As Above So Below: We Have To Keep Moving!

 

***DISCLAIMER: I am writing this review FULLY AWARE that no one, not a single person I can think of, gives a shit about this movie.

As if we're not tired enough of the found footage genre we are subjected to yet another attempt to cash in on the Paranormal Activity novelty that has all but worn its welcome out to a select few. I'm getting damn frustrated at this year's horror releases. The directors who do the genre justice have all basically decided they're tired of horror and have moved on to making decent movies in a different genre.  The ones who suck at it keep chugging along.  That's not to say that the brother duo directors of As Above So Below suck at the genre (they mostly do), but they are refusing to adjust their template for horror.  They must find the found footage aspect of horror so intriguing because of their four released films only one of them (the horrendous Devil) has been shot regularly.  Just like the superhero genre, I'm ready for something new.  Even the directors look like they're just doing found footage for the sake of doing it, because this movie could've been shot like a typical film and the "integrity" of the movie wouldn't have been compromised.

Let's begin with the most hackneyed plot of the year.  Scarlette is a professor of history who's father, since she was a little girl, searched his whole life for the Sorcerer's Stone.  No, ladies and gentlemen, I promise I'm not reviewing the first Harry Potter book, this is legitimately the plot.  She knows everything there is to know about it's creator Nicolas Flamel (aka Dumbledore's best pal). So, she's found clues that leads her to Paris where she knows she can find the Stone by traveling underground and searching through the tight spaces of the "catacombs" that run for miles under the streets of ole Paris.  Unfortunately, all of the clues are written in Aramaic, but luckily for her, she's got an old love interest who can read it.  Finally, for reasons that aren't explained at all, there's a dude following her with a camera who is attempting to make a documentary about her search.  So, through some questionable plot turns, she's able to assemble a French team who knows the catacombs well.  They travel underneath piecing together the Aramaic clues they've collected and a paper map (that they can read and translate on the spot without any sort of preparation) that leads them to the Stone.  The way they piece clues together is as if Scarlette and her man-friend are playing a back and forth of epiphanies.  One will say something cryptic and the other will have a lightbulb pop over his or her head and that's the answer to the riddle.  That answer leads them through these (heavily oxygenated) catacombs without even so much as a second thought.  This happens at least half a dozen times throughout the film and plays out like a cheesier version of a National Treasure film.  Finally, once they've gone so deep, they've apparently wandered in front of the gates of Hell.  We know this because above the door it says in perfect Aramaic "Abandon all hope ye who enter here."  Scarlette then retorts that according to "mythology" this is what is posted over the gates of Hell.  I'm glad we've finally admitted, after all these years, that Dante's Inferno is no longer a fiction, but ancient mythology.

Now, I'm not sure why you would, but if you're planning on seeing the movie, skip the rest of this paragraph because I'm going to provide a tiny bit of spoiler... it won't ruin the movie for you, but it has to be mentioned.  Yes, they enter Hell.  It happens.  And it's super orange and red.  And there's hauntings of the past out to swallow them all.  And, then, there's the grim reaper.  I shit you not.  The grim reaper.  How do I know this?  Does one of them call back to an ancient Egyptian portrait of the reaper that only a student of history could know?  Or is he dressed like a twelve year old on Halloween?  Yeah.  You guessed it.  It's the latter.  Seriously walking around ominously is this dude:

 

He honestly couldn't look less scary if he popped up looking like this:

 

Throughout the film I counted two... only two semi-decent scares.  There was probably one more moment of tension that may get your heart beating a little faster than a brisk walk to the fridge.  That's it.  Most of the time you're laughing at how every element of the plot has been taken by another, better work.  I also counted the phrase "we've got to keep moving" over twelve times.  It's probably more because I only started counting when I noticed that seemed to be the go-to phrase for when anything strange happens.  It's the defense mechanism of the dumb.  

