Annie Review

Did we need another adaption of the musical Annie? That's the exact question that I asked myself when this movie was first announced. I mean, when a movie has been done several times already, there comes a point where I think that movie should just be put on the shelf and Hollywood should just go in different directions with their ideas. I decided that this was probably one of these situations, but yet since I do love the musical Annie, I was willing to give it a shot. If you look at reviews, you'll initially see the 4.5 on IMDb and the 29% on Rotten Tomatoes and will decide immediately that this is a movie worth skipping. However, I'm here to tell you that that would be wrong. First and foremost, this does have a specific target audience, that audience being younger kids. Those kids aren't going to be the ones voting on IMDb or Rotten Tomatoes. I saw this in a theater full of kids and they were having the time of their lives. Second, this movie really isn't that bad. A lot of problems? Yes. Horrible, wretched, and not worth a second of your time? Heck to the no!

If you don't know the storyline of the musical Annie, the basic skeleton is that you have this orphan girl named Annie who lives in a pretty awful orphanage in the 1930's that is under the direction of one Miss Hannigan. All she wants is for her parents to come get her, so she can live a better life. Pretty soon her fortunes start to change as she is able to spend a short time with a wealthy man named Daddy Warbucks and his secretary Grace and together they start to search for Annie's real parents. This version is a bit different, but it still follows that same skeleton. Instead of being in the 1930's, we are in the modern day, but Annie is still an orphan girl who lives under the direction of Miss Hannigan. However, we have a mayoral candidate named Will Stacks (I don't know why we changed his name from Daddy Warbucks to Will Stacks, but oh well) who saves Annie from getting hit by a truck. When the city sees this footage, his points shoot up and so based on the advice of his VP, Grace, and his campaign advisor, Guy, he takes in Annie in order to help his shots at winning mayor increase even more. But pretty soon this shallow motivation of taking Annie becomes meaningful as he starts to realize he actually cares for Annie and wants her to find her parents and be happy.

Typically the character of Annie is a red-headed white girl. One of the more interesting things about this movie is that the first character you see is actually a red-headed white girl named Annie giving a presentation in a class. When she is done, the teachers says she can sit down and calls up the other Annie in the class to go next. This is our main character of Annie and it is a young black girl. It's as if the movie was saying, "Hey look what we're NOT doing. We DIDN'T cast the typically Annie, but instead cast a black girl to play her." At first I thought this was going to be a politically correct version of Annie, but that didn't bother me at all simply because that black girl is Quvenzhané Wallis, who was the youngest nominee for best actress at the Oscars for her role in Beasts of the Southern Wild. And by goodness is she an adorable and talented young actress. She is absolutely amazing as Annie. And for that matter, Jamie Foxx is our black Daddy Warbucks -- or Will Stacks -- and he also does an amazing job. The chemistry between the two of those throughout the movie is just perfect. And for that matter, Grace, as played by Rose Byrne -- a white actress, adds to that making for a great trio of main stars. And it's a good story, too.

However, what really is the worst part of the movie is the actual music, which is disappointing because the music part of a musical really should be the best. Before going into the movie, I actually defended the music. It's obviously auto-tuned, but I think people severely over-react to the idea of auto-tune as if it's inherently bad. It's not. In fact, this severe condemnation gets so out of hand that many times actual singers with actual talent get accused of using auto-tune just because they sang in tune. And often electronic music is also confused with auto-tune. So I am convinced that there are a huge chunk of people in this world that don't even know what auto-tune actually is and thus go around condemning every talented musician as one who uses auto-tune. It's stupid. That said, I will fully admit that this music is poorly done. The problem isn't necessarily that it is auto-tuned and lip-synced. The problem is that it looks lip-synced and sounds unnatural. When you have a group of young girls that have 100 percent perfect pitch as if they were professional singers, it doesn't sound that good. And when you are watching a musical and it's super obvious that they aren't actually singing, that's bad. And this is the case with every single song and THAT got frustrating. So yeah, the music in this movie sucks.

The other horrible part of this movie was a lady by the name of Cameron Diaz who does an absolutely wretched job as Miss Hannigan. She is so over-the-top and so fake that it is probably one of the worst performances of her career. While I really loved Quvenzhané Wallis, Jamie Foxx, and Rose Byrne, I hated Cameron Diaz and it was so bad that she almost single-handedly ruined the entire movie. Also, there were a lot of gags that I just didn't find funny. However, countering that point, every time that I was watching the movie and thought to myself that the gag they just did wasn't funny, the whole theater of kids started bursting out in laughter. Ok. So there were certain parts of the movie that didn't work for me specifically, but did work rather well for the target audience. I can respect that. Also, in terms of the acting and the auto-tune, a little kid isn't going to notice. And they didn't. I tried to observe the reaction of the kids as they left the theater and they all seemed very pleased at what they just saw. I think that is definitely worth noting.

Overall, Annie is far from perfect. The music sucks. Cameron Diaz is terrible. And there were a lot of gags that I didn't find funny. However, there is a target audience that are much more lenient when it comes to judging things like this, so my recommendation to you is that if you are a parent with small kids who have seen these previews (the movie has been advertised for over a year now) and are excited for the movie, then take them. Despite terrible reviews, the movie received a cinemascore of A-, meaning the people who were excited for the movie went to the movie and loved it. Also, that side of things aside, I really didn't find this a terrible movie. They storyline is decent because it does follow the skeleton of the excellent Annie musical and the acting by Quvenzhané Wallis, Jamie Foxx, and Rose Byrne are just amazing and the three of them have such great chemistry that it's just fun to watch their story, as long as they aren't singing. All that in mind, my grade for Annie is a 7/10.

