World War Z Official Trailer #1 (2013) - Brad Pitt Movie HD

Gangster Squad vs. Broken City

It’s January and it’s that time of year when the studios send out their Dogs with Fleas.

Reason why is that everyone is focused on watching all the nominated Oscar movies. I was hoping that these 2 movies with All-Star casts would flip the script. I was wrong.
Gangster Squad has Spicoli, Sean Penn, trying to give a great gangster performance but comes up wayyyy short and ends up matching Al Pacino’s performance of gangster Big Boy Caprice in Dick Tracy. This is not good, just funny.
The chemistry that Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling had in Crazy Stupid Love is gone and they seem to be walking through their performances. No need for me to tell you what the movie is about because you have seen this plot in numerous films even though it’s supposed to be a true story.

Verdict for Gangster Squad:
A true dud.

Now for Broken City, Mark Wahlberg is just not consistent in picking good movies to star in. He goes from Contraband which was just ok to his great starring role in Ted, then back to this weak ass Broken City. Marky Mark’s performance is pretty much the same in all movies but I was hoping to see Catherine Zeta Jones come back strong after her medical situation but in this movie she is like pretty wallpaper. I hate to say it but see has not made a good movie since she married Michael Douglas and it looks like Douglas has sucked all the youth out of her. Russell Crowe is also a disappointment. He plays a New York mayor who can’t nail the New York accent?

Letter to Mr. Crowe:
Please do Gladiator 2 before you get too old. You now have a body of work (mostly weak) but Gladiator 2 will revive your career.

Verdict for Broken City:
Broken Movie.

Verdict for Gangster Squad vs. Broken City
Go see the one great movie I missed last year but just watched on DVD:

Beast of the Southern Wild.

The Impossible

A few years ago actor Chiwetel Ejiofor starred in HBO’s miniseries Tsunami: The Aftermath which I thought at the time was an excellent account of the tragedy. Clint Eastwood also did a great recreation of the Tsunami in his movie Hereafter. So I really didn’t expect much from The Impossible. Sure enough I was right. The Impossible is a true story and it’s an account of a family caught that is separated when the storm hits and how they go about trying to find each other.

In my opinion the HBO account with Ejiofor is better. Ejifor and Sophie Okonedo, who is also in the series, should have received numerous awards.
Clint’s Hereafter special effects captured the storm better than The Impossible.
What I am trying to say is that there is no need to spend your good dollars on The Impossible.
Naomi Watts is fine but she does not deserve an Oscar for this performance. She’s done better.

Verdict:
Save your money.

Now You See Me TRAILER (2013) - Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher Movie HD

Best Movies of 2012

The Avengers

After 2 movies Hollywood finally was able to capture The Hulk exactly like he was in the comics.

Silver Lining Playbook

Very cool movie about Real People. Bradley Cooper finally proves he is a Leading Man.

Breaking Dawn

I dare anyone to show me a vampire movie that was filmed better than this. I didn’t read the books and I was on the edge of my seat. I was thoroughly entertained.

Flight
At 58 years old Denzel once again proves that he is one of the Best Actors in Hollywood. This is the movie he should win an Oscar for. The ending was on point.

Cloud Atlas

Hanks and Halle’s best performances in years. The most creative movie of the year. I can’t wait to see it again.

Le Miz

My pick for the Best Picture of the year with Cloud Atlas as a close 2^nd.

Arbitrage

This is what Wall Street 2 (God that movie sucked) should have been. This is a film that nobody saw or cared about but Richard Gere rocks.

The Master

Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix give the audience a dazzling performance.

Ted

The casting of Mark Wahlberg was genius because we laughed our heads off as he talked to a plant in The Happening so why not have him talk to a Teddy Bear. Seth MacFarlane is right now the smartest guy in Hollywood.

Think Like A Man, Act Like A Woman / What to Expect When Your Expecting

These are 2 RomComs that are not on critics top ten lists but were funny and well done.

 Retro Honorable Mention from 1968:

Night of the Living Dead:

I became a HUGE fan of The Walking Dead this year which stars a new, cool, Leading Man, British actor Andrew Lincoln (from Love Actually). The show also stars Danai Gurira in her breakthrough role as Michonne (I love her performance and character on the show). While waiting for Season 3 to continue I decided to watch the film that started it all by George A. Romero.

Night of The Living Dead is brilliant and Romero was way ahead of his time.  The casting was excellent and the other than the clothes and the cars the film does not feel dated. As with The Walking Dead the writing is great and the characters are well played.

It is sad however that Romero didn’t own the right’s to this original classic and that there have been dozens of spin offs and billions of dollars made on Walking Dead people.

Check it out in original Black and White if you haven’t already, one of the best horror movies of all time!

Zero Dark Thirty

Director Kathryn Bigelow has done a few movies I liked, Near Dark, Blue Steel, and I was one of the few people that loved Strange Days. I didn’t like Hurt Locker and I am not that fascinated like the other critics by Zero Dark Thirty. It’s a good movie but it’s not great. Reason why it is not great because at over 2 hours long you don’t ever get to know who the lead character is? The movie is a chronicle of the decade-long hunt for al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden after the September 2001 attacks, and his death at the hands of the Navy S.E.A.L. Team 6 in May, 2011.

The best part of the movie is the end where Bigelow recreates how Osama bin Laden was executed. It takes into fact everything we have heard and read about how it went down. Not sure there will be another movie that will be able to recreate this event as good as Bigelow does. That part of the movie is really all you need to see. The rest focuses on torture methods and Maya, Jessica Chastain’s, relentless pursuit of Osama.

The flaw in this movie is that the audience never gets to know what drives Maya’s character. Did she have someone die on 9/11? Why was her life so private in the movie? For 157 mins. long Bigelow could have given us a little more insight.

Verdict:
It’s like King Kong and Titanic but not anywhere in its class. You know that the ship and the ape are going down but you want to be entertained before it happens, and you want to know and care about the characters. You don’t get that in Zero Dark Thirty.

After Earth - Official Trailer | HD | Will Smith