I have not many religious followers here, for understandable reasons. But for the sake of forward motion, I've decided not only to move the bulk of my blog content. But i've bought a domain! Head over to www.mchughreviews.com for constant updates on reviews, and content almost every day of the week! Thank you for supporting me all of these years, and here's to a great future!
-Tom
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Top Three Thursday: Michael Bay
Stop lying. Yes, we all know Michael Bay movies are hilariously crappy and that he is questionable at best as a director. But you like him. You might not want to admit it, you might not even have realized it yet. But you have fun with his movies. Even his very very worst movies have a campiness and such a prominent sense of bravado that you can’t help but get really into it while you watch. I’m gonna drop the pretentious act. They’re terrible movies, but I have my fun with Michael Bay. So in honor of his new movie “Transformers: Age of Extinction”, here are my Top Three Favorite Michael Bay Movies.
Transformers as series isn’t very good at all. But the first Transformers movie was one of my favorite movies in high school. I knew it wasn’t good, but it had this awesome sense of adventure and exploration that really pulled me in, and the robots were flashy enough and cool enough to keep my interest level up pretty damn high the entire movie. Transformers 2 was crap. Complete and utter crap. But I really did enjoy the third installment of the series, Dark of the Moon. Again, it’s not good. But unlike the first two, I really felt the immediate danger closing in on the planet. I felt the urgency and the need to quickly fix the problem. I also loved the departure of Megan Fox, who was just an absolute burden on the previous movies. Granted, I didn’t love her replacement, but I was at least cheering to see her live rather than hoping she was off screen for the rest of the damn movie. Transformers: Dark of the Moon is just a lot of fun to watch, and it really got my adrenaline up during the final action scenes.
This is, strangely enough, one of my earlier memories watching a movie. I had watched some of this at a friends house when I was a kid, and thought it was so cool then. Now….yeah. I see how ridiculous it is. But honestly, you gotta hand it to the movie, despite all of its flaws it still manages to be really exciting and really tense. The acting his hilariously bad (sorry Ben Affleck, this was NOT your day), but I also can’t help but feel that it’s genuine in its own weird way. The science of this movie is bullshit (did you know NASA actually uses this film to text astronauts knowledge of space physics? The more problems they find, the higher their score), but it’s all mostly just beyond the point of obvious, enough that I buy it for what it is and let it move the story forward as it needs to. Then there’s obviously the huge action scenes, the shots of the asteroids blasting through building sides and crashing through streets, meteor showers on the asteroid making an absurd light show and the rest of the cast screaming and fighting to finish the job and save the world. All of it is kind of infectious. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it.
Pain and Gain was a pretty great basis for a movie - a heist that was run by a bunch of gym rats who really had no idea what they were doing, based on a true story. If there’s a true story for Bay to tackle, this has to be it. And then he manages to book great actors, like Mark Wahlberg and Anthony Mackie, to tackle these roles. And they absolutely nail it. Sure, the pace is definitely weird, and I definitely don’t understand the point of the random voice overs (granted I didn’t get them in oddly the same context watching American Hustle), but I did enjoy the glorification of the stupidity of these characters. It’s been said this movie glorifies violence, but I actually disagree. If it did glorify violence we would be seeing a lot worse. No, this movie glorifies the dumb actions of our main characters. And that leads to one brilliant part of the movie. I won’t give the context away, but there’s an absolutely brilliantly timed moment where on screen we see in big letters, “THIS IS STILL A TRUE STORY”. And that’s definitely a defining moment of Michael Bay’s timing. Why can’t all of his movies be as brilliant as that joke?!
That's all I wrote! Here's a trailer for Bay's new movie Transformers: Age of Extinction!
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Armageddon
Pain and Gain
That's all I wrote! Here's a trailer for Bay's new movie Transformers: Age of Extinction!
Monday, June 23, 2014
"Mega-Shark Vs. Giant Octopus" Is So Bad It's...
There's a little production company out there known infamously as "The Asylum". The wonderful mines out there are responsible for such wonderful movies as Snakes on a Plane, The Davinci Code, Alien Vs. Predator, Transformers, and the enormous blockbuster, High School Musical.
