The Sorcerer's Apprentice

My excitement for this movie is hard to explain. I knew it would be a bad movie. And I think that is mostly why I was so excited. I get that it makes absolutely no sense, but there is something about this awful looking, CGI infected, bad Nic Cage hair having movie that just made me giggle about how bad it could be. It is the absolute worst reason to see a movie, but whatever, it is my life and my money and not yours. Of course, the movie is taken from the Mickey Mouse section of Fantasia and Disney turning movies out of rides and things like that have had success, with Pirates and I think Disney had hoped this movie would on that level. You have the CGI and the big budget director, so why could they not spin gold twice.

Opening in the time of Merlin and quickly jumping to the year 2000 and then again jumping quickly to 2010, we are clearly in need of some exposition. First off, there were 3 apprentice's under Merlin-Balthazar(Cage), Maxim(Alfred Molina), and Veronica(Monica Bellucci). Maxim goes bad and joins Merlin's nemesis helping to kill Merlin. Veronica does a spell that merges herself with the villain and Balthazar captures her in a cute little jar. Balthazar does this to bad sorcerers all through time until he is the last one left, with a dragon bracelet to put on the hand o the true successor of Merlin who can actually kill these evil guys, not just trap them. In 2000, a young boy, David, stumbles into a magic shop where Balthazar works. Balthazar gives the boy the dragon thingy and it works, but quickly, David breaks something and lets out Maxim. Maxim and Balthazar fight, get trapped and we jump to 2010 where David(Jay Baruchel) is a total science nerd. He loves physics and cannot get a girl. Maxim and Balthazar get free and go after David. Turns out David is the heir to Merlin's power and he must defeat everything thrown at him. David buys into the idea pretty quickly, but does not buy into himself. He is self loathing, a dork and a loser. He meets a hot girl, Becky(Teresa Palmer) who helps him find his confidence, but will it ever be enough to defeat the evils of the supernatural world?

There is a lot lacking in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. This probably does not shock anyone, but the stuff that is lacking is the stuff I was hoping to find. The movie is too small. There are action sequences to be sure, but it just feels too small. There is too much time spent on the romance, or even the training and not enough on the fact that these guys shoot plasma balls and fire balls. Yes, there is a giant steel eagle that pops up, but it is not used enough, along with the giant bull they are thrown away in favor of story!! Boring! I mean it would be fine if the story was great, but I just wanted action because who cares about the story?

I liked some of the stuff, like the scenes where David is working on his physics stuff and we get these electric wave lengths that give off sound and David uses them to create music for Becky. It is a charming moment and Jay is a charming young actor. He is from the Michael Cera school of charm, but it works for him, Teresa Palmer is far too hot for him, but she does not play Becky shallow in any way shape or form, so in a weird way the whole thing works between them. With Jay and Mr. Cage, though, that is a whole other story. In my opinion, I wanted Cage to be bigger, crazier and more obnoxious. He is too subtle in this role. He is playing a sorcerer who is thousands of years old, but he is far too serious. Lighten up man!

I really do not have much else to say about the movie. It was harmless, and the CGI was pretty good, but I just was not invested in it at all. It was on the screen for a while, I watched it and when it was over, I felt like I was already starting to forget the experience. There is just nothing memorable here. I liked some of the nods to the original section of movie, from which the movie comes, and Alfred Molina playing a villain is always fun, but even he was too serious. It just felt like they all forgot they were making a big fun summer movie.

Final Grade: D

Cyrus

There is this very small movement in film that has been called Mumblecore. Essentially it is very very very low budget film making where the camera work is very shaky and intimate and the actors typically create the dialog on the spot. Most of the movies involve (That I have seen) involve very articulate characters who just have no idea what they are doing in their lives and like to talk it out with friends. The movies are typically very short, feature very little to no music and to be honest, the movies have a very limited appeal. I have seen 4 or 5 of them at this point(Thanks to Netflix streaming) and have managed to enjoy 2 of them. I mention this because Cyrus was written and directed by a pair of brothers who got started in Mumblecore. And your appreciation of Cyrus might rest on what you think of Mumblecore.

