Nerd Rating

Tag: Movies

  • Review: Slight Return

    http://youtu.be/H7DpVAJjfcQ
    All honesty up front about this review- I have a small part in it. So I am reviewing this with some bias. It would be a complete lie to say I could do so otherwise.

    In 1999, two teenagers made a crime drama called Revolver Action. It was a VHS wonder that would never see the light of day beyond the family and friends who were involved with it.

    Behold the power on the internet!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKfkQVsjYaM

    Very rough, yet who am I to judge? I never made a movie in my teenage years. They have a one-up on me (and maybe you) there.

    Now fifteen years later the events of Revolver Action come back to haunt Cain and Whitey when their former associate Mr. Fat is killed and they learn that the brother of the man they betrayed is out for revenge.

    Helped out by a former F.B.I. agent, they work their way through anybody that knows where the man threatening their families lives is hiding as he plans his vengeance.

    If you take the time to watch Revolver Action you will see how much better Slight Return looks and feels. The cuts and wipes are well done and you can’t beat the soundtrack. The montage in the middle of the film should have you smiling even if you had nothing to do with this film.

    greg gun

    I wish there could have been a bit more exposition spent on Michael’s character exploring more of his ruthlessness. While the body count is high, Michael could have had a few more bloody kills to add to his vengeful nature in the film. Who knows, maybe there is a third brother hanging around out there?

    I don’t know if they filmed Revolver Action with a sequel in mind, but now that one has come and the story has been expanded, I would not mind seeing more from Cain and Whitey, even though they are “done”.

    I said I would review this movie without any bias, but I simply can’t. I won’t blow smoke up your ass and say this movie is anything more than it is. There are flaws, yes, but there is also a lot of hard work involved and the finished product came out (to me) enjoyable as hell.

    I hope you will give Slight Return a watch and tell us what you think about it. It runs only 45 minutes and if you have seen all three Transformers movies you have used nine hours of your life for that, spend 45 minutes giving this a try and leave your comments below.

    And watch the outtakes after the movie is over. There may or may not be a True Detective bit.

    NERD RATING- 7.5 8.5 (sorry, it gets a bump because, reasons)

    SRposter

    Larry creep_Still001caleb step in couch_Still001

  • Here Are Your 2014 Oscar Nominees

    leowolf

    Looks like it will be another one of those years for Leonardo DiCaprio.

    This morning the nominees for the Academy Awards were announced and DiCaprio was nominated for his work in The Wolf of Wall Street (which was amazing) but I can already feel a McConaughey win on the horizon for Dallas Buyers Club. But I will make my predictions at a later date.

    Nine films were nominated for Best Picture including my favorite film of 2013, Gravity, which tied with American Hustle for the most nominations with 10 each. The only surprise, if there was one, is that Her snuck into the Best Picture race. There may be nine nominees but I feel like it is a four picture race with 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, Gravity and The Wolf of Wall Street. It is one of the most unique years for nominations and will make watching the show more fun because of it.

    Also, let this sink in; Jonah Hill is now a two-time Oscar nominee. He completely deserves it this year for his role in The Wolf of Wall Street.

    See the list of nominees below (for the big awards anyway). The Academy Awards air on March 2nd.

    Best Picture

    -The Wolf of Wall Street

    -American Hustle

    -Gravity

    -Her

    -Captain Phillips

    -12 Years a Slave

    -Dallas Buyers Club

    -Philomena

    -Nebraska

    Best Actor

    -Bruce Dern (Nebraska)

    -Christian Bale (American Hustle)

    -Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street)

    -Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)

    -Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)

    Best Actress

    -Amy Adams (American Hustle)

    -Sandra Bullock (Gravity)

    -Judi Dench (Philomena)

    -Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)

    -Meryl Streep (August: Osage County)

    Best Supporting Actor

    -Bradley Cooper (American Hustle)

    -Jonah Hill (The Wolf of Wall Street)

    -Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)

    -Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips)

    -Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave)

    Best Supporting Actress

    -Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle)

    -Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine)

    -Julia Roberts (August: Osage County)

    -Lupita Nyong’O (12 Years a Slave)

    -June Squibb (Nebraska)

    Best Director

    -Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave)

    -David O. Russell (American Hustle)

    -Alfonso Cuaron (Gravity)

    -Alexander Payne (Nebraska)

    -Martin Scorsese (The Wolf of Wall Street)

    Best Animated Feature

    -Despicable Me 2

    -The Wind Rises

    -Frozen

    -The Croods

    -Ernest and Celestine

     

     

     

     

  • Weekend Box Office- September 20-22, 2013

    9545734b-bff5-4349-a358-253f6bf466bb_prisoners
    Photo courtesy movies.yahoo.com

    Prisoners was the easy winner at the box office this past weekend. The kidnapping thriller starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllanhaal had good reviews and took in $21.4 million. Insidious Chapter 2 fell off as expected and finished second with $14.5 million. The dance film Battle of the Year failed to find much support. I just figured it was 90 minutes of Chris Brown dancing and face punching women. The Wizard of OZ IMAX 3D also grossed $3 million from its re-release.

