Oblivion (2013)

They Lied to You.  It’s Time to Learn the Truth.

When I went to the theaters to catch Star Trek, I had no reservations.  Today’s movie was less so.  I had seen the commercials for this movie and had an inkling of interest in the movie, but never enough that it would be the reason for me to make the trip to the theater.  Attaching it to a movie I wanted to see more made it much more palatable.  And I think it’s odd that I had no interest in this movie because I loved the game I assume it was based on.  In fact, I’ve loved the whole Elder Scrolls series.  I don’t know why they skipped past Daggerfall and Morrowind, but I’m still suspicious of how this game could be turned into a movie.  Do they just ignore all the side quests?  Otherwise, it would be way too long.  Well, we’ll find out as I review Oblivion, based on a graphic novel by Joseph Kosinski, written for the screen by William Monahan, Karl Gajdusek, and Michael Arndt, directed by Joseph Kosinski, and starring Tom Cruise, Andrea Riseborough, Olga Kurylenko, Morgan Freeman, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Melissa Leo, and Zoë Bell.

It’s the future so Earth is having a bad couple of days.  In 2017 the Earth was destroyed in a battle with some invading aliens when we decided to drop some nukes all over this bitch.  The surviving humans moved to a colony on Saturn’s moon Titan, with a few sticking around to repair survey drones to keep the remaining aliens (called “Scavs”) from destroying the fusion power stations that power the colony.  Two such humans are Tech 49 Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) and his partner Victoria “Vic” Olsen (Andrea Riseborough), Jack’s navigator who sits on her butt while he does all the work and chats with their weirdo mission Commander Sally (Melissa Leo).  Things are going smoothly and Jack and Vic are preparing to end their stay on Earth when Jack stumbles across a radio tower that summons a pre-invasion American spacecraft back to Earth, containing a sexy astronaut named Julia (Olga Kurylenko) that Jack has been having dreams about (but who hasn’t been?), as well as some secrets that will rock the foundation of Jack’s world.

My low expectations for this movie allowed it to exceed my expectations.  It didn’t blow any minds, but the story was solid, the look was great, and the performances all worked for me.  The biggest problem I had with the movie is that it had nothing to do with the game it took its name from.  No Daedra or anything!  What the movie is similar to is the Matrix, various post-apocalyptic movies, and Independence Day.  We fuck up the planet like a child breaking a toy so no one else can play with it.  Never really makes sense.  Man apparently has the resources to build a space station to escape on, but we’re so stubborn about not giving up our planet that we’ll destroy it first.  Either we win or everyone loses.  On the other hand, I could kind of see us doing that.  The story can kind of be slow going throughout, having not a whole lot going on other than watching Jack fix robots and having little hints at the larger story be revealed slowly.  I started getting bored around the halfway point, especially when it was going pretty heavy on the relationship stuff.  Julia showing up creates a love triangle between her, Jack, and Victoria that they really drained for all it was worth, and it wasn’t worth a whole lot to me.  The only thing it got out of me was a laugh at how much ‘splaining Jack was going to have to do to the two ladies.  ::SPOILER ALERT::  Then the movie turns into Independence Day because the big plan is to fly yourself into the mothership and blow up.  Not the greatest plan to be sure, but I’m sure Jack took solace in the fact that he had plenty of spares if his plan didn’t work out.  But I don’t know how that even got close to working in the first place.  Sally is a super smart computer intelligence, but she can’t figure out that something is amiss when Tech 49 rides up in Tech 52’s ship, even though they shouldn’t know each other exist?  The numbers are written on his shirt and the ship.  Infants and monkeys can tell if two things don’t match.  ::END SPOILERS::

The movie does very well with its look.  Everything is visually well-realized.  It looks dystopian while still being pretty beautiful and spectacular.  It shows a lot of imagination in the designs of everything, from the fusion plants to the ship that Jack flies to the tower he lives in.  A dystopian movie is always able to solicit a bit of a reaction by showing familiar landmarks like the Empire State Building buried up to the top floor in sand.  The action is fairly rare in the movie, but most of it is good.  I liked the fight between Jack and the Scavs in the library because the look of it reminded me of Gears of War, with 80% less raspiness.

