Movies Watched The Week Of 4/26 - 5/2

Oh baby.  We got a fucking week for ya’ll here, with the massive premiere of a movie 3 years in the making.  And it more than fucking delvers.  We also got 2 70s car movies straight out of the Tarantino playbook. The only downside is a mediocre comedy that still can’t lessen the shine off the massive week we got here.  So sit back and enjoy something that was more physically challenging then the Mayweather/Paquaio Fight.

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (April 26th, 2015)

Director: John Hough

Starring: Peter Fonda, Susan George, Adam Roarke, and Vic Morrow

Ah, you gotta love 70s car movies.  There is really nothing more to this movie other than the desire of the filmmakers to shoot some cool stunts and destroy the shit out of some shit.  The plot is such.  Two dumbasses (Fonda and Roarke) need money to make it into Nascar, so the rob a supermarket.  Mary is a crazed groupie who gets caught up in the mess while a policeman (Morrow) hunts them down.  Simple enough.  It’s in real time, so there’s some immediacy to it.  The casting is good enough, with George just being beyond terrible in such a glorious grindhouse way.  Fonda’s hair is the worst thing he’s ever done on screen, and he helped kill Escape From LA.  Morrow is just doing what he do.  We come for the cars and we get some fucking cars man.  The stunts are great and you get the sense that they were just irresponsible and reckless.  It’s glorious.  And the ending is perfection in the stunts department.  Then the wrap up to the film is so balls out ridiculous that you can’t help but respect the insanity of how they end it in such a laughably nihilistic way.  If you want a quick ride with some insane car stuff, this isn’t the worst way to spend your time.  If you want a real movie though because you’re high falutin, stay away cause this is just pure entertainment.

Rating: 8/10 

Avengers: Age of Ultron (May 1st, 2015)
Director: Joss Whedon
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner, and Mark Ruffalo

The time is here.  We have been waiting for a good long while.  3 years to be exact.  The glorious return of The Avengers is here and everyone in the world is going to see it. We’ve had 5 movies in Phase 2 of the MCU to tide us over, and they’ve all been winners for the most part. But this is the main event that those movies were the undercards to.  And with Joss Whedon and the crew of super heroes back in the game, the year has it’s contender for biggest movie of the year.  But could years of hype and waiting work against the movie? Can the movie itself live up to the hype or will it suffer from sequelitis?  Based off some reactions, some people can’t really let their expectations go.  But without the bullshit holding one down, you can see whats plain to see.  This is a great god damn movie and ups the ante for the MCU, a new high point for the brand.  

The movie starts off in media res with the Avengers rolling into the base of a Hydra outfit, and they roll in guns blazing.  And he starts it off with a long, edited together long take of each Avenger doing their thing much like Whedon did at the end of The Avengers.  It sets the movie up perfectly with the visual cues that these guys have been working together for a while and are comfortable, fighting like a true team.  The comic book ingenuity Whedon displays in just this one scene is great.  Everyone gets their great moments, and it lets us know this is gonna be an even keeled ensemble movie.  And with this opening, we get the introduction of two new supers, though they aren’t heroes at this moment.  Pietro and Wanda Maximoff aka Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen) make their debuts and they make an impression.   Olsen works much better than Johnson, who stands below Evan Peters as Quicksilver in Days of Future Past, but Johnson is still good enough. It’s brief but quality stuff. And it is in this opening raid that the plot is kicked into gear, as Tony Stark gets it in his head (thanks to a Scarlet Witch induced vision) to create an artificial intelligence to protect the world.  It is here that we get the seeds of Ultron’s birth.

From that point on, the movie is pretty much non stop.  It’s a big movie that spans the globe and makes time for everyone to have their moments, even cameos that appear.  The creation of Ultron is a big threat and one they can’t just simply solve with punches or a well timed nuclear bomb.  They have to use their tactical brains and work as a team to take him down before he gets loose.  But the problem is that they are hella outnumbered and outgunned, while also being torn apart from the inside.  Tony didn’t tell the others he was making an AI, so when Ultron comes to life, they blame Tony for his massive ego and god complex.  So they have to come back together for now to face a threat. 

This movie is really big.  Whedon ups the ante of the scope of the movie, shooting in widescreen and bringing a better visual style to the movie than the big budget TV look of the last one.  He still shows that visuals aren’t his strong suit with some wonky camera angles and weak visual effects in spots.    And it’s funny, because no one will bring this up, but it has a similarly muted color scheme like Man of Steel.  But since it’s Whedon and Marvel, no one will mention it.  Just like they won’t mention the insane amounts of damage done in the action scenes here.  Just because they show the heroes save some citizens now and then, the action is so massive that just as many people died here thanks to the heroes bullshit than in Man of Steel.  But since I don’t actually care about that shit in a comic book movie with really comic booky action, I was just ecstatic to see this epic level of action.  It’s big and never ending and just ripped out of the comics.  And it’s all character based action, using everyones powers to be really varied.  It may get a little cluttered at times because of Whedons strained talent with visuals, but it’s really awesome.  Easily the best of the MCU.  

