Bridge of Spies Review

Bridge of Spies is directed by Steven Spielberg and stars Tom Hanks. It is about an insurance lawyer who agrees to represent someone who was caught in America as a soviet spy. At this time he becomes very unpopular with his country because America hated the soviets during The Cold War. Then he becomes more hated when he agrees to negotiate a swap between Russia and America about 2 captured spies. He doesn't have a political standpoint however, the CIA feels like he is good at talking so they hire him to do this dangerous, and risk full task. This is based on a True Story.
I LOVE THIS MOVIE.
I went into this movie hoping, just hoping I would get enjoyment out of it and I certainly did. I can't wait to buy it the day it comes out.
Bridge of Spies is a different war film than you might be used to. There are no scenes with actual war. It is about a lawyer who went over to Germany to negotiate a swap. This is a movie that is very dialogue heavy. So if you are one of those people who don't like movies or get bored in movies with lots of talking, you probably won't enjoy this movie.
If you are one of the people who get goosebumps when you watch a perfect crafted scene, you will have the time of your life watching this. He uses camera close ups, camera wide shots to simulate camera cuts that aren't actually there. He makes the scenes have maximum dramatic effect. He does it just like the old Hollywood style filmmaking. If you love the classic films like 12 Angry Men or North by North West there is no doubt you will enjoy this movie. This is the best directed film I have seen all year.
Let's talk about Tom Hanks. One of the most likable actors alive today and even cinematic history. Once again he gives a stellar performance. An Oscar worthy performance. He is funny and instantly likable. He reminded me of Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window.  He takes the movie and makes it his own. You can tell it is a great performance when you don't see the actor in the role. I did not see Hanks in this movie. I saw his character and that is always a positive. There are multiple scenes in this movie where it is just Hanks and another person talking. There is no action to help propel the scenes, it's just Hanks.
What makes this so interesting is the underlying story.  It's a negotiation movie, it's a courtroom drama. It's a war film that doesn't focus on the physical aspect. It focuses on the mental aspect. It's a war film that highlights the emotional part more than anything else. However, Spielberg directs it as if it was an action film.
Another performance in this film that caught my attention was Mark Rylance who plays the soviet spy. I see a best supporting actor oscar nomination in his future.
If I were to pick some negatives with this movie it would be elements that take place in the second act about the american spy that got captured. You can tell it was there just to make you care. But there is an incredible plane scene in this segment that blew me away.
The other negative is the score. This movie is the first Spielberg movie since the Color Purple in 1985 that is not composed by John Williams. You can definitely tell it was missing some of that Williams magic. Thomas Newman did his best, but the score was disappointing.
Bridge of Spies isn't one of Spielberg's best. You won't want to watch it again and again like you might with Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET, or Jurassic Park. Bridge of Spies is the best Cold War film I've seen. It's funny, likable, and film that should get your attention.
Bridge of Spies gets a 9.6/10

The Man From U.N.C.L.E Review

          The Man From U.N.C.L.E is directed by Sherlock Holmes 1 & 2 director Guy Ritchie and stars Henry Cavill (Man of Steel) and Armie Hammer (The Lone Ranger, Social Network). The movie tells the story about two agents during the Cold War. One from the CIA (Cavill) and the other from the KGB (Hammer). The two enemy agents are forced to team up to try and stop an evil organization that is trying to rapidly produce nuclear weapons. 

          I didn't enjoy The Man From U.N.C.L.E. as much as I though I would. It was disappointing. 

          The biggest problem with the movie is the cast/characters. You don't care about them. You are never attached to them. It seems like they are just there and have no real purpose in the movie. There is one exception to this though. Henry Cavill is fantastic in the film. There is no question that he was the best part. Unlike the other characters, we got to know the background to his character so we actually cared about him. He was the only one that seemed like he had purpose. He had great one-liners, and portrayed his character exactly how it needed to be. He was the only one where his line delivery was entertaining.  Cavill has a whole bunch of charisma and shines every time he is on screen. 

