Tag: Movie Review

Cinema Dispatch: Passengers

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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Passengers and all the images you see in this review are owned by Columbia Pictures

Directed by Morten Tyldum

I’ve started watching Parks and Recreations recently and seeing Chris Pratt in that film has started to color my perceptions of him as a leading man.  Sure, Guardians of the Galaxy still holds up as he’s still playing up to his comedic strengths, but every time I see the poster for this movie with him and Jennifer Lawrence blandly starring back with their chiseled Hollywood looks, it’s just gotten harder to take that seriously when all I can think of Burt Macklin: The best FBI agent ever!  Still, the guy does have a HUGE amount of talent and more than enough charisma to carry a movie, so maybe he’s the right fit to bring some humanity to this kind of science fiction story and can hold his own against an actress of Jennifer Lawrence’s caliber.  Does Passengers manage to give us a compelling story anchored by two great performances from some of the most bankable names in the business right now, or is this a giant misstep that will be stain on their relatively strong careers up to this point?  Let’s find out!!

The movie begins with everyone’s favorite member of Mouse Rat in a giant space mall that’s hurtling through the galaxy at a preposterous rate but still too slow for anyone to if they had to manually control the damn thing.  That’s why the ship is on autopilot and presumptive hero Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) along with the other five thousand people on this ship are in hibernation pods and riding out this long journey to the new space colony on Homestead II.  Unfortunately for Starlord, there’s some malfunction that wakes his ass, and ONLY his ass, before everyone else with no way to go back to sleep and is trapped alone on this space ship for the next ninety years.  At first it’s not all bad considering he sort of has the run of the place which is full of video games, movies, and sushi, and he even has a friendly robotic bartender (Michael Sheen) to air his grievances at.  Eventually though, he manages to taste every variation on the tuna roll, got the high score in the latest instalment of Just Dance, and manages to drink half the ship’s wine cellar within about a year, so doing this for another 89 of them isn’t all that appealing.  He basically has two options at this point; kill himself or wake someone else up to keep him company.  Well we wouldn’t really have a movie if they went with the former (that actually would be a pretty awesome short film) so he JUST SO HAPPENS to fixate on a writer named Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence) and eventually cracks open her hibernation pod and pretends it was an accident just like his was.  Will she be able to fill the silence that has driven him to the brink of madness and give a reason to live once again?  What could he possibly do to make up for essentially kidnapping her and ruining her life as she’s doomed to suffer the same fate as him, and what will happen when she finds out the truth?  Well there IS an airlock.  I’m pretty sure she could have some fun with that.

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“WAS IT SOMETHING I SAID!?”

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Cinema Dispatch: Assassin’s Creed

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 1 Comment

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Assassin’s Creed and all the images you see in this review are owned by 20th Century Fox

Directed by Justin Kurzel

We all knew it was only a matter of time until they took a stab at making the next great video game movie, and since Warcraft turned out to be such a disaster there’s a nice big opening for Ubisoft to take the throne as the first company to get this right.  Now the trailers really don’t inspire much hope as it looks like a bunch of overqualified actors in a routine action film, but then maybe that’s enough to make this a GOOD film (a feat unto itself at this point) even if it can’t quite be a great one.  Does this manage to be the sign of things to come as studios begin to buckle down and seriously try to crack the code on adapting video games to the big screen, or will Resident Evil and Mortal Kombat still be the high bar that no one else has inexplicably been able to reach?  Let’s find out!!

The movie begins with Cal Lynch as a young boy (Angus Brown) walking in on his mother (Essie Davis) with a stab wound in her neck and his dad (Brian Gleeson in the flashbacks and Brendan Gleeson in the present) with a bloody Assassin’s blade and wearing a very uncomfortable looking coat considering the scene seems to be set in New Mexico or something.  Little Cal doesn’t have long to contemplate this as a whole bunch of black vans with hired goons rolls up on the house and tries to kill the both of him, but Cal manages to escape.  Well, not for TOO long as we jump to present day where Little Cal is now Handsome Cal (Michael Fassbender) and is on death row for… some reason.  Except not really!  Apparently a super science corporation named Abstergo arranged it so that the state would PRETEND to kill him and then hand the poor sap over to Sofia and Alan Rikkin (Marion Cotillard and Jeremy Irons) who want him for their nefarious ends… I think.  Apparently Cal is the Great Great Great Great Great Great (and so on) grandson of some Assassin from the fifteenth century and was ALSO the last known person to have the McGuffin of ultimate power… I mean the Apple of Eden.  Using this giant crane device which is supposed to the Animus, they’re gonna send his brain back in time to live out the memories of his ancestor Aguilar de Nerha and find where he left the damn thing so they can find it and use it for whatever the hell it is they want to use it for.  This of course is assuming that NO ONE MOVED IT OR FOUND IT IN FIVE HUNDRE YEARS, but I’m sure This all makes sense if I played Brotherhood or something.  Will Cal be able to locate the Apple and gain his freedom in the process?  What about all these OTHER assassins that Abstergo has collected and are housing in this Science Gulag?  Are they gonna be all that happy that Cal is working to help find this artifact?  Is there ANY reason this fucking thing had to be so damn complicated!?

