Real Movie Review-Movie Reviews, Movie Quotes, Movie Trivia

Director: Tom Vaughan

Starring: Ashton Kutcher, Cameron Diaz, Rob Corddry, Lake Bell, Jason Sudeikis, Queen Latifah, Dennis Farina

What Happens in Vegas is a mediocre formula film with a predictable formula story, stock characters right out of the screenwriters’ handbook, and ending that you see from two hours away and an over reliance on not-so comical fight scenes between men and women.

Ashton Kutcher is Jack, a fun, but aimless guy who can’t even hold a job when his father is the boss and Cameron Diaz is Joy, an successful, but uptight stock trader who can’t hold on to her man, even though she is a successful stock trader who looks like Cameron Diaz. Go figure. Anyway, these two both decide that the solution to their problems lies in a wild weekend trip with their friends, Hater (Rob Corddry) and Tipper (Lake Bell). The pairs are drawn together by fate and while Hater and Tipper zinging each other with insults, Jack and Joy have an alcohol-fueled evening of debauchery and marriage. Yup, they awake in Holy Matrimony and are all set to pursue an annulment when a 3 million dollar jackpot gets in the way. Now a fed up judge sentences then to ‘six months hard marriage’ and the story is off and limping.

What Happens in Vegas is funny in some spots and blandly interesting in others, but it is really too silly and predictable to stand out from the crowd, leaving it as the default choice for couples who can‘t agree on what they really want to see and teenagers who are young to know what they really want to see.

Director: Sam Raimi

Starring: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Alfred Molina, Rosemary Harris, J.K. Simmons

Sam Raimi is back behind the lens, as he carefully tries to re-create the recipe that made Spider-Man the box office champ of 2002. He succeeds at this for the most part, as he works his blend of humor, action, and touching drama and mixes it all up in a Big Apple bowl. The cast of #1 is back with a few additions, the most notable of which is Alfred Molina as premier Spidey villain, Doc Ock. This film is a little darker than its predecessor, and gets a little heavy at times for a light comic book action film.

Tobey Maguire is back as Peter Parker/Spider-Man and if you thought he his life was rough at times before, wait until you see the first half hour of this one, as poor Peter deals with money issues, problems with girls (still M.J. – Kirsten Dunst), friends, family, bosses, landlords, school and even laundry. If this guy got cancer, it would be a step up! Yup, his life is falling apart, and on top of that, he’s seems to be losing his super powers. There are more street musicians with Spider-Man tunes, more run ins with the fantastically amusing J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) and yet another awwww moment with his NYC neighbors. Alfred Molina is Otto Octavius, a scientist working on fusion with the help of four intelligent and ultra powerful artificial arms. But, uh oh, something goes wrong, he goes crazy and the Webslinger has another scrap on his hands. Yup, its just like the first one.

Spider-Man 2 set out to give its fans exactly what they liked in the first outing and they succeeded, too well actually. This almost feels like a scene for scene clone of the first film, though it has a new villain and some new ideas for action scenes, which really pick up in act 3 (last 30-45 mins). The end result will win over fans of the first Spider-Man. Thankfully there were plenty of those, because no new ones will be gained here.

Director: Sam Raimi

Starring: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Willem Dafoe, Cliff Robertson, Rosemary Harris, J.K. Simmons

Spider-Man was the film that re-defined super hero films for the 21st century, living up to the promise of the X-Men series that began in 2000. Sam Raimi’s striking visuals takes David Koepp’s masterfully blended script and gives us a well paced mix of action, drama and humor. The characters are natural, likable and particularly well cast. The dialog gets understandably cheesy at times (it is still a comic book movie, after all), but this is still a fitting tribute to the most popular comic book series in the world.

Tobey Maguire is Peter Parker, a clever, but unpopular high school student, who finds his life is turned upside down when he gains the super powers of a spider. He learns of his new abilities, how to use them and the responsibilities that come along with power (Gee, I can think of a bunch of celebrities who seem to have missed that class). His life is a maelstrom, of money woes, family and friend issues and an unsuccessful love life with a beautiful classmate named Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst), but become a lot more complicated when a super villain shows up.

Well developed characters, a compelling story and exciting original action scenes make this a first rate action flick that still manages to have both a heart and a pulse.

