American Hustle

3 pipes out of 4

America has been hustled. In every commercial designed to market American Hustle it is projected as a comedy when in fact it is not. There may be a few funny moments but it is much more of a drama. The marketers even hustled the Golden Globes winning Best Picture for a comedy or musical. What if fear is the case is that the main comedy of the film was supposed to come out of the situations and actions of the characters. The problem with this was that while these actions and actions may have been designed to be funny, when compared to the whole film and the desperation of the characters, they are not actually that funny. Had American Hustle been billed as a serious drama I would have come out of the film much more satisfied but being a comedy I was expecting to feel happy and energetic when all I felt was depressed. Don’t get me wrong, Christian Bale pulls of an acting masterpiece along with Amy Adams, with Jennifer Lawrence doing a superb job as bale’s deranged wife. Bradley Cooper on the other hand simply does an adequate job in his role not really stretching his acting from his other roles, most similarly in The Silver Linings Playbook. A theory has floated out there that Cooper can only act well when he is surrounded by good actors and I am beginning to agree with this theory. Cooper did well in A-Team alongside Liam Neeson, Sharlto Copley and Jessica Biel and he did his best work in The Silver Linings Playbook alongside Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Deniro and Jackie Weaver. His lone projects such as The Hangover Part II and III as well as Limitless have been terrible. But I digress, as long as you know what you are going into American Hustle is a must see before the Oscars because it has a good chance to win big.

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.