Pacific Rim

Giant robots. Yikes, is that hackneyed, and it only took one film franchise to do it. Aliens? Who really cares, right? We get a ton of aliens every year. Really, this film should have been completely unremarkable. And in fact, the box office results in America seem to think the same thing, doing mildly well but certainly not as well as it hoped to do.

And yet I have to admit, even from the trailers I had a deep suspicion I was going to walk out loving this movie. Maybe it was the giant robots being more closely related to Japanese Mecha than Transformers, maybe it was the scale of everything in the movie, maybe it was Guillermo Del Toro. Something about it fascinated me, and I was one of only a handful of people I knew who were really excited for this movie.

The biggest success for me in this film, something that I had never experienced before - the perfect mindset of being a soldier. Plot points were brought up where, in any other film, I would question the accuracy or the validity of the plot point. But in this film, I didn't. I felt like a soldier. It didn't matter why certain things were, the fact is it was, and the heroes had to find a way around it. That being said, looking back and thinking about those issues, the only one I found fault with was quickly remedied by a second viewing. And it worked well enough that it no longer bothered me. But to have a film so successfully put me into the mindset of a soldier that I forget to analyze plots the way I do has to be a success in some form.

It almost doesn't need to be said, but the effects of this movie are nothing short of phenomenal. It has a sort of Ridley Scott sci-fi look to it, maybe that being said coming off of Prometheus, but a bit more of a cartoony look that's easy on the eyes. But more importantly, it was bright, colorful, and fun to watch, with lots of details catching your eyes from every angle. In essence, this is what I wanted Man of Steel to look like - bright, colorful, fun, huge action but all within a certain size that we as an audience could visibly grasp as serious destruction. It just works. Unlike the abomination that is Man of Steel. (...terrible...)

Characters in this are not anything too special, but from the soldier mindset I was placed in, I connected with them simply as soldiers. This was a really strange experience. It left me feeling almost annoyed at learning too much about characters, a bit fearful of uncovering something I didn't want to know, almost a fear of not wanting to grow attached to them. And from what I saw and wanted to know, I really did love the characters of this film. It was such a strange experience to describe, it's actually giving me some trouble as a critic to put into words.

But all in all, this film is doing mildly well. If you have some money to throw around for a movie ticket, though, know that this film comes at my highest recommendation.

Rank - 4.5/5

The Lone Ranger

I'm confused. I thought the Lone Ranger was supposed to be a cowboy, the ultimate display of manliness, a man who I should aspire to be. And instead I get....this guy.

Armie Hammer is far from a bad actor. We saw him in The Social Network and he absolutely nailed his role. He was also astounding in J. Edgar. Then we saw Mirror Mirror. He played an obnoxious Prince Charming. Sure, he looked great, but he was horrendously unlikable,  disgracefully naive to the point of frustration, and trying far too hard to be perfect.

Now in his defense, that could have very well been the scripting of the character. And it does make sense. But then again, it only brings up the ultimate question I had for him; why on earth did he play that same character in The Lone Ranger?

His character in the film is literally exactly the same. But it doesn't work at all. Maybe the film was going for a whole character switch, but it never comes. And at the end of the film, I desperately don't want to be like either person in the film. Tonto is a jerk of a human being, with no respect for his new partner or for anyone around him and no willingness to help them, and the manly Lone Ranger is constantly finding himself in need of Tonto's help, screaming for dear life, and unable to help himself out of the silliest action movie situations. I think Depp did his best with what he was given, but even there I have to say his performance was forgettable at best. And what the logic was in casting him as a Native American man was, I can't remotely figure out.

As for the movie itself, it had this incredibly useless framing device around Tonto and a young kid. And more frustrating, it leads to a twist ending that is similar to Inception, in that it tries to be a twist but according to the rules of the film it means there is only one outcome. The script itself forced hackneyed character types down our throats, with no likability at all. And this is one heck of a long film to not have likable characters. And the story was so unexciting, as well as confusing at times, that the length was only more obvious. Simply put, it didn't work.

