The Avengers (2012)

Tags

Chris Evans, Drama, Fantasy, Joss Whedon, Mark Ruffalo, Movies, Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Science Fiction, The Avengers

puny review…

It’s good.  Real good.  Way to go Joss Whedon.

I haven’t even seen Incredible Hulk, Captain America, or Thor, and I didn’t feel like I was too far behind.

My only complaint would be that Loki wasn’t the most exciting villain.  Or maybe it was the performance by Tom Hiddleston that I wasn’t impressed with.  It’s hard to say.  It wasn’t terrible, but I think a more menacing villain usually works better.  He struck me as more bratty than menacing.

Most surprising element = how much I enjoyed Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow.  Whedon knows how to write interesting female characters that can also kick some tail, and Scarlett did a good job with all of it.

I probably don’t need to really sell anybody on this particular movie, but it’s definitely entertaining and worth a watch on the big screen.  Even the crying baby and talking kids in the theater didn’t ruin it!

Loki and a few hazy plot developments drop it to saaaayyy… 8.4/10

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Sunshine (2007)

Tags

Benedict Wong, Chris Evans, Cillian Murphy, Cliff Curtis, Drama, Hiroyuki Sanada, Michelle Yeoh, Movie, Rose Byrne, Science Fiction, Sunshine, Troy Garity

you were able to download the latest episode of America's Next Top Model?? play it, play it!!

R

Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, Cliff Curtis, Michelle Yeoh, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong, Troy Garity

Cassie: It’s different…being afraid that you won’t make it back home…and then knowing that you won’t…

A crew of 8 astronauts is on a mission to the Sun.  The Sun is dying, but the “stellar bomb” carried by their spacecraft will hopefully reignite it and bring the Earth out of the icy grave it has been descending into.

On the surface, this is nothing more than a silly science fiction movie with a questionable scientific premise and the usual collection of personalities on board a spacecraft.  For some reason, though, this works well.  At least, for most of the movie it does.

Why does it work?  Well, first of all, you get good performances from most everybody, especially Murphy and Yeoh.  Also, even if Cassie isn’t a totally believable character, Rose Byrne is a plus because…well, I think I’ve adequately expressed my adoration for her in my review of Adam.

Another reason the movie works is that director Danny Boyle presents everything with the respect and sense of awe that it deserves.  I particularly liked a short scene where they all gather anxiously in the observation area in order to get a glimpse of the planet Mercury.  It’s just a little ball of rock zipping around the Sun, but for them it’s beautiful.  Those emotions come right out of the screen and into my head, as does the seriousness of the mission these people are on.  So much so that any time that mission (and their lives) was threatened, I found myself tensing up as though my own future was riding on their success or failure.

Sound over-dramatic?  Eh, probably, but that’s what a good movie does.  It pulls you into its story.

Admittedly, the last 10-15 minutes is not as cerebral or realistic as the rest of the movie, but that ending didn’t ruin it for me like it did for some other people.  I’d rather have seen some good philosophical conversations than the theatrical thrills that are presented, but maybe there was enough of that philosophical stuff early on to justify more of a slam-bang finale.

Always remember to recalculate your ship’s shield angles when you alter the course you’re taking to get to the Sun.

10 – .7 for lacking some originality in story and characters – .3 for that questionable science – 1 for the end devolving into action thrill mode = 8.0

Push (2009)

Tags

Action, Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning, Movie, Push, Science Fiction

drawings may not be to scale...

PG-13

Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning

Henry Carver: Is there anything else she might’ve put in your head?  I’m only asking because I don’t want to be shot in the face for screwing some made-up sister you don’t really have.
Agent Mack: I don’t have a sister?

Good question.  Let’s see…apparently there are some people who are born with various psychic abilities.  For example, some can put thoughts in other people’s heads, some can see the future, while others can move things with their minds.  The government, or the so called “Division”, is after a girl who escaped after being the first survivor of an injection meant to boost her powers.  She escaped to Hong Kong and took with her a syringe of the special drug.  Only Nick (Evans) and Cassie (Fanning) can help her.

This is a mess of a movie.  First, I’ll list a few positives.  It looks good and has some pretty good special effects.  It’s very colorful and Hong Kong is an interesting location for it to all go down.  Also, Dakota Fanning is clearly a very good actress.  She can do dramatic and subtle equally well, and she manages to be just about the only interesting performance in the movie.  Djimon Hounsou, as the villain, manages to be somewhat interesting, but he’s really not on screen much.  Camilla Belle barely even says a word in the movie, even though she’s the central driving force to the plot.  That had to be a pretty boring role for her to play.

This thing is yet another film that’s like a big mix of other movies.  It seems to borrow from X-Men (and other comic book movies), Firestarter, the Bourne movies (with the crazy camera work), and even Total Recall.  The mix, however, doesn’t work very well.  At times the movie tries to over explain things with a lot of exposition, but then the next minute things will be happening that have no explanation whatsoever.  It makes for a very confusing movie watching experience.

It’s almost like they did what Nick does in the movie, and tried to make things up as they went.  If they needed a character in a scene, they’d just suddenly show up out of nowhere.  Though sometimes characters showed up and situations arose for seemingly no real reason at all.  There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as to when and why the characters’ powers do or don’t work.  Why did Carver’s power not work on Nick at the end?  How did Cassie suddenly one-up the lolli-pop girl?

I like what they were trying to do here, but they needed a more focused examination of the script to make sure everything flowed well and made sense.

10 – 3 for just not making a lot of sense – 1 for mostly dull characters – 1 for annoying hyper-editing + .3 for Fanning’s performance = 5.3