I was not surprised by the quality of the performances in the movie so much as I was surprised by the quality of the actors they got.  I only knew one of them going into the movie, but I knew he was good.  The ones I didn’t know were in the movie were also as good as they usually are, but I didn’t know they were in it.  Tom Cruise is the only person I knew would be here, and he typically brings some quality.  I didn’t know who Andrea Riseborough was, but she was also pretty good.  I had no idea that Olga Kurylenko, Morgan Freeman, Melissa Leo, and the Kingslayer himself, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, were in this movie, but they tend to be good as well.  Kurylenko helped make it easy for me to relate to Tom Cruise in this movie because I dream of Kurylenko too.  Who wouldn’t?  Morgan Freeman’s appearance was a bit bothersome to me at first, but only because he came off as a bad guy in the movie.  I don’t like Morgan Freeman as a bad guy.  He’s a great actor with a lot of range, but he’s just so likeable.  That was one of the main problems I had with the movie Wanted.  That and it being entirely mediocre.  Melissa Leo also did a good job.  Her role didn’t seem to require much out of her as she was just vaguely robotic, but also somehow bitchy.  And she got much more bitchy by the end.  They should’ve called her HAL-E from the way she looked at the end.  That’s not a WALL-E reference, but a HAL reference, just so we’re clear.  The only performances I really took issue with were those damned surveyor drones.  Those things were ungrateful pricks.

Oblivion was a fine enough movie, but perhaps not fine enough to inspire me to recommend that you see it in theaters.  The story was okay, but nothing spectacular and a little slow moving.  But the visual style and the performances were all impressive.  I could get behind recommending this movie as a rental eventually, but for the time being you can do without.  Oblivion gets “We won the war, but they destroyed half the planet” out of “Classic game.”

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Rock of Ages (2012)

This Place is About to Become a Sea of Sweat, Ear-Shattering Music and Puke.

My interest was piqued in today’s movie while listening to the Nerdist podcast. Chris Hardwick was talking about this movie because he was in the original LA cast of the musical that this movie was based on. Another thing that drove me to want to see the movie was the ridiculous hotness of some of the actresses in the movie. That’s always a driving factor for me. But it didn’t drive me hard enough to bother to go and see the movie when it was still in theaters. When I was perusing a RedBox, I saw this movie along with the movie I was looking for and decided that I might as well watch it. If nothing else, I would enjoy the hotness and tune out the movie. Did I have to do that? Find out as I review Rock of Ages, based on the musical by Chris D’Arienzo, written for the screen by Justin Theroux and Allan Loeb, directed by Adam Shankman, and starring Julianne Hough, Diego Boneta, Tom Cruise, Paul Giamatti, Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Bryan Cranston, Malin Ákerman, Kevin Nash, Jeff Chase, and Will Forte.

A girl named Sherrie Christian (Julianne Hough) moves to Los Angeles to become a singer, but realizes pretty quickly that most of LA is a cesspool when her prized record collection gets stolen from her. A barback named Drew Boley (Diego Boneta) rushes to help her and the two later start dating even though this pansy didn’t even try to run the guy with her records down. Maybe it was because he gets her a job as a waitress at The Bourbon Room, a famous rock club that’s fallen on hard financial times. To help their situation, bar owner Dennis Dupree (Alec Baldwin) and his right-hand man Lonny Barnett (Russell Brand) book the famous band Arsenal – and their temperamental lead singer Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) – to perform their final gig at the club before Jaxx embarks on a solo career. Also going on, Patricia Whitmore (Catherine Zeta-Jones), wife of Mayor Mike Whitmore (Bryan Cranston), is trying to shut down rock and roll, Constance Sack (Malin Ákerman) has sex with Jaxx and writes a scathing review about him in Rolling Stone, and Paul Gill (Paul Giamatti) tries to make a star out of Boley, knowing that Jaxx is unreliable.

I’m admittedly torn about Rock of Ages. I’m about dead center in my feelings for it. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it. I think it was mainly the story that didn’t work for me. It just didn’t strike me as all that funny. And, without the comedy, it’s basically just a run of the mill love story/musical. There’s also a little bit of Empire Records in the people trying to keep their dream of rock and roll alive in the Bourbon Room, and perhaps a little bit of Footloose in the religious crazies trying to shut down something for whatever stupid reason. But I’ve already seen those movies, and I didn’t really like them either. And I think I wanted it to be funny, but it never managed to pull that off. Stacee Jaxx got a few laughs with his wackiness, but he also frequently bordered on depressing. I also always appreciate a good shot at boy bands, but then I get depressed because – let’s face it, rock fans – they’ve kind of won. Sure, they don’t have staying power, but that genre has made far more unworthy millionaires than rock has, at least recently. I think the only thing in the movie that got a good, solid laugh out of me was when Sherrie applied for a job by saying, “I can wait tables! I’m good!” Fer real? That’s what you’re gonna put on your list of special skills. Not writing, sketching, speaks limited French. You’re gonna post up with, “Excellent waitress.” I think there’s about one job that qualifies you for…

