Avengers: Age of Ultron Review

I'm sure you all knew this by now, but in case you have forgotten or are a new friend of mine, let me remind you that I am a huge sucker for superhero movies, especially those that are a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Avengers: Age of Ultron is Marvel's 11th movie in their universe, which all began with Iron Man in 2008. In my opinion, they have yet to make a bad movie. Sure, movies like Iron Man 2 and Thor: The Dark World didn't impress me as much as others, but I would still consider those good movies. On top of all these as my favorite is 2012's The Avengers. In my opinion that movie is definitely a classic. Or will become one if you have a strict definition that a classic must be a certain age. Not only is it my favorite superhero movie from Marvel's universe, but if I were to make a list of my personal favorite superhero movies in general, that would still be number one. It was probably every comic book fan's dream, or any superhero fan's dream, to bring The Avengers to life on the big screen. The way Marvel built up to it was extremely risky, but in that instance high risk became high reward because The Avengers was pretty much done to perfection. I think I saw it at least five times in theaters and many more times when it came out on DVD. It's safe to say that you can call it my movie as it's developed into one of my all-time favorite movies. Of course I'm going to be super excited about the sequel.

That said, it's also important to note that because The Avengers was done so good, I've said for a while now that I don't think any movie that Marvel is going to top it, not even Avengers: Age of Ultron. Turns out I'm right on that. Avengers: Age of Ultron is not as good as The Avengers. In fact, I think I'd even put Captain America: The Winter Soldier ahead of it. But that's not an insult to this movie. It's more of a compliment to how great the Marvel Cinematic Universe is because Avengers: Age of Ultron is 141 minutes of pure solid entertainment. Heck, when Guardians of the Galaxy is now sixth place when I order the MCU movies from best to worst, you know Marvel has created something special because I absolutely loved that movie as well. I just like both Avengers movies, the first and third Iron Man movies, and the Captain America sequel a bit more. As superhero movie fans, we should be amazed that we are living through such an epic time in movie history where Marvel is giving us what we've been dreaming of for a long time now. All that said, it's time for me to dive deeper into this movie because there is a whole heck of a lot to talk about. No spoilers, though, I promise.

Like I said, this movie is extremely entertaining. All the action in the movie was a whole lot of fun. The chemistry between everyone in the cast is done perfectly. There were so many one-liners that had me cracking up the whole time. All this done in perfect Avengers fashion. That said, this isn't a perfect movie and I want to talk about a few of the complaints that I had. But keep in mind, these are more nit-picky because I really loved this movie. My first complaint is actually Ultron himself. He's actually a pretty solid villain in the second half of the movie, but his development is pretty underwhelming in my opinion. Maybe it's because I was just spoiled with the best A.I. movie I've ever seen last weekend with Ex Machina, but everything with Ultron just happened so fast and made little sense. Tony Stark decides he wants to create this A.I. robot to protect the world and before he's even finished, this robot decides that he's going to destroy all the Avengers. Ummm... ok. It's like Marvel was thinking that they needed a villain for the Avengers to fight and wanted to save their better, more developed villains for later. So we essentially get a villain of the week in Age of Ultron.

The other thing I really didn't like was the romance that happened between Scarlett Johansson and Mark Ruffalo. This just came out of nowhere. No development. No lead-up. Black Widow just suddenly has this thing for Bruce Banner and just goes for it. This is disappointing because I really love the character of Black Widow, especially after she blew everyone away in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. She was always very flirtatious with people, but when push came to shove, she was very closed to everyone when it came to her personal and romantic life because of some sort of dark, bitter past that we don't know of. It makes her interesting. But suddenly all that intrigue and mystery is just gone when it comes to Hulk and she is very open with him and wanting to pursue a relationship? Why? It's like Marvel looked at the situation and realized that everyone else has a significant other except for Black Widow and Hulk and decided to try start a storyline there despite there being absolutely no chemistry. Black Widow had more chemistry with Hawkeye in the first Avengers as well as more chemistry with Captain America in Winter Soldier. Frustrating.

Those two things are really the only major complaints I had, though. They weren't big enough to have a huge effect on the movie, but they're still worth bringing up. Now let's talk about the newcomers to this because I thought they were pretty good. I'm mainly referring to Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, played by Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor Johnson who really do have great chemistry together as brother and sister. This is probably because this isn't their only time working together. They played husband and wife in the latest Godzilla movie. Luckily it's been long enough since Godzilla that I didn't find that a bit weird like I did with Ansel Elgort and Shailene Woodley in The Fault in Our Stars after Divergent a few months before. Instead I just thought Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver were a great team that had great development throughout the movie. As far as Quicksilver goes, I do need to add that I think Marvel beats Fox in the Quicksilver battle. Sure, Fox's Quicksilver was a lot more entertaining in Days of Future Past, but he was only there for a few scenes while Marvel used Quicksilver for the whole movie, thus I developed more of an attachment to Marvel's Quicksilver.

Now for a few other characters to talk about. There's this new guy called Vision. Loved him. But that's all I'm saying. It was announced that he was going to be in the movie and he even has his own poster and quick second in the trailer, so me bringing him up isn't a spoiler, but if I said anything about why I loved him, it would be a spoiler. So that's that. The next character I want to talk about is not a new character, but one that was developed a lot more in this. That's Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye. Hawkeye is such a great character and Jeremy Renner is such a good actor that I was waiting for the moment where Marvel really gave us more about him and in this movie they did. He played a huge here and I loved it. I'll let you figure out for yourself what they do with him, so no spoilers, but thanks Marvel! Jeremy Renner deserved that. Andy Serkis is also in the movie as this character named Ulysses Klaue. First off, Andy Serkis is such a boss. He's probably the most talented actor in the business, which is why he has shown up in pretty much every major movie franchise. This appearance is one of the first times I've seen him as himself and not a voice or a motion capture character like Gollum or Caesar. I almost complained about him not being in the movie for long enough. If you cast Andy Serkis in your movie, why only use him for only ten or so minutes? Then I looked up his character afterwards. Turns out his appearance in this is just a setup for Black Panther where he will probably be the main villain. Got it.

