The following is a list of most of the movies I saw in 2014. I don’t do movie reviews well. Don’t expect much and you won’t be disappointed.
What’s not to like about Godzilla? I liked it. Then again, I like watching giant creatures destroy the world. I don’t need convoluted plot lines for that.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Absolutely fantastic. No it was really good. Go away with your negativity. I’ll be adding it to my Apes collection.
Angelina Jolie did a fantastic job. The movie itself? Meh.
Boring. Maybe I’ve seen too many zombie movies, but even B-movies with zombies were better. If you’ve got an hour and thirty-eight minutes to kill, watch it, but don’t go out of your way to see it.
Holy Crap! It was so borzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Much better than the schlock earlier this century. I’m sure I’ll be watching it again. Paul’s a Spiderman fan. It doesn’t matter if I liked it or not. I’ll be seeing it many more times.
It’s not a film I could watch multiple times, but for what it was I thought it was good.
An interesting look at how the one percent lives and thinks about the rest of us.
I really wanted to like this movie. It tried to be hard science fiction. Visually, it was really well done, but the story was just too weird to like it.
Based on the 2004 Japanese novel All You Need is Kill, this movie is one of the best I’ve seen this year. It’s science fiction. It’s got humor. Stuff gets blown up. It has all the elements of a fun movie.
The film takes place in a future where Earth is invaded by an alien race. Major William Cage (Tom Cruise), a public relations officer inexperienced in combat, is forced by his superiors to join a landing operation against the aliens. Though Cage is killed in combat, he finds himself in a time loop that sends him back to the day preceding the battle every time he dies.
Cage teams up with Special Forces warrior Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) to improve his fighting skills through the repeated days, seeking a way to defeat the extraterrestrial invaders.
The Defence of Duffer’s Drift, published in 1904, is probably one of the earliest examples of this type of storytelling.
I read the book many years ago and, although I liked it, it didn’t leave a big impression on me.
Slate has an article comparing the differences between the movie and the book. Some of the changes are minor to give the movie an updated appeal, such as a memory of war with horses becomes a memory of the Vietnam War. Some are changed to something completely different.
Many of the memories we see Jonas receive are changed slightly from the book’s versions: Instead of experiencing pain from a sunburn, for instance, Jonas gets a bee sting; a very old memory of war—from a time when horses are used in battle—becomes a memory from Vietnam. In the movie, the Giver accidentally transfers a violent memory to Jonas after Jonas finds him writhing on the floor in pain; this doesn’t happen in the book. In the book, the Giver is occasionally in too much pain to transfer memories, and when that happens Jonas gets the day off.
The Daily Beast hast an article about why lovers of the book will hate the movie. One of its biggest problems is Jonas is 12 in the book, but 16 in the movie and played by a 25-year old. The things Jonas learns from the Giver in the movie aren’t as jarring or scary as they would be to a 12-year old losing his innocence about the world.
Overall, I enjoyed the movie. Some of the minor changes are easily overlooked. It depends on how much a fan you were of the book. Like Total Recall, both the short story and the two film versions are equally entertaining.
Meh, it was a cute, one-time watch of a movie. It was predictable, but a decent enough way to kill 90 minutes. It’s not something I’d ever look to see again.
A science fiction movie based off a comic book series that doesn’t take itself seriously sounds like a movie I’d love. It wasn’t. I keep falling asleep. It just wasn’t interesting to me. A lot of the jokes were not funny, some downright stupid. I felt like it tried to hard to be witty. Yes, I know it made $770.1 million, but that doesn’t mean I had to like it or that it was good.
Luke Evans does a good job as Dracula with what he’s given and the visuals are fantastic. The movie tries to re-image the Dracula everyone knows. If Vlad could kill thousands all by himself, what’s the point of his army? The movie tried to humanize Vlad, but it didn’t work for me. I’m okay with people wanting to change things up a bit and give a different take on a story, but it has to hold my interest.
The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia (Documentary)
Another documentary and holy smokes this one’s a winner. It’s a train wreck you won’t be able to turn away from. You will never meet another family quite like the Whites. It’s amazing, funny and sad. In the most frank terms, this family doesn’t give a fuck. From Wikipedia:
Stemming from generations of coal miners working in risky job conditions, most of the White family possesses a fatalist attitude and a lack of fear of death. For the duration of the film, various members recollect violent acts with neighbors, family members, and other locals. Other crimes included larceny, prescription fraud, shootings, armed robbery, forgery, stabbings and parental custody. D. Ray worked in the coal mines during the scrip payment era. Mamie explains D. Ray’s frustration with the corrupt practices of his employers and how it led him to “outsmarting the system.” D. Ray legally signed each of his children up for “crazy checks” during early adolescence. Mamie discloses to the audience that each month, she (and other members) receive social security checks monthly from the government due to their inability to hold employment from psychiatric disability.
How can you not watch a movie like that?
Fun fact: I can dance just like the guy at 10 minutes into the movie.