          The script was an issue. The story was all over the place. It was very hard to tell what was going on. It was rather confusing at points. This is due to the poor direction. The style it was directed in was they style I like to call "action with little story." In this directing style they know that the best parts about the movie is their action scenes. So within their action scenes they put key story elements hoping that you will catch these key details. However, we are so focused on the action that we completely miss the story details we have to catch in order to get what was going on. Then they assume we catch the details so the non-action scenes are really confusing. It's very hard to enjoy the movie when you don't know what's going on.  Because the movie was hard to follow the way the movie ended seemed to contradict it's self. This could have been fixed by ending the movie 5-10 minutes earlier. The other big problem I found with the script was the jokes fell flat about 55% of the time. The only time they worked is when Cavill said the joke. Every other time the jokes just didn't make me laugh. Some were even cringe worthy. 

          The action scenes were awesome. They were cleanly done and you could follow the action really well. The action scenes were by far the best part in this movie. I wish there were more so I could've enjoyed this film a little more then I did. The thing that helped the action scenes was the cinematography. It's done in a way where you can see every little detail that is happening. 

          My favorite thing about this movie (other than Cavill) was the score/soundtrack. It's something I could listen to over, and over again and never get tired of it. The score is in my top 3 of the year. It was fantastic. I'm listening to it as I'm writing this. 

         Overall The Man From U.N.C.L.E is mediocre fun. It's not a movie you will be dying to see again after you first watch it, but it is a movie that you would want to see again once it comes to redbox or a dollar theater. I liked it enough that I want a sequel just to see how they can improve upon this movie and I would like to see the characters continue. I will give this movie a 6.4/10 

          

          

          

         

Harry Potter Spinoff Gets Collin Farrell

          More news about the Harry Potter spinoff "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" have surfaced. The Hollywood Reporter has reported that Collin Farrell has joined the cast which already includes Academy Award winner Eddie Redmayne, Allison Sudol, Ezra Miller, and Katherine Waterston.
          Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a text book in the Harry Potter universe written by Newt Scamander about the various magical beasts that exist in the Potter universe.
          According to The Hollywood reporter, Collin Farrell will play a wizard named Graves that Newt Scamander (Redmayne) meets while he is documenting new magical creatures.
          I really like the addition of Farrell. It's never a mistake to add talent. Farrell was in the movie Saving Mr.Banks with Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson and he stood his own ground. He was as good as Hanks and Thompson. If you haven't seen Saving Mr.Banks, treat your self.
          I'm really excited for this movie. They have the best possible people working on this project. Director David Yates who directed the last 4 Harry Potter movies is directing it, Potter producer David Heyman is producing again. Steve Kloves who was written 7/8 of the Harry Potter films is also producing. J.K. Rowling is writing the screenplay. Writing a book is completely different than writing a screenplay, but no one knows this world better than Rowling, so I'm not worried at all.
          The movie will follow Scamander as he is doing research for his book. The movie is taking place 70 years before the first Harry Potter.
          Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them  is set to release November 8th, 2016.

For the Love of PEZ

          There is a movie based on the PEZ candy dispensers coming. Yes, you heard me right. A movie about those creepy candy dispensers that disperse candy through their neck is happening. Have you been looking forward to this movie? If you answered yes to the previous question, you need to get a life. I literally have never heard of something so stupid and idiotic before. What studio is incompetent enough to make a movie about PEZ? What were they smoking when they bought the rights to this. What's this movie even going to be about? Are the PEZ characters going to shoot random objects from their neck?  If you wanted to play devil's advocate in this situation you could say that PEZ has lots of characters that they could use to do a well, thought out story. It worked for The Lego Movie? Why can't it work for PEZ? The answer to that question is the characters in the lego movie actually had arms. The characters in the PEZ movie (if they decide to stay true to their source material) are just going to be heads on big, long, necks. I can't think of anything more horrific than a big hello kitty head on a big long stick. That's absolutely terrifying. 

          The studio behind it is Envision Media Arts. They haven't done anything in the past that's noteworthy or mentionable. The writer who was hired to pen the script is Cameron Fay who also worked on that terrible Three Stooges movie. This movie is going to suck. 

          I'm just waiting for the movie about the Coca-Cola polar bears. I want that movie extremely bad. 

