Captain America: The First Avenger: 2011 Marvel superhero
film directed by Joe Johnston and starring Chris Evans, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo
Weaving, Stanley Tucci, Toby Jones, and Hayley Atwell. Steve Rogers is a young, sickly New Yorker who
desperately wants to join the fight in World War II, but his myriad health
problems keep him from the front until he’s recruited by a scientist to undergo
a radical “super soldier” experiment. It
makes him taller, more muscular, and perfect for . . . promoting the sale of
war bonds in a ridiculous costume as Captain America. Meanwhile, HYDRA, a terrorist organization
affiliated with the Third Reich and bent on world domination, has been using an
alien energy source called the Tesseract (like in Thor) to build crazy weaponry.
Rogers finally gets the chance to prove his mettle in a rescue mission,
and is then used by the military to sabotage HYDRA operations and thwart their
evil commander, Red Skull.
I
watched this to refresh my memory about the Avengers
backstory, and ended up really liking it.
The effects are great; it’s a decent, well-paced action movie; and it’s
a WWII flick with minimal schmaltz and all the flair of the Marvel movie
universe. If you liked The Avengers, give it a shot.
Night Train to Munich: 1940 British thriller directed by Carol Reed
and starring Margaret Lockwood, Paul von Henreid, and Rex Harrison. A Czech scientist and his daughter Anna are
on the run from the Nazis and take refuge in England. Dickie Randall, a British Intelligence agent,
is working with them and when they’re kidnapped by a Gestapo agent he works up
a daring rescue plan.
Not to be
trivial, but eye candy galore. Harrison,
von Henreid (aka Victor Laszlo of Casablanca),
and Lockwood are very nice to look at, as are the costumes. But also the acting is excellent, if
occasionally prone to hysterics – I mean, it was the 1940s. Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as the
cricket-obsessed fellow train travelers provide both comic relief and an
appropriate amount of tension with their meddling. It’s somewhat related to The Lady Vanishes, which is also a great movie. Definitely check it out if you’re a fan of
Hitchcock, noir, spy thrillers, or cricket.
This Is the End: 2013 comedy written and directed by Seth
Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and starring Rogen, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel,
Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, and Emma Watson as fictionalized versions of
themselves. Jay has come to Los Angeles
to spend a quiet weekend playing videogames and smoking weed with his good pal
Seth. When Seth announces they’ll be
attending a party at James Franco’s new house, Jay reluctantly agrees, and then
spends the entire evening feeling out of place.
That quickly passes once the apocalypse hits. The Rapture is upon them, and the survivors
now have to deal with giant sinkholes that lead to hell, demons, looters,
unwanted houseguests, possession, exorcism, and a serious lack of water and
food. And Danny McBride just generally
being a dick.
I
saw this in the theaters with two friends and I swear, hand to God, we all
almost peed our pants from laughing.
It’s really hilarious. I was a
little skeptical, but I was skeptical of the 21 Jump Street remake too, and that totally proved me wrong. It’s witty and self-deprecating and the
dialogue seemed very real, despite the absurdity of the plot. It’s definitely worth seeing, especially for
the last five minutes. And Michael
Cera’s highly disturbing cameo.
Date Night: 2010 romantic crime comedy directed by Shawn
Levy and starring Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Mark Wahlberg, and Taraji P.
Henson. When Phil and Claire Foster
learn that their good friends are getting a divorce they decide to reexamine
their own domestic routine, and find it rather staid. To spice things up they decide to have their
next date night at an uber-trendy Manhattan restaurant. When they realize they’ll never get a table,
they decide to live dangerously and take the reservation of the Tripplehorn’s, another
couple that didn’t show up. What
fun! Turns out the Tripplehorn’s kind of
stole a flash drive of blackmail material from a mobster and suddenly some
dirty cops are on their trail. Hilarity
abounds.
It’s pretty
solid. It’s not Fey & Carell at
their funniest, but they do make an adorable and believable couple. I also enjoyed the cameos: Ray Liotta, Mark
Ruffalo, Kristin Wiig, Nick Kroll, James Franco, Mila Kunis, etc. Not over the moon about it, but I liked it.
Kick-Ass: 2010 superhero action comedy directed by
Matthew Vaughn and starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Chloe Grace Moretz,
Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and Nicolas Cage.
Dave is a nice, normal teenager who just wants to do something exciting
with his life. So he becomes a
superhero. Kind of. After getting stabbed and run over during his
first foray into crime-fighting, he beefs up, soups up his costume, and gives
himself a terrible name: Kick-Ass. He
does pretty well for a while, but is soon jammed up again by a gang of drug
dealers. Thankfully, 11 year-old
vigilante Hit-Girl saves his ass.
Hit-Girl and her father, Big Daddy (seriously with these names), are
seeking revenge against a local kingpin and recruit Kick-Ass to assist them in
their quest.
It was fairly decent. The action sequences are great, there are some
nods to Tarantino, Moretz is hysterical as the tiny little badass, and Nic Cage
is tolerable. I haven’t read the comic
books this movie is based on, so I have no idea how it stacks up.
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