Buttered Popcorn: Buzzmans Movie Review Thread Part II

[Palooza]

3. I will be seeing the To-Do List tomorrow, too. Found out on the CBB podcast that it's written and directed by Bill Hader's wife which is awesome because he is one of my favorite human beings on this planet.

 

[Buzzman]

1. I enjoyed the violence of it all as well, but even then, some of the scenes went on way too long. The interrogation sequence near the end went on for about 5 minutes too long, and a lot of the major violence was either done off-screen and the aftermath is shown or its implied and cut away right before the deed is done. I thoguht Drive had just as much, if not more, violence.

2. Yea, I'll throw up a review tonight.

3. I really like Bill Hader too but what's funny is I really don;'t like him on SNL, but I think that's got a lot to do with that show being shit now, than him. I'd say he's my favorite part of The To Do List.

 

[Palooza]

I agree, just look at the elevator scene of Drive to see how the mix of that style/violence/music works perfectly as opposed to it not working at all in Only God Forgives.

I gave up on SNL a while ago and thankfully he's moving on. He'll be a regular writer on the next season of South Park, which is absolutely fucking brilliant. He had been a consultant/guest writer but now he's a part of the staff. I think he's easily one of the funniest people alive.

 

[dell71]

The Conjuring (2013)

Glad to see you liked this one. I've been cautiously looking forward to it. Whenever I see established/known actors in a horror flick I tend to think they're just slumming for a paycheck and it's going to be crap.

 

[Houston]

In a minor annoyance, the film begins with the “this is based on real events” bullshit. I never see the point of this crap but there must be some real dumb people who truly believe in this if they continue with this cliché.

I realized a few years ago how people were getting away with that.

Take The Strangers from 2008....

1. When the director was a kid a stranger knocked on his door and asked for someone who didn't live there.
2. Soon after he found out that abandoned houses in his neighborhood had been robbed.
3. Keddie Murders
4. Charles Manson Murders

Throw those random un-connected events together and you officially got a "Based on a True Story" tag on your movie.
:jonesy:

 

[Buzzman]

Fruitvale Station (2013)

This is a movie that is based on the incident involving Oscar Grant and his last day before he died. I am sure some of this was dramatized to some extent, but I never felt like it was being emotionally manipulative in a bad way. It certainly was, but I enjoyed them because it helped define and shape Oscar Grant as a character in a much better way than if they weren’t in included in the film. This film did a great job at avoiding all the problems I thought it could have and told a tale of a man who tragically died well before he should have, but not before telling you who Oscar Grant was as a person.

The film begins as any other day, but you as an audience member know better. The film’s opening shots show the real footage taken from the camera phone as the event took place. Doing so gives you a different set of eyes than Grant himself. The things he chooses to do on this day could have felt a bit tedious and slow but because we know of his tragic demise, the simple conversations and choices he makes all feel much more important and tangled in a web of emotions that you never really let sink in. The film does a great job of this because throughout the day you witness this character do things to take steps in the right direction and finally try and change him, but it’s a struggle. The struggles sink a little deeper with the use of clever and well placed flashbacks. I was a little worried this film would be a bit preachy or one sided, but it balances this character out very well and does the story justice.

The buildup is well done and good, but it would have been for nothing if they hadn’t nailed its conclusion. The moment the subway is mentioned, the film changes for the better. Simple tension is built on any kind of movement and interactions between the characters that keep you on the edge of your seat. When the climax is set in motion, the score becomes heart pounding and scares you. The situation is shot in a hectic manner where it felt so easily avoided, but one thing leads to another and before you know it, Oscar Grant is on the ground, shot and dying. Ryan Coogler had a hard task at making this as dramatic as it was because everyone knows the story’s end, but it was so just a fantastic sequence of events pieced together to make for an amazing thirty minute stretch.

Michael B Jordan has been on the brink of stardom for awhile now. He’s been great on TV and became known to many with Chronicle but Fruitvale Station will be his biggest achievement for a long time. He does a great job in the role and creates a character that you only get to know through one day of interactions, but he wears his emotions on his chest. He helps the characters tragedy feel justified and should wind up with an Oscar nomination at the very least. Octavia Spencer pulls in fine work as his mother, and it’s not until the very end that she finally gets to open up and create a character almost as tragic as Grant himself. This was always Jordan’s show, but Spencer’s composed but eventual blowup was great.

This is a film that very well could’ve have fallen into a trap of preachy one-sided material, but it presents a character in a normal light that makes him feel like any other guy. He’s done some bad things in his life, but like so many others, he wants to change; you want him to change. Then the all goes away in an instant and it really does make you think about yourself and where you’re headed. The film earns the right to ask that question, unlike some others. Despite a slow buildup, its final act is something worth your time alone. It’s a very good film.

