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THE EMOJI MOVIE (2017) - REVIEW

Posted on July 31, 2017 with No comments
Gene, a multi-expressional emoji, sets out on a journey to become a normal emoji. 
 

The Emoji Movie (2017)

PG-13 | | Animation, Adventure, Comedy | 23 August 2017 (Philippines)   

Director:

Writers:

(screenplay), (screenplay) | 3 more credits »

Stars:

, ,  
 

Country:

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Release Date:

23 August 2017 (Philippines) 

Also Known As:

Emojimovie: Express Yourself 

Filming Locations:

Box Office

Budget:

$50.000.000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$25.650.000 (USA) (28 July 2017)

Gross:

$25.650.000 (USA) (28 July 2017)

Company Credits

Production Co:

, ,

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| | (DTS: X)

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Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1
 
The Emoji Movie unlocks the never-before-seen secret world inside your smartphone. Hidden within the messaging app is Textopolis, a bustling city where all your favorite emojis live, hoping to be selected by the phone's user. In this world, each emoji has only one facial expression - except for Gene, an exuberant emoji who was born without a filter and is bursting with multiple expressions. Determined to become "normal" like the other emojis, Gene enlists the help of his handy best friend Hi-5 and the notorious code breaker emoji Jailbreak. Together, they embark on an epic "app-venture" through the apps on the phone, each its own wild and fun world, to find the Code that will fix Gene. But when a greater danger threatens the phone, the fate of all emojis depends on these three unlikely friends who must save their world before it's deleted forever.  

Tony Leondis' kid-flick tries to turn text-message punctuation into a colorful adventure.
Here's what you tell yourself when you accept an assignment to review a cartoon about emoji: "Remember what you thought when you heard about The Lego Movie? That it was the most shameless bit of advertising-as-entertainment you could imagine, the nadir of Hollywood's intellectual-property dependence, and couldn't possibly be worth seeing? Remember how incredibly wrong you were?"

You were wrong then. Given the right combination of inspiration, intelligence and gifted artists, any dumb thing can be turned into an enjoyable film. But Tony Leondis' The Emoji Movie, a very, very dumb thing, comes nowhere near that magic combination. It is fast and colorful enough to attract young kids, but offers nearly nothing to their parents. If only this smartphone-centric dud, so happy to hawk real-world apps to its audience, could have done the same in its release strategy — coming out via Snapchat, where it would vanish shortly after arrival. But even that wouldn't be fast enough.

The project's first hurdle is imagining how an emoji icon, which by definition represents only one emotional state (or object), can be a character capable of experiencing a story. Its solution is incoherent. We're told both that "the pressure's always on" for the face-emoji residents of Textopolis to keep their expressions convincing — smiley or smirking, angry or puzzled — and that they have no choice: That weeping guy keeps gushing tears even when he wins the lottery; he's just programmed that way.

The exception is Gene (voiced by T.J. Miller), a youngster preparing to take over for his old man as the face of Meh. (Who could play the elder embodiment of Blah other than Steven Wright?) We learn that free-spirited Gene, thanks to some glitch, is capable of infinite facial expressions. He has a hard time being deadpan on cue.

His first time on the job, in fact, he fails. In the film's weirdly unconvincing vision of how emojis make their way from a phone's inner universe to its screen when the user selects them, the whole process breaks down if one of the actors can't sit still for a face scan. Gene wrecks the app's game show-like stage, and eventually, the program's supervisor (Smiler, a ruthless but always-smiling woman voiced by Maya Rudolph) targets him for deletion, sending a team of mean-looking antivirus bots off to get him.

With the help of a high-five icon (James Corden, taking his position as the story's fount of unrelenting enthusiasm very seriously), Gene sets out to find a hacker who can reprogram him and eliminate unwanted facial expressions. Jailbreak (Anna Faris) says they need to escape the phone entirely to do this, getting past a tricky firewall and out onto The Cloud.

Getting there affords the filmmakers plenty of opportunities for product placement. The characters spend several minutes stuck in Candy Crush (gags about Hi-5's sweet tooth go on about five times longer than they should); they nearly die in a Dance Dance Revolution-style challenge game. At best, these episodes are limp set pieces; at worst, they sound like they were written by ad agencies. When our heroes need to ride streams of music from one place to another, one coos, "Whoa — this is Spotify?!"; when Jailbreak leads Gene into Dropbox, their pursuers can't follow them inside because "this app is secure."

The dialogue is even lamer when the pic's three scribes depict the life of Alex, the high-school kid who owns the phone Gene inhabits. When Alex wonders what to text the girl he has a crush on, his pal scowls "words aren't cool" — in a Manhattan preview where critics were outnumbered by ordinary moviegoers, nearly all of the laughter was directed at this sort of line, where three grown men try and fail to convincingly imagine how kids talk. Hell, they can't even come up with fresh-smelling one-liners about the movie's resident poop icon. (Amusingly, the closing credits identify this slumming actor as "Sir Patrick Stewart.")

Leondis and company don't get much mileage out of the vast variety of emojis they might use for sight gags, but they do well enough with the slapstick adventure of Gene's quest from home to the cloud. If not always imaginative or digestible, the look of the settings and characters should keep kids awake for 86 minutes; and if the trick that eventually saves the day makes very little sense to critical moviegoers, at least it's cutely frantic eye candy. Even so, few adults in the theater will have a hard time maintaining the flatline, unimpressed expression Gene has such difficulty with.