The film is too long and it takes WAY too long to get to the horror bits of the film.  They don't even enter the catacombs until almost an hour into the film.  It may have been less than that, but it felt longer.  Then, weird stuff starts to happen some time after that, then they try to scare you in the last twenty minutes.  It takes forever for anything to happen and by the time it does, you don't care anymore.  They spend that time making it so that any character you even semi-cared about is turned into a whiny, screaming, irrational asshole that you hope gets the grim finger of death.  Seriously, I still can't believe the grim reaper was in the movie.  I kept waiting for a red satan with horns and pitchfork to pop up and yell SINNER! 

I'm seriously over the found footage aspect of film right now.  By the end of AASB I had a headache from the camera shakiness that wound up looking like a first person shooter with hands karate chopping stone demons and racing through the maze like it's the final level of a video game.  It was choppy and pain-inducing.  The directors even forgot who was filming at certain points.  A couple of the perspective camera shots come from people who don't make it to the end... so how are we viewing this footage in the first place?? And there's two scenes where someone is apparently filming, but don't have a camera on their heads.  If you don't have a reason to do it, then why do it?  The scares aren't worth the wait for them and the end result is lackluster because if you have any sort of brain whatsoever, you'll be able to call the ending coming from a mile away.  I would say wait for Redbox, but even then, this movie is worthless to watch at home.  Please.  PLEASE.  Somebody make a good horror movie soon.  After all the crap we've seen this year, I feel it's deserved.

D

The Expendables 3: A Rip Out Your Throat, Show It To You, Kick You In The Crotch Good Time

Disclaimer.  I thoroughly enjoy The Expendables films.  They take me back to my childhood where I would watch Arnold or Stallone movies with my dad or my friends, quote them non-stop, and reenact them in the back yard with a half dozen blue and green (though realistically shaped) water pistols.  As a young boy, guns and strange European accents were the name of the movie game.  Then, action started getting all "realistic" and Bourne Identity-like.  So, when Stallone and his group of has-beens decided to not only revamp the action style of the 80s and 90s as well as exaggerate it... it honestly could do no wrong.  The first film was fun, but lacked any sort of a villain presence.  (I'm sorry, but no one out there is going to take Eric Roberts seriously).  The second film had a decent villain (haha, oh yeah, it was Van Damme), but it was borderline silly, with a lackluster third act.  This latest installment of the Expendables series is one that is finally everything I wanted and more.

This is normally where I'd give a brief plot summary, but does it even matter?  I could tell you that we begin with Stallone and his Expendables crew hijacking a prison train to get out their old cohort Wesley Snipes, who's gone just a little bit crazy.  Then, from there, sent on a mission to a fictional country by Harrison Ford.  During the mission Stallone realizes that the baddie he's after is Mel Gibson, one of the people who co-created the Expendables unit with Stallone.  Oh, and he was also presumed dead.  Oops.  Finally, Stallone realizes that with him alive, these guys could get killed so he tells them all they're essentially fired.  He, and Kelsey Grammar, round up a new young crew (because they're truly Expendable) and go on a mission to try and kill Mel.  Well, obviously shit doesn't go down the way it is supposed to, the new kids get captured and Stallone has to go back to his old crew to save the new crew... uh... along with Antonio Banderas.  See?  Did you really need all that?  Or did you just need me to say: Stallone and his cronies blow some shit up, Gibson retaliates and blows other shit up, then they blow more shit up and the credits roll?  This is why I love the Expendables films.  They don't get bogged down in plot or character or set ups and pay offs.  They're out to entertain the audience at the highest possible level.