John(John C Reilly) is one of those guys who just cannot seem to get his shit together. 7 years ago he got divorced and it still eats at him. His ex-wife, Jamie(Catherine Keener) still puts up with him and clearly thinks if he could get his act together he could find someone. Jamie is getting married again, and John is not coping well, but Jamie tells him to get out and meet someone and even invites him to a party and gives him Vodka and Red Bull and sets him into the wild. John, trying to be open and vulnerable, opens up far too much to a random girl on a couch. Towards the end of the night as John is peeing into a bush he meets this beautiful, if a bit damaged, Molly(Marisa Tomei) who overheard his earlier rantings to the random couch girl and for some reason she loved the honesty of it. John takes her home and she leaves before morning. John and Molly hit it off, but Molly's refusal to stay the night worries John so one time he follows her. He falls asleep in the car and wakes up the next morning and skulks around her house to discover she has a grown son, Cyrus(Jonah Hill). Cyrus comes off as a very pleasant young man, but something does seem disingenuous about him. Also, Molly and Cyrus have a very co-dependant, borderline creepy relationship. As John and Molly get closer, Cyrus starts to get passive aggressive to destroy the relationship and John can see what is happening, but Molly is oblivious to thinking her son could be anything other than sweet.

Mumblecore with a budget, as it turns out, is kind of sweet. Cyrus does not supply the kind of laughs you are led to believe it will from the trailer or even the reviews. In fact, I would not even really call the movie a comedy. Yes, there are laughs to be found, especially in the awkwardness of the early interactions between Molly, John and Cyrus, but the laughs really take a back seat about half way through. That is not to say the movie is not good, but I went in expecting one thing and did not get that thing. Reilly and Hill are both capable of great laughs and they are funny in the movie, but it is not really laugh out loud kind of humor. It is more of a snicker to yourself kind of humor. The film making is just too intimate to really laugh hysterically. The camera work is too close for us to feel comfortable laughing too much, like the characters will hear us laughing at them and get even more uncomfortable.

Beyond the awkward and uncomfortable laughs, there is this great story being told, a story about trying to find love at over 40, a story about a young man who has no idea how to react to a massive change in his life and a story about a woman who is trying to balance a man and her son. The 3 actors-Reilly, Hill and Tomei- all have great chemistry with the each other and all are totally believable in their roles. Tomei has blossomed into a gorgeously damaged actress who you believe could fall in love with people like Reilly. Reilly is such a wonderful actor and he plays puppy-dog in love quite well. he is subtle here, which works wonders for the Mumblecore style of film making. He is, of course, well adept at playing lovable losers, but in Cyrus, I really rooted for him. I felt him from beginning to end. He was a loser, yes, but I really saw the potential of this man to do something better, if he felt he had something to believe in. Hill, well I have been saying for a little while that I wanted to see Hill tread into the darker sides of comedy. With Cyrus he creates a character who is dark and twisted, but more than anything he is a pathetic and sad character and I thought Hill really "got it." He is funny and he does have the standard Jonah Hill-isms, but there is something deeper lurking beneath the surface.

The final 45 minutes of this movie really turn up the drama and I think the movie is better for it. I think the movie makes the turn at the exact right moment and I think the way it all comes to a head makes perfect sense. I think the showdowns between Hill and Reilly give the movie this sense of urgency and make that Mumblecore style of shooting a movie bearable. The shaky camera work is hit and miss all of the time, but in such a small intimate movie, it becomes even more so. The weird angles and constant bobbing of the camera has a tendency to get overwhelming and entirely too distracting, but in this style of making movies, they are a staple because they lend to the low budget feel of the film. However, one aspect that is quite excellent in this particular movie is the zoom feature of the camera. The camera is zooming in and out at these seemingly random intervals, but they really capture a specific mood, or facial expression, and because the camera zooms quickly in and then quickly out, it acts as almost like a bold print, as in, pay closer attention to that moment. It may be a kind of small detail to some, but for whatever, I caught it in this film and it really enhanced my viewing experience.

I have no idea if this script was written or if it was concocted by the people on set, but Cyrus does have a very natural feel to it. It is awkward and uncomfortable and while never truly rises to laugh out loud comedy, it provides a lot of solid moments. I liked the quiet desperation all of the actors gave in their performances and if Mumblecore with a budget is going to turn out this kind of hybrid of comedy and drama, I am in. It does take the right kind of actors to make something like this project work and here, they lucked out and got 3 people who are wonderfully suited for this and it helps make the movie work pretty well.

