Quick Review: Ghostbusters

I have to say I was a bit concerned with the social media and other commentary regarding Ghostbusters, the latest franchise reboot, being a bad idea because the Ghostbusters are now women. After all these years Hollywood is still unfair to women, whether it's the type of roles and scripts they're offered or their pay compared to male actors. So I made sure I saw it during opening weekend, and the box office report says it earned $46 million.

And it deserves it, because despite a bit of a slow start to set things up, it's quite funny. The new 'busters (Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones) work well together, and Chris Hemsworth gets to ham it up as their receptionist, hired despite being dumb as a post but pretty to look at. The plot involves a scheme to open a portal to release malevolent spirits and bring on the apocalypse. There's a post-credits scene to set up a sequel, and though I tend to frown on them I want one in this case. If nothing else, it may help shut up the sexist Twitter trolls...no, they're like the cockroaches that will survive nuclear holocaust. My grade: B-plus.

P.S. Classic title song >>>>> New theme song.

Some More Movies I Haven't Written About

Good grief, I don't even remember when I started writing this. So, some more procrastination and time wasting, my medical issues and unrelated issues and we have seven movies I've seen dating back to the day before my birthday. And also, I haven't even been to a movie in a month! (Speaking of which, at this point I'll have to turn Birthday Disco Month into Birthday Disco Year and try to get my 30 posts done before I turn 55. And when that happens there will be NO salute to Sammy Hagar, I swear!)

Captain America: Civil War: It's pretty amazing that with a few exceptions every Marvel movie is essentially a continuation of the Avengers, This time there's a split over the world's governments wanting superheroes either to register and come under governmental control or retire. Iron Man: pro. Cap: anti. Others pick a side or have their own agendas (such as the new-to-the-films Black Panther).Not much to complain about, except the guy who orchestrated the events that lead to the split is kind of lame. On the other hand, they nailed the introduction in this Marvel Cinematic Universe of Spider-Man. Nailed it! My grade: A.

The Boss: A starring vehicle for Melissa McCarthy, as a wealthy CEO, nasty to everyone until she loses everything and goes to jail for insider trading. Then...well, she's still nasty, even to her former assistant (Kristen Bell), the one person still willing to take her now-homeless ex-boss in. Can she claw her way back to the top and maybe even become a better person? (cough)formula(cough) Which isn't to say there aren't (R-rated) laughs. Just don't expect a brilliant story in addition. My grade: C-plus.

Sing Street: I loved this little indie out of Ireland. Conor, a teenager in Dublin in 1985 has to switch to a state-run Catholic school due to the family's financial problems. While trying to avoid bullying by both other students and the principal, he meets a pretty girl and, to impress her, tells her he's in a band. He then has to start a band.  There's a lot of great interaction between all the main characters, but I was particularly touched by the relationship between Conor and his older brother. There's great music of the era (the Cure, Duran Duran, etc. and a few originals that fit in as well. My grade: A-minus.

Money Monster: George Clooney plays Lee Gates, a host of a wild Wall Street TV show (think "Mad Money" and Jim Cramer) and Julia Roberts is the show's director. One day after a stock touted by Gates completely tanks, loising virtually its entire value, a guy who invested his meager life savings in said stock breezes onto the show's set (way too easily! Hello, security?), pulls a gun and forces Gates to put on a vest lined with explosives, threatening to blow up the host and kill himself if he doesn't get an explanation. Everything plays out in the studio, on live TV and eventually the streets of New York, it's all well-acted and tense enough, but a bit preposterous. But it dosen't comment on Wall Street shenanigans the way The Big Short tried to, and Clooney and Roberts actually shared just one scene together; they mostly talked via the studio PA system or phone. My grade: B.