Wild Review

Wild. Because, you know, when life gets you down, the most logical thing to do is to go on an 1,100 mile hike, right? No? Well, that's what Cheryl Strayed thought back in the 1990's and she didn't even have any previous hiking experience. And if you think that's a stupid idea, just keep in mind that she now has a movie made based on her life and you don't. So who has the last laugh, now? I thought so. So get started on your life so that you can write your book and perhaps we might get a movie about your life 20 years down the road. And if you're cool enough, maybe you can have someone as boss as Reese Witherspoon play you. Unless you're a guy. That would be awkward. What you could do instead is go travel in the wilderness without telling anyone where you are going, then get your arm stuck under a rock, cut it off, and in no time you can have someone as awesome as James Franco play you. Deal? Deal.

Yes, as you may have inferred from that paragraph, Wild is a movie about Cheryl Strayed, a lady who had quite the messed up life. Of course that aspect of her life wasn't what was unique enough to make a movie about. Everyone has crap going on in their life that is similar to what Cheryl experienced. What made Cheryl's story unique is that, without having had much hiking experience at all, she decided to tackle the Pacific Crest Trail, an 1,100 mile hike. Then she wrote a book about her experience that became a best-seller and is now a movie directed by Jean Marc-Vallée, the director of last year's Dallas Buyers Club, which was the winner of three Oscars. Wild is a movie that doesn't go in chronological order the whole time. We start the movie with Cheryl's hike, then we go back and dive into her personal life before the hike. Then we keep jumping back and forth between those two times and are thus presented with the hike she's going on as a metaphor for her life and that I really enjoyed. Hiking in general is a great life metaphor. I remember going on a 50-mile hike over the course of 2 1/2 days when I was younger and was one of the hardest things that I've done. But I looked back on that hike and concluded that despite the difficulty of the adventure, I could do hard things. It just required the motivation to keep moving forward one step at a time. Thus is the case with life in general. Life sucks. Crap happens. But we can get over it. We can move past it. And better yet, we can learn from it to better our lives moving forward.

That there was the exact theme of the movie and I loved that theme. This movie was all about realizing that life is difficult and in the process we will make a lot of mistakes. But as good ole Rafiki said in The Lion King, we can either run from the past, or we can learn from the past. We might not all have to go on an 1,100 mile hike to learn this, but each of us has our own individual moment or series of moments where we reflect on our life and make the decision to be something different or be something better. That's what this movie was all about. However, it wasn't all rainbows and butterflies with this. Despite this great theme that the movie taught, this movie had it's fair share of issues. The biggest one being that it dragged on quite a bit. I mean, I appreciated the message and the metaphor, but there came a time in the movie where it felt I was going on this hike with Cheryl. I didn't want to go on a hike. I wanted to sit in the soft theater seats and enjoy a movie. And while that was what physically happened to me, mentally it was quite the work out. I walked out of the movie theater quite relieved that the long hike was over. I don't know exactly how this could've been fixed. At 115 minutes, this wasn't a terribly long movie. But perhaps that was one of those instances where we only needed 90 or 100 minutes to tell our story. That might've made this a lot more enjoyable.

Overall, my recommendation for this movie is that it is a movie worth seeing. However, it definitely isn't a movie for everyone. I would say that if you saw and enjoyed last year's Dallas Buyers Club, then this is a movie you that you might consider checking out. It's not as good as that movie, but you can definitely tell that it's a similar style. It does have some very interesting themes that go with it and those themes are helped out by an incredible performance by Reese Witherspoon, who quite literally went all out in order to give the audience the best and most raw, realistic Cheryl Strayed impression that she could give. And it works. Her name is almost guaranteed at this point to come up when the Oscar nominations for best actress are revealed and I think she's a worthy candidate. However, there does come a point where I was ready for the movie to wrap up and it just kept going and thus I got really bored and tired during the last leg of the movie and that effected my thoughts of the movie quite a bit. So overall, I will give Wild a 7/10.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Review

Anyone else thing this title has too many the's? I mean, THE Hobbit: THE Battle... doesn't flow off my tongue very well. I think The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies would've been better. Best would've been just to keep the title The Hobbit: There and Back Again, because that's the traditional title from the book of the last part of this story. I guess they just wanted people to know what's actually going to happen in the movie. "Hey look! Remember the final battle in the book? Yeah, we're going to include that in the movie. In fact, that'll be the whole movie because we decided to split this into three movies for some weird reason, so we'll just make that the title!" I suppose There and Back Again doesn't fit quite as well with the three movie thing, so I understand the change. Although they REALLY should've just kept this to two movies and then they could've just used both of the traditional titles of An Unexpected Journey and There and Back Again. Or perhaps instead of Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies, they should've named this The Hobbit: My Name is Peter Jackson and I Went from Being a Filmmaker to a Greedy Cash Cow So I Turned this 300 Page Book Into Three Movies Because It Means I Get to Make More Money Off of It and I'm Using the B.S. Excuse of Fulfilling Tolkien's Dream to Justify Myself. You know... Part 1 and Part 2, or something like that. Because you know it's true. Don't deny it.

Moving on. As I initially told a friend of mine that I hated this final movie, I got a response back that was very disturbing to me. So disturbing that I am including his quote right here so I can clear things up with everyone. Here it is:

"Of course you did. You hated the second and this is like that and as I recall you're not a fan of the books or reading so not the middle earth fan this film was aimed for. If you disliked the first film and the second why would you like the third? They were made all at the same time in the same style after all."