The reason I believe this film succeeds where the others were lacking is that it fills out the action formula perfectly.  The best action films are comprised a few key components: a likable protagonist with some sort of inner struggle or problem, his quirky sidekicks, and his very worthy adversary.  The best action movies always have a great villain.  This is still a complaint I have about the Taken movies.  If they focused on just one villain, it could ramp the badass meter up to 10.  Think about the best action movies from the 80s and 90s. Die Hard showed us what a great actor we had in Alan Rickman.  Face/Off had Travolta as a psychopath.  Con Air had insane Malkovich.  Even Air Force One had Russian Gary Oldman.  All good action movies NEED a capable villain.  There's a reason no one remembers Die Hard II, after Hans Gruber who is going to be a better villain? (This is probably when they realized they'd blown their load in the first film and brought his brother back to kill McClain in the third film... another great entry).  In The Expendables III, we get Mel Gibson.  Hate the man all you want... he's a great actor.  The Lethal Weapon movies will go down forever as some of my favorite action movies, and the original buddy cop film.  Yes, Gibson is a deplorable human being, but he puts everything he's got into this villain role where he's actually quite frightening.  His bulk and stature aren't even comparable to Stallone's, but the insanity in his eyes leads you to believe that even in a fist-fight, he could best Rocky.

Snipes is also a fun addition to the crew.  It made me remember the good old days of non straight-to-dvd Snipes action movies when he could smile, and laugh, and give crazy eyes, and shoot tons of people.  Banderas may be the best character of the whole trilogy.  He's obnoxious, he's annoying, he's abrasive, and yet there's an innocence and sadness to his character that tends to steal a lot of empathy from the audience.  He's truly the comedic relief the series has been pining for.  The only one who really seems to be phoning it in at this point was Harrison Ford.  Not that he's bad in it, he just looks like he's reading off a cue card and doing this film solely as a favor to someone.  Statham, Li, Lundgren, and mostly Schwarzenegger are all back to tear up the silver screen with some one-liners (including an amazing Arnold one-liner) and lots of bullets.

The weakest part of the film is the younger cast.  Younger actors or action stars all tend to blend together today into one Taylor Kitsch-like entity.  They have muscles and pretty faces, but there's no personality.  They're all horrifically stale and terrible actors.  Not to say that the action stars of the 80s and 90s were good, because when it comes to acting Arnold couldn't act his way out of a box... but they have personality.  They have fun.  Everything is too serious for today's group of action kids.  They're not fun to watch anymore.  None of them have any personality in which to lead a film.  The scenes with the new member were, by far, the weakest.  Thankfully, they don't go on too long.

Lastly, the film is getting a lot of flack for abandoning it's R-rating in favor of a more marketable PG-13.  I was a little hesitant because it meant that they couldn't go as balls deep as they had before.  After having seen the final product, I was pleasantly surprised.  It's actually better as a PG-13 movie.  There's almost hardly any blood in the movie which lends to a lot more realistic looking action sequences.  In the first two, the blood was added in digitally and it gave a thicker layer of cheese to the movies that was truly unwanted.  Now, without having to add fake-looking blood to the movie, they could focus on all the different ways to shoot and kill one another.  Though it's PG-13, it is by no means tame.  It's honest to God probably one of the most violent movies I've ever seen in my life.  It might be because they kill thousands of people on screen or because my imagination is more violent than anything you can see on screen.  When someone is to get their throat slit, the camera focuses on the knife for a brief second, then the arm is shown tugging the knife just for a frame and the rest is cut away from and left up to your imagination.  My God is it violent.  Violent and beautiful.

The Expendable III is certainly not for everyone, but it is a load of fun.  There's good action, good characters, good humor, and a great villain.  This is supposed to be the last entry into the series and if it was, they definitely went out on top.  If not, please, for the love of God and everything holy... get Nicolas Cage in it.  It's more than necessary.