    1. Prisoners- $21.4 million/ $21.4 million

    2. Insidious Chapter 2- $14.5/ $60.8

    3. The Family- $7.0/ $25.6

    4. Instructions not Included- $5.7/ $34.2

    5. Battle of the Year- $5.0/ $5.0

    6. We’re the Millers- $4.6/ $138.1

    7. The Butler- $4.3/ $106.4

    8. Riddick- $3.6/ $37.1

    9. The Wizard of Oz IMAX 3D- $3.0/ $3.0

    10. Planes- $2.0/ $86.5

  • Weekend Box Office- September 13-15, 2013

    Photo courtesy crazymoviepeople.com
    Photo courtesy crazymoviepeople.com

    Insidious Chapter 2 opened on Friday the 13th with $20 million on its way to the second biggest September opening ever with $41 million. Director James Wan followed up his summer hit The Conjuring with an even bigger opening. The Conjuring made $270 million off of a $20 million budget making it one of the biggest box office hits of all time. Insidious Chapter 2 is headed in the same direction. The budget for the horror movie was only $5 million.

    Next up for Wan? A slightly bigger movie with Fast & Furious 7.

    1. Insidious Chapter 2- $41.0 million/ $41.0 million

    2. The Family- $14.5/ $14.5

    3. Riddick- $7.0/ $31.2

    4. The Butler- $5.5/ $100.0

    5. We’re the Millers- $5.4/ $131.6

    6. Instructions not Included- $4.2/ $26.5

    7. Planes- $3.0/ $82.9

    8. One Direction- $2.4/ $26.8

    9. Elysium- $2.0/ $88.3

    10. Percy Jackson- $1.8/ $62.0

     

  • Weekend Box Office- September 6-8, 2013

    Riddick

    September started off on the weak side, but this is the beginning of the fall movie season and summer blockbusters are behind us. Riddick took the top spot with $18.6 million which is not a big take, though it will end up making money since Diesel funded the movie himself with the help of financial backers. It only cost $40 million to make and Universal is on the hook for marketing so we may still get another Riddick movie when all is said and done.

    1. Riddick- $18.6 million/ $18.6 million

    2. The Butler- $8.9/ $91.9

    3. Instructions not Included- $8.1/ $21.3

    4. We’re the Millers- $7.9/ $123.8

    5. Planes- $4.2/ $79.2

    6. One Direction- $4.1/ $23.9

    7. Elysium- $3.1/ $85

    8. Blue Jasmine- $2.6/ $25.4

    9. Percy Jackson- $2.5/ $59.8

    10. The World’s End- $2.3/ $21.7

     

  • Review: Riddick

    Riddick-Eyes

    It is through the pure love of the character, Richard B. Riddick, by actor Vin Diesel and writer/director David Twohy that this third film was even put to film. After 2004’s The Chronicles of Riddick crashed very hard at the box office it was easy to think that the tales of the night seeing convict were at an end. Diesel and Twohy gathered up $38 million from various backers to help fund another movie, taking Riddick back to a smaller scale single story, instead of a bloated, world-saving adventure.

    Good move, guys.

    You may or may not remember that at the end of The Chronicles of Riddick he was assuming the throne of the Necromongers, having killed the Lord Marshal. If you don’t remember, just imagine the last fight at the end of David Lynch’s Dune with better special effects and Vin Diesel killing Sting and you should be good to go. Now, as leader, Riddick wants to go searching for his lost home world of Furya. Vaako (Karl Urban, in a brief appearance), gives Riddick a heading and when he reaches the planet he is betrayed by the Necromonger guards and left for dead on the wrong planet.

