Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 Stars

Bottom Line:  This movie is total Oscar bait.  Well acted, well directed, great cinematography, and awesome costume design.  It’s a little slow, though.

“American Hustle” is a movie very loosely based on the FBI ABSCAM sting operation from the late 70s in which they hired a con man to catch crooked politicians.  It tells the story of two con artists who are caught by the FBI and then forced to help the FBI capture more con artists.  The little fish keep offering up bigger fish and, with an FBI agent who has his eyes on promotions, they soon find themselves going after politicians and the mob as what was supposed to be a few simple arrests of low level operators quickly spins out of control.

The movie itself is gorgeous.  It’s a period piece and I am told they recreated the period beautifully.  I was too young to really remember the 70s, but from pictures and the crappy clothes my parents dressed me in, I can say that the styles seem accurate.  The set designs and the costuming alone almost make the movie worth going to, if you’re in to that sort of thing.

More importantly, though, the cast is absolutely outstanding.  Every scene between Jennifer Lawrence and Christian Bale and their warped co-dependant relationship is fantastic.  And the scenes between Bradley Cooper and Louis C.K. and their abusive boss/employee relationship are possibly even better.  But that’s just to point out the best acting parts.  Everyone is terrific in this movie.

The movie does, however, start kind of slow.  They take a lot of time to set up all of the characters.  Some may argue too much time, but it really helps to get a feel for who they are and where they come from.  It establishes depth that helps make the characters relatable.  As the FBI con keeps getting more and more complicated and the tension builds, the movie just gets better and better.  I found myself completely in the dark as to how events would unfold.  It is not often a movie does that to me.

This is going to be one of those movies that people either love or hate, I think.  I am certainly in the love column.  There is a lot to love, but many people will probably be turned off by the slow build even if the end result is well worth it.

As an added note, I was surprised to learn that the movie only made around $20 million this weekend.  The theater that I was in was fairly crowded.  It must be one of those things where the area demographics where just perfect for the movie.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: You’ll go see it because it’s “The Hobbit”.  And while you won’t necessarily regret it, you will still continue to curse Peter Jackson for taking a two to three hour book and stretching it into three ridiculousy long three hour movies.

“The Hobbit” is the price we are all paying for Peter Jackson’s hubris.  Only he could take three monumental books and condense them into the all around enjoyable “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and then think it’s a great idea to take the most straight forward book J.R.R. Tolkien has ever written and expand it into three plodding movies.  And yes, after the first two, I think I can safely say that the third will be plodding as well.

“The Desolation of Smaug” suffers from the same problems as “An Unexpected Journey” did.  See dwarves run.  See dwarves get captured.  Save them, Bilbo, save them.  See dwarves run.  And that’s not so bad, really.  The problem lies in how they get from predicament to predicament.  The part where they are captured by the spiders is sufficiently creepy and well done.  And that’s it.  Nothing else is really at all entertaining.  And not only is it not entertaining, it’s frustratingly ridiculous.  I challenge anyone to not roll their eyes less than one hundred times at the great barrel escape.  It is just a bunch of crap thrown in to pad time in an already too long movie.  Though, I will admit the camera work is pretty darn awesome in it.

And then there’s Legolas.  We can ignore the fact that Legolas doesn’t appear in the original book.  That’s fine.  Creative license and all that.  But he is so freaking useless in this book.  The biggest crime, though, is not only is he useless, he’s freaking annoying.  His sole purpose is to look pretty and engage in stupidly planned and, at times, horribly choreographed battle scenes.  It was easy to tell which scenes were CGI and which were live by how well done they were.  Hint: the clunky ones are live.  I was actively wishing for Legolas’ death throughout.

Contained within this three hours of claptrap is a decent movie.  It just gets smothered by Peter Jackson’s need to make nothing but three hour movies.  I will just have to slough through one more of these movies and then the suffering will be over.  It is funny that I was so excited to see all of the bonus material from the three “Lord of the Rings” movies, but I will be looking forward to the non-Director’s Cut of “The Hobbit” where a fan shrinks this abomination of a trilogy back down to the three or four hours that it should be.

Jean-Paul’s Rating 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: A sub-par cliché ridden Jason Statham action movie.  The action is decent, but nothing special.  Everything else was pretty bad.