The fact is this movie was made to cash in on the popularity of Depp, the good looks of Hammer, and the Pirates of the Caribbean fandom from its producers. This was an enormous misfire. While it looks exciting enough, the younger generation is just not interested in westerns anymore, and no one knows who the Lone Ranger is anymore. So of course the vast majority of the audience was over the age of 25 and of course the film is tanking badly at the box office.

Rank - 1.5/5

World War Z

I remember seeing the trailers for this last summer. The wall being scaled by a pile of the undead, a wave of zombies crashing down an alley, machine guns taking down an enormous swarm of zombies climbing over a bus. I was so pumped for this movie. And only to reaffirm my zombie love was The Last Of Us coming out right before this came out, and having beaten it in 3 days of nonstop gaming (not my finest social hours...) I was more in love with zombies than ever. And I was pumped to see one of the greatest zombie movies ever made.

Maybe it was from playing the most amazing video game experience of my new-gamer life, with an unbelievable set of characters and family dynamic. This was so underwhelming, and felt so small. For a movie that was supposed to portray the entire world collapsing, I just didn't feel a sense of its scale honestly. Perhaps it was bogus politics (because one person played devils advocate, a giant wall was built...?), maybe it was the simplicity of the defeat (hearing a bullhorn alerted zombies to human presence outside a giant city?). But not very much of this movie had me emotionally connected. And where it did, it felt forced, insincere, and almost unnecessary. Plus, to see Pitt fight for his family so early on and then have them almost forgotten for the rest of the film left me feeling let down, and disconnected to them entirely for the rest of the film.

That all being said, Pitt was amazing as always. He showed himself to be a strong, dependable father, and a good person. Perceptive, quick learning, but most importantly, selfless. He's ready to take his own life in a heartbeat for the safety of his own family. And that all came across as genuine, strong, and beautiful. The rest of the performances in this movie were pretty much forgettable. The child actors did nothing to show me any reason to keep an eye on them, and the rest of the extras were forgettable or poor. And the screenplay didn't help anyone, filled with bad one liners or monologues, I don't think I remember a single line.

There is one major redeeming point from this disappointing movie - it's cinematography. This is the best looking zombie movie I've ever seen, packed with awesome shots of hordes of zombies. Whether it's watching the enormous pileup of zombies climbing a wall or seeing closeups of them walking around the med ward, every shot in this movie was pure gold. But while that leaves plenty of eye candy, the story isn't nearly as interesting as past zombie lore, or as interesting as its source material.

Rank - 2.5/5

Monsters University

If there's one thing that Pixar knows how to do, it's parody a genre. Look at the brilliance of some parodies we've seen - we have Toy Story 3 as a prison break movie, Cars 2 as a spy thriller, each movie manages to be another genre of film. But when I heard they were going to touch on college comedy, that was definitely a strange choice in my book. How could it really nail the feeling of college in a way that would still appeal to kids? It's not a phase of their life that they've reached yet, certainly not one we'd expect them to just instantly grasp. I had my doubts about this film, especially with Brave having been one of my biggest disappointments last year.

The film started out brilliantly - portraying Mike as a young, curious toddler who was watching those working his dream job do so. Immediately, kids have a similarity to latch onto. And even though they haven't been to college, their enthusiasm about it can be right along side Mike's as he begins his first semester at Monsters University. It really works brilliantly.

The story itself is no masterpiece of cinema - it's silly, embraces it's bizarre but cute premise as a story worth telling. But I have to say, this is definitely the funniest Pixar film to date. It really has a great sense of humor, easily bouncing between humor for adults and humor for kids (although the adult humor is definitely the stronger). I loved the fraternities and their social levels as monsters, as well as college life for monsters. I also loved the specialized majors. Sure, we heard about sociology and theatre arts. But it was like going to a college for music and hearing about composition, performance, history, etc. The scare school at Monsters University had scaring, door building, tank building, and more. I loved that idea.

