World War Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Brains!!!  The first thing on any good zombie's mind and clearly the last thing on the film maker's.  Sadly I fell victim to a zombie attack on my own cerebral organ.  It was consumed, digested, evacuated and re-implanted into its former shell; once there I realized I became a statistic.  Sadly, I am now no better and no more useful than those infectious flesh rotting sub-humans, whose brains are no better off than a bowl of porridge, and less helpful.  World War Z is unfortunately the newest "film" to leave me feeling like I no longer belong, and as is true in most zombie flicks, this film will continue to rot viewers brains, until We The Viewers find our own cure, and stop the atrocity of this film.

In case you couldn't decipher my intro paragraph, I was a bit wordy I'll admit, World War Z was not only bad, but it was really bad.  Not only do I feel that this film should have never made it past the cutting room floor, I strongly believe that this could not have been the best final project available.  It pains me to say this, but having worked in production, I know first hand that the best tool in any film maker's arsenal is the ability to shoot scenes/sequences over and over until the director's vision is brought to life, unlike the main subjects of this film.  Having said all of this, while watching World War Z, I couldn't help but think that the Discovery channel could have made a far better version of a world wide pandemic revolving around rabies and infected humans.  

The worst part yet, is that the epic conclusion, the one which gives us insight on how to stop this armageddon, turned out to not only fizzle like a sparkler, but to ultimately fall flat on its face in the most anti-climactic sort of ways.

yay...

Brad Pitt is the main man we follow throughout this "film", and Brad is traveling the world in search of answers on how to help save humanity; this is the essence of World War Z.  As Brad moves around the globe he runs into more and more problems, ranging from total destruction to naive nations hiding behind a wall.  Why naive?  Because apparently no one bothered to tell these "survivors" that not only are these zombies resourceful but they are also skilled free-climbers.

I see your wall, and raise you a zombie ladder

So as Brad's comfort zone shrinks and shrinks, we empathize with him as he falls farther away from any real answers.  One thing we see, and eventually Brad sees, is that these zombies seem to avoid certain people.  What we don't know and are never really told, is that the zombies avoid those who are terminally ill, thus incapable of continuing the zombie spread.  Apparently these zombies with their rotting brains gain an extra sense, and that sense allows them to be able to instantly recognize whether or not a person will be helpful in their global takeover.

I'm sensing your skepticism

Sounds a little flimsy, huh?  Well sadly what makes this notion that these sub-human ravenous monsters are capable of something we smart intelligent humans are not, look half-way decent, is the fact that the film makers never bothered to explain any of the details to us.  All we are given is the tip of the iceberg into the makings and inner workings of these creatures.  Flimsy indeed.  Worse off, somehow Brad Pitt, who is neither a scientist nor genius, figures out through zero interviewing or investigating, the weakness and flaw behind the zombies.  He ultimately finds himself at a World Health Organization building, and following some intense scenes of sneaking and being chased through a labyrinth like laboratory, somehow ends up exactly where he was wanting to go: the infectious disease cold storage room.  Once there, he is forced to inject himself with the H1N1 virus.  This miraculously proves his theory correct that terminally ill individuals have a certain "camouflage" benefitting them.  We see him walk untouched back through a zombie hoard to the safety of other non-infected humans.  Cue the sappy monologue starting with "This is not the end,"  even though it in fact is the end of the film.  To save humanity the W.H.O. and other organizations distribute the H1N1 disease around the globe.  I gather since we see Brad get injected with the cure, that the world also receives the cure; again not explained.  If you give yourself a deadly disease and the cure, how are you exempt any longer from the view of zombies?  Again not well thought out, rather an extremely flat, confusing and anti-climactic finale.

About the only thing I actually thought was well done, was the depiction of the breakdown of society and its norms.  Scenes showing looting, and citizens with little to no clue what to do.  There was even a scene showing human vs. human aggression and  "blindness" to the rules.  The minute the proverbial S#!T hit the fan, all social rules and regulations went out the window.  This seemed to me to be the most realistic aspect of this abomination of a film, since in reality, as soon as all hell breaks loose, I have little to no doubt in my mind that every societal barrier will be broken down in the blink of an eye, and we will be left to fend for ourselves.  

All in all reader, this film is nothing like the Best Selling book by Max Brooks.  This film was flat across the board, probably flatter than what Christopher Columbus expected the world to be.