Please do us all a favor and create a simply better movie than this one next time and for the audience here is the ultimate tip on what to do about Emojis like this: don't waste your money on them.

1/10 genre

1/10 overall


and so we have the first movie ever reviewed on my blog with the most worse points so far.

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DETROIT (2017) - REVIEW

Posted on July 27, 2017 with No comments
Kathryn Bigelow's latest effort is a docudrama about the 1967 Detroit riots, focusing on a specific incident of police violence against a group of black men at a hotel and so here is my review of

Detroit (2017)




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| |  »

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4 August 2017 (USA)  »

Also Known As:

Детройт  »

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1.85 : 1
 
A set depicting Detroit 1967 was also built in Brockton, Massachusetts, right at the site of the Liberty Tree, a sycamore planted in 1863 which marked a stop on the Underground Railroad where, during the Civil War, slaves on their way north to freedom were hidden during the day in the stables of Edward Bennett so they could travel at night under the cover of darkness. Filming took place here during September 2016.  


It involves the death of three black men and the brutal beatings of nine other people: seven black men and two white women. 
 
A particularly nasty historical instance of police brutality against African-Americans is wrenched back into the spotlight on its 50th anniversary in Detroit. Shot docudrama style with an emphasis on visceral force above all else, this third collaboration over a nine-year stretch between director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal, after The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, emerges, creatively, as the least of the trio; intense and physically powerful in the way it conveys its atrocious events, the film nonetheless remains short on complexity, as if it were enough simply to provoke and outrage the audience. It's a grim tale with no catharsis. Annapurna Pictures' first feature film release can't help but stir plenty of sympathetic attention in the press and among political activists, but audiences keen to put themselves through this wringer will remain somewhat limited.

 Like Nate Parker's now conveniently forgotten The Birth of a Nation last year, the new film is a based-on-real-events drama determined to pummel the viewer with a tough, unvarnished perspective on a violent episode in American racial annals that's deeply unsettling. Historically, there's little question that in Detroit the white authorities were the bad guys, so unless the creative artists are inclined to delve beneath this rendering to examine nuances on both sides, it's uncertain what the film has to offer other than a punch to the gut.
The match that lit the fire on July 23, 1967, was a police raid on a Detroit after-hours bar in a black neighborhood where friends were celebrating the return of two locals from the Vietnam War. Things got out of hand, to the point where a local black assemblyman implored his constituents not to “mess up your own neighborhood.” But looting and destruction increased, more cops were sent in, the National Guard was called upon to protect the police and after three days, Detroit began to be compared to 'Nam itself.

This is a film that begins darkly and only becomes moreso. Bigelow and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd cover the initially random street violence with jittery, abrupt camera moves, much as a documentary camera operator might nervously re-point and refocus on unpredictable events based on where the action is. Shop windows are broken, stores are looted, and shouts and occasional gunshots of unknown origin fill the very dark nights.

In its depiction of this cauldron of helter-skelter violence lies the implicit and entirely plausible suggestion that the mainly white police in every instance overreacted to what was going on; if the wee-hours revelers had just been left alone on that first night, it's implied that nothing untoward would likely have resulted. But heavy-handed response seems to have been the force's modus operandi.

The main personal connection screenwriter Boal provides to all this comes through an enthusiastic young man named Larry Reed (Algee Smith), the smoothly appealing lead singer of a slick all-male group called The Dramatics scheduled to perform right after Martha and the Vandellas at a big downtown theater. When the tumult outside cuts the concert short right before his hoped-for star-making moment, Larry is devastated, and his own disinterest in what's going down on the streets is clearly provided as a lifeline to viewers unversed in the incident.

So the point is made that if Larry can't avoid being sucked into Detroit's tragedy, neither can anyone else. On this third night of rioting, July 25, with the city hot and dangerous, Larry and his reluctant buddy Fred (Jacob Latimore) take refuge at the Algiers Hotel, a seedy place with a pool and rear annex where drugs and hookers are not unwelcome. The only whites around are two teenage girls, Julie Ann (Hannah Murray) and Karen (Kaitlyn Dever), who appear to be up for anything and are palling around with a wild guy, Carl (Jason Mitchell), upstairs. Julie and Larry quickly hit it off, Fred is petrified and Carl plays fast and loose with a small toy gun.

Thus begins a long night's journey into hell. In the film's arduous, protracted and incendiary second act, the overwhelmingly white police force once again overreacts, raiding the hotel in the belief that there's a sniper inside and, once committed, cannot back off without exerting maximum force on their multiple suspects. Carl is immediately shot dead, while several others on the premises, including Larry and Fred, are shoved up against a wall and subjected to no end of physical and mental abuse.

The cop in charge, Philip Krauss (Will Poulter, the kid in The Revenant), is a hideous racist and sadist of the worst kind (he's also a fictional character, presumably, because whomever he's based on in real life was found innocent in court and can't be depicted as doing what the character is seen doing onscreen). Beating his terrified captives as they keep denying that anyone shot at the police or knows where the gun is, the baby-faced cretin is somewhat of a caricature — callow, sadistic, meanly manipulative, prideful in his reckless use of power and snickeringly snide in his continual reminders of how he's the one in charge here and you're not.

