Strange Magic Review

So a few weeks ago I saw this movie called Strange Magic. Now generally I like being on top of things with my movie reviews. However, sometimes life gets in the way and I get behind. I feel bad when that happens. I really do. But yeah, no one saw this movie. No one cared about this movie. Quite honestly, I didn't make it a priority to write my review because there was more interesting things to write about. As you can tell, I have written plenty of movie reviews recently of movies that I saw after Strange Magic. But do you know what, I decided that it was time to finally sit down and write this movie review. Then I realized that I have almost forgotten what this movie was about. Sure, you can blame my memory for that. But in my defense, this movie is so darn forgettable that you really can't blame me for this one. In fact, when I went to Wikipedia to look up the plot to remind me of what I had seen, Wikipedia was even confused. "Strange Magic? You mean the song by Electric Light Orchestra?" No, Wikipedia. I mean the movie that was released a month ago. See what I mean? Wikipedia even forgot this movie existed.

So I read the plot summary. Oh yes. That's what happened here. And do you know what, I usually don't do this, but I'm going to let Wikipedia introduce this movie for you. I won't post the whole plot summary. But here's the first of three paragraphs:

"The realm is divided between a land of fairies and light, and a land of bog creatures living in the dark forest; Primrose flowers, which are a crucial ingredient to love potions marks the border between the lands. Marianne; a fairy and heir to the throne of the Fairy Kingdom is engaged to be married to Roland; a handsome warrior who breaks her heart when she discovers him kissing another fairy on their Weeding Day. Scorned, Marianne vows to never fall in love again. Sometime later; her sister Dawn, who frequently says she is in love is distraught over the upcoming Spring Ball over which boy she could meet there. Her best friend Sunny, an elf who has a crush on Dawn tries to cheer her up with a song, but they are nearly devoured by a giant lizard before a hardened Marianne rescues them. Sunny, having fallen through the border of the dark forest finds a Primrose petal, which he subsequently hides when fleeing the forest." 

Yup. That's our movie. And if you think that's hard to follow, try watching this whole movie. My goodness, it was a chore. This here sounds like it was at least half of the movie with everything that happened, right? HA! This was like the first 15 minutes. They tried to shove so much into this movie that it ended up being rushed, choppy, incoherent, and convoluted. If you want to get an idea of the tone and feel of the movie, just go watch the trailer. By goodness that was honestly one of the worst trailers I have ever seen. I didn't even have a clue what the movie was going to be about outside the fact that there were a bunch of goblins and fairies and a whole bunch of confusing nonsense going on. Ok, I thought. I've seen horrendous trailers for good movies before and I've also seen amazing trailers for movies that were complete and utter crap. Perhaps this movie will be good despite the trailer. Nope. The movie is about as confusing and off-the-wall as the trailer.

"From the mind of George Lucas."

Once upon a time that used to be a good sign for a movie. I mean, the man is the creator of Star Wars. STAR WARS!!!! One of the greatest trilogies of all time, if not the greatest. I mean no disrespect for the man. I will always have a special place in my heart for George Lucas. I mean that in the most normal way possible because the man created Star Wars. I want to love everything he does. But something is off. I know I'm the last one to jump on this bandwagon. Shortly after Star Wars, he started doing weird things like Howard the Duck. The he re-released Star Wars into theaters having made a lot of changes. He got so obsessed with making changes that every subsequent release on DVD and bluray and whatnot also included a whole bunch of changes. I'm not one to really complain about that, but I know a lot of Star Wars fans I can point you to if you want to hear a few good rants. Then there's this thing called the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Once again, I'm not one to really complain about them because I like them a lot more than many people, but I do admit that they are a HUGE step down from the original trilogy. I mean, the special effects are breathtaking and the lightsaber duels are totally epic. The basic structure of the story is also just fine. But man, the acting, the script, and the dialogue are honestly putrid throughout. Those are the types of things that you can point to the director as being the problem.

Getting my vibe? George Lucas became the most respected and loved filmmaker of all time after creating possible the greatest movie universe ever. Then over the course of the next 20 or so years, he went and burnt down all his bridges, alienating most of his fan base in the process. Everyone still loves Star Wars. But George Lucas himself has become a laughing stock and a punchline. Once again, I am usually one to defend him, but did you see that Red Tails movie he did a few years ago. Horrible. And this? Strange Magic? Ouch. I can't defend him anymore when he consistently has proven that he is not a very good filmmaker anymore. Technically, he did not write, direct, or produce this movie. He was merely an executive producer. But this is his story. He'd been wanting this to get done for like 15 years. It was his passion project. I don't get it, George. Why? Why did you think this was a good idea? What trip has your mind been on these last 15 years? This is a mess. A complete and utter mess.