    The first part of the movie is spent with Riddick doing his best Tom Hanks in Cast Away, getting back to his animal side and learning to survive in less than inviting conditions. Now where Hanks had to deal with learning to fish, make camp fires and talking to a ball with a face on it, Riddick has to reset a broken leg, domesticate a feral ocelot creature and fight against large reptilian creatures that hide in water and move across the planet with the rain.

    riddick_sidebar3

    When Riddick makes his way to an emergency beacon station and sends out a distress call, this calls two groups of mercenaries that are looking to collect on the bounty which is double if Riddick is brought back dead. This begins the Riddick fun of him beginning to take out guys one by one until they realize that they all have to work together to get off the planet as the rain comes and brings the creatures to their doorstep. Here is where it gets like Pitch Black with the game of survival and it works again because this is the Riddick character that everyone wants to see, not the destined leader of the Necromongers while saving a holy man’s family. He is a killer that occasionally does what he can for other people…provided they can help him in return.

    The cast of mercenaries is mostly “who is that” and “I have seen them somewhere” except for the inclusion of ex-wrestler and recent Guardians of the Galaxy star Dave Bautista and Battlestar Galactica star and nerd goddess Katee Sackhoff, who I will go ahead and help out the movie’s box office right now, has her first nude scene. That sound you hear is a lot of BSG fans either getting in their car to go see the movie or hitting up Google at the same time.

    Riddick is big, dumb action fun. You know, like 83% of Vin Diesel movies. The lines are eye-rolling and still illicit laughs even though you have something inside you asking “why the hell am I laughing?”. The action is good and is always a great thing to see Katee Sackhoff beat the shit out of people and that wasn’t even the movie I was paying to see. Diesel is clearly having fun playing Riddick again especially after the long wait between movies and how hard he had to work to get the movie off the ground. This is pure popcorn fare of the highest order and you will either have some fun watching Riddick chopping off heads and talking about going balls deep in someone or you will curse whoever asked you to go to the theater to see it.

    For me, I had a good time with Riddick’s return and actually would not mind another flick with the character. Just remember to keep it small.

     

     

     

     

  • Weekend Box Office- August 30- September 2, 2014

    Photo courtesy craveonline.com
    Photo courtesy craveonline.com

    Ok, so We’re the Millers didn’t finish on top, but I don’t want to post another picture of Forest Whitaker on here and damn if I am going to have One Direction up there.

    So Labor Day is summer’s last hoorah and people took advantage of the holiday weekend to give every movie a boost. Lee Daniels’ The Butler took first again for the third week in a close race with the One Direction movie, This is Us.

    The weekend’s other big release, Getaway, was lost in the shuffle. It had to have been hard to market a kidnapped wife/racing movie starring Ethan Hawke and Selena Gomez. Yeah, it is even hard to type.

    1. The Butler- $20.0 million/ $79.2 million

    2. One Direction- $18.0/ $18.0

    3. We’re the Millers- $15.9/ $112.8

    4. Planes- $10.6/ $73.7

    5. Instructions Not Included- $10.0/ $10.0

    6. Elysium- $8.3/ $80.4

    7. The Mortal Instruments- $6.8/ $24.2

    8. Percy Jackson- $6.0/ $56.5

    9. Getaway- $5.5/ $5.5

    10. Blue Jasmine- $5.3/ $21.7

  • Review: The World’s End

    Photo courtesy totalfilm.com
    Photo courtesy totalfilm.com

    Well, here we are. Nine years after Shaun of the Dead was released and somehow, inexplicably, went from a cult following to required watching for any comedy or zombie buff, we come to the The World’s End. The third film from the trio of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and director Edgar Wright and while it may not have as many laugh out loud moments as Shaun or 2007’s Hot Fuzz, it is certainly the most heartfelt and emotional of the three films, which is something I was not expecting, but was completely glad I got it.

    Simon Pegg leads the way again as Gary King,a man approaching 40 who has never gotten past the good times of drinking and drugs that were the staples of his youth. He decides that he should get his old school mates back together and attempt The Golden Mile, a pub crawl in their hometown of Newton Haven consisting of twelve pubs that they never finished in their youth.

    Ready? Here we go: The First Post, The Old Familiar, The Famous Cock, The Cross Hands, The Good Companions, The Trusty Servant, The Two Headed Dog, The Mermaid, The Beehive, The King’s Head, The Hole in the Wall, The World’s End.

    That’s a lot of liquor.