Krauss' favorite game is to take his “suspects” into an adjoining room, threaten them with a bullet in the head unless they spill, then pull the trigger but deliberately miss, re-enter the hallway and announce that he's just killed that suspect and the same will happen to the next one if he or she doesn't talk. This gambit is interrupted by the arrival, at intervals, of the National Guard, the Michigan State Police and a well-meaning security guard, Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega), who's popped up before but is powerless to do anything to restrain the maniacal Krauss.

But when Krauss has another young officer join his nasty game, things go drastically wrong, resulting in more death, a cover-up and outright lies that carry all the way through the subsequent trials at which the policemen were eventually exonerated by all-white juries in courts outside Detroit. And even poor Dismukes, who only wanted to help but was powerless to do so, was investigated for murder in an example of outrageous legal overreach.

It's impossible to sit through all this and not ponder how things are, or are not, the same a full half-century after the events on display. The highly publicized rash of seemingly unwarranted police shootings of black victims in recent years have led many to insist that things basically haven't changed; others would point out that major city urban police forces are far more integrated than they used to be and that the kind of brash, overtly racist police behavior on display in Detroit would be an egregious exception rather than the rule these days.

Unfortunately, the film makes no effort to try to understand or present the police as anything other than monolithically heinous; except for Krauss, they're scarcely more individuated than Darth Vader's shock troops.
From a strictly stylistic point of view, this third consecutive collaboration between Bigelow and Ackroyd is not on the level of the previous two; the nervous camera coverage of the riots and other action feels a tad overcalculated and lacks evocative composition. Visually, this is possibly the director's least striking film.
Compensating considerably for these shortcomings are many of the castmembers. Even if the characters are not deeply developed in the writing, the mostly young performers makes strong impressions and seem in the moment at all times. Smith is engaging as the talented young singer whose life course is entirely changed by this one night, and Anthony Mackie, who prominently figured in Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, scores again as a recently returned Army vet.

Boyega, now well known due to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, stirs sympathy as a regular guy whose desire to help only lands him in deep trouble, while Mitchell, in his brief appearance, delivers a live-wire unpredictability as the guy who appears to have unwittingly provoked the police into action on the fateful night. By contrast, the white characters essentially are confined to caricatures.

Shot mostly in the Boston area rather than in Detroit, where the crew spent about a week, the film certainly succeeds in providing a visceral, you-are-there feeling of being engulfed by these sorrowful events. But its insights never elevate to present a more exalted or acute perspective on what went down 50 summers ago. What we get instead is a ramped up “j'accuse” that will offer forceful connections with present-day incidents for those keen to find them.
 

8.5/10 for the genre

6/10 overall

 
 
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THE VAULT (2017) - TRAILER

Posted on July 26, 2017 with No comments
Two estranged sisters are forced to rob a bank in order to save their brother. But this is no ordinary bank. 

The Vault (2017)


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,

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2017 (USA)  »

Also Known As:

The Trust  »

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(ACES)


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LOGAN LUCKY (2017) - REVIEW

Posted on July 26, 2017 with No comments

Steven Soderbergh's Southern heist comedy stars Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Daniel Craig, Katie Holmes and Hilary Swank, when two brothers attempt to pull off a heist during a NASCAR race in North Carolina and so here is my review of
 

Logan Lucky (2017)

PG-13 | | Comedy, Crime, Drama | 18 August 2017 (USA)   


Director:

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, ,  
 

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| |  »

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Release Date:

18 August 2017 (USA)  »

Also Known As:

Roubo em Família  »

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 »

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Production Co:

,  

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Runtime:

 
Logan Lucky is a redneck Ocean's Eleven. For his first feature film in four years, Steven Soderbergh has snuck back in on a back road with a goofy and steadily amusing tale of born losers in West Virginia who try to hit the jackpot by divesting an auto raceway of a few million bills. This loose and shambling tale with a very attractive cast is highlighted by a wonderfully wacky, show-stealing turn by Daniel Craig as a down-home career criminal.
There is definitely an audience for this likeable but no-big-deal film and probably even two — aficionados of the director and cast, as well as good-time-seeking Middle Americans — so the onus is on the very indie distributors to find it; this would be a great August drive-in picture if many outdoor screens still existed.
Working with a script by first-time writer Rebecca Blunt, Soderbergh has made the sort of breezy, unpretentious, just-for-fun film that scarcely exists anymore, one almost anyone could enjoy. In terms of milieu, it overlaps with the two Magic Mike outings, that being the working-class South (Soderbergh hails from Georgia and Louisiana, it should be remembered), and it gives off the same sort of gently rollicking good-time vibe.

And they all star Channing Tatum, who this time turns up a few steps lower on the socio-economic ladder — and even further down the IQ scale — as Jimmy Logan, a heavy equipment operator who loses his job in the opening scene, has forfeited all custody rights to his daughter with ex-wife Bobbie Jo (Katie Holmes) and has no prospects when he heads over for a drink at the roadside bar tended by his Iraq War vet brother Clyde (Adam Driver), who has a prosthetic lower left arm he doesn't always manage to keep attached; it's the first casualty of a funny set-to with an obnoxious British race car driver (with the Thomas Pynchon-worthy name of Max Chilblain), played by a virtually unrecognizable, frizzy-haired Seth MacFarlane.
So what do these down-on-their-luck good ol' boys do to turn things around for the Logan family after several generations' worth of abject, poverty-ridden, impressively sustained failure? It might just be time to try their luck on the wrong side of the law. Jimmy's bright idea is to rob the mother lode of NASCAR, the Charlotte Motor Speedway, during the Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day weekend. And just how do they intend to pull this off? Well, it so happens that Jimmy worked construction on the infrastructure of said-same race track. Therefore, he says, “I know how they move the money,” which is through an elaborate system of tubes in the bowels of the giant stadium.