Oh but I'm not done quite yet. This movie is a musical. As I hope I've proven to you, I absolutely adore a well-made musical. I'm a musical person. I was in band throughout grade school. I like to sing. I like listening to music. I love music. Always have. Always will. But there is almost nothing worse than an atrociously done musical and this is a prime example of that. Every single scene they break out into song. None of it's original. Most of it is current pop music. Some of it I think comes from A Midsummer Night's Dream. That's what I've been told and read, anyways. I'm not exactly familiar with that specific Shakespeare play. The actual singing in the movie isn't bad. The problem every single song is poorly timed and grossly out of place. This did not need to be a musical. I don't know why it was. I got 15 minutes into the movie and was just sick of the music and every subsequent song after just made me cringe. But it kept going for the whole movie. In fact, they unnecessarily broke out into song during every single. Every. Single. Freaking. Scene.

I don't know if any of you actually wanted to see this movie in theaters. If you did, it's gone. As a sign of how no one cared about this movie, during opening weekend, it was booked in over 3,000 theaters. It kept those theaters in its second weekend. Weekend three it lost over half of those screens as it was down to just 1,300 theaters. This past weekend, weekend number four, it lost most of that 1,300 and thus only played in 175 theaters. That's embarrassing. So in order to see this, you're going to have to wait until it comes out on DVD. But really, I hope I've convinced you that this isn't worth your time. It's a mess in just about every way. I mean, the animation itself is actually good, but that's it. If anything, this is the type of movie that might be a decent option if it comes to Netflix and you need something to distract your three-year old kids for a few minutes. But overall, this is just embarrassing for George Lucas, Lucasfilm Animation Studios, and everyone else involved. I'm giving Strange Magic a 3/10.

Kingsman: The Secret Service Review

It's Valentine's Day today, which means if you're heading out to the theaters, you have a choice between the romance movie and the action movie. Speaking of the romance movie this year, Fifty Shades of Grey, if you were anticipating my review of it, I'm just going to inform you right now that that review won't happen. Usually I'm good at seeing all kinds of movies, but that is one that I am choosing to not see. Sorry. However, if you want to know about how I would've felt about the movie, I encourage you to check out Chris Stuckmann's review right here. He's a YouTube reviewer that I have grown to trust and his review is both informative and hilarious. Now I really hope that you made the decision to go with the action movie this time around because Kingsman: The Secret Service is really good. If you didn't see a movie this weekend, but you were planning on a President's Day trip to the theaters, I highly recommend you give this movie a shot.

Kingsman: The Secret Service is actually based on a comic book. Being that I'm not actually into comic books, especially ones that aren't Marvel or DC, this was actually news to me a couple of weeks ago. The movie is an action spy thriller that you can compare to the James Bond movies. In fact, the movie itself compares itself to James Bond, which is kinda fun. There's even references to Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer, so this definitely knows what type of movie it's trying to be. And by goodness does this take you on quite the wild ride. Colin Firth, Michael Caine, and Mark Strong are our trio of goodies in this that belong to a secret spy organization known as the Kingsman. They dress up like gentlemen in nice suits and are hidden in a tailor shop. But underneath they have all sorts of fancy gadgets to go along with their intense training that combined make them kick some serious butt. Newcomers Taron Egerton and Sophie Cookson are brought in as two of the young people competing for a spot on the Kingsman while techie genius played by Samuel L. Jackson comes up with a crazy, sinister plot that the Kingsman need to stop.

I should mention that this is a very intense action movie with a lot of over-the-top action sequences that get quite violent at times. If that's not your type of movie, then I would suggest something a bit softer for you. But if you do like high-powered action movies, then buckle up and prepare for quite the ride. While this is very intense, it's not your dark and serious type of action movie. It's actually rather light-hearted and comedic. I was busting up with laughter for most of the movie. The fact that it's way over-the-top makes it very entertaining. On our Kingsman crew, Michael Caine and Mark Strong are mostly our behind-the-scenes people while it's Colin Firth that's our major action star. I've seen a lot of Colin Firth movies and I really like him as an actor. However, I don't think I've ever seen him in a role like this. He usually sticks to his dramas and romances, which makes him very impressive in this because he goes about this movie as if he is a seasoned veteran in the action business and he does a dang good job. The other impressive performance on the side of the Kingsman is newcomer Taron Egerton who is actually our main character. During the second half of the movie, he's the main one out there kicking trash and he also does a dang good job. This is his first big role and I hope it leads to other big roles because I saw a lot of potential with this young actor.

On the villainous side of this, Samuel L. Jackson is the season veteran in movies like this. You know he's going to do a great job because he always does a great job and of course he delivers. The only weird thing about his performance was that he has this lisp that he talks with which took a bit of getting used to at first, but overall it didn't bother me. On Samuel L. Jackson's side is his sidekick, a female known as Gazelle, played by Sofia Boutella. Her character has these prosthetic legs that remind me of the South African Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius, you know the guy who was such an inspiration to most before he shot and killed his girlfriend (perhaps on accident?). Anywho, I saw her character in the trailers and was really excited to see her in the movie. Holy cow does she not mess around. She's not just casually fighting with her legs that double as swords. She's out there cutting limbs and heads off with those legs. She even chops a guy in half vertically with one swipe. Yup. Like I said, she doesn't mess around. Also like I said, this movie is very violent and thus not for everyone.