One of the things that definitely worked for me in this movie was the music. Gangnamed that’s a good soundtrack! Check out some of these songs: Paradise City, Sister Christian, Juke Box Hero, Wanted Dead or Alive, I Wanna Rock, Pour Some Sugar on Me, Here I Go Again, Any Way You Want It, Rock You Like a Hurricane, We Built This City, Don’t Stop Believin’, and the list goes on. Add some Metallica to that and I could survive on just that soundtrack for the rest of my life. I know everyone’s taste in music is not the same as mine, but if you don’t agree then your opinions are wrong. The reason this movie was so easy to get through even with the mediocrity of the story was because of the kick ass music throughout.

The performances in this movie were fine enough, but I was focused mostly on a different kind of “fine.” Namely Julianne Hough and Malin Ákerman. SO hot! Want to touch the heiney! Amongst other things. I guess the same could be said for Catherine Zeta-Jones, but she never really did it for me. Certainly not when I have Hough and Ákerman to distract me. They did fine jobs in the movie, but you also get to see them in underwear and other such skimpies! The only thing that bothered me about that is that there were times in the movie when Hough wore less clothes then when she was acting as a stripper at one point. When she was a stripper, she rocked something that looked like an old-timey one-piece bathing suit that was low cut in the front. She wears much hotter stuff when she’s not supposed to be getting naked for money! Tom Cruise also made me take note fairly frequently. I thought at first that I would be watching him do this part and be mostly thinking about how Chris Hardwick would have done it, even though I’ve never really seen Hardwick do it. But Cruise does an interesting enough performance of his own that I never really got to thinking about that part. But, y’know what? To hell with complimenting Tom Cruise! He got to make out with Malin Ákerman AND touch Julianne Hough and Catherine Zeta-Jones boobs! ALL IN THE SAME MOVIE!

Rock of Ages was an underwhelming but totally watchable movie. Its mediocre story was elevated drastically by the awesome songs in the musical numbers. The actors also did a very good job, especially Julianne Hough and Malin Ákerman who did an exceptional job being hot and Tom Cruise who did very well at being interesting to watch. But altogether, this is probably a skippable movie. You can buy the soundtrack without sitting through the movie, and you can see Julianne Hough and Malin Ákerman being hot with a Google image search. Rock of Ages gets “It’s not an improvement” out of “I just threw up. In my pants … out of my ass.”

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Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol (2011)

Next Time, I Get to Seduce the Rich Guy

Got back into the theaters today for another big movie I’ve been looking to see. It probably spoils it a bit early, but this is the 4th part in a series that I’ve liked all the way through. Most people hated on the third one, but I still found it enjoyable. These movies are typically a step above a big, dumb action movie. They’ve got the big and the action, but they’re usually a little bit smarter than your typical dumb action movie. But, as is the case with most sequels, I tend to go into them with a great deal of trepidation. Sequels always have the danger of being too much of the same thing. Is this one? Let’s find out in my review of Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol, written by Josh Applebaum and Andre Nemec, directed by Brad Bird, and starring Tom Cruise, Michael Nyqvist, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton, Vladimir Mashkov, Lea Seydoux, Josh Holloway, Tom Wilkinson, Anil Kapoor, and Ving Rhames.

During a pick up in Budapest, IMF agent Trevor Hanaway (Josh Holloway) is killed in action by assassin Sabine Moreau (Lea Seydoux). In reaction, Hanaway’s team of Jane Carter (Paula Patton) and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) bust IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) out of a Moscow prison. Soon after, they find out that their mission – if they choose to accept it – is to break into the Kremlin to get information on someone with the codename “Cobalt”. Cobalt (Michael Nyqvist) beats them to the punch, stealing nuclear launch codes and blowing up the Kremlin, getting it blamed on Ethan Hunt and IMF. Ethan gets picked up by the IMF Secretary (Tom Wilkinson), who informs Ethan that the President has enacted “Ghost Protocol”, disavowing the entire IMF. Hunt and his team are going to take credit for it unless they get out there and fix this before they get captured. Russian security forces attack their car and kill the secretary, but Ethan escapes with the secretary’s chief analyst, William Brandt (Jeremy Renner). With Brandt on their team, Ethan, Benji, and Jane go to stop Cobalt from starting a nuclear war.

