Geek For E!

Geek For E!

Creators of the TwitView! Reviews in 140 characters or less.

Movie Review: Wrath of the Titans

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It’s been two years since Legendary Pictures’ remake of Clash of the Titans.  And it’s taken me  about two years for me to have the taste of suck finally rinse out of my mouth.  Legendary  takes a swing at a sequel with Wrath of the Titans…and well, it’s better than the first film.

Perseus, having given up the option to live with his father Zeus as an immortal in Olympus, is now a fisherman with young son Helius (which is actually the name of the Sun God in Roman mythology, but whatever).  Zeus pops in for a visit, as Greek gods often do, and lets Perseus know that the Gods will soon be no more, thanks to a lack of prayer and belief from humans.  Hey, you screw enough married chicks and you’ll start to get dissed, Zeus.  Only a matter of time.

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Movie Review: Footnote (Hearat Shulayim)

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Boy meets Talmud.  Boy falls for Talmud and devotes his whole life to it’s study.  But all he gets by way of recognition is a small footnote in someone else’s book…while his son goes on to greatness with his own research.  In Footnote, the different ways these scholars research only serves to illustrate the gulf between them.  This film is more a character study than a look inside the politics of the Israel Prize, but the seamless way director/writer Joseph Cedar blends the two creates a film that is a simple, but fascinating,  success.

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Movie Review: The Hunger Games

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24 go in.  1 comes out.  The Hunger Games is a harsh look at an even harsher post-apocalyptic world where the winner of a civil war uses the lives of children from the losing areas as a yearly reminder that the losers have truly lost everything.  Throwing children into a pit to fight it out may seem a harsh topic for Young Adult Fiction — and it is — but it’s a topic that has caused the Hunger Games trilogy (The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay) to skyrocket up the bestseller charts.  Fans of all ages love the book, so it’s only natural that there would be a movie in the works.  And now the first book of the series gets it’s close-up with The Hunger Games.

I won’t lie; I’m an unabashed fan of the books.  I read them all in one weekend, the benefit of being late to the party, and I have my ship all ready (Team Peeta!), my nails painted for “my District” (Agro, for 11!), and my favorite secondary characters (Rue!  Cinna!  Caesar!  Finnick!  Oops, jumping ahead a bit….)

This movie is good; real or not real?  Most definitely real.

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Movie Review: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

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Salmon fishing.  Yemen.  Seriously?

Yep.  And if you’ve turned your nose up at the title figuring it’s most likely the dullest documentary ever filmed, you’ll be missing out.  Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is a wonderful feel good film, a fascinating indie flick that also happens to have one of the sweetest old-school romances I’ve seen in ages.

Sheikh Muhammed is in love with fly fishing.  Does it every time he heads up to Scotland.  But he has a dream; to have a salmon stream in his homeland.  So he asks his consultant Harriet to find out if that could be a reality, and when the fisheries expert Dr. Alfred Jones tosses out a financial outlay that seems impossible, things start to snowball.  Because the Sheikh isn’t about to let a thing like money get in the way of his passion.

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Movie Review: 21 Jump Street (2012)

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It’s not what you think it is; another stale remake of a staple 80’s hit show.  It’s so much more and so much better, I was shocked.  ‘Jump Street’ manages to reboot the TV show successfully by mocking the genre it’s trying to recreate.  I was intrigued pre-screening by Jonah Hill’s writing credit and he and Channing Tatum’s spin as Producers of the film – you can see where their influences came in, and it was worth their time and money.  This film is a complete win for the cinema faring crowd.  A+

Jonah Hill & Channing Tatum

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Movie Review: John Carter

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Oh Pixar.  How I love the things you’ve done.  Especially the films Monsters, Inc. and Wall*E.  Director Andrew Stanton rocked the house, y’all.  Now there’s Stanton’s first live-action film, John Carter, done while on loan to Disney studios.  Um.  When does he get back to Pixar?

John Carter is an intriguing story based on a series of books that were written almost 100 years ago.  This movie has a whole lot going on.  Pity all that action is so dreadfully dull.  I felt like I was watching the movie through plexiglass, as if a beautiful tale was unfolding in front of me that I couldn’t touch.  The start of a series?  Prolly not.

