Movie Reviews

Transcendence

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Transcendence
  • IMDB: link

TranscendenceThe question about Transcendence isn’t if its eventual flaws will eventually cause you to lose interest but when. I’ll admit I was surprised, despite the ridiculous nature of what screenwriter Jack Paglen‘s script considers science, that by relying on some intriguing ideas and a solid cast the film kept me interested far longer than I expected. Of course that was before the movie went completely off the rails and crashed in a hideous and head-scratching mess.

Putting human intelligence in a machine is hardly anything new. Well before the invention of computers and the Internet sci-fi and horror authors were playing on the idea. The premise Paglen begins with is sound enough as several of the leaders in artificial intelligence are attacked by an a quasi-religous, sorta anti-technology (but not really) terrorist group. Although Will Caster (Johnny Depp) survives the initial attack, with only months left to live his wife (Rebecca Hall) and best friend (Paul Bettany) use their combined research to create an artificial intelligence out of his mind.

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Draft Day

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  • Title: Draft Day
  • IMDB: link

Draft DaySet over the course of a single day, Draft Day offers the opportunity for sports-film go-to-guy Kevin Costner (now a little too long in the tooth to star as an actual player) to star as the general manager of the Cleveland Browns on the team’s biggest day of the year. Fighting the recent death of his father, an aggressive new head coach (Denis Leary), an owner (Frank Langella) demanding a “big splash,” his own beliefs on the right move and the player he wants to draft (Chadwick Boseman), and the news that his not-so-secret girlfriend (Jennifer Garner) is pregnant, Sonny Weaver Jr. (Costner) will struggle through the day to do what he believes is best for the team.

The script by Scott Rothman and Rajiv Joseph along with the framing of cinematographer Eric Steelberg captures the pressure, size, and scale of the moment Sonny finds himself in the middle of when he makes a questionable deal to trade for the number-one pick to draft “a sure thing” in quarterback Bo Callahan (Josh Pence). Although I think the script does falter a bit in Sonny’s final moves, straining believably, the story director Ivan Reitman sets out to tell is enganging, well-paced, and a hell of a good time.

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier

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  • Title: Captain America: The Winter Soldier
  • IMDb: link

Captain America: The Winter SoldierPicking up some time after the events of The Avengers, Captain America (Chris Evans) has grown more accustomed to the current world while going to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. Despite being well-suited for his new role, Steve Rogers has become increasingly uncomfortable with cleaning-up Nick Fury‘s (Samuel L. Jackson) messes including working alongside the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) in the film’s opening action sequence involving the hijacking of a S.H.I.E.L.D. vessel by Algerian pirates.

Returning home with a few choice words for Fury, and contemplating leaving government service all together while hanging out with his new friend Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), Captain America finds himself in the middle of the action, and a vast conspiracy, following a brazen attack on Nick Fury in broad daylight on the streets of New York and the discovery that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been infiltrated by HYDRA. Not knowing who to trust, and with the help of only Black Widow and the Falcon, he’ll also have to deal with a mysterious assassin known only as the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan).

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Noah

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  • Title: Noah
  • IMDB: link

NoahObsessed with the story of Noah since he was 13 years-old, writer/director Darren Aronofsky finally sees his vision of a quasi-fantasy/religious take on the biblical tale of the Genesis flood crash into the big screen today like a tidal wave. Sadly, as the characters of Aronofsky’s films usually learn, obsession leads to trouble.

Noah is certainly a labor of love and quite a bit of talent went into the creation of Noah, the ark, and the flood which washed away the sin of man from the face of the Earth. Equally certain, despite the skill on display both in front and behind the camera, is the fact that Noah is a mess on the level of Waterworld. Its grand expectations and epic scale simply can’t find a way to balance its stark character study of a man fighting to do the will of his God against the film’s more fantastical and sci-fi elements which include fallen angels in the form of giant rock creatures, the existence and use of magic, and never-ending storyline that keeps going long after it’s jumped the rails and taken a nosedive into the watery abyss which consumes so many (nameless) characters.

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Bad Words

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  • Title: Bad Words
  • IMDB: link

Bad WordsAs with most of the Bad Santa imitators which have popped up in recent years Bad Words is, at best, a mixed bag. Far better than the unfortunate (and best forgotten) Bad Teacher, this film directed by and starring Jason Bateman about a middle-aged man-child entering a national 8th grade spelling competition to deal with his own personal issues certainly provides its share of laughs along the way.

When we first meet Guy Trilby (Bateman) he’s already worming his way into a qualifying round of a local spelling bee with the help of a blogger (Kathryn Hahn) and a loophole in the guidelines which allows anyone who has not yet graduated from the eighth grade entry into the bee.

To call Trilby a self-serving prick isn’t really doing justice to the man determined to make a mockery of the competition on national television much to the dismay of countless parents and those in charge of the spelling bee (Philip Baker Hall, Allison Janney). By the time the film gets around to revealing Trilby’s reasons (which are as self-serving as every other piece of his character) it doesn’t really matter as nothing could possibly justify the actions we witness.

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