Director: John G. Avildsen

Starring: Ralph Macchio, Pat Morita, Elisabeth Shue, Martin Kove, William Zabka

Rocky director John Avildsen shows once again that he knows how to make audiences stand up and cheer, with this warm and charming screenplay by Robert Kamen, who would go to write such works as Gladiator and The Fifth Element. Memorable characters wonderfully portrayed have turned this gentle drama about a young man who learns life long values from a reluctant karate instructor into a classic. Macchio seems awkward with the physical aspects of his role, but this adds to his underdog persona, and there is some great, often imitated dialog (Wax on. Wax off, sound familiar?) and even some pretty cool martial arts scenes, all wrapped up in a believable story with some good 80’s tunes.

High Schooler Daniel Larusso (Macchio, who was 22 looking 17) has just moved to the land of sunshine from Newark, but meeting a cute girl, Ali (Elisabeth Shue) also gains him an enemy in her karate expert ex-boyfriend, Johnny (William Zabka) and all his Cobra Kai buddies. Life is rough for young Mr. Larusso until he is rescued by the elderly caretaker of his building, Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita in a career role), who besides being pretty handy with bonsai trees, turns out to be a little Okinawan ninja too. Who knew? Soon Mr Miyagi is using old time training methods to prepare Daniel to stand up to the bullies at the upcoming All Valley Under 18 Karate Championship. Can he do it?

The Karate Kid and its immortal characters have become an often spoofed comedy target, and for two simple reasons. Its good and its as memorable a motion picture as any you are likely to see. It did spin off a series of deteriorating sequels that got worse and worse, but the first pic is first rate.It looks a little dated now, but with an excellent classic story and a stellar script, this one is still worth taking a shot at.

Director: David Mamet

Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alice Braga, Joe Mantegna, Emily Mortimer, Ricky Jay, Tim Allen

I love a good martial arts film. The problem with kick flicks is that it is so damn hard to find a good one and all too easy to find bad ones, which actually have an appeal all of their own, of course, but I still prefer a good one, so when twice Oscar nominated writer/director David Mamet made this mysterious motion picture about a martial arts instructor trying to keep his principals in a world that now relies mainly on the government to provide our morality, I was glad to see it. Ejiofor is subdued, but effective in the lead and Mamet‘s favored stiff, rhythmic dialog style for his performers is thankfully downplayed here. Mamet’s story is slow but engrossing and full of secrets and twists combined with bursts of pretty good fight action all leading to an appealing ending with equal parts of originality and corniness.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is Mike Terry, a skilled and traditional martial arts instructor with a struggling school and an exasperated wife, played by Alice Braga who wants Mike to use his skills as a professional mixed martial arts competitor. Things get more complicated after an incident at the school involving a cop student and a distraught female visitor. Next, Mike finds himself defending a movie star in a bar fight and the game is on. The tricky story is not always convincing, but it is always interesting. Look for lots of familiar faces, from Mamet’s posse of favored performers, and the fight world celebrities like Randy Couture to Hollywood personalities, including Tim Allen who has a supporting role as the aforementioned movie star.

David Mamet’s clever writing is always worth a watch and Red Belt is no exception. Kung fu fans will be glad to see the genre return to the big screen and those dragged along with them will be pleasantly surprised by a film with a great deal of interest and entertainment value.

Director: David Ayer

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Chris Evans, Martha Higareda, Hugh Laurie, Cedric The Entertainer,

David Ayer, who wrote both Training Day and Dark Blue, is the director this time, for yet another film about police corruption. With an unconvincing script and Keanu Reeves and Chris Evans trying to carry roles like those handled by Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke, this film was bound to be weaker…and it is. The plot starts out as rushed and convoluted, without proper character development, and becomes unraveled by the silly climax. There are some pretty good action scenes to keep you from thinking too much about the plot holes, however. That’s something.

Keanu Reeves is Tom Ludlow, a walking cliche. He is a smart-mouthed cop with an attitude and a drinking problem, hiding some past pain. Ludlow goes around finding particularly vile criminals (all minorities, but he tells us he isn’t racist) and killing them in shootouts that are then re-staged to look like good shoots, all with the backing of his boss, Jack Wander, and no one else. Internal affairs is a little curious about this and have turned his former partner into a snitch. The story gets silly when he is killed in a blatantly staged robbery while Tom is beside him. Instead of being relieved, Tom sets out to find the killers despite his own involvement and teams up with the investigator, Paul Diskant (Chris Evans from the Fantastic Four franchise). The action keeps up, but the ending lets down and should tell David Ayer he needs a new subject.