Final Grade: B-

Despicable Me

This is one of those movies I never really had much of a desire to see. I never paid close attention to the trailers nor was I interested in doing so. I kept confusing this movie with Megamind, a similar movie that comes out later this year. One had Steve Carrell and one had Will Ferrell and I could not be bothered to tell them apart. What eventually drew me into watching it, besides a free ticket and desire to get out of the house, was the opinion of a few friends who told me the movie was a a nice distraction and that it made them smile. With my own smiles in short supply, I thought I would give it all a shot.

Someone has stolen the Pyramids and replaced them with a blow-up version of them. Could a new super villain just have made his mark? Will the reigning super villain, Gru(Carrell) be dropped to number 2? It just may be. However, Gru has a plan that will change it all. He is going to steal a shrink ray, shoot himself to the moon, shrink it and then steal it and hold it for ransom. The problem is, Gru is not at the top of his game, his cohort is nearing 100yrs old and all of his little minions seem far more interested in being ridiculously cute than anything else. Plus, the new super villain, Vector, is younger, faster and far more advanced, with an impenetrable fortress, at least impenetrable to Gru. Vector appears to have a weakness for Girl Scout cookies. Gru sees this opportunity as a chance for him to get into Vector's palace and take the shrink ray. In order to do so, Gru has to adopt the girls who sold Vector the cookies. Gru just wants to use the girls, but in true animated movie fashion, he starts to feel for them because, well they make him laugh. He has a wonderful day at the amusement park with them and slowly becomes attached to them, mostly the little baby girl because she loves unicorns and it just adorable. The girls are in a ballet class, but their recital is the same day as Gru's moon launch and with pressure from the Evil bank and his cohort, whatever will Gru do?

Despicable Me is a sweet, adorable little movie that seems perfectly suited for the word cute. I am typically against the word cute in describing a movie. it is a word people use in absence of a real opinion. It is what people say for Romantic Comedies that were boring, but not horribly so. They use them for children's movies where they do not have a real opinion. When someone calls a movie "cute" I typically write off that movie. It is hard to avoid that word when talking about Despicable Me, though. First, you have these tiny yellow minions who speak in beeps and some sort of spoken Morse code with these adorable voices and they are all essentially precocious little children in yellow form. Then, you have the little children, one of which is a baby obsessed with unicorns. But if that is not enough, they give the little baby girl a fluffy stuffed unicorn and it is impossible not to think it is cute as she yells out with glee "It's so FLUFFY!!"

Steve Carrell is both funny and charming as the lovable loser super villain and Jason Segal is at times, obnoxious and at times totally rad man. The two guys only have a few scenes together but their completely different approaches to the movie blend perfectly. Segal has ramped up his energy level, whereas Carrell has lowered his. Carrell's odd accent does not ever get annoying, when I thought it would and in fact, there are times when I found things funny solely because of that accent. The other voices are provided by pretty funny people, but they do not enhance the story at all really. In fact, I could have done with anybody reading those lines and probably get the same idea.

It is hard to judge the animation because the last animated movie I saw was Toy Story 3 and Pixar is so far ahead of anyone else, it kind of is not fair. The animation here is nice. I really liked the look of the amusement park, and shooting it often in First Person point of view was a nice touch. The characters all had very distinct looks that perfectly suited the individual personalities, which is a nice plus for the idea of animation. They can make characters look exactly how they want and in a way that we understand why their personalities are that way. There is only one real action sequence and it looks fine. It is not super thrilling and I have seen far better looking scenes in recent animation, but the movie holds onto the cuteness factor all the way through.

Despicable Me is nothing special, but it has caught on with the general audience and I think that cuteness factor is a big reason. It is a nice safe family choice to see a movie. It will not challenge your emotions the way the last few Pixar movies have, but it is not dumb like so many of the Dreamworks movies are. It does not go into this weird Kubrickian place the way Happy Feet(My favorite non Pixar comedy of the last 6 or 7 years) does, and maybe it is better for it. it relies on the minions, the cute little girl and Steve Carrell's charming almost father role. I cannot fault it for that and when the movie was over, I did have a smile on my face, so I got exactly what I hoped to get from it. There is something to be said for that.

