Marval Movie

Well here we are we didn't die as the Mayan's predicted so I will be wrapping this year up with the Top Ten movies (in my opinion) of 2012. This also shows how much I've come with this Blog because last year I just made a general list of the movies that I didn't have time, or simply didn't get round to reviewing. This year I was able to post my review of whatever newly released movie quickly after I saw it so this year is more traditional.



10.  The Perks of being a Wallflower
A deep dark truthful look at the scary dark times that everyone must endure, High School










9. Amazing Spider-Man
An energetic fun reboot of the Spider-Man franchise that left me feeling hyped as hell for what comes next









8. The Artist
The old way are the best ways and this is a shining example that actions speak so much louder that words 











 



7. Prometheus
Ambition rarely comes in small packages and this is no such small package that has a massive canvas to paint on and paints in the corners








6. Ted
One of the funniest movies that I've ever seen in the theater and eagerly await Seth McFarland's next movie










5. The Dark Knight Rises
The conclusion to one of the greatest Superhero trilogies as well as one of the greatest Trilogies period











4. The Avengers
A true superhero movie thru and thru with characters that are true to their roots and believes in heroes













3. Chronicle
Superheroes are like any other genre there is more than one way to tell their story and this turns the Genre and makes it the most original well pulled-off from the last ten years








2. Seven Psychopaths
The ability to point out the the cliches within ones own medium is one thing but the pint them out as well as embrace them, play them out and keep the experience fresh and exciting is remarkable. Generously throw in a few memorable images and more that a few of some of the best characters and lines for the characters to read out and you have an instant classic







1. Samasara
Movies are a world unto themselves, this one has our world, all of it. Words to explain it are too few, enlightening, gorgeous, insightful, perfect, essential are some of the words that come to me off the top of my head, I recommend this movie to every man woman and child from wherever they are across this big wide world of ours

The Hunger Games is a move where you already know that you'll have to sign up to a few other movies later. It is one of those franchise movies that are being churned out one after the other these days. So the question is whether the characters are engaging, the world will be either enjoyable or interesting to explore and the story is something that hooks you the first time and want to see continued.

A girl named Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) is living her life with one little sister and mother, they get by with her help from hunting with a bow. Her sister is having bad dreams because she is afraid that she will be picked for the seventy-fourth Hunger Game (not the seventy-fifth or seventieth, hmm?). A tournament where one boy and one girl, from the lower districts (they live in District 12), from the ages of twelve to eighteen must compete in a kill or be killed tournament.

So comes the day of the Hunger Games choosing and Katniss sister is chosen so she volunteers herself for the games. The other contestant is chosen in a boy named Peeta (Josh Hutcherson).

The upper class areas are like the people in Terry Gilliam's Brazil. Where fashion has turned truly outrageous, heaps of makeup and over-saturated colored hair-dye. I don't really believe that people will get to a stage where they will look like this but its a fun look to see in a movie.

Woody Harelson plays their trainer, a man that has seen all the inhumanity of these games and has detached himself from caring, but still sees where there is hope in Katniss. He also dresses the least flamboyantly, probably because he has the most sense. Stanley Tucci is a parallel, or parody of a news anchor covering these Hunger Games. An unrecognizable Elizabeth Banks is their...I actually don't know what she's there for, but she is someone drenched in the "high class world" and is deplored by anything unmannerly.

The Hunger Games takes place in a dome? I think? Where the controllers are able to manipulate everything from the time of day to the weather and even set the forest on fire to shooting fireballs. Its basically a deadly Truman Show. Pure and simple, last one standing wins, beyond that there aren't really many rules, you can kill the other players by any means you can. They of course have their specialties and preferred weapons of choice which are supplied to them i.e. knives, swords etc.

The movies golden goose is indeed Jenifer Lawrence. She is one of the brightest rising stars of today. She is so engaging as Katniss and has to pull-off a lot of different emotions. From fear, to likable, to brooding and fierce and Laurence is able to ground them all under the roof of one character. But also she is given a character to work with, this isn't the stereotypical blank slate that a lot of authors/filmakers would write so that whoever reads or watches her can project themselves onto. She is defined and has a personality. Why do I have to praise this as something special?

Donald Sutherland plays President Snow. He is a man who seems to know human nature the best and sees the potential that Katnnis can bring and fears it. I wanted to see more of him and I look forward to seeing more of him in the sequel.

