Tagged: movie

Box Office Democracy: “How To Train Your Dragon 2”

I came late to the first How To Train Your Dragon film.  I caught it on HBO well over a year after release and while I thought the “better than Toy Story 3” hype was a touch overblown it was a revelation for DreamWorks Animation, which had previously churned out franchises like Shrek and Madagascar that I flat out detested.  How to Train Your Dragon 2 is not quite as good as the first one but it’s a fine film that should hold up a little better to being driven in to the ground like every other shiny thing DreamWorks gets its hands on.

Where How to Train Your Dragon 2 shines is in the amazing action sequences.  The wide variety of dragons keeps it visually interesting and when it wants to the movi keeps the screen in constant fervent motion.  It’s definitely the kind of movie that can hypnotize a theater full of small children.  This is better action than Pixar produces, this is better action than Disney or Blue Sky put out, this is the standard bearer for animated action.  I don’t know what that’s worth as the rest of the field seems to be focusing on pulling on heartstrings and wow-ing academy voters but as a stalwart defender of the live-action popcorn action movie I must stand and recognize the efforts of the animated equivalent.

It might not be completely fair but I think the thing most holding me back on this movie is the performance of Jay Baruchel as the lead.  I hate the voice he’s doing here and you have to hear it an awful lot.  It’s grating and annoying and while I understand how that serves the character of an outcast intellectual Viking I can’t let my ears hang out in the platonic ideal the voice seems to be serving.  I don’t like hearing him talk and so I hated having the main character on screen.  That’s a pretty big problem for a movie to have.

I’ve also saluted the politics of Frozen and Maleficent so I feel obliged to ding How to Train Your Dragon 2 for feeling awfully regressive in places.  The movie does not pass the Bechdel Test and, more importantly, the second most prominent returning female character is given a storyline where she’s obsessed with this bad boy dragon trapper even after he’s terrible to her and even goes as far as to basically molest him at times.  None of the female characters here are ones I’d be comfortable with my non-existent daughter’s modeling themselves after and I don’t know that there’s space for characters like that in this genre any more.

But really, no one is considering or not considering this movie for its politics.  How to Train Your Dragon 2 is fun when it wants to be fun, stunningly sad when it wants to be sad and ultimately the best kids movie I’ve seen this year.  The shortcomings are far exceeded by the sheer joyousness of the picture and that’s a near impossible thing to nitpick away.

Tweeks: Review The Fault In Our Stars

fault-in-our-stars-hazel-gus-bench-amsterdam-2215064The Tweeks have been waiting months to sit in the dark and have a good communal cry over John Green’s ultimate weep-fest novel, A Fault In Our Stars, so they brought their camera & a panel of tween movie fans to the theater on opening night.  Watch their review to see how the movie version stood up to what they consider one of the best teen reads ever.

 

Jen Krueger: The Twist Ending

  • News
  • June 10, 2014

It’s rare for me to watch a movie and not have at least one complaint about it before the credits roll. I’d chalk that up not to me being overly critical of films, but to how incredibly difficult it is for a movie to hold water all the way through yet not also disappoint in some way. Edge of Tomorrow turned out to be one of the rare cases where I was wholly satisfied, but the second the credits began, two guys sitting in my row started loudly discussing why they weren’t. They were disappointed that the movie [spoiler alert] doesn’t have a twist at the end. And while I guess I can’t blame them for expecting it to have a twist given how pervasive twists have been in entertainment over the past few years, I couldn’t fathom why they’d be disappointed the story didn’t have one.

The very nature of a plot twist means it reframes the context of the story it’s in, but if someone’s taken the time to really flesh out a world, develop characters, and craft an intriguing plot, it’s unlikely changing their context at the eleventh hour will strengthen any of those things. While there are many reasons why I could endlessly sing the praises of Breaking Bad, perhaps the biggest one is the fact that every single thing that happened in the show was inevitable because of who the characters were and the roads their actions consequently took them down. The narrative as a whole was a string of dominoes whose end wasn’t necessarily visible at the beginning, but with each piece that toppled it became clear what the next few would be. I love that kind of storytelling, because it lets a plot be delightfully potboiling while avoiding seeming predictable, but it does so without the writers having to resort to throwing a random wrench into the gears just to shake things up.

