Daily Archives: May 15, 2012

Colombiana the Review

Music

The joys of an assassin movie! Assassins always seem to be bigger than life, a super hero or a brutal villain. It lends itself to the spy genre so you get the chance of sneaky characters, twisting plots and excellent action scenes. Often hit or miss from picture to picture, Colombiana lands right in the middle….average at best.

There’s nothing new or terribly interesting going on in Colombiana. Zoe Saldana plays the lead, Cataleya, who witnesses her parents death by the drug cartel that her father worked for. Swearing revenge, her career in death starts many years later, always with her eyes on the man that ordered her parents death. That’s it. Every plot point you are thinking of right now, happens. It’s a paint by the numbers story with the requisite action, the superfluous love interest and some goofy stuff (her attack dogs) stuck in for some flavor.

Now, it’s not a bad movie. It’s well made (the direction in the first chase scene was amateur at best though), well acted and the action is serviceable. A good rainy day rental, but if you skip it, you aren’t missing anything.

Hugo the Review

Movies

Hugowas a big favorite at this years Oscar awards. Director Martin Scorsese marks his first kids and 3D theatrical release in his long, historic career.

Hugo Cabret is an orphan who lives behind the walls of a train station in 1930’s Paris. When his father tragically dies, his uncle comes to pick him up to live and work at the train station. Bringing only the clothes on his back and the automation that he and his father were working to fix, Hugo learns to keep all the clocks running in the station. The mystery of the automation and another resident of the train station collide in front of Hugo, leading him down a new path of his young life.

This was a pretty cool movie and the 3D work has been alleged to been tops, but I watched it in trusty 2D. The main stars, Asa Butterfield and Chloe Grace Moretz are two of the best child actors working today. The whole movie rides on them and they’re both stars (Chloe in particular is really fantastic, she’s starting to blow up and should have a hell of a career). My only complaint is that the movie takes way too long to really get going. It’s a slow build up to what is a real treat of a late second to third act where everything comes together and the story telling is compelling and interesting. There’s a good 10-15 minutes of meandering that could have been trimmed. I could see it boring any young viewers who would never make it to the end. That said, it’s a good movie that really shows Scorsese love and care of cinema.