BradWesley123's Movie Journal- May 2015

The cast's charms aren't enough to make up for a boring story that we've seen played out a thousand times before. It doesn't help that the movie is incredibly cloying at almost every turn, never allowing any scene to achieve anything resembling genuine and/or human.

The Wedding Ringer is, honestly, not as bad as I was expecting. The story and, most, of the jokes are pretty rote, and the film's gender/sexual politics are steeped in 1980s stereotypes, but Hart and Gad have a surprisingly strong comic chemistry that leads the film more heart than it deserves. I also enjoyed most of the oddball groomsmen-for-hire despite a certain laziness to all of their characterizations. If you go in with exceptionally low expectations, you may end up enjoying it.

Wild is a solid movie that I couldn't help but feel was missing some more intimacy. It's an emotional story that's told so unemotionally that I was left a little cold after it ended. That said it's a well put-together movie, with cinematographer Yves Bélanger beautifully evoking the wilderness and it's isolation. You also can't talk about the movie without talking about Witherspoon; Dern does some strong supporting work, but Wild features some of Witherspoon's finest acting, I would argue even better than her Oscar-winning work for Walk the Line.

The plot is pretty convoluted, and fairly confusing at times, but The Humbling is worth giving a look for the acting, which is impressive among the whole ensemble. It's especially nice to see Pacino acting again, and it's likely the best work he's done in years.

A charming little family flick that can't help but get too saccharine in spots, Paddington is a surprisingly fun movie that rests on almost entirely on the title character, and successfully so.

I enjoyed it, and got what it was going for, but A Scanner Darkly was just a little to hit-or-miss for me. The cast is strong and the animation always makes the movie interesting, but the movie only really works in spurts, then languishes in repetitive "tripping" scenes that seem to go on and on. Worth a look.

The first 10 and last 30 or so minutes are the kind of breathless action that I was expecting, so I was pretty disappointed by the middle hour. It's too slow and lingering on characters and situations that aren't very interesting. Still, it's a solid franchise starter with more artistic merit than most.

The action is pretty solid, and the movie gets better as it goes on, but Prince of Thieves is too contrived and bland to make anything close to a lasting impression. The cast is a pretty mixed bag, with Costner miscast and, most of, the rest of the cast taking this way too seriously. Rickman is the only one looking like he's having any fun, and he gives the best performance in the film.

The cast is very strong, though Larson is completely underutilized, and there's a strong soundtrack here, but The Gambler seems completely risk-averse, sticking to gambler/addiction movie basics. Even worse, the film seems to think that it's more important than it actually is; the dialogue is usually too writerly and the musical cues (while strong independent of the scene) are chosen for heightened effect.

Connery is pretty fun to watch, and Meg Ryan is okay in a pre-breakout role, but The Presidio is pretty much the standard 80s action movie, without any deviations from the norm.

Point Break is goofy as hell, but it's so well made and so much fun that I was willing to forgive almost all of it's breaks from logic (which is pretty much the whole film) and enjoy it as a genuine summer popcorn flick. Even if you don't think that it's a very good film, you'll probably still enjoy the hell out of it.

The Last Boy Scout is only really fun in fits. The action is pretty solid, as are the lead's performances, and, customary for a Shane Black script, the dialogue has a lot of great one liners. The problem is that, also cunstomary for a Shane Black script, the script never knows when to leave things alone. Everything has to be subversive and comment on the absurdities of action movies, while also playing into them. There's also a real mean streak to this movie that drowns many scenes, leading to a pretty haphazard viewing experience.

Cuts most of the meandering of the first film (most, not all) and sticks, mostly, to the full-throttle action that would help to make one of it's predecessors (Fury Road) one of the best action films ever. Nevertheless, The Road Warrior is a bit limited by it's 1980s production, and some of the action felt too stilted to me as a result. Still, so much of it works on pure ambition alone that it doesn't come close to derailing what is overall a fun movie.

Based on the listal & IMDb scores, Beyond Thunderdome seems to be the black sheep of the Mad Max family. Indeed, story is a lot goofier and more mainstream (it's the only one of the four not to have an R rating) than the previous two, one could even goes as far as to call it campy, but that still didn't diminish my enjoyment. Hell, I had more fun with this one than I did with the original. The action is still quite strong, and I quite enjoyed the more epic look to this one as opposed to the others.

Franklin's is better.

I'm pretty sure that this movie was only made so that Al Pacino could try on a bunch of weird wigs, and still draw a paycheck. This movie is so over the top and devoid of anything resembling nuance that you can't help but laugh out loud at most of it. The few good scenes in the movie (there are maybe two or three) are the results of the cast rising above the material (Mirren in particular excels; Pacino works only in spots). Those wigs though, huh?

