Magic Mike

   

   I always feel lucky when I get to see a movie a little earlier than most people. I enjoy it because I get to tell all of you what you can expect and if you will be entertained or not.  You always see a lot of the same people at these screenings and nothing really exciting happens.  When the big films come out, like Spider Man, or maybe The Dark Knight, you tend to see crowds that you don’t usually see, but with that being said nothing prepared me for the crowd I saw Magic Mike with.

    Now being a heterosexual male you would think I wouldn’t have a lot to say about a movie about a group of male strippers. You might be right, but this is a movie about male strippers directed by Steven Soderbergh, so that makes it very easy to watch and to talk about. Mike (Channing Tatum) seems to have it all, great looks and great personality and he is the hottest stripper at a male revue club in Tampa. Mike has dreams of opening his own custom furniture design shop, so he does odd jobs other than just entertain the ladies. On one of these jobs he meets a young kid named Adam (Alex Pettyfer), who seems a little down on his luck after losing a football scholarship. Mike decides to help Adam out and gives him a chance to help with anything at the club he dances at. Events occur that put Adam on stage at the club that is run by Dallas (Matthew McConaughey), who acts like a ring announcer now that his own personal entertaining days are over with. Adam gets into the life too much and starts going down paths that he shouldn’t travel. Mike on the other hand is intrigued by Adam’s sister Brooke (Cory Horn) and the desire to live his dream.  So there’s equal balance of conflict and story for the guys and ‘raining men’ for the ladies.

       When I arrived at the theater I did not know if I was watching a movie or I was in fact about to watch a live show with male dancers. I was even more confused when the movie started and women were yelling at the screen, I may have seen a dollar or two thrown at the screen. The good thing is you don’t have to be a girl to enjoy this movie, because it actually is an enjoyable film to watch. Channing Tatum once again shows that he is more than just something to look at. He brings the same charisma and sense of humor he showed in this years “21 Jump Street”. It is easy to get lost in the fact that everyone looks good in this movie, including the film itself, because of the camera work of Soderbergh. So guys this weekend make your girl happy and take her to see Magic Mike, she will enjoy it, you will enjoy it, and who knows what magic might happen for the both of you after the movie.

Brian Taylor

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

         

Naturally when you hear about a movie about Abraham Lincoln, you automatically see stove-top hat, beard, and sometimes an axe.  You just usually don’t see that axe plunging into the neck of a vampire.  But you get that here hence the title, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  The film is an adaption of the novel of the same name that splices the historic events in Lincoln’s life with an added twist of vampires roaming and eventually planning to rule the country.  So who else can stop them, but our kung fu, silver axe wielding 16^th President of the United States.

Starting with Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) as a young boy who sees a loved one murdered by a creature of the night, who indecently have really good sunscreen, since they walk about in the day armed only with stylish sunglasses.  He vows to exact vengeance against the fiend, only to be stopped and eventually trained by Henry (Dominic Cooper) the mysterious man with a secret who knows all about the existence of vampires among us.  The first half of the film plays like the origin story of a superhero, you get the family tragedy, brooding, the training montage, the love interest, the buildup to his first big challenge, or in the videogame terms, “big boss battle”.  This first half didn’t work too much for me, even though it was all pretty basic set up.  The second half of the film has him already President and is trying to fight the monsters with politics, and finds that there may be no other way than to get his hands dirty to help save the country from evil Rufus Sewell (Dark City) and his gang of bloodsuckers.  Watching Walker as Lincoln try to win the civil war, free the slaves, and deal with another personal tragedy all with vampires in the background really worked for me. Even though it probably shouldn’t have, all the way up to and including the over the top heavy CGI’ed action packed ending.  There was enough overall to be an entertaining film despite the problems.

Director Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch, Wanted) does bring his unique vision and hyper action to the screen as always, and it’s a decent fit with a premise that on the surface seems absurd.  However writer Seth Grahame-Smith who wrote the script for last month’s “Dark Shadows” and here adapts his own novel to the screen needs to work on his screenwriting, much like the young Lincoln in the film, he has a lot to learn.