Oh wait...sorry...that came out wrong. They're responsible for Snakes on a TRAIN, The Davinci TREASURE, TransMORPHERS, and SUNDAY School Musical. Yep. This production company is notorious for spitting out rip off movies, the ones that you see in the 99 cent bin at your car wash or gas station. And they have credibility? Well...credibility isn't the right word...but they have a movie people care about?
Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus is being sold exactly as you would expect it to be sold. It's about a giant shark fighting a giant octopus. That's about it. Except not. In fact, throughout the entire film, there's actually very little monster fighting. That's right. In a film called Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus, there's not even that much fighting between a mega shark and a giant octopus. The film caters itself to strange conversations and implied sexual tension to develop its cardboard characters, like the star of the film Debbie Gibson (for some strange reason...). But that's not what you're paying to see. We're treated to a bloated running time of nothing but talking, talking, talking, more talking, talking, talking. It's SO boring.
When we do get our attempted action scenes, don't get me wrong, they're very poorly CGI. BUT...they're not bad enough. I can buy that it's a low budget strong attempt at something that isn't awful. So there's really not much to laugh at. And they're so few and so short, it leaves so much to be desired that there's not much humor. When we finally get to the big fight, it doesn't exactly look like a fight. It's a lot of thrashing, and...not much else. So there's no real tension from the fight. In fact, it's over in about thirty seconds. Instead, the film tries to force tension though these really weird jump cuts, I can't make heads or tales of them..they just turn the screen grey or sepia for a moment before cutting back to the same instant in time we were just watching...
Then there's the awful consistency. The shark can bite through the golden gate bridge but then can't bite through a submarine. The scientists are supposedly scientists but it takes them a freakin hour to come to the conclusion we see in the damn title. I know this is all campy stuff from any bad movie, potentially anyway, but when you're looking for silliness in a movie like this it becomes inexcusably obvious. There is no suspension of disbelief at all, so there's no cushion to fall back on.
Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus is just bad. It's insufferable. It's not so bad it's good. For that to be there at all, there needs to be something entertaining. And when the fight that your movie is leading up to isn't good, you have a serious problem for entertainment. I hope I never have to watch this movie, or any of its sequels or spinoffs ever again. (Yes, you read that right. There are sequels and spinoffs to this terrible movie).
Oh wait...sorry...that came out wrong. They're responsible for Snakes on a TRAIN, The Davinci TREASURE, TransMORPHERS, and SUNDAY School Musical. Yep. This production company is notorious for spitting out rip off movies, the ones that you see in the 99 cent bin at your car wash or gas station. And they have credibility? Well...credibility isn't the right word...but they have a movie people care about?
Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus is being sold exactly as you would expect it to be sold. It's about a giant shark fighting a giant octopus. That's about it. Except not. In fact, throughout the entire film, there's actually very little monster fighting. That's right. In a film called Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus, there's not even that much fighting between a mega shark and a giant octopus. The film caters itself to strange conversations and implied sexual tension to develop its cardboard characters, like the star of the film Debbie Gibson (for some strange reason...). But that's not what you're paying to see. We're treated to a bloated running time of nothing but talking, talking, talking, more talking, talking, talking. It's SO boring.
When we do get our attempted action scenes, don't get me wrong, they're very poorly CGI. BUT...they're not bad enough. I can buy that it's a low budget strong attempt at something that isn't awful. So there's really not much to laugh at. And they're so few and so short, it leaves so much to be desired that there's not much humor. When we finally get to the big fight, it doesn't exactly look like a fight. It's a lot of thrashing, and...not much else. So there's no real tension from the fight. In fact, it's over in about thirty seconds. Instead, the film tries to force tension though these really weird jump cuts, I can't make heads or tales of them..they just turn the screen grey or sepia for a moment before cutting back to the same instant in time we were just watching...
Then there's the awful consistency. The shark can bite through the golden gate bridge but then can't bite through a submarine. The scientists are supposedly scientists but it takes them a freakin hour to come to the conclusion we see in the damn title. I know this is all campy stuff from any bad movie, potentially anyway, but when you're looking for silliness in a movie like this it becomes inexcusably obvious. There is no suspension of disbelief at all, so there's no cushion to fall back on.
Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus is just bad. It's insufferable. It's not so bad it's good. For that to be there at all, there needs to be something entertaining. And when the fight that your movie is leading up to isn't good, you have a serious problem for entertainment. I hope I never have to watch this movie, or any of its sequels or spinoffs ever again. (Yes, you read that right. There are sequels and spinoffs to this terrible movie).
Saturday, June 21, 2014
This Time Last Year - World War Z
Last year we were treated to the zombie movie World War Z. I loved the book (which I actually read!!) and I love zombies period. So what could go wrong?
Sadly, after one viewing, I found myself very bored with the movie. I thought the film felt small, like it's scale as a worldwide catastrophe didn't really ring through. I was annoyed with the politics, the shortsightedness of characters, and saddened by the lack of emotional investment I felt.
I just rewatched it now, a year later. Did it deserve the 2.5/5 rank I gave it a year ago? Nope. It didn't. I have to eat my words a bit.
While still not a great movie and filled with the bogus politics (the reason for the wall being built was strange), rewatching it definitely did give me a strong sense of the scale of the situation. I did feel the world wide catastrophe, I felt the gradual collapse, and I felt the stress on humanity as a whole. It felt much more organic, strangely believable and tangible as well. Perhaps this all stems from the best zombie experience of my life, playing "The Last Of Us" last summer. Amazing video game, but more importantly completely shifted and raised my standards for the zombie genre.
It should be noted that upon a rewatch, I found myself far more invested into the action of the film as well. More of it had me holding my breath. I had forgotten the outcomes of many scenes and found myself having fun guessing what was going to happen next, even though I'd seen the film before. But most importantly, I recognized the global scale while still identifying the films personal story, an outsider looking in to a small piece of a larger problem. It worked surprisingly well a second time around, and there was a lot more of the emotion for me to appreciate.
The cinematography is just as brilliant as I remember it, featuring some of the best zombie cinematography I've ever seen. I'll forever have the awesome scene of zombies climbing on top of each other to scale the wall in my mind, as well as the bus flipping over to zombies running head first into gun fire. It all emphasizes the nature of zombies, the lack of self preservation in search of food. It's creepy, foreign, and awesome.
The film isn't without its problems. It still has its hokey dialogue, and it's nearsighted characters. But unlike a year ago, the scale of the film didn't bother me nearly as much. Rather, I appreciated the smaller scale considering the enormous scale of the catastrophe. Brad Pitt was just as good as I remember him being, and the rest of the cast works through hokey scenes pretty well, again considering the material. Even though I can't give the film a super positive review, I have to say it definitely did more for me the second time around than it did the first.
Original rank - 2.5/5
Hindsight rank - 3.5/5
Sadly, after one viewing, I found myself very bored with the movie. I thought the film felt small, like it's scale as a worldwide catastrophe didn't really ring through. I was annoyed with the politics, the shortsightedness of characters, and saddened by the lack of emotional investment I felt.
I just rewatched it now, a year later. Did it deserve the 2.5/5 rank I gave it a year ago? Nope. It didn't. I have to eat my words a bit.
While still not a great movie and filled with the bogus politics (the reason for the wall being built was strange), rewatching it definitely did give me a strong sense of the scale of the situation. I did feel the world wide catastrophe, I felt the gradual collapse, and I felt the stress on humanity as a whole. It felt much more organic, strangely believable and tangible as well. Perhaps this all stems from the best zombie experience of my life, playing "The Last Of Us" last summer. Amazing video game, but more importantly completely shifted and raised my standards for the zombie genre.
It should be noted that upon a rewatch, I found myself far more invested into the action of the film as well. More of it had me holding my breath. I had forgotten the outcomes of many scenes and found myself having fun guessing what was going to happen next, even though I'd seen the film before. But most importantly, I recognized the global scale while still identifying the films personal story, an outsider looking in to a small piece of a larger problem. It worked surprisingly well a second time around, and there was a lot more of the emotion for me to appreciate.
The cinematography is just as brilliant as I remember it, featuring some of the best zombie cinematography I've ever seen. I'll forever have the awesome scene of zombies climbing on top of each other to scale the wall in my mind, as well as the bus flipping over to zombies running head first into gun fire. It all emphasizes the nature of zombies, the lack of self preservation in search of food. It's creepy, foreign, and awesome.
