Mack's Movies 2013: July

July 1st, Instant Watch
Overall opinion: Pretty good


This movie actually took me about two weeks to watch. Every night I'd watch 10 to 20 minutes on my phone in bed before going to sleep. Being so tired and sleepy while watching probably made me like it even more; it is a quiet film and due to the subject of drugs many scenes have a dreamlike quality. Had I watched this sometime in the afternoon I would have been distracted by my environment, but I ended up being quite engaged. Scene by scene I was more intrigued. Despite its quietness I felt something was always going on. I like the lack of explanation, exposition, anybody telling the viewer anything. For a science fiction film it was played like a "real life" movie and I really liked that, I was able to empathize with enough of it for it to be believable. It also had a very satisfying ending, and I felt the acting was pretty good too. Overall, good job! The only one thing that bothered me was all the drug makers seemed to be people of color except for the "pig farmer" main guy. It's a small thing. To me it just came off as writing the two protagonists and main "bad guy" as the kinda-boring white people who are leads in most American movies. But most people won't be bothered by this so go check it out if you're interested, it's worth a try.

July? June? theaters
Overall opinion: Definitely worthwhile


I had extra time on my hands during my mini-vacation to Flagstaff so I went alone to a 9am showing of After Earth- all I knew about it was the movie poster: Will and Jaden Smith starring in a sci-fi movie. The first fifteen to twenty minutes I was wondering if I'd made a good choice, but by the middle of the movie I was sold. It was great! It was a great blend of sci-fi and drama. I like the theme of these extraterrestrial world exploration movies that have been out recently (after Avatar was such a success I suppose) and After Earth is pretty much everything that I want out of this type of movie: it's got a specific and personal focus on a few characters, giving us a few good actors with a lot of screentime, intertwining their personal lives with the science fiction setting so it didn't feel gimick-y but still gave a lot of cool visuals. I was a little unsure of Jaden's acting at first and there were a couple kinda scripted moments but overall I liked it a loooot.
And surprise, it's an M. Night Shyamalan film! Didn't realize till his name came up at the end- guess he's still not a name to put on the movie posters for now. I honestly do not agree with this guy's bad rep. Also liked seeing that Will Smith came up with the story. I definitely liked After Earth and urge everyone to check it out.

July 8th, rented
Overall opinion: Fun!


I really like what little I've seen of the Fast & Furious series, this is the 3rd I've seen and it hasn't gotten old yet. I like the cast (Ludacris, The Rock, Michelle Rodriguez, Sun Kang, Tyrese Gibson, they're all so great together) I like the one liners, I like the cars, I like the action. The bigger the screen the more fun it is, I didn't get to see this in theaters but I wish I had. The story was about as good as you'd expect from the series, they don't try to get too complicated, it doesn't take itself too seriously. It doesn't try anything new and it doesn't need to. If you like any other F&F this one will not disappoint like Tokyo Drift did, it's a good addition to the series.

July 10th, owned
Overall opinion: Really good, tearjerker


I hadn't planned on seeing Seven Pounds any time soon because I knew it'd be sad (like all Will Smith dramas are to me) and I wanted to enjoy it in private where I could cry as much as I wanted. But rather unexpectedly I had some friends over for dinner and they picked this to watch out of all the available movies. I didn't let myself get as engaged in the movie as I should have because I didn't want to cry in front of everyone. :P I still cried though. Seven Pounds has some really hard-hitting, emotionally impacting stuff. It sets up a lot of tough situations that don't have happy endings, to put it simply it's a very tragic movie. Will Smith is a great actor, he's one of the few actors who can either make me laugh or make me cry, often in the same movie, and he was the perfect choice for this role. Everyone else in the film was great too. Another Woody Harleson appearance where I wasn't expecting him, and of course he did great. Rosario Dawson was great. Everyone was great. I liked the feelings it gave me and I might watch it again now that I'm prepared for what's in it.

July 11th, Syfy channel
Overall opinion: A little boring

This movie has been all over Tumblr recently and I discovered that it was premiering just last night on Syfy, so I turned it on while I was doing boring cleaning stuff around the house. Sadly it's not as entertaining as it could have been. Too much is very slow paced with nothing going on. Don't get me wrong, it's so bad it's funny, just not hilariously so. You'd think a movie about a giant hurricane/tornado with hundreds of sharks inside it would be more over the top. I mean, look at this amazing visual:


Literally a sharknado. This should have been the whole movie.
But sadly it isn't really worth the 2 hours for those few and far between moments. Not worth watching. The title is the best part of it.

July 11th, Syfy
Overall opinion: Hilariously bad
Now THIS was entertaining. This is what I expected from Sharknado. It came on right after Sharknado and I just left the TV on. There was all sorts of silly acting, a main character who kind of looked like Aaron Eckhart, lots of pointless sexiness, and hilarious blood-filled scenes of a 2 headed shark eating people, usually 2 at once. The comedic timing was great, lots of characters get dramatically eaten and do stupid things that get them hurt in the funniest and most inconvenient ways. I was actually laughing at some parts, it was great.

Another thing I loved about this was how much of it could easily have been porn- this one guy in particular would have been perfect in a porno, his shirt was always unbuttoned, he was always talking about his physique, half his lines were cheesy innuendos, and I swear all his unresolved tension was with other male characters, especially the "nerd" character. I am tempted to use the next National Novel-Writing Month as an excuse to re-write this movie as an erotic novel.