--Robert L. Castillo      

Brave--Review

          Pixar has made a name for themselves by bringing to the screen some of the greatest animated films of all time starting with Toy Story in 1995.  One area they have yet to delve into, being a part of Disney, is the realm of the Disney Princess.  With “Brave” they are introducing to the world their own version of a princess filled with independence, bravery, and a spirit as fiery as her flowing red hair.

Her name is Merida, excuse me, Princess Merida, and we meet her as she has become of age to be married away to the first prince who is good at shooting a bow and arrow.  The problem is that she wants to be in charge of her own destiny and she can shoot a bow better than any man.  In her defiance against the rules of the land and her mother she makes a deal with a witch to change her fate.  And as in all tales of this sort, it does not go as she expects.

There is one great sweeping shot after another of the landscapes of Scotland, beautiful music, and fantastic animation which has come to be expected from Pixar.  What was a bit of a letdown was how the story shifted to an interesting story about your fate and what you choose to be, to a formulaic Pixar version of a Disney movie.  And Pixar is better than that.  Yet that’s where they go with the story, and it is by no means bad, it’s just not what I expected from the creators of Finding Nemo and The Incredibles, two films that are truly about what a family is.  In Brave the family story feels basic even amongst the great visuals and perfect voice acting by Kelly McDonald, Billy Connolly, and Emma Thompson.

I think that kids, especially young girls of a certain age will really love this movie.  If for nothing else, it shows the consequences of when you’re only thinking of yourself and that your personal decisions can affect others as well.  That may seem heavy for a children’s film however Pixar manages to pull it off in the end.   And while I don’t feel that this is a return to form for Pixar after the misstep that was Cars 2, Brave is a leap back into the right direction, even if their next film up is a prequel to Monsters Inc.

--Robert L. Castillo

Flashback Corner--Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

“There are no heroes anymore Bishop, just men who follow orders.”

          There are several interesting things about John Carpenter’s “Assault on Precinct 13” one is that there is no Precinct 13 in the film, another is that many people know it was remade a few years ago with Ethan Hawke and Morpheus from “The Matrix”, but few know that the original itself was a slight remake of “Rio Bravo”, only no John Wayne and no singing.  It does however have plenty of shootouts, bad hombres and that all too wild western feel.  Coming out the same year as classics like “Taxi Driver”, and “Rocky”, Carpenter’s feature sophomore effort was a feat to behold.  It is filled with methods, music, tones, and tropes that became unique signatures in all his films to follow.

The movie begins with a group of teens getting shot down by police, and through a news broadcast we learn the gang Street Thunder has got a hold of automatic weapons, enough to be an unstoppable force.  Then it turns to the main cast of characters including a father and daughter, three cons being transferred to Death Row, a new Lieutenant, and a police precinct at the tail end of moving to a new building.  About thirty minutes in the Carpenter shows he’s not messing around when he breaks one of the unwritten movie rules.  I won’t tell you which one, but you’ll know it when you see it, it’s pretty shocking.  Eventually it all comes down to both cons and cops being trapped in the closing precinct while they are surrounded by faceless gang members “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” style.  There are several two to three minute shoot outs that foreshadow the alley brawl from “They Live”.  It just goes on and on, so much so that one of the characters calls out the time of the shootout, and that someone is bound to have heard and called for more police.

I don’t want to gush too much about “Precinct 13”, because it does have its problems, some scenes are very cheesy, the lighting is too much like a horror movie, the dialogue is clunky, and some of the camera set ups are done on the cheap with mixed results.  All in all, it’s worth seeing if you’re a fan of John Carpenter films, watching his early work you can see the genius pushing his way out of the indie realm into big budget creature features.  This is one of those films that screams old school, and shoots like it too.

--Robert L. Castillo          

What's on Redbox?--The Innkeepers--Goon

Before the movie began there was a note, a screen that read “For optimal sound reproduction the producers of this DVD recommend that you play it loud”.  No movie ever told me that before, which is only the beginning of why “The Innkeepers” is a horror film like so few are now, it takes chances at pushing tension and the build-up of possible but not guaranteed terror, over actual jump scares and gore.  Director Ti West (House of the Devil) embraces films of the 70’s where it seems like not much is going on, and the girl who’s looking for things that are going ‘bump’ is taking that ever so slow walk down that creepy hallway that seems to go on forever.  The story centers on two twenty-somethings Sara Paxton as Claire and Pat Healy as Luke who are working the day and night shifts on the last weekend before The Yankee Pedlar Inn closes its doors. The whole movie feels very unconventional, with its tone, its awkward dialogue, and the reliance on the score to keep you unnerved.  Overall it worked for me, though it may not be for everyone as I said, there is not much in the way of originality here, but it does what it was intended to do.  So on a late night, turn your lights way down and your sound way up and check out “The Innkeepers”.

