In the past week we have been bombarded with tons of new trailers AKA previews of upcoming films! Instead of posting multiple posts about each preview i'm going to post them all here for you to check out. Enjoy......
This film looks pretty good. Patriots Day follows the event of the horrible bombing in Boston during the Boston Marathon. Mark Wahlberg, John Goodman, Kevin Bacon and Michelle Monaghan all star in this film. It was also written and directed by Peter Berg who made Lone Survivor and Deepwater Horizon. I can imagine if it's anything like Berg's previous films it's going to be a hit. Mark Wahlberg has really came into his own as a solid actor of our generation. The questions really is why the crap is the dude still making Transformer movies? Everybody hated him in The Planet of the Apes remake but I loved him in it. Then again i'm a sucker for those damn dirty apes!
I was born in 1979. I am a kid of the 80's. I love almost everything from the 1980's as a 37 year old adult male today. Except maybe the fashion side of things or the haircuts. Being a child in the 80's I tend to watch a lot of films from the 1970's. I love classics like Planet of the Apes, Omega Man and Soylent Green among others. One particular film I fell in love with was Westworld. It was a film written and directed by Michael Chricton. It starred Richard Benjamin and James Brolin as a couple of tourists visiting a fictional land/themepark where anything goes, Westworld. Live in the old west. Have a shoot out. Live out whatever fantasy you want in a park where your counterparts look real but are actually human. Best of all is that can't hurt you, that is, until a bug in the system causes the robots to go on a rampage murdering the guests. Then it becomes an adventure to escape from being hunted by the crazy robots.
Now here we are in 2016 and we have a "re-imagining" of the classic tale updated for our viewing pleasures. Only one episode had aired so far. With that being said I don't think i've been so excited about a new tv series as I am Westworld. For me, i've been following the progress of this show for more than a year. I've read all the rumors and looked at all the behind the scenes pictures and watched all of the many previews HBO has released in the past few months. Bottom line is this: if you liked the original film you will love this new series!
I'm not going to get into the story of this show very much because honestly i've only seen one episode. It is a lot like the movie as far as a theme park and visitors fulfilling whatever fantasy they want. There is a gunslinger type character played by Ed Harris that was famously played by Yul Brenner in the 1973 film. Without giving away too much of the story we see James Marsden, Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton and the great Anthony Hopkins. Still very early but they all seem to fit their written roles perfectly so far. I am guessing in this new series your going to feel more for the robots that are constantly being abused and reset over and over again every night to just go back out and be abused again. Man is indeed the villain rather than the robots. That's just my guess. Who knows? I do know that I was thoroughly happy after watching the first episode and tend to keep watching the next 9. If you like science fiction you will love this. If you like westerns you will also enjoy this.
Long story short I like millions of other adults in their 30's drank the famous green drink "Ecto Cooler" Ghostbusters themed fruit drink from the Hi-C company back in the late 1980's. It was an awesome drink as a kid and was short lived as the Ghostbusters brand kinda went to the wayside in the 90's through the early 2000's.
Over the years for various Ghostbuster themed birthday parties we scoured the internet and found various recipes of homemade cooler. At the time you always think it doesn't taste quite the same as it did when you were a kid. Drinking the new stuff, the cooler we made didn't really taste far off and looked pretty much the same. So here we are in 2016 and it's a huge Ghostbusters time again and we see the re-release of the same drink we loved years ago. I'm a huge social media guy. I have Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Clear back in March or earlier I start seeing people posting pictures of this stuff. I read all the info and different captions about how good it is and it's coming soon to a store near you. LIES! LIES! It has been over 6 months later. The movie has come and gone. I found the special edition twinkies and cupcakes. We ate them but not cooler. Where was this stuff and why was it so elusive?
I literally saw this stuff all over online. Looking back I think most of these posts have either been from the eastern USA or the midwest. I know nothing about distribution of different products. I don't know living on the west coast is a disadvantage? Maybe we aren't good enough out here? Hostess hooked us up. I saw every other crazy promotion that had something to do with Ghostbusters. Why no Ecto Cooler? I still don't know the answer. The official website says available at Wal-Mart. Not my Wal-Mart and none of the stores within a 100 mile radius of my hometown. I even thought a specialty store like FYE would carry it. Nope. In the end we ordered a case of it from Wal-Mart.com. It took about a week to get to my local store for pick up. I was surprised it was in a can. The old cooler was in a box but I believe this time around it was both the box and can. The can is cool though. I kept one can for my collection unopened. Their was nothing better though than sharing the experience of drinking Ecto Cooler with my own children. It was worth the wait and the hunt of trying to find it all along.