I was floored by that. And just in case more of you have this idea in your mind that I am not a Middle Earth fan, let me make things very, VERY clear. I LOVE Lord of the Rings. I am a proud owner of... uhhh... The Two Towers and The Return of the King books (I don't know why I don't own The Fellowship of the Ring or The Hobbit books -- but it's my birthday coming up, so if you want a gift idea...). Those may be hard books to get through because of Tolkien's style, but I still love the books. They may be the best novels ever written in my opinion. And yes, I do love reading. I just don't do it as often as others because I'm a slow reader and so it's a huge time commitment for me. Also, the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy is my favorite trilogy of all time. Yes, it edges out Star Wars by the slightest of hairs. So to say that I am not the Middle Earth fan this film was aimed for couldn't be more wrong. If any of you have the idea in your head that I'm not a Middle Earth fan because I complained about the first two Hobbit movies, please erase that from your head right now. It's not true. I don't care if people disagree with me on things, but it bugs the crap out of me when people have my opinions all backwards. Hate my opinions if you want. But just make sure you are hating the right opinions. And I didn't even hate the first two Hobbit movies. My adjusted score for the first after further viewings is an 8.5 and my score for the second one is a 7.5. Those aren't bad scores. If you think I hated those movies, go re-read my reviews. I had a lot of good things to say about both movies in addition to my complaints.

So with that rant out of the way, thus giving you an accurate description of my thoughts of the previous Middle Earth adventures, let's dive into this "final" installment. I put final in quotations marks because I have a friend who wisely says to never believe Hollywood when they say they are done for good. They'll find a way to come back. The Silmarillion movie trilogy anyone? Anywho, the best way for me to describe this final Hobbit movie is unfocused. We spend way too much time on ridiculous things that we should've glanced over or just skipped altogether and we don't spend enough time on things that actually do matter. Thus this movie quickly turned into a huge trainwreck and it wasn't pretty. Desperation screamed loudly as I was watching. It's like Peter Jackson committed himself to the three movie shindig, but then realized that he really didn't have enough content for three movies and so this final movie was all over the place.

Let's give a few examples of things that I think show this. The first thing is Smaug. As you recall from the second movie, we end with Smaug flying towards Lake-town as he is about to scorch it. I suppose I won't spoil the cliffhanger if by chance you haven't read the book, but we really only have a couple minutes left of this storyline. And so Smaug only gets a bit of screen time before he's gone and thus you feel gypped. There's a lot of ways they could've fixed this, but as is it felt off. Next up is the Sauron scene. The first two movies build up to this pretty darn good and you think you're going to get an epic scene showing how Sauron came to be. Well you do. But it's not epic. It just comes and goes as if it were an afterthought, thus wasting every moment in the trilogy with Sauron, Saruman, and everything else related to that storyline.

What we did get was a whole heck of a lot of Legolas and Tauriel instead. There's a lot of cool things that Legolas did in the movie, but there's also a whole heck of a lot of outright laughable things he does. As in he becomes this crazy, gravity-defying, super ninja elf. I like Legolas. But after what I saw of him, he didn't need to be in this at all. And neither did his lady elf friend Tauriel that Peter Jackson just completely made up. Now I love Evangeline Lilly. LOST is my favorite TV show of all time and I'm so glad to see her getting big movie roles. But her character was just so poorly written that I got excited when an orc started beating the crap out of her because I thought it meant that they would kill her off and I wouldn't have to deal with her or the horribly awkward and poorly done love story between her on the dwarf. I mean, I thought that love story was bad in the second one. Oh my goodness. Take those awful moments and multiply it by at least ten and you have what it was in this movie. One of the worst and most painful-to-watch love stories that I have seen in a long time.

And that's just the beginning of the issues that I have. The whole movie is full of these weird, unfocused decisions. Thus it was hard for me to be entertained when I was getting increasingly frustrated at what was happening. I thought it would pick up. It didn't. After we glanced over Smaug and Sauron, the movie was pretty boring until the battle started. I guess the battle had it's entertaining moments. But it was clearly trying to be as epic as one of the Lord of the Rings battles. It wasn't. In fact, it didn't even come close to even shining a candle on Helm's Deep. And where was my epic battle music? Non-existent. In fact, the soundtrack as a whole was disappointing. It's not a terrible soundtrack by any means. It's just not memorable. In fact, there's no theme at all in this movie that I could sing back to you. Lord of the Rings I could sing on command without even thinking about. And in fact, Misty Mountains in the first Hobbit is like that as well. I even went back and listened to this soundtrack on YouTube. Nope. Didn't do it for me. In fact, I got bored of it, so I quickly turned it to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack to make me happy. On top of all this, the end of the movie felt very unresolved. I'm not going to explain why, but it puzzled me specifically because this is the shortest movie by a long shot. It's only 144 minutes. The other five movies are 178, 179, 201, 169, and 161 minutes respectively. So it's not like they didn't have time to wrap a few things up. They're waiting for the extended edition? Uhhh... I hope not. That would lame.

Was there anything good about this movie? Sure. Martin Freeman. Everything that man did and said as Bilbo was spot on. Also, I saw this movie in the high frame rate in 3D and that made it visually impressive actually. Did it completely fix the terrible CGI? Absolutely not. I still hated every time the orcs came on the screen because they were just so terribly done, it was embarrassing to watch. Is this worth seeing in 3D? No. I payed $12 to see this movie and that was a bad mistake. So save your money and just see this in 2D. It's impressive, but not worth the extra price. Also if I'm thinking of things done good in the movie, all the original actors from the Lord of the Rings movies that were in this one did a great job. And even our dwarf crew did great. So I can't complain about the acting at all.

