The Wolverine

Huge JackedMan in: The Wolverine

"The hero. The fugitive. The warrior. The survivor. The legend."

Hey everyone, welcome to another review from The Tagline! I know I promised another round of bitter fury today, but I decided that I would save some of my vitriol for next week, just to give my hate batteries time to recharge (I run on hate batteries, they are eco-friendly). With that in mind, and heeding the generous 66% RT was offering for it, I went to see The Wolverine, the second film based solely on the eponymous Wolverine, and the 5th film in a single X-Men continuity (this becomes clear as the movie continues, and is one of the more startling aspects of the movie, more on that later). It follows Logan (Hugh Jackman, with his trendy Wolverine hair) as he attempts to cope with the aftermath of the events that took place in X3 (and I mean who can blame him, I wanted to become an alcoholic hermit in the woods too after that movie). In particular he experiences what seem to be vivid hallucinations of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) due to his guilt over killing her (SPOILERS OH NO WHAT HAVE I DONE, seriously though X3 was a waking nightmare). While visiting town so he can stab some guys in the hand for illegal bear hunting practices, Logan encounters a Japanese Ninja Punk Girl who informs him that a guy he saved from being nuclear exploded in WWII wants to see him. In Japan. Obviously. Of course, the man's intentions are... less than honorable.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Oh dear god no.

" Mankind's finest achievement. Our nation's proudest moment. A secret hidden for forty years."

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Tagline! I normally wouldn't bother to even address how shitty a Transformers movie is, but while watching a Rifftrax of the third Transformers movie, I came to realize that it was maybe one of the single worst movies I'd ever had the misfortune of experiencing. It was so unspeakably shitty, that indeed, it was hard to even watch with the MST3K crew making jokes over it (If you do not know about Mystery Science Theater, then learn you some here. Rifftrax is what Mike Nelson, Kevin Muphy and Bill Corbitt do now). I can also mention that I didn't care for the first Transformers movie either. I can admit that it was an average action movie at least, as opposed to the epic level train wreck that is Dark of the Moon. I'm now going to attempt to summarize the movie, but I expect that's going to be challenging because I'm not 100% sure about any of it. I'm going to open the wiki page about the movie and we can discover the plot together!

Troll Hunter

That's no Bjørn at all!

"You'll believe it when you see it!"

Hello everyone! Welcome back all you Tagline readers! Today I'm going to talk about another Netflix movie today, one that I've been meaning to watch for a long time, but hadn't gotten around to. That movie is Troll Hunter, and it is more or less exactly what it sounds like. As has been so popular to do, the movie is filmed in a "found footage" style, following three college students as they attempt to interview a man they believe to be a bear poacher. Of course, this man is not, in fact, hunting bears, nor is he a poacher. Instead we discover that he is hunting trolls, and that he is in the employ of the government. Through the experiences of the would be film makers we discover that Norway has all kinds of trolls in it, some of them very large. They normally keep to themselves, but for some reason the trolls are getting restless, and so Hans (the hunter) has had his hands full hunting the errant ones. You see some trolls are relatively small. Others are... quite large. Like giant large. Bigger than trees even.

The Great Gatsby

Rich White People: The Movie

"Can't repeat the past? ...of course you can!"

Hello everyone, welcome back to The Tagline! Today I'm finally going to talk about the recent film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's seminal American novel The Great Gatsby, a book which no doubt many of you last confronted in high school English class. If you are a little hazy on the details, I will give you a quick refresher course, sage as I am. The Great Gatsby is a story told from the the POV of Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire, of Spiderman fame/infamy), a young man returned from WWI and a graduate of Yale who takes a job in New York as a bonds salesman. It is 1922, so things are really well... you know roarin'. Nick lives next to Jay Gatsby's (Leonardo DiCaprio portrays Mr. Gatsby.) ridiculously huge pleasure palace. Nick visits his cousin Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan also here in Drive, who is tremendously rich and married to Tom (Joel Edgerton who did you know was a young Owen Lars in the Star Wars prequels), who is the reason she is so rich. After this encounter he is invited to one of Gatsby's wild parties, where after a surreal experience he meets the man himself. Gatsby for his part is totally obsessed with Daisy, whom he had a relationship with in 1917, and his whole wild party-throwing act is all part of his elaborate efforts to impress her, and to prove he's good enough to be with her. This of course sort of overlooking her marriage (granted her husband is cheating on her with the wife of a poor mechanic but still). Nick rather than being directly involved in all of this, has the misfortune of just sort of... being caught up with it. He get's to know someone he considers to be an extraordinary man, and then watches as he is laid low by fate, or his own hubris, or something.

