Review Unstoppable (2010) Movie

Chris Pine has really become quite the actor. I saw him first as Captain Kirk in Star Trek, and since then, I have gone back to watch a couple of his earlier movies along with the lower-budget Sci-Fi flick, "Carriers." In "Unstoppable," he really turns on the heat, and side-by-side with good ol' Denzel, he shines.

Here was a movie that, while viewing the trailers, I was thinking, "Really? An entire movie about a runaway train?" Well, the resounding answer is, "YES!" An excellent back-story, along with a perfect amount of character-building to get us to really like these people, made for a foundation on which to build one heck of an over-the-top mountain of suspense! In addition to Chris, Denzel Washington was excellent, as always, and the rest of the acting crew, especially Rosario Dawson, were perfectly cast and on top of their game as well. The main character was more than just a menace, though, it was downright deadly...THE TRAIN!

A review I read on another site said that this movie started slow, but by the time Chris and Denzel's characters got in on the action it was non-stop fun. Well, I'm here to tell you that this movie gets rolling within the first five minutes...literally...rolling. The action and suspense builds by leaps and bounds, second-by-second. On more than one occasion, "Unstoppable" gets you to hold your breath in anticipation of the next scene, or simply steals it altogether. This one comes highly recommended. 

Review No Strings Attached (2011) Movie

- Commentary with Director Ivan Reitman
- Sex Friends: Getting Together
- Inside The Sassy Halls Of Secret High
- Deleted Scenes
- Alternate Storyline Scenes

What "No Strings Attached" lacks in originality and unpredictability is made up for in the charm and likeability of its leads. Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman not only have great onscreen chemistry, they also are individually well developed - at least, as well developed as they can be within the boundaries of a romantic comedy. It's also surprisingly funny, although it's only partly because of the well placed raunchy sex jokes; the film is one of the few recent romantic comedies to successfully find that balance between sweetness and silliness, and while that's only moderate praise for writer Elizabeth Meriwether and director Ivan Reitman, at least it's proof that they know how to take innately ridiculous material and make it accessible to general audiences.

The film is not realistic in any way, shape, or form, but that's just stating the obvious because we don't go to movies like this looking for meaning or truth. It tells the story of Adam and Emma (Kutcher and Portman), who first met as teenagers in summer camp and saw each other off and on over the next several years. In the present day, they live in Los Angeles, Adam an assistant on a TV series that crosses "Glee" with "High School Musical," Emma a doctor at UCLA. They have successfully maintained a friendship, although there's always a flash of jealousy whenever one of them shows up with a significant other. When Adam's girlfriend dumps him for his father (Kevin Kline), he goes on a bender, makes several phone calls to women he knows ... and wakes up in Emma's apartment, naked and surrounded by Emma's friends and fellow residents.

No sex took place the night before. The morning after, however, Adam and Emma suddenly drop their defenses and just go for it. That's when they decide to take a stab at being friends with benefits; they will use each other for sex at any time of the day, but they won't commit to anything long-term. Surprisingly, this comes at the insistence of Emma, who for reasons left a little obscure is frightened by serious relationships. This is made clear in her habit of texting Adam rather than seeing him in person, a trend that has become all too real in today's smart phone society. I'll stop short of saying this movie is sending a message about technology limiting social interaction, although there are hints of it all throughout.

No more of the plot needs to be described. It goes through the motions and ends exactly the way we expect it to end. There are, however, a couple of side characters that deserve to be mentioned. One of the best is Adam's on-set colleague, Lucy (Lake Bell), who's deeply neurotic and talks at a hundred miles an hour. Making this kind of character likeable is next to impossible, and yet Bell pulls it off, probably because she understood that there's a fine line between comedy relief and annoyance. And then there are Adam's best friends, played by Chris Bridges and Jake Johnson; they aren't given all that much to do, but you can count on them for a few good male-oriented one-liners. Kline is somewhat underutilized as Adam's father, a former TV star who does drugs as if it was the 1970s and has a thing for much younger women. He's mostly just a counterpoint to his son, a way for the audience to see what Adam should not do when it comes to meeting and loving the opposite sex.