Speaking of that, this movie does spend a whole lot of time setting up future events in future movies. The Andy Serkis thing is just one example I'm giving, but there's a lot of scenes that are only in the movie because they are setting something else up for a future movie. There are things that happen with Thor's character that setup for Thor: Ragnarok. You can see the tension start to happen between Captain America and Iron Man that sets up for Captain America: Civil War. And that's not all. I've heard a lot of complaints with this and I understand where people are coming from with those complaints. It's almost like Marvel spent more time focusing on future movies with Age of Ultron than focusing on the drama happening in the moment. Personally I didn't mind it, though. I'm looking at the big picture with this and I'm enjoying it. There's been 11 movies made so far and there's 11 more officially on the schedule throughout the year 2019 and I'm excited to see all of them. So while some say most of Age of Ultron was just a setup for the future, I say it was a good balance of being entertaining in the moment while making me excited for the future.

So in the end, if we compare this movie universe to a TV show and The Avengers was the pilot episode and The Infinite Wars is the huge season finale that they are setting up for, then Age of Ultron is essentially like a monster-of-the-week episode. But do you know what, if that is true, it's a pretty dang good monster-of-the-week episode. Yes, I had my concerns with it. No, it's not as good as the original. But I still loved this movie. The chemistry between this group is fantastic and I just love watching them fight together as a group. I also love seeing them just associate and hang out as a group. There's a scene at the beginning that you see in the trailer where they are just at a party and that has devoid of actual for a long while, but was super entertaining. Whatever they are doing, they are just fun to watch as group. I loved this movie. I've at least enjoyed every movie that Marvel has done previously. I'm really looking forward to everything that Marvel has in store for the future. I gave The Avengers a perfect 10/10 and I stand by that score to this day. I'm not giving Avengers: Age of Ultron a perfect score, but I will give it a 9/10, which is still a great score in my book, especially since I've been more picky with what I give a high score to as I try to utilize my whole scale more.

Movie Preview: May 2015

Summer doesn't officially start until June 21st according to the calendar, but in Hollywood it begins on the first weekend of May and goes through July, with leftovers coming in the first half of August. Yes, there are movies in the first third of the year that do great business. Just look at Furious 7 from this past month as a great example. But for the most part, studios save what they view as their biggest titles for the Summer. This Summer is loaded with a whole bunch of big titles that will be consistently attracting movie fans to theaters every weekend. I'm not going to look at the whole Summer right now, but instead I will be diving into this first month of the Summer which will be huge mainly because of what's opening in the first weekend, but there's still plenty of noteworthy movies throughout. So without further ado, lets jump in!

May 1st - 3rd-

This here is Marvel's spot. Only twice since 2008 has Marvel Studios not opened the Summer with one of their major films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and even those two movies that weren't were Marvel comic book characters (The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine), so you can say it's now a Hollywood tradition to start the Summer off with a major Marvel comic book movie. DC tried to take that spot away from Marvel with Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, but once they found out that Marvel's Summer opener next year was going to be Captain America: Civil War, they immediately retreated to the end of March. Getting to this year's Summer opener, you all knew that Avengers: Age of Ultron is opening this Summer. The critics aren't that ecstatic about this highly anticipated sequel, but movie fans don't care about that and many fans that have already seen it, like those who got it overseas last weekend, have still loved this despite the critic reviews. Will this make as much money as the first? Worldwide it probably will. In the U.S. that is in question as it might fall a bit short, but that's only because the first set a huge bar. Regardless of that though, it does seem very likely that this breaks the opening weekend record that was set by the first back in 2012. I don't need to tell you what this is about. I'm sure you've already gathered the whole idea of Ultron trying to kill off the Avengers. New Avengers characters will be officially introduced in this movie, two of which are Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch and Aaron Taylor Johnson as Quicksilver.

May 8th - 10th-

Opening the weekend after a huge movie like Avengers: Age of Ultron is usually a really bad idea, which is why studios wait at least two weeks before trying to enter the market after a movie event like this. However, Warner Bros. has decided to see if they can provide a bit of counter programming this week with Hot Pursuit. When I personally think of the title Hot Pursuit, I think of the Need For Speed franchise with video games Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit and Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2. In case you are wondering, no this is not a sequel to last year's movie Need For Speed (which is happening, by the way). Even though I hope the eventual Need For Speed sequel is subtitled Hot Pursuit, this month Hot Pursuit is referring to a PG-13-rated comedy starring Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara. Those not interested in the high octane Avengers sequel might be in the mood for a comedy,  which means this could be a decent hit for a movie opening up right after Age of Ultron, especially since this is aimed at a female audience. What immediately comes to mind is last year's The Other Woman which was another PG-13-rated comedy aimed at females that did well for itself around this time last year. The big thing that might hurt this isn't actually Age of Ultron, it's the fact that Pitch Perfect 2 gets released the very next weekend, which is aiming for the same audience.

Hot Pursuit is the only major release that has decided to go up against Avengers: Age of Ultron in this second weekend. However, there is another movie worth mentioning here that is getting a moderate release this weekend and that is The D Train. If you haven't heard of this, it's a film that caused a bit of a stir at the Sundance Film Festival a few months ago. This stars Jack Black as the head of a high school reunion committee who travels to convince the most popular guy in their class, played by James Marsden, to come to their high school reunion. I didn't go to Sundance, so I haven't seen this, but I read a lot about it and let's just say that something happens in the film that caught a lot of people by surprise. If that makes you curious, you can go search this movie and read for yourself. I'm not going to spoil it here. This won't make many ripples in the box office, but those interested in the smaller festival-type movies will be searching this one out.

