Hey everyone, Jack Drees here and welcome to an all new series of reviews! Today we are going to be starting my Tom Cruise series. Why? On September 29th, “American Made” comes out in the United States, so before that film releases, I’m going to talk about three of Cruise’s prior films. Now before we dive into the first review of the series, let’s talk a little about Tom Cruise. If you ask me, I think Tom Cruise is a fine actor. You may know him nowadays from big action flicks like “Mission Impossible,” “Edge of Tomorrow,” and “Jack Reacher.” You may know him from a bunch of other films like “Collateral,” “The Outsiders,” and “Cocktail.” The man’s been nominated for three Oscars, he’s also been nominated for seven Golden Globes and ended up winning three of those seven. Today we’re gonna talk about a movie starring Cruise which gave him one of his Golden Globe nominations, he hasn’t won that one, but he was nominated. What film am I talking about? I’m talking about “The Last Samurai.” This movie came out in 2003 and it has been nominated for four Oscars, three Golden Globes, and it was AFI’s Movie of the Year. So what did I think of this? Read to find out!
“The Last Samurai” is directed by Edward Zwick, director of “Glory” and “Legends of the Fall” and stars Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe (Inception, Batman Begins), Billy Connolly (The Boondock Saints, Timeline), Timothy Spall (Chicken Run, Secrets & Lies), Tony Goldwyn (Ghost, Tarzan), and Hiroyuki Sanada Koyuki (The Wolverine, 47 Ronin). This film is about the birth of modern Japan, an American military advisor is in Japan, while he’s there, he embraces the Samurai culture.
Now I’ve watched other movies involving Samurai before, well sort of, have you guys ever heard of “Samurai Cop?” That so-called movie from 1991 that went straight to VHS? If you haven’t, it’s a movie about two cops who think they’re in “Lethal Weapon,” by that I mean they resemble Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, and they have to stop a bunch of drug dealers. What’s my problem with “Samurai Cop?” Well, pretty much everything to be honest, but one big problem is despite being called “Samurai Cop,” there’s almost nothing Samurai-esque in the movie, it’s more your traditional chases you’d see in modern-day movies, only these chases are the movie equivalent to vomit. Luckily for the “The Last Samurai,” this movie is nothing like that at all. This movie takes place in the late 19th century, and the Samurai culture itself was vanishing. I’m gonna give you some of my positives concerning this movie.
The first positive I’ll give to you is that the action in this movie was awesome. During the moments which we see massive battles it never feels bloated, it is pretty engaging, and I’ll even say the action that technically isn’t action was pretty cool to watch as well. What do I mean? Two people are swordfighting and it’s more like practice than an actual battle. I will say though, watching the big battle which you see at the end of the movie, kind of reminded me of “Braveheart,” not to say that was something that degrades the movie, it’s actually a compliment. This movie did feel like “Braveheart” at times as a whole. By that I mean it’s a good movie, but I felt I needed to pause at times. Then again, the weekend I watched this was the first weekend I had since going back to school, so whaddya know?
Another positive at times was the score. If you weren’t already aware, this movie was scored by Hans Zimmer. Before this movie, he scored “The Lion King,” “Mission: Impossible II,” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.” After this movie, he did “The Dark Knight” trilogy, “Sherlock Holmes,” and my favorite movie score of all time, “Interstellar.” Here in this movie, his score suits the atmosphere of Japan and the movie itself. It displays the right moods at the right times, and I’d definitely listen to it sometime if I have nothing better to listen to. Also, I’ll remind you this guy went on to compose the “Kung Fu Panda” trilogy, so this isn’t the only Asian type movie he’s composed for. By the way, the music in those movies is pretty great too.
Now let’s talk about Tom Cruise. He plays a character named Nathan Algren. When comparing this to other Tom Cruise performances I’ve seen, this one is rather unique. This is because when I watch other Tom Cruise movies like “Mission: Impossible” or “Edge of Tomorrow,” I think what I see from Tom Cruise delivered in those movies happens to be pretty good, but I might also think to myself, that’s Tom Cruise. Here, he was a completely different character. Sure, he wasn’t Japanese, but he played someone who doesn’t always make you think, “Oh, that’s Tom Cruise.” Granted at times, I did actually think that, but I already knew beforehand that Tom Cruise was in this movie.
One of my biggest problems with the movie is that the supporting characters are rather unmemorable, I don’t recall who they are, I don’t remember any of their names, anything like that. I remember some of them being in engaging scenes, but chances are I won’t remember a majority of them soon. I will say though, this is my first time watching “The Last Samurai,” maybe if I watch it again, I’ll become more invested in the supporting characters and get to know them a little more.
One of my personal favorite parts of the entire film was the scene when Tom Cruise gets in front of a target and forces a Japanese soldier to fire at him. This isn’t a battle, it’s more like an exercise. He’s telling the Japanese soldier to shoot him, and he’s also telling him to quickly load his weapon, he’s yelling strictly, and it’s really compelling to watch. If you want to watch it, the clip is displayed above. Overall, in terms of acting and writing, this is one of my favorite scenes in a Tom Cruise movie.
As I was researching this movie on IMDb, I came across some information worth sharing. This movie was directed by Edward Zwick and I gotta give some credit where its due. Why? The movie takes place in Japan, and it was generally well received over there. One viewer, Tomomi Katsuta, of “The Mainichi Shimbun,” a major Japanese newspaper, said that Zwick did his research, cast well-known Japanese actors, and consulted dialogue coaches in order to avoid confusion between casual and formal Japanese speech. The only problem he had with the movie is the storybook feel it had. Japanese viewers such as the one suggested here, thought of the Samurai as more corrupt. Despite flaws being picked up overtime, it’s nice to see this sort of reception for a movie like this. In a world where we got a movie called “Gods of Egypt” years later, a movie that has pretty much not one Egyptian actor in the entire runtime, it’s nice to see a movie like this.
In the end, “The Last Samurai” wasn’t as good as I was kind of expecting it to be, but that doesn’t mean it was bad. A lot of people praise this movie, in fact there’s a significance with this movie when it comes to the day May 26. If you didn’t know, the movie’s final battle takes place on May 26, which is a reason why people watch the movie on May 26. Think of it as “Star Wars Day,” only you have less content to choose from, and instead of being on the fourth of May, it’s on the twenty-sixth of May. Overall there were many aspects I was able to appreciate and while I don’t think I’ll be popping the disc in again anytime soon, I’m glad I watched it. I’m gonna give “The Last Samurai” a 7/10. Oh yeah, just a fun fact. I actually bought this movie used on Blu-Ray and its original cost was $3.99 (before taxes), but the store had everything 25% off since it was moving, so ultimately I got this for just a little over $3. That’s a good deal considering how revered this movie is by many people. Thanks for reading this review, I should let you know in at least a couple of weeks from now I’m planning on reviewing “Kingsman: The Golden Circle,” and just to let you know I’m not gonna review “Kingsman: The Secret Service” beforehand, so get that out of your mind now if you’re thinking that.
Next up in my Tom Cruise review series I’m gonna be talking about the movie “Risky Business,” I actually already started my review on that, I’m not finished, I still have to rewatch it in order to get everything I need out of it. That review will be up on Monday, September 18th so keep your eyes peeled. Stay tuned for that review, along with more reviews! Scene Before is your click to the flicks!
Hey everyone, Jack Drees here! I have to say right now, this week may be the craziest I’ve ever witnessed when it comes to comic book movie news. Nothing new is coming out this weekend, however when it comes to news, it’s absolutely insane. I’m actually gonna cover multiple segments here, however only one portion here matters more than others. I love the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s an idea, when introduced at the time, seemed original by the standards of film. It has now inspired other cinematic universes such as the “Dark Universe” from Universal, the DCEU (Detective Comics Extended Universe), and the Monsterverse Warner is focusing on at the moment. “Thor: Ragnarok,” which will be released in November, is going to be the seventeenth movie in the universe. That’s not the only future movie planned, there’s gonna be a couple of “Avengers” sequels coming up, “Ant-Man” is getting another standalone film, Captain Marvel is gonna have a movie, “Spider-Man: Homecoming” is gonna have a sequel, and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” will be happening. Speaking of “Guardians of the Galaxy,” let’s talk about that.
If you don’t know me personally, I enjoyed the first “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie. The vibe worked perfectly, the comedy landed for the most part, and it took characters that not many people, including some people who read comic books out of enthusiasm, didn’t know much about. Not many folks, until 2014, heard about Starlord, not many people knew about Gamora, they weren’t aware of Groot, they didn’t ever think about Drax, nobody traditionally thought of Rocket as a badass raccoon. What Marvel was able to do with these characters kind of amazes me. As far as their movies go, this might be their most family friendly one yet.
As much as I enjoyed the first “Guardians,” the sequel was big letdown for me. It may have been due to my hype for the film, but then again, I anticipated “Wonder Woman” and “Dunkirk” to death and look how those movies turned out. It’s by no means a bad movie, nor is it the worst in the MCU, but it is not a great movie either, it’s just passable. The humor didn’t land as much, although some worked, like the Taserface gag and the Mary Poppins joke. Some of the characters were not as cool as they were in the first movie, although the movie did get a better villain and they did improve the character of Drax in some ways.
*UNPOPULAR OPINION WARNING, FLAME SHIELD READY*
Baby Groot is by far one of the single most annoying characters I’ve seen in anything! I get he’s small, and supposed to be cute, but this film literally tries to force it down your throat! It almost reminds me of the stupid kid the lead characters have from the piece of crap they call “Sharknado!” It’s like watching YouTube, you’re watching cat videos, and the person taking the video is constantly saying look at this cat playing the piano! YOU MADE YOUR F*CKING POINT! YOU SAID IT ONCE! YOU ALREADY TOLD ME! I ALREADY KNOW! It’s like if BB-8 from “Star Wars Episode VII” was constantly shoved into random scenes just because he’s cute. And granted, the cuteness factor was there, and a lot of people see him as a cute droid, but he’s there when the plot needs him, he’s not randomly in shots just shoving jelly beans down his gullet. Wait a minute that makes no sense, droids can’t eat or drink. Also now that I think about it, trees don’t eat jelly beans either. Whatever, you probably get my point! I’m sorry if you hate me, but this is how I feel.
If you are a mega fan of the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies, both 1 & 2, and you don’t know the main man to thank, I’ll have you know the man you probably should be thanking is James Gunn, he directed and wrote the first and second films which are out right now, and he’s also working on the third one. The man definitely knows how to direct and write these movies based on how the actors deliver their lines and how well the humor plays out. Recently, he did a stream on Facebook Live, and something… …interesting came up. When he was on the livestream, a bunch of users asked some questions, and one user asked if Richard Rider/Nova would ever be put in the MCU films. At one point when answering the question, Gunn uttered this: “One of the things I’m doing with creating “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” it will take place after the next two “Avengers” movies and it will help to set up the next 10, 20 years of Marvel movies. It’s going to really expand the cosmic universe.”
That’s right, you’re probably getting at least a decade’s worth of Marvel Cinematic Universe films. How do I feel about this? While I love Marvel and I’m excited to what they have in store, I’m simultaneously worried. The Marvel Cinematic Universe began back in 2008 with “Iron Man,” since then it has expanded with many films loved by audiences everywhere. Some people still say they prefer superhero films outside the MCU such as the older “Spider-Man” films, Nolan’s “Batman” trilogy, Donner’s “Superman,” or movies in the “X-Men” franchise. We’ve had film franchises go on longer than the MCU, such as the “Bourne” series, “James Bond,” “Fast & Furious,” and “Star Wars.” Although I’m noticing that compared to these franchises, the MCU is producing movies more rapidly and when it is compared to a franchise like “Bourne,” you can tell that “Bourne” might have an intended stopping point. The MCU is basically the cinematic universe version of “The Neverending Story.” Me personally, if I had a cinematic universe, and I actually do have one in mind if I ever have the opportunity to make films in Hollywood, I would end it at a point. I’d give it a sense of finality, but I only wonder if the folks behind the MCU will ever feel the same way.
