Ben Affleck is Our New Batman......Wait What?

If you've been living under a rock in the past 12 hours, the big news broke yesterday that Warner Bros has found its Batman for their upcoming Man of Steel sequel, which will feature both the Caped Crusader AND Superman for the first time on the big screen. And it's none other than.......Ben Affleck!

 

 

.....Wait huh?

 

 

 

 

My initial reaction to the news.....

 

Ben Affleck is definitely an.....interesting choice to play Bruce Wayne/Batman. I've always considered Bruce Wayne and Batman to be two separate people and for the character of Bruce Wayne, I feel like Affleck could pull it off. He looks the part of a billionaire playboy and definitely can have the charisma to the role. As for donning the costume and becoming Batman....I honestly don't know. I really can not picture him in the actual costume. And yes, I might as well address the fact that the last time he played a superhero....it was Daredevil in 2003, (if you really want to get technical, then it was him portraying George Reeves, the TV Superman in Hollywoodland in 2006).

 

But here's the thing: I didn't think he was that awful in Daredevil (DON"T CRUCIFY ME I said I don't think he was terrible......doesn't mean I thought he was great in the role either). Plus, Affleck has an been on an incredible upswing in his career as of late, knocking it out of the park both acting AND directing wise with The Town and Argo (the latter in which he played a man who came up with a genius strategy to save lives, something that may come in hand when he dons the cowl and cape).

Plus, we had the exact same doubts when Michael Keaton was cast as Batman or when Heath Ledger was cast as the Joker and look how absolutely amazing those performances turned out to be.

 So I'm going to reserve judgment when we see a trailer or some set photos or something like that. So for right now, I'm interested, but also hesitant about it as well. And who knows? Maybe this might lead into Affleck directing the next Batman movie, something I'd be VERY interested in seeing. Just as long as it's not, well, this:

 

Man of Steel 2, or Batman vs. Superman, or Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill Dress Up as Superheroes and Have Adventures: The Movie, or whatever you want to call it, opens in theaters on July 17, 2015.



Also, Snyder, if you're going to cast Lex Luthor as the villain, please cast Bryan Cranston. That is all.

 

Kick Ass 2 Review: Solid Follow Up to Original Film

Whenever a film that ended up being really good underperforms at the box office, it's disappointing. In a world where you see bad movies that make millions of dollars and spawn unncesary sequel after unnecessary sequel, it's nice to see one of these underrated gems generate enough interest to warrant a sequel. A prime example of what I am talking about is 2010's Kick-Ass. The film, which followed a young high schooler named Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who decided to become a costumed superhero after realizing no one else had done it before, made $96 million worldwide on a $30 million budget which, although isn't terrible, isn't entirely great either (in the US alone it made only $48 million, which means it underperformed).

But then something happened: Kick-Ass found a new life on DVD and Blu Ray, developing a strong cult following among fans. And so, three years later, we finally get a sequel: Kick Ass 2.

Dave a.k.a Kick-Ass (played once again by Taylor-Johnson) and Mindy MacCready a.k.a Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) are still policing the streets of New York as superheroes, fighting crime and keeping citizens safe. But when Hit Girl is ordered by her guardian to give up the superhero business and lead a normal life in high school, Dave is left on his own. He eventually finds a superhero team called Justice Forever, headed by ex mafia enforcer, born again Christian Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey). But problems arise as Chris D'Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) returns to take his revenger on Kick-Ass who *spoiler alert* killed his father with a bazooka in the last movie. He decides to become the world's first supervillain, taking the moniker "The Motherfucker" (swear I'm not making that name up), who recruits an army of villains in order to destroy Kick Ass.

I really enjoyed the first Kick Ass. It felt like a superhero film, but with a Tarantino-esque twist to it. It was also an excellent satire on the superhero genre itself, taking little tropes of the genre and turning them on its head (hell Nicolas Cage was a parody of Batman in that movie). So I was looking forward to the sequel because I wanted to see the continuation of this world and how they would expand on this world of costumed heroes, and because I was excited to see Jim Carrey in a dark action comedy like this, regardless of the recent comments he's made (more on that in a little bit).

