Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: Your standard Wes Anderson fare.  If you don’t know what that means, this is a good movie to find out.

You know exactly what you’re getting into when you see a Wes Anderson film.  “The Grand Budapest Hotel” is no exception.  There is whimsy.  Lots and lots of whimsy.  There are eccentric characters by the hotel full.  There is scene after scene of painstakingly designed sets.  And there’s a lot of dialogue dispensed deadpanedly.  Deadpanedly is now a word.

This particular film is pretty straight forward plot wise.  Man runs upscale hotel.  Man loves the old widows that visits the hotel.  One widow dies and leaves him a valuable painting.  Her family fights to keep painting.  Man steals painting.  Man is framed for widow’s murder.  Man goes to jail.  Man escapes from jail.  Man goes to retrieve stolen painting.  Man discovers painting holds a secret.  Man inherits fortune.  I guess I should say it’s straight forward for a Wes Anderson movie.  And that’s just the basics.

I enjoy how Wes Anderson wraps this movie up at the beginning and then unfolds it.  It begins with a woman visiting a monument to a famous writer and then that gets wrapped up into the writer talking about his career and that gets wrapped up into the writer meeting a man who owns the Grand Budapest Hotel and that gets wrapped up into the owner talking about how he came to inherit the hotel and that gets wrapped up into the main plot.  Then, after the main plot is resolved, everything gets unpacked again and the credits roll.  So “The Grand Budapest Hotel” is actually a story within a story within a story within a story.  A recursive function, if you will.

“The Grand Budapest Hotel” is entertaining throughout.  There was a persistent smile on my face throughout.  The great thing about a Wes Anderson film is that he always gives you something to look at.  Often more than one something at the same time.  It’s like a main course and a desert served together.  This movie also stars every actor that has ever appeared in another Wes Anderson movie.  Part of the fun is wondering when your favorite actor will finally appear.

I wouldn’t say this is Wes Anderson’s best film, but it’s certainly up there.  I’m not entirely sure I’d recommend it to a person who isn’t a fan of Wes Anderson movies, but I’d certainly recommend it as a first entry for anyone who has never been exposed to Wes Anderson’s particular film making style.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: Possibly the best Marvel offering since the original “Ironman” movie.  A decent plot with lots of action and a stunning amount of violence.

There’s just something about Captain America that sets him apart from your everyday comic book superhero movie fare.  It certainly helps that there is none of the gross nationalism that you’d expect from someone named Captain America.  He doesn’t fight for America, he doesn’t fight for SHIELD, he just fights for what he believes is right.  When you do that, things can get messy, but you do the best you can with what you have as you navigate the grey areas of superherodom.  All that to say that Captain America has a humanity that isn’t really present in any of the other superheroes.

Those of you that watch the ever so mediocre “Agents of SHIELD” television show probably were able to catch the tie-in between the last episode of the show and this movie.  They did something similar with the last Thor movie but after the fact.  This time, the events of the TV show predict the opening scene of “The Winter Soldier” and the movie looks to actually drive the plot of the TV series.  This is the only time that something like this has ever been attempted as far as I know and it’s an interesting set of bonus material for the fandom without getting in the way of either the TV show or the movies.

Now to finally get to the movie itself.  It was thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish.  The plot was well crafted with twists that I did not expect, though the Winter Soldier reveal kind of fell flat for me.  It was probably one of those things that you have to be a fan of the comic books to really get.  The action in the movie is top-notch and well choreographed.  And, in a surprising turn for a Marvel movie, there is a gratuitous amount of violence in it, with a kill count that would make “Game of Thrones” proud.

If you like the comic book movies, you’ll love this one so don’t delay.  I believe “The Winter Soldier” would even be enjoyable for those that aren’t really into the whole comic book scene.  It works pretty well as a solo project.  Also, if someone could explain what the heck the ending credits preview was all about I’d appreciate it.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 5/5 stars

Bottom Line: Everything IS awesome.  A perfect kids movie with good comedy and an honest to goodness moral to the story.

