I'm a huge fan of Jurassic Park, and despite the less than stellar sequels, The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III, I had high hopes for the long-awaited Jurassic World. If all you're looking for in a review is a recommendation, you can stop here: Do something better with the money. You could go see the spectacular Mad Max. You could grab a burrito at Qdoba. You could light the money on fire. All of these would be better uses. Those are pretty harsh words, so let's start digging into why setting your hard-earned money ablaze is better than seeing Jurassic World. The biggest issue with the film is the writing. The dialog feels like it was written by somebody who won too many arguments with himself in the shower. Far too many lines come across as clichéd. At no point did I find myself thinking, "Yeah, that sounds something like a normal conversation." The problem wasn't the subject matter, it was the fact that most characters seemed like they were trying to come up with the perfectly deep line for their yearbook quote so everybody would know how smart they are. Similarly, we all know the trite plot : Dinosaur gets loose and does bad things while people weigh dollars vs human lives. In doing so, Jurassic World is an allegory for the Jurassic Park franchise--Somebody has a great idea, it gets away from them and instead of stopping it immediately they favor money over people. All in all, if you want a fun action flick, go see Mad Max instead. Jurassic World is a major disappointment and should be avoided by nearly everyone.
Editor's note: Supa Hot Fire is a guest reviewer who likes to provide his take on films. He is a "hater" at his core and will often find only the flaws in films. His reviews may contain mature content and/or language intended only for mature aduiences; reader discretion is advised. His reviews and opinions do not reflect the views and opinions of the owner of this blog.
Rating: Hilarious/5
I was originally tricked into watching this film because I thought it was about an awesome new superhero. To prevent this from happening again, the movie should be renamed "Dumb Dude Gets Eaten by a Bear". It would have been a way better title, and some of you uncultured people would have seen it by now. Who should watch "Grizzly Man", you ask?
People who hate hippies
People who love the outdoors and hate hippies
People who enjoy great narrators and hate hippies
People who like seeing somebody get their comeuppance
People who think Timothy Treadwell was a jackass (Warning: This will be you within 10 minutes of the film)
Bear enthusiasts
Since that list has covered just about everybody, I'm going to assume you stopped reading and watched "Grizzly Man". If you haven't, I know a guy who will lend you his copy (Mike Harrington). So, now that everybody has seen the film, wasn't it awesome? More appropriate titles would have been "Nature Kills Hippie" or maybe "Werner Herzog Makes Dead Guy's Friends Relive His Death". What gets a little lost in the fixation on Treadwell's ludicrous assertion that the bears love him, is the love story of a 46-year-old moron and 37-year-old physician assistant/moron, Amie Huguenard. It's the story of a man that believes wild bears know who he is and the woman who loved him so much she knowingly put herself in harm's path for that love. Isn't that what we're all searching for, the kind of love that lets you get eaten by a bear together? People may call me insensitive, but this is nature's ultimate triumph, removing two imbeciles from the gene pool before they could pollute it. Bravo to nature for reminding us not to screw with it in the most hilariously appropriate way possible. This all boils down to what makes this movie so enjoyable: Schadenfreude delivered by a man who's country created it.
