The Pitch: Spongebob Squarepants is super popular. That could be monetized for a movie.
How I Came Into It: I've never seen a full episode of Spongebob Squarepants, a record maintained now in equal parts by a lack of interest in it and a desire to pointlessly maintain that streak. I don't doubt that it's good. It just never interested me. The popularity of it is undeniable and the movie is on my big list of movies. The second movie just came out in theaters, so it was as good a time as any to see this. Besides, I'd seen eight of the first ten movies from Nickelodeon* and liked most of them.
*The missing two: The Wild Thornberrys Movie and Rugrats Go Wild. Apparerntly, I have been with the Thornberrys.
Why I Saw It: (Club 50) I can see why people like this franchise. It's a lot of the same humor as something like Ren and Stimpy. The jokes are weird, at times meta, and don't talk down to the audience. The movie introduces me to the characters and story well. It didn't rely on a prior knowledge of it to know what was going on. Adding Scar Jo and Jeffrey Tambor (among others) gave it a feel of stepping up their game for the movie.
Why I Wish I Hadn't: I never blindly had no interest in watching Spongebob Squarepants. I don't watch it for the same reason that I don't seek out Ren & Stimpy reruns or ever turn to Adult Swim. Animation in general, and the prevailing style of kid-friendly humor, just isn't my thing. While it isn't a movie that sets out to exclude new viewers, it is designed to reward fans of the series. It reminded me a lot of watching Serenity before I'd seen Firefly. There's something that's lost in the process.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
The Pitch: It'll be like a hip-hop American Graffiti.
How I Came Into It: I knew that there was the guy with the big hair. I knew that it had sequels of diminishing quality. I knew that it is inescapably dated by the clothes and sound track.
Why I Saw It: (Club 50) This is a very easy to watch, minimally abrasive movie. It's the same basic structure as Superbad. That's a plus. I love me a modern-day Odyssey story. I'm going to go ahead and say this rap battle in this is superior to the one in 8 Mile*.
*I'm going to estimate that 60% of that statement is me trolling.
Why I Wish I Hadn't: I get tired of using this reason, but I didn't laugh at any of it. It's very dated and without the context of when it was released, it loses a great deal of its charm. I'm not sure if this is a negative, but I really thought I'd recognize more of the cast. It's something I'd definitely watch again, for whatever that's worth.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
The Pitch: It'll be a modern Rashomon, but instead of different stories of the same event, it will literally be told through different perspectives
How I Came Into It: I knew what the gimmick of it was and I assumed that if it was handled really well then I would've heard more about it in the form of recommendations. I never heard more about it, so I assumed it wasn't anything special.
Why I Saw It: (Club 50) It's a gimmick that I like. I'm a huge fan of perspectives and how a story can change the more that you know. There's a lot of good actors putting in good performances and it does well with the effects.
Why I Wish I Hadn't: If you are going to be repetitive, give me a reason for it. Courage Under Fire's a great example. It's the same story, but different interpretations that all say a lot without saying anything new. Vantage Point spoon feeds the truth in redundant iterations. That gets tiring. By the time that real information starts coming out that actually pushes the narrative forward, I'm so anxious to get to something new that I missed whatever slight details were captured from a moment I'd already seen a half dozen times. It's a good idea with execution that was all off. This is also one of those casts that feel like it's made up of who is available. There's not a single character that couldn't be played by a similar actor for the exact same effect.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
The Pitch: It's a Spike Lee movie, so you know what that means in term of style, but this will focus on relationships, of course giving special focus to racially mixed couples.
How I Came Into It: I haven't seen a lot of Spike Lee's movies. Most recently, I saw Do the Right Thing which is toward the top of the list of movies that are critically adored that I just don't get. I actually forgot that Jungle Fever was a Spike Lee movie at all until it started. I'm quite eager to see what other people see in his work.