Overall Score: 8/10

 

[dell71]

Michael B Jordan has been on the brink of stardom for awhile now. He’s been great on TV and became known to many with Chronicle but Fruitvale Station will be his biggest achievement for a long time. He does a great job in the role and creates a character that you only get to know through one day of interactions, but he wears his emotions on his chest. He helps the characters tragedy feel justified and should wind up with an Oscar nomination at the very least.

I like Jordan, and haven't seen this yet, but I'd be surprised if he gets a nod. It's not because I doubt how good he is, it's that movies & performances released this time of year tend to be overlooked when awards season rolls around. That is, unless you're a big blockbuster flick and getting noms in the technical categories. Most of the other nominations tend to go to movies released after Thanksgiving.

 

[Palooza]

I like Jordan, and haven't seen this yet, but I'd be surprised if he gets a nod. It's not because I doubt how good he is, it's that movies & performances released this time of year tend to be overlooked when awards season rolls around. That is, unless you're a big blockbuster flick and getting noms in the technical categories. Most of the other nominations tend to go to movies released after Thanksgiving.

I was totally on board with you, about to mention that I've said this before, comparing it to Martha Marcy May Marlene. HOWEVA, I recently found out this is a Weinstein movie, which I think is extremely important. If MBJ gets the buzz/hype/etc come fall/winter, I think Weinstein will go full court press for him.

 

[Buzzman]

Yea Harvey Weinstein wont let anything stop him when he puts his mind to something.

 

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

I like Jordan, and haven't seen this yet, but I'd be surprised if he gets a nod. It's not because I doubt how good he is, it's that movies & performances released this time of year tend to be overlooked when awards season rolls around. That is, unless you're a big blockbuster flick and getting noms in the technical categories. Most of the other nominations tend to go to movies released after Thanksgiving.

That is often by design.

However, Jordan is gaining a lot of buzz to get a nod for his work in Fruitvale.

I can see it, especially if Big Harv gets on the promotion bandwagon for him. Fruitvale is not going to be seen by a ton of eyes this summer...but I think it'll regain some steam once its released on DVD/BR for the Academy to see.

 

[Buzzman]

White House Down (2013)

To state the obvious, White House Down isn’t the first movie of its kind to release this year. The other one is Olympus Has Fallen. The two have the exact same scenario but the differences are pretty clear. Fallen tries to create a movie where the tone is that this could realistically happen. It’s dark, gritty, and violent. White House Down sticks to an action-adventure approach with bits of comedy thrown in. It clearly accepts its approach and goes all out with it, for better or worse; this case being worse.

The film begins with John Cale applying for a secret service position. After being turned down, he still takes his daughter on a tour of it and when a terrorist attack separates them, he does whatever it takes to get her back. It’s all a little bit coincidental, and things always seem to happen that way. For such a secure building, it seems to be taken over pretty easily. Then when a slew of agents die trying to stop them, John Cale escapes and begins his one man wrecking crew through the disgruntled intruders. It’s always funny when you see one guy disrupt such a well thought out plan. So many stupid decisions have to be made to not kill Cale and they make them for plot sake. Then the tone they approach this situation with is just really boring. The action scenes all feel lifeless and unthreatening, and most of the one-liners thrown out there are just not absurd enough to actually get you to chuckle. It just feels like you’re being taken on one action scene to another.

When it does settle down, there is nothing to latch onto. Channing Tatum’s John Cale is a poor man’s John McClane and really doesn’t have a whole lot of back-story other than a quick military awards page. He jumps around the film in the exact same attire and it feels like a lazy homage rather than a smart one. Jamie Foxx as The President is as laughable as possible and he babbles himself into scenarios where the script fails him miserably. They have him go into these political speeches and it feels so out of place in this otherwise action comedy. He’s not that funny and was relied on to often to make the audience laugh. The two villains of the film, (James Woods and Jason Clarke) are just very lazy. They go through all the generic turns and backstories to make you feel like you’ve seen it a thousand times over. This entire movie feels that way.

The subplot surrounding the daughter has to be the film’s biggest mistreatment. They gave her just ridiculous scene after scene and then when the film turns to its climax, you almost have to cut your own throat. It just didn’t make any sense. Why would the media throw her face and identity on TV when she leaked information to them WHILE SHES STILL IN THE WHITE HOUSE? You just put her life in severe danger and might as well pull the trigger yourself. It’s such an insult to the audience and with how much recycling they did with the original Die Hard; they might as well have come out and said this was a remake.