Having won Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor at both the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild awards, and having been released yesterday, I decided to give "Dallas Buyers Club" my attention for two hours last night. Ron Woodruff (Matthew McConaughey) is a rodeo cowboy and oil rig electrician in Texas who finds out he's not only HIV positive, but that it has progressed to AIDS. Now, in 1985, for a rough and tough Texas cowboy to find out he has a disease largely associated with the homosexual community, it's probably a bit like being a blind white-supremacist and then finding out you're black. Woodruff is given 30 days to live and told there are no drugs he can take to get better. Upset with his doctors and his situation, Woodruff decides to take matters into his own hands; he begins importing drugs and then giving them away to members who pay to be part of his club. He runs the Dallas Buyers Club with the help of Rayon, a transgender woman played by Jared Leto. Rayon and Woodruff met while getting treatment from Dr. Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner) at Dallas Mercy Hospital. Leto, McConaughey, and Garner all do a wonderful job portraying their characters; which is nice because character study films are only enjoyable when the people playing the characters are believable. When I think about who should win Best Actor, I'm picking between McConaughey and Chiwetel Ejiofor from "12 Years a Slave". They both deserve recognition for driving the action in their films. I'd compare McConauhey to Peyton Manning and Ejiofor to Tom Brady: McConaughey delivers a stunning performance with a phenomenal supporting cast, but Ejiofor gets overlooked while doing more-with-less than most could. I'm not saying the supporting cast of "12 Years a Slave" is poor, far from it, what I'm saying is that Ejiofor brings the rest of the cast up to his level in his performance. Leto is believable as the drug-addled trans woman, but he wasn't the best supporting actor of the year; Barkhad Abdi was in "Captain Phillips". I don't know what the message is when playing a transgender woman pretty much gets you the award, but I know the same thing occurs when you play somebody with a mental illness. Regardless, Leto is superb, just not more essential to the film or its cast than Abdi's pirate, Muse. People I've talked to say they have little interest in "Dallas Buyers Club" because it's depressing. Truth be told, the movie isn't depressing, it's empowering. It's the tale of a man who decided to take life by the horns and ride it out on his own terms.
"How can they send us out here without some security?" asks a crew member after the MV Maersk Alabama survives a scare with a pirate skiff. It's a great question that never gets answered, but like Captain Rich Phillips' legacy, is still making news. In the end, I don't care about what actually happened nearly as much as I suppose I should. For those of us that are fans of the Bourne Trilogy + 1, we're already familiar with Paul Greengrass's use of hyper-realistic cinematography. What this means for those of you who couldn't watch the second and third Bourne movies due to the shaky camera, you will have some trouble with this one, but not nearly as much. The first fifteen minutes was the only time that trying to track the main characters left me feeling motion-sick. Thankfully, nothing really happens in those fifteen minutes, so you could just close your eyes if need be. The film really gets going when we first see our pirates, led by Barkhad Abdi's Abduwali Muse, and it never really stops. That's what I really enjoyed about this movie, there is literally never a dull moment. Tom Hanks does a great job as Phillips, but Abdi's portrayal of the now-convicted Muse, upstages him. In a year when Christoph Waltz wasn't in a major motion picture, Abdi is my vote for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Greengrass does a great job taking you along for the ride; you genuinely feel as if you're there: I caught myself thinking "Oh, they're going to stop those pirates from getting the ladder on the ship" knowing full well they weren't and being disappointed and a little worried when they didn't. Greengrass's hyper-realism made the ride more enjoyable, and when it's all over, you'll end up feeling just as exhausted yet relieved as Captain Phillips.
Having grown up in literally the best time for a kid who enjoys animated films, I've loved Disney for most of my life. Disney managed to create "Beauty and the Beast", "The Lion King", "Toy Story", "Aladdin", and many other films that not only defined countless childhoods but still stand today as some of the best animated films of all time ("Beauty and the Beast" is a 5/5 film for me.) That being said, in the 2000s, Disney had some trouble maintaining the quality of animated features that the previous decade had seen. I'm pretty sure if you've seen "Brother Bear", "Treasure Planet", and "Home on the Rang", you and the 50 or so other people like you should start a class-action lawsuit against Disney. They owe you, they stole nearly six hours of your life that you'll never get back.Anyway, moving into the last part of the decade through today, the Mouse had more success with films like "Up", "The Princess and the Frog", and "Wreck-It Ralph". "Wreck-It Ralph" was pretty good, admittedly, I'm not a fan of Sarah Silverman, but the movie was solid. Then we have "Frozen". "Frozen" reminds me the most of the Disney movies I had as a kid: The story was familiar, and you knew everything was going to work out in the end for Elsa and the gang, but along the way we had ridiculously good songs thanks to both the voice actors (namely Broadway stars Idina Menzel and Josh Gad) and the songwriting of Robert Lopez ("Avenue Q", "Book of Mormon") and wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez. Jonathan Groff and Kristen Bell both did well, but Gad's snowman, Olaf, steals the show. You don't need to be a kid to see this movie and have a great time, although its message is a little off for young children. How could "run away and live in an ice-castle because you're self-conscious about your super powers" (wait, is this "Superman") not be seen as a little too strong of a message to kids about overcoming obstacles? Regardless, the film is the closest thing I've seen to "Beauty and the Beast" in quite some time, and I only hope the future holds similarly great things.