Quickly, we must flee the bad storyline

There were few times when the intensity of the chase made things slightly less boring.  For the most part I noticed myself sighing rather frequently at the missed opportunities and the other-wise slow and pointless plot.  The acting wasn't exceptional nor was it ugly, but the plot and story-line took much of the little positive attention away and replaced it with zzzzzzzzz's.  All in all, we were given a film whose story made less sense than a 5 year old using his parent's camera, and in the end I realized humanity won't be destroyed by a zombie outbreak, but rather by bad cinema.



Final Words: zzz.
This film tried to create a realistic feel for the end of the world, but made one major mistake: it was boring and pointless.  This film is not even worth the $1 Redbox.  I don't even know if it would be worth the time catching it on free cable.  

Until next time, happy viewing!

Review Rating : Based on popcorn sizes; small, medium, large, extra-large
                           When films get a snore zzz... worth skipping

Man of Steel

Reader my back is against the wall on this review.  Although my viewpoints are valid and I stand completely behind them, most of my concerns with Man of Steel revolve dangerously close to that two-word phrase everyone hates to hear and loathes to find out: 

Spoiler Alert.
(Don't worry, you won't find any in this review!)

Man of Steel is the newest film by Zach Snyder (Watchmen, 300, Sucker Punch) who has this unique directing style and once you know it, it is easy to tell that this film has his name written all over it.  Snyder is one of those film makers who utilizes a  technique known as "Shaky Cam" and mixes that with dark cinematics.  Shaky Cam is used to add a little more realism and grit to the look of the film, in actuality, Shaky Cam is: a headache inducing, vision blurring, nuisance.  It detracts from the overall story.  Snyder didn't completely ruin my movie going experience, however the use of shaky cam in this particular instance left me feeling drained and strained from the inability to focus during most sequences, slow or fast.  One thing I did really enjoy was the "dark" look and feel of this film.  The visuals made it seem more grounded and less spectacular, at least somewhat less spectacular than a film revolving around an alien super hero.  To assist Snyder was someone we all know as the man behind "the man behind the mask": Christopher Nolan.

Red or black?  Does it even matter?

It seems Nolan didn't waste much time transitioning from one DC superhero to another, and his influence on this film showed.  Unlike other Superman films in the past which all seemed overly bright and positive, this film as mentioned above, seemed more "human", more dark and gritty.  As with the Batman reboot, this too was a nice change to what we were used to from the past films of the Man of Steel.

As much as the look of the franchise has changed, the real shocker comes from the changes made to the story.  I will keep things brief regarding these changes as to not cause turmoil in your lives and to insure your adoration and loyalty to my reviews.  The plot behind this film, and I verified this with a comic book "genius", was not like any other Superman story line.  The plot took an original story and implanted numerous elements from the various Superman comic books and eras in order to make their story stand out.  This combination of new and old allowed us to see a whole new side of Clark-El, or is that Kal-Kent?  Getting a unique story line was rather...unique, but since Nolan did this similar mash up with the Dark Knight, it made for an interesting ride, and was rather less surprising than one would think.

I'm no Superman expert by any means, however, there were some issues I had with some of the twists offered up to us.  I won't name names here people, but for any of you with the slightest knowledge behind DC's Superheroes, you too will notice the change.  What I can tell you is the iconic "S" in the center of Superman's garb was replaced adding yet another new feature to 2013's Man of Steel.

Old and legit!

There's a line in the film, don't freak out I'm not spoiling anything, after all it's in the trailer, where Lois Lane refers to this new S like symbol as an S.  Superman tells her that the symbol isn't an S, instead the S-like shape is a Kryptonian symbol and his families "crest" meaning: HOPE.

Aw, how cute!  Kinda makes you wanna shed a tear or two, don't it?

One thing is for sure, I really did enjoy all the background, new and old, given in this film, even if it was on the long side.  For a film surpassing the 2 1/2 hour mark, I think about 90-100 minutes or more were spent as a Clark/Kal/Superman history lesson.

This got to be a little long in the tooth, and actually fatigued my brain.  Throw in that shaky-cam I mentioned earlier, and you got yourself a relentless barrage of the senses; don't get me wrong, I actually really enjoyed the background.  It was nice getting thorough story-telling within a film, and you know how I feel about story telling.  In all honesty I think the part of the film which I found to be the most troubling was not the length or shaky-cam, but the fighting.  It gets a little difficult to watch a super-man fight an equally powerful being from Krypton.  It looked like a bout from Tekken when both players lack skill and are instead button mashing.  Needless to say, it was a Michael Bay worthy fight sequence resulting in a very uncharacteristic end result for any and all Superman franchises and stories.