May 15th - 17th-

By the third weekend of May, Avengers: Age of Ultron will have died down enough for studios to feel comfortable releasing something new and this weekend has two big movies that are sure to split genders this weekend. Aiming at the male population will be Mad Max: Fury Road. This may be a bit too dark and violent to be a real huge hit, but needless to say there is a lot of buzz with this. The Mad Max movies were a fairly popular trilogy of movies back in the 1980's that were written and directed by George Miller and starred Mel Gibson as the character Max. George Miller is back on board as writer and director of this reboot, which stars Tom Hardy as Max and co-stars Charlize Theron and Nicholas Hoult, so it has quite a bit of star power. The trailers have also had positive reaction that have gotten Mad Max fans pretty excited for this.

On the female side of things, there is also Pitch Perfect 2 this weekend. It'll be interesting to see which of these movies comes out on top because both have their fair share of fans and thus both should do pretty well. Pitch Perfect was a bit of a surprise hit back in Fall of 2012 and thus became so popular that the sequel has been promoted from a Fall movie to a Summer movie. The Glee-style musical comedy is the type of movie where a sequel is pretty easy to throw together and please fans, so that's what they've done. Pitch Perfect 2 brings back much of the same cast including Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, Elizabeth Banks, Brittany Snow, and Alexis Knapp and even has star Elizabeth Banks on board to direct this sequel. It promises the same type of laughs and music that made the first a big hit, so fans of Pitch Perfect are sure to be pleased with this one.

May 22nd - 24th- 

It's a foregone conclusion that Age of Ultron will rule the box office for the first two weekends of May and barring either Age of Ultron plummeting extremely hard or a huge breakout performance from Mad Max: Fury Road or Pitch Perfect 2, Age of Ultron will probably rule for a third weekend. However, this fourth weekend will definitely be the week it gets dethroned from the top and taking that crown will be Disney again with Tomorrowland, making for a pretty good month for the company. There's a lot of good things that this movie has in it's favor. The first is successfully gaining interest from a lot of people without giving away much about the movie. We know that there is a special land called Tomorrowland and we know that Britt Robertson will be taken there by George Clooney, but that's really all we know. The second thing this has going for it is it will give family audiences something to look forward to since they have been neglected recently. Home and Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 are the only two movies in the last couple of months that have actually been directed at family audiences. The third thing this has going for it is that it is directed by Brad Bird, who directed The Incredibles and Mission: Impossibe - Ghost Protocol. With the success of both of these movies, Bird has proven his versatility in both animated and live action, thus making him a very reliable director. Look for Tomorrowland to be a fairly decent hit.

The other movie from the weekend will be providing some good counter-programming to everything else from this month as we have the horror movie Poltergeist. This, of course, isn't just any run of the mill horror movie. Poltergeist was a 1982 horror movie that was written and produced by none other than Steven Spielberg himself and is considered by many a horror classic. So this makes this the second 80's remake of the month alongside Mad Max: Fury Road. Unlike Mad Max, though, Poltergeist doesn't have the same crew on board to do this, so it's in much more tricky territory. Horror movies in general have a very hit-and-miss track record. Either it becomes a huge hit and spawns multiple sequels due to it's low budget or it completely bombs. This could go either way. But if it's not excellent, it'll certainly be labeled as another useless remake and fade away quickly, so they need to bring their A-game here.

May 29th - 31st-

Finishing off the month are a pair of movies with decent potential. The first is the disaster movie San Andreas. The San Andreas Fault is one of the more dangerous faults in the United States at least that has plagued the state of California with many earthquakes throughout the years. If you haven't heard much about this film, you might look at that title and wonder which earthquake in history they are basing this off of. Then all it takes is for you to watch the trailer to realize that the answer is none of them. This is an exaggerated fictional disaster movie based off the infamous violent fault. These types of fictional disaster movies definitely can work out and entertain audiences, but too many of them end up being non-impressive. Immediately what comes to mind is last year's Into the Storm. Thus if there was any big movie this month that has the potential to be destroyed by critics, I would place my money on this. Speaking of money, though, the advertising with this has focused heavily on star Dwayne Johnson, who has proven multiple times to be a big box office draw, so money might be in this movie's future, regardless of how it's received.

Last but certainly not least is Cameron Crowe's latest movie Aloha. Based on the cast and director, this was initially thought to be a potential Oscar contender last year before it got moved to May. Crowe won a best original screenplay Oscar for his work in Almost Famous and also earned two Oscar nominations for Jerry Maguire, which included a best picture nomination. He's only directed three movies since his win in 2001 for Almost Famous, and even though he didn't receive any major Oscar nominations for those, they are still very well liked movies, his most recent outing being We Bought a Zoo. The cast for Aloha? Check this out: Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Rachel McAdams, John Krasinski, Bill Murray, Jay Baruchel, Alec Baldwin, and Danny McBride. Yeah. Fans of Cameron Crowe's movies are definitely going to want to check this one out.

Ex Machina Review

Sometimes movies that I'm really excited for claim they are coming out one week, but then torment me by staying in limited release for two straight weeks. I've been excited for Ex Machina for a while now based solely on the trailers that were released and I was totally excited to see Furious 7 in the first weekend of April followed by Ex Machina in the second weekend. But no, I had to wait all the way until the fourth weekend. Thankfully they finally decided to expand nationwide, which is something the other movie from the second weekend of April has yet to do. Yes, I'm looking at you Clouds of Sils Maria. Come on already! Back on subject. Ex Machina finally came. Putting it simply, this is the best movie of the year so far. No contest. Granted, most of the big movies of the year haven't come out yet, but still. Also, this is the type of movie where the less you know about it going in, the better your experience will be. This makes for a tricky review, but I will  do my best to explain why this is my favorite movie of the year without telling you a whole lot about it.