This is a movie that’s tone was its own worst enemy. It never really stood a chance once Olympus Has Fallen beat them to the punch, but had it found a good balance between action and comedy, it might have worked, but it just came off as a lifeless, un-fun, summer blockbuster without any depth to it. Unless you really want to see a poor man’s Die Hard, I say skip both this and Olympus Has Fallen and just rewatch that, it does it much better than the both of them.

Overall Score: 4/10

 

[Buzzman]

The Attack (2013)

I’ve been trying to watch a lot more foreign films lately and that lead to my viewing of The Attack. My friend told me about the plot and it sounded really damn good. The film begins focuses on Doctor Amin Jaafari and his journey in piecing his life together after a devastating tragedy hits him. While on call, a bomb goes off in a restaurant and he spends all day patching up the victims, who mostly happen to be children. After a long day, he arrives home just to be woken up while sleeping saying he needs to come to the hospital, where he finds out his wife was in the explosion and the evidence points to her being the cause as the suicide bomber. This may seem like I’m spoiling the movie, but this is all in the introduction. The film’s real subject matter comes after where they explore the cause and effects of the matter and how one act doesn’t just ripple the bombers life but rather everyone associated with them.

My biggest gripe with this film is it’s too anticlimactic. That introduction reads like a powerful act of violence, yet none of the characters feel like they are as emotionally invested as they should. They all talk in calm and calculated manners, with little to no outburst of any emotion, and kind of seem to accept it, moving on with very little time to digest the situation. The only time the films intensity matched it on screen was the identifying of his wife’s body. It’s brutal, cold, and depressing to watch. It begins to do down from there as the rest of the film comes to an expected conclusion on Amin’s journey to figure out why his wife did what she did. This journey leads him to expected conversations that reveal bits of the puzzle but never fully develop into much more. They attempt to tackle the war between Arabs and Israelis through his findings but with so little time to work with, the subject matter feels like a story for a different movie.

As Amin Jaafari, Ali Suliman essentially has to carry the whole film as none of the other characters get much time to do anything else. As a confused, befuddled husband who just learned of the attack, he handles himself well. While I wouldn’t have made him so restrained amidst the chaos, he does an admirable job as a grieving spouse lost as his whole idea of living changed in an instant. We never know how we’d react in a situation as tragic as his, but I certainly wouldn’t have handled it as calmly as him. Through flashbacks we get a few glimpses of Reymond Amsalem, who plays his wife, but she never feels like a character. We spend so little time with her; we never truly get the full emotional investment that the film seemed to be going for.

The Attack is based on a book, which is no doubt a better option. It has the time to go much deeper in the subjects this film attempts to tackle. It’s a much slower pace than the film would appear to be, but I think it’s still worth a watch if you have the time. It had the potential to be great, but it wastes too much time in specific parts to fully develop its grand ideas. The thoughts that remain with you feel worth dissecting, continuing on where the film left off.

Overall Score: 6.5/10

 

[Aso]

I thought White House Down was better than Olympus Has Fallen so I'd be scared to see what you rate that movie. I hope you didn't rate it better.

 

[Buzzman]

I thought White House Down was better than Olympus Has Fallen so I'd be scared to see what you rate that movie. I hope you didn't rate it better.

I might eventually review it way down the road, but Fallen is one of the worst movies of the year.

 

[Buzzman]

The Heat (2013)

A comedy has one of the easiest jobs in the world. Make you laugh. This can actually be hard at the same time. It’s one of the only genres that is all over the place and generally understand why it has to be. Not everyone has the same taste in what makes them laugh, and generally the films rating, actors involved, and setting can clearly give you an indication on whether you’ll find it funny without ever actually having to see it. Against everything my mind and body was telling me, I dragged myself to see The Heat. It has a very good chance at taking the award as the worst film I’ve watched this year, unless there is another Mellissa McCarthy film coming out that I don’t know of.

Right from the start, you get a mouthful of what you’re going to get the entire movie. Sandra Bullock plays the straight laced by the books cop and you have the revolutionary idea to pair her with a foul mouthed rule breaker in McCarthy. Since they are opposites, they can work off each other and provide the audience with nonstop laughter. With us laughing, they probably prayed to god himself that we wouldn’t be paying attention to the plot because they were better off not having one. A drug lord is in town and they are trying to take him down, but when family gets involved, things get personal and stupid hijinx ensue. Stupid plot twists pop-up, awful unfunny situations come about and when the day is saved, the films places these two woman on a pedestal when in reality, they are terrible cops that don’t know how to do their job. It is so painfully unfunny. Largely due to the leads.

