Posts

Showing posts from July, 2013

Red 2 (2013)

Image
To start with my wife and I are fans of the first movie, and so Reds 2 was an inevitable for us to see, and I have to say that Reds 2 is a good popcorn movie.   Bruce Willis , John Malkovich , Mary-Louis Parker , and Helen Mirren are all back as our favorite retired but extremely dangerous assassins.  Even though the movie has it's funny parts it doesn't work as well as the original movie did.  Malkovich and Willis are the anchors to this story.  Their banter between each other is hilarious, and it really works.  It is when the story goes into Frank's (Willis) relationship with Sarah (Parker) that the story seems to drag.  In the beginning of the movie we see that Frank and Sarah are trying to have a normal life, and it's killing Frank, but he loves Sarah so he does what most normal people do and not kill anyone.  The movie is funny, but it jumps around from one location to another as our hero's try to piece together why everyone connected to a project called &q

Dennis Farina (1944-2013)

Image
Dennis Farina passed away Monday Morning in Scottsdale Arizona.  Mr. Farina was born in Chicago, and became a Chicago police officer for 18 years in the cities Burglary division.  It was while Mr Farina was a consultant for Michael Mann's film entitled "Thief" that Mann gave him a brief role in the movie. Farina continued to do parts while he was a police officer in the Chicago theater scene.  It wasn't until Mann cast Farina as a lead in his series "Crime Story" that Farina made the full transition to actor. He later played many different parts.  Some as police officers and other as mobsters.  Farina was a life long cubs fan, and he eventually took the part of Detective Joe Fontana on the series of Law & Order. I was always enamoured by Mr. Farina's style of acting.  He was a natural, and you could see he was having fun.  He did a stint on a show called "In-Laws" which showed his comic timing, and how well he did in comedy

Despicable Me 2

Image
So it's July 4th week-end, and what's more American then going to the movies, and so we did.  I'm a big fan of the first movie, and I have to say I loved the whole story.  Having said that I was a bit disappointed by the 2nd film.  That's not to say that I hated it.  I enjoyed seeing the film with my family, and we all laughed at bits in the film, but it is no where near the movie the first one is. Why is that?  Why was I a bit disappointed at the film?  Simply put it was the story.  They were on the right track.  After all our main character Gru is now out of the super villain business because he has his new family that he loves.  Making him a superhero is the right thing to do, but the story seemed to be too simplistic.  The movie did have some cute elements in the story which is one thing that made the first film so endearing, but it all seemed forced which is sad since you would think that Universal Studios would give more thought to the story of one of their s

World War Z (2013)

Image
I just had to go see World War Z being an avid "zombie" genre film fan.  I had never read the book by Max Brooks , about eyewitnesses account of the zombie outbreak, but I have read a few chapters here and there and what I read seemed interesting.  What the movie does is compile all those survivors accounts into one character's view of the outbreak.  Gerry Lane played by Brad Pitt is a former employee of the UN's health organization.  He is seen in the first scene of the movie making breakfast for his family.  He has two daughters, and a wife, and we find out that he quit his job due to what it was doing to him.  But that is latter on in the movie, and in the beginning of the movie we see Pitt interacting with his family while making breakfast.  We hear on the radio and on the TV that things are happening in the world, but like all news with a 24 hour cycle it is background noise to the characters.  For us the audience we all know that something is coming, and th