The film isn't without its problems. It still has its hokey dialogue, and it's nearsighted characters. But unlike a year ago, the scale of the film didn't bother me nearly as much. Rather, I appreciated the smaller scale considering the enormous scale of the catastrophe. Brad Pitt was just as good as I remember him being, and the rest of the cast works through hokey scenes pretty well, again considering the material. Even though I can't give the film a super positive review, I have to say it definitely did more for me the second time around than it did the first.
Original rank - 2.5/5
Hindsight rank - 3.5/5
Friday, June 20, 2014
Trailer Watch - 6/20/2014
Musicals, sequels, and...Third Person... I don't really know what that is. But it's time to check out this weeks line up of trailers! Let's take a look at Jersey Boys, Think Like A Man Too, and Third Person!
Jersey Boys
I didn't have the pleasure of seeing this movie on Broadway, but I absolutely love The Four Seasons and I love the music that inspired the musical. Plus I have friends who are enormous fans of the show, some seeing it multiple times a year to get their Frankie Valli fix. But even with the excitement from Broadway fans everywhere, it should be noted that Eastwoods most recent directorial efforts have been only okay. Trouble With The Curve was decent, Hereafter was okay, J. Edgar was sadly very shallow. When I watch these recent movies, I just feel the lack of focus and heart in the movies, which is so depressing considering the outstanding filmography we see only a year before that and earlier. Jersey Boys does seem like the perfect outlet for campiness found in Trouble With The Curve to come through, but my respect for The Four Seasons is too great to accept light heartedness in its story that is open to a very emotional story. As much as it does conflict me to say so, I'm gonna have to say wait to Stream It.
Think Like A Man Too
I didn't see the first Think Like A Man. I don't remember why I skipped it, but if the trailer for this is anything to justify the film, I can see why I would. It looks boring, uninspired, annoying. Kevin Hart is the obvious selling point for the film, and I'm not his biggest fan to begin with. But here he looks particularly annoying, the obvious punch line in every scene. The story is particularly uninspired, a generic battle of the sexes mixed with a boring Vegas party movie and not much else. It's fine for attracting the masses, I guess, but for me it looks like a movie we'll know the ending to about 10 minutes into the start of it. As always, I'll definitely be seeing it. But I don't think I can recommend it in good conscience. Not until I watch it, anyway. So for now, I'm gonna have to say Skip It.
Third Person
There's only one word that comes to mind watching this trailer - confusing. What is going on? It looks like the film is three unrelated but thematically connected love stories, starring Liam Neeson and Olivia Wilde in one, Mila Kunis and James Franco in another, and Adrian Brody and Moran Atias in the third. But beyond that, I just don't know what to even make of this movie. Who's is it advertising for? Apparently there's a love story between Neeson and Wilde, there's a domestic dispute story for Franco and Kunis, and then there's a gangster story for Brody and Atias. I watch the trailer and just feel an enormous lack of inspiration, something that seems to have been thrown together for the sake of thematic justification. But just because thematic material can justify interwoven stories doesn't mean it should. I cite Disconnect, a film with two awesome stories that wove together with one very disjunct one that, while thematically appropriate, didn't seem to add much to the scope of the story being told. So for this, I think I'm gonna have to say Skip It. I'm probably gonna have to skip it anyway.
Top Three Thursday - Movie Musicals
With the Jersey Boys movie coming out this weekend, I started thinking a lot about movie musicals. Musicals are touchy for me. Sometimes I love them, a lot of the time I hate them. I recognize the classics for the brilliance that they have, but they're not necessarily my first choice movies to watch. So when I started thinking of what my favorite musicals would be, I had to be honest. This is less about which musicals I think deserve to be thought of as the greatest of all time. This is my personal top three musicals, my three that I can pop in any time and love, and that meant something to me growing up.
My mother told me that one of the most defining moments of my personality was when she left me alone in the living room as a kid watching The Lion King. Mufasa's death passed by, and when she came into the room she saw me crying, but was surprised to learn it wasn't the scariness of the scene that had me upset. Rather it was the fact that Scar was blaming Simba, telling him to run away. That always stuck with me. It tells me that Lion King was a movie that was successful at communicating very dark thematic material to young children. I still love the idea that Simba was brought up by two male role models. I also love the thematic material borrowed from Hamlet, just different enough to let a new story shine through but similar enough to show an update perfect for anyones enjoyment. Then there's the cinematography. I don't think I'll ever forget the stampede scene, engraved in my mind as one of the scariest scenes from my childhood. All in all, The Lion King is an enormous success of filmmaking on every level, and I absolutely love it.