Terror at the Mall (Documentary)
Wow. Go watch it. A warning. There are graphic pictures and video in the film. It’s really compelling and I am glad I watched it, but it’s not something you should watch multiple times unless you’re purposefully trying to desensitize yourself to violence.
10 Days in North Korea (Documentary)
A documentary from RT. You can watch it online or download it. Don’t trip over the propaganda while viewing.
The movie is based on Robert A. Heinlein’s All You Zombies. IMDB describes the movie as “The life of a time-traveling Temporal Agent. On his final assignment, he must pursue the one criminal that has eluded him throughout time.”
This short description doesn’t do the movie justice. If I were to try and expand on it, I’d just spoil the movie and you’d hurt me. Go see it.
Jagten is a 2012 Danish drama film starring Mads Mikkelsen. The story is set in a small Danish village around Christmas, and follows a man (Mikkelsen) who becomes the target of mass hysteria after being wrongly accused of sexually abusing a child in his kindergarten class. Mikkelsen is a very good actor and he shines in this deeply disturbing look at human nature. It’s one of the better movies I’ve ever seen and has been nominated and/or nominated for many awards.
The Philosophers aka After the Dark
At an international school in Jakarta, a philosophy teacher challenges his class of twenty graduating seniors to choose which ten of them would take shelter underground and reboot the human race in the event of a nuclear apocalypse.
Great premise. Crap ending. A lot of pseudo-intellectual nonsense. There were too many inconsistencies to like it past the first scenario. Maybe someone else can take the great premise and make a better movie. For me, it’s a forgettable movie.
A group of aging London gangsters go on a vigilante killing spree when one of their number is murdered by a street gang.
It’s a lighthearted revenge film. It’s fun. It won’t win any awards, but who cares. I’d watch it again. The movie has mixed reviews, but I found it more fun than I expected. Most of the people who don’t like the movie thought the premise of old gangsters vs. young gangsters was stupid because they thought the old gangsters were nobodies. There are many seasoned British actors in the film, but if some folks don’t know who the Beatles are, you can’t expect them to know who Ian Ogilvy is.
The premise of the movie was a good idea. I like Luc Besson‘s work. The movie left me wanting. I really don’t like the “we only use 10 percent of our brain” in the movie. It’s not true. Also, near the end of the movie, Lucy shifts back in time to New York City at the time the Native Americans were there. They were on horses. That piece of historical inaccuracy really annoyed me. Besson tried to make an entertaining film with scientific and ethical aspects. I think he came up a little short.
It was a good movie, but extremely disturbing on so many levels. It’s all the reasons I hate war in 2 hours and 15 minutes.
While there are some valid scientific nitpicks in the movie, it’s a really nice indie science fiction movie, with an emphasis on the science. The movie was filmed in the “found footage” style and recounts the story of the first manned mission to one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa. The crew loses all communications with Earth. Then, they suffer through several crises until they encounter a baffling mystery. It was really good right up until the end when I laughed. I won’t tell you why because then you won’t watch to see what happens.
It was a good movie, if a little bit too long. Overall, a fun ride and it would have been great to see what happened after the survivors left the train. The comments on IMDB are hilarious, especially people’s obsession with the polar bear.
Even though it’s based on a true story, there are some parts that are wrong and some parts that are left out entirely. I know more about the story, having read many aspects of Jackie Robinson’s life over the years, so there are some disappointing parts where history is left out. Then again, you really can’t put every detail into a two hour movie. Overall, it was good and gave a sense of what Robinson had to deal with as the man who broke the color barrier in baseball. One way to know it’s a good movie is when someone walks in the room and asks you, “Why are you watching such racist, hateful crap?” The movie nailed it on the parts covering what blacks had to endure during the 1940s and 1950s.
IMDB describes the movie as a stop-motion animated story about people living in a Syndey apartment complex looking for meaning in their lives. I’m not a fan of stop-motion animation, but the story was compelling enough that I kept watching. Everyone is looking for the meaning of life. The title refers to the cost of a book that promises to reveal the meaning of life for $9.99. You won’t find the meaning of life in a book. It’s different for everyone.
The trailer for the movie makes it out to be a typical comedy. It’s more black comedy and drama. It’s strange. It’s different. It’s full of lonely people living on a space station.
It’s been described as a darkly humorous soap opera, set on a space station, as seen through the lens of 70s sensibilities. If you’re a Space: 1999 references you’ll notice a few things, such as Liv Tyler’s uniform, the walls and the number 91399 in different scenes (September 13, 1999 is the breakaway date).
In the future, amid a cold war with China, scientists employed by Britain’s Ministry of Defence produce a cybernetic implant that allows brain-damaged soldiers to regain lost function. The budget was less than £1 million, but stylistically, it was on par with much more expensive movies. This was writer-director Caradog James’ first full length movie and overall, the movie is well done. It’s slow at times, but still a good little-known thriller.