Life of Pi

Life of Pi

Rating 8 out of 10

This was a movie I went back and forth whether I wanted to see or not.  In fact had it not been a roofers holiday (rain day) and nothing else with a starting time that worked I would probably not be writing this  review.  I'm very glad I went.

Visually this is one of the most incredible movies you will see.  By watching the previews you would think it is a two hour movie of a boy floating in a boat with a large tiger.  There is that and much more.  Director Ang Lee can be a strange bird. He rarely gives you what you are expecting.  I did not read the book this movie is based on but now have the desire to do so.  As you also know I'm not a fan of 3d movies.  This might be one that is worth the extra three bucks for those goofy glasses.

The first third of the movie tells the story of a boy growing up in India with his parents and older brother.  His parents run a zoo in a hotel they oversee.  From an early age Pi (short for Picine) is amazed by the Bengal tiger while not really understanding the danger involved.  When a political change in the country forces Pi's parents to move to French speaking Canada they load up the animals on a ship to sell in North America where they can get a better price.  Sadly in a big storm the ship sinks taking Pi's family with it.  Pi then does end up on that small boat with the Tiger.

The voyage at sea is anything but boring.  At my NCG theater we get free refills on drinks. I always feel the need to get my monies worth out of that $3 diet coke with a refill.  I hated to leave the theater with fear of missing something.  Suraj Sharma did a good job as the young Pi.  I even liked the guy that played the older Pi.

While the story does not make you believe in God as it boasts it will give you a visually entertaining couple hours in a theater.

Rise of the Guardians

Rise of the Guardians

Rating 8.5 out of 10

I have been on a string of disappointing movies and went into the theater for this one with high hopes.  I am very glad to say this movie met my expectations and then some!  This is a movie you will buy the dvd for your kids and enjoy watching it over and over as they cycle it in with the Beauty and the Beast videos.  Clearly computer animation has gone to incredible levels.  Rise of the Guardians takes it another step higher.

Every now and then there are threats against the world children.  Luckily for all of us there are the Guardians.  Santa, Sandman, Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy.  These are picked by the Man in the Moon.  When a new threat presents himself another Guardian is needed.  Pitch the Boogieman is determined to take happiness away from the worlds children.  Jack Frost is enlisted to help the Guardians defeat evil even if he can't understand why he is needed.

As I said the animation is first rate even in the 2D version I saw.  The story is entertaining and filled with laughs for kids of all ages.  The voices are perfect.  Often in movies like this I find myself thinking of who is voicing the character rather than the character itself.  Not here.  Every voice just fits.  Alec Baldwin as Santa, Hugh Jackman is the Easter Bunny, Isla Fisher is the Tooth Fairy and Chris Pine is Jack Frost.

Take your kids to see this.  If you don't have kids, borrow some.  I'll be taking my grandkids to see this again and buying the dvd when it comes out.

Good movie.

Silver Linings Playbook

Silver Linings Playbook

Rating 4 out of 10

There will be plenty who will like this movie much more than I did.  I had high hopes as I like the stars alot.  Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence do a good job here with what they have to work with.  I wouldn't be surprised if they get award nominations.  Robert De Niro is usually good even though he hasn't really picked the right movies lately.

Pat (Cooper) is a troubled Philadelphia Eagles football fan that when we meet him is in a state institution.  Let's be honest.  Most Eagles fans belong in an institution of some sort!  : >   Pat finds he is bi-polar with a bad temper.  He loses his wife, job and home.  Forced to live with his parents (who are a little nutty too) he meets the lovely Tiffany (Lawrence).   As luck would have it she has issues too.  Her husband died six months earlier and she has been having sex with everyone in sight.   She is interested in Pat but he only wants to get his wife back.

The key that will fix everything is Pat and Tiffany are entering a ballroom dancing contest.  This is a conflicted movie of people dealing with mental illness.  Movie reviewers love movies like this.  So do the awards shows.  Royce does not.  The movie is right at two hours long and to me seemed much longer.  Not my cup...

If anyone sees this movie and enjoys it please drop me a line.

Red Dawn

Red Dawn

Rating 5 out of 10

They have run out of good movies to remake and have dropped down to remaking bad movies of the 1980s.  When you think of it that is pretty smart.  When remaking a good movie like Footloose it's too easy to suffer by comparison.  When you are remaking a movie as bad as the 1984 original starring Patrick Swayze  you have nowhere to go but up.  That is the best I can say about the new Red Dawn is it's better than the original.  This was my Thanksgiving movie with the youngest son as the wife plots out her Black Friday attack schedule with her sister.  Rocky was determine to see this one.  He didn't remember the original since he wasn't born yet.