Performances in this were expectedly spot on. Billy Crystal gave a really nice twist on the Mike character, making him naive and a bit more immature than his Monsters Inc older version. John Goodman gives a great immature Sully, with just as much charm and likability as the original but with a lot to let him grow into as the movie goes on. I had an enormous amount of fun with the perfectly creepy Dean Hardscrabble, and the entire Oozma Kappa fraternity was fun, cute, and easy to love.

All in all, I think that this movie is the funniest of the Pixar collection. It's not brilliant, sure. But as a college comedy, it's a spot on adaptation and a great addition to the world Monsters Inc created.

Rank - 4.5/5

Man of Steel

I've gotten flack for this one. But you know what? I'm going to stand by it. This is one of the biggest misfires of a film I've ever seen. I hated every last second of it.

First of all, where's the color? Why does it look like I'm watching this movie through a dark, dusty, smudged lens? Why is it that the red white and yellow of Superman's suit is grey gray and bland? It's SUPERMAN. No one read the comics to read about a brooding human, they were reading it for the fun of a man who could FLY. The joy came from watching a man who was essentially as perfect as a human could possibly become and then some. Where is that joy, that sense of adventure and fun? Where's the wit, the Clark Kent who had a personality? It's all gone. This stupid brooding sense of a man that no one wants to take the time to know is there instead. And we're forced to care about him. Too bad I don't.

Second of all, his powers. HE'S SUPERMAN! I don't need to know how his powers work! He's an alien! It's what his species can do! But no, now we're getting this forced bullshit about where his powers come from!? He's super strong because of years of living and absorbing the energy from our yellow sun? Then how is Zod powerful from being on Earth for five seconds?! He isn't really flying, he's just jumping really high? Then how can he maintain a flight pattern?! And if it took him 5 seconds to figure out how to do it, how come Zod, a well educated military leader, can never do it himself?! If his muscles and powers are just enhanced human abilities from our "yellow sun", where the hell does laser eyes come from?! And if this is all from YEARS of living under our sun, how is it that he loses his power in 5 fricken seconds being blocked away from it? What about night time? Is he not Superman at night?! What about other planets? Is he not Superman on other plants if he's farther from the sun?! God forbid he's on Mars and it's night time - he'll be SUPERBITCH! Also how about this bull about being in Kryptonian atmosphere means he suddenly has nosebleeds and headaches because he ADAPTED TO EARTHS ATMOSPHERE. HOW THE HELL CAN HE FLY IN THE VACCUUM OF SPACE?!?! THERE IS NO ATMOSPHERE!!! And how can Zod just adjust in a heartbeat to Earths atmosphere once his helmet is removed?! So much for years of adaptation - it takes him 5 seconds! Seriously, this is a SUPERMAN MOVIE. You don't need to explain things that don't need explaining - he's SUPERMAN. How can you possibly think explaining his powers is a good idea?!

Moving on from the powers, the PHYSICS in this movie, the horrible sense of human intelligence, it was just insulting. First of all, Costner gives Clark a little thing with the super man S (oh sorry, it's not an S) that's made of an element not found on the periodic table. How does he know that? A professor told him....WHY THE HELL DID THE PROFESSOR NOT KEEP IT?! It's an element that's never been discovered! What scientist would let a civilian take that away when he could take credit for naming it, discovering it, EVERYTHING! Second, the god awful tornado scene. I hate to tell you, filmmakers, but tornado's suck. THERE IS NO WAY Costners character would just stand there while a tornado over took him, he'd fly up into the air! How about the part where Amy Adams is CLEARLY falling away from a BLACK HOLE! What, you think your audience doesn't know how a black hole works?! That's absurdly stupid!! It's a BLACK HOLE. And going off of that point, who on earth would hear "lets put a black hole over a major city with tons of civilians" and think "great idea!" That's worse than the "lets make a channel for the lava to pass through the city" idea from Volcano! As for that stupid gravity device, if you're going to hold yourself to Nolan standards of filmmaking then I'm gonna nitpick - A GRAVITY DEVICE WOULD NOT JUST EFFECT TWO ISOLATED PARTS OF THE PLANET LIKE THAT! And you know what? To every one who says "oh Tom, it's a summer movie, just have fun with it!" NO SCREW YOU! This movie had the balls to hold itself to the standard of the Batman trilogy, I'm going to hold it to that standard! This movie SUCKS for its sense of believability.