While this is a busy movie, pretty much everyone gets moments and feels worthwhile to the plot.  There is almost no ounce of fat on this movie, aside from a pointless subplot with Thor is a pool that should have either been cut out or lengthened to make any sense.  But even Thor has his moments, cluing everyone into the cosmic implications to come with the increasingly visible Infinity Stones.  Cap though, yet again, is the forgotten member of the movie.  He really just serves as the good guy moral compass leader man, really dealing with nothing at all.  It’s kinda telling that they can’t get sort of story going with him. But this time out, the movies arc isn’t Stark.  His is important, as it ideologically strains the group and sets up future conflict, while setting up the plot of the movie from the past events in his movies. He’s still not the focal point or the heart of the movie  

So while the three big guns of the MCU with their own franchises are kinda sidelined, the rest of the crew are given much story and one in particular is given a big heap of work.  That would be Hawkeye, who was essentially a nothing role in the first one and hasn’t shown up in other movies.  So as an apology to Jeremy Renner, Hawkeye is given the heart of the movie and shows why he is such a vital member of the crew, despite being an unpowered human with a bow & arrow.  And Renner really shines in this movie, playing the smirking and wisecracking smartass with a heart of gold that Matt Fraction made classic.  And where Renner gets some great stuff, Black Widow and Bruce Banner get the other heartfelt story.  A surprising but fitting romance is blooming between these two and it’s really good stuff about two people who’ve never had any agency in their lives trying to take charge of their lives for once with someone they love and who loves them.  Scarlett and Ruffalo do great work here to sketch the relationship between the two.  And much like the Mal/Inara relationship in Firefly/Serenity, the relationship really works and makes even me, a hardened B movie fanboy, really happy at one particular moment in their relationship.  No one will ever say Whedon doesn’t do character moments well, and he does them here in the dramatic moments and the never ending comedic moments. 

What Whedon has done here is nothing short of spectacular, especially with the apparent emotional/physical toll it took on him, and the rumors of Marvel/Kevin Feige being too controlling.  He delivered a massive sequel that managed to work on it’s own and set up future movies really well, something that’s tripped them up before.  The character work he does is superb and heartfelt, the action is thrilling even with his limits at that aspect.  The movie is funny and dramatic and just massive.  Aside from the minor Thor digression, the only real negative here is James Spader.  And not Ultron himself.  I mean Spader. He doesn’t act here.  He plays Spader, even bringing that weird mouth thing Spader does when he talks thanks to the wonders of mo cap.  And it’s not even that he’s bad.  It fits character wise, since he’s like a mechanized son to Tony, taking on his snarky and condescending nature.  Just seeing Spader doing Spader feels kinda lazy, only working thanks to the writing of the character.  But aside from that, the movie is fantastic.  The long wait for Infinity War is gonna be tough, especially with the lack of Whedon at the helm.  But right now, this is the Empire Strikes Back of Marvel.  Dark but not dreary and setting up rougher times to come, this is a massive achievement.  It’s a shame that Mad Max: Fury Road and Star Wars: The Force Awakens are coming out this year, since they stand a real good chance to topple this movie quality wise.  So if this doesn’t end up as the number 1 blockbuster of the year, this is a ridiculous fucking year.  Marvel did it again. 

Rating: 10/10

Cyrus (May 2nd, 2015)
Directors: Jay and Mark Duplass
Starring: John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, Jonah Hill, and Catherine Keeener

The movie starts with Catherine Keener, so I knew we were getting a piece of white bread of a comedy.  It’s not that she’s bad, it’s just that shes a warning sign of a boring and slight comedy coming ones way.  And that is what we got here.  The Duplass manage to make Reilly and Hill interact and it’s not funny.  Like, almost at all.  There’s some chuckles here and there, but it’s almost laugh free.  Crazy.  And when the supposed thrust of the movie is the rivalry between Reilly and Hill, you’d expect to get that.  But, we don’t meet Hill for about 20 minutes and then we don’t get the actual rivalry until about 30 minutes left in the movie.  So, the movie spends alot of time with no real drive to it.  What the movie is more interested in is the relationship between Reilly and Tomei, which is good.  It’s sweet and has some real heart/humanity to it.  But the other aspects of the movie really just drop the movie down.  The performances are fine enough, despite laughs being almost absent here.  And since it’s a mumblecore movie, it’s shot like a slightly more polished student film.  I’m not usually this kind of guy, but this is the whitest movie ever.  It’s so bland and the problems at hand are not really interesting.  If you like the Duplass brothers, I’m sure this is perfect.  But for me, this did nothing for me.  Not terrible.  It was just there.

Rating: 7/10

Race With The Devil (May 2nd, 2015)
Director: Jack Starrett
Starring: Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Loretta Swit, and Lara Parker

This came in a two pack with the other Peter Fonda movie this week, so I threw it in and had me some nice 70’s B movie enjoyment on a Saturday night.  And while this isn’t as basically entertaining as Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry it is actually a much better movie.  It’s still a road movie with some crazy car stunts, but the majority of the movie is more akin to The Wicker Man.  It’s closer to a thriller with some tense scenes involved.  And unlike the prior movie, this one features real people and not dumbshit criminals.  It doesn’t hurt that Warren Oates is in this one, always a welcome sight.  We don’t have an Oscar movie here, but the effort to be more than just simple entertainment is welcome.  And when the climactic chase takes place, it is awesome.  More crazy shit on the road just brings a smile to my face.  And like the prior flick, this one has a brilliantly silly ending of the nihilistic nature.  But while it’s silly, there is something upsetting and unnerving about it. Like Larry, it’s a good time.  But there’s more to it than that one.  Real good stuff from the 70s man. 

Rating: 8.5/10





Top Movies

1. Avengers: Age of Ultron
2. Race With The Devil
3. Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry
4. Cyrus

- Tom Lorenzo