While not nearly as well dressed as the Ocean's gang, an ace team is assembled to pull off the unlikely heist. Given their range of associates, the brothers must start in jail, which is where they track down the one-and-only Joe Bang (Craig), a man known for blowing up bank vaults; no one inquires as to whether or not Bang is his real name. Of more immediate interest, however, is how the once-and-possibly-still-future James Bond has been decked out with short-cut white hair that makes him distinctly resemble Robert Shaw in From Russia With Love, so this is the closest the actor will ever get to playing a Bond villain.
 
The fact that Joe still has five months to go behind bars presents no problem, as he reassures his cohorts that he can break out of prison and then back in again before anyone is the wiser. Making the operation even more of family affair is the sister (Riley Keough) of Jimmy and Clyde (that could have been an alternate title). With this crew running the show, further mishaps inevitably ensue, including one very big one — and at two hours, Soderbergh perhaps does let the whole thing go on a few minutes too long, even if the final twists hit the spot.

Blunt's script is full of giddy inventions and gives the actors some good stuff to play with, but there is the sense that one more serious pass at it might have made it a bit tighter, more spirited and authentically low-down. A few moments, particularly early on, also betray a whiff of condescension to the characters.
The actors seems to be having a great time, however, and this proves contagious. Craig, Tatum and MacFarlane all find good comic grooves and stay in them. Driver's reserved sincerity is perhaps intended as an underplayed contrast, but in practice just means that the actor doesn't come off as winningly as do his co-leads. Hilary Swank pops in late-on as a special agent who tries to get to the bottom of the heist, while Katherine Waterston is wasted in a nothing part.
Still, this is a good-times film that doesn't put on airs, dress to impress or pretend to be something it isn't. It just aims to please, and does a pretty good job of it.

Production companies: Trans-Radial Pictures, Free Association
Distributor: Bleecker Street
Cast: Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Seth MacFarlane, Riley Keough, Katie Holmes, Katherine Waterston, Dwight Yoakam, Sebastian Stan, Brian Gleeson, Jack Quaid, Hilary Swank, Daniel Craig, Jesse White
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Screenwriter: Rebecca Blunt
Producers: Gregory Jacobs, Mark Johnson, Channing Tatum, Reid Carolin
Executive producers: Michael Polaire, Dan Fellman, Zane Stoddard
Director of photography: Peter Andrews
Production designer: Howard Cummings
Costume designer: Ellen Mirojnick
Editor: Mary Ann Bernard
Music: David Holmes
Casting: Carmen Cuba
Rated PG-13, 119 minutes
 

8/10 points for the genre

7.5/10 overall

 
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GIRLS TRIP (2017) - REVIEW

Posted on July 23, 2017 with No comments
When four lifelong friends travel to New Orleans for the annual Essence Festival, sisterhoods are rekindled, wild sides are rediscovered, and there's enough dancing, drinking, brawling, and romancing to make the Big Easy blush. 

Girls Trip (2017)




 
Director:

Writers:
(story by), (story by) | 3 more credits »
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Official Sites:


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Release Date:
21 July 2017 (USA)  »


Also Known As:
Girl Trip  »


Filming Locations:

Box Office


Budget:
$28.000.000 (estimated)
 »
Company Credits


Production Co:
,  

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Runtime:
 

Regina Hall, Tiffany Haddish, Jada Pinkett Smith and Queen Latifah play college friends reuniting for a New Orleans weekend during the Essence Festival in Malcolm D. Lee's sisterhood celebration.

It's barely been a month since the joyless Rough Night came and went in a blur of indifference, and this new comedy on paper could almost be the same movie — only with black sorority sisters and no corpse to dampen the weekend getaway. The difference is that Girls Trip actually delivers on its promise of a liberating good time, thanks in large part to the spirited characterizations and believable chemistry of its four immensely appealing leads. The progression from raunchy, raucous laughs into dramatic conflict and then out the other side into the uplifting empowerment of sisterhood and self-worth isn't entirely seamless, but there's too much dizzy pleasure here to get hung up on the flaws.

All that should spell "sweet summertime hit" for Universal, especially with women, while confirming Malcolm D. Lee as a go-to director for high-gloss entertainment built around successful, sexy African-American characters. In the Best Man movies, he explored how four longtime guy friends navigated various rivalries and romances, their bonds outlasting their frictions. Working from a script by Black-ish creator Kenya Barris and Tracy Oliver, Lee mines similar territory with the ladies this time, and again, his biggest assets are strong casting and genuine affection for his characters.

The movie opens with a quick recap starting at college in 1992, when the "Flossy Posse" first became an inseparable, hard-partying unit. The closeness lasted through graduation and even later, but marriages, careers and other inevitable divergent paths of adult life have weakened what was meant to be a four-way lifelong union. Ryan Pierce (Regina Hall), a popular self-help author whose latest best-seller is You Can Have It All, decides to fix that when she's invited to be the keynote speaker at the upcoming Essence Festival in New Orleans, reconvening the posse for a luxury weekend of girl time.
Ryan's lily-white agent Liz (Kate Walsh), who likes to think she's in on the "#BlackGirlMagic," is working on closing a massive deal during the festival, setting up her star client and the latter's husband Stewart (Mike Colter), a retired NFL player, with their own talk show and product line.