Here we go with yet another movie review! I was so excited to see Star Trek Beyond. I had every intention of seeing this in the theater when it originally came out but for whatever reason I missed it! Shame on me? Now that i've seen it I feel pretty good that I didn't waste a ton of money seeing this at the box office. By the way Star Trek Beyond is available for streaming as of today. This review just happens to be coincidence and not perfect timing of the availability. In fact, I do recommend streaming it if your a sci-fi fan or have enjoyed the Star Trek catalog of films. It's worth at least a one time viewing. Perhaps if your a HUGE fan of these films you may very well enjoy it? Let's jump into this review and tell you what I did and didn't like about it.
This next installment follows the crew of the Star Trek Enterprise still on a 5 year deep space mission to boldly go where no man has gone before. They are now entering depths of space that have been hugely uncharted. The "wild west" so to speak of outer space. On the edge of the unknown is a space port/colony harboring millions of people whom intercept a distress call from the outer reaches. The Enterprise crew take the challenge of following up on the distress to only find trouble ahead. After being ambushed the crew must not only figure out who has done this and why but how to get off a barren unknown planet. I won't go into too many more spoilers. If you watch the trailer you will get a fair idea of what is happening in the film. The film is fairly predictable with not many surprises.
In this film we have the original cast returning. I have always thought that every actor chosen in these films have been great. Chris Pine, Zach Quinto, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin and Zoe Saldana are awesome! We also get some nice additions with Idris Elba as the big baddie Krall and a new ally in Sofia Boutella as Jaylah. My biggest complaint with the acting here is probably in Krall. It's not that Idris Elba did a bad job but the character itself was kind of a generic bad guy and nothing really happened in the film that really made you hate or dislike him as a fan. It was like the crew were thrown into a mediocre situation and this was more of a small meal story compare to buffet of awesomeness.
After watching this film I was kinda just blah. My wife was pissed that I spent a good portion of my time on my phone and not really into the flick. I've seen this all before with Star Trek. They didn't bring anything new to the table for this film. It frankly bored me. It was another addition to the library and a small one at that. Was it the writing? Yeah! I love Simon Pegg and I know he had written a good portion of this film but I think he could have done better. I guess that's the problem now a days and even a bigger problem in a franchise like this with numerous stories. It's hard to come up with something super new and organic that doesn't feel like it's been thrown in a blender and dumped back into the lap of the movie goer. Justin Lin directed this film. He has directed my favorite Fast and Furious film among others and I just don't see him in this film. It doesn't come across as his best work. Rent it, stream it. It's worth a sit down and maybe I will try and watch it again. I doubt it. I'm not totally bashing this film but i'm not giving it a lot of praise.
There are a 2 movie properties in my life that are as about as close to me as a personal relationship with Jesus. Those franchises are Back to the Future and Ghostbusters. I've loved both of these films since I was a young child. Ghostbusters in particular really resonated with me as a child. Growing up my parents bought most of the toys and we watched many of the Saturday morning cartoons. Ghostbusters has been inter-weaved into the fabric of the person that I am today. With that being said as a 30 something adult one of the biggest dreams myself and other fanboys have had was for a 3rd Ghostbusters film to happen. Unfortunately for the fans we will never get that. With the death of Harold Ramis and Bill Murray's reluctance to return to the franchise we would just never see this fantasy come true.
Let's fast forward twenty plus years later. Most of the fans came to the conclusion that the only sequel we would see after Ghostbusters 2 would be Ghostbusters The Video Game. It was pretty cool because most of the actors came back to voice their characters and the overall story was pretty good. Sony Pictures finally conjured up the balls.....and when I say "balls" I don't mean it literally because this movie doesn't have any because it stars mostly women. Women? Women? Wait, but I thought the Ghostbusters were dudes? It's a different time. This year we finally saw what would be a Ghostbusters film starring mostly all women.
