Iron Man 2
Grade: B- (Watch it)
Review: A decent sequel. High octane superhero action movie. Robert Downey Jr does a great job playing the narcissistic Tony Stark. Some of the crew seems unnecessary but overall well executed.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
The Messenger (2009)
The Messenger
Grade: B (Watch it)
Review: Very powerful and emotional soldiers life drama. Story follows two Army Casualty Notification Officers dealing with mission of bearing the bad news to the loved ones of fallen soldiers. Great acting from the leads and supporting actors. No political statement just moving, humorous, and very human portrait of the grief and struggle.
Grade: B (Watch it)
Review: Very powerful and emotional soldiers life drama. Story follows two Army Casualty Notification Officers dealing with mission of bearing the bad news to the loved ones of fallen soldiers. Great acting from the leads and supporting actors. No political statement just moving, humorous, and very human portrait of the grief and struggle.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Daybreakers (2010)
Daybreakers
Grade: B- (Watch it)
Review: Very interesting premise of a fast developing vampire society dealing with scarce food resources - humans. Even in this society the corporate monopoly has profit rather than common good in mind. A vampire movie that is not romantic and with gay vampires. These vampires respect classic horror rules: they love blood, eat humans, get killed by the sun, you cannot see them in the mirror, and they try to avoid getting impaled.
The story and directing is strong; but some action sequences seem forced and the ending bloodshed seems unnecessary.
Grade: B- (Watch it)
Review: Very interesting premise of a fast developing vampire society dealing with scarce food resources - humans. Even in this society the corporate monopoly has profit rather than common good in mind. A vampire movie that is not romantic and with gay vampires. These vampires respect classic horror rules: they love blood, eat humans, get killed by the sun, you cannot see them in the mirror, and they try to avoid getting impaled.
The story and directing is strong; but some action sequences seem forced and the ending bloodshed seems unnecessary.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
It's Complicated (2009)
It's Complicated
Grade: C+ (Rent it)
Review: Terrible premise; but astonishing actors like Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin make this watchable and entertaining.
Grade: C+ (Rent it)
Review: Terrible premise; but astonishing actors like Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin make this watchable and entertaining.
Edge of Darkness (2010)
Edge of Darkness
Grade: B- (Watch it)
Review: Good acting and exciting story. Mel Gibson does a great job playing a cop who's looking for his daughters killers. The conspiracy theories make this thriller very exciting, but while the ending is brutally righteous it leaves few unanswered questions that make you feel there was a little more to this story.
Grade: B- (Watch it)
Review: Good acting and exciting story. Mel Gibson does a great job playing a cop who's looking for his daughters killers. The conspiracy theories make this thriller very exciting, but while the ending is brutally righteous it leaves few unanswered questions that make you feel there was a little more to this story.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Green Zone (2010)
Green Zone
Grade: B (Watch it)
Review: A fiction that is sadly too close to the tragic reality of the Iraqi war case. This is an action/thriller movie, but marketing this movie as an action movie was a moronic decision. The core of this movie is attempting to get to the heart of how unreliable intelligence about WMDs was cherry picked and used to start a war. An unnecessary war that has caused the loss of American life and wealth; it has cost us more than 1 trillion dollars and undermined our moral high-ground, our credibility and foreign policy for decades to come.
Movie explores a handful of fictitious characters who clearly have the corresponding real person (the name in the brackets is the real person).
- An opportunistic war cheerleader journalist (aka Judith Miller) who was used as a useful idiot by the administration to make the case for war.
- Incompetent administrator (aka Paul Bremer) who disbanded Iraqi Army and singlehandedly helped the start of sectarian violence and prolonged the conflict.
- Veteran intelligence officer (aka Jay Garner) who was pushed aside and his warnings and ideas for managing post occupation Iraqi were ignored.
- The “reliable” Iraqi informant (Rafid Ahmed Alwan aka 'Curveball') a conman that simply lied to German intelligence in order of getting his immigration status (green card) fixed.