Lee and the screenwriters establish the distinct personalities of the four principal women with deft economy. Dina (Tiffany Haddish) is the clown of the group, a man-crazy hothead who, in possibly the movie's most hilarious scene, blithely steamrolls her boss as he's attempting to fire her for assaulting a co-worker. Lisa (Jada Pinkett Smith) has traded in her former freaknik credentials to be a nurse and nurturing mother of two, pretending not to mind the absence of romance since her divorce. And Sasha (Queen Latifah) has moved from top-tier journalism into bottom-feeder celebrity muckraking with a gossip site, whose backer is threatening to pull the plug if she doesn't start coming up with juicier items to goose ad revenue.

The requisite squealing airport reunion segues directly to the French Quarter, with brass ensemble The Soul Rebels blasting Bill Withers' "Lovely Day." Already, even before the boozing and carousing has fully gotten underway, there's infectious enjoyment in watching these women (both the characters and the performers) cut loose and have fun. But when one of Sasha's regular paparazzi forwards her a photo taken the night before of Stewart making out with Simone (Deborah Ayorinde), a self-promoting "Instagram skank," a cloud is cast over the group, revealing the cracks in Ryan's famously perfect world.

The setup is formulaic and the characters cut from familiar cloth, but the template is fleshed out with freshness and verve as each woman exhales alongside the three other people in the world who know her best. Weaving through crowds on Bourbon Street or in the Superdome, where we catch glimpses of concert performances by Common, Diddy and others, the posse shake off the concerns of their regular existences, including Ryan, whose professional responsibilities and marital troubles don't inhibit her ability to get crazy. 
The divine Hall is definitely not straitjacketed by her designated role as "the responsible one," her voice shifting into her trademark squawk in more excitable moments.

The sparkplug that repeatedly ignites them all is shameless wild-child Dina, a role likely to be a breakout for the volcanically funny Haddish, best known for The Carmichael Show. And when she scores some 200-year-old absinthe (from Mike Epps in a cameo), ignoring the "imbibe with caution" warning, their night out turns hallucinogenic — Girls "Trip," geddit?

There's a cute moment around that point where the movie acknowledges the screen history of Latifah and Pinkett Smith by having them exchange a knowing look when Dina ushers them into a dance club, shouting, "C'mon, bitches, let's set it off!" It's followed by that most time-honored of female smackdowns, a dance-off against the aggressively adversarial Simone and her girls, which only makes the scene more irresistible.
The two posse members who have suffered betrayal or neglect both get to feel like queens again through some avid male attention. Ryan gets drawn into a flirtatious knot with Julian (Larenz Tate), a college friend who has filled out nicely and now plays bass for Ne-Yo; and frisky young stranger Malik (Kofi Siriboe) sets his sights on prim Lisa, even before she's unleashed. His intimidating endowment prompts a tutorial from Dina in "grapefruiting." Don't ask. Haddish tackles most of the more outrageously vulgar end of the comedy spectrum, and while it occasionally gets a tad gross, her fearlessness is breathtaking. Though did we really need not one but two golden showers raining down on New Orleans revelers?
Lee lets the pacing lag once uncomfortable reality intrudes, and the public humiliation of Ryan causes her to doubt Sasha's loyalty. That in turn sparks animosity amongst all four friends in a somewhat rote development. But such rifts are necessary in order to be mended in movies like this, and the warm feelings engendered toward the characters make you root for their inevitable happiness — and the strengthened renewal of their sisterhood — even if they're more diverting company in down-and-dirty mode than soft-and-fuzzy.
At just over two hours, the movie could be tighter and some of its transitions more elegant. But the vibrancy of the authentic New Orleans locations and the bustle of the Essence crowds (Mariah Carey, Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, Ava DuVernay and Best Man alum Morris Chestnut are among familiar faces glimpsed) keep things humming. Mostly, however, it's the likability of the cast and their relaxed rapport together that maintains the flow even in weak script spots. Lee rolls the end credits on a suitably celebratory image of all four leads, dressed to slay and shimmying through the Quarter in the midst of a brass-band parade. They look like they're having a ball.

Production companies: Universal Pictures, Perfect World Pictures, Will Packer Productions
Distributor: Universal
Cast: Regina Hall, Tiffany Haddish, Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah, Larenz Tate, Mike Colter, Kate Walsh, Kofi Siriboe, Deborah Ayorinde
Director: Malcolm D. Lee
Screenwriters: Kenya Barris, Tracy Oliver
Story: Erica Rivinoja, Kenya Barris, Tracy Oliver
Producers: Will Packer, Malcolm D. Lee
Executive producers: Preston Holmes, James Lopez
Director of photography: Greg Gardiner
Production designer: Keith Brian Burns
Costume designer: Danielle Hollowell
Music: David Newman
Editor: Paul Millspaugh
Casting: Mary Vernieu, Michelle Wade Byrd
Rated R, 122 minutes


7/10 genre

7/10 overall


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INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996) - FIRST CLASSICS REVIEW

Posted on July 21, 2017 with No comments
Since we just celebrated the 2017th independence day in the US I thought I will do a review on the original movie in 1996

Independence Day (1996)


PG-13 | | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi | 6 November 1996 (Philippines)


The aliens are coming and their goal is to invade and destroy Earth. Fighting superior technology, mankind's best weapon is the will to survive.