Premise. Artificial intelligence. This subject has been covered by a whole ton of movies throughout the years, but I'm here to tell you that this may be the best artificial intelligence movie that has been made. I use the word "may" because I haven't seen every movie that has tackled the subject, but right now I can't think of any that have done a better job. Broadening the topic even more, this is also one of the best sci-fi movies that I have seen in quite some time. Note the wording "one of the best." I'm not claiming this is the best sci-fi movie, but it's a dang good one. So what's it actually about? Well, Oscar Isaac plays this guy who is the head of a huge company and has created this artificially intelligent woman that he has named Ava. Domnhall Gleeson plays a character who has won the chance to come participate in an experiment with Ava for a week. That's all the specifics I'm going to tell you about the plot. Just know that with this setup comes a whole lot of unpredictable twists and turns that make this quite the ride.

A lot of this movie is actually slow-paced. As I've said in my most recent review of True Story, having a slow-paced movie can go two ways. With True Story, there are parts of the movie that are slow that make the movie boring and thus take away from the quality of the movie. Ex Machina is a great example of a movie on the other side of that spectrum. There's a lot of movies out there that focus on special effects to make their movie great. With the summer season about to get underway, we're about to see a whole lot of these movies and I'm proud to admit that I love these types of big blockbusters. This is not the focus of Ex Machina. While the special effects are actually quite brilliant, the movie leans a lot more on ideas and theme to make the movie great. The power of the movie comes in these conversations between Domnhall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, and the robot Ava as well as the consequences that follow the decisions made by each of these three. There are a lot of themes that I'm not even going to talk about because I want it to be a surprise for you, but I will say that these themes are deep. They are thought-provoking. This isn't the type of movie that is simply an entertaining flick, it's the type of movie that sticks with you long after seeing it because of the themes that are presented.

This is also a movie that is very meticulously crafted in terms of all the technical aspects and the production design. I'm not going to give you examples because, as I stated, I want to leave the themes a surprise. But once you think of all the major themes that are happening, you can sit there and analyze in depth each scene, each set, each outfit, each room, each prop and notice how all of these details, whether big or small, add something to the themes of the movie, To add to that, you have all of the cinematography adding to the themes of the movie. You can specifically pay attention to the lighting in every scene, the camera angles, the different shots, etc. All of it makes for an absolutely beautiful and stunning movie. But I'm not even done. The score in this is fantastic. A lot of the music is very subtle as the scenes themselves are also subtle, but when the movie gets to the really intense scenes, especially towards the end of the movie, the score just adds so much intensity and power to an already powerful film.

Finally I want to talk about the acting in this. First off we have Domnhall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac. These are two actors that I have been raving about for quite some time now. Pay attention to these two. If either of them highlights a cast of a movie, pay attention to that movie because it's probably worth seeing. Even if the movie itself isn't that great, you can bet that they will at least give it their all. They are also examples of two actors that do a great job of disappearing into their roles and that, to me, is the sign of a great actor. Oscar Isaac is especially excellent at this. I've seen him in several movies now and he is completely different in every movie. He acts differently. He looks differently. He talks differently. He is the character and not himself, which is fantastic. If you don't know Domnhall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac, I can guarantee that you will by the end of the year as they are both cast in Star Wars: The Force Awakes. I also can't end this review without mentioning the third person in this movie because it is a trio of great acting, not just a duo. This is Alicia Vikander who plays our A.I. girl Ava. I didn't know her much at all before this, but holy cow. She's just... wow! I don't want to say much about her or her character, but just trust me on this. She's great.

It's only April. I'm not going to try to predict how high this will be on my list of favorite movies of the year come December. First off, most of the highly anticipated movies from this year are yet to come. Second, there's always movies that show up out of nowhere towards the end of the year that blow my mind away. Last year at this time there were a couple of movies that I said were guaranteed to be on my end of year list and embarassingly enough, I left them off. What I will say, though, is that if there is a movie this year that is going to top Ex Machina, I'm super excited to see that movie because it will require a near perfect movie to top it. Right now I'm going to give Ex Machina a 9.5/10, but I'm going to put a figurative asterisk on that because this is the type of movie that will probably get better after time just by thinking about more and giving it additional viewings, but as of now it's been less than 24 hours. Just know that my mind was blown at the end of this movie. I understand that it won't be for everyone because this focuses more on theme and dialogue than fancy effects, but my reaction at the end of this movie was a similar to the reaction I had when I saw Inception for the first time. I'm not saying it's as good as Inception. I'm just saying I had that type of reaction at the end.

True Story Review

Now here's a movie that you may have never heard of. I myself had barely heard of it before it showed up in theaters this past weekend. So let me catch you up to speed real quick. This was one of those movies that Oscar buffs thought might have a slight chance at award recognition had it actually come out last year. It didn't, though. Instead it premiered this January at the Sundance Film Festival. I thought about attending Sundance this year since it's not too far away from where I am. But for various reasons, I chose not to. Instead I decided to play the waiting game because the best movies from Sundance usually get picked up by a distribution company and eventually make their way to theaters. Thus was the case with True Story, which I believe is one of the first movies from this year's festival to hit theaters. Outside the cast, I still didn't know much about this when it did hit theaters. Then I actually read the premise. Yup, I was in. This is a crime drama/mystery/thriller thing. If you know me, these types of movies are right down my alley.