B+

Let's Be Cops: Too Bland For This Shit

Let's Be Cops does exactly what it sets out to do.  No more, no less.  It was almost assuredly written very lazily.  The original writer thought up the high concept, realized he could probably sell it in a pitch meeting rather than actually having words on paper, and roll from there.  Then, the studios hired the most vanilla director in Hollywood (no, not Shawn Levy) in Luke Greenfield who's very good at writing white-ass movies.  His track record is as follows: The Girl Next Door, Something Borrowed, and The Animal (yes, the one with Rob Schneider).  So, he's never really busted on to the scene with something new and inventive and extraordinary.  When you see a Luke Greenfield film, you know exactly what you're going to get: a high concept comedy executed to the laziest extent possible.  Finally, take two comedic television actors on the rise, tell them that the script is more of a guideline and to do, basically, whatever the hell they want with it (thank God they did) and you've got a movie.

Let's Be Cops begins very lazily with our two buddies Ryan (Jake Johnson) and Justin (Damon Wayans Jr.) sitting in a cafe as Ryan poorly sings some Backstreet Boys.  Then, we're immediately thrust into a very scripted "backstory" conversation.  You know, the ones that begin with "hey man, how long have we been friends" and may also involve "why don't you just go talk to her?" and the eye rolling ensues.  From there we learn that Justin is a lowly video game designer with an idea for a patrolman-themed video game that he fails to pitch to his boss.  Ryan is doing... something... with football and kids and profanity.  It's kinda funny.  But, we get no character from it.  Finally, they're invited to a "costume" party.  Well, because Justin used props in his video game proposal, he apparently has REAL cop uniforms.  No explanation as to how he got these, the two show up to what ends up being a masquerade party as cops.  When they're finally and equally dejected by everyone at the party, they leave downtrodden and sullen about their current life situations.  This is when they realize that people think they're cops, because why wouldn't they?  They're wearing real uniforms.  They begin having fun pretending to be cops, making people do what they say, getting into places they (probably) couldn't get into before, making criminals do... uh... dancing (it was a strange scene).  Anyway, short story long, they end up pissing off the Russian (I think) mafia and make a few too many enemies, have to fight their way out, sort out their lives, realize what's important, solidify friendship and brotherhood, and get to a happy ending.

There is a cool little spin to the structure of the buddy cop genre in Let's Be Cops.  Usually, you've got the gung-ho, trigger-happy rookie partnered with the tired, experienced veteran cop.  In this, you've got a buddy cop movie... without cops.  So, while Ryan is the gung-ho one-- learning cop signals and code, purchasing a cop car and lights, actually taking a legitimate case or two-- Justin is terrified of the ramifications of their actions knowing that it could mean getting them killed.  So, there is a bit of the buddy cop dynamic spun in a new way, which was refreshing.  The problem of the movie is that it was just a little bit too lazy.  With a premise like this, the possibilities are endless.  The big fun they have is smoking weed with some teenagers and getting into a sorority girl fight.  That's about it.  From there, it's just tracking down the Russians and getting in a little bit too deep.  There is so much more fun that could've been had.  This movie could've turned into a great action comedy, but it just didn't put in the effort needed to reach that level, nor did it seem to want to.  It seemed entirely content with what it was: a spin on the buddy cop genre that will give you a good laugh or two and is so excessively vanilla that no one could be mad with the outcome.

It's true that there are some truly funny moments.  There is one scene in particular that had the theater I was in rolling for a good while.  And Johnson and Wayans Jr. have remarkable chemistry together.  It's evident that their friendship extends offscreen. They almost remind you of Turk and JD in the earlier seasons of Scrubs.  Even Natasha Leggero shows up in a couple of scenes and adds that extra umph to the humor.  But, other than that, it's pretty blandly made.  There's nothing inherently bad about the movie, it's just the wasted potential.  When you know your kid has the brain capacity to get into Harvard but settles for a Cal State... you can't be mad... just disappointed.  Like I said, Let's Be Cops succeeds in what it sets out to do: tell a story, make you laugh.  No more, no less.

C 

Boyhood: 12 Years A Movie

What?  Never heard of Boyhood?  It's a shame because much like two of my other favorite movies this year (Chef, Snowpiercer) it is not widely known.  Boyhood is the culmination of the truly ambitious project started by director Richard Linklater.  He began twelve years ago the story of a six year old boy and his life.  He then would stop filming and pick up the story where he left off a year later until the boy was eighteen.  We get to see this kid, and in the beginning he is an actual child, grow up to become an adult... and it's wonderful.