When all is said and done, my initial fears about this trilogy ended up being what did this movie in. When I heard that Peter Jackson was doing the Hobbit, I was ecstatic. When it was announced that it was going to be two movies, I was perfectly fine with that. But when it was announced that they were going to do three movies instead of two, I became nervous. Two movies sounded completely justifiable given the content of the book. Three just sounded like a Peter Jackson cash grab. And that's what much of this trilogy was. Drawn-out, unfocused, unnecessary fluff to make three movies. Had they cut out all the crap and turned this into two really focused movies, added some epic music, and did a good CGI job, we would've had two amazing Hobbit movies and you would've seen me praising Peter Jackson once again. But alas that didn't happen and instead I'm saying that Peter Jackson failed this time around. I'll stand by scores of the first two. An Unexpected Journey gets an 8.5 from me and The Desolation of Smaug gets an 7.5. But this final chapter is just a trainwreck and this I am giving The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies a 5/10. As far as the trilogy as a whole now that we are finished? Forgettable.

P.S.- Anyone want to explain to me what the fifth army was? We had the dwarves, the elves, the Lake-town people, the orcs, and the... what? The second dwarf army? The bats? A second orc army? The army that came in at the end that I won't spoil? It really didn't seem clear to me. And I know that may be a dumb question to ask, but it will at least test who actually read this whole review.

Exodus: Gods and Kings Review

It's been quite the religious awakening in Hollywood this year. Religious-themed movies are definitely not uncommon in Hollywood, but this year there just seems to be an unusually large amount of them that have all came out at the same time. We started off by diving into the life of Christ once again. Then we told a weird version of the story of Noah. After that we proved that God's not dead as well as Heaven being for real. Later in the year we met some Mormons and now we are finishing it off by recounting the story of Moses. There's been other smaller ones, like Kirk Cameron believing Christmas needs saving, but those ones I mentioned were the major ones of the year. I'm not really sure why Ridley Scott felt like he needed to tell the story of Moses again, but he did. To be honest, I don't think it was a very good telling of the epic story, so my recommendation is that if you want to watch a movie about Moses, just put in Cecil B DeMille's The Ten Commandments.

Now I want to make something clear right off the bat. I did not find this movie offensive or blasphemous at all. That was Noah. This movie was just dumb in many ways, but compared to Noah, it's pretty much a masterpiece. Yes, I'm a Christian. But I do try to be fair and I don't mind it if someone takes one of my beloved Bible stories and does something different with it, so long as they do a good job. But there comes a point where if you get too carried away with the changes that you make, it does actually detract from the story. And that's exactly what happens here. Even if you aren't a religious person, you can readily admit that the story of Moses is quite the amazing one, which is why it has been adapted by Hollywood several times. I was actually excited for a modern version of Moses because we have the technology to pull off amazing visuals in the movie that wasn't available back when the previous versions were made. But the story itself doesn't need much changing because it is quite epic. Stay true to the story and you will have a great movie that will stand out because of the visual effects.

The first part of the problem was that the beginning of this movie was really slow and boring. I went in with not much sleep, which is always a risky decision with any movie, and it was extremely hard to stay awake because of how empty and dull the first part of the movie was. Then when it picked up, it just got weird. My example comes from the scene where Moses goes up to the mountain to talk to God. Technically this is a spoiler that I'm about to give, but I don't really feel bad because you should know the story of Moses already. In the biblical story, Moses has quite the experience as he walks onto the hill and speaks with God. He comes down ready and determined to free his people from the Egyptians. In this one, he walks up the hill, gets caught in a mudslide, and is up to his head in mud when he sees a glowing bush in the distance and sees a young kid walk up to him, who is essentially speaking for God. What?!?!?! I'm honestly trying to figure out what in the heck was going through Ridley's Scott's head at this point because that was ridiculous and quite laughable. And then there's really no confrontation between Moses and Ramses at all. Instead of Moses begging Ramses to let his people go in between each plague, in this one all the plagues happen all at once without Moses even being in the city. Once again, I wonder what the heck was going through Ridley Scott's head that made him think this was a good idea.

That said, even though there was no confrontation between plagues that would've made the movie epic, the plagues themselves were actually really amazing. Ridley Scott tried to make them as realistic and graphic as possible and this idea actually worked. An example of this that I will give is the Nile River turning into blood. Instead of just magically turning into blood, we had thousands of crocodiles show up and attack everyone and everything, themselves included and that's why the river turned to blood. Then we have all the flies and the frogs showing up and it was both disgusting and incredible at the same time. It almost made the whole movie worth watching just for that. In addition to the plagues, the parting of the red sea followed by them crossing with Ramses people chasing them was also quite epic. And all the acting and costumes were great. Some people have complained about the all-white cast, but that didn't bother me. We had a cast full of amazing actors that all did a great job, even when they weren't given much to work with. I mean, Christian Bale had some horribly cheesy lines in the movie and he did his best to make them work. Also, people like Joel Edgerton and Aaron Paul are completely unrecognizable in their roles, which I thought was really cool. So props to the costume people in this.