I know you all have the same question in your mind, so let me answer it. Yes, this is based on a true story. It stars Jonah Hill as Michael Finkel and James Franco as Christian Longo. I'll get to those two actors in a second, but the story of Michael Finkel and Christian Longo is a really interesting one. Longo was a seemingly normal man who, nearly out of the blue as the movie claims, killed his wife and three kids. Or at least that's what he's accused of at the beginning of the movie. We get his actual court trial towards the end. Before he got caught and arrested, though, he was on the run taking on the identity of Michael Finkle, who is a New York Times reporter that just got fired for adding a few too many creative liberties in one of his big stories. What does Finkle do when he discovers that this convicted killer took on his identity? Well, being a reporter he decides to go visit him in jail/prison to get his story. Because that's of course the most logical solution, right? The result of these visits is a memoir Finkle ends up writing based on these experiences that he calls True Story, which of course takes several surprise turns.


Like I said, I think the idea behind this movie is a really fascinating one. I was really intrigued as I tried to figure out Finkle's motivations behind everything. I also enjoyed the mystery aspect of it. Like I inferred, at this point Longo was accused of killing his wife and kids. But since it came out of the blue, on the surface anyways, there is the question of if he is actually guilty or not and that is what Finkle is trying to figure out because Longo initially tells him that he innocent. I personally bought the mystery and intrigue. I love that stuff. However, I will admit that there did come a point in the movie where it did drag on a bit. I was waiting for the drama to pick up and for the longest time it didn't. Slow is not always bad. Many times slow is necessary and makes for a dang good film. In this instance, though, slow was boring and I almost actually dozed off a few times. Thankfully it did finally pick up and when it did the ride to the end was actually a pretty intense, fun ride. So yeah, they could've fixed that middle somehow, but overall this made for a pretty solid flick.

What definitely made it work were the two performances from our leads. James Franco and Jonah Hill are actually two pretty versatile actors, both of whom have Oscar nominations under their belts. Typically they are known for their comedies, especially when you see them both together in a movie. I mean, if I told you I saw a movie with Jonah Hill and James Franco and that was all I said, I'm sure that the first thing you would ask is which new comedy I went to see. But no. This is far from comedic, which is why I liked it. James Franco is actually a really likable character, which in turn makes him a very creepy character when you think of what he is accused of doing. Jonah Hill, though, is the one that really impressed me. Franco I've seen in several serious roles and I know he does a dang good job with them. Hill on the other hand is a different story. I'm not a huge fan of his style of comedy, but I know those who are acknowledge that he is a very funny man, so I give him props for that. And he has done a decent job in his supporting roles that he's done being that that's the category his two nominations came from, but this is the first time I've personally seen him as the lead role in a serious film and he knocked this out of the park. I'd say this is a much more solid performance than his other two performances that got him Oscar nominations and if this movie came out towards the end of the year, I'd say maybe this was good enough to at least get him in the conversation for another nomination, this time as a lead.

Finally we have this girl named Felicity Jones, who I think is really starting to make a name for herself. Before last year, she was a fairly unknown actress. Then she showed up as Felicia in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 which was of course followed by her true breakout performance as Jane Hawking in The Theory of Everything which got her a best actress nomination in the most recent Oscars. In True Story she plays Jonah Hill's wife and her role isn't very big, but towards the end of the movie she has a moment. It's only one moment, but holy freaking cow is it a dang good moment. It's a moment that almost steals the whole movie right away from James Franco and Jonah Hill. Thus it reminded me that this girl definitely has a very bright future in front of her that will almost certainly take off next year at the latest when she will show up as a lead role in the Star Wars spin-off called Rogue One.

Overall if you need a good movie to see and you don't want to wait until Avengers: Age of Ultron comes out next weekend to go to the theaters next, I'd recommend you give True Story a shot, especially if you're into the crime drama genre like me. This made almost nothing in it's small nationwide expansion, so if you don't get it now, you'll have to wait until it shows up at RedBox, in which case it would be a couple dollars spent very well. Yes, it is a bit slow during the middle, but it's an intriguing premise that immediately catches your attention and ends very well. Any slack that the movie itself leaves is picked up by solid performances from our two leads in James Franco and Jonah Hill, who prove once again how versatile they are as acting. And of course Felicity Jones totally owns it in her moment. My grade for True Story is an 8/10.

Home Review

After several years of dominating the animation scene alongside Pixar, Dreamworks Animation Studios has really struggled as of late. Dreamworks of ten years ago was able to provide the world with plenty of $200 million movies or at least get close. Since the end of 2012, though, things started to go south as Rise of the Guardians was a pretty big disappointment. Since that movie, only The Croods could be considered a win for the studio. The highly anticipated sequel, How to Train Your Dragon 2, couldn't even get wings last year as it wound up $40 million below its predecessor, despite expectations that it would out-earn that movie by quite a bit. After the financial disaster of Penguins of Madagascar, Dreamworks has totally revamped everything. Enter Home. Given this sketchy recent history, was Home looking like the home-run type of movie that would put Dreamworks back on its feet? Regardless of how you would answer that, turns out Home has become a huge win for Dreamworks. Yeah, I don't really understand why. But congratulations Dreamworks.

As far as my opinion on the movie, this is a very mixed bag actually. Allow me to describe to you the premise of this movie. There's this alien race known as the Boov. The Boov are running away from this other alien race and decide to take over Earth as a hiding spot. There's this one Boov named Oh that always screws things up and thus none of the other Boovs like. After a certain series of events that finds him running from the other Boov, he finds himself teamed up with a young human girl named Tip, who got separated from her mother when the Boov invaded. If you haven't seen this movie, think of all the possible scenarios that could happen in a kids movie where aliens invade and a young girl is teamed up with an alien. Then take a minute and try to think about exactly what happens in this particular movie. I'll even let you go watch the trailer for help. Now if you came to me with your prediction as to what happens in this movie, I will bet that you will be mostly right. That's the problem here. You can see exactly the direction this movie is going from a mile away. Then once you get watching the movie, not even halfway through you will be able to accurately and easily guess every single twist and turn that the movie tries to take you. It doesn't feel like Dreamworks put a whole lot of thought or effort into it at all. In fact, I'm sure they're very befuddled right now because they've struggled to find success with other movies that they definitely put a lot of effort into and yet the one that the succeeds is one of their lazier efforts.

