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Top Five Best and Worst Movies of Summer 2010

Nick Ondras — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 21:00:31 +0000

Summer comes to an end this weekend with Labor Day, a time for family, friends, and one final shabam to commemorate some of the greats we’ve seen this summer and some (er, a lot) of the stinkers we have as well. It’s not so difficult to grade the best due to our overall obliviousness to some of the smaller releases, so our top ten of the year will undoubtedly be much more interesting. Or maybe we’re pulling our own leg. Anyway, read on:

Best:

1. Inception: Writer-director Christopher Nolan hit an incredible high, one of the few flicks this year that had audiences and critics alike cheering. It’s mind-bending, literate, thought-provoking, and wow, was that score by Hans Zimmer dark. And hey, just think kids – you were there.

2. Toy Story 3: Another thought-provoking masterpiece, this time in animated form. Pixar’s brouhaha rounded up Woody and the gang for one last stand, blending adventurous nostalgia with enough mature craft to evoke a new look inside the heart of American youth.

3. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: Edgar Wright was three-for-three with Scott Pilgrim, adding another expertly-told fable to his collection of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. This free-kicking romp on hipster culture was sadly ignored by general crowds, dismissed as teenage trash, though fans certainly got their fill with Wright’s energetic playground.

4. Solitary Man: One of the few indies we did get a chance to check out, Soderbergh vets Brian Koppelman and David Levien’s dramedy shed light onto a black comedy by casting Michael Douglas as a spit-balling (fired) car dealer, shaking up a rich and extremely powerful film in around 90 minutes with ferocious acting and writing. Solitary Man spun a fresh rhyme by documenting scathe with the correct balance of deprecation.

5. The A-Team: It was crapped upon by, well, pretty much everybody. But if Joe Carnahan’s A-Team reboot strung a chord with you it really hit hard. Loud and accurately obnoxious, The A-Team was a silly manifesto brought to life by embracing its own audacity.

Worst:

1. The Last Airbender: Given a decent lot to work with, yet M. Night Shyamalan’s big-screen, ahem, “interpretation” of the madly-adored Nickelodeon cartoon series was unthinkable debauchery. Less a story than start-to-finish crud enhanced with dimensions that never exceeded the absolute bare minimum.

2. Jonah Hex: An alienated upbringing, Jimmy Hayward’s crapfest was made insufferably worse by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor’s screenplay. The acting by the great Josh Brolin, whatever he brought here, was drowned out by the defecation personified by a disastrous Megan Fox. It was a weeping homage to idealized female perfection that never stopped shooting itself in the foot. Or in the case of Brolin’s character, the dead skin hanging off his face.

3. The Twilight Sage: Eclipse: First off, really, do these movies have to be so damned long? In what I’d argue was the worst of the saga since the first Twilight, Eclipse channeled unnecessary chatterspeak to the extent of a Shakespearean high school production. Bleh.

4. Grown-Ups: Probably the most useless movie of the summer, Adam Sandler and Dennis Dugan’s comedy served a purpose any poor SNL skit had some twenty years back. Like a rip-off of something Tyler Perry had done, to its highest low.

5. Knight & Day: Why is there a “K” in the first word of the title? Is the ampersand a permanent stand-in for “and”? Enough said.

What were your favorites or least favorites of the summer?

Rights to ‘Googled’ Google Movie Purchased

Nick Ondras — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 09:48:30 +0000

In the vein of David Fincher’s upcoming Facebook biopic The Social Network, the rights to a Google movie have recently been purchased, according to Deadline. While Network doesn’t hit ‘til October, could this become the post-Avatar 3D craze all over again? And God’s sake, when will Peter Berg’s Battleship come and stop it from happening?

Nonetheless Groundswell Productions (they gave us Milk and The Informant) and John Morris have begun a business friendship together and bought rights to “Googled: The End of the World As We Know It” by Ken Auletta. The book hones in on Google’s two cannons Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and follows the technology they created as it rises to power. Apparently Auletta’s tell-all harps on the search engine’s impact more than it does the individual lives of its founders.

No plans have yet been made to actually turn this into a movie, and for all we know it could just end up sitting on a shelf somewhere. It’s still a mystery how The Social Network will perform with audiences, or box-office-wise as I’m guessing is the main reason behind this pick-up. Hell, I’m surprised this movie didn’t happen long before Fincher’s. Let’s line up our ducks before we count ‘em.

This Is It, People

Nick Ondras — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:24:25 +0000

Remember when Michael Jackson died in June? Scratch that; the real question should be how you couldn’t remember the death of the mega pop star. Jacko dying was the biggest thing since Obama was elected. In fact, Farrah Fawcett died that same day, but did we did anyone really seem to care or pay attention? Well, no. Not when Mr. Smooth Criminal takes the spotlight.

TV airwaves halted all programming to play his classic music videos, held interviews with random celebrities to talk about how much of an “inspiration” he was, and covered all there was about his life and legacy.

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As you probably already know, Michael Jackson was prepping for his massive “This Is It” comeback tour before he died. This was supposed to pay off his court debts and help him from losing the Neverland Ranch. Could this have launched him back to pop stardom? Well, that is subjective to discussion.