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Won 1 Oscar. Another 34 wins & 34 nominations.

On July 2nd, communications systems worldwide are sent into chaos by a strange atmospheric interference. It is soon learned by the military that a number of enormous objects are on a collision course with Earth. At first thought to be meteors, they are later revealed to be gigantic spacecraft, piloted by a mysterious alien species. After attempts to communicate with the aliens go nowhere, David Levinson, an ex-scientist turned cable technician, discovers that the aliens are going to attack major points around the globe in less than a day. On July 3rd, the aliens all but obliterate New York, Los Angeles and Washington, as well as Paris, London, Houston and Moscow. The survivors set out in convoys towards Area 51, a strange government testing ground where it is rumored the military has a captured alien spacecraft of their own. The survivors devise a plan to fight back against the enslaving aliens, and July 4th becomes the day humanity will fight for its freedom. July 4th is their ... 

Official Sites:

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Country:

Language:

Release Date:

6 November 1996 (Philippines) 

Also Known As:

Dan nezavisnosti

Filming Locations:

Box Office

Budget:

$75.000.000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$50.200.000 (USA) (5 July 1996)

Gross:

$306.124.059 (USA) (13 December 1996)

Company Credits

Production Co:

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20th Century Fox’s Independence Day is a blast — a sci-fi disaster film about an alien force that attacks Earth on Fourth of July weekend. A generic juggernaut, as well as a story of appealing human dimension, Independence Day should set off box-office fireworks worldwide.
Imaginatively splicing genres together (sci-fi, disaster, war) as well as cloning winning ingredients from more recent films from Lucas, Spielberg and Cameron files, screenwriters Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin do not exactly lift us off into any new story dimensions, but rather, they have created a sci-fi story constellation of the brightest star elements. With German director Emmerich at the helm, Independence Day soars as filmic uber-craft.

In this canny scenario, there is, contrary to “Ecclesiastes,” something new under the sun: Massive, saucer-like spacecraft hover over the world’s big cities one weekend, blocking the sunlight and casting terrifying shadows over human creation. In the United States, this weekend is the Fourth of July weekend. Evidently, these aliens know when to catch us off-guard, including the president (Bill Pullman), a Clintonesque leader who realizes that he might have to act decisively in this instance. That we’re not alone in the universe is not exactly a comforting realization — the monstrous alien presence is, by all indications, an invasionary force.
In short, it’s the world against the aliens and there’s a ticking clock in this War of the Worlds-ish saga. Like the ‘70s disaster films, an odd and unlikely assortment of individuals rally together to take on the overwhelming natural force, in this instance, invading aliens. In Emmerich’s and Devlin’s well-honed screenplay, they include, most prominently in addition to the president, a brilliant, underachieving computer whiz David (Jeff Goldblum) and breezily gung-ho Marine Corps aviator Capt. Steven Hiller (Will Smith). It’s this triumvirate that ultimately must combine their skills and summon all their bravery to save the world.
Like the best action films, our heroes here are decidedly over-matched. The aliens’ fortress-like spacecraft are impregnable, even to nuclear missiles. Like a popular toothpaste advertised in the hey-day of this genre, the alien craft are protected by “an invisible protective shield.” It’s up to the techie-wonk David to crack their intelligence code, so what’s left of the world’s air forces can launch an attack against the alien mother ship.

Undeniably, it’s the film visual effects that are the star of this colossus. Emmerich has marshaled an accomplished technical team to near-perfection: The film’s action pyrotechnics are masterful, including raging fireballs sweeping amid skyscrapers, blitzkrieg-ish air battles and spectacular explosions. On occasion, one spots the blue-screened seams, but overall the actionery is astonishing, a credit to the sorcery of the visual effects supervisors, Volker Engel and Douglas Smith.

A large part of Independence Day’s excellence is, similarly, in its design – from the ominously scary alien ships to the slimy, skeletally challenged, reptilian-slithery aliens themselves. Highest praise to production designer-creature effects creator Patrick Tatopoulos and production designer Oliver Scholl for the ferocious look, both alien and earthly.

Further plaudits to cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub for the scaring scopings. Composer David Arnold’s terrific music, from the rattle of the snares to the thunder of the horns, is marvelously old-fashioned – a generic master work along the lines of The Guns of Navaronne.
Although there are no central heroes in this sci-fi actioner, Smith and Goldblum emerge as the epic’s nearest stars. Smith’s good-natured bravado is heroically appealing, while Goldblum’s herky-quirky demeanor is winningly apt as mankind’s counterintelligence to the aliens’ attack.

Also on the people front, a squadron of supporting players is wonderful. Judd Hirsch breathes comic life into his role as David’s curmudgeonly father, while Randy Quaid is goofily inspiring as a sotted crop-duster. Robert Loggia is well-cast as an iron-pants military man, while Vivica Fox is captivating as pilot Hiller’s stalwart girlfriend. Showing that they’ve crossed every “t” and dotted every “i,” the filmmakers have gone to the Spielberg vault to include mainstream audiences’ always favorite reactive-in-jeopardy character, a steadfast pooch, method-acted to perfection here by a happy setter.
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BREAKING NEWS - JIGSAW (2017) - FIRST TRAILER (FULL HD) EXCLUSIVELY ONLY ON MOVIETOWN

Posted on July 21, 2017 with No comments

Jigsaw (2017)


R | Horror, Thriller | 27 October 2017 (USA) 


                     Bodies are turning up around the city, each having met a uniquely gruesome demise. As the investigation proceeds, evidence points to one man: John Kramer. But how can this be? The man known as Jigsaw has been dead for over a decade.

