Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Very well acted.  A very fascinating story if you don’t know anything about Alan Turing’s life.  Somewhat clichéd.

I’m fairly positive that almost anyone who sees “The Imitation Game” will like it better than I did.  Alan Turing was an amazing person and almost single-handedly brought an end to the Second World War.  All this and he was treated like a pariah after the war just for being a homosexual.  My problem is partially that none of this was new to me.  It’s a great story for those who know nothing of the goings on at Bletchley Park.  For me, it fell a little flat.

I think the main problem with the movie is how it treats Alan Turing.  The flashbacks to his childhood at the academy are the most touching and humanizing scenes in the film and I have nothing but praise for how they depict the already wildly different young Turing being picked on and very delicately exploring his homosexuality.  The adult Turing, though portrayed brilliantly by Benedict Cumberbatch, just comes off as another clichéd mad genius who is incredibly difficult to work with.  This does lead to some very humorous moments like when he tries to appear more humane and gets his fellow cryptanalyst some apples and attempts to tell a joke.  But even then, I was laughing before he even started to tell the joke because I knew what was coming.

The movie also fails the Bechdel Test miserably by only having one female of any note, Joan Clarke played wonderfully by Keira Knightley.  This can be forgiven because, well, it was a man’s world back then and they were pretty true to the story.  What can’t be forgiven is the one main interaction she has with another woman, they talk about boys.  The scene was complete fluff and it’s only purpose seemed to be so they could stick their thumb in the eye of the Bechdel Test.

These are all nits that can be picked only by someone who is familiar with the story.  Those that aren’t will likely be lost in the story too much to notice.  Personally, I would have been happier if they went more into the Ultra project and made a better show of exactly how they broke Enigma.  But that would probably be pretty boring for most.  They did have a few easter eggs for dorks like me.  For instance, in the background, you often saw them using Zygalski sheets which were actually used in attempts to decipher Enigma messages.  I’m sure there were others as well.

Despite my three star review, I would actually recommend this movie to most people.  It was a fascinating time of history that the world didn’t really discover until decades after it occurred due to the top secret nature of the project.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: Yay, I never have to watch another Hobbit movie again!

This marks my first review of an entire trilogy.  First, there was “An Unexpected Journey” which was middling but left me with hope.  Then came “The Desolation of Smaug” which was almost completely filler with some added confusing “Lord of the Rings” back story thrown in.  Now, at long last, we are at the end of our grueling journey with “Battle of the Five Armies”.  Thank the Valar!

I’m just going to say it: I hate Legolas.  How much do I hate Legolas?  Let’s just say that I find Jar Jar Binks to be a better useless addition to a movie.  Every scene he’s in he’s all like “Look at me!  I am Legolas!  I am here solely as a familiar face for the rubes to recognize because our lazy director didn’t bother to create any memorable characters that are unique to this trilogy.”  What?  Don’t believe me?  Name me more that two of the dwarves.  See?  I only can because I read the book.  Legolas is lazy storytelling at its worst.  But that’s what you get when you try squeezing every penny out of a franchise that has already made billions.  I can’t wait for the fan released “Hobbit” remix with all of Legolas’ parts removed.  Never again do I want to see his false gravitas or his idiotic action sequences.

Besides the lazy storytelling, the movie is middling.  As with the first of the trilogy, there’s nothing really awe-inspiring or memorable, but it does an ok job of finishing off the story.  There is a lot of stuff that can be confusing if you don’t remember some of the events of the completely forgettable “The Desolation of Smaug”.  I couldn’t for the life of me remember why Gandalf was sitting captured in a cage or why he went there in the first place.  I’m sure it was some sort of foreshadowing to events in “The Lord of the Rings”, but it fell so flat, it was like a penny left on the railroad tracks.

As for the eponymous battle itself?  All style, no substance.  I know next to zero about battle tactics and I was able to point out a myriad of flaws in strategy.  Yes, artistic license should be allowed, but a battle should be somewhat grounded in reality as well.  The battle had no sense of scope and felt like it was planned by kindergardeners playing with toy soldiers.  For instance, why didn’t the orcs just burrow into the the mountain and allow them direct access to a completely unguarded dwarven kingdom rather than pouring out onto an open battlefield?  You’d never see the Fremen use such poor tactics when riding Shai-Hulud into battle.  Plus, how were the orcs able to control the burrowing worms to begin with?  Plus, why would the orcs attack a completely useless and undefended town instead of pouring their forces against the actual armies that they greatly outnumber and have the advantage of higher ground against.

What pissed me off the most is when Tharanduil gives his ever-watchful archers the order to shoot anything that stirs in the dwarven fortress only to have the very next scene show Bilbo very clumsily escaping the fortress by climbing down the front barricade and trotting up to the town.  I mean how lazy can you get as a dirctor?  All you had to do is swap the scenes and things would make some sense.  But nooooooo!