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The guy jumps around and stabs people.  It’s not that hard!!

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Cinema Dispatch: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 2 Comments

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and all the images you see in this review are owned by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Directed by Gareth Edwards

In what will surely be a yearly tradition until the day we all die, Disney has given us our holiday present in the form of another Star Wars movie.  We’re only at two so far which means they PROBABLY aren’t gonna start half-assing these just yet, and in fact this one seems to be willing to take a few more risks than what we would normally expect from franchise features like this.  Okay, the fact that it’s a one-time spin off means that they’re only so much damage this can do if it blows up in their faces, but the tone of the trailers and the nature of the story they’re telling at least inspires some hope that the franchise has gotten so big that they’re willing to let it take some chances.  Does this experiment in growing the series turn out to be a total success, or will this somehow be the worst prequel yet?  Okay, I kind of doubt that’s even possible, but you never know!

The movie begins a long time ago in a galaxy far far away where little Jyn Erso (Beau Gadsdon) has her life completely uprooted when her family is found by Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) who is a high ranking member of the galactic empire.  Why did this guy hunt halfway around the galaxy for them?  Well it turns out that Jyn’s father Galen (Mads Mikkelsen) is an Empire scientist who defected and they need him back to finish some super weapon they’re working on.  The good news is that Jyn manages to escape the Empire with the help of a family friend Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker).  The bad news is that her mother (Valene Kane) got killed in the process and dear old dad got kidnapped.  Flash forward to sometime later where we meet grown up Jyn (Felicity Jones) who’s been rebellious youth-ing all around the galaxy and winds up at Rebel headquarters where they have a proposition for her.  Go with the rebel agent Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) to find her father and stop him from finishing the Death Star as he seems to be looking for a way out once again.  Okay, it’s not QUITE that simple, but that’s the basic idea of what they’re trying to do!  Anyway, they’ll point her in the right direction in the hopes that her skills and connections will kill two birds with one stone; she gets her dad back and they get to stop the Space Nuke from being completed.  Of course, nothing is as easy as it seems and there’s plenty of treachery to go around as the mission becomes only more difficult once the Empire get wind of what they might be up to.  Can Jyn save her farther before the Empire find out if he’s been undercutting their progress on the super weapon this entire time?  Does Cassian have a hidden agenda that he’s not telling Jyn about?  On a scale of one to Vader, how screwed are they?

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I think she’s got this!

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Cinema Dispatch: Collateral Beauty

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 1 Comment

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Collateral Beauty and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros Pictures

Directed by David Frankel

Is it that time again for Will Smith to try and win that Oscar he’s been so desperately seeking for some time now!?  Hey, since DiCaprio got his we need another underdog to root for, and Will Smith is as good a candidate as any.  Well… except that HIS Oscar bait films tend to be stuff like Concussion where he’s a boring scientist while Leo jumped off mountains and did massive amounts of drugs trying to get his.  This movie, just from the awkward title, doesn’t inspire much hope that The Fresh Prince is ready to put himself out there in something fun and risky to win his Academy Award, but then maybe this movie doesn’t need any of that and is a truly moving film in its own right.  We can only hope…

The movie begins with Howard (Will Smith) and Whit (Edward Norton) as two best buddies as the heads of some advertising company that seems to get motivational Howard Speeches on a daily basis.  That is… until the tragedy.  We jump straight to three years later where Howard has gone from The Fresh to Hancock (well… Hancock without the fun) and is now spending his days building up elaborate domino sets instead of working.  Not only that, but he’s so preoccupied with the grief of what happened (it doesn’t take long before we find out his daughter died) that he’s letting the company gone down the tubes financially and can’t even be bothered to sign the company over to Whit as well as Simon (Michael Peña) and Claire (Kate Winslet) who could save the company if Howard would just give them the authority to do so, though I’m not sure what the law is about letting someone literally sit on his ass all day while all his employees are left to watch things crumble.  Eventually, our trio of good buddies decide that Howard needs to either lose his fucking mind or get better (it’s never quite clear which one they’re going for) and decide to Christmas Carol his ass using actors (Keira Knightley, Jacob Latimore, and Helen Mirren) who will play Love, Time, and Death; all three of which are concepts that Howard has been writing letters to as a way of expressing his internal frustration and rage.  Will this strange plan to convince Howard he’s seeing his delusions come to life make him deal with his problems, or drive him further into his unhealthy state of mind?  Will he eventually seek help from a local support group led by Madeleine (Naomie Harris) which seems like a less risky way for him to deal with his daughter’s death?  Seriously, isn’t there like a MILLION ways this plan could go horribly wrong!?