Aloha Review

Aloha is abut a celebrated military contractor named Brian Gilcrest (Cooper) as he returns to the site of his greatest career triumph as he tries to reconnect with a long lost love (McAdams) while at the same time unexpectedly falling in love with the fighter pilot watch-dog assigned to him (Stone)
If America was enjoyable, and Mexico was boring, this movie would be stuck on the fence. It couldn't decide what it wanted to be. Aloha was one of those movies where your enjoying your watch but, at the same time you wish the movie would end. The biggest problem with this movie was the pacing. Pacing problems can come from 1 of 2 things. The first thing that pacing problems can come from is the direction of the film. The director can try and force things on you such as relationships, morals of story, etc... The second thing pacing problems can come from is a bad script. A script that has certain story elements spread out from each other and the in between scenes are just filler scenes. The pacing problems did not come from the script. It was really well done. Cameron Crowe wrote it so the big elements that the story needed to hit, hit them in a way that pushed the movie along. The pacing problems, did however come from the direction. Crowe wrote and directed this film, and you can tell that he put a lot more emphasis on the script. The film was a good story. It had me invested during the whole time. However the way that some of it came across was in fact sometimes dull and boring. At least Crowe put a lot of emphasis on one thing, rather than putting little emphasis on two things.
The cast is a really good ensemble cast. There are 3 key relationships. One between Cooper and Stone, one between Cooper and McAdams, and one between McAdams and Krasinski. Out of all of those the weakest one was probably between McAdams Krasinski probably due to the fact that they had the least amount of screen time together and had the least amount of impact to the story. I loved seeing Krasinski in something else other than the office but, I just wish he had more dialogue to say. He was a rather silent character. Cooper and McAdams worked really well together but, not as good as Cooper and Stone. Emma Stone is just so darn likable. I love her (not to mention she is quite attractive.) The chemistry between Cooper and Stone is exactly what this movie needed. I would give more details but that would call for spoilers of this spectacular story.
Overall Aloha is a movie that's right above average. With the pacing holding it back from it's full potential but the cast and the script trying to make this movie the best it can, it gave this movie a 7.5/10

Minions Review

          Minions is the spinoff  (prequel) film about the yellow, banana loving creatures we have seen previously in the Despicable Me franchise. Minions follows the adventures of a particular set of minions named Stuart, Kevin, and Bob as they try and find a master to serve. They go out on an adventure and come across the world's greatest super villain Scarlet Overkill. Unfortunately, the rest results in one of the worst movies I have seen this year.
          One of the many conclusions I got from this movie was the minions don't belong in their own stand alone movie. They are great ensemble characters, but not great characters on their own. The great thing about them in the first 2 films were that they were the comedic relief. When things got serious with Gru and the girls the film went back to the minions to make us laugh. When they are the main focus and there is no comedic relief to fall back on, the minions suddenly became less interesting to watch. Another problem I found was the lack of Gru. Gru played such a key part to building up the minions to the popularity that they are that when he wasn't there it made the minions boring characters.
          This movie had issues with every part of the script. The human characters (like the minions) were not interesting. They were really undeveloped. It felt like the makers of this film knew that they couldn't match the magic that they did with Gru, so they just put no thought into the characters and they just threw them in there for the only purpose of them being there. The second issue the script had was the dialogue. This movie wasn't funny. It was rather stupid and idiotic. I bet the writers thought the the only thing the kids care about were the minions language so they didn't need to put focus/emphasis on the human dialogue. However you can only take minion language for so long before it gets annoying so you decide to start listening to the human characters. And unfortunately I got tired of the minions in the first 10 minutes of the film and the human dialogue like I said before was terrible.
          That's really all I can say about this movie. There wasn't much substance to it. The only thing that this movie was, was a story about minions that was poorly paced, lazy written, and not funny. I'm going to give minions a 3/10. The three points coming from a little boy that yelled "That was funny grandma!" during my showing.

Jurassic World Review

     

       Jurassic World is the 4th installment in the Jurassic Park franchise and basically ignores the events of Jurassic Park 2 & 3, as it should because those movies are terrible. 

       The events of Jurassic World take place 22 years after the original movie and Isla Nubar now features a fully functioning dinosaur theme park (named Jurassic World) as it was originally envisioned by John Hammond. After 10 years of successful operation, visitor rates have started to decline so now the park has to create a new attraction in order to re-spark interest. As you may have guessed, the new attraction backfires horribly. 

       This is a good movie. It's not great. It's good. I didn't like it as much as I wanted to, but I still had a great time watching it. 

       The director of the film is Colin Trevorrow. Trevorrow has never directed a big budget block buster before so I was worried about if he could handle something on this big of a level, but he pulled it off.  He understood what made Jurassic Park magical and he brought those specific elements into Jurassic World. No one will ever come close to touching the magic that the first one did but Trevorrow did the best that he could. 

