22 Jump Street

  I decided that I needed to bust out of the shell of action or sci-fi movies and break into something a little different.  Well there is action in this flick but it is more of a comedy than action show.  It was a nice break from the overly digitalized CGI affairs that I have recented as of late.  I do enjoy a good comedy though, and of course how can you go wrong with a sequel to the 2012 Remake of 21 Jump Street.  I was not dissapointed as to the comedic aspect of the movie.  It is nice to see that big movie budgets aren't only spent of CGI oriented outings, but it would be nice to get a little more original with movie ideas.  The execs in Hollywood do seem to be grasping at straws more and more trying to find something that will sell instead of producing movies that are original.  There can be a whole other article about sequels and the unecessary greed that is the cause of them but I do not feel I need to digress to those levels at this time.  As sequels go, this particular one does not fall completely flat.  There are some good points in the movie but if you want to know more, just read on.

 

In the sequel we see a return of Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum reprising the roles of Schmitt and Jenko.  This time around the awkward duo get to be undercover at college.  The movie pokes a loto fun at itself.  There is even a girl that makes fun of Schmitt's (Jonah Hill) apparent age.  There is no lack of jokes and some of the gags seem to be a little forced.  The acting is not the best in the world even for Jona Hill.  Some of the scenes seem a little forced and of course weighing in a little heavy on the goofy side.  That is exactly what one would expect from this type of movie though.

 

The tone throughout is lite and funny.  There are a few gut busting hilarious moments.  The story and plot line is a little predictable with a decent twist in the end.  Nothing that would be hard to figure out if you really pay attention.  The story does focus a little more on the relationship between Schmitt and Jenko and that has some funny moments to it as well. 

 

Overall I would say this is an adequate summer feel good movie.  There is a good bit of laughter and one can take a long time date to see this movie.  I don't recommend it for a first date but certaintly for those that are looking for a more light hearted movie.  It is great for the guys and girls.  Plenty of Channing Tatum to look at for the girls and lots of goof for the guys.  I do not recommend this one for children under 16.  The language is barely suitable for most adults.  If you are looking for a funny break from the graphics hardened world and want to just go into a mindless meld, then this show is for you.  If you are easily offended by language and crude humor then look for something else.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

If you haven't had the opportunity to jump on the Marvel band wagon do so now.  I mean that seriously.  They are raking in the dough with all of their movies.  This is the era of the comic books and even though some of DC's stuff is good, Marvel has the market cornered completely.  This new installation of X-Men brings back a lot of the old characters we saw have a not so great demise in one of the not so great previous installations.  This is a good thing actually.  The new movie has done pretty much what has happened to the Star Trek franchise and reset the timeline.  Thank GOODNESS.  With the new way of super hero movies coming out (refer to all my past hero movie reviews) being darker and more edgier, I think the producers and directors have finally realized that more is not always better. 

This is a Marvel Super Hero movie.  Though there are going to be a huge list of "Hollywood Sins", it was fairly well done.  We get to see a lot of the old characters return.  They return not only as their old incantations but as the younger and more attractive models as well.  It is also nice to see some new faces.  Amazingly enough I was surprised at how much I liked Quicksilver.  Before the movie even came out there was a lot of backlash over his character but after watching the movie he quickly became one of my favorite characters.  I actually found myself wanting to see more of what he could do.  Peter Dinklage also has a nice role in the movie too.  For all of you GOT fans it was interesting to see him in another role.

The movie itself has a much darker tone than some of its predecessors.  Again going back to what is actually popular and what more people want to see - hyper-realism.  It is an action film as well, with lots of unbelievable explosions and it even has giant robots.  There is death in the movie but not a lot of blood and there are a few curse words.  The movie had to maintain its PG-13 rating.  There is a pretty good life struggle story that tries to develop some of the characters and make them seem more humanistic and to help us understand their motives and emotions.

I highly reccomend this to all the X-Men fans out there.  The series has returned in a great way and is now paving roads to hopefully a new outlook.  Who knows for sure though?  I would avoid this with smaller children.  The death and explosions can be a little much.  They might also not get a lot of the darker tones.  They will laugh at some of the lighter bits but those are very few indeed.  If you are looking for a romantic comedy or even a more thought provoking outlook on life then this isn't your cup of tea.  This movie is about Mutants and the super powers geeks like me wish we had.

