Megamind (2010)

I enjoyed this more the second time than the first.  It just goes to show how your preconceptions really do color your experiences.  I didn't expect to like this so it had to really work hard to win me over originally.  But, because I did end up liking it, I was much more kindly disposed toward it a second time.  That seems to be happening to me more and more lately.  I would like to think that it's because I'm growing more open and more willing to take chances on things but I can't say that for sure.  It could also mean that I'm getting lazier and more willing to just be entertained than analyze a movie for structure and content.

I already posted a synopsis of the film's plot below, so I don't have anything to add on that point, but I did find myself paying more attention to the details this time around.  Minion (David Cross) specifically stood out to me as the comic centerpiece.  A lot of the truly funny interactions are between him and Megamind.  Also, the backgrounds of Megamind's evil lair and Metro Man's secret hideout probably hold a ton of Easter eggs that bear closer scrutiny.  All these little things add up to a film that can be re-watched without causing the watcher to want to claw their eyes out.  Originally posted:  16 Jul 2012    Rob's birthday was on Saturday so he got to pick the movie (it was his turn anyway but I'm not going to remind him of that).  He picked Megamind. 

Megamind (Will Ferrell) is an alien who was sent to Earth after his planet was destroyed.  Unfortunately, another baby alien who was much cuter and much more popular also ended up on the planet, taking the name Metro Man (Brad Pitt).  The two become bitter rivals, especially over the affections of intrepid reporter Roxanne (Tina Fey) by kidnapping and rescuing, respectively.  One day, however, Megamind actually manages to succeed in killing his arch-rival and then takes over Metro City.  Sadly, a life of quiet dictatorship turns out to be boring so Megamind schemes to replace his nemesis by turning Roxanne's camera guy Hal (Jonah Hill) into the superhero Titan.  Much like many of his plans, however, things don't exactly work out.

I'm always a fan of when the bad guys win and I think this is a cute little movie.  Not as good as Despicable Me but still a fun, innocuous film suitable for all ages.  I am not a fan of Will Ferrell or of Jonah Hill but they didn't annoy me as much as I thought they would.  I guess I really just hate their stupid faces and not everything about them, like I previously assumed.  Also, Tina Fey has a really sultry voice.  I don't really know anything about her since I've never watched any of her TV shows and the only movie I've seen with her in it was Baby Mama, which was retarded.  All the other actors were very distinctive but if Rob hadn't told me that it was Tina Fey I wouldn't have known til the credits rolled.

The DUFF (2015)

  This is a very middling teen comedy that also happens to be the Christy pick for August.

Bianca (Mae Whitman) is a typical high school girl.  She has two best friends and a crush on a boy she can't talk to without stammering.  When her neighbor Wes (Robbie Amell) lets slip at a party that she is a DUFF --the Designated Ugly Fat Friend-- for her two much hotter compatriots, it wrecks her previously well-ordered life.  Bianca browbeats Wes into giving her a makeover but soon runs afoul of his bitchy ex-girlfriend (Bella Thorne) and her penchant for viral videos.

This is basically an updated She's All That for the camera phone age.  There's nothing new being said here but it's not horribly made or acted so I'm not going to tell you to avoid it.  Robbie Amell is the breakout star here, in my opinion.  He stole every scene he was in and provided nearly all of the (relatively few) laughs.

House of Frankenstein (1944)

  And now we come to the final installment of my Frankenstein Legacy collection.

Set after the events of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, the movie opens on an entirely new set of characters.  Dr. Niemann (Boris Karloff) is rotting in prison after his experiments transplanting a human brain into a dog's body --why?  Because SCIENCE!-- reached the public knowledge.  His best friend, in jail for an unspecified reason, is the hunchback Daniel (J. Carrol Naish), who hopes that Dr. Niemann will put his brain into a more suitable body.  They escape and head toward the home of Niemann's hero, Dr. Frankenstein (Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Film), catching a ride with a traveling carnival claiming to possess the very bones of Dracula.  By catching a ride, of course, I mean they murdered everyone and took over.  Frankenstein's castle has been destroyed by irate townsfolk but underneath the ruins, Niemann and Daniel discover the frozen bodies of the Monster (Glenn Strange) and Wolf Man (Lon Chaney).  Wolfie defrosts pretty easily, reverting back to his human form of Larry Talbot.  The Monster is a little worse for wear, prompting Niemann to rush back to his home lab.  They still have to put on a show in their new guise to allay suspicion, as Dr. Niemann is still a well-known name in those parts.  Having spotted one of the men who sent him to jail, Niemann removes the stake from Dracula's bones...and discovers that it is indeed the Count (John Carradine).  He sends the vampire after his nemesis' daughter (Anne Gwynne).  Meanwhile, Daniel is jealous of Niemann's fascination with Talbot and fears the doctor will renege on his promises.  Because, really, if you can't trust a mad scientist to keep his word, who CAN you trust?