And perhaps that’s exactly why I tend to dislike a twist at the end of a plot, because (with the odd exception) it’s little more than a cheap, empty thrill employed for the sheer sake of a shock. But by changing the context of a key element of the story just to surprise the audience, a plot twist often also undercuts that element at the same time. There’s always a part of me that feels cheated when I learn a character isn’t who they were purported to be, or worse yet, when I can see who they really are from the outset and have to wait for the story to catch up to the reveal. But with the increasing pervasiveness of twist endings, viewers seem to frequently be doing the latter, leaving writers unsuccessful in their attempts at pulling the rug out from under the audience as a plot approaches its conclusion. And if audiences are so often ahead of the process that these attempts fail, why do writers keep persisting with them?

Maybe because there are so few truly original movies these days. From Marvel Studios to my childhood toys to reboots of sci-fi classics, it’s hard to ignore the fact that we’re living in a golden age for movie franchises. To sell audiences on the idea that there’s something new enough at the heart of properties that have been around in some fashion for years or even decades, employing a twist in concert with basic modernization seems to be the order of the day. And while I do enjoy a number of the not-so-new franchises that have become popular in the last few years, I’d be hard-pressed to ever pick watching an installment of one of them over watching something original that stands on its own. Really, it’s an awful lot like the plot of Edge of Tomorrow. Movies are looking to repeat the same formula over and over while implementing one small change in the hope that it’s enough to yield success, but total deviation from the plan everyone thinks should work is much more likely to win the day in my book.

And despite how much I dislike them, this column unfortunately has a twist ending of its own: it’s my last. Other commitments have made an increased demand on my time and sadly left me unable to continue with a weekly column, but I’ve loved my time at ComicMix and will certainly miss you, dear readers!

“Fantastic Four” Furlough: Feasible or Flummery?

The rumors that circle through the comics industry span the sublime to the ridiculous.  Some, like the death and/or return of major characters turn out to be spot on, but some make the annual spate of April Fools posts seem tame and rational. (How many times has Dan Didio supposed to have been fired by now?)

The latest hot topic, posited by the gang at Bleeding Cool, claims that Marvel Comics has plans to suspend publication of their Fantastic Four titles, both standard and Ultimate, for an indeterminate period of time.  Not due to poor sales, or pursuant to a planned relaunch, but because the comics provide too much publicity for 20th Century Fox’s film adaptations, and by shelving the titles, interest in the characters would plummet to the point that the next film would tank, and Fox would finally relinquish the rights to the characters, opening the door to a true Marvel-led reboot.

(more…)

Win a Copy of Robocop on Blu-ray

robocop_2014_bd_oring-e1401481562990-1840284Directed by José Padilha, RoboCop stars Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Abbie Cornish, Jackie Earle Haley and Samuel L. Jackson.  In RoboCop, the year is 2028 and OmniCorp – the world’s leader in robot technology – sees a golden opportunity to reap billions for their company.  When Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) – a loving husband, father and good cop doing his best to stem the tide of crime and corruption in Detroit – is critically injured, OmniCorp grabs their chance to build a part-man, part-robot police officer.  OmniCorp envisions a RoboCop in every city and will stop at nothing – no matter the cost to Alex – to make sure the program succeeds.  But OmniCorp never counted on one thing: there is still a man fighting inside the machine.

Who knew that a robot could be so lovable such as WALL-E from Pixar’s beloved movie, or that robots could think like Sonny from I, Robot? Coming soon to Blu-ray is another story of a famous robot, this time one where the robot is part human and part machine. In honor of RoboCop’s Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD releases, we present to you a look at how robots have been portrayed in films.