After seeing the movie, I thought it was pretty damn good. It's a solid follow up to the original film and it's a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

The entire cast gives some very strong performances here, particularly from the two big leads, Aaron Taylor Johnson and Chloe Grace Moretz. Taylor-Johnson gives more depth to the character of Dave/Kick Ass this time. His character has matured, taking responsibility for the actions of becoming the first civilian to don a superhero costume. He still shows some of the humor from the last movie, for sure but it's nice to see this added maturity to the role.

Moretz owns it as Hit Girl. She's still the same badass as she was in the last movie. What impressed me the most was the way her being in high school was handled. Usually, this type of story may seem predictable but here, it was handled really well. There seemed to be some echoes of Carrie White with the way the story was portrayed minus the psychic powers of course (which is ironic considering Moretz will be playing Carrie this October).

The rest of the supporting cast was excellent as well. Christopher Mintz-Plasse provides some nice comic relief as The Motherfucker (I swear that's gotta be one of the most....original names for a supervillain ever). He can be truly menacing as a villain, but it's humorous in a darkly comic sort of way. The rest of the supporting cast was fine as well (Donald Fasion where the hell have you been since Scrubs? Good to have you back).

But the big standout in this film was Jim Carrey as Colonel Stars and Stripes. Carrey chews the scenery in every scene he's in and looks like he's having a ton of fun, regardless of what he has said. All right I might as well address the elephant in the room now: Carrey has said that he would not be a part of the film's publicity campaign because he does not support the amount of violence that was featured in the film. Now, do these comments take away from his performance in the film? Absolutely not because Carrey was one of the best parts in the film, stealing every scene that he's in. He was an absolute blast to watch.

The director of this film is Jeff Wadlow, whose big directing credit before this was the teen fighting movie Never Back Down......yeah he's never really tackled a film on this big of a scale before and in the beginning of the film, it definitely shows. However, as the film goes along, he starts to find his groove, but in the beginning it does take him a while to find it, especially with the action sequences.

And speaking of the action sequences, they are, for lack of a better word,  absolutely kick ass (swear that will be the only time I use that word in this review). They are incredibly fun and entertaining to watch, although I will admit they do lack some of the cool visual flair that the action sequences had in the first movie. But they were pretty well done.

As for negatives, I mentioned it took Wadlow a while to find his groove,like some of the hand to hand combat sequences at first were a little bit on the shaky side.   and that some of the action sequences didn't have the unique style the action sequences the original had. And the story....yes it's not as sharp and witty as I thought the first one was, but it's still an entertaining ride.

And that's all Kick Ass 2 needs to be. Kick Ass 2 was a fun, absolutely enjoyable film to watch and definitely a solid follow up to the original film. It's not been getting a lot of love at the box office (it opened at #4 this weekend) so please, go out and see it. It's definitely one sequel worth seeing

Grade: B+

Elysium Review: Impressive Sophmore Effort From Director Blomkamp

 

When District 9 was released in 2009, at the time, I really had only cared to see it for two reasons: Peter Jackson was the producer and the film's absolutely brilliant marketing campaign had me hooked on what the film was about and why they had aliens encamped in a ghetto in Johannesburg. As I walked out of the theater, however, my mind having already been blown by how amazing the film was (still remains in my top 20 all time favorites list), only one name kept going through my mind: Neill Blomkamp, the director of the film. This had been his debut feature film and I was absolutely blown away by his visual style, especially considering the film was made on a budget of $30 million. I was greatly curious to see what his next film would be like. And so now, three years later, Blomkamp has released his second film: Elysium.

The film is set in the year 2154. Earth has become an overpopulated, desolate wasteland, with Los Angeles becoming a slum with extremely poor living conditions. While the poor live on Earth, the rich and elite live on Elysium, a giant Halo ring (no seriously, it looks like one of the rings from the videogame Halo), that is essentially utopia. There are no wars, no poverty. The air is clean and fresh, everything is green and beautiful, and there are medical chambers that can cure anything. Cancer, colds, paralysis, anything.

On Earth, we meet Max (Matt Damon), a former car thief who takes a job in a factory while trying to live a normal steady life. One day, Max gets in a factory accident that gives him only five days to live. Man figures that the only way to cure himself is to get up to Elysium and enter one of the medical chambers. Soon, after being outfitted with a robotic exoskeleton, Matt must try to find a way up to Elysium while trying to avoid power hungry Secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster), who helps run Elysium's security and her liaison on Earth, Kruger (Sharlto Copley), a sociopathic mercenary who gets a kick out of killing anyone in his way.