One of the film's funniest scenes is in Emma's apartment, where she and her girlfriends - along with one gay man - spend the night together in the throes of menstrual agony. Knowing they're all on the same cycle, Adam stops by with a box full of cupcakes. He also gives Emma a period-specific mix CD, with titles I probably can't repeat for the purposes of this review. There's also a moment when Emma gives Adam a Valentine's Day card, which reads, "You give me premature ventricular contractions." I laughed hard. But then again, I was raised by registered nurses who specialized in cardiology, so I probably have an unfair advantage.

Reitman made the right choices in the casting of Kutcher and Portman, for they have that compatibility movies like this require. Kutcher is especially enjoyable and plays what may be the warmest, most caring role of his entire career. Portman is also a natural fit for this movie, which is surprising given her latest stint as a mentally ill ballerina; it's good for even the most dedicated and serious of actors to reveal that they do in fact have a sense of humor. "No Strings Attached" is by no means a great movie, and it will never be in the same league as "Ghostbusters" and "Ghostbusters II," my two favorite Reitman comedies. But if you're in the mood for a conventional lightweight romantic comedy, this movie gets the job done nicely. 

Discount Cowboys & Aliens (2011) Movies

Cowboys & Aliens fuses rip-snortin' horse opera with some whiz-bang sci-fi, melding dry and austere badlands with slimy, mucusy aliens. Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig, of James Bond fame) wakes up in the midst of sagebrush with a mysterious gadget around his wrist and no idea who he is--but he sure does remember how to take care of the bounty hunters who want to bring him in. His path soon crosses with a ruthless cattle baron named Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford, of Indiana Jones fame), who's not too happy with Lonergan, who got Dolarhyde's son in trouble. But their fracas becomes beside the point when spaceships descend and start lassoing people like cattle. The humans, including a mysterious woman (Olivia Wilde, Tron), a Native American tribe, and some snaggletoothed outlaws, band together to fight off this invasion from another world. The first two-thirds of Cowboys & Aliens is peppy fun, with its tongue-in-cheek Wild West-ness and colorful supporting cast (including Sam Rockwell, Keith Carradine, Paul Dano, and Walton Goggins) and fairly understated CGI. The last third, with the obligatory assault on the alien vessel and a mess of clichés and inconsistencies, deflates a bit, which isn't surprising given that six screenwriters were involved. Director Jon Favreau (Iron Man) does what he can to keep things lively. Fortunately, the good spirits of the first two-thirds will carry most viewers through to the end. --Bret Fetzer

 

Review Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

A galaxy's worth of nihilism buried under a '70s Velveeta topping, the Planet of the Apes series stands today as a dark marvel of pop cinema, a group of wildly variable films that combine to form a giant inescapable kiss-off to the human race. (That said message was able to withstand such distractions as ever-cheapening makeup and Charlton Heston loudly pounding sand makes its achievements even more impressive, really.) Boasting a keen awareness of its predecessors' particular charms and a gem of a central CGI performance by Andy Serkis, Rise of the Planet of the Apes makes for a rather miraculous summer movie: a big-budget special effects extravaganza that also delivers a killer backhand. Sort of redoing 1972's Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, the film follows the events set in motion when a bereaved scientist (James Franco) attempts to create a cure for Alzheimer's, resulting in a supernaturally intelligent chimp named Caesar. The old bit about science tampering in God's domain quickly applies. Director Rupert Wyatt (The Escapist) displays an admirable sense of pacing, deftly levying the escalating action scenes with small character moments from the likes of John Lithgow and Brian Cox. That said, the film belongs to Caesar, whose path from wide-eyed innocent to reluctant revolutionary generates the ironic pulp empathy that gave the original series such a kick. Watching the climactic confrontation on the Golden Gate Bridge, it's distressingly easy to figure out which side to root for. Chuck Heston would no doubt grit his teeth in approval. Note: Those skeptical that this revamp could wholly retain the original's doomy backbeat would do well to stick around during the end credits. --Andrew Wright

Best Buy Movies Get Low (2010)