While I am concerned about the franchise going on forever and ever, allow me to address some positives. Starting off the positives, this isn’t Michael Bay’s “Transformers” nor is it “Sharknado.” Also, Marvel has clearly shown how it can make stellar movies that people want to see. A lot of their flicks have been well received by both average moviegoers and critics. When it comes to comic book fans, they do a fine job appreciating that particular audience for the most part. Some notable mistakes they made over the years has usually been with the villains. With the exception of villains like Ego from “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” or the Vulture from “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” the MCU hasn’t really featured terrific villains in their films. This is why I love “Captain America: Civil War” so much, it didn’t have a villain, it had sides, neither good or evil. Another notable flaw many people have with the MCU is in “Doctor Strange.” You may remember the Ancient One in that movie, she was played by Tilda Swinton because it’s an example of whitewashing. While the MCU may not be perfect, it certainly has a lot of likability to it. Despite saying that, I wonder how much it has left.
The MCU has been around for nine years and people still enjoy it, but what if it goes on forever and ever to a point where people begin to become tired of it? If you ask me, I’m not exactly tired of it, but I am starting to think the series might go on longer than it should. Keep in mind, Marvel is owned by Disney, the Bill Gates of movie studios. Disney basically owns us now since they have Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar, and their own animations along with those animations that are being remade into live-action form. The top 5 films of 2016 in terms of box office performance are all Disney films. “Captain America: Civil War,” “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” “Finding Dory,” “Zootopia,” and “The Jungle Book.” Right now, three of this year’s films owned by Disney are in the top 10 in terms of box office performance. Those films are “Beauty and the Beast,” “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.” I’m not counting “Spider-Man: Homecoming” here because despite how it is in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sony distributed the movie. Disney has also had successes with 2015 films like “Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens,” “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” and “Inside Out.” If you look at what Disney is doing, you may see that they’re making buttloads of money. They now own all of these things we, as viewers, know about. Although I want to make a comparison to this and a popular video game franchise you guys may know about.
Have you guys ever played the “Call of Duty” games? I don’t play as much as other people do, but I know people who play the games. If you know a bit about them, you may know that they do this thing where they release a new game every year. We’re getting Marvel movies, quicker than we’re getting “Call of Duty” games. Keep in mind, many people say that some of the older games like “Modern Warfare” and “Modern Warfare 2” rock whereas newer games like “Advanced Warfare” and “Infinite Warfare” suck. If there’s one thing I noticed, personally, it’s that I thought Marvel movies got better as they went on. the oldest Marvel Cinematic Universe movie I currently have a 10/10 for is “Iron Man 3” which was released on May 3, 2013. Then there was “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “Ant-Man,” and “Captain America: Civil War,” which is currently my favorite movie in the MCU. Also, you have to keep in mind, I don’t witness many people talking about the first “Call of Duty,” the second “Call of Duty,” anything along those lines. While it seems that a lot of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films are widely talked about today, I could tell you that when “The Avengers” came out, this is when a majority of people flocked to the theater to see these movies. Also keep in mind, this came out in 2012, the same year that “The Amazing Spider-Man” and “The Dark Knight Rises” came out. Both “The Amazing Spider-Man” and “The Dark Knight Rises” were successful at the box office, in fact in some cases, “The Dark Knight Rises” may have gotten more positive reception than “The Avengers,” the case isn’t really the same for “The Amazing Spider-Man.” Spider-Man and Batman are both argued among nerds all over the world between which is the better hero, they both get their own movie in the same year, and they are beat by “The Avengers.” Although when you think about it, it makes sense, you get more superheroes, some you may know, some you may not know, and the idea of “The Avengers,” unlike “Batman” and “Spider-Man,” hasn’t really been done much on screen. Although the “Fantastic Four” movies have more than one superhero and look how those movies turned out. However when you look back before and realize what “Spider-Man” did in terms of box office performance in 2002, such as being the only film to make $100 million in its opening weekend at the time, and how “The Dark Knight” not only won the box office in 2008, but avoided a comic book movie from having the slightest bit of childishness, this is kind of interesting to think about. The Marvel Cinematic Universe did have some successes before “The Avengers” like with the first two “Iron Man” films, and while 2011 brought “Thor” and “Captain America: The First Avenger,” they didn’t quite reach the top 10, making them get a lower score in the box office than “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1…” (sigh). Right now, if you can’t tell already, the box office isn’t a problem for the MCU, and I don’t think it will be in the future. However, I wonder about their movies in terms of quality.
There’s a saying that all good things come to an end. We all know we are going to die one day. OK, I’m not saying all people are good, just look at Adolf Hitler! You know movie franchises that have technically come to conclusions in the past? Just look at “Back to the Future,” “Jaws,” or “Revenge of the Nerds.” The people behind these movies knew when to stop, “Back to the Future” stopped at three movies suggesting that the characters’ futures are what they make them, and all three franchises according to popular opinion have never made a movie better than their first installment. You know what’s still going today? “Transformers,” “Sharknado,” “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” and “Fifty Shades.” Traditionally, these movies are not well received, however they are popular over a certain demographic. “Transformers” continues to make lots of money even though people are literally paying to see the same thing every time, “Sharknado” is on TV, but people watch it because it’s “so bad it’s good,” which I thought at first with the original, but upon rewatch it became worse, and the later installments are just plain awful, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” is popular among families and kids, including some who know about the books, and while it was fun to watch as a kid, it became worse the more I thought about it. Not to mention their newest installment, if you haven’t heard about it, may be one of the most forced sequels in movie history, and for “Fifty Shades,” while it may be popular among women and those who have read the books, it wasn’t well received because of its characters, along with the fact that it is technically “porn” and yet the movie fails to deliver on that for a lot of people. Also ladies, for those of you crushing on Jamie Dornan, who plays Christian Grey in the series, the actor says he didn’t want himself nude in the movie. If you’re gonna make a movie for women, that’s technically a porno, KNOW YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE! If you ask me, I haven’t seen any of the “Fifty Shades” movies, nor have I read the books, so I can’t really say my true thoughts about it, but I honestly don’t want to see or read it unless I have a girlfriend who wants to watch it and she feels like watching it with me, if it means I get to go to a free screening, or if someone is paying me to watch the movie. With Marvel, I can enjoy myself throughout the process of watching one of their movies, but how much longer will it take for me to not enjoy myself?
So far, two movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have been released this year, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” and “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” While I enjoyed parts of both movies, I thought both needed improvement. I said what I needed to about “Guardians 2,” but I didn’t really say much about “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” I thought they aced Peter Parker and Spider-Man for the most part, it could have been funnier, they had Iron Man in the movie but they played their cards right and kept the movie from turning into “Iron Man 4,” the AI annoyed me, and the villain was cool. I gave the movie a 7/10 in my review, and I said it would probably drop to a 6. For the record, I gave “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” a 6/10, which I also gave to “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” which was fun at times, but ultimately a disappointment. The only film I gave a lower score to in the MCU was for “Captain America: The First Avenger,” which was a 5/10. Based on this you can tell that Marvel is capable of making good movies, but every year since 2013, I’ve seen one Marvel film that is worthy of a 10/10 for me. In my top 10 MCU films, I have only one movie that is a 7/10 in my book, all the others are 8/10 at minimum. If “Thor: Ragnarok” isn’t a 10/10, then the streak I’m talking about is officially over. If you ask me, I’m somewhat excited as a Marvel movie lover for “Thor: Ragnarok,” but at the same time, worried. It looks like it could be a good movie, but the marketing makes it look like “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Now, I like “Guardians of the Galaxy,” but for a movie like this, I want a darker tone. You have Planet Hulk in this movie, it looks like there’s gonna be a lot of destruction on Asgard, and yet in the trailer they’re playing “Immigrant” by Led Zeppelin. Good song, but it makes me worried here. You can still have humor in the movie, you can still have flashy effects, and granted the effects look stunning in the trailers, but I want a darker vibe than what I’m getting when this movie comes out. Now, I’ll say if “Thor: Ragnarok” is a 9/10 or 8/10, that’d still be cool. Although if it’s a 7/10 or lower, I’d start to worry.
Also, you have to consider the fact that these movies are based on comic books, so they might be taking material from the comic books, and turning that into movie material. That’s fine, but part of me wonders, will we ever run out of good material to copy? I don’t read comic books all that much, but this is something I wonder similarly as a movie watcher. I wonder if we will stop seeing original material and start always seeing unoriginal material. Although comic books have been going on for years and we are still getting lots of new stuff, but they always do unoriginal stuff. They do stuff based on other sources, they do a new series or a spinoff with certain characters, or they might do gender or race swaps. If we want to keep these movies going, we either need to introduce new characters that haven’t been written in comic form or we need to get people writing new comic book material. This has been done before though, you guys know Harley Quinn? Her first appearance was actually in “Batman: The Animated Series.”
And if you think that comic book movies are stopping anytime soon, you’re completely under a rock. People continue to watch those movies, people keep making them, and they’re even making movies on villains, kind of like they did with “Suicide Squad.” That’s not all, Sony is coming out with a “Venom” movie in 2018 with Tom Hardy as the lead actor, and there’s also gonna be a “Joker” movie that I hear is gonna be in a different universe than the DCEU. In fact tonight, just when I thought I covered everything in this post, I took a break, thought I’d add some finishing touches a little later, ONLY TO FIND OUT MATT REEVES’S “BATMAN” MOVIE ISN’T GOING TO BE PART OF THE DCEU EITHER! What is happening? It’s becoming like “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” only instead of running out of food on an Island in the Atlantic, we’re running out of new and fresh movies quite possibly throughout the world, and instead of just having sardines to eliminate our hunger, we just have comic book films to fulfill our movie watching desires!
I love movies. I love comic book movies. I love Marvel Studios. Although at the same time, I’m concerned about its future. Maybe they’ll continue on creating original content and keep rocking it not only at the box office, not only on home video, but also in the minds of the viewers. As much as Marvel Studios makes good movies, there may be a day where it goes the way of McDonald’s, by that I mean there will be a MCU movie on every corner, and it may just be processed as opposed to crafted. Guys, I don’t think “Thor: Ragnarok” will be great, admittedly I’m excited for “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp.” If “Thor: Ragnarok” is good, there’s less of a chance I have of going into these MCU films in the future with a bit of skepticism. So I want to know, what are your thoughts on this? Also, what is a movie you want to see from Marvel Studios, but hasn’t happened yet?
Also I want to break a little announcement to you all, while I still plan to do reviews of new movies, I also want to tackle some older ones too. If you recall me doing my “Spider-Man” review series along with my Christopher Nolan review series, I’d like to let you know I’m doing another one. If you think about big action stars, I’d traditionally think about Liam Neeson (Taken, Non-Stop), Jason Statham (The Transporter, Death Race), Keanu Reeves (John Wick, The Matrix), and Vin Diesel (xXx, The Fast and the Furious). Another one I think of is someone who I’m starting a series on, that my friends is Tom Cruise. Over the years, Cruise has proven himself to be a very talented actor in many ways, and I’m gonna talk about three movies he stars in. I’m gonna be starting off with “The Last Samurai.” At some point I will include a review for “Risky Business,” I’m not sure where I’ll put it, either as my second or third review, but that will be an intention in the future. I will also be reviewing another movie Cruise is in, but I’m not sure what it is yet, you’ll find out when the review comes around! Stay tuned for those reviews, and Marvel Studios, if you are planning on continuing the universe for another 10 or 20 years, focus on the movies first, and focus on the money later. Scene Before is your click to the flicks!
“Ghost in the Shell” is directed by Rupert Sanders who also directed 2012’s “Snow White and the Huntsman” and it stars Scarlett Johanson as a character who has a human mind, but she also has an artificial body. Throughout, this character we are introduced to, who goes by the name of Major, is tasked with stopping the world’s most dangerous criminals while at the same time, she’s trying to confirm the mystery of her true identity.
For the record, this movie is not original. This is based on a manga of the same name which began back in 1989, which later had multiple anime flicks, video games, and TV shows. The first “Ghost in the Shell” movie came out in 1995 and now it is considered to be one of the greatest anime films of all time. People praise it for how it is presented visually and having watched the movie, I can totally see why. If you ask me, I don’t watch much anime, so I can’t judge whether or not this belongs with the greats. I have watched this movie in the past and enjoyed it, but I’m just getting this out. That’s not all I’ll say about this, and this will be important later in the review.