Why I Saw It: (Club 50) As the movie settled in, I really liked the rotating discussions about race and relationships that the characters were all having. It got me thinking, which I believe is the point of the movie. I'm starting to get a feel for Lee's style and I could sense more of the mechanisms at work than I did in Do the Right Thing, which means that I may be getting closer to cracking his code.
Why I Wish I Hadn't: So, does Lee make movies awful intentionally? I don't get it. Snipe's character cheating on his wife made little sense. His white bosses were lacking any subtlety. Pretty much every moment until Snipes' wife learns about his affair is as unauthentic as anything I've ever seen...which may be the point, I think. All of that happens in order to lead to a larger discussion of race and relationships, so maybe he doesn't care about the specifics of how it comes about. Why did he spend so much time on it then? Ugh, I can't figure it out.
One other thing I want to note, and this could be due to the specific recording I watched, but whoever did the sound mixing for that should never work again. The music was constantly drowning out the dialogue. I think it was the worst when Flipper and Angie are first bonding late night at the office and the score was blaring.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
What I Guessed It Was About: Some people go to some remote location or maybe it's outer space (Who can tell the difference these days?). They walk into a dispute between the Aliens and the Predators, similar to a Freddy vs. Jason situation.
How I Came Into It: I've only recently seen Predator and I've seen the Alien movies before at different times. They only look comparable in that they both have aliens in them. Beyond that, this looks a lot like the studio with the rights to both milking some product out of rebranding. I'm not highly invested in either, so whatever. It's their prerogative.
Why I Saw It: (Club 50) There's a part of me that sees the title Alien vs. Predator and says, "Awesome. Let's see those two fight, Godzilla vs. Mothra style". That part of me is pretty pleased. Once they got the movie to where it was those two fighting and little else, it worked pretty well.
Why I Wish I Hadn't: Sadly, there's the whole matter of how to get to those two fighting. The human cast is nothing but a bunch of red shirts, even the lead (Sanaa Lathan) despite not dying. The story is insubstantial too.I appreciate the effort made to make the two franchises work together, despite the difference in time (Predator in the present sort of, and Alien in the future), which apparently involves a lot of Aztec mythology, but the story never feels like anything more than reverse engineering a narrative.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
Formula: (The Incredibles * Meet the Robinsons) / Armageddon
Why I Saw It: The director/star pairing of Brad Bird and George Clooney mixed with a general curiosity about the Disney Park "tie in" is enough to get me in a theater.
Cast: It's a surprisingly limited cast. Geroge Clooney gets top billing despite being a supporting character. He plays his character like he's the only guy who understood the ending of LOST and is tired of explaining it to his friends. He doesn't divulge much more information than he must and it's a nicely lived-in role. Britt Robertson is the actual lead. She's fine. She doesn't bring anything extra to the role (I've confirmed that I'm not the only one who initially thought she was Danielle Panabaker, who could've played this character with exactly the same effect). Raffey Cassidy, despite being the youngest of the stars, gets the most interesting emotional arc and, not coincidentally, has the most memorable character. Some others like Hugh Laurie, Judy Greer (a role literally cut down to hearing her voice for a few seconds), and Tim McGraw show up for a while, but never for very long.
Plot: Disney has kept this pretty cryptic, so nearly anything I'm going to say will be some kind of a spoiler. I'll try to hold back. Still, be warned. It starts with a young boy named Frank Walker at the 1964 World's Fair in New York. With the help of a young girl named Athena (Cassidy) he is led to Tomorrowland, a world in an alternate dimension that's a 1960's futuristic utopia. Cut to the present day. The movie follows a teenage girl, Casey (Robertson), a plucky optimist who doesn't see the point in complaining about things that you don't intend to try and fix. Casey finds a pin that temporarily brings her to Tomorrowland. Once the pin stops working, she meets up with Athena, who still looks the same as she did in 1964, and a recluse Frank, now played by Clooney (don't do the math with those ages). From there, it's a story about a coming apocalypse that they must prevent, and returning to Tomorrowland is key to that. The story has two main issues that bothered me. 1) While I'm sure Brad Bird and Damon Lindelof planned it all out, there's simply too much story for the run time, which leads to more telling than showing of a lot of things. 2) For a movie called Tomorrowland, there's not nearly enough Tomorrowland. Perhaps, Journey to Tomorrowland would be a better title.
