Now You See Me is a really good, bad movie. It’s in my wheelhouse, I love heist movies. It’s a new twist on heist movies which gives the movie a few more points from me as well. The thieves are master illusionists! So you have the combination of theft and magic, but the problem is you can’t mix magic like this with a Hollywood movie. All the major tricks come down to the explaination of “that’s computer generated”.

The magic of magic is seeing something unbelievable happen in front of you and it looks completely legit. You struggle to figure out the trick. When people are disappearing, floating around or throwing clearly digital objects, that needed suspension of disbelief is gone.

That’s not to say the actors aren’t doing any slight of hand, it’s just that the pay offs of the big “illusions” don’t hold any weight because so much was done in post production. You see three major heists and the main beats of how they were done are explained. Clearly a lot of consultation from magicians was done as the planning and complexity of the illusions are great and plausible (there’s a lot of built sets, forced perspective, misdirection, mirrors and the like shown) but there’s always that “computer generated” out for everything (the giant mirror used for one of the heists is broken and it’s clearly CG).

Even as I could never get passed all of the above, it’s still a fun movie that I enjoyed. The Feds chase after a group of illusionists (dubbed The Four Horseman) who steal money in their live performances and give it away to the audience. It’s a wild concept, taking bank heists and Robin Hood to a new level. The cast is good, although Jesse Eisenberg falls into his Social Network smarmy act and while Dave Franco is pushed to the back for the most of the movie, he gets far and away the best action set piece. Morgan Freeman is also Morgan Freeman, not sure why they wanted him to play himself.

The reveal at the end of the movie is more of a shoulder shrug than a twist. I don’t think it was necessary. You could have had that character be known from the start and change the beginning of the movie to accommodate that and you’d wind up with a better movie in the end. There is a set up for a sequel and there has been industry talk of one…despite all the complaining I’m doing, I’d watch it.

I’ve back logged a few movies, so let’s tee em up and knock em down.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation- Everything a sequel should be. Really well done, fixes the problems of the first and pays a lot of homage to the franchise. Dwayne Johnson keeps cementing his action hero career, he really is one of the best in the buisness today. He carries this movie on his gigantic shoulders. Let’s be real here: G.I. Joe is dumb. It always has been and always will be. It’s a popcorn movie, so if you go into it looking for that, you’ll like it. It’s got guns, marines, tanks, ninjas, choppers, a doomsday device and over the top action scenes and villains. The ninja cliff fight is a real stand out. I don’t think it’s ever been done before and is really well visualized. Complaints are for the terrible soundtrack, Bruce Willis just rolls through his screen time, I have no idea why they cut him a big check to be in this. Easily replaced. And RZA. I’d like to know who invited him. His terrible make up matched his role.

Snow White and The Huntsman- Everything is really dark these days, isn’t it? I think this is the first time I’ve ever scene Kristen Stewart look like she didn’t want to drop dead on the spot. The visuals are really striking, but nothing really stuck with me afterwards. Except Charlize Theron, she’s awesome in everything she does. This flick is pretty paint by the numbers, it follows the fairytale closely, adds it’s own unique visual elements and makes Snow White the leader of an army at the end. Oh and she’s put to sleep for like an hour, much like I was.

Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox- Warner Brothers rules. The animation partnership they have with DC is just the best. Every single movie they put out is awesome, I look forward to every release no matter who is the star. Paradox is all about The Flash and this is such a great story that it made me a fan of The Flash. Before watching this I was pretty luke warm on him as a character. Now, it does help that Batman was a big part of this, but it’s a testament to how cool The Flash can be (Geoff Johns is one of the best comic writers working today). This tale goes into some wild revisionist time traveling that is brilliant in its ideas and execution. WB gives the DC guys the resources to make their best stories come to life and should be commended for it. Check this out!

Four Lions- Wow does this comedy go to some dark places! This is a daring movie in it’s concept and is a tremendous achievement in that it works. Four Lions is a British movie about a young group of Islamic Brits who are going for the full jihad. Yes, this movie focuses on suicide bombers. This is such a taboo subject, but the wit and irony in the writing is really something to behold. The cast really sells it, so kudos to them especially. This flick pulls no punches, it makes you feel uncomfortable and it makes you think and there are some truly hilarious moments from start to finish. This came out in 2010 and I don’t think that many people know about it.

Super straight forward movie review for me on this one: I loved Silver Linings Playbook. The story of two completely messed up, completely lost and lonely people who come together at their recovery phase.

Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence are simply brilliant as Pat and Tiffany. The dialog is perfect, honest and so well delivered that they feel and act like believably broken people. Their chemistry together is remarkable and I even liked Robert De Niro as Pat’s father (whenever I see De Niro in a recent movie, I usually can’t shake the ‘there’s De Niro!’ reminder. Same with Al Pacino.) They even got Chris Tucker to come out of hiding for a fun little role!

It’s a touching movie that looks at mental illness and relationships that left me feeling like I watched on of the best movies of the year. I thought there were a few odd camera shot choices (really abrupt and dramatic zooms) that distracted me, but SLP deserved all the attention it got for the 2012 awards season.

Elysium is writer/director Neil Blomkamp’s second movie. That name alone meant I was going to see it. District 9 is arguably the best sci-fi movie released in the last decade, so I had high hopes for Blomkamp’s follow up. What I got was a good, but not great movie.

District 9 was a real breath of fresh air. It was really original, it came out of nowhere, had fantastic no name actors and looked insane for having a small ($30 million) budget. District 9 is just awesome. I can’t fault much of anything on a technical level for Elysium. Many of those high standards carried over from D9. In fact, Sharlto Copley is in this film and he’s done a huge character shift. In D9 he was the nobody turned reluctant hero through horrific circumstances. In Elysium he is a fantastic villain, the rabid merc Kruger, chasing down the hero Max (Matt Damon). Damon is great in this too, he’s proven he can pull off action the Bourne series and he makes for a likable hero.

Story wise, I found Elysium to be too predictable and heavy handed. In 130 years, Elysium is a space station that holds the incredibly wealthy. Earth is more or less dying out. Pollution is choking it out, the human population is way too high to be sustained by what’s left. Elysium is Eden, a floating utopia with amazing healthcare. It’s kinda silly how awesome it is. The people in charge of Elysium do all they can to keep the undesirables out. Back on Earth, Max gets seriously sick from work and has 5 days to get to Elysium for a cure.

Now my problems. You can see every step of where this movie goes before it happens. There’s not much finesse going on here. The message that all humans are equal is made early and made often. It wisely avoids going for a “us vs them” wealth inequality or immigration and focuses on healthcare. People don’t need to die in the streets for any reason when a solution is there. But the movie never let’s that sit and keeps reminding you every 20 minutes. Plus, the healthcare McGuffin Machine is a real Messiah like device. The thing can do anything with just a few sweeps of a laser. Lay down in this thing and it can heal anything as long as you aren’t brain dead or your heart is missing from your body. The movie shows us a world in 130 years that we’ve completely mastered our biology and it feels too sci-fi perfect because the machine is so simple. No matter what it is, blood disorders, genetic diseases, broken bones, body reconstruction, it just takes a wave of a wand to cure.

While I was hoping for more, I still liked Elysium quite a bit. Definitely one of the better movies released this summer, it stands as a really good sci-fi movie. The future tech is really well visualized, it looks and sounds great and the action is really striking. Held down by a capable cast, Elysium is a movie to see.

The Man with the Iron Fists is RZA’s love letter to kung fu movies. It’s a hell of an achievement too! He fell in love with kung fu movies when he was 9, infused the culture into his rap group The Wu Tang Clan and made it all the way to China to direct a major motion picture he co-wrote.

The story goes that a shipment of gold is heading through the Jungle Village. Rival gangs, assassins and the government clash over the gold where the local black smith is caught in the middle. His only goal was to make enough money to escape the area with his girlfriend, but the new leader of the Lion gang puts an end to that. A classic tale of revenge and justice mixed with flying fists and feet.

RZA touches on all the classic step stones of the old kung fu flicks, monks, meditation, cool weapons, wire work, fights a plenty, elaborate and gorgeous costumes, super powerful villains and characters with awesome names (Jack Knife, Poison Dagger, Madam Blossom, Lady Silk).

If you like kung fu movies, check this out lickity split. There’s some solid action, if a bit too quick cut, but there’s a lot of great ideas and love on display here. Congrats to RZA on making his boyhood dream come true.

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Huntersis a spin on the Grimm’s fairytale. Hansel and Gretel are woken up by their mother and father in the middle of the night. Their father takes them out to the woods for a unknown reason where they are separated. They kids stumble upon a house made of candy where they get trapped by a witch with some serious ill intent. But the kids fight back and kill the witch, which starts their career as which bounty hunters!