Let’s talk about the main character of Major Motoko Kusanagi. As far as character traits go, she was very similar to the character I witnessed in the 1995 movie, which is a good thing and a bad thing. I do respect this movie for relying heavily on its source material and utilizing it throughout the runtime. She has a similar personality and she looks similar (for the most part) to the character in the 1995 version.
Now, let’s get into two topics meshed together. Asia and… CONTROVERSY! What does that mean? We’re gonna be talking about North Korea. Haha, just kidding, we’re gonna be talking about Japan. What about Japan? The atomic bomb droppings at the end of World War II. Haha, just kidding again, although we are bringing Japan into this. When the “Ghost in the Shell” franchise began, it all started in Japan, so naturally, just about everything that was being made which happened to be related to the franchise is considered a Japanese product. This movie however was made as a Hollywood product from Paramount and DreamWorks. The movie also has Scarlett Johanson playing the main character, which a lot of audiences were mad about because it’s an example of whitewashing, or what is referred to as taking a character of a certain race that isn’t white and having a white person fill in the shoes of the role. This has been done in “Aloha,” with a main character named Allison Ng played by Emma Stone, in “Doctor Strange” with the Ancient One played by Tilda Swinton, and in “Gods of Egypt” with just about every character in the movie. Months ago I was surfing the web, and I came across something that said the Japanese audiences who were into this movie were shocked about the outrage. As I’m writing this review, I came across an article from The Hollywood Reporter and it features a quote from a mega manga fan named Tetsuya Kataoka. Tetsuya said “If you want a Japanese cast, then a Japanese company should make the film in Japan,” and someone else said that having a white person, while not as great as having a Japanese person, is better than having a Chinese person. As far as that statement goes, I disagree because Japanese and Chinese people somewhat look the same, but white people don’t look as similar to those two races. Granted Chinese people and Japanese people have slight differences from each other, but they’re more similar to each other than white people are to either of them. Now as far as casting anyone that is a different race than what would be expected for a certain character, is a con for me before going into a movie and I don’t care if it involves whitewashing or not. Although I will say, in general, Johanson does a fine job as Major, and if there were any white people to cast as this character, Johanson, looking back, would definitely had been a good pick.
Now I know what some of you might be thinking, “Jack, what the hell is wrong with you? Is your brain wired incorrectly? You’re only saying this because you think Scarlett is hot!” To answer that possible thought, I will say, yes, she is hot. I even point that out, maybe a little more times than necessary during my countdown of my 10 favorite Marvel Cinematic Universe films (link down below if you want to check it out). However, that’s not necessarily why I approve of this casting choice. I approve of this casting choice because of how Scarlett played the character, it made me feel like I was watching someone who was actually Japanese, it was definitely artificial, but in some ways, I bought it.
I’m not really gonna talk much about the other characters but I’ll go over some details about them. A number of these characters are also part of the source material and the casting along with the costume design is rather faithful to the franchise, and yes, there are Japanese people in this movie!
I just recently mentioned that Japanese and Chinese folks are similar to each other in many ways. You know something else? “Ghost in the Shell” from 1995 is vastly similar to “Ghost in the Shell” from 2017. This is essentially a live-action remake of the 1995 version only with a few tweaks. So in a way, it’s almost similar to what Disney is doing with a lot of their movies like “The Jungle Book” and “Cinderella.” There’s also a cliche that older material is superior to recreations of the older material, and in the case of “Ghost in the Shell,” that cliche applies here. This, to me, was especially noticeable during the action sequences, which were all eye candy, but they also looked like something I’ve witnessed before.
Basically the action sequences shown throughout the picture all resemble an action sequence we’ve gotten in the 1995 movie. I will say, the first action sequence, the one where we see Major shattering the window of a building, may be better than the sequence it resembles. The one on the right image above wasn’t as good as its counterpart which I have in mind however. The climatic battle in this movie, was somewhat equal to the climactic battle in the original, although it might lose points for that now that I think about it, there’s no originality brought to the table here. I know this is a remake, but I think some things a remake should do are either take a spin on something that could pay off, or improve flaws or imperfections that one would have with the original.
One last positive I will give is the movie’s visual effects, this feels futuristic, pretty, and glossy. The city in “Ghost in the Shell” somewhat feels like a glossier version of the city you’d see in “The Fifth Element.” Then again you can take “Star Wars Episode II” and say Coruscant, based on one scene from that movie, you’d probably know it if you watched the movie, is a glossier version of the city you’d see in “The Fifth Element,” only in that movie it was more of a rip off than anything else! Although, this does make me think of a problem that I’m hearing a lot from people concerning the DCEU films, which is that while they may have great effects and sequences, the story and characters don’t really make up for it. I thought similarly about “Ghost in the Shell,” while I did appreciate the movie visually, I couldn’t appreciate it in a lot of other ways. I tried to like Scarett Jo’s interpretation of the main character, and I liked it various ways, but I don’t think it’ll be remembered as much as what we’ve seen before her interpretation. I didn’t really find the supporting characters interesting, I was just waiting for another cool action sequence because that was the only part of the movie I felt worked so far aside from looking at visuals in general.
In the end, “Ghost of the Shell,” while visually appealing, really could have been improved on a number of other levels. The movie bored me, I may have almost fallen asleep at times, and I wouldn’t say it was worth the $30 I paid for it at the store. I will say this, I would recommend this as a test movie. What do I mean? If you purchase a new media player, like a 4K player or Blu-Ray player, or perhaps a new TV, buy this movie in a high-resolution format and just stare at the TV in awe, because this is like looking at a statue that’s incredibly clean and very well-kept, but at the same time, it’s extremely obscure and not many people would seem to know or care about what they’re looking at. I’m gonna give “Ghost in the Shell,” the live-action remake, a 4/10. This movie, to me, reminded me of when I went to see “Warcraft,” it’s eye candy, but the rest of the movie leaves a bit to be desired. One plus I will add though, out of a lot of bad movies I’ve seen, this isn’t one of those bad ones where I literally raged throughout the entire thing. For the record, I even do that during good movies like “Spider-Man: Homecoming” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.”
Thanks for reading this review, I would like to let everyone know that this weekend I will be at a convention called Terrificon. This is taking place at the convention center located inside Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, CT. There’s gonna be some celebrity guests there including some guests from TV’s “Batman,” Burt Ward (Robin) and Lee Merriweather (Catwoman), other guests include folks such as Sean Gunn (Gilmore Girls, Guardians of the Galaxy), Chris Sullivan (This is Us, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2), and Shannon Purser (Stranger Things, Riverdale). There will also be a focus on comics, a celebration of Jack Kirby’s birthday, and a tribute to the one, the only, Adam West. Or is it Adam We? If you get that reference tell me what it’s from down below, I’ll tell you whether or not it’s right, and if you’re right, I command you to pat yourself on the back, unless your hands and arms don’t work. If you see me at the convention and recognize me, don’t hesitate to say hi, I will remember to bring blue sunglasses to make myself look more distinguishable. I’ll be there all three days, August 18-20, but I’ll be at the convention center for Friday and Saturday, just a warning. I can’t wait, it’s gonna be epic! As far as other reviews go, I’m planning on seeing “The Glass Castle” sometime soon and we’ll see what else happens in the near future. Stay tuned for more reviews, and I’ll ask you, what do you think about the “Ghost in the Shell” franchise? What is your favorite edition of the manga? What is your favorite of the movie released in the franchise? What are your thoughts on the video games and the TV shows? Let me know all that down below! Scene Before is your click to the flicks!
Now before we begin my review for “Dunkirk,” I want to remind you that this movie is playing in several formats all over the world. If you want more information on that or if you want help on deciding how or where you should see the movie, I’ve got a couple links down below. The first link is to a post I did about a month ago concerning this movie, and if you aren’t satisfied with that, the second link is to a Vox article on the same topic, and personally, even though the first link is my own work, I will admit I think the Vox article does a better job on showcasing all of its information and including all of the necessary details whereas I might leave certain things out or focus on certain ideas more than others, so make your pick. Nevertheless, both of these are informative reads and don’t worry, neither of these contain spoilers for “Dunkirk.” Anyway, on with the review!
MY POST: https://scenebefore.wordpress.com/2017/06/19/why-dunkirk-must-be-seen-on-35mm-film-70mm-film-imax-70mm-film-or-imax-laser/
“Dunkirk” is directed by Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Interstellar), one of my favorite directors of all time. The movie has characters played by Fionn Whitehead (Him), Aneurin Barnard (War & Peace, Citadel), Kenneth Branagh (Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, Henry V), Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises, Mad Max: Fury Road), Mark Rylance (The BFG, Bridge of Spies), Barry Keoghan (Rebellion, ’71), Jack Lowden (Denial, The Tunnel), Tom Glynn-Carney, and Harry Styles, which if you’re a dad and you have a teenage daughter, there’s a chance to your misfortune that she probably dragged you to a concert he has performed at one point.
This movie is based on a true story which took place during World War II. Basically, the entire movie revolves around a battle which the Allied soldiers of Britain, Belgium, and France are surrounded by the Germans. At this time, the Allies are trying to flee away from the beaches and harbor of Dunkirk, France.
If there’s one thing I was anticipating about this film, perhaps near the top of list of things to anticipate in this film, it was the experience itself. This movie was shot partially with IMAX cameras and the rest was shot with standard 65mm cameras. No matter where this movie was going to be shown, it was probably gonna end up looking beautiful based on footage I witnessed before going to see this film in the theater, but if it was shown on a high quality projector, it might just be like looking at something with a naked eye. Now I saw this movie at a theater which is over an hour away from my house, it’s an IMAX theater and it’s located in Providence, RI, and I went for a number of reasons. To see the film the way Christopher Nolan intended, to see the film on film, and possibly catch details that my friends seeing this movie at a standard theater like AMC, Regal, Showcase, Carmike, Warren, Cinemark, Alamo Drafthouse, or Santikos won’t see if they actually happen to check out this movie at a theater like that. As I’m writing this review, not only do I recommend you see this movie on film, preferably on higher quality film, if you see this in digital, unless it’s IMAX probably, especially laser, you may as well be missing out on a film experience to remember. Because this may be in my top 5 (wild guess) movie experiences, based on picture and sound, I’ve ever encountered. Regardless of what you think of this movie in terms of content or story, this will definitely be something to remember based on senses. Also, if you want a link to where you can find all of the theaters playing the movie in 70mm, including IMAX, here’s a link to where you can find them, and I’ll give credit to these guys because the image displayed above showing a format comparison, that’s something I found in this link.
Before going into the theater, I’ve seen a number of a reviews for this film, and one complaint I’ve often heard is the lack of characterization in this film. Now, THAT IS TRUE, there is a lack of characterization. But you know what? I don’t f*cking care! Because believe it or not, it actually works! Let’s face it, this is a film about war, this is a film about survival. There’s action throughout the ENTIRE movie, not to mention this is based on true events. I can imagine some people talked with others during this scenario a little bit, but I think there aren’t many times when someone makes friends or just has time to chit chat when they’re in the middle of a big, loud battle of a war. Don’t get me wrong, characterization can work in movies, but not every movie needs it. And there definitely have been times where it didn’t work. Just look at the “Star Wars” prequels! I got to say, this is one of those movies I really appreciate, even though I barely know anybody’s name or much of their background aside from which side they’re on.