YAY! Mission: Impossible didn’t let me down! It’s every bit the big, action movie of moderate intelligence that the previous films were, but that’s okay. It’s what I expected, what I wanted, and what I got. The story is solid, the action is pretty spectacular, and it was great fun. It’s worth mentioning that it’s the same basic principle that the other movies use. Something happens and Ethan Hunt must break with protocol to fix it. He does, and then he’s back with the IMF at the end. Same principle, but it’s different enough that it hasn’t gotten stale yet. The way it started was a little confusing to me. Now, I know the typical MI opening credit sequence is the lighting of a fuse that then travels along through the credits until it explodes to end them. There were two things that bothered me about these though. The first was that it seemed to show the whole movie in the background as the fuse traveled through the biggest scenes. I just thought it was odd and vaguely spoiler-y, but by the end I didn’t really think so because a brief shot from a huge action scene doesn’t really spoil it. The other thing that bothered me about it was that these people had super advanced equipment like a blue light that would cut a hole through 5-foot thick concrete, but they were still using explosives with a fuze you had to light with a match? Speaking of the technology: I know that Brad Bird came from Pixar, who is owned by Apple, but does that mean that 50% of the technology they use in the movie needs to be Apple products? Almost everyone in the movie used an iPhone, and they also used an iPad to peak around corners and to operate a machine that projected the image of the wall behind a giant screen so they could push the screen down a hall without knowing. Next time I talk to someone about the iPad, I’ll need to remember to tell them that it’s not just for media viewing, it’s also great for espionage! I just got really sick of seeing all the product placement in the movie and it bummed me out a little. And they missed the opportunity for a great joke at the end! When Ethan puts three iPhones on a table to give Pegg, Patton, and Renner their missions, Renner doesn’t take his. He says “I’m not going to take that phone …” and goes on to say something vaguely emotional. I was praying for it, but it didn’t happen. I desperately wanted him to say “I’m not going to take that phone … because I’m an Android man.” The action is over the top spectacular in this movie. I really don’t know how they’ll top it for the next movie. One such action scene is from the trailers and involves Hunt climbing the world’s tallest building in Dubai. There’s also infiltrations with cool technology, chases – both in cars and on foot (because Tom Cruise loves to run in movies), and big time shootouts and fist fights. One of the chases happens in a sandstorm that is so intelligent that it knows to arrive when it’s needed to amp up the action, but leaves right when the movie was finished with it. Very polite. If I was going to point out a negative side of the movie, it was definitely the ending. The movie is interesting and fun all the way through, but the ending seemed tacked on and out of place, as if they realized there was one more plot point to tie up (and a couple more cameos to throw in) and decided to throw it in so people wouldn’t complain. But I’m doing it anyway. It just seemed to stop the movie too abruptly and it could’ve been so much better.

The performances in this movie are much better than a movie of this type requires. They’re not super fantastic, impressive, or range-y performances, but they’re better than most of the performances that you would typically see in an action movie. Tom Cruise is as good as he was in all the other MI movies. He’s very serious and is running 90% of the time, but also stretches out his acting chops a couple of times. Simon Pegg is awesome. He’s back in this movie as the comic relief computer guy (as he well should be, being so nerdy and hilarious), but he also gets to play the badass a few times in this movie. He’s awesome in everything. Jeremy Renner is also very awesome. He didn’t have quite the emotional range to this character as he showed in Hurt Locker, but that’s not what the role called for. He kicked some ass, dropped some great lines, and just did one or two emotional parts. Paula Patton was very hot. She was also very good, but her hotness overrides her performances. WITH HOTNESS! Michael Nyqvist was pretty creepy as the bad guy, but I never really felt like his motivation was clear. I still have little to no idea why he wanted a nuclear war. But I think he was supposed to be pretty crazy, so he may not have had more reason than that.

Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol keeps a great series moving forward with it’s solid story, fantastic action, and appropriately great performances. It doesn’t break any molds for story, but the action is amped up so high that I’m not sure how they’ll top it for another sequel, which I feel pretty confident will come eventually. I’m still on board to check it out. Shitty ending, be damned! I paid to see this in theaters, and I can’t see most of you being disappointed in this movie, especially if you walk out before the ending. I give Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol “Mission: Accomplished” out of “Ha, it’s funny ‘cuz you said anus.” This review was sponsored by Apple.