What happens when you cross Jason Statham with James Franco?  Not a whole lot if “Homefront” is the best they can do.  This is going to be very spoilerific because I just have to rant.

The movie starts out with Phil Broker (Jason Statham) undercover in a meth dealing biker gang.  He’s from Interpol because…the British accent?  I have no idea, but he sure can’t pull off a convincing American one.  While in the production room in the back of a bar, his DEA friends decide to raid the building with full knowledge that he is in there.  Picture how a raid would go if you and your friends were in charge of it.  Now make it more idiotic.  You have full battle gear agents storming the bar and then they just happen to march in one by one to get blown away by the bikers.  Despite all the agents starting with assault weapons, one happens to turn the corner with just a pistol in his hand only to get blow away.

The head biker , Danny T, and his son get away in a car because apparently none of the DEA agents considered that there may be a back door to the bar and Broker gives chase after about a million repetitions of “don’t shoot, I’m a cop”.  And what does he choose as his mode of transport?  A motorcycle, of course.  The police soon have the car boxed in, but that doesn’t stop the silliest game of chicken from occurring between the car and the motorcycle.  Statham wipes out causing the motorcycle to hit the car and make it crash.  Soon, Danny T is in Statham’s custody but his son gets gunned down by not Statham which causes Danny T to hate Statham forever because…well, because.

Fast forward two years because…well, because.  Broker and his daughter, Maddy, have moved to Hicksville, Louisiana because…well, because.  There is actually some explanation for it; his wife has died.  And that’s it.  I have no idea how she died.  There’s no explanation for leaving the DEA or why he would choose this small little backwater.  It would have been interesting if he had to go underground because a hit was put on him as a result of the undercover work but they only ended up killing his wife.  But no.

And now we come to one of the only good parts of the movie.  Maddy is being picked on at school by a bigger kid and she totally kicks his ass.  I don’t know what it says about me that I get such a thrill at seeing a girl beating the crap out of a boy that has it coming, but it’s like chicken soup for my soul.

Maddy’s fight causes the bully’s bat-shit crazy mother, Cassie (played convincingly by Kate Bosworth), to sick first her husband and then her meth dealing brother, Gator (James Franco) against Booker after Booker makes a fool of her husband.  Gator starts to intimidate Booker in various petty backwater ways and breaks into Booker’s house at one point and discovers what I can only describe as a dimensional portal into the complete police archive.  Booker apparently keeps all the records of every case he ever worked on in his attic.  Because…well, because.  Gator discovers that Booker was an undercover DEA agent and that Booker was responsible for the fall of kingpin Danny T from way back in Act I.  Gator thinks he can use this leverage to convince Danny T to make him the meth distributor for the area.

Gator sets up the hit on Booker through a woman who worked with Danny T and it works out about how you’d expect when a group of people go up against Jason Statham.  As the hit goes south, the woman kidnaps Maddy and brings her to Gator who is really upset with this turn of events.  Booker is clued in on where Maddy is because she had a cell phone and called him and soon it’s Booker to the rescue!

In the meantime, though, Cassie confronts Gator about what’s going on and discovers that he has Maddy hostage.  She goes to rescue Maddy and turns on the power to the boat house they are in which causes the booby trap that Booker set earlier to explode completely destroying Gator’s meth lab.  Why does there need to be an explosion?  Because EXPLOSION!, that’s why!  Cassie and Gator struggle over Maddy and Gator accidentally shoots Cassie in the struggle.

Gator then takes Maddy and drives away with her just as Booker arrives.  This leads to a fairly dull chase scene that ends up on one of those weird bridges that opens by twisting 90 degrees in the middle.  Booker and Gator have a fairly boring showdown that ends in Booker only sparing Gator’s life because his daughter is looking on.  The end.

Oh, wait.  There’s still a drug kingpin controlling stuff from jail that could just send more people to kill Booker, isn’t there?  I know!  Let’s send Booker to visit Danny T in jail and threaten him a little.  Certainly that will stop him from sending more people!  Loose end tied off!  The end!

And then there’s all the stupid little things thrown in that had absolutely no impact to the story at all.  Like the school counselor agreeing to throw a 10th birthday party for Maddy because Booker “isn’t good at that kind of thing”.  And Maddy wanting to set her up with Booker despite still being really sad about her mom just dying a year ago.  And the scene with the bully kid crying in bed while his mom argues with Gator and asks for more meth.  And…nah, never mind, I’m done.