Elephant in the Room: This looks like Corporate Synergy: The Movie. It's not. In fact, I'm sure there's more than a few Disney executives that are angry that Bird didn't find more of a way to make this an informational for the Tomorrowland section of Disney Parks. Don't get me wrong. There's still a considerable amount of plugging. The road to get to Tomorrowland in 1964 involves the it's a small world ride and there's a SciFi store in one scene that might as well be called What Does Disney Own. For the most part, this movie exists for itself and not branding though.
To Sum Things Up:
I want to find a way to recommend this movie more than I can. The message of the movie is a good one (Some mix of "Allow exceptional people to be exception" from The Incredibles and "Work toward making the future you want to see" from Meet the Robinsons). The execution of the movie as a whole is questionable. I get a sense that this is not the exact story that Bird and Lindelof wanted to tell: that they had so many more ideas than they could fit in a two hour movie. It moves at a great pace (the first 90 minutes of the movie felt like half that). I loved the depth and history of the relationship between Frank and Athena.There's plenty of humor in it as well.
Ultimately, I'm torn about this. You see, there's two wolves in my head fighting. One looks at the technical aspects of the movie that weren't executed very well. The other responds to the great message and the few moments when everything does click.
Which one do I feed?
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
The Pitch: Crimson Tide just wasn't interesting enough. Make another movie like that but Saving Private Ryan it up.
How I Came Into It: I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn't The Hunt for Red October. Needless, to say, I forgot that this had Matthew McConaughey.
Why I Saw It: (Club 50) This movie has good effects. Even the low quality recording I was watching (seriously, why even have a network if you can't put it in HD?) had a decent effect on me. These days, saying that McConaughey is a solid lead is assumed, but it's worth noting that he's always been able to carry a movie. The only thing that's changed is the quality of the movie he's tried to be in and how serious we as an audience decided to take him (Ok, Surfer Dude didn't help that).
Why I Wish I Hadn't: The modern war movie really should be defined in terms of Before or After Saving Private Ryan. For years after that movie came out, it was clear that the size would never be matched, so it was all about finding a new angle*. Enemy at the Gates took on sniping. Windtalkers ran with the Navajo Code stuff. U-571 did submarine warfare. The movie does a good job with this, but it feels like such a fringe topic, yet oddly, one that's been explored enough (Crimson Tide, Red October, Below) that it's pretty forgettable.
*The big exception being Pearl Harbor which tried to go big and still couldn't match Ryan's size, thus looking horribly inadequate by comparison.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
The Pitch: It'll be a movie that sounds like Network and ends up being A Star is Born.
How I Came Into It: I didn't know a lot about it, but I live in a post-Nightcrawler world and I couldn't get my mind off it the whole time I was watching this because it's the inverse-Nightcrawler.
Why I Saw It: (Club 50) Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Redford can lead a movie in their sleep. This is a very clean movie. Pfeiffer is able to succeed because she works hard and catches a break or two. Her and Redford succeed in railing gently pushing against the establishment. Redford dies a martyr for truth and Pfeiffer lives to be a symbol for proper journalism. If I'm looking for a straightforward narrative, this is nice and agreeable.
Why I Wish I Hadn't: Agreeable isn't interesting. Everything was pretty easy for the leads and the conflicts are pretty black and white. Then there's not being able to get over how much older Redford is than Pfeiffer. Apparently, once upon a time this was based on some reporter's biography. I didn't even know that going in, but I sure hope the reporter's life wasn't as toothless as this.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
The Pitch: A temp tries to become permanent...with Beyonce's man. Ohnoshedidn't.