Now speaking of the Man of Steel, our protagonist in the skin tight blue jump suit, was one who probably hasn't yet become a common household name, even though many of his co-stars are: Henry Cavill.

Yes I know, you thought I said the S wasn't the original style, well at some point in the film it got changed back, and without any explanation.  Hmm, can you say flimsy?

Cavill is previously best known for the CGI heavy Immortals, a film which followed a similar stylistic feel as that of Zach Snyder's 300.  Cavill has also occupied numerous other roles in film and television, however most of them have been relatively less impressive to the actors clout than Superman will be.  Cavill's co-stars consisted of many big names: Amy Adams, Laurence Fishburne, Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Russell Crow, and yet, the person whom I feel was probably the most impressive character was Krypton's own General Zod, played by Michael Shannon.

Dun dun duunnnn!!!!!  I'm evil!

Now some/many of you may be thinking to yourself, "Who is Michael Shannon?"  To answer that I  say, "Hello??!!! Premium Rush anyone?"; just playing.  Yes, Shannon was in that dreadful film, but that isn't his only gig to date.  Michael Shannon was also in Bad Boys 2, Boardwalk Empire, Pearl Harbor and 8 Mile.  He is one of those guys not form fitted by stereotypes, conversely he is a very unique actor and has the ability to be good, bad and indifferent, thusly fitting nicely within this and many films boundaries.  All in all people what I am really trying to get at is that no matter how big or small of a name graced the silver screen in this the most recent version of Superman, I truly felt that every actor was quite good.  I most definitely believed that every intention from every character was genuine and "necessary".  Sometimes you watch a film and you think that the motivation or "passion" behind an action seemed weak or like it lacked provocation, in Man of Steel I truly felt the love, hate, fear, and drive behind both human and Kryptonian actions, and that people is something to strive for.



Final Words: Medium Popcorn 
Although I really enjoyed the background story and information about Kal-El, Clark Kent, Superman, I seemed to struggle with some of the plot twists and liberties taken, about which I have not mentioned.  This film was a bit long, and some of it was a bit relentless, however, I do believe that my review here today is only the stepping stone to your own thoughts.  See this film, most people found my issues to be more petty than I.

Until next time, happy viewing!

Review Rating based on popcorn sizes: small, medium, large, extra-large; 

films worth skipping get snore...zzzzz

The Internship

As stated on Popcorn or Snore's twitter feed, I had the privilege, if you will, of seeing The Internship one week before its scheduled premiere date.  At this point I would like to fully disclose to you that I had very very low expectations for this film.  Judging from all the previews and commercials, I figured this was going to be yet another attempt at quick and easy humor.  It simply looked like another buddy comedy in which there is little to no rhyme or reason to anything happening.  I am here to say (get your tickets on Fandango, NOW!) that I was beyond surprised, perhaps blown-away by how entertaining and smart this film turned out to be.

The Internship is the newest film to appear in theaters from director Shawn Levy.  Levy has been around the block wearing more than one hat: director, producer, writer, actor.  He is the man behind many features, and television series, which have been rather successful: the Night at the Museum franchise, Pink Panther, Date Night, Real Steel, The Secret World of Alex Mack, Animorphs (the last two were television shows).  It is a safe conjecture that Shawn Levy is no stranger to the world of entertainment and in fact seems to have a pretty successful formula under his brain's belt, so to speak.

The Internship, is about an internship.  How sophisticated is that title?  For those of you who don't know, an internship is a relatively accepted form of slavery.  The idea is that after you intern for a while (not always a set duration) you will be worthy of a job at that respective company.  The idea is that you learn the trade/craft/job specifics and thus have been trained for little to no pay.  Think of apprenticeships, basically the same thing.  In this film, long time buddies and co-workers Nick (Owen Wilson) and Billy (Vince Vaughn) find themselves on the wrong end of the current work environment.  These two "foot soldiers" were the last of a dying breed of "door-to-door" salesmen; they would go to expensive businesses trying to sell watches.  As most of you are aware, after all you are reading these words on some form of computer (yes, I am including tablets and phones as computers, they are after all) Nick and Billy's sales job is rather archaic and these characters are most certainly out-dated.  Enter, The Internship.  These dino-salesmen find themselves applying for and ultimately being accepted into Google's summer intern program where one group of 6-7 will be offered a job.

