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8 posts tagged movies
Get Him to the Greek
Jonah Hill, Russell Brand, Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs
Wow - SOOOOO glad I rented this from Redbox!
It’s a movie about a guy who has to transport an aging rock star to a comeback concert, so expecting the movie to NOT be chocked full of drugs, profanity, partial nudity and the like would be ludicrous. Luckily, we didn’t expect it to not have those things.
It’s awful.
It’s a buddybonding-meaningoflife kind of movie and it’s … awful. There are some funny moments (Sean Combs being the highlight of most of them) and the cameos are amusing, but still… don’t spend any more than a dollar on this movie.
We did learn one thing, however: When the world throws you a Jeffrey, rub the furry wall!
2/5 stars
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Jay Baruchel, Nicholas Cage, Alfred Molina
My daughter wanted to watch this one, so I was hoping it would be mildly amusing. Luckily, it was more.
This is a fun family film with a plentiful mix of adventure/humor and I would gladly watch it again. Nick Cage is good in the role of Balthazar. Jay plays his standard stuttering goof, but it works well in his “apprentice” role. Alfred Molina has fast become one of my favorites when it comes to on-screen villains.
As escapism goes, this is an enjoyable couple of hours.
4/5 stars
Marmaduke
Owen Wilson, Lee Pace, George Lopez, Keifer Sutherland
Rented this one at my daughter’s request and I was skeptical to say the least. Still, she really wanted to watch it and I had a code for a free Redbox rental.
It’s actually not completely awful. Granted, Gretchen laughed at the film more than I did, but I did actually laugh a couple of times.
3/5 stars
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley
Yet another video-game-turned-movie, but luckily for everyone, Uwe Boll was NOT involved this time!
This is actually a very fun movie! I would equate it in terms of action/adventure/humor to the Indiana Jones series. The story is entertaining, the characters don’t grate on your nerves and the computer generated parts neither outshine nor get in the way of the film. Best of all, you don’t have to have played any of the games this is derived from to be able to enjoy the movie.
I can easily recommend this as a rental and can honestly say I do not regret our purchase of this disc.
4.5/5 stars
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Zachary Gordon, Robert Capron, Rachael Harris, Steve Zahn
Movie Tagline: I’ll be famous one day, but for now I’m stuck in middle school with a bunch of morons.
The tagline and trailer made it seem like it had sooo much promise. I’ve never read any of the books, but after watching this movie, I don’t think I want to.
The story is dull. Period. The side characters are more interesting than the protagonist. Actually, the main character is a jerk. And he doesn’t really change. Sure, there’s the “moment of truth” towards the end of the film where he has to act more like a rational human being, but that one act alone is NOT enough to atone for all the selfish turdlike behavior he exhibited in the rest of the film.
When the end credits started to roll, my 8-yr-old daughter (who was, in truth, the one who REALLY wanted to watch this movie) turned to me and stated, “Well… THAT was a STUPID movie!”
I couldn’t have summed it up better myself.
2/5 stars
Date Night
Steve Carell, Tina Fey
Two parts to this review: 1) the movie itself, 2) CinemaNow - which is how we watched it.
Date Night is easily one of the funniest films my wife and I have had the pleasure of watching in a long time! Carell and Fey work incredibly well together and were completely believable as a married couple. The story is entertaining and manages to draw you in as it careens out of control without ever getting outlandish. The car chase (?) sequence is high on my list, close to the top of it even, of movie hilarity!
Ironically, I’m not sure this film would go over well with people who’ve just started dating. Regardless, if you’re looking for a great comedy, this should definitely be in your rental queue!
4.5/5 stars
As for CinemaNow, our blu-ray player received an update yesterday that added the service to our viewing options aaaand it came with a $5 coupon/gift certificate… so why not try it, right?
We chose to rent Date Night in HD, which was $4.99 (standard definition was a dollar cheaper) and sat back hoping for the best. It worked, but not without some hiccups.
The HD stream is only stereo, I’m guessing due to bandwidth concerns. Even so, we weren’t even a minute in when the audio fell out of sync with the video. I had to stop/restart the movie twice to correct that.
Irritating.
Then, about halfway through, the system paused the film and told us there was some network congestion and it was switching us to the Standard def version until such time as it cleared up. Just as well since the HD stream seemed to be, uhh, s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d, for lack of a better way to describe it. If you’ve ever watched one of the old Spaghetti Westerns and their “PanaVision”, you understand what I’m talking about. If not, think of a letterboxed movie and then stretch the top & bottom to fill your screen. Or go play with some silly putty and the Sunday comics. Anyway, the SD version looked nearly as good and had NO playback issues with either the audio or video. Oh, and the system did eventually change us back to the HD stream - during the end credits!
If you have access to CinemaNow and haven’t used it, see if you can scrounge up a coupon. It works well enough and they seem to have a fairly large selection. But I would recommend sticking with the standard definition version to save you some cash and a headache.
The Losers
Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Chris Evans, Zoe Saldana, Jason Patric
WOW! I LOVE THIS MOVIE!!!
Just needed to get that out of the way… whew.
So, yeah, this is an entertaining shoot-em-up/blow-em-up that’s just plain fun (emphasis on the fff and the uhh and the nnn)! And any movie that can interest my wife enough to send her 10 PM narcolepsy into remission gets a bonus star!
The casting is perfect and the on-screen chemistry between the entire group is wonderfully engagin; but I have to say I did keep seeing too much of a resemblance between Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Brad Garrett - so I was constantly amazed that Jeff wasn’t fat. I don’t know why.
Jason Patric clearly spent too much of his earlier career trying to play the “Face” - his calling is sooo much more for being the excessively over-the-top “Heavy.“ Personally, his performance is what helped this movie work so well!
If you’re in the mood for an action flick, you could certainly do much worse than The Losers. Me? I’m going to ship the disc back to Netflix and pick up a copy for myself!
5/5 stars
The Book of Eli
Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman
It’s an interesting spin on the post-apocalyptic theme that manages to not feel like every other one of these kinds of films. The story was engaging enough to keep my wife awake for the duration, which is no small feat.
Denzel & Gary both turned in excellent performances, though I do think Mr. Oldman’s role curtailed his ability to go completely over the top.
Oh - and I thought it very brave of Denzel to remove his shirt. He’s clearly not swiping any of Sly Stallone’s HGH.
All in all, a worthy rental. Not sure I’d buy it, though.
4/5 stars
