The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

3 pipes out of 4

The odds appear ever in the favor of the makers of the Hunger Games. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire continues the tradition of remaining faithful to the books while keeping things interesting. Unlike Hunger Games which was faithful to the book but seemed to drag on, Catching Fire is authentic with action all the way. Authenticity is huge to the fan base when it comes to books being made into movies and the folks at Lionsgate have figured out the formula. The cast is back with Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, Josh Hutcherson as Peeta Mellark, and Woody Harrelson as Haymitch. There are some interesting new additions of Jeffery Wright and academy award winner Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman’s interactions with Donald Sutherland are surprisingly compelling considering they remove the audience from the action of Games. Having these two Oscar winners play off of each other’s vindictiveness is truly awesome. The romantic relationship of Peeta and Katiniss is expanded as they tour through the districts with Panem on the verge of revolution. While Gale (Liam Hemsworth) is rushed into romantic feelings of Katniss, Peeta is given the slow burn, gaining traction with Katniss as well the audience. Gale is put on the backburner and essentially ignored except for a few brief moments where he tries to guilt Katniss into having feelings or him. Once the games begin twists are thrown left and right keeping you on the edge of your seat with the connection between tributes increased tenfold from the previous film. The ending leaves the audience wanting more although it was vaguely reminiscent of the ending from Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 but definitely worth seeing.

The Lone Ranger

1 ½ pipes out of 4

Drink up me harties yo ho! Oh wait, that’s a different movie right? At times it is incredibly hard to tell and the only distinguishing aspect is the setting in the dessert instead of the seven seas. Johnny Depp is at the forefront as Tonto, shoving the Lone Ranger (Armie Hammer) to a supporting character which gives the film a fresh take on the masked vigilante except that instead of a Tonto of old, we view a pirate in the middle of a dessert. Depp maneuvers around the film as an exiled Native American of a dying tribe bent on evoking justice on the two men who slaughtered his village. His only companions are a dead crow sitting on his head and a morally conflicted Lone Ranger seeking justice for his brother’s murderer. The moral conflict raging inside the Lone Ranger, on whether it is justice if he kills his brother’s killer or the government does would be fine and actually interesting had the film ended at the hour and a half point. The fact that the film continues for a whole other hour with the same scenarios arriving with the same results is ridiculous. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results and by this definition the lone ranger is a lunatic. The audience gets bored seeing the same thing happen over and over with no issues resolved and becomes so far gone that they can’t comeback far enough to care about the films climax. The saving grace of the film from being a complete and total failure is Johnny Depp’s uncanny ability to make the audience laugh even though we have seen the same character before. What was initially thought of as simply another white man trying to play Indian turns into a well done portrayal of Tonto by Depp. He is believable to the character and keeps the depiction of Native Americans in Hollywood moving in the right direction as almost truthful.

White House Down

2 ½ pipes out of 4

Olympus Has Fallen, take 2. More takes generally create better results and that is definitely the case here for White House Down outperforming Olympus Has Fallen. Roland Emmerich takes the idea of having the White House hostilely taken over and makes it feasible. Unlike Olympus, who uses brute force to take the White House, Emmerich uses espionage and betrayal what takes down the defenses of our nation’s most defended building. From the trailer it appeared as though Jamie Foxx and Channing Tatum would be cracking jokes at inappropriate times during a massive crisis but it turns out that the jokes made sense during the time and defused the tension building, allowing the audience to stay invested without tensing all the way through the film. This only works because the high tempo action and comedy are maintained all the way through the film with no lulls until the films crescendo. At first glance White House Down is just another over the top action comedy when in reality it pays homage to the classic films in the genre. Emmerich pays direct tribute to such film as The Rock and the lethal weapons series while containing almost every cliché possible from the brilliant hacker to the betrayed soldier. The cliché’s work well together but there are a few loose ends that where hastily tied up with no real thought keeping White House Down off the top shelf but it is pretty darn close.