Final Grade: B-

Predators

I am a fan of Predator. I am also a fan of Alien Vs. Predators 2. You can toss anything else involving the Predator creatures away because the rest of it just sucks. When I read Robert Rodriguez' journal about getting El Mariachi and Desperado made, I remember reading about a treatment he once had to revitalize The Predator series. I thought it would be a good project for him. Apparently someone at FOX thought the same thing, only what, 15 years later? At this point, Rodriguez was not as interested in directing the film, but he wanted to produce it and have a say in how it went, so his Troublemaker production company took the major producing credit and Rodriguez picked Nimrod Antal to direct. Antal had previously directed 2 American, 1 excellent(Vacancy) and 1 not so excellent(Armored). I was still excited about the idea.

With a story very close to The World's Most Dangerous Game, People are set on an island and then promptly hunted. Why? Well that is never entirely clear. This particular island happens to be on another planet and the hunters happen to be crazy alien creatures. The humans are some of the most vicious killers/predators on the planet and they are not friendly. We have Royce(Adrien Brody), a former black ops military guy, Isabelle(Alice Braga) also some sort of mercenary. Then there is a Japanese mobster, a Mexican thug, Russian mercenary, Death row inmate, an African rebel and randomly a scrawny, wimpy doctor(Topher Grace), who is there seemingly just to provide us with comic relief, and maybe to patch up our humans. This band of multi colored human beings must somehow band together and stay alive against these creatures who adapt very quickly and have awesome weapons and a cloaking ability. Pretty basic stuff.

Predators is a bit too talky, but when the action gets going, it really worked for me. Too much time is spent in exposition, considering we get a crazy EXPOSITION MAN(E.M) character in the form of Laurence Fishbourne. For those of you not well versed in Kyle movie lingo. The Exposition Man character is one who exists solely to tell us what is going on. In horror movies like this, he is usually a minority and usually he is crazy. In this movie he is both. Yet even with E.M, the characters also give much expository dialog, which always brings the movie to a screeching halt. There had to be a way to have maximum amount of action, and use E.M more to give us the information we need without all of the other dialog. It is a script pet peeve of mine to have too many people explaining what is going on. One or two characters is all we need to get what is happening.

It is kind of a minor complaint because the action is totally awesome. I remember being worried that Brody was not bad ass enough to carry a picture like this, but he is. He worked out, clearly, but more importantly, Brody has always projected himself to be an actor who is always thinking and to play a Black-ops guy, he has to use that and it works completely. I believed him as a strategist and if you needed help buying the baddassery, Brody spends a majority of the movie with a giant gun in his hands. Could that be overcompensating? Maybe, but it is awesome. The weaponry all the way around is totally sick. The Predators have these cool blasters and the humans have all sorts of guns they can use to blow away the little pig like creatures in the first cool action sequence and then hopefully to kill the predators.

Predators is not a remake, or reboot, it is another movie in the canon of Predator movies. It references the original film and it is a nice addition to the world. The movie opens in this awesome moment, of someone(Broady) falling out of the sky and waking up and opening his parachute. It is a wonderfully claustrophobic moment and sets the tone perfectly. The jungle looks amazing and it is utilized well, as the characters move all over the place throughout the jungle, so we get a very good sense of geography, which is important for this type of film. The predators look great, although Megan, my movie going companion does a wicked impression of the predators and made them less scary because of it. The climatic fight between Brody and the last standing Predator is totally kick ass, but I tend to think any fight that takes place around a ring of fire, is pretty kick ass. I also enjoyed the little twist towards the end. It kind of came from nowhere, but I am sure it makes sense if you go back and watch again. It is not going to start trends in action movies, but Predators packs enough of a punch that it kept me entertained.

Final Grade: C+

Splice

Small budget horror movies in the middle of summer can reap wonderful rewards for the audience. If you need an example, I point to The Strangers. It was this wonderfully creepy horror movie in the middle of the superheroes, boy wizards and transforming robots. Now, Splice did not come out looking specifically like a horror movie. If you can excuse the pun, it looked like a hybrid, a splicing of the sci-fi, fantasy and horror genres, but undoubtedly it looked interesting. We had it at our theater for a few weeks and it took me a while to get to it, but everyone coming out of the film talked about how weird it got. This intrigued me because the premise was already weird, so for it to get more weird, what would have to happen? This was the biggest question on my mind when I finally watched Splice.