Godzilla (2014)

I literally walked around for a week before watching this movie saying Godzira.   I grew up loving the old Godzilla shows with a small passion.  I was a fiend for the special effects, even if it was just a man in a lizard suit jumping up and down on cardboard buildings.  I was able to use an imagination and think of how it actually would be like.  When I heard they were making a new one I didn’t know if I wanted to cringe because it may turn out to be a little like the other one or would it follow along the lines of today’s more darker toned movies that try to delve into hyper-realism.  Well it is Godzilla there is no true hyper-realism.  In this new outing we see Godzilla has grown to a more respectable earth shattering size.  The only thing is, this time Godzilla isn't alone.

In this Godzilla movie I think the director and writers wanted to take him back to an original format.  Godzilla is even able to span the globe and we see him in Japan and in the United States.  Little touches that show that they were trying to bring back the old style and stop creating a story line that didn't follow the original monster feel.   Other than having Godzilla himself there is another monster element that has been added.  This makes the movie feel a little less like a Godzilla movie and more of a monster flick but they do pay good homage to the big guy. 

The acting isn't bad.  It was nice to see Brian Cranston doing something after Breaking Bad and Aaron Taylor-Johnson of Kick Ass fame.  The makers of the movie do try to have more of a human element to the movie.  They make you feel as if there are true heros and true villains both in Human and in Monster forms. 

I would recommend this to anyone that grew up in the monster era of the early to mid 80's.  It is a good modern day remake of a classic.  There are a lot of inconsistencies in building destruction and location markers but does anyone watch these type of movies to find reality.  There is a lot of loud explosions and monster fighting.  I would reccomend young children stay clear for the loud noises but the young may love the monsters more than the parents.  If you don't want to see mega monsters battling it out and wreaking mass havock, then this movie is not for you. 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Captain America returns in this sequel to brighten the silver screen once again.  Marvel has found a niche in the movie going experience that is beginning to line their pockets very nicely.  And even better than that, it is a niche that is fairly fresh and not completely outdated or overdone.  Not yet anyway.  The Captain returns with a fresh new set of problems.  He doesn’t know what to do with himself in this new era of human history.  It seems that life isn’t as black and white as it was during WWII.  He now faces moral dilemmas, as well as enemies both foreign and domestic.  What is a super soldier to do?

In the sequel we get to see a spattering of the Marvel heroes including the Black Widow and Nick Fury, and of course seeing, as all the bad guys were killed off in the last movie, there are new bad guys, or are there? An addition to the story line is the Falcon.  Although the Falcon is a dumbed down version of Iron man, he does throw a little bit of a dynamic into the mix.  And thankfully here Marvel doesn’t inundate the viewer with more superhero than they can keep up with.   There are some interesting twists to the story line.  Some are completely expected and others not so much so.  It is an action flick after all.  Amazingly we get to see more of Nick Fury in this movie than in any of the other Avenger movies. It helps to be a fan of Samuel L. Jackson.

There is a lighter tone at times and even though the movie starts out at a fairly good pace it does slow down to try to get the backstory and future cast into place.  Seems like a necessary evil in movies these days.  Overall the flow of the movie is in the right direction.  The pace other than a little bit of a brief slow respite in the “near” beginning stays fairly constant.  The banter between Captain America and Black Widow throws a humorous touch and even maybe a hint of a future love interest, who knows for sure how that will end up.  There are a lot of explosions and a lot of gunfire.  Also we get to see Cap throwing his shield around and having it bounce around and boomerang right back to him.  There is a lot of violence but true to the PG-13 rating not much blood and not a lot of language.

I would recommend this one to anyone that is interested in the whole Avengers universe.  It adds another chapter to the story and continues the story line fairly well.  If you like action movies, high levels of CGI, big explosions, super hero movies and fighting scenes, then you can’t go wrong with this one.  If you are looking for the next IFC classic or for a romantic dinner date than you should probably go back and look at the choices you have made in life.  I don’t recommend this for the smaller children; the loud noises and violence may be overwhelming.  I would say 8-9 year old children especially the boys would appreciate this one, and adults can have fun with it as well.