Forget what you know about Ghostbusters. Go into this movie with a certain familiarity of a franchise but with a different face. Know up front that your in good hands. Know that your not going to be disappointed. We've seen the previews. We've heard, read and experienced the crude remarks and uproar over women starring in this film. I will tell you Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Melissa McCarthy, and Leslie Jones lead this film and do it well! I can't forget Chris Hemsworth as the goofy, fun loving male receptionist, Kevin. Paul Feig as the director handled a property that many thought that perhaps couldn't be done. For this day and age the group that was assembled to make this movie went above and beyond any expectation I ever had. Being such a huge Ghostbusters fan I was never disappointed. Out of all the actresses in this film, Kate McKinnon is the knockout, standout female in this film. All these women are funny but she really stood out from the rest.
Let's talk about the story. The story is very familiar to the original 1984 film. Different but similar. I won't go into spoilers or any specific details but it does overall semi follow the first in many ways but updated for our world today. Our antagonist Rowan (pictured above) played by Neil Casey was good enough. He was no Gozer or even Vigo from the second film. He is fairly forgettable. The special effects of the ghosts are awesome. I totally loved them. There are many different cameos by most of the original cast with an extended scene with Bill Murray. Surprising to see him but happy at the same time. In the end this movie is fun. This movie makes the grade for a one off Ghostbusters film. Would I rather see men playing the title parts? Yes, I would but that's just my opinion. My kids loved this movie. We had a great time at the theater and enjoyed the Blu-Ray release also. This movie is worth watching multiple times!
A couple of weeks ago we had the "Rose City Comic Con" in Portland, Oregon. This is a young comic con in it's 4th year I believe but has been rising to national status of great comic cons to attend around North America. My whole family attended and we had a great time. I highly recommend this con to anyone looking for great artwork, toys and the opportunity to meet some of your favorite actors and television stars. This year I didn't meet any of the celebrities or attend any of their panels. The nice thing is that Rose City posted videos of all the panels with the celebrities. I'll embed them below so check em out!
You can check out more videos from Rose City Comic Con over here!
First and foremost this is film #3. The first Purge film was new and exciting and different. Imagine one night each year for 12 hours their are no laws. No rules. Anyone can murder anybody they want. Kill, rape, mame, destroy. You name it and it's legal. I guess what "scares" me about these films is how close to reality this could become. It doesn't seem far off from the world that we live in today. Each and every one of us have a sick and twisted side to us that if this were real we would go out and "purge" ourselves by killing others. The story was different. I liked the first film. I fell asleep halfway through the second film. It seemed to me the movie studio was trying to cash in off the success of the earlier film. We decided to give the Purge another try with a look at the third movie.
Remember Kurt Russell in Escape from New York? The bad ass old school John Carpenter film. As I watched this film I felt more and more like this was a subtle knock off to another original flick. The film stars Frank Grillo as Leo Barnes. Frank was in the second film also. This time around he is a secret service type guard for hire to protect Senator Charlie Roan played by Elizabeth Mitchell. I don't need to explain what happens other than they end up in Washington DC alone running from a group of neo Nazi mercenaries for hire to capture the senator among all of the freaks murdering one another.
Would I say this is a good movie? I would say i'm on the fence. Is it somewhat scary? Not really. We've seen all this before. Again, this is the third film. There are some gruesome and violent scenes to appease the appetite of the movie goers that like that stuff. Less than half way through the film you have the ending pretty much figured out. You've seen this movie before. The acting is fine. Frank Grillo is up and coming. He had a short couple of roles in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Civil War as Crossbones. He has yet to come into his own with an iconic memorable role. I also noticed Mykelti Williamson (aka Bubba from Forrest Gump) co-stars in the film. The rest of the acting crew is pretty much forgettable.
Don't feel bad you didn't waste your money in the theater to see this. The movie has an estimated 10 Million budget and made close to 80 Million in returns so expect another sequel. I would say rent it or watch it when it comes on cable for sure. I wasn't really sure what to expect and it wasn't a huge loss of time like Ghost Team was. Let's hope they can keep improving on the franchise and bring it to bigger and better levels in the future.