I honestly didn't know what type of movie to expect when entering the theater.  I knew the premise and I know the director, but I wasn't sure what route he was going to take with the filming the same kid every year gimmick.  I assumed it would be a series of birthday vignettes, however it is a logical, cohesive and fantastic story of one boy's journey from boy to man.  We begin with 6 year old Mason.  He's a normal kid, kinda quiet, living with his single mother (Patricia Arquette) and sister Sam.  His dad (Ethan Hawke) is somewhat of a deadbeat dad, but not in the Hollywood sense.  He's the deadbeat dad in the real-life sense in that he kinda took off on his family, but he feels guilty about it, does, indeed, love his children and is very much trying to make up for the lost time.  Mason grows up in different houses depending on who his mother is banging/married to at the time.  He splits time between his mom and dad's house and deals with being a boy and having an older sister.

What's almost surprising about the film is that it tries very hard to be as accurate and non-Hollywood as possible in the telling of a boy's life.  There is no major twists and turns.  There is no moment of Mason was messing around in the garage and accidentally cut off his own leg.  Or Dad was just fooling around with the kids in order to get money and then split once more.  Or even the portrayal of each age Mason goes through.  It's all very realistic.  He's a normal child going through what, sadly now, is more or less a normal childhood.  His mother does his best to raise both of them while juggling work and going back to school.  His dad does his best to give him advice, be his friend, but still maintain the integrity that a father should employ.  It's been engrained into our heads that there needs to be these huge emotional scenes of surprise in order to tell a legacy of someone's life and I found myself trying to predict when something truly screwed up was going to happen to Mason or someone he loved.  But it never did.  Just as it never did in my life as well.

This is why I enjoyed watching Mason's story much more when he's a child up until right before his teens.  He's a curious boy, doing little boy things, with little boy interests learning from everyone around him.  He watches as his mom goes from a pushover with a (surprisingly well done and not over the top) abusive boyfriend to a strong-willed independent woman and mother. The child actor must've had a lot of input in deciding what to film with Linklater because nothing about his childhood seemed faked.  It didn't seem like an adult writing a script with dialogue he thinks a child would say or scenes he thinks a child would experience.  It all seemed very organic and natural and it was a delight to sit and watch.

However, as much as I thoroughly loved watching Mason mature into an adolescent, once he hits his teens years, the movie became a little more difficult to stomach... in a good way.  Here's what I mean by this... Mason's quietness matures him into an almost emo teenager.  He's still good-hearted and we still like him, but he becomes a typical 2010s teenager.  The aspects of his life that he thinks are important have little importance to me as an adult.  The conversations he has as a teenager and the outlook he has on life and all of the moments he has as a teenager that he would consider "deep" are complete bullshit.  Because that's what a teenager is!  They're terrible and certainly close to unwatchable when being portrayed accurately on screen.  It's not that we start to dislike Mason as a person, we just know that he is now a teenager.  Teenagers suck in real life.  Therefore, Mason sucks at this point.  It's almost laughable the scenes of him older because everything about his life is great, yet he can only see the darkness.  Or poignant moments he experiences won't mean a thing ten years after the film.  The fact that Linklater was able to so closely and accurately depict the emotions and feelings and whinings of the typical American teenager was astounding.  I didn't loathe these scenes because the movie started dragging on and falling short... I was starting to loathe each scene because they were done so perfectly.  This is a very strange dynamic of the film that I highly respect.

At nearly three hours, this film is worth every dime of your admission price.  Ironic that I saw it during a movie hopping session.  It was a highly ambitious journey that for all intents and purposes shouldn't have succeeded in becoming a near perfect portrayal of boyhood.  With studios and budgets and timing, there were a million ways for this movie to fail, but it doesn't.  It's one of the best movies of this year and I highly recommend it to almost anyone.