Next of all - the acting. Amy Adams, what happened?! You used to be so good! This was disgracefully poor! You overacted, you underacted, you didn't act and then you became inhumanly offputting. I don't understand, I really don't. I don't even have notes! As for Henry Cavill, sure I liked him and he's sure to become the next Hollywood hunk. But dear god, his role had no personality whatsoever! What was the damn point of Superman?! He was boring, forgettable, and from that he was uncomfortably useless! How about the blandness that was Kevin Costner? And what the heck was with that "don't use your powers" thing? Sure, people would fear him. BUT HE SAVED THE LIVES OF CHILDREN. And what was that stupid tornado bit? JUST SAVE THEM! YOU'RE A SUPERHERO!

And finally, the biggest point of hatred for me - how is this leading to a Justice League movie?! We just saw Superman save the world from near complete destruction, all relatively easily from the eyes of a super hero movie. Under what circumstances will he need help?! And aside from Green Lantern, if this whole thing is on a galactic scale, how the hell would flash or Batman be any help?!?!? This movie was supposed to convince me that Justice League is a good idea. And it did the exact opposite.

I can go on and on and on and on. I've had people try and give me bullshit excuses about the movie. I'm definitely one of the minority on hating this movie. But I can't forgive it. I can't let this movie get away with pure laziness. The rank reflects it. This movie was a disgrace.

Rank - 0.5/5

This Is The End

We've seen disaster movies before. Tons. We've seen big explosions. We've seen the cliche characters you're supposed to easily connect with. Give me something different.

Oh...celebrities...?

That's...

BRILLIANT!

I seriously LOVED this idea! What better way to write real people than have real people? What better way to have something we haven't seen then have real people we haven't actually seen? Sure this was going to be tongue in cheek, self satirization. But when it comes down to it, all these guys are going to be doing is playing themselves and having fun playing themselves. What could really go wrong, considering Seth Rogen would be writing it with Evan Goldberg?

There's a lot to love in this movie. It has a great sense of humor (obviously), but celebrities are absolutely relatable but also just distant enough to keep the respect of them as celebrities. That allows us to not fully relate with them, keeping us in our movie theatre seats enough to have fun watching celebrities. I love the idea of tackling a Christian apocalypse. The sheer ridiculousness of Rogen and Baruchel talking about religious repentance is hilarious considering at least Rogen is Jewish and Baruchel associates as agnostic.

The movie looked surprisingly great - fog and steam and fire that made it look like a campy bad movie set, but when the demons came in and huge shots of the decimated city looked pretty darn great. Dare I say it? The demons were pretty scary looking!

I loved the relationships they had with each other on screen. I loved how Jonah Hill was as ditzy and air headed as he was in so many of his roles, while his fellow cast members were constantly reminding him that he was now an oscar nominated actor. I had a particular amount of fun of them criticizing their own  movies, especially when talking about sequels for movies they were in, and one of them cutting in with "let's NOT do Your Highness 2." The satirization was just brutal enough to themselves to keep us laughing, while not so brutal that it became uncomfortable.

All in all, this movie is a great addition to Seth Rogen comedies, and everyone in it does a dynamite job at keeping us laughing and having fun with this really clever premise.

