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A growing nation of genetically evolved apes led by Caesar is threatened by a band of human survivors of the devastating virus unleashed a decade earlier. They reach a fragile peace, but it proves short-lived, as both sides are brought to the brink of a war that will determine who will emerge as Earth's dominant species.
This was an excellent continuation of the modern version of the franchise. I thought it would be great and loved the first one but had no idea how dramatic it would be. Normally, you would think that referring to this movie as dramatic would be bad since half if not more of the cast were apes. However, the effects used to bring the apes to life was so lifelike and the different emotions shown through them should have some of them up for oscar contention. Andy Serkis did another excellent job as Cesar but it was whoever played Koba that really stole the show. There was one part where that monkey went from serious to scared to being silly to get out of a situation and then vicious. It was really impressive. The matching emphasis on the importance of trust and family between the humans and apes was very well directed and kept the pacing of the movie great even though it had a two hour running time.
I would definitely recommend people checking this out. It was a great watch and entertaining in many more ways than I expected.
In The Hundred-Foot Journey, Hassan Kadam (Manish Dayal) is a culinary ingénue with the gastronomic equivalent of perfect pitch. Displaced from their native India, the Kadam family, led by Papa (Om Puri), settles in the quaint village of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val in the south of France. Filled with charm, it is both picturesque and elegant – the ideal place to settle down and open an Indian restaurant, the Maison Mumbai. That is, until the chilly chef proprietress of Le Saule Pleureur, a Michelin starred, classical French restaurant run by Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren), gets wind of it. Her icy protests against the new Indian restaurant a hundred feet from her own escalate to all out war between the two establishments – until Hassan's passion for French haute cuisine and for Mme. Mallory's enchanting sous chef, Marguerite (Charlotte Le Bon), combine with his mysteriously delicious talent to weave magic between their two cultures and imbue Saint-Antonin with the flavors of life that even Mme. Mallory cannot ignore. At first Mme. Mallory's culinary rival, she eventually recognizes Hassan's gift as a chef and takes him under her wing.Honestly, this is one of those you saw the trailer you saw the movie type of watches. There is nothing that surprises you or that you don't see coming. That being said, it was still a very enjoyable watch. This was a great movie about the importance of family and respecting other's cultures. It is a great example of letting go of being so set in your ways and how greatness can really be found or experienced if you will let it in even if it is from where you least expect it. I would definitely recommend people checking this movie out. It was a really great watch with great performances across the board. You definitely leave the theater feeling good and you care about the paths of all the characters from beginning to end.
Miles of twisting catacombs lie beneath the streets of Paris, the eternal home to countless souls. When a team of explorers ventures into the uncharted maze of bones, they uncover the dark secret that lies within this city of the dead. A journey into madness and terror, As Above, So Below reaches deep into the human psyche to reveal the personal demons that come back to haunt us all.
At this point I'm pretty much done with the "found footage" horror movies. They really need to stop making these or make them few and far between instead of one every 2-3 months. The theater has become saturated with them and they are pretty much all the same. This movie took what felt like forever to get to the good stuff. Once it did - there were a couple of really good parts for a "found footage" movie. You still had that annoying thing of not really being able to see what is happening in the most intense scenes but the parts were they worked around that were better than most of these types of movies. The ending fell flat just like pretty much all of these movies do.
I wouldn't really recommend anyone bothering with this movie. It's not the worst of these kinds of movies. I would put it right around the middle of the pack or a little higher due to a couple of really good scenes. But it's still not something that you need to rush out there to theaters to see.
In The Expendables 3, Barney (Stallone), Christmas (Statham) and the rest of the team comes face-to-face with Conrad Stonebanks (Gibson), who years ago co-founded The Expendables with Barney. Stonebanks subsequently became a ruthless arms trader and someone who Barney was forced to kill… or so he thought. Stonebanks, who eluded death once before, now is making it his mission to end The Expendables -- but Barney has other plans. Barney decides that he has to fight old blood with new blood, and brings in a new era of Expendables team members, recruiting individuals who are younger, faster and more tech-savvy. The latest mission becomes a clash of classic old-school style versus high-tech expertise in the Expendables’ most personal battle yet.