1. Human-Like Robots

stepford-7772229We have all seen a movie where a human is discovered to be, in fact, a robot. There are the creepy ones like in The Stepford Wives, the smart ones like in A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and the eccentric ones like Edward Scissorhands whose claim to robothood has been heatedly debated. These, at least to some, are the scariest robots since you never know when you might run into one. Maybe the brother you always thought was a bit strange or that co-worker who never really talks is the robot you always feared.

2. Robots that are Killing Machines

terminator2_l-e1401481915392-1367569We can all agree that the Terminator is a killing machine. He was sent to assassin every Sarah Connor he came across, almost succeeding.  The robots in I, Robot also fall under this category since they are determined to destroy anything and anyone that does not follow V.I.K.I.’s commands.

3. Robots Built to Fight

atom_in_real_steel-wide-e1401481958764-4922543With recent movies like Pacific Rim and the Transformers series, movie fans have gotten numerous doses of huge robots that are built to fight either aliens or large monsters. While watching those movies, one can’t help but wonder if the world will ever come to that.

4. Robots that are Way too Ambitious


metropolis-1777467I, Robot and The Matrix trilogy fixated on the intelligence machines/robots could gain over humans and thus control the world and all of its resources. These machines tend to be super analytical, overflowing with common sense, and, in rare cases, like I, Robot, want to take over the world in order to protect it. In these movies, humans end up realizing the huge mistake they made by creating these monsters. And lets just admit that the whole Matrix plot was super scary (in a good sci-fi way). Metropolis, one of the first robot movies ever, also celebrates this idea of a machine that is too smart for its own good.

5. Evil Robots

westworld-5613050Evil robots usually fall under other categories on this list, most often in the human-like one. This is probably because in films, robots that end up looking like people are created that way in order to do some real damage. Gunslinger from Westworld is one of these evil robots that will not stop until he has his fake showdown. As many fanatics of the Austin Powers movies remember, the Fembots are evil sexy women robots that are sent as a lethal distraction to the movies’ namesake. Also, Joshua, the robot arm/machine is a robot that doesn’t look like a human but still scared us all. Another contender in this category is the famous MCP from Tron.

6. Robots that Want to Save the World

i-robot-e1401481993924-4258423When robots want to save the world, they usually do it hand in hand with a human. When it comes to the Iron Man series, that robot is actually a suit that eventually becomes part of the human. In I, Robot, we have Sonny “who” sacrifices himself? itself? for the sake of mankind. There is also our beloved RoboCop who becomes the law itself and eventually takes out those wanting to control him/it. Through portrayals like these, audiences get to see a glimpse of robots that intentionally and unintentionally become heroes.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM) and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment present RoboCop, arriving on Digital HD May 20 and on Blu-ray, DVD and VOD June 3.

To win the prized copy, you need to identify your favorite category of robot and top choice robot from that category. Have your answers posted no later than 11:59 p.m., Friday, June 6 and the decision of ComicMix‘s judges will be final. The contest is open to United States and Canadian readers only.

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Eva Green’s ‘Sin City 2’ Poster Proves Too Hot for MPAA

http://news.moviefone.com/2014/05/29/eva-green-sin-city-2-poster/

evagreencropposter-2646302

Eva Green is too sexy for words. She also, apparently, is too sexy for movie theater lobbies.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier Arrives on Disc August 19

captainamericawintersoldierbluray-e1401482527776-6986109The most interesting thing about today’s announcement regarding the home video release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the absence of a Marvel One-Shot. Maybe they’re keeping it a secret or maybe there won’t be one which would be a real disappointment. Here are the rest of the details.