A Washington town wakes up one morning as all the power goes out and hundreds of North Korean soldiers parachuting in.  It seems the Korean's have come up with a pulse bomb that kills all electrical power.  Of course without electricity our military is held defenseless?  Well lucky for us our hero Jed (Chris Hemsworth who is Thor in his off time) is home from serving in Iraq.  His dad is the towns sherif and brother is the HS football star.  He gathers a rag tag group of mostly high school boys and heads into the hills.  From there they execute attacks against the military that can not be stopped.

I can pick this movie apart with my eyes closed.  I'll be nice here.  It is pretty silly for the most part.  The action is as good as you would expect for a movie like this.  The stars (including Tom Cruise's adopted son) are good looking.  It's not a horrible way to spend a couple hours.  Rocky liked it alot.

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2

Rating 8 out of 10

I know.  I'm too old and too male to be enjoying these Twilight movies/books.  My daughter Stacy got me started on the first book.  It took me a couple tries before I finally go it going.  I have been reading the books (listening to the audio books) each year just before the next movie comes out.  For the most part the books are always better.  This movie was by far the best of the bunch.

If you haven't followed along here is what you missed.  Young moody girl moves to a dreary rainy Washington town.  Falls in love with the tall pale white guy with a spiky haircut who just happens to be a vampire.  Amazingly enough that only makes her want him more.  When they do break up she becomes close with a family friend who of course turns out to be a werewolf and hates vampires.  Of course.  They have all the usual relationship issues.  Other vampires coming to town to kill them, battles with the other werewolves, problems with the Volturi (King of the vamps that lives in Italy), ect.

They work through all the problems and eventually get married with the plans of moody girl (still moody after all this) being eventually turned into a vampire to spend eternity with tall pale vampire.  They wait until after marriage to have sex but unfortunately she becomes pregnant on the honeymoon while she is still human.  This is a bad thing and almost kills her giving birth.  The problems don't stop there.  Seems the first year after becoming a vampire is the worst.  You can't control yourself and kill WAY too many humans.  Having strict rules the vampires are against turning small children into vamps.  They can't control themselves and wipe out whole villages.   The Volturi hears of the baby and decide this is a reason to wipe out the whole Cullen clan.  Maybe it's because they gave her the awful name of Renesmee?

One of the vampires in the Cullens can see into the future and sees the Volturi is definitely coming.  Luckily in the Vampire world justice is not swift.  They have a couple months to prepare and they travel the globe looking for friendly vampires to go to battle with them.

The big battle is full of bloodsuckers and werewolves duking it out in entertaining fashion.  It ends it a way that will satisfy those that have read the books and those that have not.  The twist they talk about it a good one.  Overall I liked it.

Skyfall

Skyfall

Rating 7 out of 10

It's funny how it works with Bond, James Bond.  There have been several actors play that secret agent man and mostly the one a guy feels attached to is the Bond of his teen years.  For me that was Roger Moore.  He was Mr. Cool for me.  Lots of cool gadgets, fancy cars and beautiful women.  I didn't care for Timothy Dalton one bit.  Pierce Brosnan grew on me.  I know I'm in the minority but I just don't like Daniel Craig as 007.  Sure he has a body that looks to be carved from stone.  He does not seem like Bond to me.  If you are a big Daniel Craig fan feel free to read the rest of my review with a grain of salt or two.

Skyfall starts off in wonderful Bond fashion with an incredible action scene.  The bad guy has killed one of the other agents and ran off with a computer hard drive that has the name of every undercover operative in the world.  It's up to James to track him down and save the day.

The action is for the most part what you'd expect out of a 007 movie.  The bad guy this time is Javier Bardem who was so scary in No Country for Old Men.  Here for some reason they play him as a blond gay villain.  Not sure why they went that direction.

You are reminded several times that these movies are prequels as they have to introduce the characters we grow to know so well (Moneypenny, Q, ect.).

If you liked the last two Bond films with Craig you can be assured you will like this one too.

Flight

Flight

Rating 6 out of 10

Denzel Washington is one of my all time favorite actors.  He has made a few bad movies but has never been bad in a movie.  Denzel is great in this movie.  The movie for me was just okay.  I was hoping for great.  It's basically a movie about an alcoholic that happens to fly planes.

Denzel plays airline pilot Whip Whitaker.  Right off the bat we see Whip in a hotel room after a long night of drinking and drugging and sex with one of the flight attendants.  He gets out of bed, does a line of coke and puts on his uniform to head out to the airport to fly 106 souls from Orlando to Atlanta on a very bad weather day.  He has done this many times and thinks he has it under control.  Mechanical problems with the plane sends it into a steep dive that certainly will kill everyone on board.  Whip pulls off a miracle and saves all but six on the plane.