This is an often forgotten movie from Dreamworks animation, although it's definitely more popular than any of the other movies dream works made at that time. It tells the story of Moses saving his people from the tyranny of the Pharaoh enslaving them. It's a beautiful movie, one that beautifully shows us the magnitude of the story at hand while never forcing overzealous religious beliefs down our throats. It's easy to take in and believe for the run time. And there are some beautiful scenes in the film. One that always stuck with me is a scene where Moses talks to his new wife about the incredible experience he just had with the burning bush, a scene with no talking and explosively beautiful music. The movie is an underrated masterpiece, often forgotten to the piles of Disney movies that overshadow it. But it actually had a pretty profound effect on me, even as an atheist today.
This is one of my earliest memories of movies, and I still remember watching the movie transform from black and white into color. It was a magical moment, and a significant one for me. The Wizard of Oz defines a lot of how I think about movies. The character interactions set my original standard growing up, the amazing performance of the wicked witch was another defining moment, as I now look for villains who manage to create a fascinating character in the same way, sometimes never coming close with an enormous amount of screen time compared to her shocking 12 minutes. The sense of transportation to a new magical world has only very rarely been matched by any other movie, and most of them still don't even come close to the magic I experience watching this movie. It's pretty obvious to see what makes it one of the greatest and most important movies of all time.
The Lion King
Prince of Egypt
The Wizard of Oz
This is one of my earliest memories of movies, and I still remember watching the movie transform from black and white into color. It was a magical moment, and a significant one for me. The Wizard of Oz defines a lot of how I think about movies. The character interactions set my original standard growing up, the amazing performance of the wicked witch was another defining moment, as I now look for villains who manage to create a fascinating character in the same way, sometimes never coming close with an enormous amount of screen time compared to her shocking 12 minutes. The sense of transportation to a new magical world has only very rarely been matched by any other movie, and most of them still don't even come close to the magic I experience watching this movie. It's pretty obvious to see what makes it one of the greatest and most important movies of all time.
22 Jump Street
Oh Phil Lord and Chris Miller, you've done it again. I love you both. Come give me a hug.
Lord and Miller have proven themselves to be brilliant parody film makers, what with their recent jabs at disaster films (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs), toy related films (The LEGO Movie), or campy 80s action TV (21 Jump Street). 22 Jump Street manages to parody not just college comedy, later action films, and buddy cop movies, but also cinema as a whole. And I freakin love it. There's jokes referencing the films budget, the fact that there is a sequel at all to something as ridiculous as a reboot of the TV series, the idea that no one wants to see anything new so they should just do the same thing again. I particularly love one shot of the movie that shows the duo driving through a building, no damage shown, only to have them pop out the other side and Tatum to say "Did you see all of that expensive stuff we broke?!"
The two filmmakers show a superior sense of timing and camera work, mixed with brilliant comedic sensibility from Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill. It makes a beautiful demonstration of how talented everyone is in this film. The duo on screen his hilarious thanks to brilliant writing, but the brilliant writing shines through even stronger by an amazing sense of the script from the duo. I don't think i've seen a better demonstration of teamwork between film maker and actor, at least not in such an obvious light.
The movie continues in its wonderfully updated-but-not-updated plot line enough to give us exactly what we want to see. But then it becomes more, finally letting itself become something special and original. It lets us see the original thematic material from the first movie (the idea that one of them fits right into the culture while the other has a significantly harder time), but flips it. And from there, we don't see necessarily one being jealous of the other as in the first, but rather them following different paths in college as best high school friends often do. It results in a pretty hilarious breakup, and lets the film parody romance films in the mix of the dozens of other film references its already making. Seriously, this movie can just pack in the parody. All of it works brilliantly.
The audience was loud and rowdy where I was, laughing and cheering appropriately, gasping and silent when appropriate. It was electric. It's clear that Lord and Miller know how to make a movie that really is going to appeal to everyone. That being said, I was the only one laughing at the jokes about film budget and scenic design. But whatever! I'll have my fun dammit.
Rank - 5/5
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