Zootopia: I was stunned, The ads pulled you in with a world populated with nothing but animals walking and talking and living in a modern utopia, where predators and prey live in harmony, with a rabbit who achieves her goal of being the first rabbit police officer in Zootopia, but put on parking-ticket duty because the police chief doesn't think she can do anything else, and when she does try and solve a crime she's forced to get info from the "fastest" DMV worker -- a sloth. Hahaha! Animated comedy! But as the movie continues, the timely message -- in utopia things aren't always what they seem, and even in a diverse society, old prejudices lurk not far from the glossy surface --  is skillfully and subversively worked in. Brilliant. My grade: A-plus.

The Nice Guys: Buddy action-comedy set in 1977 Los Angeles, starring Ryan Gosling as...well, not the most successful private eye in the world, who with some help from his young daughter, teams up with Russell Crowe as an enforcer-for-hire to investigate the case of a porn star killed in a car crash but whose aunt insists she saw her alive days later. Raunchy, violent, and surprisingly funny. I liked the pairing of Crowe and Gosling. My grade: B-plus.

X-Men: Apocalypse: The younger X-Men from "Days of Future Past" -- with a a few new mutants -- have to save the world from the very first mutant, who rules ancient Egypt until he's entombed (despite his powers?) until 1983. He is angry at the state of modern society and decides to destroy everything and start anew. But he needs a few more mutants -- again, if he's so powerful why does he need help (Four Horsemen, as it were)? A lot of plot that makes no sense. But like in the last film, there's another standout sequence featuring Quicksilver (Evan Peters) using his speed -- this time to evacuate the students of the Xavier School as an epxlosion is about to destroy it -- and it's set to "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" by Eurythmics! 1983 rules! My grade: C-minus.

Like, Four Months Of Movies. Part One

If you read my last post, and according to Google 269 of you at least clicked on it (yay, but not for the best of reasons, and also a couple of those clicks may be my own), you know it's been a rough patch. Between what went on healthwise in both April (while I was still working, to boot) and June, I had some sporadic movie attendance for a while. And I haven't talked about any of them. Tsk. So the first few of these, which I saw between mid-March and early June, have already gone to blu-ray, Netflix, etc. But I'll mention them anyway. After my surgery, though, I've really picked up the pace, so I'm splitting this into two posts. (I was thinking I could also check out some I missed via On Demand or my Amazon Prime subscription's Instant Video feature, but that's for the future.)

The Lazarus Effect: Some researchers accidentally discover a formula that can bring people back from the dead. Naturally, there are consequences. A bit interesting but ultimately more boring than scary. C-plus.

Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron: Bigger, louder, not as interesting nor as well-plotted as the first Avengers film. And no shawarma. B-plus.

Hot Pursuit: Sofia Vergara and Reese Witherspoon, a comedy duo for the ages. Well, the Age of Ultron, maybe. But towards the end it seemed to be trying to pull things together a little. C.

Pitch Perfect 2: Sequel. Meh. A couple of interesting quirks but disappointing. C-plus.

Tomorrowland: Best film so far this year, hands down. For all the sci-fi stuff, it really is a film about how we can still make the word a better place. It made me think of people who I see doing good work (such as this guy) and gave me a hopeful, optimistic feeling. Please see this film. A.

Spy: Melissa McCarthy seems to walk a tightrope with movie roles, at least those I've seen. Bridesmaids, awesome. Identity Thief, not nearly so. Spy is a return to fine form, with a strong supporting cast. A-minus.

Mad Max: Fury Road: Having never seen any of the previous Mad Max films, I still wasn't really lost by this reboot's plot. The future's all gone to hell and Max, now played by Tom Hardy, is fighting to survive and ends up helping some others. Lots of action and mayhem. B.

Next post: everything I've seen since my surgery.

Quick Reviews: Five More...