       Bryce Dallas Howard bugged me for the first part of this movie. She was getting on my nerves. She was overacting and had terrible line delivery. However, as the movie went one she grew on me and I ended up loving her in the end. 

       The 2 kid stars in this movie are Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins (Insidious and Iron Man 3.) Just like Bryce Dallas Howard they annoyed me at first and unfortunately they never grew on me. They played the stereotypical older brother and younger brother relationship that we have seen over, and over again. The older brother picks on the younger brother, the older brother convinces the younger brother that they don't have to do something and because of that they get in trouble, and at the end they are a big happy family. No that is not a spoiler because everyone knew it was coming. Simpkins acts like a 6 year old when in reality he needs to act his age. From the very first shot of the movie I thought to my self "Please, let him get eaten by a dinosaur." There was this part that almost made me yell "COME ON!" in the theatre. That part was they just ran away from a dinosaur and they found these cars. The cars that were used to take tours around Jurassic Park in the first movie. These cars were broken down, big time, and it would be almost impossible to fix them with out any tools. But guess what, some how the kids figure out a way to fix the cars. Who do they think they are, MacGiver? I didn't believe it for one second. 

       I'm just glad there was one person who made good first impressions. That person was Chris Pratt. Chris Pratt (like always) stole the show. He was by far the best part about Jurassic World. In Guardians of the Galaxy and Parks & Rec, his role was very comedic. So coming into the movie I was worried that they were going to make him a comedic role. I don't want heavy comedy in a dinosaur movie. I'm glad I was wrong. Yes they had a little humor with his character (you can't have Chris Pratt and have no humor) but they also had dramatic parts which I was really excited to see him do. I know some people were worried about his part as a raptor trainer in the movie but,  let me tell you, you have nothing to worry about. It was handled very well and I think you will like where the raptor story line will go. 

       The side characters were meh. They were fine. They weren't bad enough to the point where I wish they were dead (like the 2 boys) but they could have been handled better. Along with the side characters, the sub-plots were sub-par. I found them useless. I found them boring. Especially the sub-plot/back story to the 2 boys. It was poorly done. 

       The script had problems. Some of the dialogue was cringe worthy. I wanted to cuddle myself into a ball and cry, it was that bad. 50% of the jokes fell flat. They weren't funny and it just made the scene awkward. The scripts's major problems only lasted until the part were we got our first action scene. Everything else before that just felt like filler scenes. In the first Jurassic Park the first hour of the movie didn't have any action scenes and it didn't bother me because it propelled the movie forward. Yes, in Jurassic World they needed the back story in order to explain why they were doing the things they were, I just felt like they could have done it better. There were some "plot twists" if you even want to call them that. I saw the twists coming from a mile away. It has some minor inconsistencies that could have been fixed with a better script. There were some pretty lame cop-out moments that made me mad.  

       The question most people were asking was are there any original cast members returning? There are 3. The DNA strand from the video from the first Jurassic Park, a scientist. and the T-Rex. Holy crap I love the T-Rex in this movie! It was used in the way I was hoping they would use it. That's all I will say about that. 

       I was really disappointed by the score. I mean how can you compare to the John Williams's score? You just can't. At least this score could have been a little more memorable. I was scared that they wouldn't have the original score, BUT THEY DID. I smiled (and maybe shed a tear) when I heard the famous Jurassic Park score. It's my favorite of all time and I'm so glad they included it. 

       The new threat in this movie was a dinosaur called the Indominus Rex. It's a hybrid dinosaur made up of other dinosaurs and some modern day animals. I loved they way the revealed him. They showed us the dinosaur little by little so by the time we saw the full thing I was amazed. I do wish at some points they would have focused on the Indominus a little more instead of a quick glimpse from the camera. The visuals were great. I didn't feel that they were overusing CGI at all. 

       Just one more thing that I really liked from this film are the references to the first movie. There is a part (which I won't spoil for you) where the 2 kids are wondering then they came across something from the first movie. I turned to the person I went to the movie with and had a freak out session by saying "Do you know what that is! Holy crap! Holy crap!" But beware this reference i'm referring to is very brief. You have to keep your eyes open and have to be paying attention. 

      Overall Jurassic World is a good movie. It's not great. I didn't like it as much as I wanted to, but I still had a great time watching it. It is a very fun summer blockbuster. It has some issues but the positive heavily outweigh the bad. I give Jurassic World a 6.5/10