Or at least, I was last weekend, when I went to visit Evan
and Mel in their new home. I was lucky to get very nice weather for the
weekend. In fact, we got to spend the morning on Saturday walking their dog
Mikah on the beach. Fun times.
I got in on Thursday evening and left on Sunday at noon . Over the course of Friday and Saturday,
we went to see six (!) movies, alternating between theatres and Video on Demand
(VOD). They were, in order of when we saw them:
1) Jack the Giant Slayer (In theatres)
2) Wreck-it Ralph (on VOD)
3) Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (In theatres)
4) Red Dawn (on VOD)
5) A Good Day to Die Hard (in theatres)
6) Taken 2 (on VOD)
All those in the course of about 2 pm on Friday afternoon to maybe 10 pm on Saturday. Six movies in 30 hours. We haven't had
that density of movies since we did the Harry Potter marathon way back in the
fall of 2011.
I took the preview game, both individually and aggregately.
For Jack, I got GI Joe (even calling it as the first preview as we walked into
the theatre), Evan got Ironman 3, and I finished up with the next three (I
think they were Burt Wonderstone, Oblivion, and Man of Steel, but I can’t
really remember). Hansel and Gretel was shown at a cheap theatre, so I got the
preview game with Jack the Giant Slayer after we tied on Oz the Great andPowerful. Finally, Evan took the preview game for A Good Day to Die Hard with Olympushas Fallen (we both whiffed on The Heat and After Earth). All told, I got two
games out of three, with the aggregate score of five to three, with one tie.
Two surprising things about spending that much time in
theatres. One, apparently Chevrolet has paid a ton of money to Cineplex, and
now they're allowed to show ads during the previews. What? After the first
preview, there's a Chevrolet ad, and then more previews (yes, this is even
after the cinematic introducing the previews). I am not a fan, but can't quite
summon the level of outrage I think I should have for this kind of blatant
commercialism. Secondly, in some BC and Ontario
theatres, there's an onscreen game called Timeplay. You download a mobile phone
app and answer questions, competing against the other players in the theatre.
After three quick questions, it's over, and there's a reminder to turn off your
phone. Both Jack and Die Hard played in those theatres, and Evan beat me in
those both times, although we were the top two in both theatres. We won token
prizes (free drink with popcorn purchase), and now I'd kinda like it if Alberta
theatres had that.
Anyway, on with the show. Because six movies in two days
tends to mash the experiences together, I'll try and jot down some quick
thoughts about each. And if giants somehow wind up in Die Hard, please excuse
me while I rearrange my memories.
Jack the Giant Slayer
Another in the line of gritty-fied fairy tales, this one
taking Jack and the Beanstalk and making it PG-13. It opens with the standard
Fee Fi Fo Fumm (technically, they're the names of Giant Generals) rhyme, which
is the start of a story being told to Jack by his father, as well as the
Princess Isabelle by her mother. One thing I like about this movie was how the
managed to intertwine what was happening to Jack and Isabelle when they were in
two different places. I guess they were meant to end up together, because everyone
else already had a sidekick. Seriously. The evil human villain had a sidekick.
The King (Isabelle's father) had a sidekick. Ewan McGregor (Isabelle's
bodyguard) had a sidekick, and no, it wasn't his awesomely-flouffed hair. It's
like they had a surplus of characters who tended to agree with the most
powerful person around them, so they had to parcel them out to all the
important people. Only Jack and Isabelle didn't get one because they needed to be
together.
After the story opens, it skips forward ten years, where
Jack's father and Isabelle's mother have died, and both of them are looking for
adventure. I'm sure everyone would have been a lot safer if only people took
Hobbits' advice and stayed away from adventures. Anyway, Jack and Isabelle have
a brief encounter when Jack stands up for Isabelle's honour, and then she runs
away from the castle to have an adventure, and be out and about (because the
King, though nice, wants to keep her safe inside the castle with no going out).
