January 12, 2007

Movie Review: Stranger Than Fiction

Recently went to go see Stranger Than Fiction at the movies on Wednesday. I have to say that it was a pretty enjoyable movie. I was interested in seeing Will Farrell playing straight comedy. I have to say that I really enjoyed this movie. The story was told in a very interesting way, from Harold Crick's (W.F.) point of view as he hears a voice talking about him during his day. It was also cool all the little graphical things that they added post-production as the characters were acting. I really don't know how to describe it, but it was pretty cool.

8 out of 10. If you haven't seen it, you should definitely rent it when it comes out.

I really like the way that it ended. You knew that he wasn't going to die, but I really liked the explanation that she gave as to why she couldn't kill him off.

Posted by Michael at 07:40 PM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2006

Movie Review: Casino Royale

Went and saw Casino Royale on Friday with some people. Wow, this was a very very good movie. And a very good Bond movie.

I was hopeful that this would be a good movie. The last couple Bond movies have sucked, mostly because of dumb plots and corny villians. So there was a little concern that this wouldn't live up to the Bond legacy. That concern was unwarranted. This movie was all kinds of awesome. There was enough action at the beginning and small parts paced throughout the film to keep things moving and enough plot that there was a good story as well. Using relatively no-name actors in the main roles helped significantly to not have a pre-disposition as to what the characters were supposed to be.

Some of the faith I've lost in Hollywood to produce quality movies has been restored. After crappy remake and crappy movies coming out all year, it's nice for an extremely well made movie to come out.

9 out of 10 pirates. Go see this movie.

Some spoiler stuff below.

I knew where the movie was going for the most part. I knew that Vesper was eventually going to die and somehow betray Bond. This was the movie that was supposed to show us how Bond became an icy cold agent and killer. And it did its job awesome.

Despite the fact that parts of the movie were predictable, I thought that it was still awesome. I knew where it was going, and I couldn't wait for it to get to the point in the story.

Daniel Craig (James Blond) was very good and convincing as the newest incarnation of James Bond. He did a good job. A worthy replacement.

Posted by Michael at 03:53 PM | Comments (2)

August 25, 2006

Movie Review - Donnie Darko

Good movie. I'm confused.

Spoiler information below.

So I think I understand kinda what sorta maybe happened in this movie. Everything is connected, the past, present and future. One cannot exist without the other, which is an interesting view of space-time. It's more of a circular relationship, rather than a linear one.

My initial interpretation of the movie is that Donnie has some ability to control and view distortions in time. So does Frank. This explains how Frank was able to talk with Donnie after he'd been shot in the face. When the end of the world came, Donnie was able to go back in time while the engine of the plane was brought on top of his room. As campy as it sounds, he sacrificed himself so that Gretchen would never be in the road to be run over by Frank.

I've heard a competing theory about the movie from a friend at work. He basically states that the entire movie is Donnie's life flashing before his eyes. However, I have to respectfully disagree. Donnie didn't know about Gretchen prior to his "death", so it doesn't make sense that she would be in the flash.

I need to watch it again.

Posted by Michael at 11:10 AM | Comments (1)

Movie Review - Shaun of the Dead

A buddy of mine from work recently gave me this to watch. I've wanted to see this for a while, and I finally got around to it. It was pretty damn funny. Our "hero" in this movie attacks a swarm of zombies with a Cricket bat. Comedy gold as far as I am concerned.

I just love the tag line on the DVD case: "A Romantic Comedy. With Zombies." Just awesome.

8 out of 10 pirates.

Posted by Michael at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)

August 21, 2006

Movie Review -- Snakes on a Plane

"Feel good" movie of the year......just kidding.

Went and saw Snakes on a Plane on Friday with a couple people. And let me just say...I think the title of the movie is total crap. I didn't see a plane until about 10 minutes into the movie. And no snakes appeared until about 20 minutes in. I think this is totally disingenuous[0]. I don't know how they could (in good conscience) name the movie "Snakes on a Plane".

The movie, on its own merits, is fairly terrible. The movie experience, however is quite enjoyable.

It's been a long time since openly heckling and yelling at the screen has been permitted or even encouraged at a movie I went to. This can enhance the movie experience by large amounts. I definitely got my $10 worth going to see this movie, although it was more of the experience of going with friends, yelling at the screen and general laughter at the plot/characters/dialogue that made it an enjoyable movie-going experience.

The pirates abstained from voting on this movie for fear of the sequel to this movie being "Snakes on a Boat".

[0] My big word of the day.

Posted by Michael at 09:14 AM | Comments (0)

July 12, 2006

Movie Review -- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

A group of us went to go see this movie last friday. Immediately after the movie, I felt alright with the movie, that I had been entertained (for 2.5 hours no less). The more I thought about it though, the more I was disappointed. It was half a movie. I think that Ask A Ninja has the perfect review of the movie.

I am reserving a rating for this movie until I see the rest of it.

Posted by Michael at 11:11 AM | Comments (2)

June 28, 2006

Superman Returns

So Joel calls me up last night and asks if I want to go to a 10pm show of Superman Returns. I have to say that I enjoyed it a lot. I was never really a huge huge fan of Superman in the past, he's definitely one of my least favorite super-heroes. I was expecting good things from this movie though since Bryan Singer was directing this one. I have to say that I was very impressed. I enjoyed it a lot.

It did a lot of justice and homage to the original movies (1 and 2) and I liked the fact that they used a basically no-name actor as the lead character.