It's often hampered by a hit-or-miss script that leans too heavily on built-in nostalgia for old-Hollywood serials, but when The Rocketeer gets going (especially in it's final act) it's a fun, high-spirited throwback to an age where all a blockbuster need was optimism.

I was surprised by Mortdecai. Not by the film's failure, because it does fail on so many levels; no, by the way it fails. I assumed that it would just be a mess of a movie where so much is going on that it would be incomprehensible. The film proved me wrong, it wasn't a jarring mess as much as it was simply just a plodding bore. Yes, there are a few good laughs to be had here (Paul Bettany likely gets the most), but the film seems to want to be both a goofy screwball comedy filled with big, zany setpieces, yet also a globe-trotting mystery. Had the film had any energy at all it could've come close to the former, but it doesn't. It just lays there and make borderline-embarrassing mustache jokes.

Still Alice is just an incredibly depressing movie. It's a good movie, no doubt; Julianne Moore is superb, giving a role that could've easily been pure Oscar-bait an immense amount of nuance and humanity. It also wisely doesn't add any maudlin melodrama to the story, and simply presents it for what it is. It does hit a few too many familiar notes, especially as the disease really starts to take over. But, as I said, it's a depressing movie. Not one that I'll be watching again any time soon.

Had they cut Henry out of the title, or simply cast the role differently, then I think Henry's Crime would've been a genuinely good movie but, as it is now, its simply a missed opportunity. As mentioned, the main problem with the film is the title character; Henry is a blank of a character, and Reeves does nothing to help that. He's a black hole of charisma. Farmiga and Caan do a lot to make up for that with both giving warm, funny performances strong enough that they could lead their own films. With a lot more energy, this could've been something.

As smart as it is bleak, 12 Monkeys is one of the trippier sci-fi/time travel movies ever made, but also one the finest. The cast is great, as are the technical aspects of this film (the production design in particular is highly memorable), but the film's real winner is it's script. It keeps a time-travel storyline in motion without losing a step, while also examining several ideas like fanaticism.

A sweet, affecting story of a boy and his giant robot friend, The Iron Giant is wholesome entertainment with genuine emotion. I felt that it faltered early on though; it takes a little longer to kick into than I had hoped, but it's quite good when it gets going, and the ending is hard not to sniffle at.

The Machine introduces a few interesting ideas, but never seems to know what to do with them. It's essentially Ex Machina-lite; it covers artificial intelligence in pretty artificial ways, opting instead to become more of a sci-fi/action hybrid that isn't interesting enough to compensate for it's lack of originality. Yet, some of the action is decent, and the cast is engaging enough that it's never oppressively boring.

I could give a lot of advice about life, millions of little tidbits of knowledge stretched out over hundreds of years, and the truest advice I could give is this: don't submit yourself to Compulsion. Seriously, just don't. Even if you find the leads highly attract, and cannot find anything else to pass the time. It's not worth it. Maybe, just read a book instead.

Cake is a pretty standard indie flick about pain and suffering; it's got a cantankerous lead, who's more vulnerable then she lets on, a dead child, and a large(ish) ensemble with several characters representing a facet of the lead's personality. There's nothing really new here but, to the film's credit, it's not as much of a drag as I was anticipating. There are a couple of effective scenes, which are largely so because the cast is quite strong. Aniston and Barraza, in particular, give the film more nuance and pathos than it likely deserves. Not great, but not bad.

The Voices has some major problems with pacing and, especially, tone. It goes from oddball comedy, to black comedy, to straight up drama and so on, and then does it again and again. If wasn't for Ryan Reynolds excellent performance, this move would be just another weird write-off. He gives the film whatever soul it has.

Airport is a surprisingly dull melodrama that doesn't get very interesting until the last section, where it becomes something of a disaster/thriller. The cast is solid, and the effects are decent for their time period, but the stories are all pretty uninspired and predictable.

A bit too trippy for it's own good, The Congress is an interesting experiment of a movie that is often too vague or opaque to register, but is tough to write off as a failure. The film essentially hinges on Robin Wright's performance and she doesn't disappoint, giving both an excellent live-action and voice-over performance. Unfortunately, the film around her loses momentum and promise as in devolves into a mess around the third act.

I mean... what can I really say about this one. Yeah, it's bad, but we all knew that it would be. No set of particular skills in the (editing) world could save a turkey like this. They would've been much better off using my idea.

Better than you average Statham vehicle, but still pretty basic and uninspired. The script does have a few solid moments though, and the supporting cast is stronger than usual for this type of film. Good enough for a slow Sunday afternoon.