Despite this very average and very safe effort, there are a few aspects of this movie that do make it a lot more enjoyable than the atrocities that were Turbo and Penguins of Madagascar. The big thing that almost saves the movie is the voice acting of one Jim Parsons. If you don't know Jim Parsons, it's probably because you've never watched the TV show The Big Bang Theory. In which case, I would highly recommend you fix that because that is one of the few modern sitcoms that I really enjoy. If you have watched that, you will know that Jim Parsons plays the hilarious character of Sheldon Cooper. I absolutely love Sheldon in that show and so do a lot of other people as he has one several awards for that role. In Home, Jim Parsons essentially plays the exact same character. In fact, I've been telling most people that it's Sheldon Cooper that stars in this movie, not Jim Parsons. You can dock him points if you want to for the lack of creativity, but in my opinion this actually works. I was actually laughing quite about at everything that Oh did for the same reasons that I laugh at like everything Sheldon does. It was great!

On the other side of things, the main girl is played by this pop singer named Rihanna. Being quite honest, I have no idea why Rihanna is in this movie. Is she bad? No. She's serviceable. But that's it. Serviceable. However, the problem is that there are so many other actresses that could've played that role and done a better job. Rihanna was just cast so that they could advertise the fact that Rihanna is in the movie and hopefully sell more tickets. That kinda bothers me because she's not even an actress. She's a singer. Heck, that same story is what happens in her singing career. She's a serviceable singer. Some of her songs are good. But I have no idea why she is so dang popular. If you were to ask me the most popular singer/group of this generation, I would be forced to say Rihanna because it's true. Just look at her discography. Then other singers recognize that and she gets featured on so many songs by other artists, not to make the song quality better, but to make the song more popular. It bothers me. So I'm so frustrated that Dreamworks fell into this stupid trap because there were so many more people that could've played this role of the girl in this movie and done a much better job. Then there's the fact that pretty much all the songs in the soundtrack were from Rihanna. It was as if Rihanna made a deal with them. If she were to accept the role, they had to use a bunch of her music. Her songs didn't fit with the theme of the movie. They didn't. But they were there and thus I ended up hating most of the soundtrack.

So like I said, this movie was a very mixed bag for me. The story of the movie was totally boring. I was not invested in it at all. But Jim Parsons made the movie really entertaining at times. I laughed a lot because of him, which made me the movie manageable. But then there's the whole Rihanna thing that just was frustrating. Ultimately, though, this is a movie that is made for kids and the kids are sure to love it. They won't care if the story line is predictable. They probably don't even know who Rihanna is. They are sure to laugh and have a lot of fun with this, so if you are looking for a movie to take your kids to then you should really give this one a shot because there's no other real options until the middle of June when Inside Out comes out. But I always say that studios can and should make movies that are entertaining for kids and adults. Dreamworks has made many of these movies that I have loved. When I look back on all of Dreamworks' movies, this isn't at the bottom. There have been several that are much worse. However, this is nowhere near the top in terms of Dreamworks quality. So if you are an adult with no kids and your looking for a good movie to see, go see something else. My grade for Home is a 6.5/10.

Furious 7 Review

For the casual onlooker that hasn't cared to pay attention to the Fast and Furious franchise in the last several years, this movie might seem as ridiculous. A seventh Fast and Furious movie? Did the world really need a seventh movie in this franchise. Well, the answer to that question is a resounding heck yes we did! If you've seen the last two movies, you'll know exactly why. In case you are one of the people that hasn't seen  any of these movies, let me quickly catch you up to speed. The first movie was average. It was mainly dumb for most of it, then it had a good ending. The second one was honestly pretty bad. The third one I still haven't cared to watch because it has no returning cast. The fourth one turned things around by actually being a decent movie. Not amazing, but pretty good. Then holy freaking cow was the fifth movie amazing! Loved it! The sixth one was quite as good as the fifth, but it was still pretty darn awesome. So even before the tragic death of Paul Walker I was excited for a seventh one. The fact that he did die made this movie an absolute must see, which is why it just broke so many records. Also with that death brings a whole lot of emotion into this movie, which is why I think this will end up as my favorite in the series.

All things considered, I think they actually did a pretty good job with the plot in this movie. I say "all things considered" because I'm pretty sure they had a specific direction they were going with the movie before Paul Walker died and when he did die they had to re-write a lot of the movie, adding new elements so that they could seamlessly write his character out of the series. Thus the final result is a little out of whack. We don't have one clear focus like we did in the last two movies. Things are happening and I wasn't sure how we got there or why we really needed to go there, but we did anyways. Like I said, I don't really fault them too much because of what happened. In fact, I would really like to watch a special or read an article on the making of this movie if there ever happens on where they were planning on going with this and how much they had shot before Paul's death and what they did after to make everything work. That would be interesting. Speaking of which, in order to make it work, one of the things they had to do is use Paul's brother as body doubles while using CGI to finish Paul's scenes. I actually tried my hardest to figure out which was real Paul and which was fake Paul and I honestly couldn't tell. There's times that I could make a guess that it was fake Paul based on what was happening and the camera angles that they were using, but I really have to give them props for pulling that off.