A

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Cowa-BORING

There's always those one or two movies every year that I feel like I have to defend why I even went and saw it.  There's no reason I should be posting a review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles right now.  There's no reason I should've gone to work, collected a paycheck, deposited it in the bank, entered my car, burned fuel whilst on route to a theater, stimulated my leg muscles as I walked to the box office, utilized my vocal chords by ordering a ticket, sat in the theater and watched this film.  No reason.  Well, I mean, I guess I kinda didn't do all that.  It was a day of movie hopping.  This is a wasted day that I like to occasionally take where I pay the egregious $11.50 for a single movie ticket and end up seeing two or three movies in without paying for the others and actually getting my money's worth.  The plan was for me to pick one movie, the lovely enchantress I was with (ie. my significant other) to pick the other film and if time allows, a mutual decision.  My choice was Sex Tape.  Yeah, I know it's supposed to suck, but I love Jason Segal and I don't care.  Her choice was the previous entry, Into the Storm, which was the biggest mistake.  However, after the latter movie ended, the former had already started and the time didn't match up properly.  So, the closest movie playing was... you guessed it... TMNT.

I wasn't an avid TMNT fan when I was a kid.  I mean, I had the toys, thought Shredder was the only mofo who looked threatening in purple,  and was fascinated by The Secret of the Ooze.  That's the extent of my turtle love.  So, when I saw they were rebooting it again, I was, needless to say, apathetic towards the idea.  They announced Will Arnett... who I like.  They announced William Fichtner... who is great.  They announced Megan Fox... who is hot, albeit worthless.  Sure.  Sounds like I'll be seeing it.  MISTAKE.  This movie was bad, and not in a good way.  And it could've been good.  I liked where they thought they were going with it... but then just kinda steered away from the right path and went down the complete wrong one.

Problem number one with the movie is that it isn't fun.  It's not fun.  No one is having a good time while watching this movie.  No one.  Not even your kids.  They're not having fun.  There is no fun to be had.  They checked their fun at the door.  Come on... you've got a premise so ludicrous about turtles.  Turtles.  TURTLES.  But, they're not just turtles... they're teenage turtles.  But they're also mutants.  Obviously.  And they're not just mutants... they're ninjas as well.  Ninjas.  Okay.  You tell me you're showing me about kung fu fighting mutant turtles who haven't even reached adulthood yet... I'm in!  I'm in all the way.  How do you not have fun with that??  Part of what makes a reboot so successful is the origin story.  Yes, this one has an origin story in it.  In the first two minutes.  Told as a voice over and through animated silhouettes.  We don't really get to know the turtles either.  The red one has an attitude problem.  The purple one is kind of a poindexter.  The blue one is sensible.  And the orange one is a horny little bugger that creeped me out more than it made me laugh.

We get brief glimpses into their fun side, but the story starts immediately and goes on one track the whole way through.  It's about citywide domination.  "Rule the city!"  Not really sure how that works in 2014... but I'll go with it.  I just don't understand how it wasn't any fun.  They're supposed to be wise-cracking.  They're supposed to eat pizza.  They're supposed to do karate!  But, it's not fun.  It's boring.  It's sad.  It's eyeball-rolling inducing.  I mean, while looking for stills to throw up top for the main blog picture I came across this photo:

 

Look at that!  That's gotta be turtles, covered up in a large trenchcoat and hat and pretending to be a singular human on the streets of New York.  That looks like a fun scene!  Is it in the movie or a scene that even resembles something even close to that?  No!  They cut out all the fun.  It's like they showed a screener to a bunch of kids and every time they laughed or clapped or showed signs of having a good time, that scene was re-shot much more bland and the rest was cut from the finished project forever. 