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“Without love in your life, you couldn’t even appreciate the time you had with her, and-”     “Oh!  I see you have a guest!  What will she have?”     “Wait, you can see her!?  She can see you!?”     “Uh…”

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Cinema Dispatch: Miss Sloane

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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Miss Sloane and all the images you see in this review are owned by EuropaCorp

Directed by John Madden

If you really take a look at Jessica Chastain’s acting career, it becomes clear that she’s truly one of the most versatile actors working today.  Not only has she been in high caliber Oscar fare of multiple genres including The Martian, Zero Dark Thirty, and Tree of Life, but she’s also been fantastic in other places like The Huntsman: Winter’s War, Crimson Peak, and Lawless.  Now she’s headlining a political thriller at right about the time that EVERYONE is not in the mood to even be thinking about politics.  Well, I guess we can’t blame her or the director for that, and just because the world is going straight to hell doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy movies like this anymore, right?  Can this new vehicle for Jessica Chastain turn out to be another high point in her illustrious career, or will her role in that Frozen knockoff with Chris Hemsworth turn out to be her highlight this year?  I mean… that WAS a really solid movie that no one but me seems to appreciate, but even so!  Let’s find out!!

The movie follows the greatest lobbyist ever, Elizabeth Sloane (Jessica Chastain) who’s faced with a crisis of… conscious maybe?  Either conscious or competitive zeal; one of those two.  Anyway, the crisis is that the lobbying firm she works for wants her to campaign against a bill that would restrict gun sales to criminals, those on the terror watch list, etc, and her boss (Sam Waterson) is being a REAL overbearing jerk about it.  Not one to suffer fools lightly, Miss Sloane packs up her desks, grabs the best millennial interns under her command, and goes to work for Rodolfo Schmidt (Mark Strong) who is heading the Pro-Gun restriction effort.  Of course, when you bargain with the devil (or in this case someone know what it takes to win) you get exactly what you pay for and Miss Sloane proves to be INCREDIBLY effective despite how uneasy some of her methods make some of her allies, particularly Esme Manucharian (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who experiences firsthand just how far Miss Sloane is willing to go to get what she needs.  Will the best of the best be able to stand up against the most funded lobby to ever exist?  What can all these starry-eyed liberal babies learn by watching Miss Sloane in action?  What exactly led her to being like this?  Personal tragedy?  A drive to succeed?  Rich relatives that changed her life for the better?

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“Now this is the story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down.”

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Cinema Dispatch: Office Christmas Party

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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Office Christmas Party and all the images you see in this review are owned by Paramount Pictures

Directed by Will Speck and Josh Gordon

Christmas themed comedies for the most part (at least the ones that aren’t made for TV) have a pretty solid track record with classics like Elf, Bad Santa, Home Alone, Christmas Vacation, and A Christmas movies among their prestigious ranks.  I would also include How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the Ron Howard one) and even Jingle All the Way among those, but I tend to be in the minority with that particular opinion so we’ll save those arguments for another time.  The point is that there’s a certain sense of… shall we say EFFORT that comes to be expected when trying to cash in on the holidays; even if the goal is to make it raunchy like they did with A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas (another classic) which seems to be the intent here as this movie seems to be a mix between Project X, The Hangover, and the first ten minutes of Die Hard before the terrorist took over the Nakatomi building.  Does this wild party live up to the standards of excellence we expect from Christmas films, or is this just a lazy cash in that just so happened to wrangle in a whole bunch of popular comedians to do a whole bunch of lazy material before collecting their Christmas bonuses?  Let’s find out!!

