Tag: Universal Pictures

Cinema Dispatch: The Secret Life of Pets

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 3 Comments

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The Secret Life of Pets and all the images you see in this review are owned by Universal Pictures

Directed by Chris Renaud and Yarrow Cheney

Is it finally out!?  OH THANK GOODNESS!!  Whether or not this movie is actually good, at least we no longer have to see those same trailers over and over and OVER again.  The marketing for this movie was absolutely insane and was in front of every damn movie I saw.  They played this so much that now I don’t like Downtown by Macklemore anymore.  THANKS A LOT ILLUMINATION ENTERTAINMENT!!  Still, it’s not always fair to judge a movie by how obnoxiously they market it, and I did see a little bit of potential here before that hope was snuffed by the sheer incessantness of the advertisements so maybe there’s light at the end of this tunnel!  Let’s find out!!

The movie is all about Max (Louis CK) who’s living a perfect life with his owner Katie (Ellie Kemper) who does her human stuff during the day but always comes back to find Max waiting for her.  One day however, she up and ruins the perfect setup they have going by bringing a new dog home with her named Duke (Eric Stonestreet) which is a shakeup that Max is not happy about for a myriad of reasons; the least of which being that this dog is HUGE and is probably not gonna be too friendly to the much smaller Max considering how territorial dogs can be.  Oh well!  They’ll learn to get along eventually, right?  Well I wouldn’t DREAM of spoiling this movie, but before anything like that can take place, they get into a huge fight in the dog park and are stuck in the middle of New York City without collars and are just unfortunate enough to keep running into either Animal Control Workers, or a bunch of Animal Revolutionaries led by the rabbit Snowball (Kevin Hart) who want the two of them dead for convoluted reasons.  While all that is going on, a bunch of pets at their apartment building band together to find Max and Duke before it’s too late!  The group is led up by a little Pomeranian named Gidget (Jenny Slate), and is made up of a cat named Chloe (Lake Bell), a few dogs in the building (Bobby Moynihan and Hannibal Buress), a small bird who I don’t recall having any lines but is apparently played by Tara Strong, a guinea pig named Norman (Chris Renaud) and a hawk named Tiberius who’s played by Albert Brooks as you would expect a vicious animal to be played by Albert Brooks.  Will Max and Duke manage to find their way home without getting murdered by humans or other animals in the process?  Will their friends manage to find those two or will they end up getting just as lost in the process?  Why do I get the feeling I’ve seen this movie already?

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Oh right!  The Producers.  Yeah, that’s what it is.

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Cinema Dispatch: The Purge: Election Year

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 6 Comments

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The Purge: Election Year and all the images you see in this review are owned by Universal Pictures

Directed by James DeMonaco

For the past few months, there hasn’t been a movie I was more excited to see than this one.  I still haven’t seen the first movie, but the SECOND one is a really great B-Movie in the vein of John Carpenter or even modern day directors like Gareth Evans.  It was more than just an action shlock-fest though as it really wanted to say something about its premise in between the outrageous violence.  This one though?  This looks like they’re going full-tilt on having something to say about society, politics, and violence in our culture!  In between the brutal murders and silly costumes of course.  Does this manage to be yet another sequel this year that ends up better than the previous film, or have they run out of genuine ideas and are now just parroting hot button issues?  Let’s find out!!