Despite having his name in the title, there is fuck all to do with either the scientist or his monster in this film.  I think it was really just an excuse to get all three major horror properties in the same film.  It does rather turn out to be a hot mess of plot threads but it was nice to see Boris Karloff without makeup for once.  I was feeling the lack of Lugosi, though, I'm not going to lie.  John Carradine is suave, certainly, but he's no match for that Hungarian stare.

Max Payne (2008)

  Ok, this is not going to be a popular opinion but I don't care, it's my blog and I'll say what I want.

I liked this movie.  I've seen it like three times now and I still like this movie.

Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg) is a cop looking for the men who murdered his wife and baby.  The trail keeps leading him to people bearing the same wing tattoo, including a Russian prostitute named Natasha (Olga Kurylenko).  When Natasha ends up hacked to death in an alley, her sister Mona (Mila Kunis) figures Max for the killer, but it doesn't take long for her to see that they both want the same thing.  Together, they discover the connection between the victims and a psychopath named Lupino (Amaury Nolasco) is a drug called Valkyr.

The connections in this movie are stupidly obvious for anyone with the barest knowledge of Norse mythology.  Also, very early on, one drug addict drops a vial with the name of the evil corporation written on the side.  This is not high-brow fare.  I can't speak to its status as a video game adaptation since I never played it but I'm guessing from the lack of sequel development or any positive comments that it missed the mark.

None of that means anything to me.  What I really enjoyed were the visuals.  Yes, we've seen that leached noir color palette before, but I thought it worked here.  I also really liked the visual representations of the drug's hallucinatory effects.  I'm a sucker for angels and demons and the like so I was down to drink the kool-aid.  I also really like the scene where Chris O'Donnell gets punched in the face a bunch of times.  I don't know why.  I don't have anything against the man.  I just think it's entertaining.

The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)

  We now come to the fourth entry in our original series.  This is where we lost Karloff as the Monster but replaced him with other Universal stablemate, Lon Chaney.

After the events of Son of Frankenstein, Ygor (Bela Lugosi) and the Monster (Lon Chaney) are forced to escape from Castle Frankenstein before a mob of villagers burns it to the ground.  Ygor decides to locate his master's second son, Ludwig (Sir Cedric Hardwicke), a preeminent brain surgeon, to make the Monster better.  This Dr. Frankenstein also wants nothing to do with his father's creation but cannot deny the urge to fix something so grievously wrong.  He determines that the problem this whole time has been the Monster's defective brain and decides to swap it out for the brain of his colleague, Dr. Kettering (Barton Yarborough), who was murdered by the Monster.  Ygor wants to put his own brain into the unstoppable body, however, and makes a deal with Frankenstein's former mentor-cum-assistant (Lionel Atwill) to secretly switch brains.  Meanwhile, a new mob is forming to once again drive the Monster and the beleaguered Frankenstein family out of town.

Aside from the many medical impossibilities presented, this is not a bad little movie.  The Monster shows some growth in a sense, by choosing a little girl from town to donate a brain, but that's probably a reaction to wanting to become innocent again and not a gender identity crisis.  Once again, he is shown to not be totally evil, just in service to evil people, like Ygor, who has come a long way from just a dim-witted assistant.

Man on a Ledge (2012)

  I thought this was going to be awful but it ended up being pretty entertaining.  Don't get me wrong, it wants to be Inside Man so badly that it's a little sad, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) is an ex-cop doing a 25-year sentence for stealing a huge diamond while doing a bodyguard gig for industrialist David Englander (Ed Harris).  Nick maintains his innocence but so does every other inmate.  Out on a day pass for his father's funeral, Nick escapes and climbs out onto the ledge of a high-rise hotel under an assumed name.  Disgraced negotiator Det. Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks) is assigned to try and talk him off the ledge.  Meanwhile, Nick's brother Joey (Jamie Bell) and Joey's girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez) try to break in to Englander's vault to prove the diamond was never stolen in the first place.

I've never been a fan of Sam Worthington.  I don't think he can act his way out of a paper sack.  Bell and Rodriguez absolutely make this worth watching.  Anthony Mackie gets billing on top of the poster but he doesn't really have a lot of scenes.  Also, Edward Burns, Kyra Sedgwick and Titus Welliver round out the supporting cast.  I wouldn't put money down to see this, but if it's on cable give it a minute before you change channels.  You might have a good time.