This paragraph is gonna focus one of my biggest fears going into this film, and then I’m gonna drift off track a bit, then we’ll get back into gear. You may be curious, what is this big fear? Well, ladies and gentlemen, that fear happened to be, Harry Styles. If you don’t know who Harry Styles is, he’s actually never acted in a movie before. He’s done few things prior to “Dunkirk” in terms of acting, but ultimately, he hasn’t really done that much. What does he typically do? Well, if you are aware of the boy band, One Direction, Styles is actually a singer-songwriter for the band. I have NO INTEREST in One Direction, in fact I’m not a teenage girl who has posters of hunks in his room. I’m a teenage boy with posters of superheroes in his room. On the topic of teenage fangirls going into this movie, many of them, based on tweets I read, were looking forward to see Styles on the big screen. In fact, when they were watching this in the theater, apparently they thought to themselves, and this is, in writing, my very own Harry Styles fangirl impression: “OMG! GIVE THAT HUNKY HARRY ALL THE OSCARS! 😍💞” Based on this evidence before going to the theater, I honestly thought this was pure fangirling, although at the same time maybe they were complimenting his performance. I’m not insinuating every Harry Styles fangirl will like something just because Harry Styles is in it, maybe some do, I don’t know, but this did sound like pure fangirling. Now I will admit, I’m a fanboy in many aspects. I’m a fanboy of “Spider-Man,” “Star Wars,” “King of the Nerds,” Christopher Nolan, IMAX, JK Simmons, “Portal,” Howie Mandel, Curtis Armstrong, Robert Carradine, Gal Gadot, and many game shows. Although as a fanboy, believe it or not, I don’t automatically fully appreciate something just because there’s something specific attached to it. I might fully appreciate something if there’s something specific DONE RIGHT attached to it. What do I mean? For “Star Wars,” something I consider done right for example is the most recent film in the franchise, “Rogue One,” and something I consider wrong in the franchise is “The Phantom Menace.” For Gal Gadot, I think she’s sexy, I love her as Wonder Woman, and I will even say she partially saved “Batman v. Superman” from being a total catastrophe, although she was in the movie “Criminal” which came out in 2016, which was rather underwhelming, she was alright in it though.
Sticking with the original topic, how was Styles in this movie? He wasn’t bad at all, as far as his performance went, fangirls, this your warning to keep your cool, it didn’t stand out. I’m not complaining when I say that, but you also have to consider who else was cast in this movie. And I’m not saying they were better, OK, I actually am saying that, but that’s not my point. My point is that you have a lot of characters in this movie, and they were mostly white males with similar hairstyles. You may as well also consider the whole characterization thing I mentioned not long ago, the fact that Harry hasn’t done acting all that much, and performances across the board had many similarities. Besides, this movie revolved around men at war. By the way, out of all the Harry Styles look-a-likes in this movie, I gotta say Fionn Whitehead probably gave the best performance out of all of them. After seeing this movie though, I will say I wouldn’t mind seeing Harry Styles in more movies. His acting is certainly better than his singing. Then again, I’ll mention, I’M TEENAGE BOY, WHAT CAN I SAY? Although I gotta say there is a performance that stood out to me.
The guy on the left, Tom Glynn-Carney played a character in this film. It may be the red sweater talking, I don’t know, but I liked his performance. It felt really authentic, I felt like I was at a doctor’s office going into some medical procedure and the doctor said to me, “Don’t worry sir, you’ll be alright,” although in reality he’s about to shove some crap inside me I can’t even describe, and probably don’t even want to describe. I’m not saying that’s how his character was in the movie, it’s just what his character, performance-wise, reminded me of.
Since I’m bringing up fears I had going into this film on this post, I’ll bring up more. Another fear I had, is the fact that the film was PG-13. This wasn’t really a huge fear of mine, but it was still there. In films containing some sort of war such as “Saving Private Ryan” or “The Patriot,” you might expect some blood, therefore contributing to the R rating. Although then again “Lord of the Rings” has a lot of war in it and yet for what I recall that barely has any blood. In fact the extended edition of “Return of the King” is actually said to have the highest body count ever recorded in a movie. After seeing this movie, the sound, the effects, the atmosphere, and the performances all felt realistic. There wasn’t much blood, I did see some, but it wasn’t all that much and it wasn’t moving. By the way, if you watch this movie, look forward to the dogfights, seeing this in full frame IMAX from first person perspective is as the kids call it now, lit. I’ll even go as far as to say that these moments in first person are actually more fun to watch than the entirety of “Hardcore Henry,” and that movie was basically in first person from beginning to end!
Speaking of the film’s highlights, Hans Zimmer scored this film. If you ask me, it’s hard to choose a favorite movie composer, however, it is easy to say which movie was composed best out of all the ones I’ve seen. That to me, would be “Interstellar,” also directed by Christopher Nolan and composed by Hans Zimmer. Now this is the seventh project these two have worked on together, and yes, I’m also including “Man of Steel” even though Nolan didn’t direct it. He did write and produce it though. I’ve seen a lot of films these two have done and I’m impressed with a lot of their work. “Dunkirk’s” soundtrack, much like others I’ve heard from Zimmer, along with all the sound I heard in this movie, made my ears have orgasms! Is the music exactly hummable? I wouldn’t say so, however if I listen to it a few times, I might have it down. Although it was awesome nevertheless. This score also does something you might hear in the “Interstellar” and “Inception” scores. If you pay close attention when watching the movie or when listening to the soundtrack, you may hear ticking and tocking. It’s almost as if it’s saying that time is not on the side of the hero. Although when it comes to displaying time, “Interstellar” does that best out of these three scores, which is saying something since the “Inception” soundtrack has a song literally called “Time.”
One of my personal favorite one word movie quotes comes from “The Matrix,” and it’s Keanu Reeves’s character of Neo saying “Whoa.” And BOY was I uttering that throughout the movie. Although when I said “whoa,” it was more of a soft exclamation than a declaration. I mentioned I love how this movie was presented in terms of clarity and how it was shot, but I also love the sound. The first bullet that goes off in this movie, literally set me up for nonstop action and motivated me for what’s to come. The sound overall felt real, especially the bombs and planes. This is just a fraction of the incredible immersion I felt from this astoundingly audible and picture perfect film.
In the end, I enjoyed the crap out of this movie. I don’t watch many war films, but this is one of those films, that was a visual experience. I’ve had many of these films which I came across throughout my lifetime. There’s “Interstellar” (YES, I’M MENTIONING IT AGAIN, I’M SORRY, IT’S THAT GOOD OF A MOVIE), “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “The Matrix,” “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” “Gravity,” “La La Land,” the entire “Lord of the Rings” saga, and “Terminator 2: Judgement Day.” There’s very little dialogue, you don’t really get to know the characters, and while many other movies or TV shows work because you get to know the characters, this movie works because you DON’T get to know the characters. The technical aspects in this movie AUTOMATICALLY make me want to run all the way back to the theater to see this again! This is one of the LOUDEST movies I’ve witnessed in my life! I want to buy the Blu-Ray, although if there’s a 4K edition I’ll probably snatch that. What else can I say except, Christopher Nolan has done it again! This is not my favorite flick from Nolan, but it is certainly some of his best work. I’m gonna give “Dunkirk” a 9/10. I’m giving this a 9 because this is a movie that I would HIGHLY recommend. Definite seal of approval from me! The characters aren’t developed, but I don’t care, because given the situations the characters are facing throughout the movie, it was enough for me to root for them. And I’ll say, this MIGHT, and I say MIGHT jump to a 10 later. It’ll probably depend on the movie’s replay value and if I pick up on any details I may have missed the first time I watched this movie, and part of me is willing to bet I did miss something. Also, PLEASE SEE THIS IN A THEATER IN THE LARGEST FORMAT POSSIBLE OR ON FILM. Don’t pirate this movie, don’t wait for Netflix, this film IS worth your money. Thanks for reading this review, as you can obviously tell, I really appreciated the movie, and right now I might put this in my top 5 best of the year. As far as upcoming reviews go, pretty soon I’m gonna try to see “Atomic Blonde” or “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.” Stay tuned for those reviews if I ever get around to them, and I hope I can get those out soon. …Wait a sec, I feel like I’m forgetting something… Oh right, that piece of crap. If you want me to see the horse’s ass I like to call “The Emoji Movie,” leave a comment with the hashtag #GOSCREWYOURSELFEMOJIMOVIE and while it’s not guaranteed I’ll see it, the chances of me seeing it will definitely increase the more users I see commenting. Leave a comment if that’s something that interests you.
Also, if you are interested in Christopher Nolan much like myself, or if you want to know my thoughts on his movies, be sure to check out my reviews for “Interstellar,” “Inception,” and “Insomnia.” The links are down below, check those out, and stay tuned for more reviews! I hope to see this movie again, hopefully in the theater, I know a theater close to my house is playing this in 70mm film and another is playing it in IMAX laser, we’ll see what happens! Scene Before is your click to the flicks!
Hey everyone, Jack Drees here! If you have read my blog at all last week, it’s possible that you may have come across my review for “Interstellar.” If you never heard of the film before or don’t know when it came out, that’s not a new release, that’s actually from 2014. I reviewed it because the guy who directed that movie, Christopher Nolan, has a new film coming out on July 21st. It’s gonna be in theaters everywhere including special presentations in various film formats. Today, we’re gonna review yet another one of his movies. But before we get into that, I want to say if you actually want to read my review for “Interstellar,” click the link down below and that will take you to the review.
Today we’re gonna be talking about one of Christopher Nolan’s earliest films, “Insomnia.” This film came out in 2002 and considered by many to be one of Christopher Nolan’s worst movies. Although based on ratings I’ve gathered for this movie, that doesn’t mean much of anything because it’s still got a good rating of 7.2 on IMDb with most of the individual ratings coming in around the 7/10 range, which can suggest that the movie’s watchable. Without further ado, let’s start the review!
“Insomnia” is as mentioned recently, is directed by Christopher Nolan, and stars Al Pacino (Scarface, The Godfather), Robin Williams (Jumanji, Aladdin), and Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry, The Gift). This film is a thriller and is about homicide detectives who are investigating the murder of a local teenager.
A couple things before we dive into this film, I have watched this movie once before, I thought it was alright but it definitely could have been better. But then I kinda remember doing two things at once (maybe, I don’t know). Although I thought I’d give it another shot because it is a Christopher Nolan movie and that is what I intend on reviewing for the next few weeks before “Dunkirk” hits theaters. Also, in case you didn’t know, this is actually a remake of a 1997 Norwegian film which has the same name as this one. I can’t really compare this movie to that one because I haven’t seen the other interpretation, but IMDb says it has an overall slightly higher score compared to the 2002 movie of 7.3/10 with most ratings coming in the 7/10 range, although it also suggests less people, at least those who use IMDb, saw the 1997 film and more saw the 2002 film. Now let’s dive into some characters, starting with Al Pacino.
In Christopher Nolan’s interpretation of “Insomnia,” I took a glance at the cast for this movie, and noticed the characters overall have different names, and I can understand that. This is based on a Norwegian film and this is kind of being directed to other audiences. Al Pacino plays a character named Will Dormer. Al Pacino is playing another lead role who occasionally uses a gun. And that’s not the only recurrence of an Al Pacino role. In fact, to even support what I said, you know how in some movies Al Pacino would do this over the top voice that sounds like Nicolas Cage if he knew which movies to actually be a part of? For example, in “Heat,” when he shouts “She got a GREAT ASS!” Yep, he does it here. Here if it were some other actor, it probably would have taken me out of the movie, but Al Pacino made it work because it’s almost like his trademark. Also, the way his character was written was rather investing throughout the film, and once it concludes, it totally works.
Next up, we’re gonna talk about Robin Williams in this movie, who gives a good performance as his character, Walter Finch. One minor complaint I have when it comes to this movie is something I noticed on the cover of my Blu-Ray I own for it, along with the poster. Robin Williams’s name is on it. And yeah, I get it, Robin Williams is a pretty big name, but he’s not really in the movie at all until the runtime approaches the second half. If Williams’s name was gonna be on the poster, I’d personally put it on the end, where Hilary Swank’s name is. After all, Hilary Swank is pretty much in the movie from beginning to end, much like Al Pacino. It reminds me of when I watched “You Can’t Have It” back in March. Rob Gronkowski, the tight end of the New England Patriots, was supposed to be in the movie, he was even in the center of one of the posters which contained a lot of characters, but he doesn’t even show up until like the final seven minutes. It just felt unnecessary and ruined a movie that while technically incompetent, still had an interesting story and a lot of likable characters. Although despite what I said Williams’s character wasn’t all that bad. When I was watching this movie for the first time almost two months ago, Walter Finch may have been my favorite character after finishing the movie. Speaking of which, let’s dive into a little more depth.