Finally, what I want to mention in closing is that not only is this a well-acted, hilarious, entertaining action movie. It's also very smart and surprisingly unpredictable. In movies like this, I can be good at turning my brain in order to have a good time. I don't need super elaborate, unpredictable action movies to entertain me. But I'm very impressed when action movies go that way. Like, there's a point in this where our main characters do a break-the-fourth-wall type of thing and talk about what a typical, yet entertaining old action movie would do in the end and then say, "that's not this movie." Suddenly it takes you for several turns that you do not expect at all. That earned it major points in my book. So yes, if you are looking for a movie that will entertain the heck out of you and you love intense action movies, then Kingsman is the movie for you. I loved it and I really hope that it does well enough for us to get more Kingsman movies. My grade is a 9/10.

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water Review

SpongeBob SquarePants is a kids cartoon on Nickelodeon that has been around since 1999 and has now released its second theatrical movie. Love it or hate it, there's no doubt that this is a very popular cartoon. What's baffling to me personally is how popular this is among adults. I understand how this can be popular among the younger crowd. This seems like a fun cartoon that a 6-year-old would enjoy. Yet there are people that are my age and older who love SpongeBob. If they grew up on it, I understand. There are a lot of cartoons that I watched when I was little that I still love today mostly because of the nostalgia factor. But there's people that were in their mid to late teens when this show started that love the show. I don't get it. I've watched my fair share of SpongeBob and I just don't understand how or why this is so popular among adults. This is not a show that entertains me. So why would I decide to go see The SpongeBob Movie? A few reasons. First is watching and reviewing movies is what I do. I wanted my opinion on SpongeBob officially out there. Second, I heard from some review that you don't have to be a fan of SpongeBob in order to enjoy this movie, so I figured I'd go give it a shot. Third, I was honestly interested in how this live-action CGI SpongeBob was going to work out, because that's what we were getting, right? Ha!

First and foremost, I want to let you all know that this has been false advertising to the extreme. Every single trailer, TV spot, and advertisement has emphasized the fact that this is a movie where SpongeBob and friends leave their world and enter ours. They even put it in the title: The SpongeBob Movie: SPONGE OUT OF WATER (emphasis added). All this leads you to believe that the movie is going to start in their world, spend 10 or 15 minutes there, then go out and spend the majority of the time in the live-action world. That's not what happens here. If each episode of SpongeBob were about 20-25 minutes long, then this movie is the equivalent of watching four straight SpongeBob episodes where the first three episodes are classic in-the-water episodes with part of the last episode being live action. Like really, it's over an hour into this 93 minute long movie before we go on land. Then they spend about 15-20 minutes there before it's back in the water. I was shocked. I feel they lied to us, but yet I haven't decided if this is a good thing or a bad thing because they earned a whole heck of a lot of money opening weekend that I don't think they would've come anywhere near had they not tricked everyone into thinking the whole movie was live-action.

In thinking about this, I've decided that when they were discussing this movie that someone mentioned the idea of doing a live-action SpongeBob movie in order to separate this movie from the rest of the SpongeBob universe. This idea was well received, but suddenly they got cold feet because they thought this idea would alienate their fanbase, so they ultimately just made it a small part of the movie and did classic SpongeBob for the rest of it. If you are a SpongeBob fan, I think you'll actually appreciate this. In the movie, the secret recipe for their beloved Krabby patties goes missing and because of that all of Bikini Bottom goes into an apocalypse. SpongeBob ends up teaming up with the villain Plankton in order to try to find the secret recipe and restore order. The kids in the theater were laughing. A lot of their parents were laughing right along with them. The movie went in all sorts of different directions making it very good for people with short attention spans and taught all sorts of good lessons for kids like having teamwork to solve problems.

So like I said, I think this is a very good movie for kids. If your kids love SpongeBob, then this is an excellent movie to take them to. If you are a SpongeBob fan right along with your kids or you don't have kids but you still like SpongeBob, this might be the movie for you. I personally was bored through most of it, just like I always am when SpongeBob is playing. So if you are like me and you don't like SpongeBob, then don't think this will convert you, because it won't. It plays to its fanbase and it does that well. However, despite me being bored for most of the movie, when they finally went on land, that's where I actually got into it. It was clever, whitty, and fun. The CGI made them look like big, plastic toys instead of actual characters, but whatever. That didn't bother me that much. Being that I thought this was the best part of the movie, I actually wish that the movie played out like they advertised it by spending most of their time on land. But oh well. When it does go on land, Antonio Banderas is in the movie as a pirate and he looks like he is having a lot of fun in this kids movie, so kudos to him.

In the end, if you are a SpongeBob fan and this movie had you worried because it seemed like it was going to spend most of the play time on land, then rest assured that it actually isn't like this. You get classic SpongeBob for most of the movie and I think that fans of SpongeBob will really appreciate that. Also, if you have kids that like SpongeBob, then this is a very good movie to take them to. They should love. All the little kids that were with me in the theater looked like they were really enjoying their stay. So I have to give kudos to this movie for playing well to its target audience. If you are part of that target audience, my personal opinion isn't one that you shouldn't really trust. It feels weird saying that, but it's true. People who like SpongeBob enjoyed this movie and that's what's most important. However, I do have to let my opinion be known and I have never been a fan of SpongeBob. I went in hoping that I would enjoy this movie anyways, but I didn't. I was bored for most of. Yes, I was entertained for the 15-20 minutes that we spent on land, but that wasn't enough for me to be entertained and call this a great movie so my personal grade for The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge out of Water is a 6.5/10.

