Movie Reviews

Cowboys and Aliens

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Cowboys and Aliens
  • IMDB: link

cowboys-and-aliens-posterIt begins with a cowboy waking up in the desert with no memory of who he is and ends with cowboys and Indians fighting aliens for gold. Yeah, you heard me, gold.

Although I enjoyed it, with a title like Cowboys and Aliens I expected the film to be a little zanier, goofier, and far more of a fun summer popcorn flick. What director Jon Favreau delivers is entertaining, at times, but it also feels unimaginative and uninspired.

After waking up in the desert without any memories, Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) makes his way to the nearest town. Almost immediately he gets into a tussle with the son (Paul Dano) of the town’s wealthiest man (Harrison Ford), is thrown in jail for a train robbery, and shoots down a giant alien spacecraft with a strange metal bracelet attached to his arm. You know, just your everyday activities in the Old West.

When several of the townsfolk are taken Jake is roped into helping rescue them as well as a woman (Abigail Spencer) from his past he thinks may have been taken as well.

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Captain America: The First Avenger

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  • Title: Captain America: The First Avenger
  • IMDB: link

Captain America: The First AvengerDespite being around for 70 years, Marvel’s second most iconic hero (behind only Spider-Man) has had trouble finding his way to the big screen. Aside from his appearances in various cartoons over the years Captain America‘s career boils down to an old WWII serial, the perhaps best-forgotten 1970’s made-for-TV movies starring Reb Brown, and the 1990 live-action film which ended up going straight to video.

Attempting to rectify this oversight Marvel Studios and director Joe Johnston bring Captain America to the big screen with Captain America: The First Avenger which tells the basic story of Steve Rogers’ origin with a few interesting changes.

We meet Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a plucky young patriotic American who wants to enlist to fight Nazis alongside his best pal Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), as he’s turned down yet again for service due to medical reasons. Just looking at the scrawny young man you’d have a hard time believing he would eventually become the world’s greatest soldier.

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Bait and Switch

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  • Title: Friends with Benefits
  • IMDB: link

Friends with BenefitsThe idea of Mila Kunis starring in a raunchy sex comedy from the director who gave us the best male cheerleader recruitment film ever sounded promising. But for a film about casual sex Friends with Benefits, with the exception of a couple of early montages where our two leads spend 90% of their naked time together, is actually kind of impotent.

Dylan (Justin Timberlake) and Jamie (Kunis) meet cute when he comes to New York after she arranges a job interview for him at GQ through her role as a head-hunter. The two hit it off, and when Dylan decides to take the job they become fast friends.

After bonding over past relationship stories and beer one night the pair decide to try and be friends who occasionally use each other for sex. As almost always happens in movies like this things start out great but go downhill fast. This isn’t the first film to try using casual sex as the basis for a relationship film (it’s not even the first one this year), and despite failing rather spectacularly it’s sure not to be the last.

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Captain America

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  • Title: Captain America
  • IMDB: link

“To the rest of the world he’s Codename: Captain America. He may not be Superman, but he’ll be a living symbol of what this country stands for.”

Captain America posterCaptain America: The First Avenger is set to hit theaters this Friday but it isn’t the first attempt by Marvel Comics to translate their iconic hero to the big screen. While DC was churning out Batman and Superman flicks at will in the 80’s and early 90’s, Marvel was lagging behind. For the Captain America’s 50th Anniversary Marvel Comics put together a feature film centered around the hero.

Financing issues (which the production ran into after it had moved overseas for shooting in Europe) and the addition of stunt sequences, further re-shoots, and editing bogged the film down. Captain America went unreleased for two years. Although it did see the inside of theaters internationally, in the country of his origin poor Captain America was limited to a unheralded straight-to-video release.

The film begins neither in America nor in Germany, but in Mussolini’s Italy. A young boy is brutally ripped from his family and taken to a secret government laboratory where a reluctant scientist, Dr. Vaselli (Carla Cassola), will attempt to create the world’s first Super Soldier.

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

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  • Title: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
  • IMDB: link

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2In 2001 Warner Bros. released the first film adapted from the Harry Potter books. Directed by Chris Columbus, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was a critical and box office success. Ten years, three directors, and seven films later, the hugely popular film franchise comes to a close with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.

Picking up when the previous film left off, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his friends continue to lick their wounds and mourn their losses as Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), now armed with the elder wand, begins preparing for the final battle. And where better for that battle to take place than Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?

Aside from the conclusion of Harry’s battle with You-Know-Who, the series also wraps up several other stories including finally getting Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) together, the evolution of Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis) into a hero, and examination of the motives of Severus Snape (Alan Rickman).

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