All that said, this movie is very entertaining. In fact, it is so dang entertaining that I didn't even care that I didn't quite know what was going on. I was just having a blast! Now if you are the type of person that has to have everything in a movie make complete logical sense while following all the laws of physics, you're going to have a rough time because this not only ignores physics and logic, it takes them, throws them out the window, shatters them into a million pieces, and burns every piece until there is no semblance at all. Yes, this movie is absolutely freaking ridiculous. Yes, it makes no sense logically. But that's what makes it so awesome. You saw crazy things in the last two movies. With this one it takes things to a whole new level of crazy and it happens throughout the entire movie, not just in a couple of spots. Using trailer footage as examples, we had cars parachuting off airplanes, a character running up a vehicle as it was falling off a cliff, cars jumping between skyscrapers, and a whole lot more. Dang it was fun! I had the biggest grin on my face throughout the whole movie. On top of that, the movie was riddled with so many one-liners that had my laughing so hard. The dictionary really needs to update the definition of entertaining to include Furious 7.

As I referenced earlier, the icing on the cake for me was the emotion. If you didn't know, Paul Walker and Vin Diesel were not only like best friends and brothers in the movie, they were that tight in real life. The theme of this whole franchise is that of family and how important it is. More important than anything else. The actors in this were able to pull that off because they were really like family and so they didn't need to act like family. They were family and they were saying in the movie what they felt in real life. When Paul Walker died, Vin Diesel lost a brother and he was devastated. He has said since that this was the hardest movie he's ever had to do because of that. When he introduced the movie at its premier, he was chocking up. Yes, Vin Diesel is a very manly individual who proved that real men do cry. And I felt for him. I knew what he was going through because I know what it's like to a lose a brother to a tragic accident. It sucks. But you gotta move forward and realize that he's still there with you. That's why this movie is so beautiful because the whole movie is a tribute to Paul Walker and it's done perfectly. Vin Diesel gives a speech towards the end that is completely breaking the fourth wall because you know it's him talking to and about Paul. I don't cry at movies. Not that I have a problem with doing so, I'm just not a very emotional person. But this got me closer than any movie ever has. If you are a crier, then I recommend you bring your tissues with you to the theater because the ending will get to you.

In the end, this movie definitely knows what it is and it has a whole lot of fun with it. Because, you know, why not parachute cars out of planes and jump them between skyscrapers? This is the type of movie where you throw all logic out of the window and just have fun because you know they did when they made the movie. If a movie is trying to be realistic and fails, that's one thing. But this is another. If you are a fan of the Fast and Furious franchise, you are going to absolutely love every second of the film and you won't even care that it lacks a bit when it comes to plot, especially given the circumstances of the filming. And yes, this is the perfect send-off to Paul Walker, a guy that I've really to respect and appreciate as an actor and a person. The world lost a great man in November 2013 and this final performance is a great tribute from his family in this franchise. All this put together is why Furious 7 is my favorite of the franchise, but it's not by a huge margin. Thus I will give Furious 7 a 9/10. 

Movie Preview: April 2015

The month of March is over, which means we have a whole new month full of movies to look forward to. Or do we? Historically, April has been known as an off month. Studios like the month of March and of course they love the Summer months, but April is another month where things just get dumped. Then of course there's usually one huge Summer-like release that gets a head start on the Summer season. April has proven that it is good for that, so the lack of big movies in the month can be seen as the fault of the studios as opposed to the fans' lack of desire to see movies. This month should be pretty similar in that aspect. The Fast and Furious franchise has historically been one franchise that has had lots of success in April and they are at it again with what should be their biggest hit. However, I look at the rest of the month and I am struggling to come up with another movie that has a decent shot of even breaking $30 million on opening weekend. But even if there aren't many box office hits in store, there's usually still enjoyable movies, so let's dive in and look at this month!

April 3rd - 5th-

It's rare that you seen a seventh movie in a franchise that is as highly anticipated as Furious 7. Usually the response to a sequel this high is like, "Really? Another one? When are they going to stop?" The casual fan who has skipped all the Fast and Furious movies still might say this, but those who have seen all the movies are more like, "Heck yes! Another Fast and Furious movie!" I say this because starting with Fast Five, the franchise has taken things to the next level and audiences have loved it. In addition to that, Furious 7 was initially supposed to come out last summer, but the tragic death of the beloved actor Paul Walker during production caused them to have to re-write the whole ending to the movie and thus postpone it until now. It's been an emotional ride for those involved, especially Vin Diesel, who was like a brother to Paul Walker both in the movie and in real life. Vin Diesel was even chocking up quite a bit during the premier. Had Paul Walker not died, this movie still would've been huge, but now it's going to be even bigger because people are going to be really interested in seeing the late actor one last time in his most popular role. Last year, Captain America: The Winter Soldier broke the April opening weekend record with $95 million. Look for Furious 7 to shatter that record. And with the lack of competition for the rest of the month, there's a decent chance that this movie stays at number one for the entire month.

April 10th - 12th-

Given how male-centered Furious 7 is, the only logical choice of movie to release during its second release is a chick flick. Yup, that's what's happening in the second weekend of April with The Longest Ride. The Nicholas Sparks brand is a fairly good and reliable brand of chick flicks. They aren't exactly known for their originality, but that's not the point here. The point is to make a movie showing two people falling in love. Out of the previous nine Nicholas Sparks adaptations, eight of them ended with over $40 million, while five of them ended over $60 million. The concerning statistic is that the one that missed the $40 million mark is the most recent one, last year's The Best of Me. That shows that the brand is not invincible. The key to making a successful chick flick is getting at least one, but preferably two lead actors that are recognizable. This has Scott Eastwood and Britt Robertson. Who? Exactly. This seems like a miss, but sometimes a chick flick can be hard to predict.

I said there was only one wide release this weekend and I didn't lie to you. However, there are a couple of platform releases worth talking about and the first one is Clouds of Sils Maria. This premiered in the Cannes Film Festival last year and has since hit the rounds of film festivals and is finally getting a theatrical release, at least a small one. The movie is about an actress who takes a role in the play that sparked her career 20 years previously. The overall movie itself hasn't exactly been praised, but what has been praised are the performances from the actresses in the movie, specifically one Kristen Stewart who recently won the Cesar award for best supporting actress. The Cesar Awards are the French equivalent of the Oscars and Kristen is the first American actress to ever win a Cesar award. It's way too early to predict next year's Oscars, but this could be a good omen for Kristen.

