A “date night” and a movie night! What are the odds?

We’ve been rather busy with all the family activities that we haven’t had much “couple” time for ourselves. This Friday and Saturday, the kids went on their monthly pilgrimage to the nearby “Friday Nite Out” program, and the missus and I went out on the town. We hit a local bar/restaurant for early drinks (whaaaaa?), walked across the street to a Latin grill for dinner, then we relaxed at home to watch the latest episode of Fringe. Fast-forward to Saturday night after the kids went to bed, and we stayed up to watch Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011) rented over Vudu. In hindsight, I wish I had rented the physical Blu-ray from Netflix, because I later read a review about the disc, and learned I could have taken advantage of the movie in 1080p/AVC, mixed in English 7.1 Dolby TrueHD audio. Ah well.

So, Mission: Impossible? This is the fourth in the Tom Cruise series. I was a big fan of the original Mission: Impossible television show with Martin Graves, Leonard Nimoy, Greg Morris, Lesley Ann Warren, and the rest. The first film wasn’t bad, but a little confusing. The 2nd film (the John Woo one) was over-the-top and nuts, and the 3rd film directed by J. J. Abrams wasn’t bad at all. MI 4 got lots of good reviews when it came out last December, but I couldn’t find anyone to go watch it with me in the theaters.

Interestingly enough, Brad Bird directed this film where Tom Cruise’s IMF team is disavowed after a mission in Moscow goes belly-up. After that, the rest of the folks with the Tom Cruise / Ethan Hunt character are on their own to stop the villain. The rest of the team is rounded out with Jeremy Renner Simon Pegg, and Paula Patton (whom I don’t know.) The villain was played somebody, and I didn’t think very much of the villain in this story. He was there, but you see very little of him. There wasn’t much development of what this villain wanted, except near-extermination of the human race. Did I give away the plot? Did it really matter?

Overall, I thought the film was worth seeing. Not for the villain per se, but the action is good, the story is decent enough, and the characters are interesting enough. It’s a fun little way to enjoy some action and adventure, intrigue, yada yada.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)

After sitting on our tv stand literally for months, I finally had some free time to watch Gone Baby Gone today on my day off. This is a 2007 film directed by Ben Affleck, and starring his brother Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Ed Harris, and Morgan Freeman. Heck, it even has John Ashton (from the Beverly Hills Cop series), Amy Madigan, Amy Ryan (The Office), and Titus Welliver (The Good Wife.) It’s based on a book by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote Mystic River. This is the story of two private detectives who are hired to help find 4-year old Amanda McCready who disappears from her home. These two detectives (Affleck, Monaghan) are inexperienced, but know many contacts within their world of this particular tough Boston neighborhood. They face drug dealers, gangs, and pedophiles. It’s a world littered with broken families, hearts, dreams. In the middle of all of this is constant reminder of this lost, innocent little girl.

I thought this was a fantastic story. You immediately get a sense of this down-on-its-luck blue-collar neighborhood, and a very personal story about a family that loses a child, and the hunt to find her. The cinematography really worked for me, as it brought me right into the story. The story itself progressed in ways that I did not expect. It transforms into a highly disturbing tale of selfish, terrifying characters, and people who will never change. There is a lot of depth to the story, and Ben Affleck, as maligned as he’s been as an actor, does a superb job here as director.

In terms of the blu-ray video and audio presentation, I thought it was all good. The video is 1080p, lots of detail, and the drab colors accentuate the dismal conditions of the Boston environment. The audio is a 5.1 Linear PCM, so you can enjoy the uncompressed audio. It’s not a bombastic soundtrack. In fact, it’s very quiet, but it worked overall.

Gone Baby Gone (2007)

When the Captain America: The First Avenger film was released this year, I had all the intentions of watching it in the theater. Unfortunately, something or other came up, and I never got a chance. I ultimately ended up waiting for the home market release on October 25 2011. The wait wasn’t as interminable as I thought, and October 25th got here fairly quickly in my guestimation.

In case you didn’t know, this film is a prequel of sorts to the big May 2012 Avengers ensemble film. The film stars Chris Evans as the titular Captain America / Steve Rogers, with Hugo Weaving playing the Red Skull. There are, of course, other actors, but none of the supporting characters (Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Tommy Lee Jones, Dominc Cooper) play very integral parts of the overall film. The film shows how a scrawny-but-good-kid like Steve Rogers gets selected as the first candidate for the U.S. Army’s Super Soldier program.

Unfortunately, the serum is lost, and Steve is the only person with it in his genes. The U.S. Army doesn’t know what to do with him, and he ends up shilling for U.S. bonds across the country in daffy musical shows. Eventually, he finds a way to prove his worth in battle, and he leads the offensive against the Red Skull’s HYDRA organization, an offshoot R&D group within the German army.