The movie takes place two years after the events of The Purge: Anarchy where Frank Grillo’s character from the that film FINALLY has a name (Leo Barnes) and has somehow found his way to being the head of security for Senator Charlie Roan (Elizabeth Mitchell) who is poised to win the Presidential Election that year and will hopefully end the purge.  Unfortunately for her, the ruling party in the US Government (the New Founding Fathers of America, or NFFA) would very much like to keep their jobs and to keep the purge going so they can kill lots more poor people, so their plan to stop the senator is to change the rules of the purge so as to lift the ban on killing government officials; leaving them free to send a whole bunch of mercs (neo-Nazi ones of course) to take her out.  Well not if Frank Grillo has anything to say about it!  He manages to get her away from the assassins after their initial assault on the Senator’s home and they end up finding a few people trying to survive the night and more than willing to help the senator who will bring an end the purge once and for all.  These include Joe Dixon (Mykelit Williamson) who owns a small convenience store that is being threatened that night, his employee Marcos (Joseph Julian Soria) who wants to help his boss, and Laney Rucker (Betty Gabriel) who is one of the volunteers that helps people get medical treatment during purge night.  Can this rag tag group of badasses manage to outrun the NFFA?  Will Senator Roan be able to win the election, or should they find a way to ensure her victory this very night?  There have been what, fifteen purges already?  You’d think some of these people would find it all passé at this point.

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“We’re hardcore bro!”     “You’re all a bunch of posers!”

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Cinema Dispatch: Warcraft

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 2 Comments

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Warcraft and all the images you see in this review are owned by Universal Pictures

Directed by Duncan Jones

On the one hand, we are now in an age where four different video game movies are getting wide releases at the theater!  On the other hand, two of them have been far from impressive so far and Assassin’s Creed looks as dull as dishwater.  I guess all we have left to give us hope is this film based on one of gaming’s most influential franchises… that I know nothing about.  Does this manage to bring in new fans while satisfying Blizzard die hards, or is this gonna be yet another example of why we just shouldn’t expect much from video game movies?  Let’s find out!!

The movie is about… too many things, but in the broadest terms it’s about the war between the Orcs and the Humans of Stormwind.  See the Orcs kinda fucked up their own planet (or it’s dying of natural causes) and so they need to go through a dimensional portal to find a new place and take it over.  Our key Orc players in this are Durotan (Toby Kebbell) who’s the chieftain of one of the Orc tribes that’s the first to notice that things seem to be amiss with the leadership, Gul’dan (Daniel Wu) who is said leadership and uses dark magic all over the place, and Garona (Paula Patton) who’s a half breed and gets captured by the humans early on.  Now the Humans are led by King Llane (Dominic Cooper), his right hand man Sir Anduin Lothar (Travis Fimmel), a young sorcerer who first notices the dark magic being used by this new threat named Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer) and some super mage given the title of The Guardian who I guess just sits in a tower waiting to be called upon named Medivh (Ben Foster).  As stated earlier, Garona is captured by the Humans early on during an unsuccessful raid by the Orcs, but it is during this fight that Durotan realizes just how bad the magic shit that Gul’dan has been throwing around is and decides to overthrow him to save the Orcs from the dark magic.  While he’s doing that, the Humans begin mounting a counter effort with the help of Garona, but Medivh may not be quite up to the task of taking on this new dark magic which does not bode well for the Kingdom of Stormwind.  Can the Humans fight back from this invading force?  Can Durotan stop the OBVIOUSLY EVIL dark mage from… corrupting the souls of the Orcs I guess?  Does anyone else think this should have been a TV show instead?

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“WHAT IS GOING ON!?  SOMEONE TELL ME NOW!!”

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Cinema Dispatch: Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and all the images you see in this review are owned by Universal Pictures

Directed by Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone

Weird Al got a movie, Oingo Boingo got a movie, and now The Lonely Island have one.  I’m sure you can point to ten awful musician movies for every good one, but there are some all-out classics in that very strange sub genre.  The aforementioned UHF is a lot of fun, Forbidden Zone is an absolute classic, hell, let’s go ahead and throw in The Blues Brothers and Walk Hard: The Dewy Cox story while we’re at it!  True, the musicians in question for those movies are known more for their comedies than their music, but you can pretty much say the same thing about The Lonely Island!  Does this mockumentary into the absurd world of pop stardom turn out to be the perfect update to the Spinal Tap formula, or are these guys not up to the task of stretching their material out for an entire movie?  Let’s find out!!

