Saw the name Katie Holmes somewhere and thought "Hey, what movies does she have on Netflix" and this one came up. Decided to watch it for some reason. 20 minutes in, I was in awe of its suckiness, complete with the entire gamut of Katie Holmes mannerisms that can be really annoying. Anyway, didn't bother finishing it. Easily one of the worst movies you'll ever see. 1/10.
Documentary on net neutrality focusing on the story of Robb Topolski, a software quality engineer who conclusively busted Comcast's practice of throttling and degrading the performance of P2P applications. They do an excellent job of covering the downsides of net neutrality while also giving voice to the pro-ISP side of things. Lots of folks heard from and this is generally well-done. However, the movie is hurt when it kind of goes off the rails and starts talking about police squads turning into the military. That's a worthy topic, one with a LOT of merit, but has no place in this movie. Movie is also hurt by its release date since the topic is still evolving really quickly and stuff has changed since the movie was finished. 8/10.
Tom Cruise stars in this sci-fi movie about a guy who gets reincarnated every time he dies so that he might be better trained to fight an invading force. Or something like that. Anyway, this is a high-budget, well-done action movie that's very entertaining and a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it's dragged down by an ending that doesn't make sense and thus is just...7/10.
Documentary on the great NHL enforcers and fighters of the 1980s and 1990s, with 90% of the movie being the life and career of Chris Nilan. Lots of great highlight clips shown, including lots of fights (of course). Nilan has had a difficult life - before, during, and after hockey. Abusive father, fights with management, drugs, shoplifting, and so on. He is brutally honest and pretty unrepentant about all of it. We also get interviews with fighters like Tony Twist, Todd Ewen and, in perhaps the last interview before his death, Bob Probert, who died during the making of this movie. The end result is a compelling look at this aspect of hockey and a very entertaining movie. 8/10.
Sometimes I just flip through my Netflix queue looking for stuff that is a particular length. Don't really care what it's about, just needs to be the right length. This one fit that criteria. The better question is how it made my queue in the first place. Ring the Bell tells the story of Rob Decker, an obnoxious, ethics-challenged, high-profile sports agent headed off to a small town to try and convince Sean Hart, the nation's top baseball prospect, to go pro instead of going to college. When Rob's BMW (that somehow has the GM-only OnStar in it) breaks down, Rob is stuck in town for a few days. He meets a cast of characters in town that will show him the error of his ways and he comes around. This is the standard city-slicker-stranded-in-a-small-town we've seen so many times before, like in the far-better Doc Hollywood, among others. The twist here is that Ring the Bell is a Christian movie, a fact it will beat you over the head with throughout. I knew that going in and didn't care. I watch and enjoy Christian movies all the time. Some are good and pretty well-done - Moms Night Out, for example. Others, like this one, not so much. You get the standard decent-but-not-Hollywood production values but also get a bad script, lame characters, and not-great acting. Every conversation turns into a ham-handed sermon. The result is a movie that, even if you judge on a "it's a Christian movie so I'll lower my standards" scale, is terrible. But, hey, look for cameos from major leaguers Rick Sutcliffe, John Kruk, and Ben Zobrist and a nice (but too long) concert clip from Christian stars Casting Crowns. 2/10.
Loosely based on a true story, Lou Taylor Pucci is Gabriel, a rebellious 1960s teen who ran away from home after a fight with his parents. He turns up 20 years later suffering from a brain tumor and the inability to form new memories and losing his short-term memory. Basically what the guy in Memento had. JK Simmons is Henry, Gabriel's stern father, struggling to make sense of the new reality of his relationship with his son. He is distant at first, angry at his son for disappearing and unable to relate to this new person occupying his son's body. When Gabriel's mother falls ill, Henry takes up the routine of daily visits. Through some pioneering research, it is discovered that music from Gabriel's teen years reactivates his memory and he becomes relatively normal. Henry forces himself to listen to Gabriel's music, all that noise he hated before, and develops a greater understanding of his son, his feelings, and the struggles he went through. Throughout the movie, we are given flashbacks to Gabriel's childhood to help fill out the story. This is a good movie with solid performances from Pucci (who played another character with mental difficulties in The Story of Luke and Simmons. It doesn't really break any new ground but it's well-done. You'll notice some similarities to Awakenings, no doubt because it's based on a case from the same author/doctor (Oliver Sacks). Anyway, this one is right at the Tabedoza Line™ - 7/10.
Two couples reunite two years after a weekend visit that turned really nasty and ugly for one of the couples - so bad that it ended their friendship. The reunion lets us catch up and see where each couple is in their lives. Basically, what we have here is four characters that are not likable yelling at each other and saying really, really mean stuff to one another, so much so that you question how they were ever friends in the first place. The cast is decent enough, the acting is decent enough but in the end, the results are just mediocre. But, hey, Julia Stiles looks perhaps the hottest she's ever looked in a movie and that alone is worth an extra point from me. We'll say... 5/10.