Ok, I’m done complaining.  If you ever find yourself in a mood to sit down and watch a trilogy and think to yourself, “Oh, I should watch ‘The Hobbit'”, please have someone slap you in the face and scream, “What are you thinking, man!?”.  Maybe that will make you come to your senses and allow you to watch a good trilogy like “The Lord of the Rings”.  Now let us never speak of “The Hobbit” trilogy again.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: A visually gorgeous movie with great acting and a middling story.  Ploddingly long at points.  How can you make plagues boring?

Given that a vast majority of the population of the United States is either Christian or Jewish, the story of Exodus will be familiar.  Moses grows up like an Egyptian prince, later finds out he’s a Hebrew, gets told by god to free his people from Egyptian slavery, leads his people to the promised land.  Throw in some plagues and you got yourself the basics of the movie.

Visually, the movie was stunning.  Given, life at that time was much harder, more brutal, and shorter than any of us would be comfortable with, but man, would I want to see Memphis in its prime.  I don’t know how much historical accuracy Ridley Scott went for in portraying it, but it was beautiful.  It is too bad, the visuals were the best part of the movie.

The acting was great, as you would expect from a movie starring Christian Bale, Ben Kingsley, and Sigourney Weaver.  The kid who played Yahweh was also quite good, though I can’t seem to find his name.  There was this one part where he goes all Old Testament that was just exceptional.

None of that can make up for the plodding length of the movie, however.  Weighing in at 150 minutes, much of the movie just goes from scene to scene without much background and often leaves you wondering why things happened the way they did.  The missing background, like Moses’ youth, would have made a much better story.  Also surprising was how boring the plagues were.  They seem to have been an afterthought of the movie.  It went kind of like this: story, story, story, story, plaaaaaaaaagues, overly long death of the firstborn, story, anticlimactic Red Sea showdown, story, story.  Yes, there was a completely pointless rationalization of the plagues thrown in the middle somewhere, but that didn’t seem to fit at all.

This one’s difficult to recommend.  There’s some good stuff, but I’m not sure it’s really worth the time investment.  Oh, and you can ignore all the biblical criticisms of the movie that you read.  Yes, liberties were taken, but choosing Moses to speak to a child-god just makes dramatic sense.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Eddie Redmayne has an uncanny likeness to Stephen Hawking.  Not much science.  Parts of the movie were engrossing, parts plodding.  Somewhat annoying soundtrack.

Stephen Hawking is an amazing individual and without a doubt one of the top minds so far in the 21st century.  He has also led, as you can imagine, a very complicated personal life.  This movie focuses more on the personal life than his life as a cosmologist.  At heart, this movie is a love story with maddeningly tiny bits of science intertwined throughout.  In the movie’s defense, what Hawking works on is well over the top of most lay people, including myself, and it does a pretty good job of describing the science it delves into so that most people can at least conceptualize it.

I am not sure how true to life the movie is.  It is based on an autobiography by Jane Hawking, Stephen’s love interest in the movie.  Having read things about the Hawkings’ personal life in the past, I get the feeling that this movie represents the sugar-coated, lipstick-on-a-pig version of the real story.  Not that I’d blame anyone for trying to put a better face on what is undoubtedly a compelling story regardless of the glossing over of sordid details.

It was amazing watching Eddie Redmayne portray the degeneration of Stephen Hawking from awkward nerd to the wheelchair-bound, speech-synthesized professor most of us are familiar with as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) ravages his body.  Equally amazing, but easily overlooked, was Felicity Jones’ portrayal of Jane Hawking.  If this were a better movie, I’d say they would both be nominated for various awards.

The pacing of the movie was somewhat awkward.  One could be so inclined to say that this was on purpose and represented Hawking’s awkwardness as his ALS took over his body, but I’m guessing that was not the intent.  Much of the awkwardness in the movie, I think, is due to the halting soundtrack.  Most of the more compelling parts of the movie are shot with emotion capturing silence, while others have a not out-of-place, but not quite fitting soundtrack that suddenly launches which, for me, almost always detracted from the scene.  Then there were the parts that were likely necessary, but lasted a bit too long so your interest would wane slightly.

All in all, though, this was a good biopic of the Hawking family.  They are certainly an intriguing family on many levels.  I’d recommend it to pretty much anyone.  There is no need to see this movie in the theaters, though, so save your money and wait for it to come to the small screen of your home.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: As good as or better than “Catching Fire”.  More great acting.  More great design.  For once, a movie where I get the bland, interchangeable, good-looking men confused.