I want to talk about something I saw in the film and connect it to reality. In the movie, the murdered teen girl had a personal connection with Robin Williams’s character. Now Williams is playing a writer, he makes books. He mentions at one point, he was at a signing which the girl attended, they eventually talked, and they met a few more times after the signing. This scene actually got me thinking and made me ask a few questions to myself. Now, if you didn’t already know, one of my personal biggest idols is Curtis Armstrong, who you may know from content including “Revenge of the Nerds” and “Supernatural.” I met the guy in person before, he’s a fun dude, and personally, if I could hang around with him more, I would. After all, we have some stuff in common when it comes to our personalities. In fact, I’m actually meeting him again in just one day after this is posted. At one point, Robin Williams reveals that the girl showed him her writing when she became comfortable with that idea. For the record, she was interested in writing and a big focal point for her as a writer was poetry. He’s soon asked how the poetry was as a whole, and he replies to the person asking, saying it wasn’t good. Not long after he says the girl never knew his true thoughts about it, and he doesn’t know why he would spit something like that out of his mouth. Now I’m an aspiring screenwriter, I also enjoy writing on this blog, and I’ve been told these reviews, when it comes to my overall writing ability, have proven to be some decent material. If I wanted someone to judge me as a reviewer or as a screenwriter, I would want them to be as honest with me as possible. I would want to know if I’m the skyrocketing overlord of my craft or if I’m the pathetic ass of my craft. Although when it comes to this movie, I could understand where Walter Finch, the character played by Robin Williams, was coming from. Let’s say if I were a celebrity and I were at a convention as a special guest signing autographs and doing photo ops, I would love to meet my fans, I would love to see the stuff that they put all of their time and effort into. However, one thing I don’t want to do to my fans, is let them down. If I had a fan that came up to me at a convention, and they showed me a short review or something like that, I would love it if they’d ask for constructive criticism. I mean, heck, you guys know Doug Walker? The Nostalgia Critic? He’s at conventions all the time! If I showed him a review of mine, I’d want him to respond back to me with full honesty. I want him to tell me if it sucks, I want him to tell me if it’s awesome, I want him to tell me if it’s OK. A big thing I wondered about this movie, is what this girl was like as a person. Was she too shy to ask for constructive criticism? Did she ask for constructive criticism and never receive the truth? I’m actually curious about this. In fact, I’m even aware of my own mistakes without anyone else pointing them out. I make numerous errors on here. Here are some actual examples you may or may not have noticed from reading this blog.
Top 10 WORST Movies of 2016 “How does movie exist?!”
CORRECTION: How does this movie exist?!
“Transformers: The Last Knight” Review
(ON THE TOPIC OF CHARACTERS BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL BY PLAYING MUSIC IN SOME WAY) “I don’t recall seeing that type of humor anywhere. The closest I can say that has come to this, is during one scene from a “Family Guy” episode called “Baby, You Knock Me Out,””
CORRECTION: More than one “Family Guy” episode I witnessed was like this, “Blue Harvest” is another example.
“The Fate of the Furious” Review
“As far as other news goes, there is a TV movie coming out on HBO this Sunday, that movie is called “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” it’s based on a book by Rebecca Skloot, and focuses on the true story on the discovery of and research dedicated towards the HeLa cell, which changed cancer research forever. I MIGHT review it, I might not, I don’t even know if I’ll even see it, but if I do see it, there may be a possibility of an upcoming review concerning the film.”
CORRECTION: The movie premiered on a Saturday (By the way, I did see it, never reviewed it)
And yes, I know WordPress allows you to edit these things, at the moment I have no intentions to, because I feel I should reveal that I, am human, and I’m fallible.
Now let’s talk about Hilary Swank. She plays a character named Ellie Burr. I don’t have many complaints with this character. Some things that stood out about her is her outgoing presence and her name. And while I do think she may be the weakest of the three big names on the poster, I did enjoy her character in the movie. Although she did remind me of Optimus Prime from “Transformers,” a little bit. Weird comparison, I know. But believe me, you know how I mentioned her name stands out to me? She said her name multiple times during the movie, I mean it was necessary, but still, before she said it on multiple occasions, it almost felt like I just heard it not too long ago. You could almost dub in Optimus Prime’s voice in multiple moments of the movie and you will either hear something like “Optimus Prime,” or “My name is Optimus Prime,” or “I am Optimus Prime.” In fact, despite remembering how I technically enjoyed Hilary Swank’s character in the movie, moments containing her throughout are starting to fade from my memory.
Another minor complaint I have about this movie is the score, which is done by David Julyan, who also composed music for other Christopher Nolan flicks including “Following,” “Memento,” and “The Prestige.” I’m rather disappointed to say this because this is a Christopher Nolan movie and I usually like the scores I hear in them. At times in this movie, the score totally works and it matches perfectly with a scene, especially at the very end. But at other times, it feels like a scene should have no music whatsoever and yet there is music playing. Also, at times, the music played in certain scenes that are paced faster than others don’t really give any fast paced vibes and feel more like music that belongs in a particular segment of “Manchester by the Sea” or something.
I’ll say this and this isn’t really a spoiler or anything, but at one moment in the film, Al Pacino shoots his partner. It was kind of intense when I saw that and it felt extremely realistic given the circumstances the characters were going through. Seeing Al Pacino try to deal with this in the aftermath was rather compelling and added a bit to the overall story in terms of benefits. This leads to something else in the film that almost sounded illogical at first, but from the purpose of storytelling, it made the overall story a little more compelling than it already was.
If I have any other compliments to give towards the film, I’d say that the final shootout was awesome. I won’t go into detail, but this is one of the moments where the music (or lack of music) worked. Seeing the two sides going against each other in battle was investing and it had me glued to the screen. It was a very short fight, but it was also sweet. Some of the cinematography in this movie was pretty cool too, especially during the opening. From what I can gather, none of this film was done on a green screen, and I could definitely tell, and films like these are why I love when films are shot on location. Granted, I do enjoy all of the popcorn superhero films, but when a director wants to shoot a movie in the real world, only good things in my mind would come as a result.
In the end, “Insomnia” is definitely not Christopher Nolan’s best work, but that doesn’t mean the movie’s bad. There’s a lot to like about it. The cinematography, the characters, the performances, the editing, the dialogue. Although the film has numerous flaws, and some of them in my view, happen to be character quirks, but despite those quirks and flaws, I had a good time watching this movie. Watching this movie the second time was definitely more enjoyable than it was the first time. I’m gonna give “Insomnia” a very high 7/10. I was almost gonna give this an 8, but given time to marinate, this isn’t a movie I’d watch over and over again. Sure, it was an enjoyable ride, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t feel like something I’d be putting on in my Blu-Ray player in a week from now. Thanks for reading this review. I’m not sure if I’m gonna be seeing any movies this upcoming weekend, after all, I am going away to a family reunion. However there is a theater nearby in the town I’m staying in for a few nights, and who knows, it’s possible I could catch a movie there if there’s nothing else to do. Like, if it’s a rainy day or something.
Also, next week, I will be doing my final review in my Christopher Nolan series leading up to “Dunkirk.” That review is going to be for the 2010 flick, “Inception,” the film about a thief who is experienced in stealing ideas from others in dreams. Stay tuned for that along with more reviews! Scene Before is your click to the flicks, and before I end this post, here’s a funny line from “Insomnia.”
What has two thumbs and likes blowjobs? (POINTS TO HIMSELF WITH BOTH THUMBS) This guy! -Fred Duggar
“Spider-Man: Homecoming” is directed by Jon Watts and it has a cast including Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Robert Downey Jr., Marisa Tomei, Laura Harrier, and Zendaya. This film is the sixth standalone “Spider-Man” film to hit the big screen. You may have seen the interpretation of this web slinger once before in “Captain America: Civil War,” but ultimately, this is Spidey’s own movie, hence the name “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” The overall plot of this film involves Spidey trying to balance his life in school, while at the same time, having to take down the Vulture. Oh yeah, and Iron Man’s there too.
Going into this movie, I was pretty excited. I’m not much of a comic book junkie, but I do enjoy Spider-Man as a character, and pretty much every aspect of him resonates with me as a person. He’s a nerd, he’s smart, he’s trying to just get his life together, and he’s kind of an outcast when it comes to society despite having a number of friends. Although at the same time, I was worried, because the trailers did reveal a little more than I had hoped they would, and this movie was being advertised almost as an “Iron Man” film. I mean, you could argue that “Captain America: Civil War” qualified as an “Iron Man” film but to me, it actually worked there because part of the title is Civil War, signifying that there is a war among the Marvel heroes, and it still focused a bit on the story of Captain America and what he’s got going on during various portions of this film. If you watch the trailers for this film, you might as well think it should be called “Spider-Man: Homecoming (Featuring: Iron Man).” However, this movie isn’t really like that. Sure, Iron Man is in some of it, but it’s not like he’s taking up a good portion of the movie’s runtime.
Let’s talk about Peter Parker in this movie, now if you have watched all the other big screen “Spider-Man” flicks, you may be aware that in at least a portion of each series these flicks are part of, Peter’s a teenager in high school. That’s no different here in this movie. Parker establishes at one point in the movie that he’s 15 years old. Why do I mention this? Well, one thing people point out about the other flicks, is that Parker is being played by someone pretending to be a teenager, but they’re really in their twenties. For the record, Tom Holland, the guy playing this interpretation of Spidey, is actually 21 right now. I would imagined he would have been 19 and 20 throughout the process of filming this movie. After all he was 19 when “Captain America: Civil War” came out. So while it is not exactly age accurate, it is closer to being age accurate than the past Spider-Men we’ve received. Now, I gotta say, I have nothing really terrible to say about Tom Holland as Spider-Man, at times, when he’s in the suit, he reminded me of Andrew Garfield’s interpretation of Spider-Man. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, I liked Garfield’s interpretation. It was like the comics, he had all sorts of technology, he had some quips, which we’re gonna get to. Speaking of Andrew Garfield, I mentioned I had some cons with his interpretation as Peter Parker. I can’t say the same for Tom Holland. It was never awkward, it was fluid, and it felt like I was watching an actual nerd at times. Some of this is shown through his various complications he’s received through his personal life. Speaking of his personal life, let’s talk about one of Peter’s friends.
One character in this movie goes by the name of Ned Leeds, he was played by Jacob Batalon, and there was a point in this movie where I wanted some sort of technology that existed which could allow me to jump into a movie’s universe. I could go into this one, find Ned, and give him the finger! I mean, at times, I liked his character, he was a nerd like me, but there were times in this movie where it almost sounded like he was jacked up on caffeine and he was just, I don’t know how to describe him. Simply put, he was annoying. He eventually finds out Peter is Spider-Man, not a spoiler, it was shown in the advertising, and after that, he starts asking all of these questions, and it’s just too much to handle.
Let’s talk about Peter’s love interest in the movie. In Raimi’s trilogy, the love interest was Mary Jane Watson, played by Kirsten Dunst. In Marc Webb’s films, the love interest was Gwen Stacy, played by Emma Stone. In this universe, the love interest is Liz Allan, played by Laura Herrier. If you remember before this movie came out, rumors were going around saying the love interest in this movie was going to be Mary Jane, played by Zendeya (Shake It Up, K.C Undercover). However, none of that’s true. Sure, Zendeya’s in the movie, but she is neither the love interest, nor is she Mary Jane. Zendeya actually plays a character named Michelle, although at one point she does say people call her “MJ.” Anyway, back to Liz. When it comes to all of the love interests in every “Spider-Man” series we’ve gotten so far, I must say the relationship between her and Peter may be the most authentic. Is it my favorite? I don’t know, but in terms of coming close to a real relationship, this is something Peter and Liz have going for each other.
Now let’s get to where Marvel usually leaves a bit to be desired, the villain. In this movie, the villain is the Vulture. He’s played by Michael Keaton which I actually find rather interesting considering how he once played Batman. He’s one of the better villains I’ve seen Marvel put out recently. He’s not the best Spider-Man villain I’ve seen in all of cinema, that’s a close call between Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock and Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin. His relationship with Peter in this movie is interesting, he was almost terrifying at times, and his motivation was pretty clear.
Going into this film, I knew about this, but Happy Hogan (left), played by Jon Faverau, is also in here. What I didn’t expect is how much of a crucial role he’d have in the film as a whole. I’m not against it or anything, I’m just saying. Overall, I had no major problems with him, although he pretty much did the same actions as Tony Stark throughout the movie so there’s not too much separating the two characters in that sort of aspect. The two were basically mentors to Peter. The relationship between Peter and Tony was a bit more prominent, but there was a relationship between Peter and Happy too.