    131836340__430267c

    Gary sets off to get his old mates back together and finds their lives exactly what he has always tried to avoid. Peter (Eddie Marsan) has never gotten past being bullied in his youth and is a car saleman at his father’s lot, Oliver (Martin Freeman) is a yuppie real estate agent, Steven (Paddy Considine) is an architect and was and still is a rival for Oliver’s sister (Rosamund Pike) and Andrew (Nick Frost) is a lawyer and Gary’s former best friend before a giant falling out.

    Through some manipulation and flat out lying, Gary convinces the four friends to return to Newton Haven and take on the pub crawl that bested them. The night starts out simple enough with Gary reliving the best part of his life while imbibing plenty of pints while the four friends wonder why they even agreed to tag along on the journey. When Gary’s lies begin to fall apart and the group decides to leave is where things go haywire in the form of alien robots (not robots) that have taken over the town for some (what the group thinks) nefarious reasons.

    Gary’s plan is to stick to the pub crawl sensing that if they act normally the blue-blooded beings will let them leave, but that is not the case. The five friends make their way from pub to pub getting more and more drunk as they fight groups of killer robots while working through all of their problems with each other. That is where The World’s End feels different from Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz. It is about life not giving you what you thought you should have and trying to revisit the best times of your life only to realize that it can never happen. We grow up, people change, situations alter our plans and life just…happens.

    the-worlds-end-review-3

    Where The World’s End may disappoint is that it is not as slapstick funny as the previous films in the trilogy. I am not saying that the movie is not funny, far from it, but you will not be leaving the theater with a host of quotable lines that you will instantly connect with the movie. There are plenty of laughs to be had especially when the action gets frantic and everyone is completely off the wagon, it just takes its time and does not skimp on the emotional center and I applaud Pegg, Frost and Wright for doing that.

    All in all I have to say that The World’s End would be in third place when it comes to The Cornetto Trilogy with Hot Fuzz being first and Shaun in the middle. That in no way is a slight against the film because it is funny as hell in places and the cast is, once again, top notch with plenty of bit parts from Cornetto regulars and even Pierce Brosnan. The World’s End is a fitting end for the trilogy and will surprise you with the sentimental depth of the relationships.

    Plus, you know, killer robots.

     

     

  • Weekend Box Office- August 23-25, 2013

    Photo courtesy thetimes.co.uk
    Photo courtesy thetimes.co.uk

    It was a repeat winner at the box office this weekend as Lee Daniels’ The Butler only fell off 30% and took the top spot with $17 million. We’re the Millers came in second with $13.5 million and is headed towards the $100 million mark next week.

    The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones proved to be another pretender to the Twilight “tween” throne only grossing $9.3 million and $14 million since last Wednesday.

    The World’s End was the big winner of all the new releases. Even though it only grossed $8.9 million, it did so in half the theaters (1,500) of the other big releases. It will certainly have a big take overseas just like Hot Fuzz back in 2007.

    1. The Butler- $17.0 million/ $52.2 million

    2. We’re the Millers- $13.5/ $91.7

    3. The Mortal Instruments- $9.3/ $14.0

    4. The World’s End- $8.9/ $8.9

    5. Planes- $8.5/ $59.5

    6. Elysium- $7.1/ $69.0

    7. You’re Next- $7.0/ $7.0

    8. Percy Jackson- $5.2/ $48.3

    9. Blue Jasmine- $4.3/ $14.7

    10. Kick-Ass 2- $4.3/ $22.4

  • Weekend Box Office- August 16-18, 2013

    Photo courtesy nydailynews.com
    Photo courtesy nydailynews.com

    Kick-Ass and Hit Girl were no match. For this week they faced the wrath of The Butler. Lee Daniels’ film about Cecil Gaines and his life of serving under eight presidents easily took the top spot with $25 million. We’re the Millers and Elysium had strong second weekend showings which left Kick-Ass 2 coming up with only $13.5 million which is even below the low expectations of $17-19 million. I guess Jim Carrey really didn’t have anything to worry about with the vilence of the movie since not a lot of people are going to see it in the first place.

    1. The Butler- $25.0 million/ $25.0 million

    2. We’re the Millers- $17.7/ $69.5

    3. Elysium- $13.6/ $55.9

    4. Kick-Ass 2- $13.5/ $13.5

    5. Planes- $13.1/ $45.0

    6. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters- $8.3/ $38.9

    7. Jobs- $6.7/ $6.7

    8. 2 Guns- $5.6/ $59.2

    9. The Smurfs 2- $4.6/ $56.9

    10. The Wolverine- $4.4/ $120.4