Back at it ...

Back at the movie review thing, I am going to try to get a few of these things out there as often as I can.  I find that I love going to the movies and even though the prices have skyrocketed to unethical proportions, I don’t mind, because it is the experience that I crave.  When watching movies on screens that are taller than the average house and surrounded by complete strangers, it makes the jaunt to the movies just a little more interesting.  You really never know what you are going to get.  The unfamiliarity is part of the movie going experience.  Plus the overly priced popcorn and sodas can be nice too.  Too bad I am a penny pincher and would rather carry a bag of skittles in my pocket.  (This might be frowned upon though so I don’t recommend doing that.) 

So off to the movies I go.  The summer blockbuster period has started.  I think that this time period gets moved up every year too.  Not that I am complaining about that.  I look forward to the summer periods not only for the warm weather, but the movies tend to get a little better  and more abundant during those months.

Red Tails

Red tails is a movie that is about Black Americans flying sorties in World War II and the troubles that they encountered in order to do so.  This is a film by George Lucas and Lucas had a lot of difficulty in actually making this film.  The film was a few years in the making and was a challenge for Lucas to distribute due to a cast that was all black with no white main characters.  Lucas even put up some of his own money for distribution.

The movie itself is an action movie moves well and has a good story line.  The movie is about the Tuskegee Air men that became famous for their courage and their successes in the war.  It was believed that the black community could never do the things that these men were able to accomplish. 

The movie is a little on the inaccurate side when it comes to completely historical but what does one expect out of Hollywood.  There is a lot of high flying action, shooting and explosions.  The acting is pretty good.  Cuba Gooding Jr. actually finds his way to the silver screen, taking a break from his B movie career and actually getting back to the big budget movies.  Terrence Howard plays a good commanding officer, Col. Bullard. The rest of the cast are fairly unknown but they do a good job and keep one involved in the show.

I would recommend seeing this movie if you are into historical fiction or even war movies.  The fighting scenes can be pretty intense at times.  The aerial views are something alone to watch the movie for.  Dogfights are fun to watch and the bad guys do a great job of being the bad guys.  I don't recommend this one for the younger kids, maybe 9 or 10 and up due to some violence and loud noises but it is a good history lesson and a great lesson in tolerance as well.

Underworld: Awakening

Kate Beckinsale reprises her role as Selene, the Vampire who kicks butt, in this fourth installment of the Underworld series.  This one is just as dark as all the others but takes place in the future.  The humans have come to realize that there is a threat out there of both Vampires and Lycans (werewolves) and they pose a threat to humanity so must be destroyed.  Selene is caught and put on ice for study and wakes up in the future not knowing what has happened and realizing that she has a daughter.  The action that ensues afterward is gory and fast paced.

This is not a screen actors dream come true.  There isn't much in the way of great acting.  Even the newcomer India Eisley who plays Selene's teenage daughter is void of many emotions.  There is also no love story in this one.  Its vampire vs. lycan vs. human story that has what most people would think about when they imagine throwing all of these beings into a room and shaking it up to see what would happen.  This isn't Twilight in any sense, the vampires don't sparkle and the werewolves aren't Calvin Klein models.  This is Underworld were the bad guys are bad, and the good guys are bad.

The movie has a very dark tone to it.  Even in 3-D its hard to see from all the black that is flying around but the extreme actions and fast pace of the movie make it a little interesting in 3-D.  As mentioned before there is a lot of killing which in this case leads to a lot of blood and gore.  There are curse words and the gore and blood alone I would say one should keep the little children away from this movie.  The creatures alone could cause nightmares in the younger crowds.  I would recommend keeping this one to the older teens and above.

If you are looking for a love story than this one isn't for you.  If you want to take a date to a movie and they are huge Twi-Hards than this isn't for them.  There are no sparkly vampires and no unrequited love story.  Its an action flick plain and simple.  You go to this one to watch Kate Beckinsale wearing very tight clothes and kicking butt.  Throw in some guns, explosions and chopping off of extremities and you have the action flick you wanted to watch.