Son of Frankenstein (1939)

  Today is my 33rd birthday!  I got my hair done and then went to two wineries with my friends!  It was a good day.  Now I am back and ready to blog. 

This installment of Frankenstein is one I had never seen before but I noticed so many things Young Frankenstein had lifted, it felt almost familiar.

Wolf von Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone), raised by his mother in England, has no real attachment to his ancestral home and wants to make a fresh start upon the death of his father.  The townspeople, on the other hand, have just about had it with the whole weird bunch and charge the police chief (Lionel Atwill) with keeping an eye on the heir.  It's really Igor (Bela Lugosi) who gets Junior back into the monster-raising business.  He explains that Frankenstein's creation (Boris Karloff) had been struck by lightning and has not been right since, stuck in some sort of coma.  Frankenstein the younger is intrigued by the problem but soon finds that dealing with an angry mob, a spiteful henchman, and a suspicious cop is a bit much for any man.

Bela Lugosi does not get enough credit for this role.  He is phenomenal here.  Rathbone is famous for playing Sherlock Holmes in a series of films, which I have not seen, but here his timing seems to lag in places, like he's waiting for someone's missed cue.  I have no idea if that is the case or not but it makes me award the Stand-out Performance statue to Lugosi, instead.  Most sequels suck, especially ones made years after the original but this is well worth a watch.

No Cable

I had hoped to have everything up and running by today.  I've accomplished quite a bit already.  I learned how to use a power drill, successfully navigated to two different Home Depots, bought a socket wrench, discovered I have the upper body strength of cooked spaghetti which prevented me from being able to utilize said socket wrench effectively but did not then throw a fit and proceed to smash everything with a hammer.  I sat down, took deep breaths, said "fuck it" and used a crescent wrench for more leverage.  Because I would rather have drilled through my foot than called someone to ask for help.  I managed to get the television in the living room mounted (no small feat, as it is almost the same length I am) and all the components hooked up only to be stymied by an unresponsive cable box.  The earliest I can get a person out to check the wiring is Wednesday.

I feel like someone changed the difficulty rating on my game without telling me.

Typically, me having cable or not wouldn't impact my blogging but I spent so much time on it the last two days that I haven't had time to watch anything else.  I've started Son of Frankenstein but I'm not going to have it finished before midnight tonight and I'm just too tired to stay up.  

You know how I know it's a work of fiction?  Three generations of Frankensteins have managed to create a living creature using a pulley and a thunderstorm, meanwhile four different customer support people can't even get signal to my cable box.  Honestly, it's like I'm living in the 19th century over here.  Up until Saturday, I didn't even have a microwave.  Luckily, a co-worker gave me one before I starved.  Thank God for wifi or I'd start to wonder if I was pioneering on the Oregon Trail.  (And then my whole party died of dysentery.)

Planet Earth (2006)

  Well, I did not get my living room TV mounted today.  But I did manage to get set up in the bedroom, so I can at least watch DVDs.  I've just finished the BBC series Planet Earth and it is astonishingly beautiful.  Covering every habitat from jungle canopies to the depths of the ocean, these intrepid camera people managed to film some of the rarest views our planet has to offer.

My favorite segments were the Planet Earth diaries at the end of each episode.  These little featurettes focused on a particular sequence of filming and showed how the crew accomplished getting their shots.  Mostly, it involved hours upon hours of waiting in horrific climates.  Sometimes it's dangerous, like trying to get footage of oceanic whitetip sharks, or just soul-scarringly icky, like filming a literal mountain of bat guano in a cave covered in millions of cockroaches.  In fact, the entire Cave episode is just pure nightmare fuel.  Not even the avuncular tones of David Attenborough could make that one okay.

If you haven't seen this series, it is also available on streaming so there's really no excuse.  It's lovely and educational.

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

I am officially moved in to my new apartment!  Unfortunately, as of the writing of this update, everything is still in boxes which means that I was not able to watch anything the last couple of days.  I've been so tired it hasn't really mattered to me but it does leave me fresh out of things to post.  I was re-watching Bride of Frankenstein when I had to disassemble all my electronics so I'm going to re-post my review for today.  Now that everything is moved, I'm hoping I can get at least one blu-ray player hooked up today so I have something to watch for tomorrow's post.  A friend from work (shout-out to Jim!) loaned me a drill so I can put up the living room TV but I don't know if I'm going to get to it today.  There's so much that needs to be done before I can even consider drilling into the walls.  I appreciate everyone's patience and I am going to try and get stuff posted on schedule this week.  Originally published 14 Apr 2013    This is the rare sequel that surpasses the original.