And we’ve come to the final book of the “Hunger Games” series.  The studios, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to split the final book into two movies because money.  This is always something to be wary of, but there’s enough material in “Mockingjay Part 1” to make it both enjoyable and to leave you guessing as to what will happen when Part 2 comes out.

If you recall from my “Catching Fire” review, I’ve been looking forward to seeing “Mockingjay”.  “Catching Fire” had a lot to recommend itself and I’m happy to see that “Mockingjay” is a worthy successor in the series.  Whereas I though there was some silliness in “Catching Fire”, there was none of that in “Mockingjay”.  “Mockingjay” was also more internally consistent, which I assume is what you get when you have two movies to tell your story.

Once again, we have some superb acting jobs by the inestimable Donald Sutherland (President Snow) and by the better every time you see her Jennifer Lawrence (Katniss).  In fact, there’s a scene in this movie where Jennifer Lawrence has to pretend to act poorly and you totally believe it.  So yeah, she acts really well acting poorly.  That’s talent.  New to the series in Julian Moore who portrays President Coin very effectively.  It is also good to see the now deceased Phillip Seymore Hoffman back as Plutarch Heavensbee (He died after filming most of his “Mockingjay” lines).  Other than that, the performances are all effective to meh.  I’ve always found Josh Hutcherson’s portrayal of Peeta to be sort of annoying, but he’s better in this one.  The one thing that I found funny is how I could not tell Gale (Liam Hemsworth) and Finnick (Sam Clafin) apart through most of the movie.  If they had switched roles halfway through the film, I would have been none the wiser.

Another good thing about this movie is how much the great design work really shines through.  It was just as good in the previous films, but the gaudy pomposity of the Capitol always kind of drowned out the attention to detail paid in the Districts.  Here, with very few Capitol scenes, the amount of detail paid to the scenes can really take center stage.

My only real complaint about the movie is that I think they ended the movie wrong.  There is this one scene, which I will not spoil, where I whispered over to my brother and said “Right there is where they should have ended this movie”.  You’ll know it when you see it.  Some stuff happens beyond that, but it saddens me when definitive shocking endings are wasted.

I would probably recommend a rewatching of “Catching Fire” prior to watching this movie as there were times when I was scratching my head trying to recall things that they referenced from the prior movie.  Other than that, what we have here is another winner in what’s turning out to be a very effective series of movies. Needless to say, I am looking forward to seeing the next as well.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: A fun kids movie.  Cute and inventive.  Some humor for the adults, but not much.  Disney’s attempt to be Pixar.

The good news is that you don’t need to see any of “Big Hero 1-5” in order to understand the story of “Big Hero 6”.  That’s a joke.  I know that there weren’t five other prequels to this movie.  It does raise the question of what they would call a sequel to this movie, though.

“Big Hero 6” is very loosely based on a Marvel comic series of the same name.  This version follows a bunch of nerds who develop really awesome science projects.  They then go on to incorporate those science projects into super hero costumes.  If you want any further proof that nerdism has gone mainstream, look no further.  The devices used are mostly really clever with a little silly thrown in.  As an added plus, the team is also very diverse.

There is a lot of stuff here for kids to enjoy.  It’s maybe a little too cutesy at times for the adults and the “lesson” is kind of blah, but all in all, what we have here is an all around well put together movie that adults can tolerate, if not enjoy, and kids will really like.  The animation is crisp and unique.  Baymax, the cute rubbery robot, plays very well as a comic foil.  Besides Hiro, the teenage genius, the other characters don’t get as much fleshing out, but there’s enough to feel for them.  The villain is kind of one-dimensional and not terribly believable, but this is a kids movie.

Disney really tried to copy the winning Pixar formula here and fell a little short.  The animation is similar and they even have John Lasseter of “Toy Story” fame producing it.  There was even the ubiquitous short animation film before the main movie that Pixar pioneered.  That leads me to wonder why they didn’t just hand the movie over to Pixar completely since they own them.  I guess Disney wants to show that its animation studio can produce CG movies as good as Pixar can.

If you like kids movies, you’ll probably enjoy this one.  I found it a fun time even though the pacing was strange at times.  There’s no real need to see it in the theater if you have a decent home television, but if you don’t crisp animation is always worth going to the theater for.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: A movie with mostly good science!  Decent story, if a little overwrought.  Magnificent scenery.  IMAX sound adds to the enjoyment.  Questionable ending.

“Interstellar” is a beautiful movie.  It paints a stark, somewhat believable future and throws us on a last-ditch effort to save humanity.  From the Earth, to space, to planets both known and unknown, to black holes, it is gorgeous.  But a gorgeous movie doesn’t necessarily mean a good movie.  So how does this one hold up?  Meh, it was decent.