Overall, despite the story of Moses not really needing to be told again, this movie actually had quite a bit of potential. It was helmed by a director that has done a great job in the past and had an amazing cast to go along with it. It also had some breathtaking visual effects when it came to the plagues and the parting of the red sea. The problem was the rest of the movie just sucked. The beginning was incredibly boring. The dialogue was actually pretty bad in certain places. Weird decisions were made as far as the story of this goes. So despite the plagues and the parting of the red sea being amazing, the fact that there is no redeemable quality of the film to go along with those events leaves you with a sour taste in your mouth as you walk out of the theater. It's wasted potential. Like I said in the beginning of the movie, if you feel like watching the story of Moses, just do yourself a favor and throw in The Ten Commandments instead. Or you can choose to watch The Prince of Egypt. That'd be also a great choice. But Exodus: Gods and Kings is sadly not worth your time. My grade for the movie is a 6.5/10.

Penguins of Madagascar Review

I feel it's safe to say that I am a fan of Dreamworks Animation. No, they aren't as good as Pixar, Disney, or a few of the other animation studios, but they have put out a lot of solid movies over the years that I have really enjoyed. The problem with Dreamworks is that they are one company who is especially obsessed with the sequel idea. They actually make a lot of movies, usually at least two a year -- many years three, but when the come upon a movie that has a lot of success, you can almost count on a sequel. In fact, you can count on them squeezing every last penny out of these successful franchises until people are completely sick of them. This is what I feel is happening with the Madagascar franchise. I mean, we've already had three of them. And on top of this current Penguins of Madagascar spin-off, a Madagascar 4 is on the way. Apparently people are still liking these movies, which is why they keep coming. But I personally got tired of this franchise. I decided to give this spin-off a chance, though, because I do like the penguins. Bad decision. This movie is a complete pile of crap and I am glad that it is tanking hard in the box office right now.

Like I mentioned, Penguins of Madagascar comes from the popular penguin characters from the Madagascar franchise. These are characters that I enjoyed watching in the first movie, so I was down with this happening, especially since they do have their own TV show that is apparently well-liked. In this movie, the penguins decide to separate themselves from the Antarctica penguins and do their own thing. Pretty soon they form this secret agent group where they try to fight crime so to say. But despite all the talk, they are actually pretty bad at this job, which is funny because they end up combining forces with this professional group of secret agents that actually do know what they are doing. This leads to a movie that is just stuffed full of all sorts of gags throughout the movie that you would expect from the penguins.

Here's the problem. And it's very simple. This movie wasn't funny. At all. The purpose of this was to be a fun comedy and when you are trying to be a fun comedy, the number one rule is that you need to actually make people laugh. And I was waiting. I've loved these penguins. A lot of the gags in the first movie worked rather well and I was excited to see this gag-filled movie that I thought I was going to be laughing hysterically at. I chuckled a few times. But I didn't laugh. There literally wasn't a single moment in the entire movie where I busted out laughing. A few polite chuckles was it for me. Instead of laughing, I watched as gag after gag and joke after joke just completely missed the mark and pretty soon into this movie they got really dumb. And they kept getting dumber. Halfway through the movie all my patience with the movie was completely gone. I was waiting for the movie to turn around and do something respectable or funny, but it never happened. And to make matters worse, the end of the movie was almost an exact copy and paste of Despicable Me 2. Like almost to the "t." It's like Dreamworks watched that movie, saw how much money they made, and because they were desperate they said to themselves, "Hey let's make a movie that is the exact same thing as this movie, except with penguins instead of minions. Maybe that will finally be the trick that gets us out of this financial hole that we're in because our movies keep flopping." I'm serious. That's how I think this movie happened. The kids won't catch it. But I did.

I really don't have much more to say about this movie. It was a comedy that was supposed to make me laugh and all I did was chuckle politely a few times. Instead of laughing, I was just bored to tears and the theater started to feel like a prison because it just got worse and worse. Now in all fairness, this is a movie that was made for kids and there is a very good chance that the kids will love this. So if you are a parent with small kids who loved all three of the Madagascar movies and maybe even enjoy the TV show with the penguins, then this is probably a movie that you should take your kids to or buy when it comes to DVD to add it to your collection. Because of this, most will read this review and just brush my opinion to the side because "this movie just wasn't made for you." My retort is that I do think that you can make an animated movie that is good for kids AND adults. In fact, Dreamworks has done this many times. This is just one of those instances where it didn't work for me. This is a kids only movie in my opinion and it really disappointments me when one of the major animated studios gives a big nationwide release that is kids only because I like enjoying these, too. This one I thought was boring and stupid. My grade for Penguins of Madagascar is a 5/10.

Movie Preview: December 2014

The holiday season is upon us and while it didn't start with a whimper, November overall was a tad bit disappointing considering the titles that were released. Interstellar was supposed to be the huge movie in the beginning of the month while The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 was supposed to be the huge movie to end the month and thus on paper we were set for what looked like an epic month. Thus there weren't a whole lot of challengers. Interstellar started us out by not even being able to crack $50 million in its debut, being defeated in the box office by Disney's Big Hero 6. Meanwhile, Mockingjay did great business as it was the biggest opening weekend of the year, but it fell way short of the mark set by the first two movies in the franchise. And of course Big Hero 6 did great business, but it also proved that last year's Frozen was more of a fluke than a thing to expect from Disney Animation. So now we move to December. While box office totals will be hard to predict, the one thing that is certain is that there won't be a lack of options. Not only is it Christmas season, but it's also the last month for Oscar-hopefuls to jump in the game. So let's dive in and see what the month has in store.