The second platform release worth mentioning is Ex Machina. This has been released already in various countries around the world and had it's US debut at the South by Southwest Film Festival a few weeks back. Unlike the previously mentioned movie, this actually has received very strong reviews as it currently stands at an 89 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 8.0 on IMDb. This is a sci-fi thriller about guy who participates in an experiment involving a beautiful artificially intelligent robot woman. The line becomes machine and robot becomes very thin as this guy tries to figure out who he can trust, the robot girl or the guy doing the experiment. Ex Machina stars two up-and-coming stars in Oscar Isaac and Domnhall Gleeson. If you aren't familiar with this two, come year's end you definitely will be. They're both in Star Wars: Episode VII, which is of course released in December.

April 17th - 19th-

After two weeks of smartly playing the game of avoiding Furious 7 like the plague, a whole handful of movies get released on the third weekend of April as studios attempt to earn a bit of cash before everything gets destroyed by Avengers: Age of Ultron in the first weekend of May. Still, though, there's a good chance that Furious 7 takes the weekend because none of these seem too strong. The first movie that will attempt to dethrone Furious 7 is Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2. I don't know if the world really needed or wanted a sequel to Paul Blart: Mall Cop, but we got one anyways because the first one made just under $150 million on a $26 million budget back in 2009. If this sequel tops or matches that total, it could end up winning the weekend, depending of course on how much Furious 7 falls after in its second and third weekends. The huge advantage Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 has is that the options for family audiences is very slim pickings right now, which is one reason why last month's Home was such a big hit. It fed a starving audience even if the response to it was so-so. Star Kevin James does actually have a decent track record when he does his family-friendly movies. Critics may hate movies like Zookeeper or Here Comes the Boom, but young kids don't care one bit about what a critic says.

If Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 falls short this weekend, the other candidate to stop Furious 7 is the new horror movie Unfriended. Horror movies are very hit and miss. A couple years back, there was a huge string of very successful horror movies. Last year tried to replicate that but instead ended with a huge string of duds that  no one cared about. Unfriended is attempting to go where no horror has gone before. Social media. I actually don't know if there have been any other social media horror movies. I haven't cared enough to look to hard. I'm just going by the trailer's claim that this is a new genre of horror movie. What happens in this is that a girl kills herself and for some reason her suicide was recorded and posted on the internet. So she comes back and haunts all her friends via social media. Is this unique and new enough to attract horror fans and take the weekend? We shall see.

The third option of the weekend seems much less likely to breakout, but yet has all the ingredients of a potential sleeper hit. This is Child 44. The family audience and the horror audience are pretty huge, even if they don't end up taking the trip to see these specific films. Getting a huge crowd out to see an R-rated thriller is a lot harder, especially since this is April. However, Child 44 does have an intriguing premise as it's about an investigation of a string of child murders during the Stalin era of the Soviet Union. The director is a man by the name of Daniel Espinosa who directed the movie Safe House back in 2012, which was a huge sleeper hit. That's the second thing the movie has going for it. Finally, the cast is quite excellent as it stars Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Noomi Rapace, and Charles Dance among others. So yes, the pieces are there for a sleeper hit, but sometimes potential sleeper hits stay asleep, so its hard to tell for sure.

Finally we have what has essentially become an Earth Day tradition for Disneynature, releasing some sort of nature documentary in this weekend in April. This year it's Monkey Kingdom. Since 2009, Disneynature has released documentaries on Earth, Oceans, African Cats, Chimpanzees, and Bears. The only year they missed since 2009 was 2013. They've been consistently getting around $20 million overall. So they aren't huge, but for anyone who wants to go learn about monkeys, the option is there!

April 24th - 26th-

The final weekend of April is always a very dangerous one because the first weekend of May starts Hollywood's summer season and Marvel loves that spot. This year they have Avengers: Age of Ultron on the docket. If by chance you've been like Rip Van Winkle and have been asleep for the last 20 years, the first Avengers made more money in its opening weekend than most movies make in their entire run. Considering how beloved that movie is, Age of Ultron will most likely make even more, at least in the opening weekend. Moral of the story concerning the final weekend of April is that the two movies here essentially have seven days before everything gets stomped on. The first movie daring to come this weekend is The Age of Adaline. Earlier in the month, we got our Nicholas Sparks chick flick and now we end the month with this romance movie. I'm not sure if I want to call this one a chick flick, though. It might simply be a romantic drama, which is different than a chick flick. At least in my book. Adaline is a girl that has been stuck in time, so to speak. She hasn't aged in a long time, thus falling in love seems hopeless because she literally can't grow old with any man. This could end up being a chick flick, but the trailers seem to have focused a lot less on the romance and more on the idea of life and the disadvantages of staying young forever. I'm not sure if this will make more money than The Longest Ride, but one thing it does have on that movie is recognizable cast members which include Blake Lively and Harrison Ford.

Last and potentially least is another drama, this one being Little Boy. I haven't seen very much advertising on this one at all, so I don't know if there is a huge push by the studio. They might just be hoping to pick up a dollar or two by spending close to nothing to get the word out. It's a father/son drama about a little boy whose father just went off to World War II and the boy wants his father back. The trailer also gives off the vibe that this could be a faith-based drama, so that crowd might be interested in this one. But I don't know, I fail to see how this one is going to get enough interest to do anything. I'm thinking most movie goers are just going to skip it because they are saving their time and money for Avengers: Age of Ultron the next weekend. This does have a recognizable cast, though. It's Kevin James' second movie of the month and along with him are Emily Watson and Tom Wilkinson. I don't think that's going to be enough, though.