Elsa(Sarah Polley) and Clive(Adrien Brody) are rebellious scientists who get on the cover of magazines for their cutting edge working styles and research subjects. They have created hybrid animals that will hopefully be used to treat human illnesses and diseases. However, these two young, rock star scientists want more. They want to go outside of moral, ethic and legal boundaries and splice together human and animal genes, just to see what would happen. Thus Dren (Yes, Nerd backwards) is created. At first, they just want to see if they can bring the creature to term, but Elsa becomes attached to it and soon, they are caring for this hybrid creature. Dren grows at a rapid rate and keeping her under wraps becomes increasingly difficult. Clive and Elsa both grow to care about Dren, but Elsa harbors a secret past and her crazy tendencies start to show as she tries to be a mother to this creature, so Clive takes a more nurturing role.

That plot synopsis may not be one of my better ones, but even writing about this movie brings back the feelings of just how damn weird and uncomfortable it got. There is a scene fairly early on when Else and Clive start to have sex on a couch, with Dren sleeping near them and Dren wakes up and watches. Clive sees her watching, but he cannot stop himself from sexing his girlfriend. It was at this moment, that I thought "Oh no...this is going to get strange." But I was not even prepared for the fucked up nature of this nonsense. The movie gets so bizarre that it negated what was a pretty damn good movie. Now, I am all for movies that just go there but this just took me so far out of the movie and just when I thought the weirdness was at a peak, it would twist out again. There are no less than 4 weird twists in the final 35 minutes that I just threw my hands up in the air and gave up.

However, up until that point, I was totally engaged. Splice is not a scary movie. It does not offer cheap jumps, or real jumps save 1 or 2 moments. The opening P.O.V shot of something being born/hatched/created totally put me right in the movie and was such a great way to start and from there the movie builds a lot of interesting tension. I was never scared, but I was often on the verge of being scared. I kept waiting for the jump and I kind of liked that anticipation of being scared. The effects of Dren are slick and gross, but not overly gross, until the movie goes batshit crazy. I liked the way Dren moved, very chicken like in her younger forms and I thought Brody and Polley were believable as these sort of renegade scientists. There is cool montage scene set to cool music that really sets the film up and I was excited for where it was going.

My disappointment in the final half hour was made more grand by the fact that I was so very much enjoying the movie up until that moment, and I knew, I just knew that moment was coming, but I was hoping the film maker was going to somehow avoid it. he did not. He wasted all of this tension, all of these interesting shots, and effects and this great use of light and shadows, for some cheap gross out moments, a completely disgusting rape and this horrid end. Yet, I got the very of the movie. I actually understood that is how the character would react in that situation, but the fact that the writer/director thought of putting Elsa in that situation just got to me.

I want so desperately to recommend Splice because of the fantastic first 75 minutes or so, but I cannot do it. It just took it to a place that ruined the entire experience for me. It was like having really great sex and before you can finish, your partner rips off her skin and is a reptile and instead of remembering how great the sex was, you remember you had sex with a reptile. It just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Final Grade: D

Toy Story 3(spoilers)

Very few movies bring out the child in me like Toy Story or Toy Story 2. What kid did not wonder if his/her toys came to life when left alone? When Toy Story came out, yes, the animation was groundbreaking, but it was also about the story of unbreakable friendship. This theme carried through Toy Story two and I figured it would carry through Toy Story 3 as well. Pixar raised the level of story telling, not just in animation but in film making. Their string of hits feels unprecedented for a studio, or for any part of movie making. And it all began with a group of toys belonging to a young boy with a wild imagination. When I first heard Toy Story was adding a third chapter, I was a little bit concerned because it had been so long and I did not want to watch my favorite toys in something not worthy of them. When the first trailer came out, all of my worries were eased, just by seeing Woody, Buzz and the gang on screen again. I went in to the film having no doubts about how good it would be and in the process realized doubting Pixar was just stupid!