Constantly in the movie is the shaky cam. Gone seem the days where we would get nice smooth camerawork and in are the days where you can put a camera in the hands of any guy with shaky hands and let him run around with the camera. There seems to be no scene where a still or smooth image is called for.

A book can be however long the author wants it to be, a movie usually has to be between ninety to a hundred and twenty minutes. Because of this there's just so much information you can fit into it. There are lots of little details that went unanswered through the movie, like where exactly is this Hunger Games stadium? Why are there district for the poor? Is the entire world like this or is it just the country? Apparently their explored and fleshed out in the book but I went to see a movie and shouldn't have to pick up the book to understand the movie. There aren't any plot holes, well not ones the lack of details create, but it makes the viewing ride a lot more bumpy than it needs to be.

However good this movie is or how popular the books are there will still be two words that hang over this franchise and they are Battle Royal. Battle Royal is a masterpiece, which I would recommend to most people. And of course it is also about teens being put in an environment and forced to kill each-other. While Battle Royal was a masterpiece this movie is not.

The Hunger Games is another franchise movie aimed at elderly teenagers, or "Young Adult" as it's referred to. Luckily though the books are apparently good and this world and themes that it explores and exploits are something with texture and feel to it. If this will indeed be the time of book franchises being adapted into franchised movies we might as well have good ones and this is indeed one of them.

Rating: 3 stars out of 4

And so The Twilight Saga comes to an end. This is the akibat act of all the weird relationships, the bad effect, the unconvincing action, the laughable situations. It's over.

Part two picks up where Part one left off, with Bella (Kristen Stewart) now a newly formed vampire. She awakes to her new state of being with her "true love" Edward (Robert Pattinson) and is introduced to their new baby named Renesmee. Things are complicated because the werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner) has "imprinted" on the little baby, a werewolf thing where it doesn't necessarily mean romance but is like assigning guardianship.

The baby Renesmee, is one of the worst effects you will see in movies. How they were allowed to go the theaters with this poorly rendered smudge on the screen that makes the C.G.I. from the nineties look like Gollum simply defies any rational explanation. Why? Were they unable to find on real baby? It gets even worse because she ages rapidly, for some unexplained reason, so we have to see her forms between her as a baby and between... seven? Again she is apparently growing very fast but how fast is unclear.

Anyway it turns out that having a child in vampire form is forbidden and it means that they have produced a confrontation from The Volturi, the big, old, dramatic, ruling vampires, that all others must answer to. They are lead by Aro played by Michael Sheen.

Michael Sheen is a good actor which he is able to completely hide in his performance here. This is one of those cases where you watch a bad, terrible performance but it is made shocking because its by a good actor. This is like Eddie Redmayne in Jupiter Acceding. Even though it is not good, it is entertaining. Everything he has to do, he puts the scale up to fifteen with no regard for subtlety or nuance. In all likelihood it will make you laugh.

Once again, like all the other movies Billy Burke is the best actor. Plus in this that last movie in the Saga does the news finally get broken to him about the supernatural. He reacts as best a man in his position can, even though Bella has to keep the actual word vampire away from him you can see that he is struggling to accept what he needs to know and what he want to.

The other best actor in this movie is Dakota Fanning as Jane. She was introduced way back in New Moon and ever since she's appeared she has been appropriately creepy. With her pale, still face and red eyes that are the front for a truly sadistic personality. Her special vampire ability is that she can inflict great pain on whomever she wishes. Fanning does not have a lot to do in this movie or this Saga as a whole, but being the talented actor she is, she gives all she can give to this small role.

Everything finally comes to a head in a conclusion that is like something out of a cartoon and a twist you will never see coming because it defies all rational thinking. But I actually mean this in a good way. This is like the encapsulation of all the stupid and madness of this franchise channeled into one movie but all the good things about it.

I guess in the end that this is the best Twilight movie. It gives us all the stupid, has too much to do to make it boring and is never offensive like Part I and even gives Bella as a character something to do. Plus when its all done you can finally say "I made it out alive and I'm done."

