The Out-of-Focus Guy's blog

Movie Mini-Review: Men in Black III

The new sequel, "Men in Black III", is passable entertainment.  I would grade it as a B.  The movie series was never great, as its jokes never go beyond chuckle humor.  As in the other two movies, Agent J (Will Smith) and Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) are two secret government agents who protect the planet from immigrant aliens.  In this film, history is changed when Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement), a criminal captured by Agent K back in 1969, escapes from his prison on the moon and time travels back to 1969 to kill Agent K.  Their new boss, Agent O (Emma Thompson), orders Agent J to time travel back to 1969 to stop Boris.  The best part of this film is seeing the older agents as younger characters.  Josh Brolin ably plays the younger K.  Alice Eve plays the younger O.  Brolin does more than just an impression.  He actually gives a better performance of the same character than Jones.  I hope this is the last in the series, as there doesn't seem much else to this series than jokes about celebrities being aliens and the oil and water relationship between J and K.  In this movie, J finally understands more about his enigmatic partner through his time travel (and an interesting connection to him).  The acting is okay for this type of movie and the directing byBarry Sonnenfeld is fine.  The outstanding supporting performance is by Michael Stuhlbarg as an alien that can see all possible futures and aids Agents J and K in 1969.

Movie Mini-Review: The Five-Year Engagement

Nicholas Stoller and Jason Segel, the director/co-writer and co-writer/star of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," have made a new film: "The Five-Year Engagement."  It's pretty good, but falls short of great.  I would grade it as a B+.  Segel plays Tom, a San Francisco sous chef who proposes to his psychology grad student girlfriend Violet (Emily Blunt) after a year of dating.  Shortly after this event, Violet learns she has been accepted into the graduate psychology program at the University of Michigan.  Tom reluctantly quits his chef job and moves to Ann Arbor with Violet without any job prospects.  Violet and Tom's wedding plans are postponed after they discover that Violet's sister (a very funny Alison Brie) has become pregnant after hooking up with Tom's chef buddy (Chris Pratt) at their rehearsal dinner.  The rest of the movie deals with the aftermath of Tom and Violet's move to Ann Arbor and what that does to their relationship.  It's a bit darker than I expected, but that didn't necessarily detract from the enjoyment of the movie.  The ending feels a bit rushed and I'm not sure all of the characters deserved what happened to them.  Acting is good and the direction is fine.

Movie Mini-Review: Marvel's The Avengers

The new comic book movie, "The Avengers" is okay.  My biggest problem is that I never felt any emotional connection to the characters.  The script by director Joss Whedon and Zak Penn adds humor to break the tension, but there are too many characters to service to make you feel anything.  As such, I would grade this as a B.  The plot is that Thor's (Chris Hemsworth) brother, Loki (Tom Hiddleston), has returned from exile to conquer Earth with the aid of an alien race.  He needs to open a portal so the aliens can travel the vast expanse of space.  The movie shows Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and SHIELD bringing the super-heroes together as a team (and like all Marvel Comics characters, not getting along).  Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) is his usual smart-ass self.  Captain America (Chris Evans) is the good soldier.  Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) is a smart spy.  Master archer Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) gets hypnotized by Loki early in the film, so he doesn't appear in the team until later.  Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) is the best part of the movie.  The fights (amongst the team and against Loki and the aliens) are fine and sometimes fun to watch.  Guest stars include SHIELD members Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) and Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg); Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) from "Iron Man"; and Professor Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) from the "Thor" movie.  This film feels like the Marvel equivalent of a "Transformers" movie: lots of noise and little character development.

Movie Mini-Review: Pirates! Band of Misfits

I usually love Aardman-produced movies, but "Pirates! Band of Misfits" was a bit of a disappointment.  It never rises above chuckle-level humor, so it rates a B-.  Hugh Grant does the voice of the Pirate Captain, the head of a Pirate ship in the early 19th Century that is sadly lacking in its ability to sack and plunder.  The Pirate Captain's rivals,  Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek), usually top him in the silly Pirate of the Year competition that the King of the Pirates (Brian Blessed) holds.  The Pirate Captain sets out to top his rivals, but he ends up sacking the Beagle, the ship of Charles Darwin, the botanist and early geneticist (David Tennant).  Darwin points out that the Pirate Captain's pet bird is actually the rare species, the Dodo, and that she would be valuable enough for them to win a scientific prize.  When they return to England, the Pirate Captain becomes a media sensation (replacing the Elephant Man) and even gets pardoned by Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton).  What follows is a bit silly, but it never really reaches the usually hilarious level of absurdity that Aardman is known for.  It probably falls short of "Flushed Away", one of the weaker Aardman productions.  Martin Freeman plays the Pirate Captain's loyal second-in-command.  It's a disappointment, unfortunately.