“The LEGO Movie” is one of those movies that you can watch again and again.  And if you have kids, you WILL be watching it again and again.  The only down side to this is not being able to get the “Everything is Awesome” song out of your head.  But that only requires one viewing.

And speaking of the “Everything is Awesome” song, I have never experienced a situation where I went from disliking a song to really liking it after hearing it in the movie.  It is an incredibly stupid pop song, but it snaps in perfectly inside the movie.  This is a welcome change to the inorganic nature that often comes with original songs in movies.

Yes, this is basically an hour and a half long LEGO commercial, but the artistry and imagery in the movie are so perfect you can believe they were ripped straight from a child’s imagination and the LEGOs are just the medium the child had chosen.  And really, LEGOs are a unique medium perfect for the fertile imagination of a child.  The idea of that imagination is used as fuel for the plot of the movie which pits those who want to always follow the directions against those who want to build as they wish.

The movie also teaches an important lesson which is rare for a children’s movie.  That lesson is there is no wrong way to play with LEGOs.  Yes, really.  Like I said, it’s a LEGO commercial.  But that can be applied to life in general.  Sometimes you need to play by the rules and follow the directions and sometimes you shouldn’t and see where it takes you.  Words to live by.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 1/5 stars

Bottom Line: Look, it’s gratuitous,over the top blood and long-winded soliloquies with excessive use of slow motion.  Where have I seen this before?  Oh yeah, it was called “300”.

So there was this empire and it, like, rose or some junk?  The title of the film may be “Rise of an Empire”, but it’s not at all clear which empire is rising or how it is rising.  The movie ends very abruptly in the middle of a pitched battle which I’m assuming you are supposed to believe that the Greeks were going to win, but it’s not really clear.

A lot of “Rise of an Empire” plays exactly like the original “300” movie did.  Almost every scene is very stylistic and shot in high contrast so every ab and muscle and piercing and gush of blood shows in great detail.  It is kind of beautiful, but it’s also empty.  I enjoyed the original “300” for its stylistic elements, but a sequel just shows how shallow those stylistic elements are.  “300” was a one-trick pony and “Rise of an Empire” is the exact same pony performing the exact same trick only with a change of costume and a different script and on a boat.

I got suckered into watching this movie after seeing a preview featuring a pretty neat origin story of Xerxes.  I had assumed that we would see a more in-depth look at Xerxes the man-god in the movie itself.  Expecting depth from this movie, however, is like expecting a mosquito not to bite.  The preview turned out to contain 90% of all of Xerxes’ involvement in the movie.  The rest is just him standing around and looking big and beating up a girl.  This movie may hold the title for making the lamest man-god ever filmed.  What’s even more amazing is this movie was “based” off of the Frank Miller comic titled “Xerxes” and barely featured the dude.

The only interesting thought I had about the movie coming out of it was a chicken or the egg thought.  The final naval battle between Greece and Persia features a plan that is eerily similar to the Battle of Blackwater from “Game of Thrones” where all the boats perform a 40 car pileup and people start jumping on the boats from land and fighting.  I wonder if this movie ripped off George R. R. Martin or if George R. R. Martin ripped off Frank Miller or if there was actually a Greek battle that featured such an outrageous tactic and everyone ripped that off.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: A fair to middling Liam Neeson movie with just enough entertainment to keep you engaged until the wheels come off near the end.

Some movies have this great premise that sounds like a good idea on paper, but once you start exploring the premise you find there’s not much there.  Sometimes, you still decide to make the movie because you’ve got Liam freakin’ Neeson as the headliner.  Thus “Non-Stop” was made.

The first and second acts of the movie are fairly engaging.  Act one introduces us to alcoholic air marshal Bill Marks (Liam Neeson), a no nonsense, leave me alone type of man with a soft heart that peeks out every once in a while.  The movie very effectively portrays this through a series of encounters with passengers that Bill runs into while navigating through the airport on his way to his assigned plane.  Since the majority of the film is going to be shot on a tube containing 150 passengers, this was a very clever way of introducing all the major players as the story unfolds.

