The Grey (2012)

Trying a new format here, see how I feel about it.  Less verbalizing, more boiling it down.

Directed by: Joe Carnahan (do watch his excellent Narc, avoid watching the terrible Smokin’ Aces)

Written by: Carnahan co-wrote the screenplay with Ian Mackenzie Jeffers who adapted his own short story “Ghost Walker”

Starring: Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney, Joe Anderson, Frank Grillo, Dallas Roberts, James Badge Dale

What it’s about: A plane transporting Alaskan oil drillers crashes, and the survivors must battle both nature (the titular grey wolves) and the elements for survival

B-Movie Alternate Title: The Grey Wolves Attack!

Movie Mash Up: Frozen + Alive + A Lonely Place to Die with a little bit of Neeson badassery from Taken thrown in there

What I liked: gritty, dark, excellently shot, decent enough acting for what’s asked of the actors in this type of movie, Liam Neeson as a man questioning faith while attempting to lead these oil drillers to survival in the Arctic wilderness, tense.

What I disliked: the aforementioned “questioning faith” aspect felt a bit tacked on, some of the wolves didn’t appear as realistic as they should have, and how goddamn cold watching it made me (which is more a compliment to the cinematography)

Would I recommend it to everyone?: Yup, unless you have something against Liam Neeson being a bad ass.

Rating: 4 / 5

Battleship (2012)

Ugh.  I never thought that in our lifetimes we would be seeing movies based upon board games.  The video games into movies phenomenon was pretty much bad enough, but board games?  How long until there’s a goddamn Uno movie?  And do you know how much it made at the box office?  Over $300 million.  And I just spent two hours of my life watching it too, so who are the real criminals here?  The existence of this movie raises so many rhetorical nonsense questions.

Directed by Peter Berg, Battleship has very little to do with the board game that “inspired” the screenplay.  There’s literally one fucking scene in the movie where they are targeting enemy ships, and they aren’t even human ships, they’re goddamn alien ships.  I suppose we’ve become so sensitive as a society that we are not willing to label any country an enemy if there’s a chance that the movie will make money over there, so they had to make the enemies goddamn aliens.

The disaster film / USA! USA! USA! film genre is chock full of amazingly terrifying images, especially with the advent of CGI.  I remember watching 2012 and thinking “wow, it appears we’ve all gotten over that whole 9/11 thing because this is literally the most traumatic purposely filmed movie I’ve ever seen.”  Battleship involves many of those scenes, except they generally take place in Hong Kong (which I’ve grown kind of fond of thanks to playing “Sleeping Dogs” lately) and involve a disturbing disregard for the amount of human lives lost there.  So there’s that.

The cast is filled with pretty Hollywood people and inexplicably Rihanna as well.  Not that she’s not pretty or whatever, it’s just Why?  Taylor Kitsch continues to show that his John Carter performance wasn’t a one-hit wonder with another charismatic leading role here.  Still has a stupid name, though.  Ugh, I’m done writing this.  It’s a popcorn movie that is dumb and don’t think about it too hard because you’ll end up confusing yourself.

1.5 / 5

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

I don’t even know how to go about starting this review.  Having just watched it, I feel both emotionally and mentally exhausted while at the same time thrilled and ecstatic over what I’ve just borne witness to.  The Christopher Nolan Batman Trilogy is one of the greatest accomplishments in cinema history, not just for a comic book movie, because as I stated in my Avengers review, the Nolan Batman movies are above just being classified as comic book movies.  Despite attempting to avoid any and all spoilers for The Dark Knight Rises, I had read a Cracked article last year that had mentally prepared me for anything Nolan might have in store for us.  At least I thought it had.

When we last left Batman (Christian Bale) at the end of The Dark Knight, he had told Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) to lay the blame for Harvey Dent’s death at the hands of Batman, thus giving Dent a martyr-like status in the eyes of the citizens of Gotham City.  Between Dark Knight and this film, eight years have passed and Gordon has used The Dent Act to clean up Gotham with his police forces, as Batman retired to his secret identity of Bruce Wayne rather than be hunted.  Wayne has become a recluse, appearing to only communicate with his butler Alfred (Michael Caine) in regards to affairs of the outside world.  When an attractive cat burglar named Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) makes off with a Wayne family heirloom, something is awakened in Bruce and he begins to come alive again.  All the while, a cerebral and brutal villain by the name of Bane (Tom Hardy) concocts a plan to bring the city of Gotham to its knees.  Then there’s also Officer John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a hotheaded young man who comes to the attention of both Wayne and Gordon.