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27 October 2017 (USA)  »

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Saw VIII  »

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This was the first trailer of the new movie (part 8 of the SAW series) Jigsaw, and I love the look and the effects used in here.
I am so excited to watch JIGSAW, in cinemas on October 27, 2017.

Thanks for watching and have fun watching movies.     
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DUNKIRK (2017) - REVIEW

Posted on July 19, 2017 with No comments
A master piece of movies with an incredible Metascore of 97, an average rating of 9.6/10 and a movie by Christopher Nolan is coming in July 20, 2017 and so here we are talking today about an extended review version of Allied soldiers from Belgium, the British Empire and France, who are surrounded by the German army and evacuated during a fierce battle in World War II.   

Dunkirk (2017)

PG-13 | | Action, Drama, History | 20 July 2017 (Philippines) 

          


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Evacuation of Allied soldiers from Belgium, the British Empire, Canada, and France, who were cut off and surrounded by the German army from the beaches and harbor of Dunkirk, France, between May 26- June 04, 1940, during Battle of France in World War II.

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It is another time where Christopher Noland proves that he has the right understanding of doing movies, it is another time, where he shows a world of twist and movements within a movie, which you don't expect.

This movie has so many superlatives that I don't know where to start, but I will try and let me just say that Dunkirk deserves what a movie should deserves, because there are absolutely no regrets and no bad things in there.

First me starts this time with the technical part before we go into the details of the movie. The camera is outstanding, the action and movements by the camera are so smooth and soft, and even in the hardest and fastest action, which we have a lot in Dunkirk, is like we are sitting on a 100000$ carpet because the action captured is like we never get nervous and mind fucked by the camera. It is smooth, it is soft, and it is directed talented by Mr. CN.

The effects are also good, explosions, bombs, planes, the complete surrounding is like the real 45. It is simply a wonderful cake presented by Nolan, same with the music and e.g. the ticking of a clock (seen in the trailer) is used as a symbol of the tragedy but also as a symbol for the war in general, since you have to survive. You get deeply in touch with the characters and you can feel what they feel and the technical supporter used in Dunkirk are making this movie marvelous.

Dunkirk is an impressionist masterpiece. These are not the first words you expect to see applied to a giant-budgeted summer entertainment made by one of the industry's most dependably commercial big-name directors. But this is a war film like few others, one that may employ a large and expensive canvas but that conveys the whole through isolated, brilliantly realized, often private moments more than via sheer spectacle, although that is here, too. Somber, grim and as resolute in its creative confidence as the British are in this ultimate historical narrative of having one's back to the wall, this is the film that Christopher Nolan earned the right to make thanks to his abundant contributions to Warner Bros. with his Dark Knight trilogy. He's made the most of it.

With multiple Winston Churchill/darkest-hour films hovering about these days, the story of England's resolve in the face of Nazi aggression three quarters of a century ago is once again common currency. Nostalgia for effective leadership and a Britain that no longer exists doubtless play a part in this, but, for all its emotional potency, this film doesn't trade in cheap sentiments, stiff-upper-lip cliches or conventional battle-film tropes. It's about resolve, determination and survival on the ground, on the water and in the air. When one of the soldiers finally makes it back home after a harrowing journey, he's greeted with a, “Well done.” “All we did was survive,” comes the reply. “That's enough,” says the soldier, who, almost miraculously, will live to fight another day.

Using a risky, even radical narrative structure that splits the storytelling into three intercut chronologies of different duration, Dunkirk dramatizes the calamitous climax of the attempt by the British Expeditionary Force to help French, Belgian and Canadian forces stem the Germans' stunningly swift sweep through France in the spring of 1940. Some 400,000 mostly British soldiers ended up on the beaches of Dunkirk, in northern France, desperate for a way to make it across the 26 miles of the English Channel — so near, practically close enough to see, and yet so far.

There are essential practical and logistical matters that need to be understood — that the shallow waters prevent the arrival of large ships and that English owners of “little ships” were encouraged to make the crossing to help rescue as many soldiers as possible. Still, the sight of so many men waiting in endless queues hoping to be picked up makes it all seems like a true mission impossible.

Nolan, who wrote the script himself, presents the brutal truth of the situation with lashing, pitiless directness. The first scene has several English soldiers being shot at as they run through city streets, and all are cut down except one. Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) makes it to the beach, where he finds countless thousands of other soldiers already lined up waiting for transport; the arbitrariness of who lives and dies is established at once. One of Nolan's bold decisions is to never even show a Nazi; we see the result of the enemy's aggression, especially from the air, but not once is a villain, or a swastika, offered up to function as a target for the viewer's own aggressive emotion.

Tommy shortly teams up on the beach with two other soldiers, Gibson (Aneurin Barnard) and Alex (Harry Styles), and the three finesse a plan to get out on the mole, a long narrow pier where boats can tie up under the supervision of naval Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh), the closest thing to an even-handed type on view here, and his army counterpart, Col. Winnant (James D'Arcy).