Our story begins at the Chicago branch of Zenotek which sells servers or something like that where we meet our key characters for the shenanigan fueled debauchery that will unfold in due time.  We’ve got Josh (Jason Bateman) who’s basically if Jason Bateman worked at a branch of a tech company, Clay (TJ Miller) who’s basically if TJ Miller was in charge of said branch of a tech company, Mary (Kate McKinnon) who is what you’d imagine Kate McKinnon would do as a caricature of the head of human resources at said branch of a tech company, and a bunch of others played by Sam Richardson, Vanessa Bayer, Karan Soni, Randall Park, and Rob Corddry to fill out this scenario where a branch of a tech company as filled entirely by smart asses and awkward comedians.  Oh, and Olivia Munn is in here too as the uber savvy hacker Tracey to be Josh’s love interest and to provide the very obvious Chekov’s Gun for the finale.  Anyway, while we’re getting introduced to all these employees at Zenotech and setting up the boring typical Christmas Party, The CEO of the company Carol (Jennifer Aniston) who also happens to be Clay’s sister has informed them that the branch is about to get some HEAVY cuts and that the party is cancelled.  Well that certainly sucks!  If only there was a way to fix both problems at the same time…  Oh wait!  There’s a big contract up for grabs and the company’s representative is in town (Courtney B Vance) so maybe they can woo him into signing a contract with the BEST CHRISTMAS PARTY EVAR, giving their employees the great time they deserve and saving the branch in the process.  It could work, right?

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“FUCK ORACLE!!  OUR SERVERS ARE THE SHIT!!”     “HELL YEAH!!  WHERE DO I SIGN!?  Also, can I do so after I puke?”

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Cinema Dispatch: Incarnate

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 4 Comments

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Incarnate and all the images you see in this review are owned by Blumhouse Tilt, High Top Releasing, and Universal Pictures

Directed by Brad Peyton

I go to see a lot of movies, and I don’t think I saw a single trailer for this at any of them; not even other horror films or Blumhouse productions.  That seems pretty strange though considering they’ve got a well-known actor in here with Aaron Eckhart who may not be quite A list, but should be enough to sell a movie like this, and yet it seems to have slipped completely under the radar.  That’s usually a bad sign, but it’s not always the case as films like last year’s We Are Your Friends was a movie I never heard of until I went to the theater to see it, and that turned out to be pretty solid; especially compared to other Zac Effron outings like Dirty Grandpa and Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates.  Maybe the same is true for this little horror flick.  I mean… it’s possible… right?  Either way, let’s find out!!

The movie begins as most demon possession movies do with a young child getting his soul hijacked from some horrifying hell spawn with the victim here being Cameron (David Mazouz) who seems to catch it from this homeless woman as the demons here apparently jump from host to host.  Naturally, the Vatican is all over this and sends out one of their representatives (Catalina Sandino Moreno) to keep an eye on things, but it soon becomes clear that conventional methods are gonna take care of it this time.  Instead, she calls upon… Dr. Seth Ember (Aaron Eckhart)!  Who is he?  Well he’s some guy who looks to have watched Inception a few too many times and has come up with a new exorcism technique where he goes into the mind of those possessed and convince their subconscious or whatever to reject the monster that is feeding off of their soul.  Of course, Dr. Ember isn’t some bright eyed idealist who’s doing this for the good of mankind!  He has a DARK PAST full of TRAGEDY and WOE, and the techniques he’s developed were all in service of killing ONE DEMON SPECIFICALLY who has something to do with said tragic past.  Of course, it JUST SO HAPPENS (or maybe not?) that the kid is being possessed by that ONE SPECIFIC DEMON, so Dr. Ember begrudgingly takes the case along with his two hipster tech brats Riley and Oliver (Emily Jackson and Keir O’Donnell).  Will Dr. Ember finally gets the vengeance that has eluded him all these years?  Will he be able to save Cameron in the process, or will Ember see him as expendable in the pursuit of a greater goal?  What… exactly did I just sit though?

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“Maybe I will do that I, Frankenstein sequel after all.  It wasn’t THAT bad, was it?”

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Cinema Dispatch: Bad Santa 2

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 2 Comments

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Bad Santa 2 and all the images you see in this review are owned by Broad Green Pictures

Directed by Mark Waters

Well this certainly seems necessary, right?  I mean, who WASN’T clamoring for Billy Bob Thornton to don the red suit once again and try to catch lightening in a bottle twice!?  Comedy sequels are already a bad idea to start with, but when we get one that’s not only this many years after the fact but also for a movie that’s REALLY freaking good?  What the hell is the point!?  Is there really much more that we need to learn about Willie that wasn’t already covered in the first film?  I mean, we DO get his mother this time around so maybe it will fill in some of the gaps of how he ended up as a drunken piece of trash, but it’s hardly necessary considering how well the role was fleshed out the first time around!  Still, maybe there’s some hope for this one!  After all, at least they didn’t completely recast the damn thing like Kindergarten Cop 2 or The Tooth Fairy 2 (ugh…), so maybe that’s a sign that they actually care about this one!  Yeah… the bar is still really low and I’m not expecting too much from this.  Will this at least be funny enough to justify its existence even if it can’t match up to the original, or was this just a cash-in for everyone who could be bothered to come back?  Let’s find out!!

