Oceans 13 (PG-13)

Last night we watched Oceans 13. Very good movie, very enjoyable. For those that have followed this storyline, there was the original remake for Oceans 11, then the terrible follow up of 12. This one luckily leaves the crap from 12 behind and goes back to the good storyline of the first movie.

In the story a new character played by Al Pacino screws over Reuben (Elliot Gould) out of his land and money. In doing so Reuben becomes sick and bed ridden. The team of Clooney and Pitt get the gang back together to get even with Pacino's character, even involving the former target of their crimes.

What made this movie enjoyable was its quick wit, good storyline, and good characters. I mean, by this time, we all know the characters, and we know what to expect from them. However, the movie is still able to give you new information about these old characters, enough to get you re-engaged in the storyline. There is plenty of twists and setups just as you would expect as well. I'd definitely recommend this movie to anyone looking for a good 2 hours of good film to watch.

Wall-E (G)

This past weekend Jenn and I took our nephews to see Wall-E. I had been waiting to go see it, hoping that they hadn't seen it yet. I mean, if you're going to go see a new Pixar movie, shouldn't it be with kids!?

So we went, and it was a very good, fun, enjoyable movie. The premise is that of a little robot, named Wall-E, who is working through Earth's trash while its inhabitants are out in space waiting for the place to get cleaned up. We find out during the movie, that this process has been going on for 700 years!

Many reviews that read about this movie talked about the lack of dialog in the beginning of the movie. From my perspective, yes, there is a lack of human to human dialog at the beginning, but in no way does it detract from the movie. In some ways it even adds. Its neat to see some ways of non-verbal communication and see the ways you can communicate information without typical words.

The movie itself is quite amusing with the typical good story that Pixar is now renowned for coming up with. One of my favorite parts, I'll list two here, are such: first, when Wall-E boots up, he boots up with the Mac OS boot sound, very funny to me. Second, when you see the people in space, there is a comment that there may be some slight bone loss due to prolonged space flight, and then it shows a graph of the people who went from fit, to extremely unfit, again, very funny.

Overall this movie was great. Great for kids. Great for adults. So get out there and see it!

Little Miss Sunshine (R)

So I figure after the last two posts where I didn't really care for the movie, I would do better to post about a movie that I did enjoy. Little Miss Sunshine is one of those movies that when it came out, people were quietly talking about, but nobody in the mass media was talking about it at all.

I feel like I heard very little about this movie, but it had this underground buzz about it, which made me tape it and want to watch it. I was certainly very pleasantly surprised by the movie. In the few previews I did see, its seemed as is the preview makers were trying their best to capitalize off of the presence and screen power of Steve Carell. While he's in the movie, he's certainly not the only thing worth watching.

The story in brief is that a little girl gets to participate in the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant, and the trip that her family makes to get her there. Of course, there are bumps along the way, and other such hardships. But eventually she makes it to the show, and does her own unique performance (that she's been practicing with grandpa).

For me, what really made this movie so enjoyable was the dialog, and the character development. The movie was easy going, but at the same time was able to convey the realism of life, in that just because you want to do something, to get there can be very difficult and hard sometimes. Carell is wonderful in the movie, but I think the real star is the little girl Abigail Breslin who is basically the lead. She is wonderful and very lovable in a quirky girl kinda way.

My final recommendation - definitely worth watching. At this point you'll probably have to rent it, but if you wait another 6-12 months it will probably be on cable!

28 Weeks Later (R)

This movie was much better than its predecessor. The things that made it better are actually pretty simple, better action and more/better dialog.

This movie is set 4 months after the outbreak of a zombie creating pandemic across England (maybe farther reaching, but its hard to determine based on the two movies). The U.S. military has stepped in and his helped to rebuild a community in London. People are checked for infection prior to being allowed in and then remain to repopulate. However, just as you'd expect, someone gets through, makes one dude get infected, and then BAM! plague all over again!

This movie had some really good action/gory blood zombie eating scenes which for me made the movie much better than the previous movie. In one shot that I thought was really cool, there is a man driving a helicopter attempting to pick up the few non-infected people running for their lives, and to stave them off while the others run, he uses the helicopter blades to chop up the zombies as they continuously run into it. Awesome scene!

As for movie quality, its not the greatest. But its certainly better than 28 Weeks Later. If you're into zombie flicks or gory movies, then its work checking out, otherwise I wouldn't bother. I watched both this and 28 Weeks Later upon the recommendation of my co-workers. I'd say that unless you're in a similar situation, just stay away.

28 Days Later (R)

Awful. This movie stunk. Boring, uninteresting movie. Thats the best way I could describe this movie.

Why was it so bad? For those that don't know the story, basically a dude wakes up in a hospital 28 days after a pandemic has broken out in England. There really isn't anyone left, and so he sets out from the hospital. Along the way he finds two people who take him in and help him. Then those three become two (one dies) and they move on to find a dad and daughter hold up in building. Once together, they move on to a compound of military people keeping out the infected. I'll stop the story there, as to not ruin it.