The story unfolds in act two as a mysterious person on the plane starts texting Bill letting him know that a person is going to die every 20 minutes unless $150 million is deposited in a bank account.  What follows is a just plausible enough series of events where passenger after passenger does indeed die as foretold.  There is some suspension of disbelief required for this portion of the film, but it is still enjoyable as Bill tries to ferret out the hidden hijacker and turns his suspicions from one passenger to the next.

Things fall off the rails pretty quickly in act three as the evil doer is revealed and describes a motive that can only be described as laughable and which calls into question all of the previous incidents in the second act that were passable assuming the foe was at all intelligent or sane.  The movie ends with the bad guys getting what they deserve and a harrowing plane landing Bill saving the life of a little girl thrown in just for…something.

There are a few things that I think would have saved this film from sub-mediocrity.  Number one on the list would be some sort of grander conspiracy than the ridiculous plot that unfolded.  Something that tied the hijacking to events occurring off the airplane.  Number two would be if they went completely the other direction and actually made Bill the hijacker.  This would not have been as difficult as it sounds since there was a question as to whether that were true pretty far into the movie.  Number three would be if there were mother-fucking snakes on this mother-fucking plane.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: A not bad remake of a classic uber-violent 80’s revenge flick.

This may be a better movie than I think it is.  Nostalgia may be getting in the way.  The original “Robocop” was a much better story than this one.  It’s not that the stories were much different, it’s more that the telling of the story was much more compelling in the original.  The most glaring departure in the new film is the complete lack of black humor that made the original so memorable.  But enough about comparing the two.

Or not.  One place where the new “Robocop” shines over the old is with the fictional robotics company OmniCorp (OCP in the original if I remember correctly).  Michael Keaton plays the genius CEO and Gary Oldman plays the head robotics scientist.  The interaction between the two of them is top rate.  It is really the only acting in the movie worth talking about.  What they have to say is actually interesting as you have the struggle between the CEO wanting to make money with military contracts and the scientist wanting to use the robotics for more benign purposes.

There was a lot of the story that didn’t really make sense.  It wasn’t clear why they had to remove as much of his body as they did except for a really cool and creepy effect.  One of the main fighting scenes were completely avoidable by any criminal with even moderate intelligence. It was still a cool scene, though.  I also wish they used the hulking ED-209 robots to greater effect than they did.

“Robocop” was an ok movie.  It’s completely skippable, but if you have a special place in your heart for the first movie, it’s worth going to see this one if only for the enjoyment of discussing the difference between the two.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 Stars

Bottom Line: A bit of a convoluted plot.  Some good action.  All in all, mindless fun.

This is not your daddy’s Jack Ryan.  Gone is the Cold War intrigue between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. of the Tom Clancy novels.  Here is the new economy intrigue between the U.S. and the C.I.S. as Jack Ryan gets rebooted for the next generation.  Also gone, unfortunately, is the cerebralness of many of the prior Clancy movies as the reboot decides to go the pure action route.

Every reboot needs an origin story and this one has it.  Economics PhD student Jack Ryan drops out of the London School of Economics when 9/11 happens.  He joins the Marines and is sent to Afghanistan.  He ends up getting shot down in a helicopter and severely injuring his back.  While in rehab, he meets his love interest and is recruited into the CIA as an undercover analyst.

Analysts are boring, though.  So after an assassination attempt, Jack quickly goes from analyst to operative.  There is a large suspension of disbelief required for this moment.  I won’t go into more detail than that, but the whole thing about Jack becoming an operative is kind of eye-rolling.  It doesn’t detract from the movie at all, but it would have been nice if they weren’t so sloppy.

The movie has all of your necessary spy thriller scenes.  There’s the breaking into a super secure building to steal information.  There’s the distracting the bad guy so the break-in can occur.  There’s the kidnapping of the love interest.  There’s the car chase to rescue the love interest.  There’s the montage of unlikely jumping to conclusions where they figure the whole plot out.  There’s a bomb.  There’s a motorcycle chase scene.  There’s Jack saving the day.