Man of Steel

3 pipes out of 4

Superman returns to prime form in his triumphant return to the big screen. With the reinvigoration of the storyline from previous films Zach Snyder explains many of the details that had fallen by the wayside such as why kryptonite is so toxic to Superman. Henry Calvill does a surprisingly good job as Cal-El aka Clark Kent considering his previously biggest role was in the lackluster Immortals. The younger versions of Kent struggle with their powerful abilities and what they are supposed to do with them. Kevin Costner plays Superman’s adopted father Jonathan Kent putting a much darker town to the character, questioning whether Clark should use his abilities to help others and risking his identity. Russell Crowe performs at the opposite of the spectrum as Jor-El, Clark’s biological father who sends his son to earth where he will be viewed as “a god”. Cal-El is sent away from his home planet in order to escape the destruction of the over harvested core and a military coup-de-ta by the head of the military, General Zod. Snyder puts an interesting and more realistic take on the Superman character with Superman wanting to help the humans but having them not immediately accept him as a savior. Instead he is greeted with hostility and suspicion with not all of it dissipating by the end of the film. In the previous set of films General Zod was introduced in the first but then delegated to the second. While being a villain in the second he was one of three villains, not being the top dog. Snyder wisely added Michael Shannon as Zod who finally appears to be getting the recognition he deserves for a wonderfully underappreciated career. Shannon gives Zod a deep mental anguish and desire for the greeter good which iterates the resounding question of the film; do the ends justify the means? Another bright spot is the acceleration of Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and Superman’s courtship giving us a new take on the relationship that never has appeared on the big screen before. A minor gripe is that Laurence Fishburne play Perry white, Lois’ boss at the daily planet, and while Fishburne is a wonderful actor this is obviously an attempt to make one of the characters black so as not to appear racist or discriminatory. Overall Man of Steel is leaps and bounds above Superman Returns and is a firm stepping stone towards the eventual Justice League.

This Is The End

2 ½ pipes out of 4

An apocalyptic film to end all apocalypse films. With the group of actors cast playing themselves only stereotyped to the max as Jonah Hill is viewed as the general good guy, he overplays his niceness coming off as obnoxious while James Franco hilariously plays up an obsession with Seth Rogen. The central focus of the movie is the relationship between Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel while all hell breaks loose around them. The initial party that the two attend at Franco’s enormous house is a cameo fest with Paul Rudd, Kevin Hart and Rihanna to name a few. At the party the apocalypse begins leaving only Hill, Franco, Rogen and Baruchel trapped inside the house along with a hilarious Craig Robinson and the worthless Danny Mcbride. With the removal of Mcbride and Michael Cera from the film This is the End could have improved immensely. Cera pretends to be the light headed douche that he seems to always play only this time he is obsessed with cocaine. Mcbride plays the jerk who everyone hates but no one has the guts to kick him out of the house despite his waste of supplies with no regard to any of the other housemates. Despite these facts the film is amazingly funny, taking shots at all apocalyptic films and film making in general taking special shots at The Exorcist, Your Highness, Moneyball and The Green Hornet. Emma Watson makes a small appearance in finally breaking from her innocent Hermione character from Harry Potter, creating a witty foulmouthed independent woman, making you wish she had a bigger role than she does. With surprise and expected cameos This is the End proudly makes fun of itself and the stupidity of its own characters. Easily worth the price of admission and could be the best R rated comedy of the summer.

The Internship

2 ½ pipes out of 4

The Wedding Crashers are back and they are the just the same as before only in a new environment. Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are introduced as watch salesmen whose business has gone under in a watchless society. Forced into the job market with no market able skills, they happen to land an interview for an internship at Google. Amazingly they happen to get the internship and begin competing with college students from the like of Brown, Stanford and MIT for only 5 permanent jobs. As typical with these types of movies they are grouped with the dysfunctional group and are made fun of for their impossible naivety in the likes of Harry Potter, X-Men and the internet. Most of the comedy comes from this generational gap and their awkwardness with technology though some comes from the social anxieties put upon the ‘geeky’ group members Vaughn and Wilson are paired with. Both the young bucks and then old veterans teach each other lessons in that Technology does make life easier but it also can remove the human element and that is what is most important. The internship come out a few years ago this may have been the break out hit of the summer, however now it is simply a fun movie to see during a matinee.