Loosely based on the actual FBI operation "Abscam", David O. Russell's latest work is packed with quite talented actors. Christian Bale does well as the lead con artist, and Amy Adams pairs well with him as a slightly crazier con artist. Bradley Cooper was enjoyable as the eager but overzealous FBI agent, and Jennifer Lawrence looked like she had fun playing the manic depressive housewife of Christian Bale. Jeremy Renner is once again underrated as the well-intentioned but gullible mayor of Camden, New Jersey. Renner's character is the only one I found myself genuinely interested in, as the others were rather unlikable. Louis C.K. plays Bradley Cooper's fun-hating boss, and while he's initially seen as a dud, it later becomes clear he might be the only sane person in the movie. The real problem with this film is that the actors did their jobs really well, but the rest of the movie just lets them down. David O. Russell puts out a performance closer to the bizarre "I Heart Huckabees" than the successful "Silver Linings Playbook". The message of the movie is supposed to be "Everyone Hustles to Survive", but all we really see are three idiots, the mayor they took advantage of, and an unstable housewife. I don't know why this movie had to be made, that is, I don't know why this story needed to be told. All in all, the acting was solid, but the story and the direction were subpar.
This film comes from the "Popular on Netflix" selection on Netflix.
I'd like to think of myself as a guy who's in the know when it comes to what people like in movies, but after watching this remake, I'm not quite sure about that. The opening sequence doesn't even try to hide that this is a movie based on another bad movie, "Red Dawn" (1984). Instead of going with something like, "Based on a book by Kevin Reynolds," it simply states, "Based on the movie Red Dawn." I'm not quite sure how much work needs to go into making a movie based on a similarly bad movie, but from what I've seen, not much did. The highlight of the film was in the first 5 minutes when ESPN's Mark Schlereth is the head coach of the Wolverine's football team. Seriously, it's the best part of the film. I watched the rest of it so you don't have to. It's like somebody at MGM said, "Let's remake a bad movie with bad actors but not ironically." I love Chris Hemsworth as Thor and Josh Hutcherson as Peeta, but here they fall flat. Red Dawn had such a great chance to be a "so bad it's good" movie but was simply a "so bad you turn it off" movie.
I'm a huge fan of Jurassic Park, and despite the less than stellar sequels, The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III, I had high hopes for the long-awaited Jurassic World. If all you're looking for in a review is a recommendation, you can stop here: Do something better with the money. You could go see the spectacular Mad Max. You could grab a burrito at Qdoba. You could light the money on fire. All of these would be better uses. Those are pretty harsh words, so let's start digging into why setting your hard-earned money ablaze is better than seeing Jurassic World. The biggest issue with the film is the writing. The dialog feels like it was written by somebody who won too many arguments with himself in the shower. Far too many lines come across as clichéd. At no point did I find myself thinking, "Yeah, that sounds something like a normal conversation." The problem wasn't the subject matter, it was the fact that most characters seemed like they were trying to come up with the perfectly deep line for their yearbook quote so everybody would know how smart they are. Similarly, we all know the trite plot : Dinosaur gets loose and does bad things while people weigh dollars vs human lives. In doing so, Jurassic World is an allegory for the Jurassic Park franchise--Somebody has a great idea, it gets away from them and instead of stopping it immediately they favor money over people. All in all, if you want a fun action flick, go see Mad Max instead. Jurassic World is a major disappointment and should be avoided by nearly everyone.
.jpg)