Problems start when a blood test after the crash show Whip was very drunk while he was flying the plane.  This is a bad thing.  He can go from hero to serving jail time in a heartbeat.  He needs to clean up his act in a hurry. We get to see the demons of a person with a bad drinking problem.  Some people find this more interesting than I do.

One cool thing about the movie is much of it was filmed in the Atlanta area.  One of the main characters lives in the Georgian Terraces apartments.  I put the roof on that complex several years ago!

As I said some may like this movie more than I did.  At just over 2.5 hours I think it could have been 45 minutes shorter.  Denzel is very good as you would expect and keeps the movie moving along.  Sadly another movie that would be better saved as a dvd rental.

Man with the Iron Fists

Man with the Iron Fists

Rating 5 out of 10

Anyone that has read my blog knows I like action movies.  Lots of karate kicks to the head and limbs severed and I'm probably there.  Throw Lucy Lu into the mix and I'm definitely there.  This looked interesting with Russell Crowe as the English knifesman named ironically Jack Knife.  That's pretty much how this movie goes.  Quentin Tarantino's name is on the film yet I don't think he had a thing to do with making it.  Instead the movie is directed by and one of the stars by rapper RZA.  As an old white male I am proud to say I have no idea who he is.

This movie has a feel of a cheesy throw back 80's karate movie.  You almost expect the words not to match their mouths as in Chinese dubbed movies.  The plot is very thin and not real easy to follow.  Not that it matters.

There is a town in China that seems to be the center of all that is bad.  Right in the middle is a brothel run by Lucy Lu.  There is a story about a couple clans fighting, a big transport of gold by the Chinese government and a very tubby Russell Crowe (not in his Gladiator form).  The local blacksmith is RZA who loves one of Lucy's girls and dreams of making enough money buy her freedom.

Lots of fighting and buckets of blood.  The movie is entertaining for what it is.  If you like these type movies you could do worse than this one.  Although I'd recommend renting it instead.

Wreck-it Ralph

Wreck-it Ralph

Rating 6.5 out of 10

This was a good week for me.  This was the second movie I got to go to with a granddaughter.  This was my youngest granddaughters first movie with her mom and dad.

Wreck-it Ralph is a cute movie from Disney.  That's different that a movie from Pixar which is owned by Disney.  Ralph is a character is an old school video game in the local arcade called Fix-it Felix.  He is the bad guy that tears a building up while the good guy (Felix) comes along and fixes the damage thus winning the game.  After closing time the characters from all the video games get together and socialize.  Ralph is tired of being the bad guy.  If he can just get a gold medal like Felix people will like him and he will be a good guy.

Ralph goes into different games in search.  First stop is a cool kick buns action war game where the leader is the always funny Jane Lynch. Then on to a Candyland type game with cute little girl voiced by Sarah Silverman.

The movie has impressive animation in the 2D version we saw.  John C. Reilly is the perfect voice for Ralph.  The movie is cute.  It has some laughs and sweet awww shucks feel good moments at the end.  The movie tho is clearly aimed at ten year olds.  The kids will love it while the parents are mildly entertained.

Hotel Transylvania

Hotel Transylvania

Rating 4 out of 10

Adam Sandler just can't catch a break.  Somehow his name is still enough to get the box office numbers up on some of his movies but personally I can't remember the last time I saw one of his movies in a theater and left feeling good about it.  Sadly his step into animated films is no better.

I had a date with my lovely granddaughter to see a movie.  We are not having much luck.  Last time we went to a movie someone broke into my car while we were in the theater and stole the stereo.  I still get to enjoy time with Delilah.

In Hotel Transylvania Dracula has become an over protective father.  His loving wife was killed by evil humans a hundred years before.  He builds a fancy hotel in Transylvania where monsters can come to vacation without having to worry about humans trying to kill them.  It is disguised so that humans can't tell it is there.  His daughter Mavis (voiced by Selena Gomez) has never seen life outside the hotel and has always wanted to go out into the world.  She is turning 118 and feels she is old enough to handle it.

When an unsuspecting human stumbles into the hotel (Jonathan voiced by Andy Sandberg) Dracula is worried all his business will be gone if the monsters find out Humans know where it is.  Jonathan plays along when Dracula dresses him up as Frankensteins nephew the party planner there to help with Mavis birthday bash.  The movie starts off slow and goes downhill from there.

Great cast of voices but sadly the movie has nothing else needed to make an animated film succeed.  The story is boring and uninteresting.  The music is not something you would tap your foot to.  Worst is in this day and age of great animation this seems much more like a Saturday cartoon than a full feature release.

Delilah crawled up in my lap and fell asleep and honestly I was wondering if the clean up kids would wake us if I dozed off too.  If you have a small child you want to rent a movie for next Halloween you can do better than this one, but rent if you want.  Can't say I didn't warn you. : <