December 5th - 7th-

The first weekend of December is always one of the worst weekends of the year. In fact, it has such a bad reputation that the major studios tend to avoid it altogether. Which is a bit odd if you think about it. Is it a bad weekend because people just don't like going to the theaters in the beginning of December or is it a bad weekend because studios think it's a bad weekend and avoid it? Or both? I mean, people can't go out to the movies if there's no new movies to see. That's right. This year there was a grand total of ZERO new wide releases. The closest we came was the horror movie Pyramid, which is a confused movie because this isn't Halloween season. While it's not unheard of to release a horror movie during the Christmas season, it usually doesn't happen. Fox knowing that there wasn't much interest in this movie decided to only release it in 589 theaters. And they were right. The per-theater average was pretty bad, so perhaps they made the good decision to not spend the money booking theaters that weren't going to get used. If done right this could've been successful. I mean, exploring the pyramids isn't a bad premise for a horror movie.

On a platform release, the movie Wild hit 21 theaters this weekend, earning just over $600,000. This is another Oscar-hopeful that chronicles the life of Cheryl Strayed, who embarked on an 1,100 mile journey in the 1990's on the Pacific Crest Trail all by herself, despite no previous backpacking experience, after going through a lot of personal struggles. Strayed wrote a book about her experiences that became a best-seller and now has a movie adaption. Jean-Marc Vallée is the director here and he is coming off a lot of success from last year's Dallas Buyers Club, which got nominated for six Oscars, winning three of them. While there isn't as much buzz from Wild at the moment, star Reese Witherspoon should be right in the thick of the competitive best actress race.

December 12th - 14th-

After being ignored the first weekend of December, general audiences will finally get to dive into the Christmas movie season starting with Exodus: Gods and Kings. You could definitely say that it's been the year of the religious movie. In addition to several smaller, independently released Christian films breaking out this year, this is also the third time that a major studio has dove into the Bible for it's source material following Son of God and Noah. This time around we are telling the story of Moses, which has definitely been no stranger to Hollywood. Previous adaptations include Cecil B. DeMille's classic The Ten Commandments, which is the sixth highest grossing movie of all time when adjusted for ticket price inflation, as well as Dreamworks' late 90's animated version The Prince of Egypt. Director Ridley Scott has a lot of experience doing epics, so this is right in his ballpark. His work with Gladiator has been especially all over the marketing. Although some of been complaining at the all-white cast, that cast does boast some pretty big names such as Christian Bale as Moses, Joel Edgerton as Ramses, Ben Kingsley as Nun, and Aaron Paul as Joshua.

Also getting an official nationwide release is Chris Rock's Top Five. The famous comedian is pulling triple duty in this as director, writer, and star, which is his third time doing do. His previous stints include Head of State (2003) and I Think I Love My Wife (2007). In the movie, Chris Rock is playing a comedian who's trying to make it as a serious actor. Is the a reflection of his own personal life? Maybe. If Rock was trying to make it as a serious actor, it would fit very well, but it looks like this is all comedy here, which is what Rock is pretty good at.

On the platform front, this week's Oscar-hopeful is director Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice. Anderson has had plenty of luck with the award scene as he has had five nominations, most notably with There Will Be Blood in 2007, but he has yet to win any personal awards for his movies as There Will Be Blood only won in the acting and cinematography categories. He completely missed out with his most recent film The Master and is hoping to recover with this one. Inherent Vice is a crime drama based off the book by Thomas Pynchon that centers around a Los Angeles detective in the 1970's who is investigating the disappearance of a former girlfriend. It has quite the loaded cast led by Joaquin Phoenix, who is hoping for justice after being left out by Oscar last year, and also stars Katherine Waterston, Josh Brolin, Maya Rudolph, Michael Kenneth Williams, Benicio Del Toro, Jena Malone, Owen Wilson, and Reese Witherspoon among others.

December 19th - 21st-

It's the weekend before Christmas and before Hollywood loads the theaters with presents for movie-lovers on Christmas Day, there will be quite the load of early Christmas presents. Most notably is the final trip to Middle Earth (unless Peter Jackson decides he wants to take on The Silmarillion) with The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, which actually gets released on Wednesday the 17th. After getting nearly unanimous praise with his Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson hasn't quite had the same reaction to his Hobbit trilogy. Some have loved what he has done while others think Tolkien would be rolling over in his grave right now with what Jackson has done. The biggest criticism has been his decision to split one book into three separate movies. The title of this final chapter pretty much sums up what will happen here. Jackson will be looking to replicate the epic battle that was Helm's Deep. This chapter is not likely to convert those who haven't been a fan of the first two, but those who have been a fan are likely in for a treat.

Family audiences have been neglected a lot this year, but this weekend gives them two different options for the season. The first of which is a movie that been advertised for an amazingly long time now and that is the umpteenth version of the classic musical Annie. When casting rumors first came out, it almost appeared to some that this was going to be a politically correct version of Annie that featured an all-black cast. Not that this would've necessarily been a bad idea, but that turned out to be false. Instead, it appeared that they were just looking for the most talented young actress they could find and they did a pretty good job as the young Quvenzhané Wallis is not too far removed from being the youngest actress ever to get an Oscar nomination for best actress (Beasts of the Southern Wild). Wallis is joined in the movie by Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz, who also have had a good track record recently. Whether or not audiences will be enamored with this latest version of Annie is a different story, though.

The second option for family audiences is the third movie in the  Night at the Museum franchise, entitled Night at the Museum: The Secret of the Tomb. The first Night at the Museum became a surprise hit back in 2006 sparking a sequel in 2009 that also played well, although with a significant dip-off from the first. Some people will certainly be wondering if a third Night at the Museum movie was really necessary and thus might decide to skip this one. But it could provide some good counter-programming if it can survive the battle between it and Annie. Another advantage the movie has is that it stars Robin Williams in what will be his final live action role. Those who were touched and inspired by this man, which is most people that lived through the 90's, may want to check this one to see legend perform one last time.