How I Came Into It: You know, I've seen a lot of Beyonce's filmography. I haven't loved any of the movies and I don't even like her a lot. I just realized that. The title and poster says all you need to know and that's the kind of movie they were trying to make.
Why I Saw It: (Club 50) Idris Elba. Ali Larter was pretty hot a couple of times too. The catfight between her and Beyonce followed through on the implicit contract of that title in that kind of movie with that cast. If I like the Fatal Attraction kind of movies more, this would certainly whet an appetite for that. This movie is definitely a success because of the Beyonce of it all, and they gave the audience enough of her to justify the attention.
Why I Wish I Hadn't: The movie is half soundtrack at least. I'm pretty sure there's two different songs at the beginning before anyone even says anything. I never understood Ali Larter's motivation other than Idris Elba being one good looking specimen. The story doesn't make much sense as a result. For example, what was the point of her drugging and sleeping with him anyway? Was that ever used against him? The script (or to be fair, maybe it was the editing) could've been a lot tighter. I won't bother going after any of the performances because this isn't a movie where anyone needed to be doing exceptional work.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
Formula: (Mad Max * Mad Max: The Road Warrior * Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome) + ~30 years
Why I Saw It: An amazing trailer or two. Fantastic reviews. A great cast.
Cast: Tom Hardy movies fall into two categories: The ones I've seen and the ones I will see. Charlize Theron is great, not just in her Academy Award nominated roles (Did anyone else see Young Adult? That one is still hitting me). Nicholas Hoult is one of those actors who I haven't loved in anything yet (Warm Bodies and X-Men were fun) but I'm ready to find something. Rosie Huntington-Whitely and Zoe Kravitz are the only others in the cast I know by name. This is a largely unrecognizable supporting cast and it doesn't really matter. While the performances are great all, they are secondary to the action blitz happening for most of the movie.
Plot: Max (Hardy) is a prisoner of Immortan Joe, a warlord/god/governor of - I guess you'd call it - a city in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Imperator Furiosa (Theron) kidnaps/rescues Immortan Joe's slave-wives. Nux (Hoult) is a disciple of Immortan Joe's who is part of the group trying to recapture the wives. Max, Furiosa, Nux, and the wives spend the movie trying to outrace Immortan Joe, his small army, and his assorted allies. That's all there really is to the plot. That's all there needs to be. It's fitting that most of the movie takes place in cars because the film is constantly moving. It's divided into chapters, all different action sequences that left me breathless at times and always engaged. The chases and battles are all brilliantly and beautifully staged as well as tightly edited.
Elephant in the Room: I haven't seen the original movies. Neither have I. All you need to know is that this is the future, the Earth is decimated, and it's apparently easier to come by oil than water. I'm sure some context is gained by more familiarity with George Miller's first three installments, but this is very much a stand-alone movie. The beginning is a little disorienting. It doesn't take long to catch up though.
To Sum Things Up:
The bar has been set for the action movies this year. Good luck, Ant Man, Star Wars, et al. Kingsman was cute. Furious 7 had a lot of spectacle. Age of Ultron was a good effort. Fury Road easily outdoes them. I'm not sure the last movie I saw that was as balls to the walls as Fury Road. It's so well staged and intense that it's hard to believe this is from the director who's sole credits over the last 18 years are Babe: Pig in the City and a couple Happy Feet movies. I've been looking for the words for this movie for a couple days and all I can come up with is "grab you popcorn, sit back*, and enjoy".
*For as long as you can. It's easy to get swept up.
Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend
Formula: Pitch Perfect * 2
Why I Saw It: If you recall, I thought Pitch Perfect was pretty grand.