Street Kings is a bland cop buddy film that tries to fill plot holes with bullets, just as was done with Training Day, but with worse dialog and less compelling performers, this one goes down despite the hail of gunfire, leaving a corpse that will only interest die hard fans of the ailing cop/buddy genre.

Director: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer

Starring: Sean Maguire, Carmen Electra, Kevin Sorbo, Ken Davitian, Diedrich Bado

Meet The Spartans (2008) *1/2

Director: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer

Starring: Sean Maguire, Carmen Electra, Kevin Sorbo, Ken Davitian, Diedrich Bado

The lords of the overdone spoof, writer/directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer are back at it. After such comedy classics as the Scary Movie series and all its offshoots (Epic Movie, Date Movie, etc.) these guys turned the action epic, 300 into a one-gag film with modern pop culture references appearing over and over again in the setting of ancient Sparta. Its’ funny once in awhile, but mostly it’s just wearisome

TV star Sean Maguire is Leonidas, the mucho leader of the Spartans who loves nothing more than kicking people into the Pit of Death, but unfortunately stopped before the makers of this mess stepped onscreen. The story follows 300 pretty closely, just tweaking it into the same joke over and over again, as it references Casino Royale (the groin torture scene of course), Happy Feet, Britney Spears (naturally), and Paris Hilton (another surprise). An overabundance of body fluid scenes do nothing to add to the appeal here, nor do the preponderance of gay jokes. I’d tell you how it ends, but I’ve already forgotten.

Meet the Spartans is poor, even by spoof standards, but juvenile-minded fans of Friedberg and Seltzer’s previous efforts will probably enjoy it, though the humor is weaker and replaced by more pop culture references and corporate product placement. It does offer one gift to movie reviewers such as myself, in that its ridiculously short 70 minute run time limited my suffering, though real fans may feel like they should get some of their money back. As for movie viewers who have missed these guys’ previous attempts at cinematic excellence, skip it and be glad you did, but I’m sure you didn’t need me to tell you that.

Director: Jon Favreau

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow, Leslie Bibb, Faran Tahir, Shaun Toob

Little known director Jon Favreau (Elf) will be a more familiar name after smashing his way into the comic book genre with this fast-paced visual action intro to what is obviously intended to be an Iron Man series. The script, which has more writers than the bible, is witty and like the uber successful Spider-man trilogy, doesn’t get too serious. Robert Downey Jr. exudes cool charisma with a great performance in the title role and has some enviable back up from Gwyneth Paltrow and a really old-looking Jeff Bridges. The film is flashy and the action scenes could have been shorter and more plentiful. I have never seen more metallurgy scenes in any movie to date, but nonetheless excellent dialog and cool effects keep the viewers entertained while waiting for something big to happen.

Robert Downey Jr. is a billionaire boy genius in the defense industry named Tony Stark who seems to divide his time, albeit unequally, between making scientific breakthroughs and living a jet-setting rock star lifestyle until a business trip to Afghanistan sees him taken hostage by some vaguely motivated middle eastern bad guys. They force Stark, along with the help of fellow hostage, Yinsen (Shaun Toob from The Kite Runner) to build them one of his cutting edge missile systems, Jericho. Unfortunately for the soon-to-be-punished reprobates, Stark isn’t building them a missile system, but building himself a bullet-proof, powered suit to use to escape, which he does, of course. This turns out to be a life-changing experience for Stark, and he decides its time to give back a little to the world by becoming a super-hero. Well, that is one way. Wouldn’t it be easier and more helpful just to build a few hospitals and schools? It might, but it wouldn’t make an action-packed movie.

Iron Man flies into theaters as one off the best of the comic book genre films, thanks in equal parts to a sharp script and an impressive performance by Downey. Imagine Spider-man crossed with Robocop and then blended with the Transformers and you will have some idea of what to expect. Comic book fans and action lovers will flock to it and even a lukewarm, yawning and jaded movie veteran such as myself is looking forward to the next installment. Oh, and for a little foreshadowing of things to come, wait for the credits to end. There is a short little bonus scene.