That's it for the nationwide releases, but we are not done as we have another pair of Oscar-hopefuls getting their start. The first of these two is The Gambler. Out of the two limited release films, this is the one that will probably go over better with general audiences, but might be the one that gets ignored by Oscar. It's a crime drama about, you guessed it, a gambler. Mark Wahlberg stars as he plays a character that gets himself sucked into quite the intense situation. If this gets any award nominations, it will be for Wahlberg's co-star in the movie, John Goodman. However, Goodman has had a habit recently of getting rumored to get nominated, but getting left out in the end. One of these days he might actually get the nomination, but I wouldn't bet on it.

The limited release that has a better chance of getting a nomination or two, but yet might not go over as well with general audiences is Mr. Turner. This movie dives into the life of famous British painter J.M.W. Turner who died in the year 1851. Timothy Spall plays the lead role of Mr. Turner in this movie and there's good reason to suggest that he'll at least get a long, serious look by the Academy when it comes to Oscar nominations. The reasoning for this is that he actually won the Best Actor award earlier this year in the Cannes Film Festival. Spall has had a long and successful career, but hasn't had a whole lot of opportunities to play a lead role like this. Even those who haven't liked the film have recognized that he does a good job in it. Those who don't recognize his name right of the bat will probably have a light bulb experience when I mention that he played Wormtail in the Harry Potter movies.

December 25th - 28th- 

Christmas Day brings a whole slew of new movies to the table. And if you think this is crowded upon reading over it, know that a couple of months ago it was even more crowded before Paddington and Hot Tub Time Machine 2 bailed on the date. Scaring Paddington away was most likely Disney's highly anticipated live-action musical Into the Woods. This is based off of a very popular musical of the same name and hopes to have the same reaction that Les Mis did a couple years back. It did run into a bit of controversy when it was announced that they were making a few key alterations to the original musical in order to get the family-friendly PG rating, but it's worth noting that the movie is in very good hands. It's directed by Rob Marshall, who won best picture when he directed the musical Chicago. Also, the original people who worked on the Into the Woods musical also worked on this movie. And it has quite the phenomenal cast in that includes Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Johnny Depp, Ana Kendrick, Chris Pine, and James Corden.

Next up is the movie that most likely scared Hot Tub Time Machine 2 away and that is The Interview. This movie is a comedy wherein James Franco and Seth Rogen are recruited to go assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jung-un. The real life Kim Jung-un has not been shy about his feelings on this movie. In fact, he's gone as far as threatening to attack the United States if they end up releasing the movie. World War III started because of a movie that gets released on Christmas Day? Probably not. North Korea is pretty good at making threats that they don't follow up on. Plus that would be a really bad idea on North Korea's part to attack the United States. However, by issuing this threat, Kim Jung-un has done the movie a huge favor by raising awareness as most have just found this threat comedic and instead have become excited for this movie. Word is, though, that they may have done some post-production alterations in order to appease Kim Jung-un.

The third and final nationwide release is a movie that has had a whole ton of Oscar-buzz ever since it was announced. That is Unbroken. This tells the true story of Louis Zamperini, who was a U.S. Olympic runner back in the late 1930's. When the war broke out and the next Olympics were cancelled, he enlisted and was assigned to fight on the Japanese front. This movie is based on the book of the same title that dives into his experiences as a prisoner of war in Japan and thus goes into detail about what life was like on this front, which is something that isn't discussed as much as the German front is. The movie stars Jack O'Connell as Zamperini as well as Domnhall Gleeson as his friend in the war and Japanese rock star Miyavi as the character known as "The Bird," who causes him much mental and physical anguish. All three have received their fair share of awards buzz. Director and Oscar-darling Angelina Jolie has also received a lot of attention for her work on this. On top of all this, the movie is very timely as the real life Zamperini recently passed away.

That's it for the nationwide releases, but there's also a whole bunch of limited release movies coming out in order to get their Oscar-qualifying run in before they get their nationwide release in January. Recently entering the scene as not only a strong contender to get nominated, but to win best picture is the movie Selma. This, along with several others, will get it's nationwide release in January, so this is almost a brief preview of next month as well. But I include it here because this is the official release date and it's fun to talk about all the Oscar-hopefuls in one post. That said, Selma is a movie about Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement, specifically focusing on all the marches that were influential in getting the Civil Rights Bill moving forward. Selma, Alabama could be seen as the climax of all this, hence the title. The King himself is played by David Oyelowo. Oyelowo was most recently seen in the movie Interstellar as the principal, but is probably best known for his role in 2012's Jack Reacher. Joining Oyelowo in the movie is Carmen Ojego as Coretta Scott King, Tim Roth as George Wallace, and Tom Wilkinson as President Lyndon B Johnson as well as appearances from Martin Sheen, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Oprah Winfrey.

Up next is a movie that is actually losing a bit of steam in the Oscar race due to a poor showing recently, but is still hoping to sneak in some nominations. That is American Sniper. This tells the story of Navy S.E.A.L. Chris Kyle who was one of the most famous snipers as he had over 150 confirmed kills. Bradley Cooper plays the title role and it's been quite the successful ride for Cooper. Not only has he had two straight Oscar nominations for his roles in Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, but he also voiced the extremely popular Rocket Raccoon in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy earlier this year. But alas, a poor showing could cause him to break his streak of Oscar nominations due to the intense race this year. However, American Sniper should still play well for general audiences. A comparable title would be Lone Survivor, another war movie about the Navy S.E.A.L.S. that was mostly ignored by the Academy but went on to huge box office totals in January this past January. American Sniper will probably do the same as it gets its nationwide release on the third weekend of January.