Picking up immediately where the previous film left off, the fire is still burning at the old watch tower.  The Creature (Boris Karloff) manages to crawl out of the wreckage and escape into the town.  After being captured and escaping a couple of times, he finally makes it into the woods, where a blind hermit (O.P. Heggie) shelters him and teaches him the finer things, like cigars and drinking.  Oh, also, talking.  Meanwhile, the body of Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) is taken back to the castle.  His fiancée, Elizabeth (now Valerie Hobson, in a little break in continuity), takes care of him and nurses him back to health.  Henry vows to never have anything to do with his experiments again.  This is bad news for creepy visitor Doctor Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger), who really wants Frankenstein to help him create a whole new race of people by building the Creature a mate. 

There is a lot more going on in this movie.  I was pleased there was some character development for the Creature but I would have liked to have seen more from Elsa Lanchester.  I know that's supposed to be the "big reveal" but still.  At least she got an earlier bit where she could play Mary Shelley, narrating this sequel for her husband and Lord Byron.  That part was cute. 

Frankenstein (1931)

I did end up buying the Frankenstein Legacy Collection and it's currently the only DVD that is not packed.  I have no idea if I've mentioned this previously, but I am in the process of moving from my current apartment and have spent what feels like an eternity packing.  The move-out date is only a couple of days away now so I'm down to bare bones in my apartment.  Obviously, this has not left me a great deal of time to see new movies so I appreciate your collective patience.  I have been watching assorted anime series on the server like Magical Girl Squad, which was cute, and Magister Negi Magi, which was not.  I honestly couldn't even get through three episodes of the latter.  Too pervy.  I hope things will be returning to normal here in the next couple of weeks so bear with me.  Originally posted 4/13/13    I had never actually seen the iconic Karloff Frankenstein all the way through.  I had seen countless clips and references but I had never sat down and watched it before.  Even now, after eighty years, this is a great movie.

Dr. Frankenstein (Colin Clive) is a man obsessed.  He has called off his own wedding and holed up in an abandoned watch tower in order to conduct his experiments, with the help only of his hunchbacked assistant, Fritz (Dwight Frye).  His father, the baron, is furious and sends Henry's fiancée and best man out to get him.  They arrive during a terrible storm, just as Henry's greatest experiment is scheduled to be completed:  the reanimation of dead tissue.  The Creature (Boris Karloff) is stitched together from stolen corpses and a abnormal brain.  For all that, he is quite passive until Fritz discovers his irrational fear of fire.  The little hunchback takes every opportunity to harass the Creature, until the inevitable happens.

I already own the Dracula and Wolf Man Legacy collections and it looks like I'll have to add this one to my list.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015)

  I know, I know, I'm a week behind.  It's been a very busy summer for me, if not for the box office.

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is waylaid by a mysterious villain (Sean Harris) in London at the same time as the Impossible Mission Force is shut down by the CIA.  Brandt (Jeremy Renner) is running interference at home while Ethan tracks a series of catastrophic events around the globe.  He knows he can count on support from Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames) but femme fatale Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson) is a different bag altogether.  Still, they must pool their resources if they ever hope to take down the Syndicate.

Ghost Protocol is still the best entry in the series so far but this one isn't terrible.  The stunts are good; Tom Cruise is crazy for doing them himself but Lord love him for being in that good of shape at his age.  Simon Pegg gets a much beefier role this time around, which is great since he is much more of the beating heart than Cruise, who is just slightly too removed and aloof.  There's a wonderful set piece in the opera house in Vienna that was probably my stand-out moment, but it was not all wine and roses.

It felt as though the filmmakers tried a little too hard to make this into a Sherlock-Moriarty game.  The central villain is meant to be a dark mirror to Ethan Hunt and Sean Harris does a helluva job.  The strain came from everyone else's reactions in the film.  Over and over, characters ask Ethan if the Syndicate could be all in his head.  That kind of schtick only works if there is doubt in the audience's mind and it's explicitly shown to those of us watching that the Syndicate is very much a thing.  Then it feels very much like the drama is forced.  Like you just want to yell "He is not making  it up!  Can you get off your asses and lend him a hand?!" at the screen.  Maybe that's just me.

Monkey Business (1931)

  This was my very first Marx Brothers movie. I am now a fan forever and for always.

