3.15.2015

Most Anticipated Movies - 2015



Honorable Mention: Dragonball Z: Resurrection of Frieza

This is being released in Japan on April 18, but I have no idea when it will be available in the U.S. Frieza is the most influential villain in the DBZ universe, and he has been dead for nearly 20 years. 20 freakin' years! Keeping a villain dead for that long is nearly unheard of in America. He was the main antagonist when I started watching first run episodes in Japan, and I'm excited to see him back.




7. Terminator: Genysis

Release Date: July 1
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Emilia Clarke
Budget: $170 million +
Synopsis: People vs Robots

I'm not quite sure what's going on here. Schwarzenegger is back as the good Terminator, but he's like grumpy grandpa terminator. It appears that some time travel shenanigans are going to cause a reboot of the series, which I'm not a fan of, but I am excited about Sarah Connor being reintroduced to the series through Emilia Clarke. If you're not familiar with Emilia Clarke, she's the only good thing about Game of Thrones. I thought Terminator Salvation was kind of boring, and I'd really like a conclusion to the machine war instead of another movie trying to prevent the machine war. Regardless of how bad or good this is, I think I will at least enjoy watching Schwarzenegger reprise the role that made him famous.


6. Jurassic World

Release Date: June 12
Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard
Budget: $150 million +
Synopsis: People vs Dinosaurs

I honestly have very little recollection of Jurassic Park 2 or 3. There don't seem to be a lot of dinosaur related scripts floating around Hollywood, unless you count Transformers 4, which was bad even by my standards. I'm excited to see some non-robot dinosaurs on the big screen again, and I like the idea of a fully functional dinosaur park. I'm less excited about having to sit through a story about scientists genetically modifying dinosaurs, because ya know, who in the world would go to a park with boring regular dinosaurs. We'll see.


5. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2

Release Date: November 20
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Woody Harrelson, Phillip Seymour Hoffman
Budget: $125 million +
Synopsis: People vs Other People

I was rather underwhelmed by Mockingjay Part 1. I thought it dragged and it was only split into two movies as a cash grab by Lionsgate. That being said, if the movie follows the book, Part 2 should be mostly all action as Katniss and company storm the capitol. More than the story, I'm anxious to see the level of violence from the books they carry over to the movie. Spoiler alert: it is a blood bath! Characters are slaughtered left and right, in the city, in the sewers, children are blown up in the capitol, and Katniss assassinates President Coin (Julianne Moore). I don't necessarily want to see all these things, but the director, Francis Lawrence, has a huge PG-13 challenge on his hands. (Bonus: While researching this, I learned that Francis Lawrence's father was a physicist who taught at California State University, Northridge.)

4. Mission Impossible 5

Release Date: July 31?
Starring: Tom Cruise and ?
Budget: $150 million + ?
Synopsis: Spies vs Terrorists?

This wasn't supposed to be released until late 2015, but was apparently bumped up to summer 2015 because it is that awesome. As of this writing, there is no poster, preview, or synopsis available, and I don't need one. Mission Impossible 4 was the best in the series. Tom Cruise is currently on a hot streak with action films (Jack Reacher, Oblivion, Edge of Tomorrow).


3. Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Release Date: December 18
Starring: a lot of young adult actors I haven't heard of and the old Star Wars cast
Budget: $200 million +
Synopsis: I don't know

I am not really a Star Wars fan. Of the six movies, I only enjoy Revenge of the Sith and Empire Strikes Back. I tried watching the Clone Wars cartoon but I could never get into it. I don't like what J.J. Abrams did with Star Trek, and I have little doubt that he is going to turn this into another franchise geared towards young adults. With that being said, there are actually several reasons I want to see this.
  1 - I really like light sabers.
  2 - I like the Millenium Falcon and am interested to see it in commission again after 30 years.
  3 - I want to see the remnants of the Empire. I don't imagine it just fell apart when Emporer Palpatine was killed.
  4 - I like being part of event pictures, and this will be an event. I think all the elements are in place for this to have the largest debut weekend of all time, breaking the $207 million opening weekend set by the Avengers in 2012. There is only one movie that can stop it from doing so, which is...


2. The Avengers: Age of Ultron

Release Date: May 1
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, James Spader
Budget: $200 million +
Synopsis: Heroes vs Robots

James Spader is the voice of Ultron, and from what I've seen in the previews, he hits it out of the park. We also get to see Iron Man break out the Hulkbuster armor. I thought maybe they'd wait for a Planet Hulk storyline to reveal it, but this will work. Elizabeth Olsen is joining the cast as the Scarlet Witch. I'm not sure there is anything to not look forward to here. I would be excited about Quicksilver, but we already had a fun demonstration of his powers in X-Men: Days of Future Past last year.