Jupiter Ascending Review

I'm always down for a good sci-fi movie, which is why when I first heard of Jupiter Ascending I was actually fairly excited, especially since it was being made by the Wachowskis and had a fairly decent cast. While the Wachowskis haven't been on the greatest run since making The Matrix, I was still hoping for a return to form. After all, this was a summer movie, right? It should be really fun. But then it got delayed from this past July till now. That's when all kinds of red flags went up in my mid. They claim was they wanted to finish the movie, but in reading between the lines I began to worry if perhaps they didn't feel confident about what they were putting on the screen. Did they think that their movie wasn't good enough to compete with the other summer blockbusters? Is this why they chose to release the movie in February where they didn't have to compete with superior blockbusters? I mean, wanting more time to make sure the movie is as good as possible is something I can respect. But from July to February? I became nervous. But I was still hoping that it would be good. Then more trailers started to arrive and suddenly I began to realize that this movie is probably going to suck. But wow! Even with low expectations, I totally didn't expect the pile of garbage that I got when I saw it. This movie is terrible!

Let's start with the opening scene. Here we have a happy young couple where the wife is very pregnant. Nothing wrong so far. But then they start obsessing over the wife's bare pregnant belly. They lift up the shirt a bit so they can both stare at the belly and then the husband grabs Vaseline to rub it all over her belly and starts kissing it over and over and over. Maybe this is something married people do all the time, I don't know. I'm not a married person. But to me it started to get awkward. Not sexual or explicit. Just awkward. The kind of awkward you feel if your friend, roommate, or sibling just starts making out in front of you and they don't stop despite the fact that they can obviously tell you're uncomfortable. I was begging this movie to move on, but it didn't. It just dragged on. Then this husband brings up this weird idea of naming their daughter Jupiter while he's pretty much making out with his wife's belly. The wife doesn't like it and for good reason. Who names their daughter Jupiter? But of course, since you know the title of the movie already, you know what's going to happen next. I felt zero remorse when it happened because they just both annoyed the heck out of me in that opening scene.

Not a good start. But oh well. Perhaps the rest of the movie would be entertaining. Can't get any worse, right? Ha! By goodness it can! Mila Kunis, who plays Jupiter, is raised in this Russian household in Chicago where they treat her terribly by making her wake up at 4:45 a.m. every morning and do all the chores like make breakfast, clean the house, scrub the toilet, etc. Just like she's Cinderella. Then I got thinking. The opening was the exact same as Finding Nemo. Then we get Cinderella. I thought the Wachowskis were known for coming up with their original ideas? Negative points for being unoriginal. But let's continue. Shortly after watching Kunis' boring life with this not-so-fun family, she is in the room of a female friend(?) helping that friend pick out a dress. Friend is just standing in her underwear because she can't decide which dress to wear when suddenly aliens arrive in the room. Suddenly nearly naked friend is in a trance and is being lifted up in the air. What does Mila do? Run? Hide? Help her friend? Nope. Let's just get out our phone and calmly take a picture. Because, you know, that totally makes sense. Why would she help? And of course, she forgets the whole thing Men in Black style.

I'm not here to describe the whole plot scene by scene. But I did want to do that to paint a picture of how terrible this movie is when it starts off. I don't know how long it took to get to the main action, but it was all super boring and terrible. But perhaps this movie was going to be a lot of fun once it got going. Oh my goodness. Nope. In fact, I am here to tell you that it got a lot worse. This movie went downhill rather quickly. You know how I picked apart the opening of this film in the previous two paragraphs? I kid you not, I could do this for the entire movie. I mean, after we present in a terrible way of how Mila Kunis' life is boring, suddenly she is trying to buy a telescope for some reason, then she is doing this operation that has nothing to do with anything when the doctors turn into aliens and try to kill her when suddenly Channing Tatum, who is part dog (not as weird Sean Bean who is part bee) arrives to rescue her because for some reason she is like the most important woman in the universe which starts this absolutely freaking ridiculous plot of them fighting over her and earth and something weird and crazy with none of it being executed very well at all. Convoluted is a popular word being used to describe this movie and I'd say that's pretty accurate. This movie lost me really quickly and I never recovered or experienced even one sequence of entertainment.

I was told in a film class that I shouldn't just completely rip a movie apart and call it complete garbage. It takes a lot of time, effort, and money to make. Each film is someone's personal project that they spent a very long time on, so I should try to find the good in each movie. Ummmmm... ok. This movie looks really pretty, so long as you ignore the fact that visually it looks exactly like Phantom Menace. Channing Tatum is actually really good in the movie. Sure, I respect the amount of time it took to put this thing together. But I have to be honest. The final product was a mess to me. Speaking of Channing Tatum, let's talk about a few more the actors. Mila Kunis. She looked bored. That worked for the beginning because her character is supposed to be bored with life. But the problem is she never got unbored. She shows very little emotion the whole movie. Not to mention she was just a useless damsel in distress for the whole movie. I mean, how many times did Channing Tatum have to rescue her? A lot. That's not her fault, though. That's the writers' fault. If you're making a movie where the female character's name is in the title of the movie, she should probably be a strong female character that actually does something, especially if she's the most important girl in the universe.