Fast And Furious 6

2 ½ Pipes out of 4

Fast cars, beautiful women and hunky men, fun for the whole family. Fast and Furious returns, without a cool title I might add, I a big way with Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Ludacris, Tyrese Gibson and the rest of the crew teaming with Dwayne Johnson and Gina Carano to take down a criminal mastermind. Diesel and company do not simply have an epiphany and join the police, no they have the ulterior motive that part of the mastermind’s crew is one of their own Leti (Michelle Rodriguez) who had been believed dead. With intertwining plot points from the previous movies, Fast and Furious 6 does a surprisingly good job of keeping the audience interested with more than explosions and car chases, of which there are many. There are a number plot choices that are questionable, for instance what to do with the woman that Diesel ended that last movie in love with. It also astounds me that the CIA cannot find a notorious criminal and in order to find them resort to hiring more criminals to find him. Vin Diesel also leaves his acting depth of the muscle man action hero when trying to show his emotion demonstrate his love for other characters. While this becomes quite awkward at times it was done with good intentions, continuing the Fast and Furious tradition of showing that through all the racing, explosions and death, values and family are what truly matter. 

The Great Gatsby

1 ½ Pipes out of 4

Similar to real estate where the 3 most important aspects are location, location, location, in movie making the most critical aspects are narration, narration, narration. The Great Gatsby had such promise and turns out to be a really good film except for the narration. Toby Maguire narrates the entire film which is not so bad but every 20-30 minutes they remove the audience from the story that he is telling and return to him in real time. It removes the audience from the narrative and it disrupts the flow of the story. With the narration being so skewed it is all but impossible for the audience to relate or care about any of the characters. All have massive character flaws and we are not exposed enough to their virtues to be persuaded to overlook their flaws. Along with problems with the narration there are large issues with the soundtrack choices for the film. With the film being set in the 1920’s one would think that the film would be set to music of the time or at least modern adaption’s of 20’s esc music. Instead the soundtrack contains modern hip hop that removes the audience again from the narrative with the drastic difference from what is being seen and what is being heard.  A good soundtrack supplements a film and helps the audience get lost in the aura and spectacle of the movie. When Jay-Z is heard rapping in the background instead of the girls who are physically singing in front of you it breaks the aura. Leonardo DiCaprio dedicates himself to the role of Gatsby as only he can giving a fresh twist on him since Robert Redford took up the mantle in 1974 and Joel Edgerton, an incredibly underappreciated actor, does a masterful job of playing the egotistical, entitled Tom Buchanan. The potential for what this film could have been had the narration breaks to Toby Maguire’s messed up future been removed and the soundtrack done with more authenticity saves Gatsby from being a complete flop but the title misleads with calling it Great.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

3 out of 4 Pipes

Benedict Cumberbatch finally has his break out role in American Cinema with the masterful portrayal of the mysterious villain opposite James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto). In what is likely to be J.J. Abram’s last Star Trek due to his Star Wars commitment, He sends us off with an amazing sequel that was well worth the wait.  With the set up from the previous film being this new Star Trek is an alternate universe to the previous films, Abrams does a wonderful job intertwining original story lines into this new universe in diverse ways. Kirk takes his overconfidence too far and results in severe consequences and he must regain his faith in himself in order to save his crew. Spock on the other hand is still getting in touch with his human side instead of being dominated by his Vulcan logic. There is not much more that can be said without ruining a wonderful plot with twists and turns left and right keeping you on the edge of your seat all the way through. Alice Eve was a nice addition to the Enterprise crew adding a much needed sexiness to the crew without ruining it with a relationship with a crew member  Into Darkness is not a perfect film as there are a number of instances were Abrams simply kills a character simply to get them out of the way but it is still a phenomenal film. One can only hope that either Abrams returns to continue the franchise or a new director is brought in to replace him as the door is left wide open for future films. 

Lincoln

4 pipes out of 4

Daniel Day-Lewis tackles one of the most ominous historical figures of all time, Abraham Lincoln, and does so masterfully. He fully deserved the Oscar that he was given and the film itself deserved Best Picture instead of Argo. Day-Lewis humanized Lincoln for the common man after centuries of heroification. He brings out Lincoln’s faults showing us that Lincoln was a normal man pushed into abnormal situations. What was truly amazing about the film is that it focused on the little known aspect of the 13^th amendment freeing all slaves in the United States. Because Lincoln was assassinated before he could sign the amendment it is often thought that he had little to do with it. While Lewis does a wonderful job as Lincoln he is absolutely engulfed with superb supporting actors from Sally Field as Mary Lincoln to Tommy Lee Jones as Senator Thaddeus Stevens with many in between.  The script is both dramatic and witty, relieving tension with a snide remark or long winded story by Lincoln. The movie follows Lincoln in the final months of the Civil War and how he manipulated the Senate as well as the South in order to get the 13^th amendment passed. There are a number of instances that crack the indestructible moral man shell of Lincoln leaving the question did he do the right thing? Do the ends justify the means? Steven Spielberg skillfully directed the cluster of big name actors to get everything out of them, even after some might already be in the moonlight of their careers. Sitting at a whopping 2 ½ hours with only a brief battle in the beginning, it might seem to get a bit lengthy but the history and intrigue draw you in from start to finish.