The four Marx brothers, Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo, stowaway on an ocean liner.  While hiding from the crew, Zeppo meets the lovely Mary Helton (Ruth Hall), whose father, Joe (Rockcliffe Fellowes), is attempting to cut ties with his gangster past.  Joe's biggest rival, Briggs (Harry Woods), has followed him onto the boat in order to force Joe to acknowledge Briggs as the new gang leader.  Groucho immediately begins putting the moves on Briggs' attention-starved wife, Lucille (Thelma Todd).  Briggs is not to be distracted, however, and kidnaps Mary from a party, forcing the Marx Brothers to band together and rescue her.  Ok, mostly they provide running commentary while Zeppo attempts to rescue her.

This movie is 84 years old and still works as perfectly now as it did when released.  There is something so timeless about these four and their antics that really can't be described.  I've always come across quotes from Groucho Marx, mostly from his television show, but seeing him in action, especially his interactions with Chico, was magical.  I'm not a huge physical comedy person so I thought I'd probably like Harpo the least, since he's always mute, but I was stunned at how charismatic and likable he was.

If you've ever been curious about the Marx brothers or are just a fan of whiplash one-liners and expert pratfalls, give them a try.  They are excellent.

The Fox and the Hound II (2006)

  I'm not sure what genius thought this needed to be made, but they were wrong.

Set at some unspecified point in the main characters' youth, Tod (Jonah Bobo) the fox and Copper (Harrison Fahn) the hound are very excited at the prospect of a county fair.  Chief (Rob Paulsen) is competing as a tracker and Copper wants to do the same, but has not quite mastered the art of using his nose and is relegated to his barrel.  Tod liberates his friend and they explore the various attractions, including all-dog a cappella group The Singin' Strays.  Lead singer Cash (Patrick Swayze) clashes with diva Dixie (Reba McIntire) and hires Copper to fill in, just to tweak her nose.  Dixie retaliates by cozying up to a left-out Tod in the hopes of sabotaging the group's audition for the Grand Ole Opry.  Of course, everything backfires and Tod and Copper must use the Power of Friendship to make everything right.

This is nothing more than a shameless grab for cash, despite the inclusion of bonafide stars Swayze and McIntire.  Their musical numbers would almost make this worth watching if there wasn't so much wrong with the rest of it, including a flimsy premise, tired gags, and too many side characters.

The Fox and the Hound (1981)

  I swear, I thought this movie was made way earlier than 1981.  It is such a throwback to old-style Disney movies in style and animation that I was shocked when I looked it up in IMDb.

Orphaned by hunters as a kit, Tod (Keith Coogan and Mickey Rooney) is raised by the Widow Tweed (Jeanette Nolan), a human woman, and Big Mama (Pearl Bailey), an owl.  On the farm next to the widow's, a hunter named Amos Slade (Jack Albertson) lives with his dogs, Chief (Pat Buttram) and Copper (Corey Feldman and Kurt Russell).  Copper and Tod are the same age and enjoy playing together but Amos Slade is determined to turn Copper into a hunting hound.  After an accident where Chief is injured, the blame falls on Tod and the widow decides to set him free in a game preserve.  But protected land is no deterrent to the vindictive Slade.

This was never my favorite of the Disney collection.  It's under-characterized, there aren't any musical bits to speak of, and it's a highly simplistic storyline.  I know there are people who really love it, though, so I guess I'm in the minority.  It just never grabbed me.

Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (2012)

  This was surprisingly funny.  I haven't been as big a fan of this franchise as I have of the other DreamWorks fare.  It tends to fall under the "children only" category, not "fun for all ages".  I don't know how this would hold up to repeat viewings but it at least made me interested in seeing the Penguins spin-off.

The four New York zoo animals, Marty (Chris Rock), Alex (Ben Stiller), Gloria (Jada Pinkett-Smith), and Melman (David Schwimmer) find themselves abandoned in Africa after the penguins and the chimps take a plane to Monte Carlo, instead of for rescue.  Alex gets fed up with waiting and decides to hunt down the penguins and force them to help the refugees get back to the zoo.  They find the penguins living it up in a casino but must quickly change their plans as they come into the sights of an overzealous animal control officer (Frances McDormand).  As a cover, the mismatched group joins a traveling circus that has seen better days.  In order to get a contract to perform in America, the circus must impress a talent scout in Rome.  Alex and crew must reinvent this sad troupe into a group worthy of attention if they ever want to see home again.

There was one moment in this film that made me laugh so hard I had to hit pause.  It is the only real dark comedy gag and it was so unexpected and delightful that the rest of the movie could have been shit and I would still recommend it.  It is worth it for that moment alone.  The rest of the movie is cute, don't worry, but that scene is the real stand-out for me.