The audio and video were pretty good on this blu-ray disc. The video quality was good, but the colors were a little dull. Maybe this had to do with the war scenes. The DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 was fun, with lots of activity. The storyline and the action were entertaining, and I thought the acting was pretty good. Not the greatest superhero film, but I thought it was up there with Spiderman 1 and 2. It was 10x better than this year’s Green Lantern stinker.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

I took Monday off to relax and get some cleaning up done at the house, and maybe even clean up a small degenerate slice of Gotham, which I did. I also sat and watched Michael Mann’s 1995 crime drama Heat. If you haven’t seen it yet (though I believe I’m the only one who hasn’t), it features an all-star cast, written and directed by Michael Mann. The film stars Al Pacino and Robert De Niro cast, but also includes:

• Val Kilmer
• Jon Voight
• Tom Sizemore (pre-career implosion)
• Amy Brenneman
• Ashley Judd
• Natalie Portman (small role)
• Mykelti Williamson
• Dennis Haysbert (small role)
• William Fichtner

De Niro stars as Neil McCauley, who leads a professional criminal crew that scores on big money targets (banks, vaults, armored cars.) After a botched job, Lt. Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) and his team of cops in the Robbery/Homicide police division begin hunting McCauley’s crew. What I liked about this film was that both sides were very smart, and at times fairly likeable from a certain point of view. Both sides had families (except leader McCauley), and they were all pretty smart. Speaking of families, McCauley follows a dictum taught to him long ago by his criminal mentor — “Never have anything in your life that you can’t walk out on in thirty seconds flat, if you spot the heat coming around the corner.” However, he meets Amy Brenneman’s character, and falls in love. As the noose tightens on McCauley and his crew, you have no idea how the story will unfold.

I liked the plot as it was unpredictable. I liked the characters as they were very nuanced, and the dialogue was very great. I also liked how nobody was a fool in this story — both the criminals and the detectives were smart, so you had two worthy teams of adversaries squaring off against each other. I watched this film on blu-ray, and it was a pretty good transfer. The video quality was decent for a mid-90′s film, and the Dolby TruHD 5.1 audio was excellent — the dialogue was crisp, the LFE (bass) was big, and the rear speakers were surprisingly active.

Heat (1995)

Saturday night, I watched The Hurricane, a 1999 film starring Denzel Washington. This is the Hollywood version of events surrounding the incarceration of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a talented African-American boxer in the 1960′s who was wrongly imprisoned for a triple-homicide for about 20 years in Rahway State Prison. Directed by a fellow named Norman Jewison, the cast is decent, and I noted Liev Schreiber, Dan Hedaya, John Hannah (from The Mummy movies) and Harris Yulin among the actors in this film of note. Oh, and of course, Vincent Pastore of Sopranos fame.

I think much like many people, I first heard about the plight of “Hurricane” Carter from Bob Dylan’s protest song “Hurricane.” It’s natural to be curious, no? Turns out, there’s a bit of a controversy with the song, as no one truly knows the truth at this stage about really happened at the Lafayette Grill that night in Patterson, NJ. Patterson police have never solved this crime. Also, many facts cited in the song were not accurate.

This film is generally well-received by critics and people who have watched it (83% freshness on Rotten Tomatoes.) Jewison was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Directory. Denzel Washington was nominated for an Academy award, and won a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor. Personally? I’ll give credit to Denzel for a fine acting job. However, I didn’t like this film very much. Why is that? Why do I fly in the face of overwhelming love for this film? I find fault for the misrepresented facts of Carter’s life and the case itself, as documented in both his criminal and military records, and police reports and court documentation. I’m a guy who likes his documentaries, and his character dramas. If you are going to make a film about historical events, I want to watch this visual representation of what happened. It’s like watching a documentary, but with better acting and a bigger budget. To watch a movie that has significantly revised events, it’s less about what happened, and more a fictional tale that pretends to be accurate.

I remember back in 2001 when my wife and I went to the theater to watch Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind, the story of mathematician John Nash who suffered from schizophrenia. A well done movie, but criticized for historical inaccuracies. Once I read the whole story about John Nash, I liked Ron Howard’s film a lot less.

Apart from the historical whitewashing of actual events, I didn’t quite connect to this film. It wasn’t the acting per se, but there was a certain 1990′s “this film is a character battling adversity” vibe that was all too blatant for me to enjoy. It felt dated, and not subtle. Sorry, folks. Not my favorite movie.

