Clark Reviews ‘Jupiter Ascending’

Clark Reviews ‘Jupiter Ascending’
Clark Douglas — 365 Movie Guy

The term “space opera” gets thrown around every time a big-budget fantasy set in space rolls into theatres, but Jupiter Ascending actually earns the title: whatever you may think of it, there’s no denying that it’s pretty damn operatic. There’s a pure-hearted earnestness here which might have felt run-of-the-mill thirty years ago but feels fairly bracing in 2015. It’s a movie filled with flying dinosaur soldiers, shape-shifting aliens, genetic splicing, bonkers performances, grandiose concepts, political statements, royalphile bees, anti-gravity roller blades, Brazil references and a metric…

Read The Rest

Tak3n — Review

2 of 5 stars
Tak3n

First they took his daughter, then they took him and his wife. Now, they didn’t just take his wife, they killed her.

It’s interesting, looking at the slow and steady march down the rankings that this film series has taken. The first film sits at 58% on the Tomatometer. The second at 21%, and this the third film sits at 10%. The critics are none too pleased about this series. And it’s understandable and predictable, if nothing else.

Modest Beginnings

I think the thing I liked most about this film is it didn’t try too hard to drag us in. I didn’t feel as if the film was forcing something…

Read The Review

Paddington — Review

4 of 5 stars
Paddington

Bears like marmalade. This is an incontrovertible fact. If you supply a bear with marmalade, he’ll be your friend for life and it will supply him with all the nutrients he needs for a day. That latter part, at least, is what Paddinton insists on.

I went to see the film last night in preparation for this week’s episode of The MovieByte Podcast and I expected to enjoy it, but not to really like it. But Paddington is, in fact, quite a bit more charming, more fun, and much better than it has any right to be. It’s based on a silly children’s series, it’s had some internal political and talent…

Read The Review

Into the Woods (2014) — Review

3.5 of 5 stars
Into the Woods (2014)

Into the Woods is based on the award winning Broadway musical of the same name. The play is much celebrated and many love it, but it is by no means for children. It deals with very adult themes and content. As such, one wonders what Disney’s interest in the film is/was? Disney is not beyond making more adult content, but it’s almost always of a type that children can still watch and enjoy as well. Though I believe it was Disney’s intent to put this film in that later category, I certainly don’t think I would take any of my children (8, 6, 4, and 2) to see it — and therein lies one of the big…

Read The Review

Clark Reviews ‘American Sniper’

Clark Reviews ‘American Sniper’
Clark Douglas — 365 Movie Guy

As far as Chris is concerned, the war he’s eventually asked to participate in is a simple one: there are a bunch of violent savages over there, and it’s America’s job to go over there and kill them before they kill us.

Based on what I’ve read, this seems like a fairly accurate portrait of Kyle’s mindset, but the problem is that the film itself seems to share the same mentality. It oversimplifies an incredibly complex war for the sake of permitting American Sniper to double as a propaganda film; the American equivalent of that fictional German sniper biopic featured at the end of Quentin…

Read The Rest

John Wick — Review

4.5 of 5 stars
John Wick

Once upon a time, before he retired, the Russians called him Baba Yaga. The Boogeyman. This and this alone should tell you that John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is not a guy you want to mess with.

Too bad nobody told Iosef Tarasov (Alfie Allen) before he killed Wick’s dog. Not just any dog, either, but a parting gift from his recently deceased wife.

Iosef’s father, Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist), is head of the Russian mob in New York. To say he’s disappointed in his son’s behavior would be a bald understatement. His mood hardly improves when Wick starts systematically dismantling his empire.…

Read The Review

The Imitation Game — Review

4.5 of 5 stars
The Imitation Game

I wonder what the process of casting for the part of the irascible “father of modern computing” looked like? I have to say I have no idea, but whatever process lead them to casting Benedict Cumberbatch was the right one! This film rises or falls on this one performance — even though there were several good performances in the film — and as always and ever, Cumberbatch elevates this film to a level I do not think would have been possible with any other actor.

There are many uncomfortable details about the work and life of Alan Turing’s life that the film does not shy away from.

An Odd… Read The Review

Birdman — Review

4 of 5 stars
Birdman

What is film? More specifically, what do films, or the folks who make them, want to accomplish with their film? The answer to this question can be different for every film and every filmmaker out there. But I believe we could find on a very broad overview, that 99% of all films every made intend to tell you a story, and entertain you while doing it. No matter the genre, no matter the subject, no matter true story or fictional, filmmakers want you to be enthralled and engaged and to enjoy the great telling of a good story. Let’s start there for Birdman. Did the film enthrall me? Did it engage…

Read The Review

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 — Review

4 of 5 stars
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1

This is the point at which I realize I never got around to writing my written review of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and realize that I have not seen it recently enough to do so. That’s sort of frustrating. Make no mistake, it is always my intention to write a review of every film I see. I am not always able to get around to doing it.

Luckily, I did write a review of the first Hunger Games film. It was very early in the days of MovieByte when these films first began making their appearance. Joe and I also talked about it on episode 7 of The MovieByte Podcast. The first installment was…

Read The Review

Big Hero 6 — Review

4.5 of 5 stars
Big Hero 6

You guys remember Wreck-it Ralph? It was a film by Disney Animation Studios in 2012, and in many ways very much in the same line of work as the latest offering from Disney, Big Hero 6. I don’t mean that in terms of plot it is similar — indeed, it is very dissimilar in that way. What I do mean is that this is the new Walt Disney Animation Studios. I think we got a little hint of this with Bolt (2008), which was a surprisingly good film for what it was. Not on the same level as the latest three offerings from Disney by any stretch of the imagination, but quite good, in my estimation.

The…

Read The Review