If you’ve read this far, you get to read about the things I liked about the movie.  I really liked the small town criminal feel portrayed by Gator and Cassie and her husband.  It was the perfect mix of small town prejudice and bruised honor and stupidity and delusions of grandeur that you would expect from two-bit criminals.  Ok, thing.  You get to read about the thing I liked about the movie.  No, it’s still not worth watching the movie, but it’s there.  So there’s that, I guess.

Oh, and why is the movie called “Homefront”?  It’s a mystery to me.  I would humbly suggest “Don’t Ever Eff With Jason Statham”.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 Stars

Bottom Line: A surprisingly enjoyable movie, much more so than the first.  Time went by quick for a 2+ hours movie.  There are still a few laughable but forgivable moments.

“Catching Fire” is the second movie in the “Hunger Games” series and it is far superior to the first.  Alas, the first movie came out before I started writing these reviews so I don’t recall exactly what was lacking, but what has stuck with me was a sense of “meh” with some admiration for the set designs and costuming.  “Catching Fire” does not disappoint in the latter.  Once again, the costuming is very interesting and the set design does not disappoint.

In a lot of ways, this is just a setup movie for the revolution that we all know is coming.  It’s the story of how Katniss goes from adored winner of the Hunger Games to revolutionary leader.  It’s a chess game between President Snow and Katniss but it’s also a game Katniss is not always entirely aware she’s playing or willing to play.  Jennifer Lawrence is highly effective at playing Katniss and Donald Sutherland gets the Machiavellian creepiness of Snow just right.

I don’t remember Jennifer Lawrence being nearly as captivating in the first movie.  Perhaps she’s grown that much as an actor in the ensuing years.  Donald Sutherland is Donald Sutherland and Woody Harrelson gives the most memorable character from the first film, Haymitch, another good go.  A surprise and welcome addition to the cast was Phillip Seymore Hoffman as Plutarch Heavensbee, the games master who you are not quite sure what he’s up to.

Everything else in “Catching Fire” is just very effective filler.  The Games themselves are interesting but kind of dull, filled with silly plans and alliances that I’m sure make more sense in the books than when translated to the movie.  The end was a little confusing as the real alliances are revealed, but it was a great setup to the next two part movie “Mockingjay”.  I am actually looking forward to it.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: Living with AIDS in the 80’s SUCKED.  You should read “And The Band Played On” by Randy Shilts to find out how much it sucked.  Matthew McConaughey and, especially, Jared Leto were fantastic.  Government can really suck sometimes.

Another true story movie.  This one is about Ron Woodroof, a hard drinking, fast talking, drug addicted, womanizing, homophobic cowboy/electrician.  You know, a Texan.  Ron discovers that he has AIDS after an electrical accident and is given 30 days to live.  After first rejecting the diagnosis, Ron quickly comes to his senses and starts stealing the trial drug AZT which he quickly overdoses on and almost dies.  Ok, maybe he doesn’t come to his senses so quickly after all.  After the overdose, Ron starts learning all he can about the disease and starts a club that gives away non-FDA approved medicines that do help prolong the lives of AIDS patients.  He quickly gets in trouble with the FDA and must fight them as well as his disease as he tries to help AIDS patients and make a bit of money.

The 80’s were a really scary time for HIV patients.  Not only did they have a disease with no known cure, but they were also demonized by the populace and the government.  I highly recommend “And The Band Played On” by Randy Shilts if you want to know more about this dark time in U.S. history.  It is a great accompanying piece to this movie.  The amount of history that we live through and know nothing about is mind-boggling.

This movie has some top rate acting by Matthew McConaughey as Ron Woodroof and Jared Leto as the cross-dressing eventual business partner, Rayon.  They both also go through quite the bodily transformation as their AIDS progresses.  Jennifer Garner as Eve Saks, a doctor sympathetic to Ron’s plight as he tries to bring an ease of symptoms to his club members is less effective.  I found her acting in the beginning of this movie annoying, but she did grow on me a bit in the second half.