1. Fast & Furious 7
Release Date: April 3
Starring: Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Ludacris, Tyrese
Budget:$250 million +
Synopsis:Everyone vs Jason Statham

I bet you're real surprised to find this here. Fast 6 was better than Fast 5, which was better than Fast 4, which was much better than Fast 3. The general trend of this series is that each film released is better than the previous one, which gives me high hopes for Fast 7. The cast is by no means Shakespearean trained, but they all play to their strengths. At this point, the cast and crew know what they are doing, and with the addition of Jason Statham it is hard to see this movie not performing well as a popcorn blockbuster. I always found Paul Walker's performances to be the downside of these movies. With his unfortunate demise, I won't even poke fun at him here.

And here's a picture of The Rock firing a gatling gun to get me more pumped for this movie.

3.12.2015

Favorite Movies - 2014

Wow, I have really been slacking on this blog. Here is a list of my ten seven favorite movies that were released in 2014. (Top 10 lists are so two years ago. Also, don't expect to see The Grand Budapest Hotel anywhere on this list.) I'm listing the Rotten Tomatoes audience rating so you can see how far off the mark my taste in movies is from everyone else.


7. The Skeleton Twins
Released: September 11
Rotten Tomatoes: 71%

I was out by myself one night, determined to find something to do other than wander around Cap Hill and eat Chipotle by myself. As is usually my luck, I ultimately did end up wandering around Cap Hill and eating at Chipotle by myself. On my way home I stumbled upon The Harvard Exit theater showing this film. The director, Craig Johnson, describes the theme of this movie as, "Dealing with dark shit with a sense of humor." There were a lot of dark themes, but there was also this awesome lip sync scene of Starship's Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now. Seriously though, a really good performances from Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader here.



6. Interstellar
Released: November 6
Rotten Tomatoes: 87%

One of my favorite books in college was Kip Thorne's Black Holes and Time Warps. Kip is an expert in gravitation physics and this book features a forward by Stephen Hawking. (You know you're smart when Hawking is writing the forward to your book.) Kip was also a scientific consultant and executive producer for Interstellar, which means this is probably the closest I'm ever going to get to seeing a movie version of Black Holes and Time Warps. Regarding the movie, if you don't feel for Mathew McConaughey when he's driving away from his daughter, and during a later scene which I won't ruin for you, then you probably don't have a soul.



5. Whiplash
Released: October 15
Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

For a movie without superheros, race cars, dinosaurs, robots, or robot dinosaurs, Whiplash is really good. It is everything the movie poster describes it as. I also pride myself on seeing an Academy Award nominated film before Allen.






4. 22 Jump Street

Released: June 13
Rotten Tomatoes: 78%

The greatest thing about this sequel is that it was mostly one big inside joke about being a sequel. This was also a movie that I fondly remember for the audience reaction. The laughter was so loud and so prolonged for some scenes that I missed the dialogue. Ice Cube steals several scenes and Channing Tatum is handsome as always. The only thing missing was a strong female character.




3. Guardians of the Galaxy
Released: August 1
Rotten Tomatoes: 93%

My favorite movie from 2012 is The Avengers, so it should be no surprise that Space Avengers is one of my favorite movies this year. You may think I'm a hypocrite for liking a movie with not only a talking animal, but also a talking tree, but I'm giving them a pass because they were so darn entertaining. What is most surprising is that I was not a fan, at all, of the Guardians comic growing up, and I somehow like these characters now. I was only familiar with Nebula and Gamora from the Silver Surfer stories. Marvel is going to be scraping the bottom of the barrel with movie characters in about five years (I'm looking at you, Nova) but this movie makes me optimistic for the future films.



2. X-Men: Days of Future Past
Released: May 23
Rotten Tomatoes: 92%

In my opinion, this is the best X-Men movie in the series. As always, I would prefer less Wolverine and Mystique, but I guess that's the consequence of having Hugh Jackman and Jennifer Lawerence in your movie. It also features James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage, Ian McKellen, and Patrick Stewart. I don't know how this was made for less than a billion dollars. The icing on the cake is that this movie retcons X-Men: The Last Stand, which was terrible, and sets up X-Men: Apocalypse, which I'm really excited for. I just want to give Bryan Singer a big hug for making this movie happen.



1. Edge of Tomorrow
Released: June 6
Rotten Tomatoes: 90%

This movie deserves so much more box office credit than it received last summer. It's like the producers started by remaking Groundhog Day and replaced everything good with something even better along the way. Tom Cruise can still bring it in action movies, and Emily Blunt is fantastic.





Here is a list of the rest of the 2014 movies I saw.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Birdman
Captain America: The Winter Soldier*
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Fury
The Equalizer
Ghostbusters
Gone Girl
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1
The Interview*
Lucy*
Maleficent
Maze Runner
Neighbors
Robocop
Sabotage
The Theory of Everything
Transformers 4
 Under the Skin*
When the Game Stands Tall

*Movies released in 2014 that I watched upon digital release