Movie Reviews

Kick-Ass 2

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  • Title: Kick-Ass 2
  • IMDB: link

Kick-Ass 2The work of comic writer Mark Millar (Wanted, Kick-Ass) is an acquired taste. Although he writes super-hero comics, complete with brightly-colored masks and spandex, his gritty nihilistic visions often don’t paint a very rosy picture of the world which he seems to believe are predominantly filled with irrevocably fucked-up human beings.

Realizing this, the original Kick-Ass movie made some big changes to the source material. The choice to undercut some of the more gruesome elements with humor worked in its favor (as it does with the sequel). However, the sequel is also stuck with a couple of large plot changes that have to be addressed in Kick-Ass 2.

The first movie saw Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) get the girl (something not even considered a remote possibility in the original work). The problem of what to do with Katie (Lyndsy Fonseca) is easily handled as the movie quickly, much to my disappointment, writes Fonseca’s character out of the movie never to be heard from, or spoken of, again.

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Elysium

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  • Title: Elysium
  • IMDB: link

ElysiumWith District 9 writer/director Neill Blomkamp crafted an original character study of a man (Sharlto Copley) trapped on the wrong side of the Earth’s treatment of alien refugees as a thinly-veiled metaphor for the social segregation in Blomkamp’s home country of South Africa. The result was one of 2009’s best films. Sadly Elysium, Blomkamp’s latest, is no District 9.

While dealing with similar themes of class warfare, inequalities, and a greedy one-percent, Elysium trades in metaphor for far less subtle preaching about the evils of social inequality between the haves and have nots.

The haves include the wealthiest members of the human race who have abandoned their world to live in luxury on the space station Elysium, leaving the polluted planet to the less fortunate. The inequality doesn’t end there, however. Whereas as the rich partake of miraculous medical advancements that can literally cure any affliction in the matter of seconds, the rest of the world is left with nothing more advanced than current medical devices and training.

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We’re the Millers

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  • Title: We’re the Millers
  • IMDb: link

We're the MillersDespite boasting four separate screenwriters who cobble together a script which teases (but doesn’t really deliver) an attempt to be edgy and cool, We’re the Millers is your predictable raunchy comedy featuring three unlikable characters and one idiot who all learn important life lessons before the credits roll. The result is an occasionally amusing by-the-book flick that’s far less cool than it wants to be.

Jason Sudeikis stars as a low-rent drug dealer who needs to come up with some cash fast after he’s robbed while trying to help out his dimwitted neighbor Kenny (Will Poulter). Owing nearly $50,000, his drug-dealing boss (Ed Helms in a role that requires him to be both funny and scary, only one of which he pulls off) offers David (Sudeikis) a way out by taking a trip down to Mexico and bringing back a small load of marijuana over the border. With no choice, David enlist the help of Kenny, a homeless girl (Emma Roberts), and a stripper (Jennifer Aniston) to pose as his family and help him drive the RV chock full of drugs back into the United States.

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Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters

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  • Title: Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
  • IMDb: link

Percy Jackson: Sea of MonstersBased on Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson & the Olympians young adult novel series, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters picks up a few months after the events of the underwhelming Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief in which Percy (Logan Lerman) and his fellow demigod best buds Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) and Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) successfully returned Zeus’ (Sean Bean) stolen thunderbolt and Percy came to an understanding with his absent father Poseidon (Kevin McKidd) and took his place among the other half-human sons and daughters of the Olympian Gods.

Things have quieted down a bit as the introspective Percy has begun questioning his own abilities as a hero as he is constantly outshone by the bitchy Clarisse (Leven Rambin). When the safety of Camp Half-Blood (the truly awful name for the secret village where the demigods dwell) is put in jeopardy Clarisse is assigned to retrieve the Golden Fleece in order to bolster the protective barrier around the camp which has begun to fail.

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The Wolverine

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  • Title: The Wolverine
  • IMDB: link

The Wolverine

Taking place several months after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand (yes, this movie states the atrocity that was Lamest Stand counts as X-Men movie canon), The Wolverine picks up with a haunted Logan (Hugh Jackman) coerced out of his cave by an assassin (Rila Fukushima) and taken to Japan for a meeting with an old friend (Hal Yamanouchi) who wants to repay Wolverine for saving his life at Nagasaki more than 70 years ago (in a terrific sequence) by offering the hero turned hermit the one thing denied to him – morality.

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