This is pretty much just more of the same from the first two movies. The story doesn't really matter. It's the action and all these action stars not taking themselves seriously and riffing on each other while playing shoot em up and what not. The new additions this go around were good as the bad guy and the laugh track.
I would recommend this to anyone that liked the first two. You will probably enjoy this one as much as those. If you have not seen any of them - I have no idea why you would start now.
The story of The Giver centers on Jonas (Brenton Thwaites), a young man who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Yet as he begins to spend time with The Giver (Jeff Bridges), who is the sole keeper of all the community's memories, Jonas quickly begins to discover the dark and deadly truths of his community's secret past. With this newfound power of knowledge, he realizes that the stakes are higher than imagined - a matter of life and death for himself and those he loves most. At extreme odds, Jonas knows that he must escape their world to protect them all - a challenge that no one has ever succeeded at before.
This was another movie about a future society based on a young adult novel. The whole set up seemed very similar to The Hunger Games and Divergent and that should really make me sick of these movies by this point. Yet I'm not for some unknown reason. I like these movies even though they seem like knock offs of each other. Not sure if that's a reflection of my views of society and how I think the future will shape up or if I just have some sort of patience for this. The cast in this was good although I think they could have actually done more with the three teenage friends dynamic. Meryl Streep was no necessary and seemed out of place but Jeff Bridges was perfect and great as always. I did not read this book so I can 't really account for the book vs movie debate.
I liked this movie. I would not say loved it or that it is a must see. Not nearly as good as The Hunger Games or Divergent in my opinion but still a pretty decent watch. I would somewhat recommend people checking this out.
Code named 'The November Man,' Peter Devereaux (Pierce Brosnan) is a lethal and highly trained ex-CIA agent, who has been enjoying a quiet life in Switzerland. When Devereaux is lured out of retirement for one last mission, he must protect valuable witness, Alice Fournier, (Olga Kurylenko). He soon uncovers this assignment marks him a target of his former friend and CIA protégé David Mason (Luke Bracey). With growing suspicions of a mole in the agency, there is no one Devereaux can trust, no rules and no holds barred.
This movie was a somewhat decent watch. The problem is that it was supposed to be a political espionage suspense type of movie and there was nothing that you didn't see coming whatsoever. You could see everything coming ten miles away that it started to drag after a while as you had to wait for the dots to be connected that you already knew would be. Pierce Brosnan was good but the rest of the cast was pretty lame. This probably could have been much better with a better cast and tighter story telling.
I wouldn't really recommend people wasting their time seeing this. You can just catch this one cable or something if you really have nothing to do and it happens to be on.
Madea gets coaxed into helping a friend pay her daughter a surprise visit in the country for Christmas, but the biggest surprise is what they'll find when they arrive. As the small, rural town prepares for its annual Christmas Carnival, new secrets are revealed and old relationships are tested while Madea dishes her own brand of Christmas Spirit to all.
I had hoped to find the whole Madea thing funny again after it had gotten so stale during the last couple of entries. And it had a couple of moments but overall, it was just as bad. The side story was overly dramatic as always. And how in the hell Larry The Cable Guy is in a Tyler Perry movie is totally beyond me.
I would not really recommend anyone watching this. I was a huge fan of Madea at the start. I still found it funny for the first four or five films but it has definitely run its course now and needs to be shelved for a while, if not permanently.