She ends up at Jack's house/hut just as the beanstalk grows up to the land of
giants, and is thrust up there alone.
The king assembles a team to climb the beanstalk and go
after her, and Jack volunteers because ... well, Adventure! And the plot demands
it, I supposed.
Anyway, things go from there, and I won't spoil it. But I
will relay Evan's review, which was that it was "Surprisingly not half
bad." Now there's a poster blurb if I ever heard one. I enjoyed it. It
wasn't a great movie, but I think it was good for what I needed it to be. Fun
time, good action, funny, nice special effects. Although Jack seemed far too
happy-go-lucky for the life threatening situations he was put through. How can
you be smiling and joking and have all that witty banter when you're about to
be eaten? Also, the last minute of the movie was the worst ending I have ever seen.
Atrocious. Completely spoils the flavour of the movie. If you can leave those
minor aspects aside, I think it's a solid Blu-Ray movie.
Wreck-it Ralph
Wreck-it Ralph is essentially a Pixar movie done by Disney.
And that's not a bad thing, as Disney has a lot of good people working for
them. They've essentially nailed the Pixar formula. Loveable characters,
additions for the adults (usually it's humour aimed at them, in this case it's
video game cameos), and even the part before the climax where the two main
protagonists have a falling out and little kids get a hug from their moms.
The movie centres on Ralph, who's the bad guy in a video
game called Fix-it Felix. No one likes Ralph because he's the bad guy, which
could easily lead to Then Let Me Be Evil, even though he's clearly a
Punch-Clock Villain (almost literally). Instead, he tries to prove he's not
such a bad guy after all, which leads to all manner of hijinks but also
introduces him to Vanellope, a glitch in the racing game near Fix-it Felix's
arcade stand.
Because it hews so close to the Pixar formula, it also gets
the Pixar quality. This is a good movie. Funny, sweet, hilariously detailed
video game animations (the tenants in the building Ralph demolishes move like
eight-bit characters, even outside the video game). Even though it was aimed at
a much younger audience than me (well, maybe a slightly lesser maturity than
me, but not by much), I still liked it a lot. Definitely a theatre movie.
Hansel and Gretel:
Which Hunters
We had to drive for about 45 minutes to get to the only
theatre that was still playing Hansel and Gretel. It was called Hollywood
3, and the preview for the latest movie was released that day. So yeah, cheap,
slightly sketchy. Oh yeah, and late at night, because 9:45 pm is the only time it was showing, and really late
for old farts like us.
The movie opens with two kids being led into the woods by
their father, who leaves them there. He doesn't come back, so they search for
him, eventually stumbling across a cabin made of candy. They shout for help,
and the door opens ... by itself. Man, those safety lessons in school were a
lot different back then. Anyway, they meet a really creepy witch, who chains
Gretel and locks up Hansel, making him eat by threatening Gretel. She
eventually picks the lock to her chains just as Hansel's about to be cooked,
and the siblings knock the witch into the oven, roasting her alive. As Jeremy
Renner's voiceover explains, it's a solid way of killing a witch.
Then the opening credits come, and then we get to a town
that has a witch problem, who are also behind the kidnapping children problem.
The Mayor hires Hansel and Gretel, now grown up and played by Renner and Gemma
Arterton, to find the children and kill the witches. After that follows a ton
of action, funny jokes, gory action, bloody jokes, the occasional f-bomb, and
Gretel continually waking up in new locations after being knocked out
(seriously, count the times she gets knocked out. It's a drinking game).
Did I love it? Of course I loved it! It's a whole lot of
fun. Keep in mind that my taste in movies is terrible, but it's probably the
best movie I saw last weekend. Action, comedy, plot-twists, action, comedy,
Gemma Arterton. What's not to like? Theatre movie, and I can't believe it
didn't do better.