Moving on to another actor that deserves his very own paragraph. Eddie Redmayne. The man did a decent job in Les Mis. His performance didn't stand out, but it wasn't bad. Then he did this movie called The Theory of Everything. Personally I thought the movie was a bit overrated, but I can't argue with the fact that Eddie Redmayne totally knocked it out of the park as Stephen Hawking. No I don't think he deserves to win the best actor award over the likes of Benedict Cumberbatch, Bradley Cooper, or Michael Keaton, but I'm not going to deny that he did an amazing job. The guy is a good actor and I'm excited for his future. But holy cow! Whatever he was told to do in this movie just didn't work out at all. I don't know who all to blame for this, but this performance was outright terrible. In fact, this is so bad that those people who didn't see Les Mis or The Theory of Everything just may walk out of the theater thinking that Redmayne is a really bad actor and regardless of what he does in the future, I really think that there are going to be a group of people that will be forever scarred by his terrible performance in this movie and may never forgive him for it. I really hope that this doesn't ruin his career.

Man, I've talked so much about this movie that I think it's time for me to wrap it up. However, the sad thing is that I feel that there is a lot that I have left out that I could've talked about. Alas, I do realize that people's attention spans aren't always that big when reading movie reviews, so I'm not going to say all that I could say because that would take way too long. Needless to say, this movie was a disaster. I was hoping for it to be good. Even though it was delayed to February, trailers looked bad, and reviews were coming in poor, I still went in hoping that I was going to be at least somewhat entertained, but I wasn't. I know people spent a lot of time on this project, but the honest truth is that the final product really isn't that good at all. In fact, this was a painful experience for me that made me feel trapped in the theater. Yes, the movie looked pretty and some of the acting (namely Channing Tatum) was good, but in the end I'm going to give Jupiter Ascending a 4/10.

Movie Preview: February 2015

Thanks mostly due to a historical run by American Sniper, this January became the best January since 2009 when Avatar was still in the process of taking over the world. This huge boost from American Sniper also helped start 2015 in an excellent way by notching up the first billion dollar month of the year. This presents a fairly good omen for the rest of the year, a year that is full of huge movies that should make this a very healthy year for the box office. However, outside of American Sniper there weren't a whole lot of movies to write home about, especially when you only look at the new 2015 releases (this would exclude American Sniper and Selma which are both considered 2014 releases). Outside Paddington, all the new releases ended up below 40% on Rotten Tomatoes and over half of them below 20%. Even Paddington (which is at 98% right now) could be removed from this conversation due to the fact that it was initially intended as a Christmas movie before being postponed due to heavy competition. This just cements the idea that January is seen as a dumping ground for studios. February is usually a little better. You could say it's a combination of January and March in that it has several movies that studios are just dumping there in hopes to earn a bit of cash as well as some bigger movies that could draw a lot of interest. This is definitely the case for this February as it has quite the variety of films, both good and bad, big and small. So let's dive in!

February 6th - 8th-

The final weekend of January saw the failure of a movie in Project Almanac that went through a whole lot of production issues. Production issues don't always equate to failure, just ask World War Z, but nonetheless this first weekend we get two such movies are being thrown on the schedule. Before we get to those, though, one of the most popular cartoons is getting another shot at the big screen and that is The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge out of Water. SpongeBob has a pretty big following as it first aired on Nickelodeon back in 1999 and went for nine seasons with rumblings of a tenth coming soon. This time around, SpongeBob is going where no other SpongeBob movie or TV episode has gone before. Into the human world. A pirate has stolen something valuable, so they have to follow him and find it. A live-action SpongeBob movie with the classic characters being CGI is a bold move for sure that may or may not work out for SpongeBob fans. They like their classic cartoon SpongeBob and doing this could upset many. Or it could be seen as a genius move that sets this SpongeBob movie apart from all the other SpongeBob material in a good way.

Now to talk about the two movies that have gone through production issues. First off is the movie by the Wachowski siblings, Jupiter Ascending. This was supposed to come out back in June, but got delayed because the Wachowski's said they needed to polish it up, which is respectable. But going from big summer month to a quiet off-month doesn't show a whole lot of confidence. Or perhaps they are just trying to release in a quieter month where they can dominate. Which, if true, turned out to be an unlucky choice because this February is turning into a very competitive month. Early word on Jupiter Ascending is that the visual effects are top notch while the rest of the movie leaves a lot to be desired for, so that's not a good sign. However, what it does have on its side is an excellent cast that includes Channing Tatum, Eddie Redmayne, Mila Kunis, Sean Bean, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw.