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Movie Review: Act of Valor

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Ever wonder what it must be like to be a part of the United States Navy’s SEALs (Sea, Air, and Land Teams)?  Act of Valor gives you an up-close and personal look at their life, in what the filmmakers are calling “cinematic nonfiction”.  Like television shows such as Law & Order, CSI and Body of Proof, Act of Valor is based on real-life events.  But unlike those shows, this film showcases real-life, currently active-duty SEALs in the storyline, doing what they do best.  It’s a riveting film that kept this “thought I’d seen it all” action-genre fan on the edge of her seat.  Is it top-notch storytelling and grade A acting?  No, but if you’re expecting award-winning performances from non-actors you be trippin’.  What it is, is a whole lot of fun that left me with a warm fuzzy feeling about being Amuuuurincan.  It also gave me even more respect for the men and women of today’s Armed Forces.  Hooyah!

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Movie Review – “This Means War”

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You take the good…you take the bad…you put them together and what do you have? You have This Means War… a movie that is full of  flash, a little bit of substance, and a whole lot of nothing. The ironic part is that McG’s ode to “nothing” is a fun movie to sit through and the nothingness is what makes it so much fun. The plot is simple – two CIA agents,  FDR Foster (played be Star Trek‘s Chris Pine) and Tuck (played by The Dark Night Rises’s Tom Hardy), fall in love with Lauren (Water with Elephant‘s Reese Witherspoon) while in-between their field work of trying to stop the bad-guy (played by Inglorious Bastard’s Til Schweiger) who they have been tracking for a long time.

The inside story of the bad-guy is there to give FDR and Tuck something to do as part of their story.  Tuck is divorced but keeps close to his ex-wife and their son. FDR has never had a serious relationship due to his womanizing nature. Both have allowed work to be their lives and because of this they have not had time to “be human” and have a normal relationship. After visiting FDR’s grandma (played by Spider-man‘s Rosemary Harris) and seeing how happy she has been for years with her husband, they both realize that it’s time to settle down and meet someone and maybe even start a family. Just bare with me on this as I will explain This Means War  in a feature that we all enjoy – It’s Alex’s “The Good! The Bad! and The Geeky”!!!

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Movie Review: The Vow

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Valentine’s Day.  The time when all us chicks drag our poor, unsuspecting fellas to the multiplex so we can bond over a sappy love story.  Or rather, the time of year when gals drag their guys to the multiplex for a sappy love story on pain of not being able to watch March Madness in peace, let alone get a little Barry White time, knowwhatI’msayin?  I tend to be the weird chick that would rather head off to a slasher flick than subject myself to boo-hooey romance — except for Notting Hill and The Holiday, because they’re awesome and stop looking at me like that — so it was with great trepidation that I headed into the theater for The Vow.  I like Rachel McAdams (Mean Girls and Midnight in Paris are two favorite films of mine), I like Channing Tatum (uh, hello; Step Up is old school fun).  I like movies based on real events.  And I like The Vow.

It’s amazing that a movie based on a real-life couple’s struggle to find their way back to each other didn’t end up a complete schmoopfest.  Don’t get me wrong, this movie is firmly in the romance genre, and it may even be considered a graduate-level romance flick for die-hard romantics only.  But it’s also a well-crafted, beautifully acted piece of filmmaking that stands out in the pre-Summer Blockbuster wasteland of late Winter movie releases.  The Vow could have easily been a Lifetime Original Movie in multiplex form, something producers threw money at in the hopes people watching the film in theaters wouldn’t notice they could see the same exact movie at home for free.  Instead, The Vow has a layered storyline that goes beyond it’s one-note beginnings and does something many romance movies forget to do; it entertains.

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Movie Review: Safe House

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Safe House is a heart pounding thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. Thank you Hollywood for finally delivering a movie that has a backbone and doesn’t pander to the lowest denominator. The gritty nature of Safe House manages to suck the audience into the story for an intense two-hour thrill ride that has you eagerly sitting in anticipation of what will happen next.

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