Doctors blamed his constant practicing for the upcoming tour as one of the reasons he was so weak, and eventually died. Throughout the routines, it was announced that they had filmed 120 hours of rehearsal footage for a documentary or for just pre-concert footage. The big question for M.J’s crew was: what do we do with this? An HBO special, a DVD release? But Kenny Ortega, the choreographer for Michael Jackson’s “This Is It” tour and director of all three High School Musical movies, stepped in and said that he wanted the footage to be properly taken care of. Thus, Michael Jackson’s This Is It Chromophobia movie was born.

Michael Jackson’s This Is It Not Easily Broken dvdrip Dead Poets Society video is a “compilation of interviews, rehearsals and backstage footage of Michael Jackson as he prepared for his series of sold-out shows in London.” (via IMDb The Borrowers film ) A lot of fans are wondering: what the hell is This Is It? A concert movie, a documentary, or something we’ve never even seen before? To be honest, I, too, have absolutely no idea what to expect. Yet everyone purchased tickets online or at their local movie theater in advance, outselling tickets for New Moon and Avatar. Keep in mind, this movie wasn’t even happening until a few months ago, compared to Avatar, which was ten years

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A lot of fans have been boycotting this movie, but at the same time a lot of people are probably standing in line right now. Whether you’re a Michael Jackson fan or not, you’ll probably be seeing this movie since it’s expected to be huge. I wouldn’t call myself a Jacko fan, but that doesn’t mean I’m not completely psyched for this movie. Come midnight tonight, this is the last time you’re going to see The King Of Pop doing the one thing that he loved to do most. “This Is It,” people.

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Oscar Season is (almost) Here!

Nick Ondras — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 03:04:30 +0000

Oscar Season is officially here…almost. Personally, I think that Where The Wild Things Are should win for Best Achievement in Visual Effects this year, not Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen (how I despise that movie), which is rumored to win. But this past October 23^rd, Oscar Season officially began with the release of Amelia.

Miss Congeniality movie download The Air I Breathe hd If you’re unaware of what Amelia is due to a drab marketing campaign (because again, it’s meant to win awards, not make money), it chronicles the life and career of Amelia Earhart, played by Hilary Swank; from her attempting to fly around the world, to her love life with George Putnam, played by Richard Gere in the film.

Amelia never appealed to me when I heard about it a few months ago, and I gagged even more after I saw the trailer. It looked like Oscar bait and nothing else, a movie that will live hard and be forgotten after February 2010. Although I figured that critics like Roger Ebert and A.O. Scott would drool over Mira Nair’s film and give it rave reviews. However if you paid any attention this week’s movie reviews, you’ll see that I was wrong: on poll site Rotten Tomatoes, Amelia

received a 16% rating. That’s Hilary Swank’s third-worst rated film of her career. It was rated lower than Saw VI and Astro Boy, for God’s sakes! And critics destroy Saw every year!

Mira Nair must be pissed. After all, most of her movies have been rather well-received, Monsoon Wedding Vertigo full movie

being called a “banquet for the heart.” Although Monsoon

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, and all of her other movies besides New York, I Love You, have been foreign films. She was actually asked to direct Amelia, she didn’t just choose it out of nowhere. So could Amelia and New York, I Love You’s (which was also poorly received) bad ratings a sign for Nair to return to directing indie love stories? In my opinion, yes. “Some guys just can’t handle Vegas”, as said in The Hangover, “Vegas” in this expression meaning “Hollywood”. Just look at Spike Lee.

So I guess that Oscar Season isn’t here yet, folks. Give Where The Wild Things Are another watch and check back November 6^th when The Men Who Stare At Goats download I Sell the Dead movie comes out.

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Snap Early Review of Up In the Air

Craig Kessler — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 06:30:15 +0000

From Noon Till Three

Guest Review by Travis Fantina and you can get more of his posts, rants, and more on his Travis Fantina Site.

Up in the Air’ is a very hard film to explain. Something about a guy who goes around collecting frequent flyer miles and has no personal relationships. In writing this review I was hoping to shed some new light on the plot that would make readers jump into theaters on November 25th however I can’t really. The fact is ‘Up in the Air’ just very hard to summarize (well summarize and make it sound cool) without spoiling most of the movie. Just know that I liked this movie.

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George Clooney is Ryan Bingham a corporate downsizing expert who travels the country doing a job some employers are too afraid to do: downsize. Sometimes employees cry, other times they use a string of colorful but not to original words, and occasionally they turn violent. These are a few reasons a company might hire a consultant like Ryan Bigham to do their dirty work. This job allows Bingham to remain in motion at all times making very few personal connections. In a hotel bar Bingham meets Alex (Vera Farmiga), he takes her to his room and then they part ways agreeing to meet again should their layovers ever cross ways. Bingham goes back to his corporate office for an important meeting, his boss Craig (Jason Bateman) informs him that the new hotshot Natalie (Anna Kendrick) has come up with a way to lay people off over the internet essentially making him obsolete. This greatly jeopardizes Bingham’s constant on the move lifestyle and his goal of obtaining ten million frequent flyer miles.

The film is not really about a guy trying to get ten million frequent flyer miles, it’s about the way different types of people interact with each other. Their are about six ‘main’ characters and each approach life and relationships in a very different way. So that’s really what ‘Up in the Air’ is a character study of six people, each trying to be happy and looking in different places.

‘Up in the Air’ is a well crafted character expose. The photography is not flashy but their are a lot of interesting visuals, as well as a brilliant title sequence by Shadow Play Studios (they also did ‘Thank you for Smoking’ and ‘Juno’).