The Last of the Mohicans

4 pipes out of 4

At first glance The Last of the Mohicans is simply another white take on the Native American story, glorifying the white and keeping the Native American story hidden. Upon closer inspection it helps share both the plight of the Native American while placating the mostly white audience. Daniel Day-Lewis plays a white man who was adopted by a Mohican father after both his parents were murdered at a young age. While Lewis does a masterful job as he always does in his films, it is his Native American father and brother who steal the show. Their portrayal is both honest and heartbreaking, giving the audience a partial view into the Native American colonial life, caught between war and famine, slowly being eradicated. The true relationship to watch in this film is not Day-Lewis’s character Hawkeye and the daughter of a British Colonel Cora (Madeleine Stowe), but the Native American brother Uncas (Eric Schweig) and Cora’s younger sister Alice (Jodhi May). One is obvious that will happen while the other develops slowly and with subtle cues, giving us hope for the future between Whites and Native Americans. If we take our cues from Alice and Uncas then a resolution can be found between these two parties. The film develops around the French and Indian war in the Colonies prior to revolution. There are a number of instances where the film plants the seeds of why the colonies declared independence, for instance the inability to leave their post while their homes and families were burned and murdered. The love relationship between Hawkeye and Cora seemed slightly rushed but the message behind the film and the development of the relationships between the other characters far exceeds it. The development of the villain character Magua (Wes Studi) was extremely well done in that while remaining the villain and not seeing reason, the audience gets a view into what has caused him to become this way. The Magua character demonstrates that there are no clean hands when it comes to the Native Americans be they French, British, Colonists or even Native American.

Iron Man 3

3 pipes out of 4

When you think that Jon Favreau has exhausted the broken Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), Shane Black, director of the Lethal Weapon series, throws a curve and reinvents the character. Unlike Favreau who focused on Stark’s personal faults, Black looks at the effect of New York in the Avengers took on Tony. Instead of fighting alcoholism, Stark fights anxiety. Instead of overcoming egotism, Stark must come to terms to which Iron Man really is the man or the suit. The one drawback is that again Tony and Pepper Potts’ (Gwyneth Paltrow) relationship is heavily strained by Tony’s internal battle. This seems to happen in every Iron Man film and the only reprieve where we see a happy couple is in The Avengers. Granted in this case it helps the story heavily and unlike Iron Man 2 Pepper is much more understanding as is Stark. The overall theme of Iron Man 3, as you are introduced to it in the very beginning with a voice over flashback to 1999, is that you create your own demons whether you mean to or not. Guy Pearce plays a wormy head of a think tank looking for investors believing humans where meant to evolve far beyond what we currently are. Ben Kingsley gives an interesting take on the villain the Mandarin while Rebecca Hall, who you might recognize from The Town or her golden globe nominated role in Vicky Christina Barcelona, plays the jilted lover of tony Stark and a biologist specializing in regenerative technology. Don Cheadle reprises his role as Colonel James Rhodes who is getting kind of annoying how loyal he remains to an obviously corrupt government. There are a number of twists and turns that are completely unexpected, some being refreshing and some bearing slight disappointment but they keep you invested in the story along with the characters. The main highlight of the film is Stark’s interaction with a young boy who has been abandoned by his father similar to Tony. Their cynicism towards each other and continual bickering provides constant laughs. Going onto this film not much was expected but much was received thanks to an amazing revival of the franchise by Black. Due to Black’s masterful reinvention, there now can be true excitement for what will happen in Avengers 2 and green light an Iron Man 4. 