I want to talk about the movie’s screenplay and how it was presented. Multiple people wrote this movie, and while I do think they did a fine job, it could have been better. I’ll just put it this way. In “Captain America: Civil War,” Spider-Man, at least in my opinion, was the best part of the movie. Why? Pretty much every single line of dialogue uttered by him, mainly during the big throwdown at the airport, was comedy gold. Almost every line from Spidey was a quip, and they were all hysterical! Sure, you get some chuckle-worthy quips here, but nowhere near as good as “Captain America: Civil War.” And this kind of sucks because you have an entire movie dedicated to Spidey, as opposed to a movie that has him for about ten or so minutes. Now, if you read my reviews, you may be thinking I’m an idiot, because I happen to revere Tobey Maguire’s Spidey and I mentioned before that he doesn’t give too many quips and it works for him. Here’s the thing, it was established in “Captain America: Civil War” with this Spider-Man that he’s a s*it-talker. These are two different universes.
On the topic of humor, there was this one line given in the movie. A bunch of people are going on a bus, I honestly can’t recall who said this, it could’ve been Peter, I don’t know. But they’re all headed to Washington DC for Nationals, and one person talks about protesting and that’s a reason why they’re on this bus to DC, this is followed by a reply from someone else saying that protesting is patriotic. When I heard that, I couldn’t help but think about the following ideas. 1: This was one of the later days of shooting and Trump was in office. 2: The writers pretty much predicted Donald Trump would win and they had the balls to write this. 3: This may be anti-Trump propaganda. 4: This could have been a reshoot just to get that line in because Trump was in office and the people behind this movie wanted to insert a joke per se. I don’t know, but this almost sounds like the movie just wanted to bash against Donald Trump. I’m not against bashing Donald Trump, but that line was cringe-worthy and just all around forced.
Another problem I have with this movie involves Spider-Man’s suit. Tony Stark has a form of control over it, which yeah, it’s almost in the same way you operate a kid’s bike. That’s fine and all, but the problem with that is, at one point, Peter turns it off. Yes, that’s a spoiler, but I assure you, it very likely won’t affect much of your experience watching this movie. The thing I consider to be wrong with this is how the suit operates when turned off. There’s this artificial intelligence thingy inside the suit essentially, and it’s pretty much the Spider-Man equivalent to JARVIS. The mode Peter turns off is referred to as Training Wheels. Peter and Tony never get into an argument over this, but that’s not worth talking about. What I do feel like talking about is the fact that Spider-Man has an assistant in his suit, it’s basically helping him. It’s giving him advice on all sorts of tactics and stuff like that. If you have a mode called Training Wheels, wouldn’t that have the voice? Spider-Man has to figure out everything on his own without that voice. I mean, you could argue that the mode is called training wheels because Spider-Man doesn’t have access to all of the advanced s*it. But even with that, how does this resolve the artificial intelligence problem? Let’s look at it this way, there’s a sequence in “Iron Man 3” where a bunch of people are falling out of a plane and Iron Man has to save them. He has JARVIS who’s actually able to assist him. He asks JARVIS how many people are in the air, JARVIS replies saying a number somewhere in the teens, I believe it was thirteen. Tony then asks how many people he could carry, JARVIS responds telling him he can only carry four people. Tony is able to use his artificial intelligence to his own benefit and Spider-Man can’t, because, it’s too advanced for him. That’s like telling a student that he or she can’t refer to a textbook when they’re doing their homework.
Speaking of artifical intelligence problems, there’s more. At one point in the movie, Spidey actually tells her about Liz, and how he feels about her. Now, I won’t get super-spoilery, it might be minor-spoilery, but it’s not gonna affect much of your experience. Peter Parker actually TELLS her about Liz, but at no point does it reveal Peter SHOWING pictures of Liz or anything like that. At one point later in the movie, I won’t say when, the AI says that Spider-Man should kiss her. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT SHE LOOKS LIKE! WHY ARE YOU SAYING ALL OF THIS CRAP?!
One thing I have a very minor problem with is the movie’s title. It’s called “Spider-Man: Homecoming” and based on the content presented in the movie, it’s called that for a reason. During the movie, there’s this homecoming dance, but that barely has anything to do with the movie. If you want a better title, I’d go with “Spectacular Spider-Man,” “Spider-Man: The Inspired Hero,” “The Web Slinging Spider-Man,” “Spider-Man: Rise of the Vulture,” or “Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.” As far as other complaints go, I was going to say there was one point which one of Iron Man’s suits come in and rescues Peter from an incident, and I began to question how it even knew where Peter was, but another part of me says that Tony might be tracking Peter and it happens to be something movie isn’t telling me, so I’m wondering if that complaint will either stand or fall.
In the end, “Spider-Man: Homecoming” is somewhat fun, but overall, it could have been a much better “Spider-Man” experience. There were some things I liked in the movie, and quite a few things I didn’t like in the movie. I haven’t even talked about Aunt May, I’ll say she was average. Certainly better than the last Aunt May we had. Considering how “Spider-Man” was established in “Captain America: Civil War,” this film was rather disappointing. By the way, if you don’t know my thoughts on “Spider-Man 3,” I believe it gets too much hate, and honestly, when compared to “Spider-Man 3,” I’d actually rather watch that instead of “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” Sorry guys, this is just how I feel. I’m gonna give “Spider-Man: Homecoming” a rather low 7/10. This might drop to a 6 sometime in the future, I’m honestly not sure. This film had a lot of good things about it. The high school scenes felt rather authentic, the villain was great by Marvel standards, I liked Tom Holland, but he was given better dialogue in “Captain America: Civil War.” Oh yeah, and Ned is just a chatterbox that I wanted to punch in the face. I may be judging this film rather harshly, but the thing is, this is Marvel Studios, who are usually known for making good movies, nine of them being at least 8/10 in my book, so this ultimately somewhat let me down. Sure, Sony was involved, but Marvel Studios collaborated so I feel something like this is worth mentioning.
Thanks for reading this review, Christopher Nolan’s newest movie, “Dunkirk,” comes out in two weeks, so right now I’m doing a series of reviews dedicated to past Christopher Nolan films, this week I reviewed “Interstellar,” I haven’t made a final decision on what my next review should be, but you’ll see what I decided on when I finish the review. Although if you do want to check out my review for “Interstellar,” you’ll either see an icon that can take you to the review, or that’ll be the post below this one. Also, since this is a review for “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” I’ll have links down below to all of my other “Spider-Man” reviews. Check those out if you’re interested, I had fun making them, and I hope you have as much fun reading them. Stay tuned for more reviews! Scene Before is your click to the flicks!
“The Amazing Spider-Man 2” is directed by Marc Webb, who also directed the first “Amazing Spider-Man” film, and stars Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx, and Dane DaHaan in the fifth live-action “Spider-Man” film brought to the big screen. This film continues the story of Peter Parker in what is being called, according to all the movie’s marketing, “his greatest battle.” …Honestly it’s not. His greatest battle happened in 2004 in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man 2.” He has to stop the evil Electro, while at the same time, he regroups with an old friend, Harry Osborn, the son of Norman, whose name was mentioned in the last movie, but has a much bigger importance in this movie. Meanwhile, he has to balance all of that with his relationship with Gwen Stacy.
The year before this movie came out, that’s when I first aspired to make my own movies in Hollywood, that’s also when I started to look at all sorts of film news regarding films that come out long from the day its announced. This was one of those films I was really looking forward to. “The Amazing Spider-Man” wasn’t the best Spidey flick I’ve seen, but it didn’t mean I lacked faith in its then upcoming sequel. When I first saw the first trailer for it, my excitement grew, and before it came out, it was my most anticipated film of 2014 right below the final “Hobbit” film. I liked the film when I first saw it, but as time passed, the film went from being good, to just being OK. Before watching this film again, I wondered if this opinion would change. So how was the experience of rewatching this movie? It was worse than I thought it would be. There were some cool moments, but this experience of rewatching this movie, was surprisingly boring and surprisingly almost anger-inducing. So much crap is happening in this movie that it isn’t even funny! You think a lot of crap happens in “Batman v. Superman?” A lot of the crap you see that movie, at least in my book, PAYS OFF! This movie almost seems to never know what it ultimately wants to be! It’s just a bunch of tones combining together in one product! It’s like putting peanut butter on pizza. Peanut butter is an unthinkable pizza topping and even if your friends call you boring for doing so, you’re probably better off ordering cheese pizza. Which reminds me, hilariously enough, this movie is full of cheese.
Andrew Garfield returns in this movie as Peter Parker, and when I compare Andrew Garfield with Tobey Maguire from Raimi’s trilogy, I do think there are some things I like better one way as opposed to the other. One pro Garfield has compared to Maguire is his age. He was a bit younger than Tobey when playing Peter in each of their first “Spider-Man” movies and he was also younger than Tobey was when they were doing their own second installments. Another pro Garfield has is his line delivery. OK, well, this isn’t entirely directed towards Garfield as an actor, nor is it directed towards Maguire, it’s more towards the writing. Garfield’s interpretation of “Spider-Man” is slightly more faithful to its source material. What do I mean? Garfield’s Spidey gives more quips as opposed to Maguire’s. Sure, Maguire did that too, but not as much. Although as Peter Parker, I think the better interpretation goes to Maguire. It was believable, it showed how much of a nerd he was, and it wasn’t as awkward. OK, you have every right to bring up some segments in “Spider-Man 3” which I consider understandable. Speaking of faithfulness to the source material, Spidey has web shooters. I personally prefer Spidey shooting webs out of his wrists simply because believe it or not, it sounds more practical. You have this high schooler, you have no verification that he or his family is rich, and now he’s making all of this technology that could be costing a lot of money. The creator of “Spider-Man,” Stan Lee, actually has a criticism for all of this. He likes the web shooters because at any point Spidey could run out of fluid and he’s forced to rely on his wits. By the way, Stan, Stanny, Stan by me, Superstan, if you’re reading this, which you probably aren’t, because you’re probably at a convention right now or something, I need you to rewatch Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man 2.” Spider-Man doesn’t exactly run out of fluid, but he has trouble producing it, which eventually leads to him losing his powers, I honestly think that’s better, but you do you. Also, from my memory, between the two films in Marc Webb’s Spidey series, Spidey never runs out of fluid. One of his web shooters becomes disabled, but he never runs out of fluid. If you ask me, after watching every “Spider-Man” film brought to the big screen that exists today, I’ve come to the conclusion that Tobey Maguire is my preferred “Spider-Man.” He may not be as funny, but he’s extremely relatable, I’m able to care about him, and his interpretation may be arguably the most realistic interpretation of a superhero I’ve ever seen.
Emma Stone also returns in this movie, and she once again plays Gwen Stacy. One key difference between her character compared to the love interest in Raimi’s trilogy, Mary Jane, is that Gwen is never a damsel in distress. Now, some of you might be getting tired of that sort of thing, and believe me, I don’t mind Gwen as a character being someone who’s able to stand up for herself, but at the same time, it makes her a dumbass, we’ll get to that in a second, but let’s talk about her in the beginning of the movie. We first see her in this movie graduating high school. She’s the valedictorian and she gives this speech that is supposed to have a huge meaning in the movie as a whole, Peter comes in after trying to complete the mission he’s taking on at the movie’s opening, he kisses Gwen on the lips. Kind of cringeworthy if you ask me. Although we do get a pretty good Stan Lee cameo. The relationship between Peter and Gwen is kind of off and on. They start off as boyfriend and girlfriend, they have an awkward conversation, awkward mainly for me, the viewer, which then leads to the two breaking up. Peter then stalks Gwen Stacy, which he later admits, so yeah, basically this attempt at making a “Spider-Man” movie turned into the superhero version of “Twilight” for a few seconds… Weird. The two eventually become friends, then it’s almost like they become friends with benefits. No, they don’t have sex, they kiss once in a closet, so you can probably call them friends with minor benefits. Then the two reunite as boyfriend and girlfriend just before Gwen is supposed to leave on a plane to the United Kingdom because she just got accepted to Oxford and they have summer classes. It’s a very rocky relationship, kind of like this movie. Oh, and you know how I mentioned when it comes to the character of Spidey in this series compared to the previous one that they are slightly more faithful to the comics? Well, in terms of faithfulness, this movie’s final act is faithful to Gwen Stacy too. Right before the big bloated electric battle begins during the end of the movie, you can see Gwen and if you know anything about the comics, and you watch this movie, just look at her outfit. It may look familiar to you. Some of you might be asking why I’m bringing this up. Well, in this movie, spoiler alert, I said there were spoilers in the title of the post, so if you are at this point without having seen the movie and you care so much, only blame yourself, Gwen dies. When she dies, she’s actually wearing the same exact outfit she wore when she died in the comics. Another thing I actually just found out, is that when she dies, it’s in a clock tower, and when that happens, it says 1:21. And if you read the comics, Gwen dies in issue 121. On the topic of Gwen, let’s talk about some other things.