By the way, Jeremy Renner is creeping up our Mindless Movie
Power Rankings. He's been in this one, The Bourne Legacy, The Avengers, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, and cameo’d in Thor. Led two, starred in two more,
appeared in a fifth? Coming up on Jason Statham territory (for the record,
Statham has led three - Safe, Killer Elite, and The Mechanic - and starred in
two more - The Expendables 1 and 2).
Red Dawn
This remake has been on the shelf for a while, possibly so
the original Chinese antagonists could be turned into North Korean antagonists.
Not realizing China
could be a major market for movies? Pretty dumb. Mind you, dumb was kind of the
modus operandi on this film, so it's perfect for us.
It opens with a football game in which an older brother
watches a younger brother quarterback a football team to a loss. The younger
brother proves he's not much of a team player by constantly running, which puts
them just outside of field goal distance, so the kicker misses. Then the
younger brother leaves with his girlfriend while the older brother sleeps on
his father's couch, since he just showed up out of the blue while on leave from
the marines. Got it?
The next morning, North Korea
invades Spokane , Washington Spokane ,
but we can pretend. I think the original was set in Denver ,
which actually has a nuclear something-or-other and NORAD, so there's that.
This movie is decent. Not great, but not bad. Enough stupid
action to make me happy. A bit too much shaky-cam for my tastes. Even in quite
moments, close-ups on faces would be done in shaky-cam. Usually that stuff's
reserved for action scenes, but they went all Friday Night Lights on us (by the
way, I might be the only guy who preferred Studio 60 over FNL, but I guess I
preferred a soap opera masquerading as a TV show over a soap opera masquerading
as football). Anyway, I think this is a blu-ray movie. All the characters were
so generic that we kept on calling them by nicknames instead of their actual
names (Big Bro, Little Bro, Girlfriend, Older Black Kid, Younger Black Kid, Latino
Girl, Manly Kid). And if the characters are that generic, the movie's just not memorable
enough to be a theatre movie.
A Good Day to Die
Hard
This was pretty much the entire reason I visited. All the
other movies were picked on the fly, but this movie we picked out in advance
when we knew the dates of my visit. And I gotta say, I'm a little disappointed.
The movie opens with the assassination of someone by Jack
McClain, who looks a bit like Sam Worthington. He gets arrested, and offers a
plea deal. Meanwhile, his father (John McClain, pushing 60) finds out and flies
over to Russia
to deal with it. Once there, he's generally a stubborn pain in the ass until
about haflway through the movie. Seriously. Which is very annoying, because I
don't like stubborn pains in the asses (being one myself), and not liking John
McClain is a very disorienting experience.
Anyway, there is a lot of explosions and action, and a plot
twist (it turns out, the bad guy is just a thief, like every other bad guy in
the Die Hard franchise, except for 2), and very cool shot at the end. That does
not make up for the fact that I spent half the movie resenting John McClain for
his mere presence. Idiot Ball, much? Blu-Ray movie, but I can't go higher, and
that makes me sad.
Taken 2
This time around, there are no awesome speeches to put on
the poster, but Liam Neeson still has the skills acquired over a very long
career. These let him Liam Neeson his way across Istanbul
with the help of his daughter (Kim), who initially has to break him out
confinement. Then he gets around to the shooting and neck-punching that made up
so much of the first Taken.
Kim is very brave to help out, but is also very scared. I
like how she's pretty much what a normal person would be in an action movie -
on the verge of panic the entire time. It's only her father's influence that
gets her through.
It's a theatre movie for me. Quite a bit of action, not much
humour, Liam Neeson laying the smack down. One thing that blew my mind while
watching it is when Evan told me Neeson was probably working so much because
his wife died. How did I not know that? It suddenly explained why he's popped
up in so many of our movies - Taken 2, The Dark Knight Rises, Battleship, Wrathof the Titans, The A-Team, and Clash of the Titans. He's by no means led or
starred in all of them (only three, by my count), but that's still a fairly
impressive resume for less than three years.
And that about wraps it up for my trip out west. Great
weather that I missed because we spent most of it indoors, frying our minds and
popping out our eyeballs.