This one traces the phenomenon of real people dressing up capes and costumes and acting as real-life superheroes on the streets of their cities. 95% of this movie is an unintentionally hilarious train wreck with one "superhero" demonstrating his devastating fight technique in a scene that could be an outtake from Napoleon Dynamite. Another guy drives around with a cooler in the back of his van with popsicles in it - in case, you know, he runs into kids that will take treats from a stranger at night. And beer. He wanders around and then comes back to his van and drinks beer. Other heroes are less pathetic, with one guy patrolling Washington Square Park with a cameraman, filming drug transactions, yelling in a megaphone to drive away drug dealers, and so on. Another group chases down a drunk driver who rammed a park car and, unable to get the police to even stop, manage to get him to give up his keys for the night. The last few minutes of the movie covers the heroes going around giving out food and water to the homeless or the drunk hero guy's annual Christmas drive that's actually pretty successful. This ends up being "halfway decent" with the first 30-45 minutes being "the greatest movie ever" [/sarcasm] because of the unintentional comedy. It is fascinating to look at all of these very earnest folks who just aren't quite right in the head. 6/10.
The chick who plays April Kepner on Grey's Anatomy is an over-stressed stay-at-home mom married to Rudy from...Rudy. So she plans a night out with Ray Romano's wife, who is the wife of a pastor, and some other woman I didn't recognize. And much hijinks follow. Trace Adkins also has a small role as a tough-guy biker. This is that rarest of all birds - a Christian comedy. It's kind of a cross between Adventures in Babysitting and The Hangover, only (obviously) a very clean cross between them. Yeah, there's lots of silliness and ridiculousness but there's also a LOT of laughs. Adkins, in particular, is great and steals the movie with a scene toward the end. This is light, funny entertainment and I liked it a lot. 7/10.
Benedict Cumberbatch is Alan Turing, the pioneering mathematician and computer scientist. The Imitation Game tells the (based on a) true story of Turing's work at Bletchley Park during World War II, creating a machine that could decode Germany's unbreakable "Enigma" code. Keira Knightley plays Joan Clarke, Turing's collaborator and fiancee. What on the surface sounds like a perhaps-unexciting theme for a movie (codebreakers) instead ends up as a dramatic race against time. Against the backdrop of supply chains being cut off from England and casualties mounting, Turing and his team speed toward finding a solution. Cumberbatch is brilliant here, capturing Turing's volatile behavior and Aspergers-like disdain for social niceties and nuance. The rest of the cast are pretty much just along for the ride but carry their parts well. The movie does play fast and loose with the facts in a couple key areas, which definitely hurts it, particularly in giving Turing too much credit. That said, this is a terrific movie that tells a very important story and tells it well. 8/10.
On a more personal note, I couldn't help but be dismayed by Turing's story. I already knew the key points but seeing him prosecuted and chemically castrated for being gay, eventually driving him to suicide after he grew breasts, up on the big screen brought it all back home again. Such a waste of a brilliant mind that was nowhere close to being done contributing meaningful work. How much further along could we be technology-wise if we hadn't sacrificed one of our brightest minds? :(
Apparently The Rock likes "based on a true story" heist movies. Unfortunately, this one ain't Pain & Gain. Empire State tells the tale of the robbery of the most-comically-unsecured armored car depot of all-time, a heist that netted somewhere between $8m and eleventy billion dollars. I give that range because the number frequently morphs in the movie and we're presented with math that makes no sense (like $8m being "half" of $11m). Liam Hemsworth stars as the security guard who assisted in the robbery. The story told is a convoluted mess of a movie and is just a disaster. Hardly anything makes sense, scenes are disjointed and thrown together and simply doesn't work. It seems to want to be a "funny caper" movie like Pain & Gain but doesn't succeed. Bottom line: this movie stinks. 2/10.
John Travolta is Frank, the divorced father of Danny. Teri Polo is Danny's mom and she's about to get married to Rick, played by Vince Vaughn. Danny is upset mom is getting married and doesn't like Rick, a man with a dark and mysterious pass. When Danny witnesses Rick murdering someone, things get MESSY. This is straight paint-by-numbers thriller of the week stuff. The cast is solid and they're all fine in their roles but not really given much to work with. Like so many other thrillers, we're asked to ignore stuff that makes no sense - like Danny being mad his mom is getting married although his dad already lives with someone else or Rick killing a guy in his car but magically leaving behind no blood after a quick wipedown. In the end, this is your average movie aspiring to be average and succeeding. 5/10.