If you wanna see the best and funniest rip-off of Rocky ever, you could do worse than see “Goon” a very loose take on a true story of a bouncer turned minor league hockey player.  Sean William Scott plays Doug Glatt a not too bright tough guy who stumbles into a sport where his only job is to beat people up.  He takes to it much to the disappointment of his parents.  It’s a very entertaining movie, the team scenes are funny, the relationship scenes with Scott and Alison Pill (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) are very cute, and some of the fighting is pretty brutal.  There is a great scene where Doug confronts his family about his career choice that got me a little choked up, and the buildup to the big fight between him and aging goon Ross Rhea played brilliantly by Liev Schreiber (Scream) is much like the journey of Apollo and Rocky to the ring.  There is even a “Heat” like encounter between the pair of goons in a dinner, good stuff.  The film shows some pretty good acting chops by Sean William Scott who looks to be trying to shake the Stifler persona.  If he takes more roles like “Goon” he will be well on his way.   

Robert L. Castillo

A Commentary on Commentaries

When I was young I would always love to watch the behind-the-scenes shorts that they would show on TV right before a film was released in theaters.  Whether it was “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, “Beverly Hills Cop II” or even “Jaws: The Revenge”, I would eat those things up, I would record them on VHS, and re-watch them both before and after the movie came out.  Later these behind the scenes bits would be put on the DVD’s of these films as a special feature.

The next evolution of behind-the-scenes in the early days of the DVD, was the audio commentaries.  It’s something that most average DVD, now DVD/BluRay buyers never look at or treat as a reason to buy the disc in the first place.  I always thought of them as good ways to get a little more insight into a movie you love or way to watch the film with its creators/actors where they are not confined to a five minute chat about their movie like in a late night talk show, they have to endure the entire film start to finish.  Sometimes that’s a good thing, other times and to be completely honest most of the time they end up just describing what’s happening on screen with sometimes telling stories about the scenes, these can be boring and can turn you off to the commentary track all together.

Early on almost every movie had a running commentary, the first DVD I ever bought “Analyze This” had a commentary.  It featured Billy Crystal and Robert De Niro talking as the movie played, which went about like you would expect, Crystal trying to be funny for 100 minutes and De Niro grunting a ‘yeah’ or ‘no’ every now and then but mostly counting the seconds to get the hell out of there.  However this was not the first commentary I ever heard, the first to get me interested was on the extinct Laserdisc system from the 1997 Kevin Smith film “Chasing Amy”.  It featured commentary by Smith, producers Scott Mosier, Bob Hawk, actors Ben Affleck, Jason Mewes, exec Jon Gordon, and historian Vincent Pereira. It was a lot of people for a one audio track, but the best moments of it are Smith and Affleck, they are hilarious through the entire track, the others tell some relevant stories, but the humor and good natured ribbing by Smith and Affleck is awesome.

To me the best commentaries are the ones that either take you further into the movie making process like “Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring”, or John Carpenter’s “The Thing” with a Carpenter/Russell commentary track, or there are ones that treat the viewing like their own personal MST3K (Mystery Science Theater 3000) where they poke fun at the films as well as themselves like David Fincher, Brad Pitt, and Edward Norton do in “Fight Club” and Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding Jr., Renee Zellweger, and Cameron Crowe laugh for hours in “Jerry Maguire”.  Another classic commentary is a classic itself, “Ghostbusters” with a track by director Ivan Reitman, Harold Ramis, and Joe Medjuck.