Rating: 2 stars out of 4

For the past decade (roughly) Spider-Man has been the legal property of Sony, within the movies. MARVEL nearly went bankrupt back then so sold the character to make some money. Since then MARVEL movies have become the biggest and consistently high-quality movie series in history. However, they've had an arm tied behind they're backs with not having the rights to all their characters. Now an agreement has been reached that Sony will allow Spider-Man to be used in their cinematic universe.

This movie opens after the devastation caused at the end of Avengers and a clean-up crew is clearing debris and packing up alien technology. They are then halted in doing so by higher officials saying that they are taking over. This means that a bunch of them are losing their jobs. They have already taken some of the technology so instead of turning it over they keep it for themselves for their own ventures.

Cut then to a few years later when Spider-Man first appeared in Civil War, he's vlogging the whole thing. So now after all the events Peter Parker a.k.a. Spider-Man must now wait until he's needed for another mission with the Avengers. He waits, stops burglaries and other little crimes and waits for the call.

Tom Holland plays Peter and Spider-Man as someone who is in awe with most of the amazing things he gets to see and experience. When he sees another Superhero he falls to pieces and talks all about them. He's simply an energetic, well-meaning kid.

Being that getting this movie made already came with its share of legal baggage, two different companies have to have their say on the character, as well as a total of six people on the screenplay, the odds seemed good that this movie would have been a mess.

Soon we see that the men that took the alien technology have created their own heist operation, where they steal and sell weapons to local thugs. Their leader is a man Adrian Toomes, who is playing The Vulture, even though he is never referred to that by name. Michael Keaton brings him to life with a kind of subtle malice. He's not a complete, raging psychopath, you can see thought and control, but also that there is clearly danger lurking below the surface level. He has equipped himself with robotic wings that come with a few gadgets and blades so he provides more than a threat.

The other supporting cast comes in the form of Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) that proved fresh no-nonsense support for Peter. Being that he recruited him in Civil War Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) returns for this movie and plays the mentor/father figure, giving pieces of advice and plenty of criticism. His best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) that provides extra elements of comedy and allows Peter to spell things out for him because he knows so little about the Superhero world. Then there's Michelle (Zendaya) a wonderfully confusing contradiction that says she doesn't care about any of the social events or trends but is still apart of all of them.

Donald Glover makes an appearance as Aaron Davies, a low-level crook that actually cooperates with Spidey. Glover made some political waves when he put himself forward for Spider-Man a few years ago and asked the question why couldn't an African American man play the Wall-Crawler. He did voice the Miles Morales Spider-Man (alternative version) in an episode of Ultimate Spider-Man and here he still gets to be a part of the world he clearly loves.

In 2002 Sam Rami made his version and then 2012 it got rebooted with Andrew Garfield in The Amazing Spider-Man, which ended with it's a sequel in 2014. A criticism for this movie and even putting the character into Civil War was that the public is tired of starting this character over AGAIN. The concern is fair, how many times can we see the same story repeated exactly? Well, a lot if human history is anything to go by. But what they do is make the decision to forego the origin and tell Peter's story after-the-fact.

Spider-Man has always been about all the little things getting in the way. This movie's plot is bogged with all kinds of commitments and scheduling conflicts that wouldn't be a big deal to Captain America or Thor but Peter is tethered to such menial links in his life. It has always been the most humbling and connectable element to the character.

This movie is refreshing from some of the other MARVEL movies because of it's lower scale. Like with Ant-Man this follows what came before and acknowledges that this is a world where giant aliens can descend from the sky and cause mass destruction but tells its story from a lower scale perspective. It's a good way to refocus these movies and not make every movie about a city or continent being smashed to pieces.

This movie is fun. It has bright, vivid colors, a plot that is simple to understand, characters that poke fun at each other and some story details and along for the ride are a few energetic, creative action sequences.

Rating: 3 1/2 stars out of 4

Avengers was the accumulation of years of planning and character development that had originally started in 2008's Iron Man. It wasn't the first to bring multiple characters together from other movies but this was the one that clearly had a plan, each character got their own movie so they could all be here and gathered together. In the end, it made a promise of a villain that there was more. Infinity War is the payoff.

Now, ten years later and eighteen movies we have arrived at where the plan was apparently alway to be. Many heroes, many different locations, visuals, effects, moments, etc. This movie takes everything in the toy box and throws it at us and introduces new ones while doing so.

