Before I catch up on some of the movies I’ve seen recently I’d like to give a shout out about Safety Words. Two guys who have made this sweet mash up with Wu-Tang Clan and some classic Nintendo game themes. The Ghostfaced Pixels Mixtape is some wild stuff. It’s like an hour long and has some really ingenious beats going on. Really impressive.
Apocalypto– From 2006 which I think predates Mel Gibson’s ‘I Might Be A Lunatic” DUI arrest and naughty quote fest. Mel has/had been a darling of Hollywood and this movie really just fostered his career. It’s really good! A Mayan tale that came out of no where, there isn’t a lick of English in here. Very little dialog actually, but the story and characters are very memorable. A conquering tribe sweeps through our main characters village and destroy everything he knows. Forced to hide his family and taken away as a slave our hero goes through a very rough road to stay alive and get back to his family. It’s a gorgeous movie, just really well made (Mel really loves close-ups). Action scenes are pretty intense although there is some bad effects (the boar) here and there.
Despicable Me– A really cute movie. A villain hitting some rough times figures he could use the help of some orphan girls to re-establish his dominance in the villian game and stomp out his arch enemy. There’s a lot of cliched and obvious writing going on here but the movie still works. Animation is really good, there some funny gags and the cast is solid too. The girls in particular are really good, but I just can’t get on the Steve Carell bandwagon; the guy is like Patrick Warburton. He has absolutely zero vocal range. You always know it’s him, same problem Mike Myers has. There had to have been someone better to get than him, I don’t think his name on the poster really made a difference.
The A-Team– This flick got pooped on by critics all over the place, but it was a lot better than I thought it was going to be. The cast really works and the action is really over the top. The filmmakers knew what they were making, they don’t take anything too serious and just have fun with it. Good story and editing, some imaginative action sequences and the majority of the FX look good. I’m down for a sequel.
Resident Evil: Afterlife– The 4th movie in the series, I pretty much asked myself, “Did this movie need to be made?” It’s not a horrible movie, it just feels like nothing actually happened in it. It’s a few scenes linked together by action scenes with monsters that people who have played the games will recognize. They pimped the hell out of the 3D they used to make the movie, but who cares when the movie just kind of lays there. I might have said “That looks neat” if I saw it in 3D but I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. They scaled back Alice’s superpowers from the last movie or so, but there is is still plenty of impossible things going on here. I just can’t recommend it. You haven’t missed anything if you haven’t seen it.
Frost/Nixon– I’ve been meaning to see this for awhile, it’s been in my list for a long time. Now that I’ve seen it, I’m glad I did. It’s a Ron Howard picture so you can imagine the look and feel of it from there. Ron Howard can always get a great cast for his pictures together and this film is no exception. The movie focus’ around the series of interviews that British talk show host David Frost conducted with President Nixon. This happened after Nixon was tossed out of office due to the Watergate cover up. Frost had to come up with a serious amount of money to get it done (he actually only came up with 30% of the funding while they were doing the interview) and he had very little support from his peers that he could do an interview that wasn’t a complete fluff piece.
Frost certainly had his work cut out for him. After Nixon left office, President Ford pardoned him of any possible wrong doing with Watergate, keeping him away from trial and out of harms way. So most of the country felt like a villain was able to duck and take cover, taking no responsibility for what he had done. Frost wanted to get Americans a confession, at the very least an explanation. With each side prepping for months to duke it out, Frost had to step up his game. The acting really sells the picture with Frank Langella as Richard Nixon stealing the show.
The Town-Ben Affleck continues his rebith into Hollywood as a rising star. Not just in front of the camera, but behind it as well. Affleck co-wrote, produced and directed this terrific bank heist movie. I’m a fan of these types of movies and Affleck and his crew put together a great movie. The dialog is really good, the acting is terrific (Jeremy Renner is on a roll, he keeps putting out fantastic work) and I admire the direction. Affleck really has a good eye and I’m really impressed that he can film an action scene that isn’t a mess. Something that is a serious problem in Hollywood today. I never got lost in the action, the geography of the scene was always clear. The movie does suffer from the trappings of a heist movie (just one more job and we’ll quit!) but that isn’t enough to ruin the movie in anyway. I really liked it, check it out. Just one thing though, could you leave Boston behind for once Ben? There’s a whole world out there.