On some level, I must have liked it because its two hour and forty-five minute run time did not feel like it at all.  The plot interesting and doesn’t really slow down.  There are some things that bothered me like how can you not know the basic composition of a planet prior to landing on it?  Or how can a habitable planet orbit so close to a black hole that it brings relativity into play?  The former, I am almost sure is possible today, the latter, I may just not know enough about planetary formation.  These things can be forgiven because they lead to some spectacular what-if situations that will mess with your mind.  I’m also pretty sure there’s a fairly large plot hole in the film, but I’d have to rewatch it to be sure.

And then there’s the ending.  It seems as if it were tacked on to make the movie a little more feel-good.  I won’t spoil anything, but the decisions that were made seem both unlikely and unnecessary.  There wasn’t much of an emotional attachment to make the decision that was made and there seemed to be plenty of other options available that would be much more palatable.  Oh, and don’t even get me started on the whole cause-effect stuff that ties everything together.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the awesome sound in the movie.  I watched the movie in one of those almost-but-not-quite-IMAX theaters where the sound quality is excellent and the screen is larger than normal, but not true IMAX size.  The sound in this movie adds much to this adventure.  When ships are taking off, you actually feel like you’re taking off with them, minus the 10 G-forces.  For this reason, I would highly recommend you watch the movie in as high quality a theater as possible.

All things considered,I enjoyed the movie and would recommend that anyone who has a hankerin’ for space go see it in the theater.  Others, I’m not sure about.  I think this is a good general audience movie, but can’t subjectively say if the non-space loving general public will enjoy it.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: Mindless fun.  Good stylized violence.  A wicked sense of humor.

Poor Alfie Allen!  I didn’t think it was possible to be typecast as a young upstart who consistently pines for the approval of his father and fails miserably, but there you have it.  You may know Alfie Allen as Theon Greyjoy from “Game of Thrones”.  In “John Wick”, he reprises his role as Theon, but this time he is called Iosef Tarasov and he is the son of a gangland mafia boss.  He has a chance meeting with John Wick (Keanu Reeves) at a gas station and really likes John’s car.  Boy, did he pick the wrong person to steal a car from.  I won’t spoil more than that, because if you don’t know more than that about the movie, I’ll completely spoil John Wick’s motivation for you.

“John Wick” is a fun movie.  It is carefully crafted and scenes are created with an abundance of attention to detail.  I was surprised to learn that “John Wick” does not come from any comic book or regular book series.  For a stand-alone movie with no background source material to borrow from, there is certainly a lot of world-building in the movie.  The “John Wick” underworld is a universe within itself with all sorts of rules and etiquette.

Another surprising thing about this movie is the amount of legitimately funny dry humor in the movie.  It’s all done in a deadpan way without any accompanying music or action and the result is dead air filled with an audience that is laughing.  I don’t think I’ve been more aware of audience laughter in a movie.  It’s a bit eerie, especially given the source material.

The one major complaint I have about the movie is how poorly all these little things get wrapped up in the end.  It’s almost sloppy.  It slightly ruined my enjoyment of the movie.  It makes me think that they had an alternate ending in mind that didn’t test well so they threw this ending together.  Or maybe ending movies is just really difficult and this is the best they could come up with.  Regardless, “John Wick” is a fun ride despite its warts.  I would certainly enjoy a sequel if it’s of the quality of the first three-fourths of the movie.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 5/5 stars

Bottom Line: An excellent movie all around.  Touching, funny, realistic.

“St. Vincent” is what happens when you hit the trifecta of great writing, great acting, and great direction.  If I try really hard, I can come up with a complaint that there are a few slow parts at times and Naomi Watts is a little over the top as a pregnant Russian stripper, but really even those parts are delightful.

I want to see Melissa McCarthy and Bill Murray in a room together ad libbing the characters of Maggie and Vincent.  They are both absolutely delightful in this movie.  You never quite know what’s ad lib and what’s scripted when you get two comic geniuses together, but having the two of them go all out off of each other would be hilarious.

What makes this movie special is how organic everything is.  The movie is funny, but it’s not bit laugh funny.  The dialogue just rolls off the tongue.  Nothing is forced.  You can believe people talking exactly like the movie portrays them.  And the comedy is so believable because the characters are so believable.  These are not off-the-wall situations you find the characters in.  Maggie is a recently divorced mom trying to keep it all together between her kid and her job.  Vincent is a mess of a sad, lonely man who has good reason to be so.  Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher, who does an awesome job as the straight guy, er, kid) struggles to find his place in a new school where he is bullied and has to deal with being a latchkey kid.

We desperately need more movies like this one so go see it as soon as you can.  It is well worth your time and money even though it is not necessary to see a movie like this on the big screen.  I can’t wait for “St. Vincent” to come to the small screen so I can watch it again.