BURBANK, Calif. May 30, 2014— From the studio that brought you the biggest Super Hero movie of all time, Marvel’s The Avengers, comes this year’s #1 live-action adventure, Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, available early on Digital 3D and HD August 19th, 2014, and on 3D Blu-ray Combo Pack, Blu-ray, DVD and On-Demand September 9th, 2014, from Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment. Saluted by critics as “action-packed” (NY Daily News), “thrilling” (Cinema Blend) and “better than The Avengers” (Access Hollywood), this blockbuster second chapter in the Captain America series teams Marvel’s First Avenger, Captain America, with Black Widow and new ally The Falcon as they battle their most mysterious and powerful enemy yet, the Winter Soldier.

captainamericawintersoldier3dcombo-e1401482565225-5000770Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo from a screenplay by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely and starring Chris Evans as Captain America, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Sebastian Stan as The Winter Soldier, Anthony Mackie as The Falcon, with Robert Redford as Alexander Pierce and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier arrives on 3D Blu-ray Combo Pack and Digital HD armed with explosively entertaining bonus features, including Making-of Featurettes, Audio Commentary, Never-Before-Seen Deleted Scenes, Bloopers and More…

Bring home the movie that changed everything and expand your Marvel collection in the following formats with bonus features as listed:

Bonus Materials Overview for These Products:

Digital 3D, HD, & SD*

3D Blu-ray Combo Pack (3D BD + Single Disc BD + Digital Copy)

Blu-ray

Includes:

Making-of Featurettes
Audio Commentary
Never-Before-Seen Deleted Scenes
Bloopers
And More…

*Digital bonus offerings will vary per retailer

1-Disc DVD

Includes:

Making-of Featurette
Never-Before-Seen Deleted Scene

Feature Run Time: Approximately 136 minutes
Rating: Feature Film: “PG-13” in U.S., G in Canada (CE and CF)
Additional Bonus Features Not Rated
Aspect Ratio: 3-D Blu-ray Feature Film = 2.40:1
Blu-ray Feature Film = 2.40:1
DVD Feature Film = 2.40:1
Audio: Blu-ray 3D & Blu-ray 2D = English 7.1 DTS-HDMA, French-Canadian 5.1 Dolby Digital, Latin Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital, English DVS 2.0 Dolby Digital
DVD = English/Latin Spanish/French Canadian 5.1 Dolby Digital, English DVS 2.0 Dolby Digital
Languages/Subtitles: English, French & Spanish (Applies To Film Content Only)

REVIEW: How to Train Your Dragon

how-to-train-your-dragon-6971307When your children grow up and leave home, one of the regrets is that until they give you grandchildren, you have little excuse to go see the fun family films that keep rolling out. As a result, I missed How to Train Your Dragon when it arrived in 2010. I was told by those still with kids that it was a charming, funny film. Thanks to Paramount Home Entertainment, I finally caught up with it now that it has been rereleased today as a Blu-ray + DVD + Digital combo pack.

The unfortunately named Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is a young Viking growing up on the island of Berk. His father, the better named Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler), is the tribe’s chief who insists that the youngsters are taught how to fight the fearsome dragons that share the island. Hiccup is destined for greatness – at least that’s the hope; he’s actually skinny and weak and prone to accidents — when fate shakes things up as he saves an injured young beast named Toothless. They bond and Hiccup is handed a new destiny: he has to convince the tribe that their ways are wrong and that the dragons are really allies not dinner.

It’s an uphill battle complicating with the distracting affection he has Astrid (America Ferrara). She, of course, sees him as annoying, clumsy boy. Their friend Gobbler (Craig Ferguson), a blacksmith. supplies support, crazy mechanical inventions, and even more comic relief.

Directors Chris Sanders and Dean DuBlois do a fine job adapting Cressida Cowell’s young adult novel. They make it heartwarming and funny, charming and goofy without tripping over the line and getting excessive on any account.

The current high definition disc is a visual treat for young and old alike. The 1080p transfer is pristine, keeping all the color bright and vibrant. Coupled with the wonderful 7.1 Dolby TrueHD lossless soundtrack, the viewing experience at home is superb, matching the film’s entertainment value.

This edition comes with a sticker on the slipcover offering $7.50 off a movie ticket for June’s obviously named How to Train Your Dragon 2. There are a bunch of extras carried over from earlier editions of the film such as the filmmaker’s commentary, a trivia track, the PiP feature “The Animators’ Corner”, and the featurettes “The Story Behind the Story” (7:40), “The Technical Artistry of Dragon” (10:13), “Viking-Sized Cast” (11:44), and “How to Draw a Dragon” (10:52).