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

1½  pipes out of 4

Incredible in name but too many detractors inhibit Burt Wonderstone to live up to it. An intriguing dark comedy about the aging magician duo of Burt Wonderstone (Steve Carell) and Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi) trying to get their energy and awe back. This would have been good enough except writers John Goldstein and John Daley team with director Don Scardino to take things too far with the addition of Steve Grey (Jim Carrey). Carrey’s character is meant to be a satire of today’s magicians performing extreme acts instead of performing actual magic. Besides almost all of his tricks being physically impossible, Carrey’s character is a complete waste of screen time and deflates most of the comedy before it can get going. There is a point that Goldstein, Daley and Scardino is trying to make which is today’s society is more into brutality and reality than theatricality and awe, but like most of Carrey’s characters, it goes way over the top, even going so far as to make fun of rape by calling himself the ‘Brain Rapist’. Alan Arkin follows up his Oscar nominated role in Argo to supplement Carell and actually is a highlight of the film. He just seems to get better with age. Olivia Wilde plays Jane, an aspiring magician who once idolized Wonderstone but upon meeting him, becomes disillusioned. From the get go one can see that this relationship will be the romance of the film but it just feels wrong. From the way they portray Carell with his makeup and hairdo, he is easily 50 years old while Wilde portrays the young 20 something assistant. The age gap is just too wide to bridge without awkwardness. There were a number of comical moments in the film, most of which come from the interactions between Carell and Buscemi whose chemistry is phenomenal. Over all this is an ok movie which could have been much better without Jim Carrey and his character.

The Croods

3 pipes out of 4

While The Croods may be prehistoric, the story is beyond its time. Being a direct response by DreamWorks to the popular Ice Age series by Blue Sky Studios, at first glance it appears simply to be a repeat and redundant. But once you dive into the story that follows a human family instead of animals, you find a much more endearing characters and much a more relatable storyline. Emma Stone offers her husky voice to the young Eep, pushing the boundaries of her overprotective father Grug. With any other voice this may have been an ok character but Nicholas Cage brings every line to life with hilarity. Ryan Reynolds completes the hilarious trinity as Guy, the innovative love interest. The supporting cast is nothing to laugh at with veterans Catherin Keener, Cloris Leachman along with the comedic idiosyncrasies of Clark Duke. DreamWorks has revolutionized animation in the past and they continue to move in new directions, creating a character that is funny and dynamic while not uttering a single word. They also create a wonderful world with just the right amount of realism with while suspending the belief of the audience, with flying turtles and crocodile dogs. Director Chris Sanders lends his voice to my favorite character the pet of Guy, a sloth who has an eye for the dramatic giving his signature ‘dun dun dun’ in sometimes not the best places. Expected to be an Ice Age rip off, the Croods evolved into a world of its own, giving the whole family something to enjoy.

Olympus Has Fallen

1½ pipes out of 4

Olympus has fallen and it can’t get up. Even with an all star cast of Morgan Freeman, Aaron Eckhart, Gerard Butler and Ashley Judd, it just can’t seem to get off the ground. Besides the fact that the premise that the White House could ever be taken in 15 minutes is ridicules, Olympus Has Fallen appears to be a bad rip off of the original Die Hard. It is complete with all of the action movie clichés, with the classic double cross, there being only one person that can save the day and a hard nosed general who hates the protagonist for being better at life than he is. There are so many similarities it could be viewed as a Die Hard reboot to the naked eye. Another interesting fact is that while Morgan Freeman makes a descent president, he continues the trend in Hollywood if having a black man as the acting president whenever there is a horrible tragedy, remember deep impact? The 5^th Element? 2012? Aaron Eckhart plays the original president who gets taken hostage and has to show his bravado of everyone else can give up their codes to the nukes because he won’t give up his. Since he won’t give up his there is no point for others to resist, by this logic the fate of the entire world rests on one man when it could have remained on 3. Ashley Judd makes a brief appearance as the First Lady until tragedy strikes and Gerard Butler, head of secret service security detail to the president, is demoted to a desk job. Soon after, all hell breaks loose at the White House and Butler is called upon to unleash is inner BAMF. One thing that the film does have going for it is that Rick Yune does a wonderful job portraying a genius yet insane villain with realism, going so far as executing a hostage on camera after a failed attempt by the Navy Seals to retake the White House. The action is relatively nonstop which does help disguise the discrepancies making this a nice film to curl up on the couch on a Saturday night with popcorn and the $1 price of red box. 

