taken 2

the first movie was ok, it owed its great success completely to that phenomenal trailer where liam neeson tells off the men who kidnapped his daughter.  that monologue was so fantastic that there was a lot of good will that this sequel played off of.  the only problem is that the good will is pretty well wasted.  this time neeson is in turkey on vacation with his daughter and ex-wife when the family of the kidnappers from the first movie decide they want revenge.  as one would expect, superman neeson does everything he can to get his family out alive.  the city of istanbul is beautiful, which gives the movie a cool backdrop, but the story and action itself is pretty bland.  the only thing that keeps this one out of the garbage bin is just how cool neeson is.  this is the role he was made for!  though i didn't really care for this movie, i would certainly watch a 'taken 3' if they made one- just to see neeson do his revenge thing!

skyfall

i'm not a huge james bond fan, i've only seen one or two of them from before daniel craig took on the role, so bare in mind i dont have much to go on.  even still, i would definitely say that this was the best of all the bond movies!  the story clipped along at a great pace, fast action that slowed down for the personal moments when needed.  we gained a lot of background about bond, more than any other bond movie i've ever seen.  the story starts as james bond is shot in the line of duty.  he's thought dead, but shows up a few months later and dives back in when m needs him to.  the story was good enough for what it is, a bond movie, but the thing that makes me love this film so much was the absolutely gorgeous cinematography.  this is one of the best looking movies i have ever seen in my life!  at times i forgot to even pay attention to the story because i was so drawn in my be amazing visuals!  the casino he visits in china, with candles lining the water, was breathtaking.  the action in the all glass floor of the chinese skyscraper was amazing- the interplay of the neon lights outside playing off the glass surfaces was a visual symphony.  the showdown at the old orphanage was a dirty fiery feast for the eyes.  at every moment i was taken in by the beauty of each shot, even if the action was grossly brutal.  you know, this could have been the worst movie in the world, but i was so blown away by how gorgeous it was that i wouldn't have even noticed!

ghost rider: spirit of vengeance

granted, the first one wasnt that good, but it wasnt as bad as it could have been.  it was a fairly straight forward superhero movie.  this one though?  quite different...  it doesnt waste any time with an origin story or anything like that, we are just told that johnny blaze made a deal with the devil and now, for some reason, is living in the former soviet union (at least i think thats where it takes place...).  he's got a score to settle and nothing is going to stop him!  this movie is rather crazy, although what else would you expect from the directors who made the 'crank' series?  the story doesnt make much sense, instead feeling like just a random collection of scenes for our hero to 'ghost ride' in to.  but we arent here for the story, are we?  its all about the vengeance, and this movie has a few really cool looking fight scenes.  the certainly got the flaming skeleton right- that thing was awesome!  they also got the attitude of ghost rider right: he doesnt care about being nice, he's there to get rid of the problem.  through the frenetic style and balls out violence, we get to see a rather cool interpretation of what this demon would actually be like.  when he's not the flaming head though, johnny blaze is absolutely terrible.  nicolas cage does his 'crazy guy' shtick here which does seem a bit overboard, even with the chaotic style.  i was very excited to see christopher lambert on screen again though, too bad he was completely underused.  all in all, this is exactly what it claims to be: an all out trashy 'B' movie!

john carter

everything you've heard about this one is true: this thing stinks!  the story follows john carter, a man who left the fighting in the civil war to go out west, as he miraculously transports to mars!  why?  well, never mind that, lets just get to the strange martians!  he meets up with some strange four armed green aliens and tries to learn their ways.  if the film would have stopped there and just dealt with the story of 'a stranger in a strange land' as he learns about them, it may have had a chance at being ok.  but no no no!  they go on to introduce two other races on mars that are feuding for control of the planet (which, by the way, doesn't really seem to have any impact on the green guys at all, one way or another).  these two races seem to be exactly the same as humans, except that they have have tattoos and wear red or blue to distinguish them from each other.  john carter, of course, is the 'chosen one' that all the prophecies are about, so he steps in as their leader and works with the green guys to get rid of the bad guys, which are the red ones.  or is that the blue ones?  does it really matter?  nope.  i kind of feel bad for the movie, its based on the old book 'a princess of mars', written in 1917 by edger rice burroughs (the guy who created tarzan).  its got a bunch of great ideas that were ahead of their time, but unfortunately it has been pillaged by every other author and film maker since, so any ideas that were creative and new back in 1917 are old and worn out by 2012.  sorry, i'm sure this was an interesting story with amazing ideas back then, but today it just seems cliche.  the effects look pretty good, but all of it is meaningless because of the overly complex and predictable storytelling.  i'm sure this would have been an amazing story to turn into a film back in the 1950's, but it just doesn't hold any interest today.