In a lot more trouble is the fantasy movie Seventh Son. This is based on a popular book series, but as history has shown us, that isn't all that's needed to have success. This movie was originally scheduled to come out in February of 2013. That's two years ago. I can't even begin to describe all the reasons why it kept being pushed back again and again and again. Let's just say that it's had a whole bunch of issues and now it seems like it's just being thrown on the schedule so that they can get this over with. Are there are enough fans of the book series to help this do well? Better yet, do the fans of the book series know it's even coming out? Doesn't seem like there's been a huge marketing push. But Jupiter Ascending and Seventh Son can't succeed this weekend and it's going to be hard for either of them to do well against Kingsman: The Secret Service coming up on the weekend of Valentine's Day. It seems like Seventh Son will be the odd one out.

February 13th - 15th-

Friday the 13th is happening this month and it comes the day before Valentine's Day. That seems like a bad omen for many. But not for the box office. Valentine's Day always seems to have a romance movie for the girls and an action movie for the guys. That way those wanting a happy lovey movie for Valentine's Day will be happy while those who want to boycott romance will also be happy. This Valentine's Day definitely follows that trend with two very high profile movies from each genre. To the chagrin of many, the romance movie this Valentine's Day is in fact the very controversial Fifty Shades of Grey. Controversy sparks publicity, which in many cases sparks curiosity. So those who are passionately against this movie and voice their opinions on it might be unintentionally helping its cause, if that makes any sense. Speaking of curiosity, that's the tagline on a lot of the marketing. Curious? Come take a peak. How many are going to give into this? A lot actually. Love it or hate it, this is a popular book with a lot of fans that has had a huge marketing push, so it looks to be quite successful. Those who do know exactly what they are getting into as it got its R-rating (yes R -- not NC-17 or PG-13) for "strong sexual content including dialogue, some unusual behavior and graphic nudity, and for language."

Those not wanting to dive into the sexually charged Fifty Shades of Grey movie have the option to dive into the high profile action movie Kingsman: The Secret Service. This is also an adaption, although of a comic book, not a novel. Those who love action movies are certainly in for a treat because this looks like it is loaded with a whole bunch of crazy, physics-defying action-packed scenes throughout. The purpose of this is to provide a whole lot of fun for its audiences and it looks like it will do just that. Helping that is that this is also a comedy, so its definitely not taking itself seriously. Finally, this has quite the cast as it stars Colin Firth, Samuel L Jackson, Mark Hamill, and Michael Caine among others and also has Matthew Vaughn on board to direct, who previously directed Kick-A--, X-Men: First Class, and Stardust. Action? Comedy? Cast? Director? This is a big recipe for success.

February 20th - 22nd-

After what should be a fairly solid first two weekends this month, the third one looks like it may slow things down a bit, allowing for the holdovers from Valentine's Day to dominate once again. There are three new releases to talk about, though, the first of which being Hot Tub Time Machine 2. This was originally supposed to come out on Christmas, but it shied away due to all the press from The Interview, which ended up not getting much of a theatrical release. February was probably a better time for this, anyways, because the last couple of years have shown us that February is a decent time to release an adult-themed comedy. Last year About Last Night did decent business while Identity Thief was the biggest February hit from two years ago. So this sets up nicely on paper. The issue here is did people really want a sequel to Hot Tub Time Machine? Since its release in 2010, there have been a ton of adult comedies that have been huge hits that have already had successful sequels. But this was only a decent hit in the first place and it wasn't extremely well-received. They also probably waited too long to get this out, which will often hurt a sequel even if the first was liked.

Next up we have Kevin Costner doing what Kevin Costner does best. Starring in a sports movie. This time around he's a track coach in McFarland, USA. Sports movies are a tricky thing to do sometimes because there's really only so many ways you can go with the story before coming off as cliche and repetitive. At the same time, if you have a good cast with a good enough story, then people going into the sports movie will be ready for a happy, feel good story. But still, in order to attract huge audiences, you need to stand out. Can McFarland, USA stand out? Can Kevin Costner put the movie on his shoulders if it doesn't stand out. Costner's sports movie last year was Draft Day and that wasn't super impressive and neither was Disney's sports movie from last year in Million Dollar Arm. In fact, both ended with around $30 million, which seems like a fair place for this to end up in.

Speaking of comedies that people might not be interested in, our final movie of the weekend is The DUFF. This is definitely a comedy aimed at teenage girls as this is about a girl in high school being labeled as the "DUFF," which stands for "Designated Ugly Fat Friend." I didn't know that being a DUFF was a thing, but yet it's been a while since I've been to high school, so maybe that's a new thing for high school. Either way, self image is a pretty big thing for high school girls, so this seems like it could be relevant for that crowd, but are they actually going to show up to see it? It doesn't have a known director and it's biggest actor is Robbie Amell, star of CW's The Tomorrow People and The Flash. That's not the best sign.