"Get Low" takes place in the thirties and is about Felix who lives in the Tennessee woods for forty years as a foul-tempered recluse having little to do with the local townspeople. The old bearded coot is played by Robert Duvall who does a great but effortless-seeming acting job. He has a guilty secret which has driven him into seclusion. When an old acquaintance dies, he decides to have a funeral, but he decides he wants it to be a party, and he wants people to tell stories about him, and he wants to be there while he's still alive. Felix infrequently comes into town with his old mule. It's fun looking at the old thirties cars and the period hearse.
It's only later as the movie moves along that you realize this is really a mystery movie. One of the first clues comes when an old flame Sissy Spacek runs out on Felix after seeing a photograph on his wall. As a viewer you wonder what gets her so agitated. What Felix wants is one particular friend, an Afro-American minister (played by Billy Cobbs) to tell what he knows about him. Not that Felix built a beautiful church for the minister but what he confessed to him.
As the funeral director, Bill Murray is very winning playing the part of a man who is funny, sly, maybe a bit of a crook. He is only too happy to get paid for the strange funeral party because his business is tanking, not like his former home in Chicago where people were regularly getting bumped off.
It's actually a tour de force role for Duvall, but movie acting has gotten so deeply ingrained in him that he can make it seem organic. The movie is about peeling away layers of humanity in each character, and we slowly see them evolve into better people that we can admire.
It's a piece of magic storytelling which moves at a stately pace, a measured pace, but you don't get bored and you don't want it rushed because it is inevitably going to be revelatory, and Felix's secret is going to be eased out.
Basically it's a very simple story concerning a man who does not want to go to his grave with a guilty conscience.
Murray's young assistant, the deus ex machina, the catalyst, for a lot that happens in the story, is well-played by good-looking young Lucas Black. It's a movie of subtlety, humor, and deep human emotion, but I do have a lot of trouble remembering what I think is a lousy title.

Discount Real Steel (2011)

Sometime in the not-too-distant future, boxing has been outlawed and replaced by fighting matches with robots. Big robots. Hulking, rock 'em, sock 'em mechanical robots. But if those machines are cutting edge, Real Steel sticks to an old-fashioned style of storytelling, with a tale of a down-and-out fight manager (Hugh Jackman) looking for a good 'bot to get back in the game, and get back out of debt. Hearts are further tugged by the arrival of this guy's 11-year-old son (Dakota Goyo), who hasn't seen his dad in many years but now needs tending. There's something endearing about the way nobody ever pauses to remark on the fact that they are in the presence of giant remote-controlled prizefighting robots; it's taken for granted in this cockeyed universe. Loosely inspired by a Richard Matheson-penned episode of The Twilight Zone, Shawn Levy's film is lavishly mounted and fairly ridiculous--although in this case, the human interactions are more preposterous and formulaic than the fun robot action. Jackman plays to his roguish strengths, Evangeline Lilly (Lost) gets the perfunctory love interest role, and the villains are uncomplicatedly hissable, from Jackman's good ol' boy rival (Kevin Durand) to the heavily accented owners (Olga Fonda, Karl Yune) of the most fearsome of robots, the undefeated Zeus. If you can imagine Rocky restaged with a pile of spare parts, you might be the audience for Real Steel. --Robert Horton

Best Buy Movies True Grit (2010)

A 14-year-old girl needs a man with "true grit" to help her bring in the fugitive who killed her father. That she settles on Rooster Cogburn--a one-eyed, booze-soaked, potbellied U.S. marshal on the downward curve of his career in law enforcement--is the glorious springboard for all versions of True Grit: the Charles Portis novel, the 1969 western that won an Oscar for John Wayne, and the 2010 Coen brothers adaptation. The Coens have some mighty shoes to fill in their version, and their choice for the eye-patch is Jeff Bridges, who growls his way through an understated take on Rooster. Matt Damon plays LaBoeuf, the Texas Ranger who joins the hunt; Josh Brolin is the scurvy killer; and Barry Pepper is the leader of the outlaw gang. Working as usual with cinematographer Roger Deakins, the Coens exhibit their clear, crisp view of western places, thrillingly creating new takes on recognizable vistas such as the frontier town, the snowy forest, and the isolated cabin at night. The Coens revel in the incredibly ornate dialogue, which allows their sardonic attitude to bleed into the material--young actress Hailee Steinfeld doesn't seem at all fazed by the language, which may be a key reason she got the job as heroine Mattie Ross. While True Grit doesn't have the heft of the best films in the Coens' arsenal (there's something very formal and even a wee bit academic about their stroll through this familiar text), they do create a pleasant sense of a good yarn, retold around the campfire for the umpteenth time. --Robert Horton