That’s as vague as I can get without giving away any surprises in the plot, but also identifying the major players.  As with many Nolan films, he brings back a lot of familiar faces in his casting, and just take a look at all the tags if you want to see identifiable names jump out at you.  A couple of them are minor spoilers, but not really surprises at all.  While I’m writing this review, I’m taking time to read the Wiki entry for Dark Knight Rises and it says numerous times that Nolan was unsure about coming back for a third film.  Nolan might just be a great actor himself, because there are certain aspects of the story that would suggest just the opposite: that Nolan had been planning the entire Trilogy from the very first film.

There are few movie trilogies that I have given perfect marks to all of the installments.  The Toy Story Trilogy is the only one I can think of off the top of my head, and now even that is going to fall by the wayside since apparently Toy Story 4 has been announced to be in production.  The Batman Trilogy is exactly that.  Nolan won’t come back to make a fourth film, neither will Bale, neither will any of the principles.  Even the way Rises ends should not fill people with hope for that to happen.

Everything in Rises is excellent in my eyes.  From the casting, the acting, the set pieces, the direction, the writing (minus a couple little things that I won’t go into here, and may just be inconsequential in future re-watchings), the action, all breathtakingly great.  During the opening sequence I was legitimately catching my breath, wondering if my nerves could handle the end of this storied franchise.  The sheer menace that Bane brings with him is astonishingly well-executed, and Hardy doesn’t let the mask control his acting.  Hathaway is probably the best Catwoman/Selina Kyle ever, because she’s not used as just a vehicle for puns.  Bale and his familiar cast mates deliver exactly what they did in the first two films, sheer awesomeness.

Better film critics than me will write more detailed reviews than I did, because mine just seems to be what ultimately can only be construed as nothing more than a Thank You note to Christopher Nolan and the team he put together for these three films.

5 / 5

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999)

As I previously mentioned, 2011’s #movieaday goal was based around watching 365 brand new movies (to me).  2012 will not have that limitation put upon them, which – honestly – makes it so much more attainable.  Also, I just did it, so I don’t care if I miss a day.  One of my Christmas gifts was the Blu-Ray box set of the Star Wars movies, all of them, episodes I – VI, the great and the bad.

I remember the anticipation for this movie as being, well it was the most anticipated thing of all time, anywhere.  The most modern thing I can attribute that to nowadays, would be the release of The Dark Knight Rises in several months.  It won’t be the same though.  I won’t be waiting outside until the ticket windows open, two weeks before the movie even hits theatres, no, I learned my lesson thanks to Episode I.

The hardest part when it comes to discussing the Prequel Trilogy is separating fanboy cronyism from actual film criticism.  Whatever you think of Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best), you have to be able to analyze the other aspects of the film, and just get over that completely righteous anger over Binks’ creation.  Because, even though he sucks (hard), there’s still a whole movie going on around him, and for the most part … well, it’s far below the standards of the Original Trilogy.

The two bright spots are Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor’s performances as Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi, respectively.  There’s humour and heart and actual emotions in their depictions of the two Jedi Knights.  You could also say Darth Maul (Ray Park) was pretty badass, but that is tempered by the fact that SPOILER ALERT he gets killed off far too early.  It was also neat seeing Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu, clearly the most kickass of all Jedi Knights.  And there’s all the little hints and Star Wars nerdery throughout that makes it tolerable.

However, director and writer George Lucas made such a terrible decision when it came to Jar Jar Binks, that it overshadows everything else in the movie.  Jar Jar’s stench is palpable in everything, and there’s also the silly little decisions that Lucas made when it came to directing actors in the movie.  He’s not an actor guy, he’s the tech guy.  Even though McGregor’s performance is fun and good, he looks entirely too bemused at the goings on around him.

And then there’s Jake Lloyd, portraying the future SPOILER ALERT Darth Vader as young Anakin Skywalker.  So many dumb things included, like his “WHOOOAAAAA” when Qui-Gon lifts him into Anakin’s pod racer.  This kid has faced death on numerous occasions in past pod races, yet he’s amazed at being lifted three feet up in the air by a Jedi Knight?  Better, nerdier, fatter and more socially awkward people than I have written longer articles on all the things that are wrong with Episode I, and while I don’t particularly like the movie, it’s a kind of guilty pleasure for me.  After all, it still is Star Wars.

2 / 5