Jump forward many years and the brother and sister are really good at what they do. They have custom weapons, they’ve become knows as the go to people for village witch problems. The next hour or so of the movie is a romp to stop a devious witch plan to sacrifice 12 children so that they can become immune to fire, making these witches even more dangerous.

It’s a cool monster movie. These are some vicious witches, they each have their own unique design and are dispatched in different ways, The weapons Hansel and Gretel have a really cool, the fights are creative and mostly well done (a lot of fast editing), the effects are very good too (the emphasis on making explosions extra shrapnel-y for the 3D is tiresome and gross though). Edward the Troll is one of my favorite movie creatures now. It’s actually like the witch version of Blade; comic book fantasy.

Good cast and story that’s set up nicely for a sequel. It’s rated R for violence and language, both of which seemed to be in there to try and make it edgy. The gore fits considering what’s going on and there are good moments in there (decapitations, quartering, full body explosions) the cursing always felt out of place to me. Great rental for a rainy day.

The To Do Listis in the high school coming of age genre. Here, it’s 1993 and Brandy Klark (Aubrey Plaza) is the class valedictorian and feels pressure to become more sexually experienced before college starts. She takes it on like it’s an AP course. She writes a To Do list with different colored markers, looking up terms that she doesn’t know. It seems like everyone she knows is more experienced than her, so she turns to her two friends, her older sister and even her mother to get advise on how to make her love life blossom.

It’s a funny movie that is way more raunchy than I thought it was going to be. Some of the stuff you see Aubrey do stands right next to the most notorious stuff that the American Pie movies did. The cast is great, I really liked the 90’s setting and it felt like an honest view of sexuality from a girl’s perspective. Sure things are ramped up to set up and follow through on jokes, but I really enjoyed it. I can’t really think of anything I didn’t like (actually, the last joke wasn’t necessary). It was really well made. Perfect run time, good editing and direction, lots of references and homages. This movie snuck out, I don’t think many people know about it. I think it’ll catch a big audience when it’s released to home viewership.

The original Evil Dead came out in 1981 and is a sacred cow of the horror genre. It pushed the genre at the time, was made with nothing but sweat, blood and passion and started more than one long lasting career in the industry. Two more sequels came out over a few more years and then nothing. People have been bugging Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell to make another one ever since. Last year, a remake was announced which raised a few eyebrows.

With the release coming up, I re-watched the original to refresh myself and keep a better eye on what new vision the new kids had come up with. Now, I think this 2013 movie is one of the more successful horror reboots (John Carpenter’s The Thing and 2004’s Dawn of the Dead topping that list for sure). This new movie respects the original while going into new directions that make it stand on its own. It’s not an exact retread of the same material, but a new extension of it.

Evil Dead helped make the ‘cabin in the woods’ horror trope and the remake sticks with that. They use the set up that Mia is addicted to heroin and her friends (one is a nurse) and her estranged brother bring her up to an old family vacation cabin to detox. They’re gonna keep her there for a last ditch effort to get her clean as she nearly overdosed on her last bender. It’s a weird set up that I can’t make up my mind if I like it or not. It does work as in I could see someone actually doing this thinking it would work. Plus it has the added bonus of explaining the early paranormal events as, “she’s crazy from the dope with drawl, she’s having fits and we just have to ride it out with it.” So that adds to the audience tension as the movie slowly and steadily slides down a hill into hell on Earth. But on the other hand it just seems like a crummy idea to think that it’d be okay for someone to detox away from professionals, aside from one person who says they know what they’re doing. Someone might end up dead just from that, never mind waking the evil dead that hangs out over there.

Now, for he actual evil, the book of the dead is used again (it has a different cover though). It’s found in the basement under shady circumstances and of course an idiot has to read the incantation that lets demonic evil out to possess the living. This is probably my biggest complaint, as Eric goes through some extra leg work to read the text. In the original, it’s a tape recorder that they find and play back, completely oblivious to what’s on it. The incantation is read aloud and cue horror. Here, there are warnings scrawled all over the book, in English with notes around the horrific pictures. The instructions are even scratched out and Curious Eric rubs them with a paper and pencil to read what was clearly meant to be buried and lost forever. Obviously there would be no movie without this, but the way it goes down makes me nuts. The “Oh, come on!” factor while watching him do it is crazy, but I think that is the point. There’s no way for him to know the devil is actually cracking his knuckles on the other side of the door, only the viewer knows. The 5 actors were all fine, no one really jumped out as me as terrific or bad to me. Although the blonde girl was more of piece of the background until she got possessed, I think she stood around and blinked more than talked in the time she was on screen.