Cast: It's big. Nearly everyone is back from the first movie as well as several other key additions this time around. Anna Kendrick is still the lead, although it's clear that this is more comfortably written as an ensemble by now (which is not a reflection on Kendrick). Rebel Wilson, Brittany Snow, Alexis Knapp, Hana Mae Lee, Ester Dean, Skylar Astin, Adam DeVine, Ben Platt, Anna Camp, and yes, John Michael Higgins and director Elizabeth Banks all get moments to shine. Even Kelley Jakle and Shelley Regner return for a joke about never getting the spotlight. Hailee Steinfeld is brought in as an insurance policy if Kendrick decides not to return for the inevitable sequel. Chrissie Fit is the only new Bella in the three years between movies until Steinfeld shows up and has a great one-joke character. Brigitte Hjort-Sorensen and Flula Borg make great German rivals. Keegan-Michael Key steals every scene he's in. Did I mention Snoop Dogg? As I said, this is a huge cast.
Plot: The Barden Bellas have been on a tear since we last saw them, dominating the a cappella scene for the past three years until a very public accident derails them and nearly disbands them. Through <plot device> they can still compete for the world championship, so that's what they do. Meanwhile, Beca (Kendrick) has an internship at a record company that she has to balance with her Bella responsibilities. Emily (Steinfeld) is a legacy they are allowed to bring into the Bellas through <plot device> and she has trouble breaking into this tight knit sisterhood. Fat Amy (Wilson) finds love and is afraid to accept it. Those are the central stories. There's several smaller ones as well. It's a very busy movie.
Elephant in the Room: Is there a difference between being a good movie and a good sequel? Yes, but it's not a bad difference. This is a great sequel. It takes what people loved about the first movie and doubled-down on all of it. The jokes are bigger. The performances are more elaborate. The characters are more cartoonish. Story takes a major backseat. And that's the difference between being a sequel and Part 2 in a series. It doesn't have an effect on this movie. It just means that I'm worried about the third movie.
To Sum Things Up:
I enjoyed the hell out of this movie. Any fan of the first movie will be more than pleased to watch this. It's hard to believe a PG-13 movie can be this funny these days. Everyone is having a blast and Elizabeth Banks seamlessly makes her directorial debut. Anna Kendrick is as delightful as ever. Wilson is big and funny too. Steinfeld has some room to grow, but doesn't disrupt the chemistry at all. As I've already mentioned, the movie is very busy and short changes a lot of stories (the climactic competition is virtually an afterthought). Pitch Perfect is a solid all-around movie. Pitch Perfect 2 is more of a helluva joke delivery system. I could always use a good laugh, so that's fine by me.
Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend
Formula: Romy and Michele's High School Reunion + In & Out
Why I Saw It: I only had a small window of time to see a movie. This was in that window and I'd heard some ok things about it from Sundance.
Cast: Jack Black is playing a mix between his characters from Envy, Bernie, and some other movie that I'm forgetting about. James Marsden is super relaxed. I can't think of a similar role, but it's oddly familiar for him. Kathryn Hahn is kind of the nagging wife role. Jeffrey Tambor gets an uncomplex role that's not so dissimilar from Hank Kingsley. What I'm trying to say is that no one has to stretch his or herself. There's several other familiar faces of the "indie movie using TV people" mold.
Plot: Dan (Black) is the "chairperson" of his high school reunion. He has a family: a wife (Hahn), a teenage son, and a baby. He's one of those guys who never moved away from his home town and never quite left high school. People don't like him, and honestly, there's a reason for that. Not every social reject is misunderstood. Some just aren't likable people. He sees a national commercial with a guy from his high school class (Marsden) in it and decides that if he can get this guy to go to the reunion, people will like him. There's kind of a big twist in this that is better to go in cold about, but I can say that Dan tracks down this classmate and convinces him to go to the reunion. This don't go smoothly though,
Elephant in the Room: What the big twist? Ok, you asked for it. Well, Dan tracks this guy down to L.A. and ends up having sex with him. It's unexpected and drives all the conflict after that. Sadly, I already knew about it going in, so I can't say if that surprise would've helped the movie. It certainly did need help though.