February 27th - March 1st-

The final weekend of February, which includes one day of March, gives us two new titles, one including one of Hollywood's biggest stars in Will Smith. This movie is Focus. Given Will Smith's box office track record, it's hard to bet against him, especially in this one where he is teamed up with The Wolf of Wall Street star Margot Robbie. In Focus, Will Smith plays a con artist who takes Margot Robbie under his wing as a partner, but things get complicated when he starts losing... uhh.. focus. Because, you know, it's really easy to fall in love with Margot Robbie, so you can't blame the man. The movie is part crime drama and part comedy, so it looks like it has a very good balance. While betting on Will Smith to succeed just because it's Will Smith isn't a bad strategy, it's worth noting that his last big movie, After Earth, was a big failure, so even the best can fall short.

Last and possibly least, February rounds thing off by delivering us another horror movie with The Lazerus Effect. Horror movies are a dime a dozen and recently have been very poorly received. Recently being last year of course as there were many different horror movies that ended up on peoples' worst movies of 2014 lists. Is The Lazerus Effect going to change the genre's luck around by giving horror fans something can cheer for? Director David Gelb previous work includes.... documentaries? Nope. No feature length films. Nothing horror related. But if it can provide scares, then that's all that matters, right? The premise here is that a group of researchers finds a way to bring people back to life. Hence the Lazerus effect. And of course you know things are going to go wrong. This is only PG-13, so perhaps it's trying to attract the teenage crowd?

Locke Review

This is a very unique review for me. Very rarely do I actually write a review for a movie that I first saw after it had been released on DVD. I don't exactly have a reasoning for that other than I just like to review current movies in theaters as close to opening weekend as possible, preferably on opening weekend. However, I'm going against that because I'm reviewing this movie called Locke that came out last April that I saw the other week on Amazon Prime. This is a movie that went completely under my radar. I didn't see any advertisements or trailers. I did not hear of it when it came to theaters. It even left theaters without me even realizing it existed. Looking back, this is mostly because it was only released in 121 theaters at its max. However, what brought this to my attention was some very soft Oscar buzz for Tom Hardy in this role. This wasn't even close to actually happening, but since I like Tom Hardy as an actor, I gave the movie a shot when I saw it on my Amazon Prime earlier in the month. And holy cow, I was totally captivated by this movie. In fact, I liked it so much that I decided a review needs to happen in hopes that I can convince at least one additional person to give this movie a shot, especially since it's on Amazon Prime.

Locke is about a man named Ivan Locke and man does he have himself in quite the conundrum. He works as a manager of some sort of construction business and their team is about to do one of the biggest concrete pourings of their business. He kind of needs to be there. He is also happily married with an older kid and he has promised them that he will be home to watch the big game with them. Not too bad, right? Well, what throws a huge wrench into the situation is that lets say approximately nine months ago he messed up big time and slept with another lady. He feels terrible about this. He doesn't love her, he claims. He just messed up and now she is in the hospital having his child. So what does he do? He makes the decision that he needs to be with this woman for this birth. So with his job and his relationship with his family on the line, he drives to the hospital while trying to work things out with everyone else.

On that premise alone, I think this would be an interesting movie. Perhaps the movie could show some of the back story. It could show his co-workers. It could show the lady at the hospital and his family at home while showing what Ivan Locke does. But what makes this absolutely brilliant is that it shows none of this. The whole movie, every second of the 85 minute run time, is Tom Hardy in his car driving on the freeway at night. That's it. Tom Hardy is the only actor we physically see in screen and all he's doing is sitting in his car driving. How does the story unfold like this? Simple. Tom Hardy makes a bunch of phone calls while he's driving and since he uses his bluetooth, we hear all the conversations on the speaker of the car. That's how we get our story. Looking at reviews, this movie definitely splits people. Some people just don't care to see a movie about Tom Hardy driving down the road in his car. But others like me absolutely loved it.

To me this is a very simplistic movie that shows that you don't necessarily need a whole lot to create a good movie. A lot of paintings are like this. You'll have a very simple painting that does the bare minimum in what is actually painted, but many times that is all that is needed to create a grand picture that says a whole lot. It makes the viewers think and imagine the story that is taking place with the artwork. That's what happens here. A great comparison I think is Richard Linklater's Before trilogy. In each of those movies, all you see is people walking and talking. It's very simple, but yet it does a great job of painting the big picture just with simple dialogue telling the story that most films decide to show. If you liked those movies, I really think you'll like this. In this movie, we don't need to see the other characters in their environments. We don't need to see the co-workers. We don't need to see his wife. We don't need to see the lady in the hospital. We don't need to see his son. All we need is to hear them on the phone with Locke. We don't even need to see or listen to their actions and reactions when they hang up the phone with them. Based on the many conversations we hear, we can infer and imagine what they do and say off-phone. We can create this huge story in our mind with all these complex characters just be listening to the building blocks of this story through conversation. It's brilliant.