New additions, and welcome ones, include “Frozen” (22:41), billed as an “exclusive episode” of the TV show Dragons: Defenders of Berk; “Book of Dragons” (17:38), a short that provides additional details about the fire-breathing dragons; Ultimate Book of Dragons, an interactive feature; and, Gobber’s Training Secrets” (2:10), a series of short vignettes about dragons.

Two more extras — the short film “Legend of the BoneKnapper Dragon” (16:33), and deleted scenes (7:33) – can only be found on the DVD.

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Do We Need To Talk About Spider-Man? And Other Superhero Movies Too?

Criminy. Devin Faraci sitsus down for “the talk”.

http://badassdigest.com/2014/05/18/we-need-to-talk-about-spider-man

1297182761-sad-spiderman__span-1888170

As AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 underperforms Sony must be considering how to fix their flailing franchise. 

Is this simple sequel fatigue and diminishing returns, or is it possible that we might be seeing the first superhero movie domino fall?

Suddenly, a lot more seems to be riding on X-Men: Days Of Future Past this weekend…

Jen Krueger: Mindless Monster Movies

Before Godzilla had even been out for 24 hours, I was already hearing mixed feedback about it. Some people I know enjoyed themselves while watching it, but the more vocal reaction I’ve encountered is disappointment that the characters and story aren’t strong enough for it to be a good movie. And though I have to preface this by saying that I’ve yet to see it and could end up being disappointed by it myself, I do have something to say to the people that are complaining about the narrative shortcomings of Godzilla:

Get your expectations in line with the movie you’re watching!

Of course, I’m all for monster movies that have characters with dimension and stories without gaping plot holes, but when I sit down to watch something with a kaiju in it, all that needs to happen for me to be satisfied is for that kaiju to rampage. I want to see a city get attacked, and a fight ensue to take down the kaiju (preferably one in which another huge monster or some kind of huge machine is the kaiju’s opponent). If I happen to care about the fate of the humans that serve as the audience’s entry into the story, that’s honestly just gravy.

But as someone who’s usually complaining about hollow characters or narrative shortcomings in other blockbusters, why is it that I don’t take issue with similar problems when it comes to monster movies? Because it’s one of very few genres in which I think the characters are completely secondary to other aspects of the movie. Sure, superhero films must have set piece action sequences and exciting stunts to be successful, but they also must get the viewer to take the hero’s side in those sequences, because even a team of superheroes working together is still a fight involving several individuals against an antagonizing force. Monster movies, though, pit all of humanity against a terror from space or the sea, and the specific characters involved in the fight against them are basically incidental since they could be replaced by any other pilot, politician, or unlucky civilian tasked with the same plan to eliminate the kaiju.

Even with my (fairly low) requirements for a monster movie to satisfy me, there have certainly been some offerings that didn’t live up to my expectations. In its trailers, Cloverfield promised a monster movie unlike any I’d ever seen, but delivered on that promise by barely letting me see the monster. I expected unparalleled destruction, but got far too much time spent with people I didn’t care about running through tunnels. And despite the signs of destruction around the protagonists, I was too embedded with them to get the sense of large-scale damage and combat that I crave from a kaiju. With no real monster money shot, I left the theater underwhelmed and had to wait five years for one that really lived up to what I crave in this genre. With multiple kaiju and a bunch of giant robots, Pacific Rim seemed to never go more than fifteen minutes without showing one smashing into the other, and became the monster movie to which I’ll compare all future offerings.

While Godzilla advertises itself as a single kaiju movie and (as far as I know) has no giant robots as part of the scheme to take it out, it at least makes its single monster enormous and destructive enough to plow through bridges and swat away combat vehicles as if they were pesky insects. It’s enough to get me in the theater, and as long as the eponymous kaiju doesn’t have a silly weakness that brings it down too easily in the end, I’m sure I’ll have a great time watching it. And if all else fails, at least Transformers 4 is only about a month away. It may not have a monster, but it has a giant robot riding a robot dinosaur, which is obviously the next best thing.

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