The Hurricane (1999)

I watched The Hurt Locker, a 2008 film by Kathryn Bigelow not released in the US domestically until 2009. The film stars Jeremy Renner as a Sgt. 1st Class William James, a reckless man talented with defusing explosives. Sgt. James deploys to the U.S. Army’s Bravo Company in Iraq in 2004 after their unit’s team leader is killed in an IED explosion. James is blessed with natural skills so he’s very good at what he does. However, his reckless behavior and disregard for protocol unnerves his team, and causes serious conflict. The film counts down the last 30+ days of Bravo’s Company’s tour in Iraq, and the soldiers’ primary goal is to stay alive until they can get home.

This was a pretty good movie. Of course, the acting was good, and the direction was good. No doubt about it. What I liked most about it was that I couldn’t predict what would happen next. So many films that I’ve watched recently, I could predict the plot twists a mile away. Here, with the nature of the film being a bomb disposal unit during an intense war, you don’t know what is going to happen next. A war zone is inherently unpredictable.

The Hurt Locker (2008)

This week, I saw Woody Allen’s 1977 film Annie Hall, apparently one of this most famous and acclaimed films. I’ve read that this was one of his most popular films, but I didn’t know that it had won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. I haven’t partaken with a majority of Woody Allen’s films, though I do slightly remember watching portions of Sleeper many moons ago when I was a kid.

Annie Hall is about Allen’s character Alvy Singer who meets a woman named Annie Hall, played by Diane Keaton. They fall in love and get into a relationship that lasts a few years. They eventually break up, and the film’s premise is a view of adult relationships. Not being a student of the 70′s, I thought it was an interesting look at love and life in the 1970s. I don’t quite understand the fashion choices, but it was interesting to watch the beginning and end of a relationship. I was reminded that relationships are complex and difficult and wonderful.

Annie Hall (1977)

I was up late Wednesday night cleaning and sorting the junk mail, so I watched Zack Snyder’s Watchmen film from 2009. Before it came out, I’ll admit that, judging from the trailers, it looked amazing. I’ve never read, nor was I familiar with, Alan Moore’s Watchmen comic book series. Still, if the film is executed well, the audience should get the gist regardless. The only Zack Snyder that I’ve seen beforehand was 300, which was more about the visual vs the story or being grounded in reality.

I won’t go to detailed into the plot. Basically, the Watchmen were a group of superheroes who have since now retired.  One of the superheroes is murdered, and the rest try to find out who may be trying to kill them off. It takes place primarily in an alternate 1985, but there are flashbacks to events in the early 20th century when certain key backstory events occurred. It’s an overly long movie, clocking in at 2 hours and 45 mins. I do feel that it was a little bloated, and could have been a little compressed. I believe the general was, “What does it mean to be a superhero, to have super powers?” They aren’t perfect people, so what is their responsibility? What do people expect from them?

My favorite was Rorschach, but it was enjoyable to watch the ass-kickin’ scenes. If the movie wasn’t so overly long, I think I would have enjoyed it better. It’s still interesting to watch, so I’d recommend it.

Watchmen (2009)

I rented No Country for Old Men, a 2007 Coen brothers movie.  It has a great cast with excellent acting. Taking place in Texas in 1980, Josh Brolin’s character stumbles upon a drug deal gone bad $2 million dollars. He swipes the money, but becomes the subject of a hunt by a monstrous killer played by Javier Bardem. Bardem is positively unnerving and frightening. It also stars Tommy Lee Jones, and Woody Harrelson. The trailer is below.

Fantastic, gripping film. You never quite know what is going to happen, and there is a sense of dread when Bardem is in the scene. I recommend this film.

No Country for Old Men (2007)

I consider the original 1981 Clash of the Titans is a classic. A pure Ray Harryhausen special effects classic. As a kid, what more could you ask for than a movie about fantastical mythological beasts, Greek gods, and a good story. As an adult looking back, the cast was a nice who’s who — Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Ursula Andress (best Aphrodite ever — va va va voom), and Burgess freakin’ Meredith. The story tells a classic tale of a man (demigod really) in love with a woman, and he goes to the Underworld and back to save her.

Which leads me to why I didn’t like the 2010 remake as much. Again, I don’t mind remakes, as it’s okay to experiment and take a different perspective on a story. Life is short, and you never know if the end-product is going to be better or worse. In the remake starring Sam Worthington, the background love story was replaced with a revenge story between Perseus and the Gods. This sort of reminded me of the God of War storyline from the PS3 videogame franchise. In this film, everyone seemed to have a problem with their pantheon of gods, and Perseus specifically wanted revenge on Hades, and Zeus to a lesser degree. I couldn’t get into it. I like a good revenge story, but I didn’t buy this one.

Of course, who cares what I think. Hollywood is working on a 2012 sequel — Wrath of the Titans.

Clash of the Titans (2010)