The story follows the exploits of Willie Soke (Billy Bob Thornton) who it turns out DID NOT have a happy ending as he ended up going back to the bottle and pissing away whatever goodwill he built up with the last movie.  Well… ALMOST all the goodwill as Thurman Merman (Brett Kelly) still thinks he’s the bee’s knees and brings him sandwiches whenever he can.  Unfortunately ham and cheese on wheat don’t seem to lift Willie’s spirits as much as you’d expect they would, but after a series of suicide attempts he’s given a chance to sort of get his life back on track.  It turns out that Marcus Skidmore (Tony Cox) just got out of jail and needs someone to help him with a heist in Chicago that’s being set up by a third party associate.  With nothing else to do other than drink another bottle and suck on a shotgun, Willie decides he might as well put his safe cracking skills to use and agrees to join him… but it turns out the mysterious associate is actually his mother Sunny (Kathy Bates) and they have a… complicated history.  With only a few days before they have to steal a shit ton of money from a local charity, will they get their act together long enough to not get caught?  What about Thurman who wants nothing more than to spend Christmas with his favorite Santa and is still unaware of just how awful of a human being Willie is?  IS he finally gonna get his heart broken by the one person on Earth he’s somehow idolized all these years?  Just what kind of charitable organization was dumb enough to hire these three scumbags!?

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“Why is your bucket so heavy?  We’ve only been out here an hour!”     “I’ve been pissing in it.  If those bastards want to feed hungry kids, they gonna have to prove how bad they want it.”

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Cinema Dispatch: The Handmaiden

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 1 Comment

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The Handmaiden and all the images you see in this review are owned by CJ Entertainment

Directed by Chan-wook Park

I have been waiting to see this one for a while now which is somewhat depressing considering all the other film critics got to see it some time ago, but on the other hand at least I was lucky enough to see at all which a lot of other people haven’t been lucky enough to do yet.  Now all the way back in 2010 (I think) when Netflix was still delivering DVDs, the first movie I ever watched when I took the plunge into their streaming service was oddly enough Sympathy for Lady Vengeance which… I guess doesn’t REALLY have any significance, but it was my introduction to Chan-wook Park’s work, and I ended up watching Old Boy not too long after that.  If you aren’t aware already, this is a guy who is an absolute legend that we get to experience in his prime; on par with the greats like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and John Waters.  Okay… that last one was for me, but there are comparisons to be made between those two as Chan-wook Park, like Waters, finds humor and absurdity in people just being people.  Now to be fair, Park tends to go in a much darker direction with that concept, especially in films like Thirst which is about someone desperately trying to find a way to live as a vampire while maintaining his humanity, but its honestly these touches along with his technical acumen that has led him to stand out and garner all the critical praise that he has.  So is his latest film yet another example of this director being just as brilliant as everyone says he is, or are the cracks starting to show now that his work has been at the bleeding edge of film discourse for over a decade now?  Let’s find out!!

The movie begins in Japanese occupied Korea with Sook-Hee (Kim Tae-ri) who’s been recruited by Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo) who’s managed to drag himself out of the lower class but still doesn’t have the kind of money he needs to truly be accepted into high society.  What is Sook-Hee recruited for?  Well he has a plan to rob this rich guy known simply as Uncle Kouzuk (Cho Jin-woong) who’s niece Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee) is the inheritor a vast fortune.  Count Fujiwara plans to have Sook-hee go undercover as the titular Handmaiden to Lady Hideko and will gain her trust so that she can start convincing her that this dashing new suitor is the PERFECT husband.  Once married, Count Fujiwara will lock Lady Hideko in an insane asylum (which I’m guessing wasn’t all that hard to do back in those days) and split some of the money with Sook-hee.  Now obviously things don’t go exactly as planned as we watch Sook-hee get closer and closer to Lady Hideko, and we learn more and more about the life she’s led and how her uncle has treated her since her aunt died some time ago.  Will Sook-hee go through with the plan that will get her all the money she could ever need, or will her feelings make it impossible to do so?  Will Count Fujiwara be able to stay civil long enough for the plan to even work in the first place?  Just what the heck is going on in that library they keep bringing up!?

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“Tonight’s reading will be a selected piece from VegitoBro420 titled Mercy and Tracer go to White Castle: A tale of Love and Hamburgers.”

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