One thing I want to bring up is the character of Captain Stacy, who is also Gwen’s father, which if you saw the movie which came out before this one, he dies in that. Before he dies, he says the words displayed in the image above. Peter actually sees Gwen Stacy’s dad throughout the film, not literally, because he’s dead, but it’s almost as if Captain Stacy is in front of him. Peter disobeying Captain Stacy’s dying words and seeing Captain Stacy at the end of the movie should have been a sign for him that Gwen could get in trouble. After seeing that, I wonder how obvious in terms of foreshadowing this would be to people. During my first few watches, I don’t remember seeing it all that much until recently. Although I probably did notice it and it just slipped from my memory because it’s been a while since I saw this movie. Also, I want to know, if you saw the movie, did you notice this? And what are your thoughts on it? I want to know in the comments.
When Gwen Stacy shows up as Spider-Man is fighting around the power grid, she says she must be here because she knows how this grid operates and that sort of thing, but she has to make it clear that being here is “her choice.” Listen, I get if you want a progressive female character that girls can look up to in a movie, but the problem here is, Gwen doing this, is just idiotic by the standards of common sense. “Highly Illogical,” as Spock puts it. Gwen has no superpowers, so it would be like me, a guy who hasn’t played a game of ice hockey in his life, suddenly joining the NHL. In fact, when Gwen dies, I blame her more than Peter. I mean, sure, when she died it was sad, but if you remember the quote from Captain Stacy which was recently brought up, Spidey tried to leave Gwen out of it, but she forced herself in. Sure, Spidey failed at getting rid of Gwen at that moment, but still. How could he? Maybe some blame can go towards the web slinger for failing, but Gwen nevertheless brought herself in.
On a different subject, let’s talk about some bad guys. One of the biggest problems people have with this film are the villains. If you remember “Spider-Man 3” from 2007, you may recall that people disliked it partially due to the movie having three villains (New Goblin, Sandman, and Venom). In this movie, the main villain according to the film’s marketing was Electro (right). However, Spider-Man interacts with certain people in this movie who potentially become villains, including the Green Goblin (middle), and the Rhino (left). So in a way, the “Spider-Man 3” problem exists in this movie. This problem is overall done differently, but nevertheless, it exists. Speaking of which, let’s talk about those villains.
Starting off with Electro, his character is played by Jamie Foxx and overall I thought the buildup for his character, going from average person to villain was very compelling and in a way, I was able to understand how he felt at certain points of the movie. At the beginning of the movie, Spider-Man is going around the city trying to complete an objective, and there’s this guy named Max. He’s going around the city and all of these blueprints he’s carrying fall out of his hands. Spidey lends a helping hand to him regarding the blueprints and he says that Max is Spidey’s “eyes and ears.” Max throughout the first act is treated rather horribly by those he works with, especially considering it is his birthday. As far as other positives go, I really liked the first fight sequence between Spidey and Max in Times Square. At times it is full of CGI, much like another portion of the movie that I bet you might predict I’m thinking of, but still, I enjoyed it. Speaking of CGI, there was this one sequence when Electro was blasting this amazingly massive sparkle wave throughout Times Square, that certainly did a lot of damage. Despite all of what I said so far, I do have some criticisms. Electro feels like a superhuman whose powers give you the will to do anything. At times, it’s almost as if the screenwriter needed a scene to make sense so he’d put in a power we have yet to witness from Electro and it just feels absurd. In fact, there’s one point where we see him, and he’s wearing nothing but boxer shorts. I mean, kids watch these movies so you can’t show any penises, but really?! Just do some closeups on Electro and cut his legs off! Might look weird in terms of presentation but it might make Electro slightly more convincing. Either that or crop the image or something!
Speaking of awful, let’s go onto Dane Dahaan. In this movie, he’s portraying the character of Harry Osborn, and if you know anything about “Spider-Man,” he’s the son of Norman Osborn. You may remember from the last movie, there was a subplot involving Norman and how he was gonna die soon. You barely saw his character during the movie, but still, that plot was a thing. Turns out in this movie, he actually has more screentime. How much screentime in total? Probably less than a few minutes. Norman actually ends up dying moments after talking to Harry and it turns out that the disease that was the killer for Norman happened to be genetic. Interestingly enough, Harry is getting this disease at a much quicker rate than Norman. This leads into a subplot that just got duller by the second. This subplot involves Harry getting a cure for himself. Eventually, he says that he needs Spider-Man’s blood. Part of this is based on research done by Peter’s father and the fact that Spider-Man himself was bitten by a Spider. Now let’s drift away from that and talk about Dane DaHaan himself. I haven’t watched much of Dane DaHaan’s work, but I hear he’s gonna be in “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” a movie I’m really looking forward to. Although it comes out the same day as “Dunkirk” so I’m gonna put “Valerian” behind that on my must see list. I don’t know how well or poor he does in other movies, but in this movie, Dane DaHaan may have given what I consider to be part of my top 10 worst performances of all time. Dane starts out in this movie as if he were a slow talker. Like, imagine if “Seinfeld” were soft rebooted today and the original cast came back to do more episodes, and if they did one involving an over-dramatic slow talker, this would be a character if the episode had a really dark vibe. Later on, it becomes better, but it’s really weird. Plus the way Harry looks as the Green Goblin is creepy, but I almost don’t buy it for some reason. Anyone else feel that way?
This paragraph is gonna focus on Aleksei Sytsevich, otherwise known as Rhino. This character is played by Paul Giamatti, a fairly respected actor from films like “Saving Private Ryan,” “Cinderella Man,” and “Saving Mr. Banks.” Much like Dane DaHaan in this film, this guy’s performance is weak. I personally like Giamatti’s performance as opposed to DaHaan’s, but that doesn’t say much because watching his performance was almost like watching a cartoon. The first few seconds of him on screen, he’s just obnoxiously yelling random mumbo jumbo that I guess can also be referred to as words, this is all being done while he’s driving a truck and the camera is just focusing on him as he’s shouting. You can argue that Spider-Man acts like a cartoon in this movie with those endless quips he’s got, but I can buy into it. If this was a voiceover role in an animation I might be a little bit more forgiving, but it doesn’t work in a live-action film like this.
Let me ask you something, have you ever seen a movie that you thought was so bad it was good? Common examples among people for this include: “Batman & Robin,” “The Room,” “Troll 2,” “Birdemic,” “Sharknado,” or “Nicolas Cage: The Movie,” yes, that’s not a real movie but if you know who Nicolas Cage is and follow his work you’d most certainly get my point. If “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” qualifies to be that sort of film, it does by a hair, at least that’s how I feel for now, but I do think there are more moments in this movie that can make this film hysterically bad compared to “Spider-Man 3.” I can actually ENJOY “Spider-Man 3” compared to this piece of crap! Aside from the future meme of Paul Giamatti’s performance in this movie, one of my personal favorite examples of this movie’s plethora of hilariously awful moments include this one scene where Spider-Man is going up against Electro. So the two are fighting in this CGI-infested battle, I mean, it’s a cliche in superhero movie climaxes so whaddaya expect? All of sudden, Electro flies from one structure of the grid to another, and from each structure to the next, is one syllable from “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Hearing it is funny enough, but it’s also funny to hear Spidey talking about it saying “I hate this song!” By the way, that’s not the only time “Itsy Bitsy Spider” was used in a “Spider-Man” movie. It was used in the finale of Sam Raimi’s first “Spider-Man” movie from 2002. Yeah, the Green Goblin was on his glider and he began singing, “The Itsy Bitsy Spider went up the water spout. Down came the goblin and took the spider out.” If these guys wanted to bring any more hilarity to the table, they should have put in “Boris the Spider” by The Who somewhere! I feel like I should talk about more of these, so you know what? I’m gonna talk about more of these.
There’s this one moment where Peter and Gwen are talking, they’re thinking of just being friends. At one point, Peter thinks of developing some ground rules now that they are friends. One of them is that Gwen needs to laugh differently than she usually would. So at one point she gives off this really corny laugh and it’s almost like listening to a female version of the Joker or the Green Goblin. In fact, Harry shouldn’t be the Green Goblin in this movie, Gwen should (laughs normally, not at all like Gwen).
This next moment isn’t exactly hilariously awful, it’s just… awful. Part of the movie is devoted to Peter finding the truth behind what happened to his birthparents. Some of it feels awkward, some of it feels like it wasn’t worth hearing, and this moment, just feels… insane. There is this bag that is shown at the beginning of the film, it’s ignored until somewhere beyond the halfway point. It had all of Peter’s father’s stuff inside. I don’t even know if I’m gonna end up getting the entirety of this information right, but this movie doesn’t feel right, so this movie and I may as well call it even. One of Peter’s father’s items was a calculator. Peter ends up breaking this calculator and inside it happens to have some subway tokens. Peter all of sudden starts doing some research and heads to the area which this subway is located. So he’s in this underground station, there’s a gateway where you put in your token, Peter puts one in and he goes through the gate, there’s no train on the tracks. Turns out there’s a train is underground! Peter actually pushes a wall in order to bring it up! What the s*it?! What idiot wrote this?! Who thought of this?! Inside there is actually a computer that contains a video Richard Parker, Peter’s father, made. Just… why?! This is f*cking New York f*cking City, not Smurf Village!
I want to talk about the score in this movie. Thus far, I’ve mentioned that I enjoyed every single score in a “Spider-Man” film I reviewed. This film, is inferior to the others in terms of that. I’ve likely heard less impressive scores throughout my life, but this film is the worst of the “Spider-Man” movies when it comes to the score. The music in this film was done by Hans Zimmer, one of my all time favorite movie composers. He’s also had experience with making scores for superhero movies prior to this one. If you watched Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy, he did each one of those movies. He even did my favorite movie score, which is in “Interstellar,” a movie that came out six months after this movie. If you watch this movie and that movie, you can tell the same guy did both scores because they sound very similar at certain points. The biggest problem I have with this score, is this dubstep theme he did for Electro. I’ve listened to the theme on it’s own and I don’t exactly mind the music, as music, it’s fun to listen to. But when you place it in this movie, it just doesn’t work. My suggestion is probably putting this theme in the credits, which by the way, we’re gonna get to. There were some likable moments in the score, but in the end, it cannot even come close to rivaling Danny Elfman’s scores in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” trilogy.
Oh yeah, let’s talk about the ending of this movie, it sucks! It all starts out with a sinister six teaser, then it continues to a point which the public wonders where Spider-Man is, then Spidey is in the city, he’s about to take down Rhino, a villain you may know from the comics. He was shown in the trailer and there’s this one shot that looked pretty cool in it, the shot was shown in the movie, and as soon as they start fighting, the movie’s over! This ending might be disappointing to a lot of people, but a small shred of disappointment might be added if you were watching the trailer and were looking forward to that.