This is not the extent of the Oscar-hopefuls that will officially get their qualifying run in at the end of the year, but it is the last one I will talk about in this post. This last movie is Tim Burton's Big Eyes. Now immediately when you hear the name Tim Burton, you will automatically assume that this will be a weird, crazy movie. That's a fair assumption considering Burton's past, but it would actually be wrong in this instance. This is actually a very normal movie. It's a movie about painter Margaret Keane who had great success in the 1950's, but struggled with legal difficulties as her husband started claiming all of her work as his own. This pair is played by Christof Waltz and Amy Adams. If Amy Adams gets a nomination this would make it her sixth nomination in the last ten years. Some would call her unlucky for getting nominated five times and losing every single time. Others would recognize that she could see it as quite the honor to get five nominees because many actors play out their whole career without a single nomination. Either way, it was initially thought that Oscar could finally award her for her efforts and give her a win. But now that's not the case as Julianne Moore is almost seen as a lock to win.

The Theory of Everything Review

As you all should know, I am a big fan of Oscar season. While some people scoff at the Oscars for rarely nominating the big blockbusters, I'm personally a fan because a lot of the movies that do get nominated are in fact excellent movies. As a fan of movies, I just like watching a good movie regardless of how much money it makes or how many awards it gets, so I choose not to take sides in that war. What I do get frustrated with is this tactic of releasing these award-contending movies in as few theaters as possible and slowly expanding outwards. I mean, I understand the tactic. I just don't like having to wait a long time for the movie to finally get to my town after reading or watching reviews saying how awesome it is by the privileged people who got to see it really early. First world problems, right? Anywho, this is the reason why oftentimes I get more excited when the small movies finally get to me as opposed to the larger movies that come exactly when they say they will. Long story short, The Theory of Everything finally came to a theater near me after several weeks and months of anticipation. And now you're getting my review of it.

If you haven't yet heard about The Theory of Everything, it's a biopic of world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking. If you're not in tune at all to the science world and don't recognize that name right when I say it, a light bulb should come on when I tell you that he is the guy in the wheelchair with the computerized voice. He got put in that wheelchair with that computer as his voice because he was diagnosed with motor neuron disease.What's motor neuron disease? Well, that's a general category in which belongs the disease ALS, which you all know about because everyone in the world dumped buckets of ice water on their heads to raise awareness for this disease this summer. It was shortly after his 21st birthday when Stephen was diagnosed and given two years to live. Well, you know how that ended because he's still alive right now at the age of 72. This movie is about his journey and struggles with that disease and trying to figure out how to balance his love life and career. And as we see in the trailer, his wife is going to be there with him as they fight the disease and work things out.

Perfect recipe for this super emotional, touching, and inspiring movie that you make you leave the theaters wishing you had brought your tissue box with you, right? Meh. Kinda. My biggest problem with this movie is that I wasn't actually sure what emotion I was supposed to be feeling as I finished the movie. Not that what happens in the movie is a huge secret because you can look up what happens to Stephen in his life with a quick google search, but nevertheless I'm not going to go into a whole ton of detail. However, I will say that this is not exactly your cookie-cutter inspirational story. Yes I think the fact that Stephen has lived for 50 years when he was supposed to only live two is very inspirational. I feel bad that he's had to suffer like this his whole life with ALS, but there's a few things that happen in his personal life that make you raise your eyebrow a bit. But he's not the only guilty party. His wife also does things that make you not a big fan of her. I guess you can call this life. Life is not always a fairy tale. But still. As a movie there were a lot of things that didn't sit too well with me and thus is why I had a whole ton of mixed emotions as I left the theater.

That said, I can't deny the fact that the acting in this is pretty dang good. Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones are two names that you may have never heard before. They aren't unknown names. Redmayne played Marius in the recent Les Mis movie, while Jones played Felicia in the most recent Spider-Man movie. But outside those roles, there's not a whole ton on their resume that would be considered extremely recognizable. However, they have now earned the right for you to remember their names as I'm sure this movie will be a springboard to a whole bunch of new roles for both of them. Both are to be considered near locks to get Oscar nominations. That I'm a bit split on. While they definitely do an amazing job, is it an Oscar-worthy performance? Specifically looking at Redmayne, he does great as Stephen Hawking. But I can name a handful of people that I would rather see get the nomination for best actor over him. Bill Murray and Jake Gyllenhaal top that list right now of actors that deserve a nomination but will be left out because the Academy chose Redmayne instead. That might make me upset. Just warning you. On the other hand, I was totally in love with Felicity in this movie as an actress. I wasn't a huge fan of what her character did, but she was great nonetheless. I definitely want to see more of her. In fact, I may be fine with her being Spider-Man's new girlfriend if everything doesn't collapse on Sony.

I feel I've been very negative with this review. However, this isn't a bad movie. It's just not quite what I was expecting. For one reason or another, I've never been a huge fan of Stephen Hawking. I was hoping this movie would shine more light on him for me, but it really didn't. I'm still not a huge fan of Stephen Hawking. However, if you are curious to know more of this story, I'd recommend you give this a shot. Stephen Hawking himself watched the movie and actually cried while watching it, referring to it as "generally true." He then gave them the right to use his voice in the movie. I personally piece that all together and call it an accurate representation of his life. It's also very well acted, which is a must for a good biopic. Not my favorite movie of the year. But if it shows up in your local theater and you have nothing else to see, I'd recommend you give it a shot. My grade for The Theory of Everything is a 7.5/10.