To Sum Things Up:
I didn't like this movie, plain and simple. Black's character is unlikable. Black plays him well, but every single decision Black makes until the third act is wrong and unjustifiable. I can't root for that protagonist, and I really need to. The script works very hard to get to the big surprise and doesn't do anything interesting with the fallout. Perhaps with time to appreciate what the movie was trying to do, I'll come to appreciate it more. For now, I just want to recommend that anyone considering it avoid it*.
*And if you still see it anyway and end up liking it, please explain why. I want to know what I missed.
Verdict (?): Strongly Don't Recommend
The Pitch: A WWII movie about an Air Force crew on their last mission. We'll keep costs down with stock footage and a lot of scenes on the plane.
How I Came Into It: It had Rudy and that's all I knew. I figured Memphis Belle was the name of a boat (granted, I come from the Louisville perspective with the Belle of Louisville being a thing).
Why I Saw It: (Club 50) I appreciate what they tried to do in the movie. There's the limited perspective of being on the Memphis Belle in the air for a lot of the movie. Those close confines are very intimate and deepen a story that is largely a checklist of cliches. The whole crew of the ship gives solid performances. I was legitimately nervous when they were trying to land at the end. The Perfect Storm has ruined me for movies based on true stories when I don't know the fate of the people in real life beforehand.
Why I Wish I Hadn't: Just because I appreciated what they were trying to do, doesn't mean I thought they were successful at it. So much of the movie happens on the Memphis Belle during the last mission, but most of it is pretty dead. There's a reason why Top Gun focused a lot on the planes externally. Inside the plane (a bomber no less) is pretty boring. It doesn't help that I couldn't tell any of the characters apart. I don't know if it was because they all looked the same or simply didn't have enough characterization, but I spent most of the time being like "that's Rudy" or "that's Jimmy Cooper". I couldn't tell you a single difference between them.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
The Pitch: Steven Seagal gets revenge on [a senator] for killing [his family] after [coming out of a coma].*
*This template is conveniently reusable.
How I Came Into It: How the hell long was this Steven Seagal marathon I recorded? In the past few weeks, I've gone from being barely aware of Seagal's movie to having an acute distaste for them. I prepared myself for an equally simple movie as his others with a similarly innocuous name. It did worry me that this didn't even have the benefit of surrounding Seagal with better actors to offset - you know - him.
Why I Saw It: (Club 50) This is only Seagal's second movie, so parts of it still look like someone is trying. It's a very simple plot and it's a hard one to get wrong: Man is betrayed. Man seeks revenge. Kelly LeBrock is positively shining by comparison throughout the movie and gives it a lighter feel that is missing from later movies.
Why I Wish I Hadn't: It's nearly bulletproof in a way. To complain about this would be to take it seriously, which shouldn't be done. It's incredibly violent in a needless way. The dialogue is horrible. You could teach a seminar on the dangers of writing a script backwards with all the crap thrown into this. Most of what it comes down to though is that the entire time Seagal is on screen, I keep thinking "that guy looks like an asshole". There's a fan of this type of movie out there. I am not one of them.
Verdict (?): Strongly Don't Recommend
The Pitch: Terry Gilliam does a time travel movie.
How I Came Into It: This is a movie that I've been threatening to watch for years. I kept eluding me, but I was also nervous to watch it because Gilliam movies get a little weird. I'm not always ready for that.
Why I Saw It: (Club 50) Bruce Willis is frustratingly good in this. He spends almost the whole movie in a state of confusion or dazed. It's well played, but hard to watch at times. Brad Pitt is a man possessed. I don't think oddball is his best shade although this proves that he can do it if asked to. There's great toying around with time travel and fatality. It's a very clever movie. It looks great (and distinctive). I get why it's highly regarded in SciFi circles.
Why I Wish I Hadn't: Gilliam is another case of a director who I appreciate but don't particularly love. I can't identify anything I disliked about the movie or say that I thought was done poorly. It's just a matter of the type of performances Gilliam got and the visual style didn't appeal to me. Glad I finally saw it though.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
Formula: The Avengers + Iron Man 3 + Thor: The Dark World + Captain America: The Winter Soldier + (1 / Guardians of the Galaxy)
Why I Saw It: I can't really believe what the Marvel Cinematic Universe is pulling off. There's no reason for me to jump ship now.