Product Description

True Grit is a powerful story of vengeance and valor set in an unforgiving and unpredictable frontier where justice is simple and mercy is rare. Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), is determined to avenge her father's blood by capturing Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), the man who shot and killed him for two pieces of gold. Just fourteen, she enlists the help of Rooster Cogburn (Academy Award® Winner Jeff Bridges), a one-eyed, trigger-happy U.S. Marshall with an affinity for drinking and hardened Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Academy Award® Winner Matt Damon) to track the fleeing Chaney. Despite their differences, their ruthless determination leads them on a perilous adventure that can only have one outcome: retribution.

Discount Boys of Fall (2011

Though the National Football League is "king of the hill" right now in terms of organized sports, this documentary takes a look at football on the high school level, with input from coaches and players from all aspects of the sports' history.

The great thing about this DVD, based on the Kenny Chesney song of the same name, is that everybody can relate to its message, which is the spectacle of the action under the friday night lights. From the fans to the coaches, and the players to the pep band, nearly everyone was has lived can remember those innocent high school nights and not help but be caught up in a wave of nostalgia.

What really hooks you, though, is the input from high-profile guests like John Madden (good to hear that voice again!), Brett Favre, Troy Aikman, and a long list of famous coaches from the college ranks, to name but a few. In this relaxed, chit-chat type setting, all the pressures of winning and losing are cast aside, and the simple joy and life experience of playing the game are touched on. When all the X's and O's and the business aspects of the game are stripped away, it quickly becomes clear the power that team sports can have in not only shaping teams, but also individuals in other aspects of life away from the football field.

Basically, this is just a great little documentary to watch if you are sick of the pomp and circumstance of the NFL and just want to get back to football's roots: a group of guys coming together as individuals to form a team and try to win instead of lose together. It really isn't any more complicated than that, despite all our attempts to make it so. Thus, this is the perfect gift for the pigskin-head in your family. It may not remain in the entertainment center for good, but it will make an impression on the first viewing, that is for sure.

Review Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011)

Based on the 1938 book of the same name by Richard and Florence Atwater, Mr. Popper's Penguins is a comedy about how the surprise appearance of a penguin at a New York businessman's door turns his life completely upside down, while simultaneously teaching him an important lesson about the value of family. Far from the small-town painter featured in the book, the film's Mr. Popper is a real estate developer who lives in an exclusive apartment on Park Avenue, has his sights set on becoming a partner in his firm, and is an every-other-weekend father to his two children. A ruthless developer with no time for anything but business, Mr. Popper resolves to deal with his father's parting gift of a penguin by getting rid of the annoying bird as quickly as possible. That process proves much more difficult than expected, even with the help of his ultra-efficient assistant Pippi, who speaks primarily in p's, and Mr. Popper soon winds up with six penguins. Even more unexpected is how markedly those penguins begin to affect the relationship between Mr. Popper and his children and how that change affects the rest of Mr. Popper's life. Jim Carrey's performance as Mr. Popper is very good--he capitalizes on the many comic opportunities afforded by the idea of keeping penguins in a New York apartment while showing an uncharacteristic restraint that's quite refreshing. Ophelia Lovibond is quite comical as Pippi and Angela Lansbury also makes a strong appearance as one of Mr. Popper's potential business clients. As Pippi would say, the premise of the power of the penguin to promote personal prosperity and perpetuate personal peace positively prevails in Mr. Popper's Penguins. (Ages 7 and older) --Tami Horiuchi

Product Description

Chill out with the funniest family comedy of the year! Jim Carrey stars as Tom Popper, a successful businessman who’s clueless when it comes to the really important things in life...until he inherits six “adorable” penguins, each with its own unique personality. Soon Tom’s rambunctious roommates turn his swank New York apartment into a snowy winter wonderland — and the rest of his world upside-down. Adapted from the award-winning classic children’s book, Mr. Popper’s Penguins is a cool blast of fun for all ages!