 

The Lathe of Heaven

Enjoy this incredibly fuzzy graphic.

"From the makers of Overdrawn at the Memory Bank"

Okay, that's a little misleading, it was just also produced by the same public television station, it didn't actually have the same director or anything. Also it wasn't an utterly ridiculous movie. The Lathe of Heaven was a TV movie based on a novel of the same name written by Ursula K. Le Guin in 1971. It was made on a micro-budget by a public television station in New York, WNET. It was to be the first in a series of TV movie adaptations of science fiction works, though in the end only this and one other, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank (which I recommend watching via the MST3K episode, it is ridiculously bad). The film was shot on an astonishing 250,000 dollar budget, and released in 1980. Le Guin, who's work was being adapted, was personally involved in casting, scripting, and filming for the movie, to ensure a faithful adaptation. I felt that really showed, because this film does very closely follow the book in terms of content and tone, and even manages to retain a lot of the subtler implications of the original novel. That makes it rather distinct from the bulk of science fiction movies ever made, because rather than being a movie about things happening, it is first and foremost a movie about ideas. It explores the implications of its premise, even as it concludes the plot. But before I keep going on about all that, what the hell is it ABOUT right?

Pacific Rim

Property Damage: The Movie

"To fight monsters we created monsters."

Heyo everyone! Posting a little bit later than usual, but I didn't want to write my review for Pacific Rim half asleep, so here it is now! Pacific Rim (if you've been hiding from summer movie news) is about giant monsters dubbed Kaiju, which appear out of a rift under the ocean (as in a rift in space, like a portal, not just a hole) called the breach and then rise to annihilate all of mankind. To combat this coming monster-fueled end time, the world's governments all work together to create the Jaegers, enormous man operated mecha that have the size and weaponry to blow up Kaiju. Also in the process to cause considerable volumes of property damage, which they do, for the duration of the film. That isn't really anything that people are worrying about though, because they're too busy worrying about the towering reptilian monsters trying to kill them. The plot's human element focuses around Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam, who appeared in my review of Deadfall) a former Jaeger ace who stopped piloting after his brother was killed. Raleigh is called back into action by Stacker Pentacost (Idris Elba, notably he was Heimdall in Thor) to assist in one final desperate attempt to close the breach. This situation is complicated in many ways: the united world governments have cut funding to the Jaeger program, leaving only four functioning. In addition Kaiju attacks are increasing in frequency and the Kajiu coming through are larger and adapted for combat against Jaegers. Add in Raleigh's own attempts to cope with the death of his brother, and his new co-pilot Mako (Rinko Kikuchi) trying to deal with her own issues, and shit looks pretty bad for the world.

House at the End of the Street

Because the girl next door is Jennifer
Lawrence I'm supposed to believe.

"Fear reaches out... for the girl next door."

Hello everyone! It's Thursday, and that means it's movie time! Today it came to my attention that while I had intended to, I never reviewed House at the End of the Street, a mystery horror film starring Jennifer Lawrence, of Hunger Games fame. She stars as Elissa Cassidy, daughter of fresh divorcee Sarah (Elizabeth Shue). The two have just moved to the house of their dreams, but all isn't well in paradise, thanks to weirdo kid Ryan Jacobson (Max Thieriot) who lives at the end of their street... in a house. He lives alone because when he was a young lad, his sister went crazy and murdered his parents. People believe she drowned in the river after that, but her body was never found. What Elissa discovers is that Ryan is misunderstood. She starts to get close to him, and then she discovers... some other stuff. Ryan by the way survived his sister Carol-Ann's murder spree because at the time he'd been caring for his ailing aunt far from home, and so did not get psycho-murdered. From Ryan, Elissa learns that Carol-Ann had fallen and suffered a brain injury that made her really violent.

Mirror Mirror

It was strangely challenging to find an
English poster for this movie.

"The Snow White legend comes alive."