Rank - 4/5

The Internship

I don't like Owen Wilson. I love him in Midnight in Paris. That's about it. Even Wedding Crashers, which I enjoyed for what it was, was almost ruined by him. I find him tired, unfunny, and just uncomfortable. I really don't get his appeal. But that being said, I think he has potential to be a great actor. But put him in a role with a gimmick, and it just falls apart. As for Mr. Vaughn, I'm completely impartial. I've loved him, I've hated him. He's made me laugh, he's made me bitter. I have no resentment towards him, but I also keep no standard for him. As for the director, Shawn Levy, I love the first Night at the Museum. But that's really about it. I dislike Cheaper by the Dozen, I'm not a fan of Pink Panther, Night of the Museum 2, Real Steal... I guess you can say my thoughts of him aren't great.

So that being said, I actually really like this idea - two men who are well past their professional prime in a job that's obsolete try their hand at finding a job in the happiest employment on earth, Google. Sure, it's a bit dated maybe, but I don't think it's irrelevant. I think plenty of people are in that same boat.

But, that being said, the story follows two men who are not relatable and more frustrating. Their gag gets tired, the fast talking salesman talk of nothing leads nowhere fast, again and again and again. I hate to sound like the guy defending the occupation of salesmanship, but as someone who's been mildly successful in sales, I can say it's not all fast talking. It's knowing your product, loving your product, and knowing what you're talking about. These guys are HORRIBLE salesmen. And yet they got the movie greenlighted....hm...

The sad thing is, the cast isn't untalented. Truth be told, I loved pretty much everyone else in this movie for what they were. And I have a solidified celebrity crush on Tiya Sircar - sheesh, she is something else. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves and I appreciated the geekdom that kept coming back. It was fun watching Wilson and Vaughn go play Quidditch. But...why was that there again? Was it just to solidify how quirky and fun this internship was? Because I don't get it.

All in all, the worst part of the movie was the unbelievably annoying google pushing. I get it, it's at google. I get it, google is god made website. Seriously, we get it. It's one of those "show don't tell" instances where we see the slides, we see the campus, we see the food - you don't need to tell us how great it all is when we're watching it.

So, I guess I can rank this as a big advertisement for google. It wasn't great.

Rank - 2/5

The Great Gatsby

My reaction when I heard that Baz Luhrman was directing a remake of the Great Gatsby? YES. I can't think of anyone who I think would do a better job of a modern interpretation. His visual style, the musical choices, and the cast of Leonardo DiCaprio meant absolutely nothing could go wrong.

(It should be noted that we went to the Gatsby Party like it was a real Gatsby Party...we were pretty drunk.)

I remember reading that this movie, according to the critic, didn't rely enough on the story as much as it should have. That it was a lot of style over substance. Sure, I can see that. But I can also see that the story isn't exactly one people are dying to see. I don't know about my readers, but I know plenty of people who found the book that they read in school as boring, tiresome, dramatic, what have you. I am not one of those people. But I felt that the adaptation was a great method of reaching people to show the tragedy of the story and what made it significant. I also felt that the style worked unbelievably well, putting into perspective exactly how overzealous the lifestyle was respective to our own overzealous party lifestyles.

The acting saved every possible flaw I had. Every character was portrayed exactly as I imagined them in my own exploration of the novel. Leonardo DiCaprio deserves every award for his unbelievably connectable and yet distant portrayal of Gatsby. Toby MaGuire has an unbelievable sense of disconnect from the audience, that leaves enough intrigue to follow him but never leaves us enough of likability to trust him. Carrey Mulligan gives a DYNAMITE performances as Daisy, quiet and naive but goodhearted and victimized. And Joel Edgerton plays an unforgettable Tom, full of fearlessness and ego, perhaps finding himself a bit untouchable through his name. The result is four powerhouse performances that I followed each of.

The worst part of this movie was its own original score. But since the soundtrack took up most of the film, it has to be said that the soundtrack was fascinatingly poignant, brilliantly structured again to allow us to connect with a time period none of us were familiar with. It made bad music useful, and great music recognizably great. It just worked.

I can't defend Gatsby as a perfect film. But I can defend it as a film that works to the best of its style. And for that, I have to give it an enormous amount of respect and admiration.

Rank - 4/5