4.5 out of 5. I highly recommend it.

Posted by Michael at 08:07 PM | Comments (1)

May 28, 2006

Movie Review: X:Men 3

Went and saw Xmen 3 tonight. Unfortunately, I have to say that it was not up to snuff, like I feared it was going to be. The loss of Bryan Singer was a huge loss and the movie definitely suffered for it. I
was hoping that it wouldn't be as bad as I feared it would be, but alas the film was sub-par, especially after X2 rocked all sorts of good.

2.5 out of 5 pirates

Read on below for spoiler info.

Here's a nice list format of all the problems I found with the latest Xmen movie.

Posted by Michael at 11:14 PM | Comments (4)

May 19, 2006

Poseidon: The movie that should have stayed under the water

I went and saw Poseidon with my family last weekend. I was never a huge huge fan of the original, but it was one of my older brother's favorite movies when he was young. Oddly enough, his favorite movies were disaster movies. I'll let you chew on that for a minute.

In any case, the movie sucked. You really couldn't get into any of the characters, there wasn't really enough character development.

Save your money, and if you have to go see it, rent it. But if you don't see it, don't worry...cuz you aren't missing a whole lot.

1.5 out of 5 pirates.

Posted by Michael at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2005

Movie Review: Serenity

As I am sure that most of my loyal readers have already seen this movie by now, I feel it is my duty to post a review. After watching the series (twice), I really enjoyed the movie. All the characters were as I expected them to be. The plot was enjoyable. I really like the way they explained the backstory for those who didn't see the series. A couple of my friends (who had not seen Firefly) enjoyed the movie, although probably not as much as I did. =)

4.75 out of 5 pirates.

(Spoilers below - Probably refrain from reading comments if you are weary of spoilers too)

I am a leaf on the wind....

Part of me is very saddened by the loss of Wash. He is definately one of my favorite characters and it sucks that he died. I can understand killing the Shepherd, since he was really only a minor character and he didn't really do a whole lot. It would have been nice to find out some of his back-story, but I can leave things shrouded in mystery and be OK with it. But Wash...he had some of my favorite lines in the show and the movie. =/

River is a badass, but we really knew that the entire time. She appears to have taken over Wash's job on the ship as pilot. At least she can bring something to the crew, other than resident badass.

I am easily one of many that would like to see Firefly return to the air, maybe on Sci-Fi or something.

Posted by Michael at 03:50 AM | Comments (2)

July 18, 2005

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Pretty good. There were some subtle changes with the original, but nothing that really bothered me.

Johnny Depp did a great job and there were some nice things added to fill out parts of the story.

I give it 4 out of 5 Pirates.

Read on for more info, but beware of spoilers.

At first I was somewhat unsure of the Willy Wonka flashbacks, but it was cool at the end to see some of a backstory for Willy. The plot was more about what made Willy Wonka the character he was than the original version, which was interesting. Again, Depp was outstanding in this role.

Charlie never does anything bad in this one, something that doesn't really bother me. I can see where some people would be upset about this, but for me, it doesn't really add a whole lot to the plot. There are other Charlie character developments going on to keep me from caring about this too much.

All things considered, it's a nice modern twist on an older movie. Burton did a good job.

Posted by Michael at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

Wedding Crashers

This isn't the kind of movie where I have to worry about releasing plot information, because from the trailer, you could pretty much guess the entire movie.

I will have to say that it was pretty damn funny. There were parts where the audience was laughing for like a minute straight, so much so that I couldn't hear the actual dialog on the screen because I was laughing so hard.

As a note, it is fairly raunchy, so if you are sensitive to things like that, this probably isn't the movie for you.

4.5 out of 5 Pirates (It's not going to win any awards, but it's been a long time since I laughed so much during a movie)

Posted by Michael at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)

July 14, 2005

(Not so) Fantastic Four

Not such a great movie, not that I really expected it to be. Probably not worth spending $10 on it, unless you are a die-hard Marvel/FF fan. A matinee (or even dollar theater...it'll be there soon) would be better if you just have to see it, but otherwise, just wait to rent it (if at all).

It did have some good moments though, as it focuses more on the interaction between the 5 characters (FF & Doom) than anything else. For me, the comedy between Johnny (Human Torch) and Ben (Thing) was a welcome distraction that was the rest of this movie. Not a lot of fight scenes as we spend more time with character development than anything else.

Serenity can't come out soon enough.

1.5 Pirates out of 5

Posted by Michael at 10:48 AM | Comments (1)

July 01, 2005

Movie Review: War Of The Worlds

One word:

Weak

I don't want to give too much away, so look below for spoiler stuff.

Well, here we are, reading spoiler information...just the two of us....

Ahem...sorry.

I thought the ending was very weak, although in all fairness it's somewhat difficult for me to really believe that we could actually win against aliens which have mastered space flight when the common person has issues driving from point A to point B.

The first like hour or so was cool, but that's about it.

Definately a renter...maybe.

Posted by Michael at 02:08 PM | Comments (2)

August 06, 2004

Movie Review -- The Bourne Supremacy

I saw The Bourne Supremacy last night. It was pretty good. I think that I liked the first one better overall, but this one definately had its strong points. I'm not going to give anything away, but the first 15 minutes of the movie came very unexpected things. Very good, I give it a 8/10.

Posted by Michael at 01:50 PM | Comments (0)