Hello everyone, welcome to a new day at The Tagline! Today, since the Lone Ranger just came out, but I am too cheap to go see it because I anticipate it sucking ass, I thought I could revisit Armie Hammer's recent cinematic past (also his name... is that really his name?) by talking about Mirror Mirror. For those who recall, I reviewed the other recent movie about Snow White, Snow White and the Huntsman, when it was released but I never got around to seeing Mirror Mirror, which came out around the same time. While Snow White and The Huntsman favored a darker interpretation of the age old story, that was nonetheless ploddingly paced and unevenly acted, Mirror Mirror favors a more colorful aesthetic. Starring Lily Collins as Snow White (See her and her eyebrows here as well alongside Taylor "I can't act" Lautner) and Julia Roberts as the wicked queen who oppresses the kingdom, Mirror Mirror offers its own variation on the oft told story of Snow White. In this particular instance... well things are about the same as they are in other Snow Whites. A widower king is bewitched by a very nasty lady, who takes over after his convenient disappearance and treats the princess, Snow White, not so nicely, and eventually decides she has to die because she's in the way. In particular, Julia Roberts the evil queen plans to marry the handsome and rich prince of Valencia Alcott (that would be Armie Hammer) and to make sure there are no road blocks there she sends her lackey Brighton (Nathan Lane) to kill her in the woods. Naturally he doesn't and she takes up with a bunch of bandits who are actually dwarves (seven of them go figure) who teach her to sword fight and be sassy or what-have-you, and she resolves to retake the kingdom from Julia Roberts, who no surprise is not a great ruler, on account of she is a vain and evil witch (literally of course).

Much Ado About Nothing

A splendid second chance for my OTP.

"Shakespeare knows how to throw a party."

Welcome to the Tagline, as promised I found a movie that has nothing to do with teens or vampires. I went out to the local art cinema (I am lucky enough to live about ten minutes away from a pretty decent one) and saw Much Ado About Nothing, probably my favorite of Shakespeare's comedies, adapted and filmed on a micro-budget by Joss Whedon. The entire movie was shot inside Whedon's house, and the cast is a sort of Joss Whedon Alumni hall of fame. In case you have never read Much Ado About Nothing, or perhaps the last time you read it was when you were a freshman in high school here's a quick primer. Much Ado is primarily about two pairs of lovers. The younger pair are Claudio and Hero, who are very open and forward in their love, compared to Benedick and Beatrice, two witty individuals who rail frequently against love and marriage, and yet are very much in love with one another (though they refuse to admit it) In the midst of all this romance, Don John, brother of Don Pedro (who is the Prince of Aragon, and in the company of Claudio and Benedick) attempts to ruin the nuptial bliss of Claudio and Hero by dishonoring Hero, because Don John is basically a massive dickbag. In this Whedon adaptation, Benedick is portrayed by Alexis Denisof (who portrayed Wesley Wyndam Pryce first in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and later in Angel) and Beatrice is portrayed by Amy Acker (who was romantically opposite Alexis Denisof in Angel as Winifred Burkle) Claudio is played by Fran Kranz (recently he starred in Whedon's Cabin in the Woods) and Hero is played by newcomer Jillian Morgese who previously was only an extra in a few movies (including the Avengers)

Beautiful Creatures

Jeremy Irons IS a beautiful creature
I suppose.

"Dark secrets will come to light."

Good morning, and welcome back to The Tagline! Today's feature presentation is Beautiful Creatures, a recent entry into that hyper-overexposed genre, supernatural teen romance based on a young adult novel. Just typing that sentence made me gag a little, see?! This particular entry stars Alden Ehrenreich (who incidentally had a supporting role in Stoker which I reviewed last week) as Ethan Wate, a boy growing up in a nowhere town in the deep south called Gatlin. Ethan dreams about a girl whose face he can't see, until one day Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert) moves to town. After the typical teenage butting of heads, Lena reveals that she's been dreaming about Ethan too, and also that she is some sort of immortal magic person (they call them casters in this series which just seems lazy) Lena has moved to Gatlin with her uncle, Macon Ravenwood (Jeremy Irons, and it pains me to say this is the best movie I've seen him in for a LONG time) because of her approaching 16th birthday. You see when girls of Lena's persuasion turn 16, they become either light or dark casters, and signs are pointing towards Lena going super duper dark, partly because of a curse, and also because of the interference of her mother Sarafine (who only ever appears in the possession of another woman, portrayed by Emma Thompson) and her cousin Ridley (Emmy Rossum, who I think I last saw ages ago in The Day After Tomorrow yuck, no wait it was Dragonball: Evolution...not better.). Ethan meanwhile, as a mortal, is caught in the middle of this supernatural confluence of events, and mostly, is determined to keep Lena from going bad.