Then there are commentaries that are so special that they can be even more educational or at times more entertaining than the film itself.  Some of my favorites are films like “The Usual Suspects” track with director Bryan Singer and writer Christopher McQuarrie as they wax intellectual about their masterpiece and nit-pick the hell out of it as well. The “Stir of Echoes” track has writer/director David Koepp treating it like a filmmaking 101 class, it’s great.  There are geek commentaries like Tarantino on “True Romance”, his story of the origin of the Walken/Hopper scene makes it even more memorable.  “Dark City” and “The Matrix” has several different interesting tracks.  “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn” is pretty good, “The Zero Effect” is a fun one as well as “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” with Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr. making fun of, everything.  If you want to laugh, check out the commentaries for “Tropic Thunder” or “Pineapple Express”.  The afore mentioned Kevin Smith films have multiple commentaries, so good in fact that a huge portion of his career now is just that, ‘talking’ on podcasts.

What brought all this back to my attention again was that I watch very little of the commentaries anymore, most are too technical or the speakers tend to play it safe and can be very politically correct.  However, recently I watched “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengance” the sequel to the horrible original “Ghost Rider” starring Nicolas Cage.  This version was very B-movie-esque, which is fine, it works for the film and for Cage who gets to be a little crazy.  What I found totally worth watching was though was the video commentary by directors Neveldine and Taylor.  The pair walk you through the movie, praising the greatness and insanity that is Nic Cage, they pause at certain scenes and show a behind-the-scene clip of how the effects were created, they slow-mo a shot of a stunt man breaking his ankle, they make fun of the silly moments in the film as well as the short-comings of the script, they lust after actress Viloante Placido, and most importantly they show their love for making movies, even if it’s not intended to win Oscars.

There are plenty that I have not mentioned and after doing a little research myself, I found that there are several top ten best commentary tracks of films that I didn’t even mention or have seen.  So I will seek them out and try once again to see an old movie in a new way.  You should give it a try, you might like it.

--Robert L. Castillo               

Rock Of Ages

1987 was a memorable year for me for many reasons. The biggest reason was it was my first year of High School. It is hard to forget your High Schools days and the music that surrounded it. I remember the first Guns N’ Roses album and all of the other hair bands of the late eighties and early nineties that thankfully seem to never die. With all the musicals out there it was only a matter of time before someone made a musical of that era and that music. With its beginnings on Broadway and its success, it just made sense to bring “Rock of Ages” to the big screen.

         Sherrie Christian (Julianne Hough) is just a small town girl, living in a lonely world; until she decides to take the midnight bus to Hollywood. She has visions of becoming a singer, and is immediately taken in by the bright lights and the big city. Sherrie finds a job at “The Bourbon Room” where she meets Drew (Diego Boneta), who is a busboy there. Drew is a city boy, who was raised in Los Angeles and is just waiting for his band to get its big break. When Sherrie and Drew meet, it is love at first sight, but can their relationship survive as they chase their dreams? Drew and Sherrie’s boss is Dennis Dupree (Alec Baldwin), who always seems to be flanked by Lonny (Russell Brand), no matter where he is. Dennis is in dire need of money, or risks losing his famous club, because there are people who want to clean up the area and consider “The Bourbon Room” the cause of it all. Those people are the Mayor Mike Whitmore (Bryan Cranston) and his ultra conservative wife Patricia (Catherine Zeta- Jones), who might have other reasons why she dislikes Rock and Roll so much. Dennis gets Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) to play “The Bourbon Room” as a final performance with his band Arsenal, in an effort to save the club from its end. Can “The Bourbon Room” be saved? And will Drew and Sherrie’s romance survive their dreams? These and other answers will all unfold to the sounds of classic rock.

                 I want to say “Rock if Ages” is a good movie that everyone would enjoy, unfortunately I cannot. The music is fun and I found myself singing along more than a few times to music I love to this day. I just know that this movie isn’t for everyone, but to people who grew up with this music, you will have nothing but a good time, remembering the music of your youth. All of the actors sing the songs, including Tom Cruise who plays a perfect rock god who has lost touch with what made his music special. I really feel like this movie will have a lot of thirty plus in the audience, who will be tapping their feet and singing along, and not many people in their twenties and below. Every generation has their music and to the generation below they don’t understand it, and to the next generation it is just old. My generation will enjoy this movie, because of the music and nothing more. So go see this movie and relive a time when hairspray was as important as the music you played, because I know you will have a good time.

 Brian Taylor