The movie is presented to us as an documentary into the life of Conner 4 Real (Andy Samberg) whose debut solo album (Thriller, Also) was a record smashing hit and launched him into super stardom after he left The Lonely Island… I mean The Style Boyz.  We start the movie on the eve of the release of his second album which has a pretty amazing title (CONNquest) but it turns out to be a finical and critical flop.  From then on, we follow Conner as he tries more and more desperate moves to salvage the fledgling album and boost his ticket sales while also coming to terms that he may not be as good as he thinks he is (or at least as good as his Yes Men tell him he is).  Along with him on this journey is his DJ Own (Jorma Taccone) who was one of The Style Boyz back in the day, his manager Harry (Tim Meadows) who’s trying to juggle Conner’s insane ego with his duties of keeping their empire afloat, and many others who make up the eclectic group of misfits that Conner surrounds himself with.  Can he manage to find his creative spirit once again and come back stronger than ever, or will he hit rock bottom as he slowly begins to isolate those who are trying to help him.  Oh who am I kidding?  It will probably be both!

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“Would you fuck me?  I’d fuck me.”

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Cinema Dispatch: Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 1 Comment

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Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising and all the images you see in this review are owned by Universal Pictures

Directed by Nicholas Stoller

They just couldn’t resist the urge, could they?  I guess there was just too much money lying on the table to NOT make another one of these.  Sequels to unexpected hits (especially comedies) are almost always underwhelming as it’s like trying to capture lightening in a bottle twice.  Caddyshack 2, Ghostbusters 2, Horrible Bosses 2, you could make a neigh infinite list of them.  Now the first film was a pretty solid movie that had a bit more to it than you would expect from a movie that’s essentially a prank war.  Not only that, but they’re coming into this one with a decent enough idea in regards to how Sororities are viewed by the education system, even if it is a bit ridiculous that the SAME THING happens to these people twice in a row.  Can this manage to be the few comedy sequels to NOT be the worst thing imaginable, or is this movie destined to be the worst thing imaginable?  Let’s find out!!

The movie begins a few years after the first one ended with Teddy Sanders (Zac Efron) still wasting his life away but now doing so as Pete’s roommate (Dave Franco) and Mac and Kelly Radner (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) planning to sell their house so that they can move to the suburb.  There’s a small roadblock though to their plan which is that they ALREADY bought the house in the suburb, but the house they just sold is in escrow which the movie thankfully explains is a thirty day waiting period where the buyers can back out of the deal if something were to change.  That couldn’t POSSIBLY happen though, right?  Well back on the college campus (what college is it anyway?) the new female freshmen are trying to get into Sorrorities, but three of them (Chloë Grace Moretz, Kiersey Clemons, and Beanie Feldstein) find the guidelines about not being able to party too restrictive, so they decide to start their own independent Sorority.  Well SURELY they won’t end up at the EXACT same house that Teddy’s frat was at, right?  Well speaking of Teddy, Pete just got engaged so Teddy has to move out which means he’s lost once again and needs to find not only a new place to stay, but some meaning in his life.  Oh look!  The house he used to live at!  And look!  The girls are touring it to see if it works for their needs!  An unholy (and tenuous) alliance is born between the girls of the new Sorority (Kappa Nu) and the frat boy looking to relive his glory day, so they rent out the house to the terror of Mac and Kelly who just want to sell their place and move on with their lives.  And so the war is on once again as the girls refuse to keep things quite for thirty days and the old people try to keep them from exercising their right to party!  Can Mac and Kelly once again destroy the young people who are trying to fuck up their lives?  Will the sisters fail in their endeavor to bring about a new kind of Sorority that’s empowering those who want to have fun but don’t want to be objectified?  Things can’t get any crazier here than they did in the LAST movie… right?

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“My painted on abs give me strength!!”     “KILL THE FAT GUY!!”

