Tag Archives: Movie Reviews

Review: Earth to Echo

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Nostalgia can be dangerous, especially when it comes to the film industry.  Nostalgia is what gives us endless remakes, reboots and sequels to what’s come before, in the place of more original fare.  It seems like most people would choose to go to a film based on something that they’re familiar with than take a chance on something new, and the studios know this.  Nostalgia is often served up as a method of forging an emotional connection with an audience, in place of real emotion in the story.  But nostalgia can be dangerous from the other side of things too, when it prevents us from giving a film a chance simply because it looks similar to something we’ve seen and loved before.  (I recently had a long argument with a coworker over whether movies released today will still be watched in 50 years as movies from the 1960’s are still watched today, with the twist being that he doesn’t see modern movies because he doesn’t think they can possibly compare to the films of his youth.)  I think Earth to Echo has become a victim to nostalgia.

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Review: Edge of Tomorrow

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After Oblivion opened last year and was greeted with a general shrug, people started asking all sorts of questions.  Had Tom Cruise’s box office clout finally faded, leaving him nothing more than an aging star doomed to appear in endless Mission Impossible sequels instead of more interesting fare?  Did Oblivion‘s failure combined with that of After Earth signal the end of the days when a big name actor like Cruise or Will Smith could draw audiences to the theater by the strength of their name alone?  Are original science fiction films dead altogether, leaving us nothing but sequels, remakes and reboots?  Edge of Tomorrow (and its box office performance) doesn’t exactly answer any of those questions, despite being a fun and entertaining movie, but it perhaps postpones the day when both science fiction films and the concept of the box office star are declared dead.

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Review: How to Train Your Dragon 2

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Four years ago, the first How to Train Your Dragon film was something of a surprise success.  Very loosely based on the children’s book series by Cressida Cowell (and I’m serious about “very loosely;” I almost had a fit when I saw the initial trailers and dragons were the enemy and Toothless was big enough to ride), the first film used its unique setting and tone, along with some brilliant storycrafting and a solid voice cast to stand out from its competition, winning over critics and audiences alike.  It was a story full of heart and humor, with the relationship between Hiccup and Toothless at the center, as they fight to change the traditions and prejudices of their land.  We return once again to the Viking village of Berk in How to Train Your Dragon 2, a sequel that is bigger in nearly every way, but which perhaps is not the better for it.

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Movie Review: The Fault in Our Stars

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Adapting a beloved novel for the big screen is often an enormous challenge, even with books written with cinema in mind.  Most stories don’t automatically come with a two hour screenplay attached, and the process of fitting that story into a film can be troublesome for the filmmakers and heartbreaking for fans.  Some things will naturally have to be cut in order to fit into the running time, while others will have to be changed or rewritten in order to work on the screen (and heaven forbid the filmmakers add something that was never in the book).  Then there’s the struggle to find the right tone and perspective, where humor and pathos have to be transitioned to the screen but also balanced in the right mix to feel true to the author’s intent.  If you’re too faithful to the novel you might alienate viewers who are unfamiliar with the source, but if you go too broad then you might risk diluting what made the story so special in the first place.  So it’s a pleasant surprise that the film version of The Fault in Our Stars is such a success.

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Review: Maleficent

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Maleficent tries to do for Sleeping Beauty what Wicked did for The Wizard of Oz.  It strives to take a villain and reexamine her life, giving us context and an explanation for her actions and making us question our preconceptions.  Yet it lacks the grace and power of Wicked.  Maleficent is occasionally shockingly old-fashioned, it has a mediocre script and an inconsistent tone, and it trades one shallow villain for another while leaving few of the characters with any depth.  Yet Maleficent shines in spite of all that, defying expectations and rising above the things that might hold it back.  It’s truly more than the sum of its parts, and it owes any success it finds to its two charismatic lead actresses.

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Review: X-Men: Days of Future Past

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X-Men: Days of Future Past is the best X-Men film in over a decade and one of the biggest and most ambitious film events since The Avengers.  It’s technically the seventh film in the series, including the original trilogy, two Wolverine spin offs and one prequel/reboot, and it pulls from all of those films to create a complex, interesting conglomeration featuring almost every actor who’s ever had anything to do with X-Men in any way.  It’s based on one of the most popular stories from the comics, and it borrows heavily from films like The Terminator and Back to the Future.  And while Days of Future Past is generally a success, it tries to include so much that it often loses focus and isn’t as compelling as those first X-Men films years ago.  It’s great to see so many familiar faces, and the film has moments of brilliance, but I couldn’t help feeling while I watched it like I would have preferred something different.

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Review: The Grand Budapest Hotel

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I’ve been trying to write a review of The Grand Budapest Hotel for over a month, but it’s given me an unusual amount of trouble.  It has made me curious about what this very specific writer’s block means in terms of my opinion of the film.  I certainly enjoyed it, as I’ve enjoyed all Wes Anderson films, but it seems like I just don’t have much to say about it.  My overriding opinion from a review standpoint is that if you like Wes Anderson’s other movies, you’ll like The Grand Budapest Hotel, if you dislike them then you’ll want to skip it, and if you’re indifferent it’s worth checking out but probably not as worthy of attention as some of Anderson’s other works.

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Review: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

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I have to say that I wasn’t particularly thrilled by Captain America: The First Avenger.  As the last film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to be released before The Avengers, it felt like just one more piece in the puzzle rather than a compelling story in its own right.  That’s not to say that I disliked the film, or that it was particularly bad (still a big step ahead of Iron Man 2), it just wasn’t as interesting to me as Thor or Iron Man.  It was another solid origin story, with a strong cast and a fun setting, but the end result of the film seemed to just serve as setup for The Avengers.  (In a recent rewatch of that film, I’ve realized that I might have judged it a little too harshly upon my first viewing.)  Three years and four movies later we now have Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which might be the most complex and interesting film Marvel has made to date, not to mention one of the most entertaining, and it’s a game-changer for the universe its predecessor helped to create. Continue reading →

Review: Divergent

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To the casual observer, Divergent might seem like an attempt to cash in on the success of The Hunger Games, especially when you consider the number of similarly themed previews that showed before Divergent.  It seems like “young adult” (hate that term) post-apocalyptic stories are “in” these days, and those who haven’t read the Divergent books might be tempted to write the film adaptation off as just another clone.  However, to do so would be a mistake, as the Divergent series has a lot to offer, even if this first film is perhaps not everything we might have hoped it would be.  The books are filled with interesting ideas and compelling characters and I hope the remaining books are adapted for the screen, because the story covered in the two remaining books is interesting and unconventional, and would make for movies very different than we’re used to.

Divergent tells the story of Beatrice Prior, who was born in a ruined, future version of Chicago, where the citizens are divided into five factions, each of which embodies a certain desirable trait and fulfills a certain role in society.  Continue reading →

Review: Muppets Most Wanted

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2011’s The Muppets was hilarious, heartfelt, emotional, nostalgic, zany and inventive, and it brought the Muppets back to the level of success and relevance they deserve.  Muppets Most Wanted is all of those things as well, but to a somewhat lesser degree.  The Muppets was such a revelation and a revitalization that it would be impossible for Muppets Most Wanted to match, but this new film wisely strikes out on its own path, taking things on the road and steering well clear of recycling the story from the last movie.  And in the end, no matter how the rest of the film plays out, it’s always good to see the Muppets together again.

Muppets Most Wanted picks up literally right where The Muppets left off, replicating the final shot of that film.  Continue reading →