Now let’s dive into the movie’s end credits, because there is an end credits scene worth talking about. And just a reminder to you all, I wouldn’t be saying this to you if I were reviewing the movie back in 2014. I might point out that there is an end credit scene, but that’s pretty much all I’d say. But I want to bring a little more depth to the table. I still recall the first time I saw this movie, it was a sold out IMAX showing, or should I say lie-MAX because it was shown in IMAX digital (I’ve ranted about it more than once). There were about 500 people in the theater. Once the movie was over, a good number of them, including me, actually stayed for the credits. So we’re watching, throughout there is this song by Alicia Keys playing called “It’s On Again.” That song comes to an end, and we see this flashing, then we are cut to a door with an X on it, that signifies that we are getting a scene related to “X-Men,” which does make sense because “X-Men: Days of Future Past” has yet to come out and it was going to be in theaters soon. Once that’s over, we go back to credits, and throughout there are no other scenes. Now just a reminder to you all, I own the Blu-Ray for this film. It also comes with a DVD and digital download copy code so you can watch the movie digitally. I watched the Blu-Ray version in preparation for this review, and that was not the only time I watched the movie in that specific format. On the Blu-Ray, and this can also give a little suggestion to other home video formats as well, the end credit scene isn’t there! Now, “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” is a Sony film, and FOX owns the rights to the “X-Men” movies, so putting that scene in this movie is a little bit out of the ordinary. If that clip existed solely for the sake of promoting “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” a movie which came out three weeks after this one, I get it, but removing it entirely from the film later on is just wrong in my book! There are some people who enjoyed that in the theater and may have been looking forward to watch it again at home, but they don’t get to see it! I wonder if one day there will be another edition of “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” released on home video and it will be subtitled “The Theatrical Cut,” and that cut will feature the “X-Men” end credit scene. For those of you who think I’m creating fake news and you plan to call out on me like Donald Trump, I have video proof, and I’ll mention once again, I WAS AT THE THEATER, so I saw something that maybe you didn’t. There is another video of this I found on YouTube that may have better quality, but I’m posting this video you’re seeing up above because in case you can’t tell, that was taken by someone in a movie theater, which was the only way you could really watch this scene. Also, if it looks kinda weird, that’s because the presentation was in 3D, quite possibly IMAX 3D.
In the end, my thoughts on “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” has changed quite a bit from what they were last time I thought about it. Last time I thought about it, I thought it was just OK, but now it’s sadly worse than that. The “X-Men” thing won’t affect my score, but everything else will. This movie is nothing but a bunch of scenes that are randomly placed together. Peter Parker was awkward, Gwen Stacy was stupid towards the end of the movie, there were too many subplots, Aunt May was rather annoying, there’s one moment from the start of the film that comes to mind when I say this, the script almost felt like it was written by Akiva Goldsman, the writer of “Batman & Robin,” Paul Giamatti is basically the Heavy from “Team Fortress 2,” and Dane DaHaan, just, why? Why Dane DaHaan? Why did this happen? If you watch this movie, you might have some fun watching it, but ultimately, if what you’re looking for is a good “Spider-Man” movie, watch “Spider-Man” from 2002 or “Spider-Man 2” from 2004. A couple last things before I give my rating, this movie has a good chunk of deleted scenes. Including a moment when Peter meets his father in person and the introduction of Mary Jane Watson played by Shailene Woodley (Divergent, The Secret Life of the American Teenager). This movie as a final product is the longest “Spider-Man” film ever made. If these scenes were included, the final product would have only been longer. I’m gonna give “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” a 3/10. For the record, I actually gave “The Amazing Spider-Man” a higher verdict, but in the end, I’d probably much rather watch this movie. Why? It may not be as well crafted as a film, but I can still enjoy some of the goofiness it has to offer. Not to mention, “The Amazing Spider-Man” is essentially something the world has seen before in “Spider-Man” from 2002, which was a better flick, this however is a different movie. Thanks for reading this review and I can now declare that my series of reviews dedicated to past “Spider-Man” movies is over. I want to know, if there is a series of film reviews you want me to do, what would it be? Right now I think I have one in mind. In a few weeks, the movie “Dunkirk” comes out, and that is a film directed by Christopher Nolan. Maybe before that, I should do some of his films from the past. Maybe I could do “Inception,” “Interstellar,” “Memento,” “Insomnia,” or his “Dark Knight” trilogy. This isn’t official, but I’m just saying I might keep it in mind. We’ll see what happens. Also, what is your favorite “Spider-Man” film? Mine’s “Spider-Man 2” by the way. And no, “Captain America: Civil War” doesn’t qualify. If you want to read any of my other “Spider-Man” reviews, I’ll have links to those posted down below. Hope you enjoy those and I hope to see “Spider-Man: Homecoming” in theaters as soon as possible. Stay tuned for more reviews! Scene Before is your click to the flicks, and now, I’m gonna leave you with a horribly delivered quote from Harry Osborn in this movie that I find hilarious.
“On my 16th birthday, you sent me Scotch.” -Harry Osborn
“Baby Driver” is directed by Edgar Wright, who also directed films such as “Shaun of the Dead” and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.” This film stars Ansel Elgort (The Fault in Our Stars, Divergent), Kevin Spacey (Se7en, House of Cards), Lily James, (Cinderella (2015), Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), Eiza Gonzalez (Jem and the Holograms), and it even features Jon Hamm (The Town, Mad Men) along with Jamie Foxx (Ray, Django Unchained). This film is about a getaway driver named Baby, he’s forced into working for this crime boss and he goes on a mission that could possibly put him in jail.
Now before we talk about the movie itself, let’s talk about the lead actor in this movie, Ansel Elgort. Going into this movie, one of my biggest concerns happened to be how Ansel Elgort would perform in it given his role. Why? Because when I think of Ansel Elgort, action star is not the first thing that comes to mind. Granted I have seen him in “Divergent,” a movie with action in it, but he is neither the main character nor is he the most memorable character in my eyes. When it comes to Ansel Elgort, the first thing that would usually come to mind is “The Fault in Our Stars,” a romance movie which came out a few years back and has gained a following among many in the teenage girl demographic. I have not seen the movie, I’ve heard mostly positive things, but I’m not rushing to see it. How is he in this movie? Well, I’d say he was a lot better than I expected. I’m not saying Elgort was once a bad actor, I’m just saying he wasn’t necessarily an actor I expected to see in an action film like this. To me, Ansel Elgort now somewhat reminds me of Tom Cruise. You may have some of these folks’s early work which contain more of a romantic vibe, yeah, I’m sticking with romantic, in various segments such as “Risky Business” (Cruise) and “The Fault in Our Stars” (Elgort). But now Cruise, much like Elgort who is in this film, has become this action star that I want to see more of in future movies. Also, another thing that kinda makes the two resemble each other, is this…
Just, look at that! When I saw those sunglasses, I could tell these two weren’t the same person, but it might as well show the similarities between the two folks as actors. By the way, Ansel Elgort is on the left and Tom Cruise is on the right.
Speaking of actors and characters in this film, Kevin Spacey is also in this movie. Now, Kevin Spacey is one of the most revered actors of all time, so it probably wouldn’t be a surprise on how well he does in this movie in terms of his performance. I also got to give kudos to the well-written screenplay as well. Some of his lines are pretty sick and when you combine that with Kevin Spacey’s excellent acting ability, you’ve got a pretty cool character. Now that I’m thinking more about it, this somewhat reminds me of Colin Firth’s character in “Kingsman.” Also, yes, this very likely will make you forget about Kevin Spacey in “Nine Lives.” I haven’t seen that movie, but it’s a movie that came out last year and it is about a businessman that has little to no time for his family. He decides to get a cat for his daughter, because her birthday is coming up, and every year she wants a cat. So he goes to a pet store, and when Christopher Walken’s character shows up with a cat Spacey intends to give to his daughter, a strange turn of events causes Spacey’s character to be trapped inside the body of the cat. So not only does that sound stupid, but it almost sounds like a ripoff of “The Shaggy Dog.” OK, I’ll stop there.
If you notice the title of my review, I said that this film is basically a mix of “La La Land,” “Fast & Furious” and “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Here’s why. This film involves a main character who often listens to music, similar to Peter Quill’s character in “Guardians of the Galaxy,” although in this movie you may notice Baby using an IPod and Peter from “Guardians” using a Sony Walkman, and much like “Guardians of the Galaxy,” I would probably say a good number of people might end up buying this movie’s soundtrack. It probably won’t end up selling as many copies, but still. The film overall is an action film, much like a number of “Fast & Furious” installments, and much like “Fast & Furious” the action consists of multiple car chases and the film contains a heist. Why is it like “La La Land?” Well, there is a romance thrown in the movie as well. I wouldn’t say it was forced, sure, it’s kinda Hollywoodish, but still, I say that with the movie’s writing and characterization, it worked. The romance also felt kinda cheesy at times, but in a way, I’d say it was forgivable, because the chemistry between the characters worked in my book. In fact, this movie at times, felt like a musical. There were no original songs that were done by crowds of people or anything like that, but there were times that the characters were listening to the songs and they were singing, mainly Ansel Elgort, but I believe more than one character got involved in this. Not to mention I kinda moved my hand, head, and foot (I don’t remember if the foot thing happened, but still) to the music.
Since I recently mentioned there’s a love interest in this film, let’s talk about her. Her name is Debora and she’s played by Lily James. When she was introduced in this movie, I thought the connection between her and the lead character of Baby was kinda cute. As mentioned, the romance did feel like a somewhat fantastical Hollywood romance, although in a way, I was able to buy into it, and it didn’t really bother me. In fact, one example is when the two are talking with each other and having a conversation related to music. Yeah, they were talking about songs that have their names in it, so they’re basically referring to these as “Debora songs” and “Baby songs.” Also on a little sidenote, I would like to thank everyone behind this movie for not putting Justin Bieber’s “Baby” into the movie. I probably would have walked out if that were the case. I mean, there’s a reason why the music video for it has so many dislikes on YouTube.
Overall, the action in this movie was fun to watch. It was very well shot, much like some other parts of the movie. There were some cuts here and there, but it wasn’t all jumpcutty or anything like that, it all flowed naturally. In fact, during parts of the movie, it would take a long time for the camera to cut, and I have to say it worked. There are times when movies are like that and it ends up working, and funny enough, “La La Land,” a movie I compared this to, is one of those movies. There are a lot of great action sequences throughout the movie, and if you look above, you’ll see a Suburu car. If you go see this movie, you’ll notice that car in the opening action scene. And once again, here’s another comparison to “La La Land.” The opening sequence in “La La Land” wowed me and set a tone for what’s to come. The same can also be said in “Baby Driver.” When that first action sequence was over, it did end up giving me thrills, but it also gave me the desire to see more action. I also recently mentioned that this movie occasionally has moments that are all showcased in one very long shot. That happens not long after this first action scene, I won’t go into detail, but it did amaze me.
Also, a little fact for you, this movie also contains a little reference from the Pixar animation, “Monsters, Inc..” I’m not gonna dive into what the reference is or anything, but let’s just say, if you go see this movie, pay close attention and keep an eye out for that, because overall it gave me a laugh.
In the end, “Baby Driver” is definitely one of the most entertaining action flicks I’ve seen recently. It’s a very unique experience and had a lot of great characters, including some supporting ones I didn’t mention. However, the film does have flaws. I recently mentioned the cheesy romance, although that complaint I can forgive, and also there was one line that was uttered by Jamie Foxx’s character, Eiza Rodriguez’s character said something that made Foxx’s character say it’s almost like listening to an Oscar speech. It was almost as if Foxx was trying to be funny and the just ended up falling flat. As far as the ending goes, it is really compelling, I understood most of it, but there is one segment that I feel I need to look over. I have a feeling it can be resolved over a second watch, but this complaint still stands. But overall, I had fun watching “Baby Driver,” and I wouldn’t mind watching it again, so I’m gonna give “Baby Driver” a 9/10. This movie is not your average action film. Sure, it’s got your car chases, your gun fights, witty dialogue given on various occasions, while at times it almost reminded me of films like “Interstellar” and “Arrival,” both of which I consider to be great movies. Is this movie as good as those? No, but it doesn’t change the fact that I enjoyed this film as a whole. Thanks for reading this review, pretty soon my series of reviews related to past “Spider-Man” movies are gonna come to an end. The last movie I’m doing for this series is “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” and the reason why I’m doing this is because in a week from now, “Spider-Man: Homecoming” will hit theaters everywhere, and I do plan to see that as soon as possible. Stay tuned for my “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” review, along with my “Spider-Man: Homecoming” review when I get around to it, and even more reviews! Scene Before is your click to the flicks!
Scene Before 