IMMORTALS is the best new release this week

Today is 11/11/11 and there was a big marketing push around that for a few movies, particularly IMMORTALS. But what else came out today? Apparently, not much in terms of quality...

J. Edgar has the pedigree with Leonardo DiCaprio and Clint Eastwood involved. However, the reviews have been pretty mixed, given that caliber of talent.

Jack and Jill is so obviously terrible that I really don't need to get into it here.

And that leaves IMMORTALS. I saw it a couple weeks ago and while it's not a great Greek epic and certainly doesn't live up to 300, it was definitely an enjoyable watch thanks to some stellar visuals, amazing 3D, and visionary fight scenes. You can ready my full review on NapiersNews.com. 

And for those of my readers who are also fans of The Vampire Diaries, the evil king's sniveling sidekick is TVD's Klaus! He's way better at being evil than being evil's sidekick though. I was pretty disappointed he didn't get a chance to really shine - he was basically the movie's punching bag throughout.

If you see IMMORTALS this weekend, let me know your thoughts in the comments!

Advance Review: RED

I was lucky enough to catch a free screening of this flick earlier this week. Filled with action, laughs, and some romance thrown in, I really think everyone would enjoy this comic book adaptation.

DC Comics does not have the film track record that marvel does. They have some shining examples like the Batman series, but when it comes to bringing lesser known characters to life they just haven't had much success. Just look at Jonah Hex for a perfect example of this.

The story revolves around Frank (Bruce Willis) after he's been tagged RED: Retired Extremely Dangerous. While he's out of the business, someone deemed him too dangerous and knowledgable of US secrets to stick around. His crush, played hilariously by Mary Louis Parker, gets swept into the madness as she soon becomes a target too. Frank then uncovers a conspiracy that puts all his old cohorts in danger. He reunites the old team, consisting of Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren, to keep them alive and take out whoever it was that tagged them all RED.

I loved the humor they were able to infuse throughout the film. Helen Mirren got some good laughs, but the biggest were for Mary Louis Parker and John Malkovich. Mary Louis was the fish out of water, the civilian swept into the spy madness, and she handled the shock and awe supremely well. And no one does crazy as well as John Malkovich! He had the most gags but also had some of the best gun action.

The action was huge and oftentimes hilarious. Given the age of the cast, you may think they couldn't pull of fight scenes, but you'd be mistaken. There's a rough and violent fist fight between Bruce Willis and Karl Urban that elicited applause from the audience. There were a few scenes, like the fist fight and the bazooka gun fight seen in the commercials, that had the audience clapping for the awesome action and exploding people.

It was a nice change of pace to see senior citizens kicking butt. While I don't know how many people in that age bracket will see this movie, I think it's got a nice unintentional anti-agist message within it.

If you're going to the movies this weekend, skip Jackass 3D with it's juvenile, gross-out humor and check out RED instead.

Related Article:
Helen Mirren on RED, guns, and Harvey Pikar

Advance Review: Buried

It would have made Hitchcock proud

I saw a sneak peek of Buried at USC earlier this week, was really glad I got the opportunity. It was a tightly wound, suspenseful film that kept me on the edge of my seat for the entire 95 minutes. Ryan Reynolds may be known for his good looks and roles in The Proposal and Van Wilder, but this film finally made me see him as a truly talented dramatic actor. He caries the entire film and I believed his terror and will to survive completely.

It's a tightly paced film with a new twist or complication to up the ante every few minutes. As if being buried alive isn't enough, he has to deal with terrorists, ransom, elements of nature, a war happening just a few feet above him, and so much more. My heart was pounding the whole time!

There's a reason this was the first distribution deal from Sundance. I highly recommend you see it when it comes out on October 8.

Advance Review: MacGruber

Not familiar with MacGruber? For a quick crash course, check out the SNL sketch:



If you enjoyed that sketch, it's pretty much guaranteed you will enjoy the movie. It's fairly short, clocking in at just an hour fifteen minutes, but when you consider it's based on 30-second-long sketches it's pretty impressive they were able to make a full plot line out of it.

With hilarious, inappropriate moments, MacGruber was a whole lot of fun to watch. Some critics are saying it's the best SNL movie since Wayne's World. I don't know about that, but I will say it's the best comedy since The Hangover last year. If you like raunchy humor including everything from fart/anus jokes, hilariously wrong sex scenes, and defacing corpses, you'll laugh throughout.

While I expected Will Forte and Kirsten Wiig to be fully committed to these outlandish characters, I was happily surprised with Ryan Phillippes turn in comedy. While he plays the straight man to Will Forte's MacGruber, he does have a few moments to shine and elicit laughs. One of my favorite moments is when MacGruber uses him as a human shield (it's in the trailer so I'm not spoiling anything). The entire time Ryan is convulsing and just selling that he's getting shot everywhere on that bullet proof jacket. Another highlight for me was the ridiculousness of the celery stick trick.

The comedy is raunchy and the violence is surprisingly graphic, but if you've got that R rating why not just go balls to wall with it, right?

My recommendation: If you enjoyed the trailer or the SNL sketch, you'll love the film. It's not selling itself or trying to be anything other than what it flat out tells you, and you gotta love it for that.