So what follows is madness of the greatest kind. Just like the original, the evil goes after each kid one at a time, possessing one more at each horrific encounter. This movie touches on the infamous moments of the original with the tree and chainsaws, but changes them to make them new and inventive. Plus they came up with some really inventive showpieces which are something to see. The gore effects are really phenomenal with all practical on set work. If they snuck some CG touches, I couldn’t tell. It’s really effective stuff and sits right in line with the spirit of the Evil Dead films as they go wild with the gore and splatter. In fact, I love the way this movie looks and sounds. I’m really impressed with Fede Alvarez’s direction. He’s got a great eye, there’s a lot of awesome camera work and shots that match with the madness. He’s got a few Sam Raimi wood run cams (which is a must) sprinkled throughout, the spooky and tension is often held together with great blocking and camera movement. The end is an absolute scream, they came up with a great finale set piece that makes a new hero for the franchise.

I can see why Raimi and company gave this movie a green light, they trusted these new film makers with their world and it worked. It would be great if this spawned a direct sequel or got Raimi and Campbell the jump they need to bring Ash back one more time for another run through hell. I’m curious to see what someone would think if they saw the remake before seeing the original. Have them see a similar story with the same intentions but with modern movie making techniques compared to the dated visuals of 1981. The suspense of the original is still there, but it looks so crusty and fake, which makes new viewers roll their eyes and dismiss it now.

Oh, the joys of a quality summer blockbuster! Director Guillermo del Toro is one of my favorites and I’ve been waiting for Pacific Rim for quite some time. It met my expectations.

In the not too distant future, a dimensional rift opens at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Massive monsters emerge from this rift, demolishing everything in it’s reach. After 4 of these beasts emerge to rampage and kill within a few years time span, the citizens of Earth ban together to create the “Jaeger” project to defend the planet . These giant, man piloted robots prove to be far my effective than military strikes. So much so, that the robots and their pilots become superstars on the world stage. Things look good for humanity as each “Kaiju” that appears is crushed by our Jaeger’s. But then things take a turn for the worse. The Kaiju become bigger and more advanced and appear more frequently. Jaegers start losing their fights.

Raleigh is a pilot of one of the Jaeger’s, “Gipsy Danger”, along with his brother (it takes 2 human pilots to manage a Jaeger). They are on the front lines when the tide turns, Raleigh watches and experiences his brother die right in front of him during battle. Raleigh leaves the program for many years until his old boss comes knocking. The Kaiju are winning and Raleigh is needed for one last desperate push to end the war for all: the rift must be closed.

The movie is set up very quickly and smartly from the very start of the movie. We are quickly brought up to speed with what’s going on, the technology behind the Jaeger’s and what’s at stake here. The rest is the trip to save the world. Putting the teams together, coming up with a plan to close the rift and then going on the last mission. Of course the Kaiju have other plans and some of the best action scenes unfold in front of your dazzling eyes. The scale and visceral impact is just staggering. The SFX are world class, top of the line, Oscar worthy caliber. Everything looks amazing. The designs of the Jaeger’s and Kaiju are so cool. The animation is shockingly good. It looks and sounds so real that this insanity is totally believable.

It’s a very straight forward and concise story that’s got goofy characters, military machismo and buck wild action pieces. Some people say it’s stupid and too simple, but I don’t agree. I like the vibe that the movie establishes and keeps. It’s a lot like watching a quality anime, just enough believability and spirit to keep it fun but cuts a lot of unnecessary and insulting garbage that bogs down many other movies in this genre (looking at you Transformers). It all hums along and works with the added lore that is discovered as it progresses.

I had so much fun watching Pacific Rim. It’s a love letter to Guillermo del Toro’s youth, the monster and science fiction movies that shaped his creative eye and made him want to become a film maker. Godzilla, just about every mech based anime and manga get a nod to the inspiration of Pacific Rim. Using those past works as a frame, del Toro has gleefully made his own sand box filled with gigantic toys and invites you to come play with him. It totally sucked me in and I was smiling and laughing along watching the pilots pump their legs and gyrate around, their Jaegers matching every move to crush evil into chum. If I was 10 I’d say this is the best thing I’ve ever watched in my entire life.