Movie Reviews

The Muppets

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  • Title: The Muppets
  • IMDB: link

the-muppets-posterIt’s time to play the music. It’s time to light the lights. It’s been a long time since the The Muppets took Manhattan, had a great caper, or set their sites on an original movie. Sure there was that attempt to give Gonzo his own film, and the series of movies adapted from literature to star The Muppets over the years, but for the first time in a long time, with no small part to Jason Segel, The Muppets are back.

The story begins with brothers Walter (Peter Linz) and Gary (Segel) traveling to Los Angeles with Gary’s longtime girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams). Although the trip was initially set as an anniversary getaway for the lovers, Gary brings Walter along to let him realize one of his dreams by visiting Muppet Studios.

Walter is crushed to find the studio in disrepair and horrified to learn that an oil tycoon (Chris Cooper) is set to take ownership of the property and destroy it. The Muppets have only one chance, the contract leaves a clause that they can buy back the studio before the deadline if they can raise $10,000,000.

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Hugo

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  • Title: Hugo
  • IMDB: link

hugo-posterFor the first half-hour or so of Hugo you’re wondering to yourself why is Martin Scorcese directing a children’s story about an orphan who lives in a train station with a broken robot?

Don’t get me wrong, the characters are engaging and the look of the film (especially in 3D where the effects bring to mind a child’s pop-up book) are terrific, but the question still remains. And then this film about an orphan and his automaton becomes a story about a famous filmmaker and the celebration and preservation of old films, and you know exactly what struck the director’s fancy.

When we first meet Hugo Cabaret (Asa Butterfield) he’s living in the walls of the Paris train station. The son of clockmaker (Jude Law), Hugo was orphaned when his father died in a museum fire. Now all Hugo has to remember him is a notebook and a broken automaton his father was attempting to fix before his death.

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The Descendants

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  • Title: The Decendants
  • IMDB: link

the-descendants-posterOn the beautiful islands of Hawaii, Matt King’s (George Clooney) world crashes down when the real estate lawyer is hit with two bombshells at once. First, he learns that his wife (Patricia Hastie), who suffered a boating accident and has languished in a coma for weeks, isn’t going to get better. Her living will makes it obvious what will happen next, even if Matt and his two daughters aren’t ready for inevitable.

Things only get more complicated when breaking the news to his oldest daughter Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) Matt learns his wife has been having an affair and it’s this, not the daughter’s recently troubling behavior, which was the cause of the friction between mother and daughter in recent months.

Through his anger and grief Matt tries to keep his dysfunctional family together, deal with the outbursts of his younger daughter (Amara Miller) in school, and put up with Alexandra’s moron of a boyfriend Sid (Nick Krause), all while managing a complicated land sale that means millions of dollars for his extended family.

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Like Crazy

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  • Title: Like Crazy
  • IMDB: link

like-crazy-posterLike Crazy wants to be this year’s Blue Valentine. Paradoxically it also wants to be a romantic love story. Despite some nice performances and an understated feel, the movie leaves much unsaid about a pair of people who, even after spending two hours with them, we’re not sure if they belong together.

The film has a documentary feel that stresses real moments. This gives us small petty fights and cute moments with the pair in bed together, but it also shares with us long stretches that would have been better off on the cutting room floor. Too often the film’s rabid embrace of realism gets in the way of basic storytelling.

Like Crazy begins with the meeting of British exchange student Anna (Felicity Jones – think a more bubbly version of Emma Roberts) and Jacob (Anton Yelchin). The pair hit it off immediately and the glory days of their relationship is a montage blur until Anna’s Visa expires and she has to return home. Against the advice of some very cool movie parents (Alex Kingston, Oliver Muirhead) Anna overstays her time in America.

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J. Edgar

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  • Title: J. Edgar
  • IMDb: link

j-edgar-poster

For his latest film director Clint Eastwood teams up with Milk writer Dustin Lance Black to examine the life of one of the 20th Century’s most famous, and infamous, men ever employed by the United States Government – J. Edgar Hoover. Eastwood and Black offer us a Hoover who was a fascinating figure, a great American, and a deeply flawed human being unprepared to deal with his own paranoia, latent homosexuality, and the eventual wealth of power he possessed as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

As with many biopics, the story is told through a series of flashbacks as Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) goes over his experiences with a series of writers working on his autobiography. The film begins with Hoover’s early days with the agency, his promotion, and the ruthlessness he used to move the F.B.I. into the 20th Century by incorporating new techniques such as fingerprint analysis and forensics into police work and changing the image of government agents in the public’s perception. He also managed to blackmail a great many people.

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