Oz the Great and Powerful

3 pipes out of 4

James Franco really needs to make up his mind whether he wants to be a serious actor or simply the stoner guy. The man has magnificent talent but when he chooses more sophisticated roles as he does in Oz the Great and Powerful, he almost seems out of place. You are constantly waiting for him to light up and make stupid comments. Franco Plays Oz, a failing circus magician who breaks women’s hearts and is taken in to a tornado, propelling him to Oz. Zach Braff plays his side kick in both Kansas and Oz except in Oz he takes the form of a flying monkey. I typically do not like the movies that Braff tends to lean towards but he is surprisingly good with his witty humor and self deprecating act. Mila Kunis, who plays Theadora is the first person to meet Franco upon his arrival to Oz and almost instantly falls in love with him. Some critics have stated that Kunis is a poor aspect of the film and I would have to agree, only in that her storyline is far too rushed giving very little time for development. I thought Kunis did a marvelous job with what she had but she didn’t have much. Michelle Williams plays Glinda The Good Witch who tries to convince Oz to fulfill the prophecy laid down by her father in that a great wizard will come to Oz, defeat the evil witch Rachel Weis and become King of Oz. Almost all of the signature characters from the old classic Wizard of Oz are either in the film or referenced but with slight variations in order to maintain some kind of legal agreement. The Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow are explicitly referenced but the tin man is oddly left out. Except for some minor clichés and a few cases of obvious foreshadowing, Oz, the Great and Powerful is a wonderful film and does complete justice to the original it is prequeling. 

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

½ Pipe out of 4

Remember Van Helsing? Or The Brothers Grimm? Well Hansel & Gretel is a horrible mixture of the two with the vampires of Van Helsing and the pair of bounty hunters in The Brothers Grimm. To those who say that Van Helsing and The Brothers Grimm by themselves are bad movies, I am not one to disagree but Hansel & Gretel make them look like Oscar Nominees. Unlike the other two films the plot is absolutely horrible and not worth the watch. There is no character development while things move way to fast to actually understand what is happening. The love story that is supposed to develop between two of the main characters is only explained by the fact that one save the other’s life and therefore she is in love with him. There is more sexual chemistry between Hansel and Gretel than this love connection. A scene actually develops so that it looks as if Hansel and Gretel are going start making out. This scene could have been used to push forward the romance so the inevitable conclusion would be more believable but they chose to give it to a brother and sister. This film is the reason why January is the movie dump, demonstrating poor decisions in the movie making process and in order to get it out they release in the industry crapper. Gemma Arterton who plays Gretel has a hard time maintaining one accent and switches between old time and modern day, Renner at least maintained the consistency of the modern day accent instead of switching between that and old timey. From the moment Jeremy Renner enters the screen as Hansel to save a false witch, it is evident that he does not care about this film and does not put his best foot forward. The best parts of the film are just Renner's apparent disregard which comes across as the equivalent of a confused audience member, of which there were many.

Zero Dark Thirty

2 ½ pipes out of 4

Kathryn Bigelow has created another Hurt Locker only under a different name, more realistic and documentary style. She does a decent enough job chronicling the events that led to Osama Bin Laden’s Assassination, not in the thriller format that is advertised but in a scripted documentary that the audience already knows the ending of. The audience is introduced to the film with the audio of the final moment phone calls from the Twin Towers on September 11^th 2001; they are then thrust into a CIA torture scene 3 years later still trying to find Bin Laden. Zero Dark Thirty has taken many shots from the military in how it portrays torture, understandably so because the film appears to glorify torture and declare it a necessary evil to fight terrorism. Jessica Chastain plays Maya; a CIA agent who becomes hell bent on finding Bin Laden and somehow happens to be in every key meeting regarding him. She dedicates herself from her deployment into the field until she sees Bin Laden’s body on a gurney demonstrating the drive of one person and the political bureaucracy that governs the CIA. Even though being designated a thriller, Zero Dark Thirty is more of a drama until Seal Team 6 enters Bin Laden’s secret compound. There the audience becomes part of the team not knowing what to expect and anticipating that fateful moment of discovering Bin Laden. To close the film, Bigelow gives the audience a scene of relief, security and uncertainty on what direction to go next. While Zero Dark Thirty is being heavily favored for the best picture at the Oscars to me it failed to live up to such high expectations and is too similar to The Hurt Locker to get my vote but it remains a decent film.