After making their way through high school (twice), big changes are in store for officers Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) when they go deep undercover at a local college. But when Jenko meets a kindred spirit on the football team, and Schmidt infiltrates the bohemian art major scene, they begin to question their partnership. Now they don't have to just crack the case - they have to figure out if they can have a mature relationship. If these two overgrown adolescents can grow from freshmen into real men, college might be the best thing that ever happened to them.This was a pretty funny movie. It was just like the first one in the fact that they were mocking the movie the entire time. There was one scene towards the beginning where it was essentially a dialogue on how stupid sequels as a whole were and did nothing but riff on them and making fun of themselves. You can never go wrong when you blatantly don't take your movie seriously like this. It always provides awesome comedic material. The overacted relationship of Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum also continued and is very funny due to the great chemistry that they have together. However, the best part of the movie is the mockumentary type stuff during the end credits. That stuff had me belly laughing.If you were a fan of the first one - there is no way that you will be disappointed with this one. It was just as funny and I think I might have actually liked it more than the original.
Co-directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller reunite to bring Miller's visually stunning "Sin City" graphic novels back to the screen in Sin City: A Day to Kill For. Weaving together two of Miller's classic stories with new tales, the town's most hard boiled citizens cross paths with some of its more notorious inhabitants.
This movie was pretty much exactly like the first one. The stories and characters are pretty much taken right from the comic books. But the movie is not about them as much as it is about the film style. Its just as great in this one as it was in the first one. It's so surreal and cartoonish but with real actors. The whole thing really is amazing.
I would recommend anyone who enjoyed the first one or was really into the visual look of the first one. I don't have much else to say because thats really all these movies are to me. Glorious filming style.
In the span of a single day, the town of Silverton is ravaged by an unprecedented onslaught of tornadoes. The entire town is at the mercy of the erratic and deadly cyclones, even as storm trackers predict the worst is yet to come. Most people seek shelter, while others run towards the vortex, testing how far a storm chaser will go for that once-in-a-lifetime shot. Told through the eyes and lenses of professional storm chasers, thrill-seeking amateurs, and courageous townspeople, Into the Storm throws you directly into the eye of the storm to experience Mother Nature at her most extreme.
This was basically a documentary style remake of Twister. The acting was pretty much garbage and any non storm stuff was boring as hell. The actual storm stuff was great. And I think the documentary style actually made all the weather related effects even better. There were a couple of times where I actually caught myself completely awestruck by the effects on screen. Unfortunately I was questioning leaving early any time they were not up there.
I would somewhat recommend people checking this out. The effects were some must see stuff. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie was wish I didn't have to see stuff.
There are a million reasons not to like realtor Oren Little (Michael Douglas), and that's just the way he likes it. Willfully obnoxious to anyone who might cross his path, he wants nothing more than to sell one last house and retire in peace and quiet -- until his estranged son suddenly drops off a granddaughter (Sterling Jerins) he never knew existed and turns his life upside-down. Clueless about how to care for a sweet, abandoned nine-year-old, he pawns her off on his determined and lovable neighbor Leah (Diane Keaton) and tries to resume his life uninterrupted. But little by little, Oren stubbornly learns to open his heart – to his family, to Leah, and to life itself - in this uplifting comedy from acclaimed director Rob Reiner.
This is a textbook "you see the trailer - you see the movie". There was not a single thing you didn't see coming from the commercial whatsoever. That being said, it was a cute romantic comedy. And it did a good job of portraying people falling in love later in life after suffering personal hardships and how doing so can work wonders for people's demeanor as well as confidence. Douglas & Keaton were great and played really well off of each other.
I would recommend this movie for couples wanting a good laugh and some heartwarming moments as well.
Mia Hall (Chloë Grace Moretz) thought the hardest decision she would ever face would be whether to pursue her musical dreams at Juilliard or follow a different path to be with the love of her life, Adam (Jamie Blackley). But what should have been a carefree family drive changes everything in an instant, and now her own life hangs in the balance. Caught between life and death for one revealing day, Mia has only one decision left, which will not only decide her future but her ultimate fate. If I Stay is based on the best-selling novel of the same name.
