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.

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.