Their hats say "NOOGLE", you get it?  They are new at Google, NOOGLE!  Hilarious!!

Question: Have you ever tried to teach or have witnessed technologically out of date individuals learn how to work modern gadgets?  Do you know how to make the VCR stop blinking "12:00...12:00...12:00...12:00" over and over?  Do you even know what a VCR is?

Sweet VHS bro!  You don't know what that is either??!! Sheesh!

Well for those of you older than 15 I'm sure you are following my diatribe.  My point is that Nick and Billy were fish out of water, men at the mall, a film reviewer without readers, PLEASE KEEP READING!  These two protagonists were adventuring into the modern world where they had little to no business being.  Funny stuff.  Watch your grandparents work an iPhone for a while and you'll understand my meanings.

Behind all the comedy existed a very real and uncomfortable plot.  I know what you're thinking, you thought the internship was the plot.  Well the internship was the vehicle for the comedy driven by the plot.  What I mean by this is that the pulse of this film really existed in the fact that it is tough today to get a job, even in the movies.  That's the reason there is a film about internships.  These two guys lost everything and had to start over.  We've all been there, writing a paper for school and your computer shuts off and you forgot to save it, or you just got to the next world in Mario and your console dies.

I feel your pain young one, I feel your pain

It's a scary situation, and no matter how many times you've experienced it, you'll never be prepared.  Well, Nick and Billy had no other option than to take this internship, and to be honest their adventure  was inspiring!  It was a breath of fresh air to see this predicament through someone else's eyes, and I laud them and their efforts.

One of the things I found the most interesting was the locations in which they filmed The Internship. As one would expect from a film based around the Google Internship program, most of this film was shot in or around the Google buildings and campus.  For those who have never been to Google, I am one of those except I've seen the film, what's your excuse?, the Google campus and building is like the modern version of Disneyland, or at least it is the Techy Version of Disneyland.  

What's even more impressive than the outside is the inside!  

Slide and themed offices/shared space, not to mention the Nap Pods area.  Google is a very fun and interesting location to shoot, but it has nothing on my favorite location of the film: San Francisco!  Not much of this film was set within the city limits, but there were a couple sequences which ventured beyond Frisco's southernly neighbor and into locations like: Fisherman's Wharf, and the Marin Headlands looking south over the foggy bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.  These were the scenes which rang true to my heart, after all I only live in LA, but I left my heart in San Francisco Bay!

Final Words: Large Popcorn.

The Internship is a wild ride from start to finish.  It offers a very funny shell to a very really "dilemma" of sorts.  Work is tough and starting over is even tougher, but when your discomfort has a candy coating shell of comedy, it's totally worth the feeling.  This film will make you want to celebrate... once you've stopped crying from all the hearty laughter!  Do yourselves a favor and go see this one!

Until next time, happy viewing!

Review Rating : Based on popcorn sizes; small, medium, large, extra-large

                           When films get a snore zzz... worth skipping

Now You See Me

Look closely at these words.  Choose one word.  Remember it and place it back into the sentence.  Abracadabra!  The more you will read the more likely the word you have chosen will appear once again right before your eyes, isn't magic fun?  It certainly is, and when it's done well it leaves us non-magicians puzzled.  In the case of the film Now You See Me, this very same magical wool is pulled over our eyes leaving the viewer excited and perplexed.  

Now You See Me is the new film on the block revolving entirely around magic!  I know, we already had two films not that long ago whose plots involved magical phenomena, The Illusionist and The Prestige.  The difference between those films and Now You See Me is the desired outcome of the performers, and the effect those results played on the world.  This film revolves around a quartet of magicians who refer to themselves as The Four Horsemen (how ominous), they each bring a different skill to the table, and each just as important as the first.