At this point, I am ready for McCarthy to have a heart attack and die. She is just not funny. That doesn’t mean I haven’t found her funny, but her material is just so repetitive. She’s a one trick pony that thinks vulgar language and stunts is enough, but saying fuck without context isn’t enough. Her partner in crime is just as bad. Sandra Bullock plays the same role she’s always done and nothing else. She puts on a fake smile, acts appalled to McCarthy’s mannerisms and plays laughs with drunken awkwardness and poorly worded dialogue. Its pretty bad that I can say Marlon Waynes Is the best part of the cast, and that’s simply because they restrain him enough to never let him annoy you.

I may get some backlash for my distaste for this film, but it’s exactly what I hate in Hollywood. This film is a lazy piece of shit, relying on the current trends, and expects that to be enough. Which it so clearly was since America responded with big box office dollars and now has another pointless franchise on their hands. Fuck this movie. It’s an abomination.

Overall Score: 0/10

 

[Houston]

I always thought comedies were the hardest. You can learn textbook stuff on how to make other genres work.

 

[Buzzman]

Getting you to laugh a few times is easy. Getting you to laugh a lot is hard. That's the job of a comedy. So yea I'd say its really hard to make a great comedy. The Heat isn't even a bad comedy, its just a terrible movie.

 

[Buzzman]

Despicable Me (2010)

This is a family-fun film. There are no doubts about that, but I thought it was interesting in the path it takes. Normally you don’t get to see the master villain placed as the protagonist of the film but that’s exactly what they do. It’s a nice little twist for the film; just enough to deceive people into thinking it’s fresher than it really is. Once you get past the introductions of the characters, it’s a story of good vs. bad and the lines are clearly drawn. Gru may pretend to evil, but at heart he really is the nicest guy in the movie. That’s where I wound up really enjoying the film. This is bizarre because most of the film doesn’t actually have a plot. It’s just a slew of scenes of Gru unknowingly bonding and becoming attached to the girls he adopted originally for diabolical reasons. A lot of heart is put into these scenes and it’s nice to see this love between the characters be developed on screen rather than quick montages. You normally don’t get to see that in a family fun animation.

The thing I really disliked was the films lack of urgency from the absence of an antagonist. Sure the film had a man named Vectorman but he rarely is in the movie and when he is, nothing about him is intimidating because all he does is sit on his couch and talk to himself while nobody is in the room. It’s kind of pathetic that Gru struggles to outsmart him because this guy is a moron. It would be one thing if they played him off as a comedic goofus, but he’s not even funny. He is a very weak part that brings down an otherwise fun, cute, heartfelt film. The other thing that I totally understand its placement but wish they toned down on was the use of the minions. Just because their cute and cuddly and speak gibberish doesn’t mean you can just throw anything at us and expect to laugh. I and everyone else know they are there for the children and where the money comes from which is why I overlook and accept them. At least I do manage a chuckle out of some of their antics.

This is a nice animation that offers up a little something new than what’s traditionally given to you. It still presents its expected clichés and dumb laughs, but it has a ton of heart that just makes you feel good about yourself while you watch it. I think it may be a tad bit overrated from a few people, but it’s still a good watch whether you have kids or not. There is enough material for both age groups to enjoy it and that’s basically what defines good animation. I’m curious where they can go from here. With a few improvements it could be even more fun.

Overall Score: 7.5/10

 

[Buzzman]

Despicable Me 2 (2013)

For the longest time I thought I had loved the first Despicable Me. I would tell people how much I enjoyed it. One day while thinking about it, I couldn’t remember the ending and after a bit realized that I never actually finished the film in theaters due to bothersome circumstances. With a rewatch, I realized that while I enjoyed the film, it had some real problems that hampered it from being a great movie. The sequel takes most of what I liked and subtracts from it while cranking up more of the annoyances. It’s disappointing.

The film begins a certain time after the events of the first and now Gru and his three girls are one big happy family. That heart from the first one is present but it quickly vanishes away once Gru’s assistant departs for another job and the Anti Villain League invites Gru to become a spy to track down a world threatening virus with the help of rookie agent, Lucy. The virus is hidden in the mall and they must reveal which store owner is actually a mad genius. They kind of lose track of Gru’s family until he sees them wandering around the mall and it becomes this mess of ideas all clashing and you kind of forget what’s going on. The virus becomes sort of an afterthought because they seem to more content on forcing this relationship together between Gru and Lucy. I would’ve liked it had there been chemistry, but Lucy comes off as awkward, unprofessional, and kind of out there.