The Hobbit

2 ½ out of 4

Let’s take a ride with Peter Jackson once again into the world of Tolkien and Lord of the Rings, this time into the original novel The Hobbit. Broken into 3 movies at close to 3 hours a piece Jackson has plenty of time to expand minuscule details and keep everything from the book. Just keep in perspective, all totaled Jackson’s Hobbit will be longer than the audio book. All that aside, Jackson does a good job of connecting The Hobbit to his other Lord of the Rings films since they came first. There is an interesting cameo for Frodo (Elijah Wood), and the connection to Bilbo’s birthday in Fellowship of the Ring is purely delightful. I will also say that Jackson sure knows how to do a voice over prologue; he did it to introduce the history of the ring in the Fellowship of the Ring and does it again to introduce the history of the dwarfs. There were a couple of scenes that Jackson drags on for no apparent reason other than to keep his tradition of a 3 hour movie. Many of these scenes took place with scenery porn. Granted the scenery chosen is magnificent but there is just too much of it, it honestly took more than half an hour of the film put together. Jackson needs to let go of the 3 hour mold and accept that good movies can be an hour and a half or even two hours and doesn’t have to be three hours every time. Martin Freedman does a wonderful job as a young Bilbo Baggins and Ian McKellen plays Gandalf in masterful mystical way. But the character that stole the movie was Gollum/Smeagol played by the brilliant Andy Serkis. The dual personality of the tormented mind of Gollum and Smeagol is on full display in the interaction between Bilbo and Gollum. This interaction goes far beyond the small role it had in the book and becomes one of the largest and most anticipated parts of the movie. The scene may be slightly drawn out but Serkis’ performance simply makes it great. The Hobbit definitely doesn’t deserve the 11 Oscar nominations given to Return of the King but is still a fun adventure. 

Django Unchained

1 pipe out of 4

Quinton Tarantino’s past few films Kill Bill 2 and Inglorious Basterds have begun to put me off from his style. Django Unchained smashed that light bulb. I went into Django with the expectation of it being extremely violent and vulgar as is Tarantino’s style but boy was did I underestimate how far Tarantino would go. Django is a throwback to the Spaghetti westerns of the 70’s with the modern twist of it being a modern black revenge but nowhere in the film is there black revenge. So many horrible things occur to the African Americans in the film described in graphic detail, some even done by the main character Django, that the small amount of retribution that two characters attain is trivial in retrospect to all of the harms done. Maybe Tarantino expected us to forget all of the horrors we witnessed by his attempted comedic character of the black slave who thinks he’s white, I mean what’s funnier than a black man degrading another black man because he’s black? That’s hilarious right? Wrong! If Tarantino wanted to represent all of the types of slaves that existed in the south that is fine, but to insinuate that some were better than others by the amount of suffering they went through is terrible. Slavery is evil in any form so to degrade a character in order to get some cheap laughs is despicable. Then to have your main character Django become a Black slaver and abuse other slaves in order to save is enslaved wife completely kills the credibility of the character, eliminating the black revenge and simply turning it into lovers revenge with slavery. The only character that saves the movie from a total failure is Dr. King Schultz (Christopher Waltz), a German bounty hunter who attests slavery and aids Django (Jamie Foxx) in trying to save his wife from Calvin Candie (Leonardo DeCaprio). Waltz demonstrates the one person throughout the movie who has any morals, showing compassion and remorse when slaves are mistreated. Even with Waltz being the one delight in the film there are still wholes in his character, such as what motivates him to help Django with no gain for himself. Leonardo DeCaprio plays the part of a Mandingo fight organizing plantation owner and does it well however he does not come off as a particularly threatening villain. He owns a plantation, he owns slaves, he is brutal to those slaves and is a racist; just like every other plantation owner in the south. For all the talk of DeCaprio finally taking the step towards villainy, he is usurped for the main villain role by Steven (Samuel L. Jackson), the black slave who is a racist against his own race. Simply put, Tarantino tried to show us the horrors of slavery while trying to make us laugh at those same horrors which does not work.