I really wish this movie would've been bigger in terms of its release and box office total, because this is a movie that I think every movie lover should check out and know of. Since I barely heard of it, I am willing to bet that there are at least a few people out there reading this review that are learning of this movie for the very first time, which saddens me. It also saddens me that I didn't learn of this sooner, so I'm doing my due diligence in spreading the word. This is absolutely brilliant film making that could teach filmmakers and aspiring filmmakers a lot of lessons about film. The acting by Tom Hardy in this movie is top notch. One of his best performances to date in my opinion, and I've loved a lot of his movies. Definitely Oscar-worthy. The other people lending their voices also do a great job of giving us all kinds of emotions with just their voices. Finally, the movie also brings up a whole ton of themes that can be reflected on and discussed for long after this movie ends. So yes, go find this movie and watch it. If you have Amazon Prime, you can watch it for free right there. I just checked that to make sure it was still up and it is. If you don't have Amazon Prime, I'm sure there's other ways that you can find this. I did actually see this movie before creating my best of 2014 movie list and this movie was one of the last cuts and it broke my heart that I didn't include it. My grade for Locke is a 9/10.

Project Almanac Review

Just over a year ago, I was sitting in the theater for some movie when I saw a trailer for Welcome to Yesterday. It was a time travel, found footage movie that had a pretty decent trailer actually and it was coming out that February. I decided that I was excited to see what this movie had to offer. Sure, it didn't seem totally epic, but I thought it had the potential to be a lot of fun. Then come February they pulled the rug right out from underneath me by postponing this movie at the last second for an entire year. Ouch! That was not very nice of them at all. I don't know what went on behind the scenes to cause this delay, but at some point during this delay, one of the things they decided to change was the title. It went from Welcome to Yesterday to Project Almanac. I even believe at some point it was called just Almanac before they threw the "Project" in front of it. That was weird. It took my mind a while to get used to this new name, and even though I am used to it, I still think I like the original title better. Anywho, after an annoyingly long wait it finally showed up in theaters, and, uh, well, whatever they attempted to fix during the delay didn't quite work out that well because this movie leaves a lot to be desired for.

First off I want to make one thing clear. There's a lot of people that will hate on this movie because of the found footage genre. It was once fresh and original, but now it's been done so much that people are just sick of it and thus they will rip any found footage apart just because it is done in the found footage style. I'm not that type of person. If done well I think that the found footage genre is a very effective style of movie making. Two great examples are the movies Cloverfield and Chronicle. I love and own both of those movies and in both cases the found footage genre is what makes the movie. I try to think of what those movies would look like without that style and I don't think they would be nearly as good. So no, I don't look at found footage as inherently bad. However, I do think that a movie that does found footage needs to do a dang good job of justifying them using the style. Because, come on, how many people honestly take out their camera and film every second of their lives just because something crazy is happening? Not very many. Thus when a movie tries so hard to justify their use of it, it usually comes off as forced and unnecessary.

I was really hoping that this movie would turn out like Chronicle and actually make good use of the genre. But unfortunately instead of being like Chronicle in its use of found footage, it's more like last year's Earth to Echo, which is a movie that could've been a fun movie, but one of the many problems was that it was found footage when it didn't need to be. In fact, found footage made that movie worse. Same thing here. I started this movie doing my best to like it, but we didn't get very far at all before I started to think about what the movie would be like it was shot normally. Honestly, it would've been a much better movie. So yes, the found footage hurt this movie quite a bit. Can you imagine would Back to the Future would've been like if it were done found footage style? Yeah, that sounds really weird to me, too. If you don't need to do found footage and you can in fact make a better movie without it, then don't do found footage. I hope all future movie makers are taking notes on that.

But ok, what about the actual movie itself? Had the only problem in the movie been the terrible use of found footage, that in theory could've been forgiven to a degree. But that's the problem. The actual movie itself isn't that good. It's a time travel movie that has every time traveling cliche in the book. I mean, think of every time traveling movie you've watched and put together the typical generic storyline for such a movie. I'm willing to bet that you would come up with something like this: people/person discovers a way to travel in time, they have fun with time travel for a while, something bad starts to happen, potential ripple effects happen that change the future, then because of this they try to figure out a way to make it so they never time traveled in the first place or they realize that life is good without time travel so they try to go back to normal. Right? Right. That's what this movie is to a t. No originality. Nothing unpredictable. Just bland, boring time travel. What makes it worse is that the movie spoils itself at the very beginning. The whole premise is that the main kid watches a video of his 7th birthday party and sees his current self in the mirror. The second you see that scene, you know everything that is going to happen and you're exactly right. Finally, these kids don't even do anything interesting with the time travel. I mean, one kid wants to go back and ace a test, one girl wants to go get revenge on a bully, then they go to an Imagine Dragons concert. Stuff that teenagers would do with time travel at first. But I was hoping they would do more. You know, take the time travel to the next level? Nope.

So overall, Project Almanac is a movie that had a lot of potential. Chronicle proved that the found footage genre can be used very effectively, even when the story surrounds a group of teenage kids. Project Almanac went this direction and even had a time travel premise that they could've done amazing things with. But they don't. This movie isn't unwatchably bad. I'd much rather go back and re-watch this than some of the other movies I've seen this month. But the problem is that this has so much potential that it just throws away for a boring, predictable, safe, cliche time travel movie that gives the found footage genre an even worse name by completely misusing it. I waited a long time for this movie. I was even to the point where I decided that I was excited for this movie. I wanted it to be good. I tried to like it. But I have to be honest. This movie isn't that good. My grade for Project Almanac is a 6/10.