and mysterious - I would have liked to have known more. Sam Rockwell plays Doc, but Rockwell will always be the hated Wild Bill from The Green Mile to me, and it makes him hard to like. His character was generic enough, though, to forget it was him. A shout-out to Paul Dano, who plays Ford's nut case of a son. I thought Dano was just super in There Will Be Blood, and I would have liked to have seen more of him.

Kind of a preposterous plot, but definitely an interesting combination. Good CGI, good acting, not a bad movie at all.