Not that you were planning on racing out to see the film anyway, but leave this one alone.  Don't let that 90s curiosity get the better of you like it did me.  The action is wanting, the acting is hollow (seriously Will Arnett, what drew you to this script??), the movie is long, and it's just as fun as painting one wall over and over and over again.  

D+

Into The Storm: It Sucks!... Get It?

The good news here is that all of you know that Into the Storm was going to suck.  All of you.  Not one of you thought it genuinely looked like a decent movie.  There may have been some who thought they could bypass all the shit and just watch the tornado destruction.  I advise against this.  Strongly.  Into the Storm is what happened when a seven year old went and watched Twister, then immediately went home and wrote his own tornado movie.  Then, he waited 18 years and finally submitted it... the unabridged childhood version... to a major movie studio... they paid for it, filmed it, distributed it, and released it all in it's unedited glory.  This is a movie written by a seven year old for five year olds.  Plain and simple.  It's awful.

We are given nothing to work with in this movie.  First, it's a found-footage disaster film.  This gimmick is getting sooooo tired.  I still sigh when i hear another movie is going this route.  It doesn't work.  At all anymore.  In fact, in a film that people only go to see for the effects, found footage is the worst way to go.  We are also give stock characters.  No.  I take that back.  They're not stock characters.  These "characters" are written so poorly that stock characters are even going, "Jesus Christ, are you serious?"  The acting is so bad that three or so characters blended together for me that I couldn't keep track of them... and they weren't even the same race.  The star of the movie is literally "that guy who was the doctor in The Hangover."

As a filmmaker I'd have to assume it must be just as difficult to make a movie as bad and poorly made like this one, as it is to make an Academy Award winning film.  It's not laziness or ineptitude.  People genuinely have to TRY to make a movie this bad.  And, let's be honest here, disaster movies have never been written well, but there have been great ones.  Twister is a classic.  The Day After Tomorrow, The Poseidon Adventure, even 2012 had more going for it than this messy heap.  There was something about the actors, I guess, back in the day (the 90s) that made people give a shit.  I watch Dante's Peak mainly for the volcano exploding and the death and mayhem, but I also care if the main characters live or die.  Even the prick boss who gets it late in the film, I felt bad about.  This movie... wow... they couldn't kill them as fast as I wanted.  I think actually you only get to see  two deaths.  Only two.  And they're stupid.  Obviously.

You weren't going to see it anyway.  But, if there's still that slight notion in your mind...

D-

Guardians of the Galaxy: The Most Surprising Movie Of The Year

Note: I have like five minutes to write this and will not be near a computer for the next five days so this is a very crunch-time, quick review, but I feel that's all this movie needs. When I return, I should be able to expand upon the review.  Maybe.  If I feel like it.  Fuck it, it's my blog.

So... Guardians of the Galaxy.  Another entry into the Marvel universe.  I've seen countless trailers for the film and none of it interested me.  I like almost everyone in the cast, but it just didn't look like anything that I would enjoy.  Plus, as I've said a lot this year, I'm SICK of superhero movies.  They're coming out every other week it seems and I'm just over all of it.  But, again, I'm looking at rottentomatoes and it's telling me high ninety percent in the positives, so naturally, I have to set aside my proclivities and see it.  I'm really glad that I did.

Guardians of the Galaxy isn't a superhero movie.  Actually, the way it presents itself is almost anti-superhero.  The writing is genius and the acting is phenomenal.  The movie is phenomenal.  It's actually the funniest movie of the year.  When you're not mesmerized by the effects, the sets, the colors, and the plot, you're laughing your ass off.  I genuinely feel that this is the BEST Marvel movie ever made.  I'm a huge fan of Iron Man 3 and Captain America was really good, but this one kills them all and even shows The Avengers up.  I will see this movie many, many more times before I die.  Minus anything Christopher Nolan has ever done, this is my favorite comic book movie.

See it.  See it right now.  Stop reading and see it.  There's no reason for me to keep writing because you should be headed out to see it.  Now.

A