It was all just really silly. Not the best bad movie I've seen, but if you like bad movies it's definitely worth trying.

July 12th, theaters
Overall opinion: Good for a summer blockbuster

Sadly it was not amazing and didn't live up to the hype I've been hearing. Don't get me wrong, in the category of summer blockbusters, Pacific Rim is near the top in quality. However it's got some flaws that I can't quite forgive.
For one, and don't take this the wrong way friends, I was surprised at how many white people where in this movie. I heard hype about how it starred lots of people of color and was set globally so to speak, I mean most of the movie is in Hong Kong, so you'd expect a lot of diversity right? I mean if you get down to just #s, there's an overwhelming # of white people and just a few POC. What's wrong with having just a few white people for once? However most POC were still secondary characters, even in Hong Kong. Ron Perlman's character was pointless, why would a white man be running a black market shop in Hong Kong? He wasn't even good in this, his ridiculous character completely ruined the mood of the movie.
I am especially mad at the lack of diversity in the main characters because I have seen more than one reviewer relate Pacific Rim to the original Star Trek series in progressiveness. No. Star Trek was progressive for it's time, which was 40 years ago. Matching the # of non-white people in Star Trek doesn't make a movie progressive. By this point in time Hollywood should be past having a cis white male as lead in every movie.
On a related note, the lead character was boring. He existed to fill the role of lead white guy and didn't bring anything to the movie. Him and that other character he fought with all the time were pretty much exchangeable, I couldn't tell them apart in some scenes. Boring and pointless casting. The character of Mako should have taken the lead. She had everything the movie needed; Raleigh was completely unnecessary.

The Kaiju and Jager designs, while pretty awesome, were also a little uninspired. Maybe I watch too many giant monster movies or giant mech animes, but they felt kinda generic. And the fights between the two were pretty bad. I could have piloted a Jager better than most of the pilots in the movie. It was really dumb whenever they picked up a Kaiju and threw it- that is never a good tactic, especially when you're in the fucking ocean. The battles were sloppy and had too much city destruction. They should focus more on cool fighting than knocking down buildings.
Not to mention those two Jager teams that we barely got to see- the Russians and Chinese triplets, who got very very little screentime. Pretty lame.

But overall it's still a neat movie. It's a step in the right direction. Original plot, a slightly diverse cast, giant monsters, interesting and quality acting from everyone who wasn't Charlie Hunnam. Charlie Day as Newton was quite entertaining, Rinko Kikuchi was great and Mana Ashida was amazing, Idris Elba who has never let me down so far was also wonderful, and I hope they all get more great roles to work with in the future. There's a lot to like in Pacific Rim despite my complaints. It's definitely worth seeing.

July 13th, theaters
Overall opinion: Very enjoyable


White House Down was a much more satisfying movie. Granted, it was kind of cheesy. But considering the subject of the film I think we got off with only a little bit of crazy patriotism. And truly the only time I was rolling me eyes was at the end, which left common sense behind quite a few times. But the movie was very satisfying, I think it was paced well and if I hadn't needed to pee through the whole thing (I refuse to get up during a movie if I can help it) I would have been very immersed in the action. I liked Jamie Foxx, as usual, and I continue to think Channing Tatum is a worthwhile actor in these big budget action-y things he stars in. For a Roland Emmerich movie, it was good! I had a fun time which is what these movies are here for right?
(There was an offhand remark one character made about the White House referencing Independence Day which I thought was cute.)

July 14th, instant watch
Overall opinion: Well it's a Jackass movie, what's there to say?

We have a new tenant at home and he spends a lot of the late night hours watching things like this on Netflix. This is the only one I've seen all the way through so far. Its goal was to entertain through this group of guys doing ridiculous and stupid stunts and that's exactly what they did. Some of it was hard to watch but some of it was quite funny. Not really movie gold here but I also can't say it was a failure.

About these fun fellows: they are doing exactly what they want to do in life, making a living off of it, and enjoying every second, and I cannot dislike anyone for doing that.

July 120th, instant watch
Overall opinion: Meh

There were a few things I liked but overall it was not super interesting.

July 22nd, instant watch
Overall opinion: Great!

I was expecting something with a lot less personality and I was a little shocked when it started and almost immediately an armadillo gets run over trying to cross the road and then has a conversation with the main character despite his middle being completely smooshed into the pavement. It was a little weird! But I loved it. All the characters were engrossing, the animation was beautiful, it was odd and quirky and I think a testament to the potential of animated films that don't try to be too kid-friendly.

July 28th, theaters
Overall opinion: good for its genre

I usually avoid films like this because I expect them to be stupid, poorly written, and only mildly scary with no quality content. While The Conjuring was not a game changer and it didn't have anything mind blowing or original, it wasn't at all stupid. It had a solid, hole-less plot, nobody made dumb mistakes like reading from the mysterious leather-bound book or splitting up in the woods. So I really enjoyed it for the simple, fun, at times scary horror film it was. And I did get scared in a few places- I'm almost immune to creepy dolls and small child ghosts but there was a little more than that. The acting was fine, nobody dropped the ball. It was a little funny seeing Patrick Wilson in it after seeing him in Insidious, but this was considerably better than Insidious.


I saw a joke somewhere on the internet, something like "Patrick Wilson really needs to turn around"

July 29th, Instant Watch
Overall opinion: fascinating

July 30th, Instant Watch
Overall opinion: good