I think I should say something about the drug AZT as it and the FDA, are the main villains in the movie.  There was a quick splash message at the end saying they eventually lowered the dosage of AZT to reduce some of the severe side effects of the drug, but you can easily come out of the movie thinking that AZT is bad.  It is not.  The FDA, on the other hand, is.  Or was.  Important lessons were learned from the HIV epidemic and changes were made to protocols when dealing with emerging viral threats.  We’ll see how well that works the next time an outbreak that predominantly effects a disaffected minority occurs.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: Don’t expect to like or understand the story unless you’re a comic geek.  As with the first Thor movie, the scenes on Earth steal the show from the special effecty Asgard scenes.  Kat Dennings is hilarious.

So, you see, there are these Elves, right?  And they like Dark and stuff, ok?  And they once tried to bring Darkness back to the universe by harnessing this stuff called Ether which can, like, totally bring Darkness back.  But they were resisted by the Asgardians who fight with swords and axes against the Dark Elves who have these super destructive beam weapons and stuff and the Asgardians totally decimated the Dark Elves and hid the Ether in the deepest regions of the somethingorother where it could never be reached again.  And the Dark Elves?  The Asgardians totally made them extinct and stuff even though a bunch very clearly got away in a massive space ship right in front of a whole bunch of Asgardians.

Yeah, we’re talking real comic book setup here.  But it’s ok.  You’ll survive it.  The rest of the movie is quite fun.

Like the first Thor movie, the scenes on Earth are much more compelling than the Asgard scenes.  A lot of this can be attributed to Darcy Lewis played by Kat Dennings.  I don’t think there is a single scene that she was in that wasn’t at least wryly amusing.  Exiting the movie, I asked how Kat Dennings wasn’t in more stuff only to find that she’s been in quite a few things, most notably the comedy “Two Broke Girls”, of which I have seen about five minutes before I gave up on it.  Maybe I should give it another chance.

This movie is closer to what Thor is supposed to be like than the first.  The one thing you should know about Thor is that he is supposed to be a pompous ass and kind of a moron.  Wait, that was two things.  His pomp was solved in the first movie, but his sheer stupidity was really missing from it.  In “The Dark World” we get to see a bit of his lackwit nature with him coming up with the brilliant idea of taking his Ether-toting girlfriend, Jane, from the massive defenses of Asgard to a barren planet which will draw away the very limited Dark Elf army so that he can fight them all himself and defeat the Ether by…something.  Thor is the Underpants Gnome superhero:  1.) Fight the enemy.  2.) ???  3.) WIN!

But, of course, win is what Thor does.  And this win is quite entertaining.  With the worlds aligning and portals to other worlds appearing everywhere, Thor battles uber-Dark Elf, Malekith, and they batter each other through portals and across worlds.  If you’ve ever played the Portal video game, it’s kind of like that only without the orange and green glowing portals.

Marvel has quite a knack of making perfectly entertaining movies that I have absolutely no interest in seeing again.  This one is slightly better than those.  I probably will never want to see it again, but I would not complain too much if I happened to do so.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 Stars

Bottom Line: Great acting and some incredible dialogue will not prevent you from asking yourself what the heck it was you just watched.

Subtitled Bottom Line:  Warning!  Cormac McCarthy movie ahead!

One thing I am certain of after watching “The Counselor” is that things definitely happened in it.  I am not sure what happened or how things were connected but, yep, things happened.  The plot, as far as I could follow it is such: This lawyer guy who is distractingly only called Counselor throughout the entire movie needs a lot of money because of…something.  In order to get that money, the Counselor decides to broker a drug deal using his drug dealing friends (clients?) that will net him millions of dollars.  A series of events that I am sure must be related to the drug deal because they bothered to put them in the movie then occur leading the Cartel to believe that the Counselor has stolen their drugs.  A lot of deaths follow which may or may not have been related to the previous series of events.

The first half of the movie really allows all the top talent actors to flex their A-list muscles.  This is certainly helped by Cormac McCarthy’s ability to write cerebral dialogue that can somehow come off as both deep and aloof at the same time.  If I were of a mind to watch this movie over and over again, which I am not, there are many gems of dialogue that would be certain to make it into my vernacular.

The second half of the movie is kind of a mess.  I was never really certain what was going on and how things were connected.  Everyone seemed to have a preternatural ability to know where the individual they want will be.  I was also never quite sure of who was on what side or how many double crosses were going on at any given time.  It would have been nice if the movie credits featured a Venn diagram of whose side everyone was on or maybe a flow chart of events to clarify some of the murkiness.