Yes, it’s all pretty formulaic, but it works.   I would like a Jack Ryan movie with a bit more depth than this had, but I also wouldn’t mind seeing another one of this quality.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom line: Inspiring real life story.  Walks the line of  patriotism and pointing out flaws well.  Some pointlessly gratuitous violence.

“Lone Survivor” tells the true story of a botched Navy SEAL operation to detain or kill a high value Taliban target in Afghanistan.  A four man fireteam is dropped off far from a remote village where the target is suspected to be.  Their mission is to get to the village and identify the man and do what is necessary to make sure that he is no longer a threat to U.S. soldiers.  Things quickly go south when a combination of communication problems and an unfortunate run-in with goat herders inform the Taliban of the SEALs presence.

That only one of the SEALs survives should be of no surprise to anyone who can read the movie title.  The movie itself is more about human survival than anything else.  It should come as no surprise that Navy SEALs are pretty badass.  Their training alone puts them through the worse conditions imaginable because they just might face those conditions when out in the field.  These four did.  It is impossible to tell through the fog of war and the remembrances of one man who was almost dead himself what is fact and what is fiction, but if even half of what happened to these four is true, they all survived far longer than any mere mortal would be expected to.

I was pleased that this wasn’t a gung-ho patriotic movie.  It tells the story of what happened to these four warts and all.  From the very frank conversation over whether to murder the hostage goat herders to the poor equipment we send our soldiers to war with to the unavailability of needed resources to the unwise rescue attempt, it’s all there for you to see.  That is rare in a movie that was given implicit approval from the U.S. Armed Forces.

There was some really gratuitous violence in the movie that I thought was a bit uncalled for and that’s saying a lot about a movie about a very bloody battle.  Most notably, a long and drawn out head-shot of one of the SEALs as he sits propped up and slowly dying as his lungs fill with blood.  It seems to me an impossibility that events could have been reconstructed enough to know for sure that he died that way and to put it in the movie as fact seems disingenuous.  Maybe I’m wrong and they were able to piece it together much more thoroughly than I think possible.

Besides the gratuitous violence, I have only one other qualm about the movie.  As is common with real stories of the U.S. Armed Forces, there was a role call of the service members that died during the mission.  I think the filmmakers did a great disservice to the Pashtun villagers who fought and died to save and protect lone survivor Marcus Luttrell by not including their names alongside ours.  Regardless, it is a movie well worth seeing to give you a good look into the life of a Navy SEAL.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: A few good laughs.  Some great cameos.  That’s about it.

I don’t know why I went to see this movie given that I’ve never seen the first “Anchorman” movie and I find Will Ferrell movies to be pretty overrated.  The previews for it looked genuinely funny, though, so I gave it a shot.  I ended up with exactly what I’d expect from a Will Ferrell movie.  Not a lot.

Inasmuch as plot matters to a movie like this, Ron Burgandy (Will Ferrell) loses his job as a news anchor while his wife is promoted which causes them to break up.  After hitting rock bottom, he ends up getting a job at the first 24 hour news network where he quickly makes it a news rating juggernaut all while putting his family back together.  But if you expect the movie to make sense, you are in the wrong movie.

Given the audience reactions, this was the funniest movie ever made.  There were many guffaws and plenty of hearty laughter throughout, only I wasn’t the one laughing.  I believe I got more entertainment laughing at the people laughing at the movie than I did the movie itself.  That isn’t to say there weren’t any laughable moments.  There were enough laughs for an hour long movie, a few of which only I found funny.  Unfortunately, the movie was two hours long.

The final battle scene (yes, you read that right) has what is perhaps the most cameo appearances ever accomplished in a motion picture.  The scene is only clever because of the amount of cameos which includes Liam Neeson, Amy Pohler, Tina Fey, Jim Carrey, and John C. Riley just to name a few.  Oh, and the Minotaur which was the only funny part of the whole battle.

There was, surprisingly, some pretty good social commentary in the film.  Many of the jokes that hit were of the “this is what ‘news’ has become” variety.  That’s not nearly enough to save this overlong clunker whose idea of comedy is to throw as much at the wall as possible to see what sticks.  Comedy movies have gotten more and more lazy that way.