I posted the trailer within my Most Anticipated Summer Movies post, but here it is again for your convenience:

Advance Review: Step Up 3D

For dancing movies, no one really cares about the plot. It's all about the dancing and routines! Now, a dance movie that has a good storyline is just icing on the cake. Unfortunately, this is just cake. The plot had a lot of holes and I wasn't fully satisfied with the ending. One of the relationships felt forced and unnecessary. But again, the plot doesn't matter. I was so enthralled with the dancing and battle storyline that I didn't even notice these holes while watching; it was only during the focus group after the film, when I was forced to look back and reflect on the weaknesses, that I noticed these short comings.

The dance battles were memorable and highlighted by the fact that they were in 3D. And this is 3D as it was meant to be made - shot in 3D instead of converting it after the fact. The 3D made the dancing even more jaw dropping. They had the battles set so they could fully use 3D to its maximum potential. The first battle took place in a warehouse with chalk all over the floor. The chalk highlighted certain moves and made the 3D really pop. This style was used again in another dance battle which was set in a small pool of water. Great dancing and footwork, while also using the water to make moves more dramatic and exciting.

This is the third film in a series, but you really don't need to know anything about the first two movies to enjoy it. I saw the first one (Channing Tatum's big break) and loved it, but had no desire to see the second installment. What drew me to Step Up 3D was it's connection to So You Think You Can Dance, with Adam Shankman as director and many of the stars from Season 4-6 in minor roles, and the 3D element. The basic story is that the "Moose" character from the second film moves to NYC to go to NYU but gets wrangled into the dancing world despite trying to focus on his engineering degree. There's a cute romance and a heated rivalry that spice things up along the way to the World Jam - the final battle that crowns a dance crew champion and awards a prize that will supposedly solve all their problems. Again, this story isn't important. With at least 5 riveting dance routines that feature some of the best dancers around - Twitch, Legacy, Mad Chad, etc, you're in for a great time.

My recommendation: See this film in theaters (in 3D!) if you have ever liked a dance movie, ever.

Watch the trailer below, in case you missed it the first time I posted it:

Jonah Hex: What a Hot Mess

I was (un)lucky enough to catch a test screening of Jonah Hex last weekend. I was looking forward to this flick as I'm a fan of Megan Fox and I thought it sounded interesting. However, the western/fantasy mash-up has failed again. The only things in this genre that I've enjoyed have been Brisco County Jr. and Back to the Future 3, and even then that was the weakest installment in that series.

Jonah Hex was a slow, chaotic mess. The action scenes were up to par, but otherwise everything else was lacking. Megan Fox was hardly used so I didn't have any emotional connection when she got in trouble. I don't know if that was writing or if her scenes were cut down in post.

I will give John Malcovich credit - he knows how to play a villian. His Turnbull was maniacal and heartless and the highlight of the film for me.

My recommendation: skip this movie. Wait til its  on DVD or cable. At only an hour and a half, it dragged.

Still tempted to see it? Watch the trailer below:




Jonah Hex comes out on June 18. The fact that the trailer was just released is just another hint at how plagued this production has been. There have been rewrites, reshoots, and overall mayhem that could explain this disappointing finished product.

Related Link:
Josh Brolin Wants 'Jonah Hex' To Be 'More Absurdist Than It Already Is'
'We're still in the process of solidifying that tone,' he tells MTV News.

Movie Review: The Losers

Update: The Losers opens today to mixed reviews. Keep reading to see my review from last month when I saw an advance screening.

This week I got to be at one of the first screenings for the new movie The Losers. Watch the trailer below:



The trailer is what got me interested in seeing the film, and it lived up to most of my expectations. This was a fast, fun little action movie with solid performances from the cast. The cast did a good job with the material they were given, but Chris Evans stood out from the rest. He brought humor and depth to his supporting role, and hopefully this bodes well for his turn as Captain America. I've been a fan of his since Not Another Teen Movie and The Perfect Score. He has consistently been the best part of a mediocre movie, and that trend doesn't end here.

The movie starts out strong, though kind of fizzles at the end. The opening scene was fantastic: it got me interested in the story and these characters and kept me on the edge of my seat. It kept up this pace until about halfway through when Roque has his big moment. After that, the story shifts and just never really recovers. The ending action scene should have been better than the opening, but it dragged and I was no longer invested as much.

While the version I saw did not have all of the special effects finished, what was there was exciting and great. I particularly liked the fight sequences and explosions, but what stands out most is the display of the effect of the "snook" weapon. (Did no one involved in this project think of that South Park episode and consider changing the name?)

The music throughout was distracting, but that is probably going to be changed a bit before the movie is released, since it seemed like a common complaint on the survey. If they end up changing some of the music, then I think it will really help the second half - the action scenes are all set to music and that was also part of the pacing problem I mentioned earlier.

Despite the music and lackluster 2nd half, I would still recommend this for a great weekend matinee or rental. While not necessarily worth the $12 it costs to see a movie in LA, it's definitely worth seeing at some point.

Rating: 2.5 out of 4 stars.

Bran Nue Day

I was lucky enough to catch an advance screening of Bran Nue Dae, a very unique new film that is making its way to America. It follows Willie, a young Aborigine, who has to decide between studying to be a priest or follow his heart to be with the girl of his dreams. He ends up on a haphazard adventure as he tries to make his way home from the big city. The movie is filled with interesting characters and catchy tunes. The shots of Australia are just beautiful, I wish they had shown even more. It's fast-paced and full of fun, but also manages to shine a light on Aborigine culture, something we know very little about here in the states. At a short 88 minutes, I wish it had gone on longer.

You can check out the teaser trailer below:


I really recommend you see it! The landscape shots are gorgeous, but you might want to wait til DVD if you can't justify spending $12 on a movie that isn't even an hour and a half.