What made it so bad is that it was slow. There wasn't much dialog, and when there was dialog I just didn't care for it. My co-workers slam me because I don't hate on "I Am Legend" even though its basically the same movie, with even less dialog. However you can look for that review later. To sum up this junk fest, its a zombie movie, but horribly boring and slow. It is somewhat artsy if you're into that kind of thing. I will say however that the sequel "28 Weeks Later" was much better, and you can read that review in the near future.

My final recommendation - don't watch this movie!

Iron Man (PG-13)

This movie was amazing. Wonderful! Excellent. When I walked out of the movie, I told Jenn that for me its a 9/10 right now, and if I can't find anything wrong with it, then its gonna be a 10. Well I haven't been able to figure anything out, therefore, its a 10!

I wasn't one of the fanboys going to see this movie. Iron Man was never one of my favorite comics, or superheroes growing up (that was typically X-Men). But the hype around the movie, and my love of summer blockbusters meant I had to get out and see this, and I'm glad I did.

The action was well done, the acting, which many thought Robert Downey Jr. would not do well, was on point. I think he fits the role of the character very well, and brings a large sense of realism to the screen. Iron Man for me, feels like the same kind of superhero as Batman. A man with to much money and time on his hands, and a newfound grudge against the evils of society. And the CGI, incredible. I had read about the blending of live action with the CGI, and it really was well done.

And for those that don't know any of the storyline, but want to know something going in (because after my recommendation, who wouldn't see this movie :) ) - the basic premise is that Tony Stark (Downey Jr.) is captured in Afghanistan and to escape creates the Iron Man suit. Upon escape he perfects his creation, but as with any superhero there are always people that don't see eye to eye with their plans. I don't want to give away to much, so thats where I'll stop this.

My final recommendation, go see this movie. Its definitely no fluke that it make 100.7 million this weekend here in the U.S. Fantastic movie!

Walk Hard The Dewey Cox Story

Last night a bunch of friends got together to watch a movie. When I heard it was "Walk Hard" I was about to just go ahead and leave. I'm pretty picky when it comes to movies and this movie looked awful from the beginning. The commercials made it look like a spoof movie, similar to Superhero Movie, or Meet the Spartans. There is a fine line in spoof movies, very few have in my mind succeeded since Airplane!, and this movie looked to be one of the worst.

The trailers set you up for failure. Prop-falls, slapstick, an actor who has never had to carry a movie on his own. I heard the movie got pretty good reviews, but I never had any desire to actually pay to check it out.

The movie was very surprising. I laughed out loud on numerous occasions which is pretty good considering most lowbrow movie humor gets more of a groan from me than actual laughter. The acting was about what you would expect form this type of movie. John C. Reilly carried the movie very well, but the supporting cast really shined. Every scene had a way of throwing a cameo in, and some of them were great. The jokes were well placed without being overdone. Too many times in movies like this the jokes are written on a wall for you and beat into your head a hundred times to make sure you got it. It may have been Judd Apatow's doing, who also produced Superbad and Knocked Up, but this movie was pretty good from top to bottom.

I don't expect it to win any awards, but it exceeded my expectations enough to get 4 movie reels.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (PG-13)

Here we have a movie that probably lives up to all expectations you might have for it. I don't necessarily mean that in a negative way, but at the same time I don't mean it in a positive way.

You have a movie where two men pretend to be gay in order to scam the pension benefits system. Kevin James character (Larry) has a deceased wife whom he has been grieving over and because of this never filed different paperwork for his pension. Early in the movie Larry saves Chuck's life (since they are firefighters after all), and therefore Chuck feels he owes a debt to Larry. Once Larry decides what he wants, the gay humor sets in.

I was entertained. I laughed at the jokes both slapstick style and verbal jokes. I think Kevin James and Sandler are funny guys so I liked this combination when it came out last summer. I would recommend this as a catch it on tv movie, or borrow from a friend, maybe even spend the $1 at the redbox for it, but certainly not a full out purchase it situation.

Lucky Number Slevin (R)

So this is the inaugural post for a new blog I've decided to start up. Since I'm not very imaginative when it comes to naming things, I decided to stick with a naming convention viewers of my photo blog are aware of. The idea behind this new blog is for me to share movie reviews.

So I'm going to start with what I thought was an excellent movie. A movie that I would recommend to everyone, keeping in mind the rating. So what made this movie so good? Well it was different. Like many people I'm used to the standard movies and the standard plot lines, and trust me I watch plenty of those movies. But this movie wasn't standard. From the very beginning the movie brings you in with two seemingly unrelated murders by unknown people and then quickly jumps to the main character storyline.

In the movie Hartnett plays a character named Slevin who is tapped by two mob bosses to pay debts that aren't his. Not really wanting to go into detail about the plot because I don't want to spoil anything, I will instead talk about the aspects of the movie that made it good for me.

The dialog in the movie is great. Each character no matter how small to large is well developed. You get a sense for that character, their personality, even if they don't even speak. For me, this is one of the key elements that really sells the movie. Kinda brings you in and makes you wonder whats going on, and want more. In addition to the dialog the story itself is a good one. Its well crafted and very engaging. Since I'm not sure what else to say about the movie, I'm going to go ahead and rate it which you can see below.