Oops, I did it again. Procrastinated on writing about the movies I've seen, that is. I guess all that writing for "Man of Steel" took a lot out of me...no, just the usual issues. Anyway, here are the most recent five:

The Bling Ring is based on a true story about shallow, vapid young people robbing the homes of shallow, vapid celebrities such as Paris Hilton -- celebrities so shallow that they tended to leave the doors to their homes unlocked, which made it much easier for the burglars. I can think of no further proof of the utter shallowness of Paris Hilton than the fact that not only did she cameo in the movie, but allowed the filmmakers to film the scenes of the robbery of her house at that very same house. The movie made no points, taught no lessons, and doesn't even function as a pseudo-documentary. My grade: D.

World War Z was just odd. It felt like a mashup of different genres -- science fiction, disaster film, horror -- and it all didn't blend well for me. And Brad Pitt as an action hero didn't connect with me either. Also, I hate that the film started out in Philadelphia, where Pitt's character's family lived, but was obviously filmed elsewhere (London, if I recall). Even the skyline didn't look like Philadelphia. My grade: C-plus.

Monsters University is a prequel, focusing on the first meeting of Mike and Sully at college. When Pixar's followed up on previous films they've been good (both "Toy Story" sequels) and bad ("Cars 2," from what I've heard). This one is okay, but it doesn't bode well for other planned sequels, including one for "Finding Nemo." Pixar needs to focus on original stuff again and leave sequels and prequels to Disney's direct-to-DVD products. My grade: B.

When I get excited about a movie based on its trailer, I am always concerned about a letdown. Thankfully, there was no letdown from The Heat, the Sandra Bullock-Melissa McCarthy mismatched-buddy-cop (well, cop and FBI in this one) action comedy. Lots of humor, foul language, violence -- but heart as well. Bullock and McCarthy work very well together. My grade: A.

The Lone Ranger has Armie Hammer in the title role, but make no mistake, the masked man's the straight man for Johnny Depp's shticky Tonto. The Ranger is more of a dolt than a hero, and it all strained my credulity. It got a surprising amount of laughs from others in the theater, but I mostly sat there sighing and rolling my eyes as it went on and on, interspersed with a ridiculous framing sequence featuring an elderly Depp-as-Tonto telling the story to a little boy at a traveling circus. My grade: D-plus.

Quick Reviews: Identity Amour Beasts

Finally got my last two Oscar Best Picture nominees in the books. So after this post you'll finally get my best/worst of 2012 (only two months late!) and my ranking of the Best Pictures.

I was very disappointed by Identity Thief. The trailer seemed promising but the film didn't live up to expectations. Jason Bateman's character (the identity theft victim) was just too stupid; that was established in the opening scene, which showed how the theft occurred -- basically, he gave it away. And I like Melissa McCarthy, but her character was just a series of weight/looks jokes with motives that were inconsistent. Is she really a bad person or a victim of her childhood? After her star-making turn in "Bridesmaids," she'd better look at her scripts more carefully. My grade: D-plus.

The story in Amour is meant to be heartbreaking. An elderly woman (Emmanuelle Riva) suffers a stroke that leaves her partially paralyzed, and her husband (Jean-Louis Trintignant) takes care of her at their Paris apartment to honor her wish not to go into a hospital or nursing home. He struggles more and more as her condition deteriorates. It's well-acted but takes a jarring and then confusing turn near the end that kind of ruined it a little for me. My grade: B-minus.

I'm still puzzling a little over Beasts of the Southern Wild, to be honest. When I first finished watching it (note: for time-saving purposes I bought it on pay-per-view instead of seeing it in the theater) I was glad it was over, but upon some reflection I find my initial reaction was wrong. At first it reminded me of "Winter's Bone" in that it takes place in a very poor community -- this one's set in a part of the Louisiana bayou called "The Bathtub" that's cut off from everyone else by a levee. However, the fantasy element (the "aurochs," behemoths frozen in the ice caps long ago but freed by global warming) distracted from the story of the little girl (Quvenzhane Wallis), her ailing father, their impoverished but happy and self-sufficient community and the threat of destruction from a coming storm. Perhaps I'm missing the symbolism or something. My grade: B.