I don't know what was missing. I just didn't connect enough to this movie to really enjoy it. It felt like it was trying too much to pull heart strings instead of really connecting the viewer to the events that were taking place. I also was not really feeling the storytelling of flashing back from the hospital. It just felt very fragmented and again trying to pull heart strings too much.
I wouldn't really recommend anyone bothering with this movie. It was way too melodramatic and made The Fault In Our Stars seem oscar worthy.
The thrilling second chapter of the epic How to Train Your Dragon story returns to the fantastical world of the heroic Viking Hiccup and his faithful dragon Toothless. The inseparable duo must protect the peace – and save the future of men and dragons from the power-hungry Drago.
I don't know that I will ever have more of an emotional attachment to a movie or movies like I do to the How To Train Your Dragon movies. Toothless is literally an animated dragon version of my cat J. The relationship between him and Hiccup is a carbon copy of the relationship I had with J. J and I used to watch the first movie all the time. We had to put him to sleep almost 4 months ago and to say that I have not been the same since is beyond an understatement. I have been equally looking forward to this movie and dreading it at the same time. It didn't disappoint on either front. The movie was just as amazingly animated as the first one. You still enjoy the wide cast of characters and their dragons. The story is well done and paced excellently. There are emotional hooks galore in this movie about the importance of friends and family. And there is the amazing friendship and loyalty between Hiccup and Toothless. I was bawling my eyes numerous times throughout the movie and the way it played out served as the most amazing recognition of honor for my dearly departed best friend.
I'm sorry if this post seems like more of a eulogy than a movie review. That's the emotional attachment I have to these movies taking over. This movie will be just as enjoyable as the first one was for movie goers and if like me you love and appreciate the bond between Hiccup and Toothless - it just gets even better.
Tammy (Melissa McCarthy) is having a bad day. She's totaled her clunker car, gotten fired from her thankless job at a greasy burger joint, and instead of finding comfort at home, finds her husband getting comfortable with the neighbor in her own house. It's time to take her boom box and book it. The bad news is she's broke and without wheels. The worse news is her grandma, Pearl (Susan Sarandon), is her only option—with a car, cash, and an itch to see Niagara Falls. Not exactly the escape Tammy had in mind. But on the road, with grandma riding shot gun, it may be just what Tammy needs.
I find Melissa McCarthy absolutely hysterical. She is a lock for the top five funniest people in my opinion. It really doesn't matter what she is doing. Her delivery and physical humor get me every time. This movie is a pretty great testament to this. Spade a spade - it was a pretty pointless and stupid movie. But the surroundings are carried by the aforementioned strengths of McCarthy and I still found it enjoyable and funny. It is nowhere near the league of The Heat or Identity Thief where the movie around McCarthy was also hysterical. This is just a testament to how talented she is when it comes to hitting the funny bone.
I would still recommend this movie to anyone that is also a fan of Melissa McCarthy like I am. I honestly wouldn't recommend it to anyone that isn't though because if you don't find her funny - the movie is pretty much trash.
It's the ultimate buddy cop movie except for one thing: they're not cops. When two struggling pals dress as police officers for a costume party, they become neighborhood sensations. But when these newly-minted “heroes” get tangled in a real life web of mobsters and dirty detectives, they must put their fake badges on the line.
This was a pretty simple concept and should have been a pretty basic movie with good laughs especially considering the two lead actors. These guys are absolutely hysterical on New Girl so you knew that the chemistry would already be there. Instead, they tried to infuse too much of a story that there is no way you are going to get that invested in emotionally because you only went to laugh. This also made the movie too long. This should have been 90 minutes at most and off the wall comedy from start to finish. This is not to say that the movie was bad. The laughs were great - especially if you like these two guys. But there was a lot of down time in between that kind of made the movie fall into the decent range instead of being good or great.
I would somewhat recommend this movie - again especially to fans of the show New Girl. You will definitely not be disappointed. Just be aware that it is not as funny as it could have been and runs a little too long.