Cast: Everyone wants to be in the Avengers. The expected faces (Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner), new faces (Elizabeth Olsen, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, James Spader, Linda Cardellini, Andy Serkis), and even some familiar ones (Cobie Smulders, Samuel L. Jackson, Paul Bettany, Hayley Atwell, Don Cheadle, Anthony Mackie). They are all putting up the performances you need in the movie. There's basically two camps regarding this: there's two many characters to service or this is a movie in which no character needs a lot of attention. I'm more the latter than the former.
Plot: The movie starts with the group already together on a mission where they get Loki's scepter from an Eastern European facility. Tony Stark (Downey) wants to use the technology of the scepter to program something he calls Voltron: a robotic defense system that would essentially replace the need for the Avengers. That goes wrong and an enemy is created. The enemy, Ultron, employs the help of two not-quite-mutant siblings*, Quicksilver (Johnson) and Scarlett Witch (Olsen). Battles ensue. Tempers flare. Jokes are cracked. The world is saved. To expect anything else would be foolish.
*They ARE siblings. For legal purposes, the ARE NOT mutants.
Elephant in the Room: I hear that this is 90% setup for future movies. That depends on how you look at it. This is clearly setting up a lot. The more I've read about the movie, the more I realize how much was setup for future movies. That's kind of what I love about the MCU. There's a lot going on at all times. There's not one single story, so you can be in the middle of Age of Ultron and see that X is leading into the Black Panther or Y is setting up the Infinity War (whatever that means). Certainly, the less you know about the comics, the less intrusive all these allusions to the future are. They just feel like things that are happening.
To Sum Things Up:
We are so spoiled right now. It's not entirely our fault. After all, we did get The Avengers in 2012, which was a minor miracle of cinema. Action-packed. Funny. Well developed characters. A clear villain. It set an almost impossible bar for Age of Ultron. The main difference between the movies is key. The Avengers was the end of something (Phase 1, specifically). Age of Ultron is the middle of something. It's hard to make a movie feel special when it's so clearly building toward bigger things. Personally, I think Age of Ultron, in a vacuum is as good as The Avengers. All the same stuff is there that made the first one great. The vague feeling of conclusion in The Avengers though is replaced with anticipation of what's next in Age of Ultron. If this turns out to be the Two Towers of the Avengers trilogy, then that's OK with me.
Related Reactions:
The Avengers
Iron Man 3
Thor: The Dark World
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Guardians of the Galaxy
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
The Pitch: Let's make the Billy the Kid story into something a little more palatable for Hollywood.
How I Came Into It: This is one of those movies no one ever talks about but everyone knows. The cast certainly precedes it. Of the six guns, Casey Siemaszko is the only one who isn't still pretty well known and he's worked plenty regardless. The casting gods really shined down on this one.
Why I Saw It: (Club 50) The movie begins making it very clear what this is about: getting as many hot young stars together for a western. It doesn't work hard to convince you that it's perfectly accurate. It's a star vehicle for numerous stars. In fact, I quite enjoyed that they played with the truth a little, things being incorrectly attributed to Billy and the turmoil within the group. The action too has a good sense of fun.
Why I Wish I Hadn't: It was a little too busy trying to do right by all the leads and still fit in a relatively short run time. I liked the length, but I would've liked a pass or two more at the script to tighten it up. It also hasn't aged too well. The gun fights are shot using what I call "Hollywood logic". It's not that they purposely choose to go over the top with the action, like this is a heightened reality. It's that thing where you can almost hear the director saying "it would be cool if" and the protagonists' shooting accuracy is 50 times better than the antagonists'. It's the difference between knowing that you are over the top (Commando is a good example) and thinking you are just "going big".
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
