Channing Tatum

Hail, Caesar!

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Hail, Caesar!
  • IMDb: link

Hail, Caesar!With Hail, Caesar! the Coen Brothers take a few good-natured stabs at the golden age of movies while celebrating, and lampooning, the studio system of Hollywood during the early days of the Cold War. Providing a film where Channing Tatum gets to play Fred Astaire and Tilda Swinton does double-duty as twin gossip columnists, I wouldn’t go so far to call it a screwball comedy, but Hail, Caesar! certainly does have a few screws loose (in mostly the right places).

Josh Brolin stars as studio exec Eddie Mannix dodging offers to leave the studio for a more stable job while overseeing a big-budget spectacular about a Roman general’s encounter with Jesus Christ when his star (George Clooney) is kidnapped by a group of Hollywood writers who are all Communists (Fisher Stevens, Patrick Fischler, Tom Musgrave, David Krumholtz, Greg Baldwin, and Patrick Carroll).

Not all the film works. Far too much time is wasted on Mannix being wooed by an airline, and, while opening up intriguing ideas about outside-the-box solutions to problems, the subplot involving Scarlett Johansson as a single pregnant starlet fizzles. More successful is Alden Ehrenreich as a Western star struggling with his role in straightforward drama.

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Jupiter Ascending

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Jupiter Ascending
  • IMDb: link

Jupiter AscendingJupiter Ascending is insane (and only occasionally in a good way). The latest from the Wachowskis casts Mila Kunis in the starring role as an illegal immigrant house cleaner who is actually the resurrected matriarch of one the galaxy’s richest families. Despite being born on Earth, and having no memory of her previous life, based on her DNA Jupiter is entitled to her former estates and riches which her galactic progeny (Eddie Redmayne, Douglas Booth, Tuppence Middleton) will do anything to prevent from happening.

Saved by a soldier spliced with a wolf on rocket shoes (Channing Tatum), Jupiter eventually finds her way into space to accept her inheritance which includes the planet Earth and everyone living on it.

Did I mention this movie is insane? Jupiter Ascending jumps the tracks fairly early, after a slow introduction to our protagonist’s pre-space-faring life, and becomes a constantly exploding runaway train that no one involved in the project lifts a finger to gain control of for the remainder of its 127-minute running time. Visually intriguing, the film is a mess of mashed-up sci-fi ideas borrowed from better films.

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22 Jump Street

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  • Title: 22 Jump Street
  • IMDb: link

22 Jump StreetThe first film’s rebooting of the 80s television show with Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum as a pair of screw-up cops sent in undercover as high school students turned out to be a surprisingly self-aware dumb-fun action-comedy. Those who enjoyed 21 Jump Street and were left wanting more of the same should enjoy the sequel (which even the script by Michael Bacall, Oren Uziel, and Rodney Rothman admits, on multiple occasions, is basically the exact same story all over again).

Poking fun not only at the pair of cops attempting to pass themselves off as college freshman but also sequels in general this time around, 22 Jump Street sends officers Schmidt (Hill) and Jenko (Tatum) to college to track down a new designer drug WHYPHY. Offering the same friendship and fallout dynamic between partners as 21 Jump Street, the sequel also gives gives Schmidt a new love interest (Amber Stevens) while working Ice Cube into a slightly larger role this time around. It’s not a great film, and you’re certainly going to have to put your brain on hold, but it does provide plenty of dumb fun.

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Die Hard in the White House (with a kid)

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: White House Down
  • IMDB: link

White House DownAfter the initial success of Die Hard there was a time when every movie studio was trying to cash in on the concept of a great action star (usually a cop or specially trained soldier) in the wrong place at the wrong time and forced to save the day (which almost always also included endangered hostages and some kind of robbery or cash grab). We got Die Hard on a plane, Die Hard on a boat, Die Hard on a bus, Die Hard on a train, and so on. More than 25 years later Hollywood still hasn’t given up on the formula.

Much like Olympus Has Fallen, released earlier this year, White House Down offers us a story of a terrorist attack on Washington D.C. and the capture of the White House, the President of the United States, and several high ranking members of the United States Government. Where Antoine Fuqua‘s film struggled to be Michael Bay-style action porn, director Roland Emmerich‘s movie has a far better sense of humor and an understanding of the complete ridiculousness of its entire premise. Don’t get me wrong, the movie is dumb as dirt at times, but at least it knows this.

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G.I. JOE: Retaliation

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  • Title: G.I. JOE: Retaliation
  • IMDB: link

G.I. JOE: RetaliationFour years after the train wreck that was G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra, the sequel finally makes it to theaters after converting the movie to 3D and shooting additional scenes to cash-in on Channing Tatum‘s increased celebrity. G.I. JOE: Retaliation doesn’t prove to be worth the wait, but it’s certainly far better than the original.

For those of you unlucky enough to have witnessed the first film, you know that the terrorist organization known as Cobra had risen. Even if they had been defeated by the American special anti-terrorism force known as G.I. JOE, one of Cobra’s own, the master of disguise known as Zartan (Arnold Vosloo), had taken the place of the President of the United States (Jonathan Pryce).

G.I. JOE: Retaliation picks up some months later with President Zartan orchestrating the public disgrace and destruction of the JOEs while Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) and Firefly (Ray Stevenson) break Cobra Commander (now played by Luke Bracey) out of futuristic prison in an overly-elaborate plan.

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