With naval vessels largely useless, the only real effort the English military can muster is air power, represented here by three Spitfire fighter planes sent to bring down as many Luftwaffe bombers and fighters as they can. The ace flier is played by Tom Hardy, whose face is once again largely hidden behind a mask (as in Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises as well as in the more recent Mad Max: Fury Road). The aerial sequences are brilliantly and excitingly filmed, and Nolan has made a special point of showing how difficult it was to line up a moving target and score a hit.

The third major narrative thread involves the brave effort of a middle-aged civilian sailor, Dawson (Mark Rylance), and his teenaged-son Peter (Tom Glynn-Carney) to sail their small private yacht across the Channel to bring home whomever they can. They're joined at the last moment by a friend of Peter's, George (Barry Keoghan, who made quite an impression in Cannes this year as a loathsome teen in The Killing of a Sacred Deer), a greenhorn who has no idea what he's in for, especially after they take on the shell-shocked lone survivor of a sunken ship (Cillian Murphy).

Nolan's daring gambit, which only comes into focus with time, is to intercut these three related but distinct narratives, each of which has its own time frame and duration: The general evacuation went on for nine days (during which the Germans held back from delivering the coup de grace, for reasons that are still debated), Dawson's crossing of the Channel occupies just one day and the air battle probably lasts, in real time, little more than an hour. Yet all these actions are combined as if they are happening simultaneously, a strategy that ultimately works to emphasize that what we are seeing is a highly selective representation of the whole, both in number of participants and time span.

Dunkirk also vividly contrasts the hugely different ways in which the soldiers experienced the same event. On the beach are tens of thousands of men standing in queues waiting for passage, sitting ducks for any sort of aggression the enemy might exert; above them are solitary pilots roving the brilliantly clear skies for enemy aircraft, engaging in aerial duels and, in one breathless scene, ditching in the Channel; several of the soldiers spend excruciating time hiding in the hull of a capsized boat as random bullets persist in blasting through the metal; and a Red Cross hospital boat is sunk in the harbor, creating massive panic. The hundreds of thousands of soldiers are at once all in this vast struggle together and quite on their own to respond as each moment demands.

All of Nolan's films are intensely visual, but it's fair to say that Dunkirk is especially so, given the sparseness, and strict functionality, of the dialogue. This is not a war film of inspirational speeches, digressions about loved ones back home or hopes for the future. No, it's all about the here and now and matters at hand under conditions that demand both endless waiting and split-second responses. Hardy probably has a half-dozen lines in the whole picture and, given his mask, does most of his acting with his eyes, something at which he's become very good indeed. Quite properly, though, no one stands out in the large cast; as required, everyone just does his job.

Although the film is deeply moving at unexpected moments, it's not due to any manufactured sentimentality or false heroics. Bursts of emotion here explode like depth charges, at times and for reasons that will no doubt vary from viewer to viewer. There's never a sense of Nolan — unlike, say Spielberg — manipulating the drama in order to play the viewer's heartstrings. Nor is there anything resembling a John Williams score to stir the emotional pot.

Quite the contrary, in fact. In what has to be one of the most adventurous of his countless soundtracks, Hans Zimmer enormously strengthens the film with a work that equally incorporates both sound and music to extraordinary effect. Mostly it's effectively in the background, reinforcing the action as a proper score is meant to do. But at times it bursts forth on its own to shattering effect. On initial experience it registers as an amazing piece of work that would require repeated exposure to analyze just how it has been conceived and applied to the narrative drama.

Similar levels of top-marks work have been turned in across the board here, notably by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, whose second consecutive feature with Nolan was shot on a combination of Imax and 65mm film to stunning effect with a boxy aspect ratio; the format certainly plays a significant role in one's almost instantaneous immersion in the world of the film. Production designer Nathan Crowley, costume designer Jeffrey Kurland and the visual and special effects teams have also made major contributions to the film's thoroughly authentic feel. Editor Lee Smith has helped the director tell the tale in a brisk 106 minutes, making this Nolan's shortest film since his small, homemade 1998 first feature, Following.

A decimation of the British at Dunkirk would almost certainly have resulted in the U.K.'s capitulation to Hitler and no American involvement in the European war. So the climax of the film, as beautiful as it is thanks to the visually stunning presentation of Hardy's character's fate, is more like the beginning of the real war. Even here, however, Nolan has figured out how to counter convention by having an excerpt from Churchill's famed “We Shall Fight on the Beaches” speech of June 4, 1940, heard, not as intoned by the great orator himself, but by an ordinary soldier in very ordinary tones.

In Dunkirk, Nolan has gotten everything just right.

Production company: Syncopy
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Cast: Fionn Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jack Lowden, Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard, James D'Arcy, Barry Keoghan, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy
Director-screenwriter: Christopher Nolan
Producers: Emma Thomas, Christopher Nolan
Executive producer: Jake Nyers
Director of photography: Hoyte van Hoytema
Production designer: Nathan Crowley
Costume designer: Jeffrey Kurland
Editor: Lee Smith
Music: Hans Zimmer
Visual effects supervisor: Andrew Jackson
Special effects supervisor: Scott Fisher
Casting: John Papsidera, Toby Whale

10/10 genre
10/10 overall


There is one little thing which annoys me, which speaks about high level critism and it is at the very beginning of the movie actually, when the transition of intro and main part is coming up and we have a little jump in the character of Hardy himself, which is really hard to see, but it is still there. Here I was a little bit like, too much clue. But still go and watch it, have fun, if, you did everything right.
Thanks for reading.


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