Director: Rob Reiner

Starring: Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Bruno Kirby, Carrie Fisher

Rob Reiner gave us this romantic comedy classic that has set the standard for the entire genre. Nora Ephron’s stellar screenplay has well-formed characters exchanging fabulous dialog that will remind new viewers of Seinfeld. Crystal gives his usual appealing neurotic, but laid back, portrayal, while Ryan shines in the leading role, including the unforgettable restaurant orgasm scene. This hit would make her the go-to gal for rom-coms for the next decade. The story is gentle, patient and authentic and, aided by talented and charismatic performers and makes this film a wonderfully pleasing experience.

Harry (Billy Crystal) first meets Sally (Meg Ryan) when both have just finished university in Chicago and are sharing a car ride to NYC. They click like motor oil and mustard and soon forget about one another. Over the years, a couple more chance encounters paves the path to an unlikely friendship between two very different young, single adults. There are charming scenes set in during time passages featuring interviews of older couples talking about how they met. Adding humor and story depth that is stereotypical, but still amusing, are ‘friends’ played here by Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher.

When Harry Met Sally looks a little dated now with its 80’s hair and fashions, but this near-perfect screenplay is still interesting, touching and funny. If you have never seen this before, it’s better than you think. If you have seen it before, it’s better than you remember.

Directors: Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg

Starring: John Cho, Kal Penn, Rob Corddry, Neil Patrick Harris, Danneel Harris

This effort is the second installment in what is apparently becoming the new standard in stoner movies. Like it predecessors, Cheech and Chong and Half Baked, the Harold and Kumar movies have a very apparent central theme, pot makes everything funny. Although that may be true, unlike the others in this genre, this movie might even be funny if you are not fried!

John Cho and Kal Penn star once again as(in their only leading roles to date), straight laced, stick to the plan Harold Lee or Roldy and this is bullshit my dad is a tyrant, damn the man Kumar Patel. Two lovable also rans, who despite their very different personalities are best friends, probably because of their mutual adoration of ganja. The two decide to take a week off, Harold from his job at the bank and Kumar from whatever it is he does to pay for weed, and head to Amsterdam to meet a girl who is apparently (although it is never actually explained) Harold’s long distance girl friend and of course smoke weed. After some trouble at the security checkpoint the boys run into Kumar’s ex Vanessa played by Danneel Harris who is on her way to Texas to marry her new boyfriend in Texas. Obviously since he is from Texas he is the dream son in law for any parent, tall, handsome, rich and connected (and of course according to Kumar, a douche bag) While on the plane Kumar decides that he can’t wait for 6 hours to get his smoke on and busts out a smokeless Bong. Since the he is darker skinned but not African American or Mexican, he is already under suspicion and when he breaks out this strange contraption the has some kind of blinking light (i have seen a lot of bongs in my time and even i was not sure what this was) and rhymes with the word bomb, you can imagine what happens next. Thanks to an wildly over zealous Homeland security agent played by Rob Corddry and the patriot act, the boys are shipped off to G-bay with their only hope being Vanessa’s connected boyfriend in Texas.

This movie, unlike so many before it, surprised me in a good way. Having seen the first Harold and Kumar movie which centered around having the munchies, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect walking in. It would be filled with random scenes that have nothing to do with the story but have everything to do with what happens when you are stoned. It would also have some unexpected cameos that would be entertaining and perplexing. Moreover, it would be predicated on a story that is as thin as craft paper. This is all true but the difference with this movie is that the writers took the things that made the first one almost unwatchable and replaced them with more of the stuff that made the first one extremely funny. Now, I am not going to say that this is Forrest Gump because it isn’t and the story has some obvious holes (you might be able to park in a few of them) like sure it wasn’t a bomb, but they were still smoking pot on a plane!!! But taken for what it is, this movie has enough humor to keep you laughing. It also has some very funny political humor with it’s pokes at stereotypes. And like the first one, it has a great sequence with Neil Patrick Harris playing himself, you will never look at Doogie Howser the same way again. If you combine half baked with Jay and silent Bob strike back, you will get a decent idea of how this movie will feel when you try it on.