Our favorite toys are in some trouble as Andy, their owner, is heading off to college and they have no idea what comes next. They have not been played with for years and fear they are headed for the trash. Woody tries to calm their fears by telling them they will go to the attic and there they can live together and play together until Andy has kids and maybe, just maybe, they will be played with again. After a bag mix up, the toys end up in a daycare and at first it looks like the perfect place for them. However, Woody refuses to stay and finds away to escape, only to end up in the backpack of a young girl. At the daycare, our favorite gang of toys, meet a few new toys including Ken, of Barbie and Ken fame. Quickly, though, the daycare turns from dream to nightmare when our toys are placed with kids who have no business playing with toys. Buzz goes out to investigate and stumbles onto a conspiracy of toys. It turns out the Lotsa Hugs Teddy Bear runs his toy rooms like a prison and our gang of toys are prisoners. The bad gang of toys reprogram Buzz to help them enforce the prison rules and all looks hopeless for our toys. Meanwhile, Woody meets some new toys, and hears a horror story about the daycare center and realizes he needs to save his friends, more than he needs to get back home to go to college with Andy. From here Toy Story 3 transitions into a combination of film noir, prison break movie and absurdist comedy.

Somehow Toy Story 3 managed to bring tears to my eyes in two different ways. For the first 90 minutes, it is one of the funniest, most clever Pixar movies and then, just when you think it is too funny to make you feel emotional, it gets you at your core. I was so relieved that it was so funny because it meant I would not have water works the way I did during Wall-E and UP. But the second the toys think they have reached the end of their corporeal journey and join together, I started to tear up and then, in the final scene, I just lost it completely. Pixar truly has done it again. They tell a genuinely great story in an interesting fashion all while making it look excellent. Woody's movements are still jerky and hilarious, but they look more clean. Buzz's big wide, vacant eyes are just as great as I remember and everyone else is the same way. Of the new characters, Big Baby looks scary as hell and being a walking talking baby toy does not help my fear of creepy moving dolls!

However, I do not want to give off the impression that Toy Story 3 is just this silly frivolity that manufactures tears in the end. Toy Story 3 is a movie that crosses genres with such ease that you would think Tarantino had something to do with it. The movie opens with this epic Western/Sci-Fi action sequence with exploding train tracks, a dinosaur, force fields and Woody and Buzz saving the day, maybe. From there the movie gives us all of these great film styles and mixes them together to really please anyone. If you want a goofy comedy, you get Spanish Buzz Lightyear, which as funny as it is in the trailer, it is a million times funnier in the actual movie. if you want ridiculous over-the-top comedy, there is a bit involving Mr. Potato Head, a tortilla and a pickle that will just slay you. But then, there are these great action sequences and these great moments of pensive thought and this gorgeously dark sequence involving voice over narration from a clown toy while we see a flashback. There is a car who talks like he stepped out of a 1940 noir film and the extended, very thrilling prison break scene that somehow manages to combine all of those elements in a 10 minute span.

I remember loving Toy Story 2 because, in essence, Woody gave up eternal life to go back to his life with Andy. Toy Story 3 has a sort of similar theme, but in a different way. For 3 movies we watched these toys stay together, get each other out of trouble and bond in very real ways, but the overarching idea was that they were Andy's toys. They belonged to him and he was what kept them together. In this movie, the toys realize, what I feel like we have known all along: They are what keeps them together. It is the friendships they forged through years of being together that makes them all what they are. Woody needs Buzz, and Mr. Potato Head needs Piggy Bank and so on. The characters may be the last to realize that and it may take a near death experience to realize it, but the moment they all get it really makes the wait worth it.

Toy Story 3 is hilarious, genuinely touching, thrilling, action packed and thought provoking all within a two hour time frame. It is another notch for Pixar to hang their very high flag on. It gives us what we love about the characters and adds to the world Pixar first created that began this remarkable run. It features amazing voice acting (especially Michael Keaton as Ken) and is just a great time for everyone. I laughed a lot and I also cried heavy heavy tears and the tears were there the second viewing as well. I did not bother with 3D, but when a movie resonates this much, it is not about the spectacle, it is about the heart and Toy Story, thankfully, wears its heart on its sleeve. I cannot imagine this movie will be anywhere but my top 5 for the year when the year comes to an end.

Final Grade: A+