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Cinema Dispatch: The Huntsman: Winter’s War

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 1 Comment

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The Huntsman: Winter’s War and all the images you see in this review are owned by Universal Pictures

Directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan

I really haven’t been looking forward to this.  Cutting Snow White out of a sequel to Snow White?  Yeah… no.  This exists simply because Chris Hemsworth had a weekend free between Captain America and In the Heart of the Sea.  Still, the first movie was a pretty solid fantasy film that had drop dead gorgeous designs and if nothing else that seems to have carried over here.  Not only that, but they managed to somehow get Charlize Theron back, and while the explanation will probably be dumb as hell, she WAS one of the best aspects of the first film.  Can they manage to squeeze out ONE decent sequel before driving this franchise into the dirt, or is it too late to even hope for that much?  Let’s find out!!

First of all, this movie is very much a sequel despite the advertising that states otherwise.  It STARTS as a prequel, but only to fill in the backstories for the characters who weren’t around for the first movie.  Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) was murdering her way through the fantasy kingdom’s royal families when her sister Freya (Emily Blunt) reveals that she is not only in love, but pregnant as well.  Despite the careful warnings of her sister, Freya goes all in on love and gets seriously burned.  Okay, well maybe SHE doesn’t get burned, but her baby does as she finds her one true love has torched the nursey with the baby inside.  Ouch.  This traumatic incident is enough to not only awaken Freya’s hidden ice powers, but to essentially make her emotionally dead and disdainful of love.  Since grief council apparently doesn’t exist in this world, she instead takes out her pain on the Northern part of the country (it’s ALWAYS in the North where things we don’t know about until later happened) where she creates her icy doom fortress and raids villages for children to raise as her Huntsmen.  Two such huntsmen are Eric (Chris Hemsworth) and Sara (Jessica Chastain) who fall in love which is strictly forbidden in the snow palace, so Sara’s killed and Eric is left for dead.  Got it?  Good.  We THEN cut to the present time (not too long after the first movie) where Snow White (who apparently is still in this except not really) has ordered the mirror mirror on the wall to be sent away where its wicked powers cannot hurt anyone.  Unfortunately, the convoy delivering it to some vaguely defined sacred place never reached their destination so she requests the huntsman to go out there, find the damn thing, and finish delivering it before it can fall into the wrong hands.  Say… those of the Ice Queen?  He heads out on the journey with Nion and Gryff (Nick Frost and Rob Brydon) who are two dwarves (one of whom is from the first movie) and try to figure out just what the hell happened to the mirror and the convey.   But wait!  Not all is as it seems as Eric is soon confronted with Sara who somehow is still alive and super pissed!  How did she manage to recover from being murdered?  Will this little posse of fantasy bad asses be able to find the mirror before it’s too late?  Just how blatantly are they ripping off Frozen in this!?

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Cinema Dispatch: Jurassic World

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 4 Comments

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Jurassic World and all the images you see in this review are owned by Universal Pictures.

Directed by Colin Trevorrow

Two hundred MILLION dollars in the opening weekend!?  Oh I’m, sorry that FIVE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS when you include the international box office.  What exactly about this movie (other than it being a new entry in a franchise that has nostalgic appeal to multiple generations of people) could bring in that kind of cash!?  Jurassic Park was never really that important of a franchise for me (only got through the first one and half of the second one) which means this movie was barely on my radar.  The only thing that caught my attention was Star Lord driving a motorcycle with his personal posse of velociraptors (and of course this amazing gif).  Needless to say, the movie caught my attention after everyone starting to go nuts over it, so I went ahead and saw the damn thing to find out what the fuss is about.  Now big box office numbers are never a reliable indicator of quality (just look at the Transformers films) but there was still a bit of optimism what with the decent trailers and the undeniable coolness of dinosaurs WITHOUT feathers.  Also, Chris Pratt.

No matter what it is, just keep running.  Dinosaurs, cops, Parks and Rec fans, doesn’t matter.
No matter what it is, just keep running.  Dinosaurs, cops, Parks and Rec fans, doesn’t matter.

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