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Top Gun (1986)

This review is when I set myself apart from all other movie reviewers by being the only reviewer I know that will use “Gay Balls” in the review of a movie.  There may well be other movie reviewers willing to do this, and I’m pretty sure I’ve used this term as well, but few movies have ever deserved it more.  More than To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, I ask you to hop in your car and join me on the highway to the danger zone with my review … of Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Anthony Edwards, Meg Ryan, Val Kilmer, Tom Skerritt, and Michael Ironside.

Top Gun follows Maverick (Tom Cruise) and his copilot Goose (Anthony Edwards).  To go off on a tangent real quick: how pissed is Goose?  He hangs out with people whose handles are Maverick, Iceman, Cougar, Merlin, Jester, Hollywood, and Viper, and he somehow lands the moniker of “Goose”.  Lame.  Anyway, Maverick is a fantastic, but dangerous, Naval pilot who goes to the Top Gun academy when the number 1 pilot steps down because of a near death experience.  When they arrive at the academy, they meet their rivals, Iceman (Val Kilmer) and … whoever the Hell his copilot was.  Iceman got his name by flying cool as ice, never making mistakes and wearing his opponents down.  But this is the time of rebels; we know how this quarrel will eventually end up.  The two are in constant competition in the Top Gun rankings until one day when Iceman wants so badly to take down an enemy that he refuses to get out of the way for Maverick, who has the shot.  When he eventually does, the jet wash from his engine causes a flameout on Maverick’s plane, sending him into a flat spin.  Maverick and Goose eject, but Goose slams his head into the canopy on the way out.  Well his Goose is cooked.  Yeah, I went there.  So he dead, and Maverick blames himself even though Goose’s wife (Meg Ryan) and Maverick’s own girlfriend (Kelly McGillis) tell him it wasn’t his fault.  His remorse makes him suck at flying.  Can Maverick overcome and be the best again?  Yeah, probably.  Not a surprising movie, here.

This movie has caused me much grief in my time.  I did not see this movie when it came out … and I was 3 … so I have no reminiscences to make me like it.  I probably saw this movie when I was 25 and I had a higher standard for movie.  And, since I saw it, I have had 2 women tell me this movie is the best thing since sliced bread.  One such girl said she had no interest in seeing Rocky (you know, the 1976 Academy Award winner for Best Picture and Director?), but called this movie “her favorite movie ever”.  The other girl said this movie was better than Schindler’s List, and this girl requested I review this movie (CHRISTIAN!).  Feel free to tell her how wrong she is in the comments section.  But be nice, she apparently just loves really gay movies.

As I hinted at before, this movie is uber gay.  So many scenes of hot body mens doing homoerotic things together.  The volleyball scene alone is probably the reason all gays and women like this movie at all.  Most of the exposition of this movie takes place with the dudes wearing nothing but a towel in the showers.  If it were me, I’d say “Hey, Maverick!  I haveta yell at you.  Put your clothes on and meet me outside”.  And did the captain really have to come and have a heartfelt conversation about recently deceased Goose while Maverick was wearing only tighty-whiteys?  Again, a simple “Oh, I can wait” could fix all of my pain.  And I’m pretty sure the whole “You can be my wingman” exchange was Iceman and Maverick asking each other out on a date.

As for the rest of the movie, it’s serviceable at best.  I highly doubt this movie ever tried to get itself nominated for an Academy Award (DANIELLE!!), so it was only trying to be some good times for about 2 hours.  It kind of manages that.  The story is equal parts cliched and annoying, though I find it difficult to wonder how cliched something from 1986 was.  Maybe this type of story started with Top Gun, but probably not.  The acting is fine, but not spectacular.  And almost every song besides “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling” seems to be Kenny Loggins 80’s gayness.

By far the best part of this movie is the aerial battles.  I don’t think these were miniatures, so they must’ve gone to the Navy and said “Look, we’re making a movie that is basically a giant hand job to the Navy, wanna let us film you doing things?” and thus it was born. I could have totally watched these aerial battles on YouTube.  Although I’m sure that the inverted bird-flipping that Maverick gave a pilot from an unnamed enemy country would not have been safe to attempt in real life.

If all this movie showed was the aerial battles, this movie would be great.  Since they had to have conversations, it wasn’t.  As it is, the movie is watchable, and should probably be watched at least once so you can get the homage’s made in other movies, but the next time someone tells me this movie it’s their favorite movie without qualifying it with favorite guilty pleasure movie or favorite jet fighting drama from 1986, I will spit.  I also say you should watch this so that you can enjoy Hot Shots more.  I give this movie a “GAY BALLS” out of 96.

And, as always, please rate, comment, and/or like this post and others.  It may help me get better.