The Horsemen originate as individual acts, touring all different stages and locations, until a "mystical being" brings them together with the promise of becoming members of an exclusive society known as The Eye.  It is comprised of a group of “magicians” [con-men] originating in ancient Egypt and adapting to a much larger scale throughout the centuries.  For some reason, their initiation required them to become greater and more “feared”, ultimately turning them into Robin Hoods in disguise.  They would steal from the rich, give back to the poor and not keep a dime for themselves.  It was not clearly stated if becoming Robin Hood was a necessary part of the process or if they just needed to steal for the purpose of stealing...probably just something to make the story seem more interesting.  Because these magicians have suddenly transformed into bank robbing, identity thieving, professional criminals, the FBI becomes interested in them and demands answers.  What begins as an "innocent" magic act turns into a huge elaborate series of events.  As can be assumed and expected, the magicians seem to have the right playing cards in all encounters: fighting, evading, planning.  However, what we know about all heist type films is that in the end the bad guys get what's coming to them...except in this film.  What's remarkable actually about this film is that the ending was unpredictable yet at the same time obvious, incredibly poor and quite the let down. The film started out on a high note and continued with that intensity and excitement throughout the film until the reveal of the "mystical being".  That was the point in the film when things were finally brought to a close and I couldn't stop shaking my head out of annoyance and utter disappointment.  Seriously people, I haven't been this disappointed since I found out that Bruce Willis was already dead!

Now that the plot has been established, let's take a look at the wide ranged cast assembled to help move this story from mere thought to a series of images and sound pieced together for the purpose of sheer entertainment.  Making up the Four Horsemen we have: Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco and Woody Harrelson.  None of whom are fresh faces to the silver screen, yet as a whole are relative newbies when compared to Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman.  These two Hollywood Vets are most definitely (in order to buff up the credits) the big names attached to Now You See Me.  Finally, we have Mark Ruffalo playing the FBI agent whose interest in the group went from cold to hot and then to what??  It's safe to say that this film and its director [casting department] went out of their way in order to find a very eclectic group of actors and actresses.  Not every name could draw the audience desired, but together they made up an interesting group of individuals.  As previously stated each character and conversely actor brought a very unique presence to the story and screen allowing for a realistic feel and flow from start to finish.  Their actions and reactions seemed genuine and believable in all matters that would be expected in a heist type film, and where we find good acting, we usually find good directing.

Now you See Me was directed by Louis Leterrier; no need to be shocked or disappointed if the name doesn't ring familiar.  Leterrier is not what I have called in the past a "heavyweight" when it comes to directing.  He has a hand full of features under his belt all of which revolve around a fast paced action themed story-line: Transporter 1 & 2, Clash of the Titans, 2008's Incredible Hulk and of course Now You See Me.  It is truly tough to give proper directing credit to a film not laden with a sad dramatic acting presence.  This is the reason you don't see guys like Leterrier winning Oscars, however, I can safely say that making movies is a similar process to pulling off magic tricks.  There are numerous steps along the way, and when done properly the viewer of the magic trick, or in this case the film, believe that what the magician, or director, pulled off was in fact a fluid seamless process. 

Is this your card?  No?!  Well, shoot.

The majority of this film was well thought out, entertaining, original, suspenseful, action-packed and then the bomb was dropped. I instantly went from believing this film had great potential and promise to seeing how bad and much too obvious the "twist" was.  I would love the opportunity to ask the writers what they were thinking when writing this ending.  Why not make the ending on par with the rest of the movie?  There were many ways they could have twisted the plot and yet they went a direction which made little sense.  Despite the disappointing ending, Now You See Me is worth watching.  If you wanted to watch this film based off of the commercials and ads and wanted to see it before reading this review, then by all means, go to Fandango and purchase those tickets! Some of you may not be as bothered by the weak ending as I am.  It is worth it to see simply based on the first 95% of this film. The opening scenes, fight/car chase sequences and the special effects are all really great.  The locations and sets: Las Vegas, New York, New Orleans, were all very extravagant and beautifully dressed.  The camera moves and look of the film were very inviting to the eye (not the magic group) and you were very quickly pulled into the story.  The magic tricks were elaborate and fancy, while also being just the distraction needed for bank robbers.  Unfortunately, it was the ending that ruined this movie for me and because it was the end, there was no story left to turn this issue around and make this film better.

Final Words: Medium Popcorn.

This film was a tough one to score.  I really enjoyed the majority of it, as I said above something like 95% of it was a Large+ Popcorn, but the ending really bothered me.  So I feel I can only give this film a Medium.  Again some of you may find no problem with the ending, so do yourselves a favor and see this film.  It's fun and entertaining and worth admission, especially matinee.  I would avoid taking the young ones, this film has some language and intense sequences.

Until next time, happy viewing!

Review Rating : Based on popcorn sizes; small, medium, large, extra-large

                           When films get a snore zzz... worth skipping