ides of march

this film is an exploration of one man's journey from naive wonder to hardened corruption.  the perfect showcase for someone being corrupt?  well, politics, of course!  the story follows ryan gosling's character, a political campaign specialist, as he works on getting clooney's character, an inspiring senator who seems like the real deal, to with the presidency.  along the way he makes a couple mistakes, finds out about what is really going on behind that veneer of change and hope, and realized what politics is actually about.  its a sad tale of innocence lost as he faces the reality if the political machine that uses you and spits you out like last week's garbage.  gosling tries to be an agent for change in a positive way at the beginning of the film, but we see him soon become everything he hates as the truth of who clooney is comes crashing down around him.  its and interesting film that shows the journey of gosling's fall from optimism.  by the end of the film we understand how these men, thirsty for power, become the monsters we know them to be.  though the film may be slight, it does carry a sadness that comes with the loss of innocence.

girl with the dragon tattoo

having never read the book i wasnt quite sure what to expect.  the film looks fantastic, but to be honest, it kind of felt like an R rated episode of a crime drama that shows nightly on cbs.  the story follows daniel craig's character as he investigates an old case of a girl gone missing.  the uncle of the missing girl wants to truth about this cold case figured out once and for all.  as he tries to get to the bottom of it, he enlists the aid of an emotionally broken down girl who is the best there is at finding stuff out.  the two of them work together to solve the case and grow closer to each other along the way.  kind of basic stuff with a pretty sorted and dirty underlying story about rape and abuse that comes to light as they begin to crack the case.  its an ok crime drama, but i dont exactly know what all the fuss is about.  i felt like the story of the girl never really tied in to the main drive of the story, which was craig's story.  it almost felt like it was two movies for the first half.  the ending (if this is viewed as a stand alone movie and not just the first part of a trilogy) was unnecessary and felt tacked on.  did we really need to see that last relationship beat between the two of them?  it felt like it was just put there as a way of letting us know that the story of these two characters would continue in the next film.  but as it is, i dont feel that this film gives me any reason or is a compelling enough story to bother with a sequel.

anonymous

i dont know all that much about shakespeare, i've read a few of his plays and watched a bunch of movies based on his work, but as for the man himself? i know very little.  it is with this relative ignorance that i come into this move.  it is a movie that puts forward a theory that the man we know as shakespeare didnt actually write any of the work that is attributed to him.  the film instead insists that it was actually a duke of oxford who wrote the highest regarded works in the english language.
the film itself is a bit of a mess, it jumps around from the present, to 1601, three years earlier, and then 40 years before that.  often times, the jumps are hardly even addressed, we are just expected to know what is going on.  its a jumbled mess for the first half hour or so, but after that the story falls in to place and is actually quite compelling.  there is a lot of interplay between the duke, the actors of the plays, and queen elizabeth.  the twists and turns along the way get a bit muddled due to some poor casting (so many of them look alike i had a hard time keeping them straight!) and a bunch of time jumps, the the main drive of the story remains fairly clear.  the most impressive part of the film, though, was the visceral quality of the imagery.  all of the scenes at the theatre were quite spectacular  the staging of the plays that were performed, the audiences responses, and the dark dingy reality of life at this time.  they do a great job of set and costume design, showing the reality of dirty fingernails, ink stained fingers, and poor dental hygiene.  the theory of who the real author of the shakespeare plays is an interesting one, but the visuals alone for the film make it worth watching!