My (Extremely Late) Best Movies of 2011

Just because, here's a list of my ten favorite films from 2011:

1. "X-Men: First Class" - Mainly because there wasn't a great film last year, but this film was the most enjoyable for me.  I liked the James Bond-ian first half of the movie, and the acting and special effects were good enough to make this Cold War-superhero film work.

2. "Kung Fu Panda 2" - The sequel furthers Po's adventures as a member of the Furious Five and has him learning how he came to be adopted by his noodle-loving, goose father.  Lots of fun and very heart-warming.

3. "Limitless" - I did not see this in the theatres, but I really enjoyed this story of a dead-end writer who betters himself when he becomes addicted to a "smart" pill that enhances his brain activity.

4. "Drive" - Except for the ending, this film was really close to being the best in 2011.  Ryan Gosling was great as the stoic, getaway driver with a moral code.

5. "The Artist" - Except for the fact that the plot is so similar to "A Star is Born", this is a really good movie.  I like that most of the movie is silent (except at the very end) and the acting and directing are excellent.

6. "Hugo" - Not Martin Scorsese's best, but still a pretty good film: a lonely, orphan kid in Paris gets involved with a movie pioneer from the early 20th Century who has retired from the film industry to run a shop at a train station.

7. "The Descendents" - The only thing that prevents this from being a better movie is that half of the main plot doesn't work.  Part of the film is George Clooney's character coming to terms with his wife's impending death (and her secret affair) and the other part is about his role as family executor in deciding what to do with the huge, family-owned plot of land in Hawaii.  The decision he makes about his family land seemingly comes out of the blue.

8. "Captain America: The First Avenger" - A really good superhero movie.  The biggest drawback to this is that its plot is pretty much a paint-by-numbers hero story.

9. "The Muppets" - This movie only gets better upon repeated viewings.  A fun reunion movie created by star Jason Segel and writing partner Nicholas Stoller.

10. "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" - I liked this better than the Swedish original.  The plot is better laid out and the performance by Rooney Mara is (to me) a better take on the character of Lisbeth Salander.  I love the opening credits sequence.

 

Movie Mini-Review: Delicacy

"Delicacy" is a French film starring Audrey Tautou ("Amélie") about a young widow who finally gets over her husband's death with a man none of her family or friends expected her to find attractive.  The movie is mostly a drama with some humorous moments.  It follows some romance cliches, but I felt it was enjoyable nevertheless.  I would grade it as a B+.  Tautou plays Nathalie, an office manager in charge of projects.  Her handsome husband dies while on a run and Nathalie pours herself into work to avoid having to deal with her grief.  Nathalie's boss (Bruno Todeschini) has always been attracted to Nathalie and hits on her after her husband's death.  She rejects him (partially because he's married), but finds herself unexpectedly attracted to a rather ordinary-looking Swedish guy named Markus (François Damiens), who she supervises.  The rest of the movie has the pair coming to terms with how this unexpected romance affects their co-workers, their friends and their family.  The ending is a little odd, but I enjoyed the movie for what it was.

Movie Mini-Review: The Hunger Games

I am not the target audience for which the film (and book series) "The Hunger Games" is aiming, but I liked the film overall.  I thought the film was a B+.  The premise of this movie is that a dictatorship formed in the remains of what used to be North America (called Panem) requires that each District (effectively a state) conscript a boy and a girl between the ages of 12 and 18 to fight in a sort of gladiatorial game called the Hunger Games.  The games are televised as entertainment for the residents of the capital city and as a deterrent to revolution to the external districts.  District 12, a mining region, selects 12-year-old Primrose Everdeen (Willow Shields) as the girl.  Her 16-year-old sister, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence), volunteers in her stead to protect her sister.  The boy selected is Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), who harbors a secret crush on Katniss.  The remainder of the film shows the preparation for and eventually the fighting of the Hunger Games.  Supporting characters include Liam Hemsworth as Katniss' childhood friend, Gale; Woody Harrelson as her coach, Haymitch; Elizabeth Banks as the eccentric hostess; Stanley Tucci as the game show host; and Donald Sutherland as the dictator president.  It's a little bit long, and the premise doesn't completely work for me.  My biggest problem with the film is the idea that a televised gladiatorial game will serve as a deterrent is false.  If anything, I think it would outrage the districts into rebelling against the government.  While I think it's still well made and Jennifer Lawrence holds the whole film together with an outstanding performance, it's only just okay instead of being terrific. 