- Main character (aka Richard "Monty" Gonzales the Army chief warrant officer charged with finding the WMDs) who believes in our reason for going to war but quickly becomes disheartened by false intelligence as he visits an empty site after an empty site.
Grade: B (Watch it)
Review: A fiction that is sadly too close to the tragic reality of the Iraqi war case. This is an action/thriller movie, but marketing this movie as an action movie was a moronic decision. The core of this movie is attempting to get to the heart of how unreliable intelligence about WMDs was cherry picked and used to start a war. An unnecessary war that has caused the loss of American life and wealth; it has cost us more than 1 trillion dollars and undermined our moral high-ground, our credibility and foreign policy for decades to come.
Movie explores a handful of fictitious characters who clearly have the corresponding real person (the name in the brackets is the real person).
- An opportunistic war cheerleader journalist (aka Judith Miller) who was used as a useful idiot by the administration to make the case for war.
- Incompetent administrator (aka Paul Bremer) who disbanded Iraqi Army and singlehandedly helped the start of sectarian violence and prolonged the conflict.
- Veteran intelligence officer (aka Jay Garner) who was pushed aside and his warnings and ideas for managing post occupation Iraqi were ignored.
- The “reliable” Iraqi informant (Rafid Ahmed Alwan aka 'Curveball') a conman that simply lied to German intelligence in order of getting his immigration status (green card) fixed.
- Main character (aka Richard "Monty" Gonzales the Army chief warrant officer charged with finding the WMDs) who believes in our reason for going to war but quickly becomes disheartened by false intelligence as he visits an empty site after an empty site.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Repo Men (2010)
Repo Men
Grade: D (Skip it)
Review: A futuristic dystopia where health-care is really out of control. An organ transplantation is reduced to a high interest equity loan; if you don't pay than organ is repossessed and patient dies. Even if we let Goldman manage health-care it is unlikely it would degenerate to this unrealistic scenario. Movie has some gory scenes that serve no purpose. The ending twist is interesting but unfortunately doesn't make up for the unrealistic boring story and poor acting.
Grade: D (Skip it)
Review: A futuristic dystopia where health-care is really out of control. An organ transplantation is reduced to a high interest equity loan; if you don't pay than organ is repossessed and patient dies. Even if we let Goldman manage health-care it is unlikely it would degenerate to this unrealistic scenario. Movie has some gory scenes that serve no purpose. The ending twist is interesting but unfortunately doesn't make up for the unrealistic boring story and poor acting.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Brooklyn's Finest (2010)
Brooklyn's Finest
Grade: C- (Rent it)
Review: An interesting cop story with huge potential. It follows independently the life of three NYPD cops; a street cop few days before retirement (Richard Gere), an undercover cop deeply infiltrated into a drug gang (Don Cheadle), and a narcotics officer (Ethan Hawke). Each characters is struggling with their demons and dealing with their specific family challenges of a cop life. The movie builds up these stories (similar to Crash) but unfortunately after all the build up it delivers a conclusion that seemed rushed and unsatisfactory.
You would expect something better from Antoine Fuqua the director of the Training Day. I sincerely hope he doesn't start delivering bomb after bomb like M. Night Shyamalan.
Grade: C- (Rent it)
Review: An interesting cop story with huge potential. It follows independently the life of three NYPD cops; a street cop few days before retirement (Richard Gere), an undercover cop deeply infiltrated into a drug gang (Don Cheadle), and a narcotics officer (Ethan Hawke). Each characters is struggling with their demons and dealing with their specific family challenges of a cop life. The movie builds up these stories (similar to Crash) but unfortunately after all the build up it delivers a conclusion that seemed rushed and unsatisfactory.
You would expect something better from Antoine Fuqua the director of the Training Day. I sincerely hope he doesn't start delivering bomb after bomb like M. Night Shyamalan.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
She's Out of My League (2010)
She's Out of My League
Grade: C (Rent it)
Review: Nothing memorable but it had some funny moments. It is worth renting.
Grade: C (Rent it)
Review: Nothing memorable but it had some funny moments. It is worth renting.
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