This movie is proof that a well written, well acted movie can still be pretty crappy.  My advice would be this:  If you’re going to see this movie, ignore the plot completely.  Look at it as a series of vingettes with some incredibly clever and witty dialogue.  Also, leave half way through the movie.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 5/5 Stars

Bottom line:  Dark.  Depressing.  Brilliant.

It is hard to admit that you liked a film such as “12 Years a Slave”.  It is a brutal and honest recounting of the darkest part of American history.  It is based on the autobiography of the same name which recounts the twelve years that free man Solomon Northup spent in slavery after being kidnapped and sold in the South.  Free Blacks being kidnapped and sold into slavery was a common occurrence.  The uncommon occurrence was Solomon Northrup being rescued from slavery and being able to write about it for the world to hear.  I do not feel that I am spoiling the ending by telling you this because it may make you feel a lot better to know that the movie has a happy ending.  If you can call that happy.  The many unhappy endings throughout make even this small victory bitter.

The injustices perpetrated upon Solomon Northup are legion, but the one that sticks in my mind the most is the one done at the hands of Ford, the “good” slave owner.  There is little doubt that Ford knew all along that Northup was once free and, despite his decent treatment of his slaves, he did nothing to help Northup and ends up selling Northup the minute he becomes inconvenient.  To some extent, one must accept the evil in the world, but putting on a facade of good to cover the rot in your soul gets to me more than the actions of the cruellest of dictators.

Despite it’s dark content, there is a lot of beauty in this movie as well.  The dire circumstances are interspersed with hauntingly beautiful landscapes that only the South can provide.  Director Steve McQueen (not THAT Steve McQueen) does a remarkable job of not only bringing to life the daily cruelties but also the daily pleasures that slaves try to bring to their lives.

This is certainly not a feel good movie and the violence is often quite graphic.  That makes it very hard to recommend this movie to a general audience.  But neither life nor history is all rainbows and lollipops.  Sometimes you need to look into the dark maw of the past to see our not so sparkly past.  Only then can we create a slightly less muddy future.

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 Stars

Bottom Line: An intriguing story of a real life event.  More Somali pirate background should have been included.  Some editing would have been nice.  Damn, Tom Hanks is a good actor.

“Captain Phillips” tells the true story of a massive container ship hijacked by Somali pirates and the ordeals that the ship’s crew and the eponymous Captain Phillips endure.  The movie starts with two opening sequences that establish the main characters.

We see Captain Phillips getting ready for his trip to take command of the Maresk Alabama and driving to the airport with his wife.  He’s just an everyman going to his job discussing issues of the family with his wife.  It’s a beautiful scene and the interactions with his wife make you believe the two have beem married for years.  Captain Phillips’ life is familiar to us so it doesn’t take much time to establish his character and it certainly helps that you have as talented an actor as Tom Hanks doing so.

We also see Muse, a Somali pirate gathering a group of men to go looking for ships to hijack.  You get the feeling that almost none of them want to be doing this.  But threats of violence from the local warlord and a bit of drugs and a bit of competition and they are raring to go.  I wish they had spent more time establishing Muse’s background.  What does he do when he’s not hijacking ships?  What is his family situation?  Barkhad Abdi does a really good job of establishing Muse’s humanity throughout the movie, but his life in Somalia is so foreign to us he and his fellow pirates might as well be aliens.

The events leading up to the eventual hijacking of the Maersk Alabama are fairly taut as are the events that take place on the ship as well.  When the pirates escape the ship taking Captain Phillips hostage, things kind of slow down.  A good ten or fifteen minutes could probably have been cut from this portion of the film without any loss of cohesion.

The ending scene is absolutely riveting.  Tom Hanks will just blow you away when you watch this part of the film.  After everything that has happened, Captain Phillips is understandably in shock.  Tom Hanks captures this so heart-achingly beautifully.  I don’t think this is an Oscar caliber movie, but if they could give an Oscar for a single scene performance, Tom Hanks would win it hands down.

As with all movies that claim to portray real events, there is a bit of a controversy if things happened as they did in the film.  A lot of people blame Captain Phillips for putting the ship in the position to be kidnapped in the first place.  This is somewhat portrayed in the movie, but kind of glossed over.  It just goes to show, history is not only written by the victors but by the heroes on the winning side.