Only recently has MARVEL done better in having better villains in their movies. But most of them weren't really serious threats, they were scene chewing, fun bad guys. Thanos (Josh Brolin) is one of the biggest and baddest of villains in the comic book world and has now been realized on the big screen. He stands eight feet high, bulky with muscle and a plan that will devastate everyone. He believes that there is too much population in the universe so he has taken it upon himself to wipe out half the population to stabilize it. This is quite mad and the characters point it out. Dread is packed into the way the characters talk about him and he proves that he is indeed someone to fear. Not only does he pack a punch, but can take one and has a sophisticated way with words and philosophy. Brains and brawn, he most certainly has a few key elements of a great screen villain.

His plan revolves around acquiring six Infinity Stones that all control a certain aspect of existence (reality, mind, time, soul, etc.). Once he has all of them he can accomplish his goal with a literal snap of his fingers. These Infinity Stones have been scattered throughout the other MARVEL movies so for us watching we can connect the dots. Now the race is on to either get to a stone before he can, get them away from him or destroy them. Failure means the death of half the universe.

To describe all the different scenarios going on and who is where will take up too much space in the review, so I will simply name the players. Iron Man (Robert Doweny Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Panther (Chadwick Bosseman), Spider-Man (Tom Holland), Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Vision (Paul Bentny), War Machine (Don Cheadle), Falcom (Anthony Mackie), Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), Groot (Vin Diesel) and Rocket (Bradley Cooper). There are a few more but that's enough.

This is obviously a big cast. Approximately twenty characters that are not just present but are essentially their own main character. What helps is that they have had their own movies previously to help develop them so they can come into this movie smoothly, a lot has been established so the writers have plenty to work with and the actors know the characters inside and out. But what if this is the first movie you've seen and have not viewed any of the others yet? Well, you'll probably suffer from overload, I don't recommend this as your first MARVEL movie but it will definitely be someones. There is just enough in terms of efficiency establishing the characters in their moments of introduction to understanding who they are and roll with it for the rest of the movie.

Beyond having all the characters on-screen at the same time what the filmmakers have to consider is the different visual style all the other heroes have. The Guardians have a stronger, disco color pallet, Black Panther has more jungle colors and Dr. Strange comes with psychedelic visuals. All of them have to be represented here. They are. Along with that, this is (along with tone) the darkest MARVEL movie color wise. There is a lot of blacks on-screen, deep, true blacks, contrasting with other deep, vivid colors that pop out. It makes for an engaging image and adds to the dire nature of the story.

As I have mentioned at least once in my recent reviews of the MARVEL movies the screenwriters are prone to adding quips in the dialog. Or sometimes having what feels like mandatory jokes happen every ten minutes. The tone of the movies has always been a light-hearted one to a degree so it wasn't off-tone and they were funny so that also wasn't a bother. They are present here as well, a character makes comments on the others attire, name, mentality, etc. But these are moments of characters either being themselves within moments of respite or even dealing with this seemingly hopeless situation.

This movie naturally comes with its share of action set pieces. As previously stated we have had many other movies to get to know these characters and in the time they have in this movie is enough to connect with them. So we care a little about who is going into battle. But when it comes to the fights everyone has different abilities and they use them like great pieces in a strategy game, others get close, while one attacks from a distance and another distracts (these are just examples).

A popular criticism of other MARVEL movies is that there aren't any real stakes because none of the main characters ever die. Only a handful of important characters have died and these movies are light as a feather and so forth. Well, it's as if this really was all part of the plan because now characters do indeed die. I won't spoil who (go see the movie!), but early on they do and later on others. So being that some can it means anybody can die, which adds great gravitas to the action scenes that now have the biggest stakes of all.

I have to mention directors Anthony and Joe Russo and scriptwriting team Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely that took on this monumental task of juggling all these characters and taking all the story threads and weaving them into something not only consistent but effective.

This movie doesn't work as a single character arc, nor does it work as a self-contained story, because of the immense story and characters, this is actually part one of two. This is a grand accumulation of seeing all of the characters and worlds we have come to know and love over the course of many movies and face something that is too big for any one of them to handle on their own. It shows all the amazing images and feet's of imagination and drama that the world of Superheroes is able to present before us. All the fun times and pulp from before is brutally stripped away and since we had that mindset in the previous movies the darkness and brutality hit all the harder.

Rating: 4 stars out of 4