Movie Mini-Review: Jeff Who Lives at Home

The Duplass brothers, Mark and Jay, have created a surprisingly good film, "Jeff Who Lives at Home."  The brothers, who last directed the comedy "Cyrus", have made a movie that seemingly is  a stoner journey but actually ends up a much deeper family movie.  I would grade it as an A-.  Jeff (Jason Segal) is a lazy stoner who lives in his mother's basement.  His mother (Susan Sarandon) calls him up and asks him to run an errand for her to get wood glue to repair the blinds.  He had been watching M. Night Shyamalan's movie "Signs", and this leads him to believe that he is on an existential journey to find his purpose in life.  He receives a wrong number call (someone looking for a Kevin) and spends time trying to find a Kevin.  All of this leads him on an adventure with his older brother Pat (Ed Helms), who is having marital difficulties with his wife (Judy Greer).  Meanwhile, their lonely mother discovers a secret crush at work.  Everything comes together nicely in the end when everyone ends up on a freeway from Baton Rouge to New Orleans.  I really enjoyed this movie.    

Movie Mini-Review: Casa de mi Padre

Boy, what a disappointment Will Farrell's "Casa de mi Padre" was.  I would grade it as a C-.  The new film, directed by Matt Piedmont, was intended as a spoof of Spanish-language telenovelas (basically, soap operas) and grindhouse movies.  Some of that succeeds, but it was mostly like a one-joke Saturday Night Live skit where they extend the one joke to five minutes.  The same could be said about stretching the one joke to an hour and a half movie.  Some of the fun is in the casting:  The much younger and more handsome Diego Luna plays Ferrell's older brother Raul; the youthful Gael García Bernal plays the evil (older) drug kingpin, Onza; Genesis Rodriguez plays Onza's niece (even though she's nearly the same age as Bernal); and Efren Ramirez plays the sidekick of Farrell's character (he was Napolean Dynamite sidekick, Pedro).  The basic plot is that Mexican rancher Armando (Ferrell) gets involved in his older brother Raul's troubles: his life as a drug dealer; his beautiful fiance, Sonia (Genesis Rodriguez); and the fight between the brothers for the love of their father (Pedro Armendáriz Jr.).  There are some crazy moments where they spoof the cheeziness and amateur filmmaking of the films that inspired this movie, but they are few and far between.  It's a really thin premise stretched too far.

Movie Mini-Review: John Carter

I don't get critics.  I really liked "John Carter" a lot.  It's an A-.  Edgar Rice Burroughs,  the creator of Tarzan, wrote the story that originated this movie.  "John Carter" is about a Civil War Confederate captain (Taylor Kitsch) who, while searching for gold in Arizona, finds a cave that transports him to Mars (known as Barsoom by the natives).   When he first arrives on Mars, he discovers that he can "leap tall buildings with a single bound" due to the differences in gravitational pull.  He is captured by the four-armed race led by Tars Tarkem (Willem Dafoe).  He later gets involved in a war between various races on Barsoom when he rescues a princess (Dejah Thoris of Helium, played by Lynn Collins) trying to escape an arranged marriage between her and the prince of a rival race (Sab Than, Prince of Zodanga; played by Dominic West).  Most of the movie is introducing the viewer to the various races and their conflict.  John, haunted by the deaths of his wife and daughter as well as fighting in the Civil War, does not want to get involved in this conflict and only wants to return to Earth.    He discovers a race, led by Matai Shang (Mark Strong), was involved in his transportation to Mars and is playing sides in the conflict.  The acting is good for a movie of this kind and the directing and storytelling (by director Andrew Stanton) is straightforward and interesting.  Even though there is a lot of "world-building" (establishing and explaining the various races and culture of Barsoom), it's not too confusing.  It's really quite good.