It fits the first films tone of choosing family over drama, but it really hurts this film once again. This virus is supposed to be this worldwide threat and it’s just put on the backburner over little things that shouldn’t matter. Instead we get the minions messing around getting captured one by one by a villain to be named later, but it such seems a lot more of the same. It’s crazy that only two films in and the minions already feel tiresome, but the give me too much of a three stooges vibe. I’m not one to let the voices of the characters affect me all that much because there are very few times where you can actually mess that up but two people bothered me. Kristen Wiig’s character matched her voice and with it came her usually weird antics that she does in live action. It’s a bit repetitive at this moment; the other being the villain of the film. It’s quite obvious who the mystery man is in the mall simply on the voice alone. Everyone else is a bunch of unrecognizable voices and one is recognizable. Gee, I wonder if that’s the bad guy?

Two films in and this will be a monster franchise based on this one’s box office. It’s insane how popular it has grown in four years and while I still enjoyed this one, it falls a bit short of the original. It’s a watchable film you’ll enjoy with your time, but wind up just being a forgettable experience. It sucks because they have the characters to make something really good, but they choose to go in these more general audience appealing routes that will bring in money. I cannot blame them for it, but the result for me is disappointment. This franchise seems stuck in one place and with the formula working a second time, it won’t be changing soon. I’m sure we’ll get a third and even a minion spin-off in the near future, but I won’t be expecting much out of them.

Overall Score: 7/10

 

[Buzzman]

The Wolverine (2013)

We can all agree that before X-Men First Class, the X-Men series in general was falling off a cliff with nothing to prevent them from splattering. The first Wolverine and the third installment, The Last Stand, are movies we as movie goers try our bests to erase from our minds and pretend like they never existed. This is why it came as a surprise to me how often this movie references the third film and actually continues on from it. It never does it enough to make it seemed distasteful or forced, but it’s just something I thought we’d all just love to forget. This film does its best to avoid the problems those previous two entries had before it, but is cutting down the cast and focusing on Wolverine alone do worth it? Not exactly.

To say this film is uneventful would be a understatement. The film begins with Logan as a POW saving the life of a Japanese soldier, which clearly will come into player later on. Jump all the way ahead in the X-Men timeline and Logan has ran away from society after having to kill his love, Jean Grey. He hasn’t dealt with it well and what has become a very common trait of Logan, he seems to wake up screaming claws out. There is no other way the character can wake up. Once he receives word that he’s needed in Japan, he reluctantly goes. The old Japanese soldier he once saved is dying and asks him if he can have his healing powers, and shockingly Logan says no and the man mysteriously dies. It’s very rushed, very set up, and very lazy. Then our first real bit of action occurs in what feels like a long chase sequence that ends horribly on a bullet train that looks like trash and executed without any sense of realism, even in a world full of mutants.

The rest of the movie doesn’t get much better. Slowed down conversation scenes are supposed to lead into a loving bond between the characters, but feels like forced dialogue that at the end of the day is just filler. The film does a strange thing that Iron man 3 kind of did; stripping Logan of his regenerating powers, but never quite does anything with it. This is a very vulnerable time for the character but there is never a sense of threat or consequence to actually losing his powers. He still acts and fights like Wolverine, with an occasional sigh of pain. It feels like a big missed opportunity for the character and the film. That then leads into the third act which is the real nail in the coffin for me. The villains are revealed, the fights are terribly choreographed, and the motives behind them are so cheesy and with little thought. It makes a boring, harmless movie into a bad one.

I think it really boils down to Wolverine as a character. We’ve seen him at the center so many times, there really isn’t much left unexplored. Hugh Jackman plays him perfectly as normal, but his approach hasn’t changed since the beginning so the movie around him needs to be better for you to care much about Wolverine. The two female leads do a fine job, but ultimately come off forgettable. The real stinker here comes from Svetlana Khodchenkova playing Viper. I don’t know if she was trying to be over the top or completely serious, but it didn’t work and the theater laughed her off; Just a terrible portrayal of an uninteresting character.

This is a film that isn’t nearly as crippling to the franchise as some of the other installments, but it’s ultimately forgettable. Hugh Jackman has consistently said this was the Wolverine movie he always wanted to make, and it’s disheartening to hear because it just didn’t do enough. It wants to be a deadly dark serious take on the character, but still needs to keep a light tone for the box office bills. It doesn’t reveal anything about the character we didn’t already know, nor does it shine a different light on him. I think I am ready for them to retire the claws and move onto some other characters in the franchise. It could be the breath of fresh air it needs.

Overall Score: 5/10