This film has been one of my most anticipated of the year. I wanted to see if Blomkamp could pull off a film without any need for the backing of a Hollywood director. Plus, the film itself looked visually spectacular and I wanted to see what Blomkamp could do with a bigger budget. So how was Elysium?

Awesome. I loved this movie. Do I have some issues with it? Sure not every film is perfect. But for the most part, this movie kicked ass.

The acting in this movie was solid all around. Matt Damon was fine as the lead protagonist. He gave the character a nice believability to him, making you feel for him and rooting for his character, especially near the end. Jodie Foster gave Secretary Delacourt a nice cold demeanor. She was calculating, cold, and precise.....for the 10 minutes she was in the movie (more on that later).

But perhaps the best performance in the entire movie is Sharlto Copley as Krueger. He steals every scene that he's in and is an absolute blast to watch. He truly makes Krueger sociopathic and menacing, relishing in the opportunity to destroy anyone and anything. Now, I haven't seen Copley in a movie since 2010's The A Team movie and what I want to know is....where the hell has he been? Seriously, this man needs to be in more movies he is a fantastic actor. I mean look at him in District 9 and then this. He can go from playing a naïve character to one who is batshit nuts in the worst way possible. He can also be funny. I personally thought he was the best part The A-Team movie because of his performance. The man has fantastic range.

Hollywood, get on this. Put Sharlto Copley in more movies.

In terms of visuals and themes, this feels very similar to District 9. Once again, Blomkamp uses social issues as his major themes for the movie. Where District 9 focused on themes like racism, xenophobia, and inhumanity, Elysium focuses on elitists vs commoners, overpopulation, and health care. Blomkamp manages to handles these issues with deft ease, though at times I felt that he was kind of hitting the audience in the head a little too much with them.

As for visuals, these are the best visuals I have seen in a film all year since Oblivion came out back in April, if not better. Blomkamp's been given a bigger budget this time around and he uses it to its full advantage in order to show us his vision. He has this distinct visual style that's wholly unique. He's a director who knows how to shoot his way around an action scene (there is a heist scene midway through that is an absolute fun to watch. However, there are some scenes that literally look like they belong in a first person shooter games....it didn't really need that). Some of the visuals he does have are completely jaw dropping, especially when you first see Elysium. Blomkamp proves once again why he's a talented visual filmmaker.

As I stated before, I did have some issues with the film I've mentioned tiny ones throughout out this reviews, like hitting the social issue message over our head a bit too much and some of the shots (like the one that looks like it's from a video game). But there are others as well.

One of them was the fact is that Jodie Foster seems to only be in the movie for a short amount of time. I know that maybe this was intentional for her character, but when you have her all over the marketing material and all over the trailer along with Damon, you'd think she would have been in the movie more often than she was.

Another big thing I had was this movie was that they said the world had become overpopulated and desolate, yet all we see is what Los Angeles looks like now, a slum. What about the other big cities like New York? Or Chicago? Or what about Washington D.C. what does our nation's capital look like in the future? I wish they had shown more of how other cities were affected by this grim future.

But overall, Elysium is a kickass ride. It has its flaws, some that can't be overlooked, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a flat out blast to watch. I can't wait to see what Blomkamp has planned next.

Grade: B+

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters Review: Second Chance Doesn't Leave Good Impression

Ever since the Harry Potter films grossed billions of dollars worldwide and changed the way Hollywood looks at young adult novels, film studios have been scrambling to find the next kid lit hit (try saying that ten times fast). Some of them range from the decent (I thought Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events was a fairly decent movie), but most of them have just been...bad. Really, really....bad (see: Eragon, City of Ember, The Seeker: The Dark is Rising....you get the idea). A recent example of a young adult book series that has tried to become the next Harry Potter film franchise is Percy Jackson and The Olympians by Rick Riordan.

The series focuses on young Percy Jackson, who finds out that he's a demigod, or half human, half god, and that the gods you hear in Greek myths, such as Zeus, Hades, Ares, etc. are real and still exist on this earth today. Percy discovers that he's the son of the god of the seas, Posiedon and that he's destined to save Mount Olympus from an ancient threat, more ancient than the gods themselves. Now I have read the books on which these films are based and I think they're an excellent read. The concept of the series alone is fascinating and the series deftly blends witty humor with fast paced action and contains a series of well written characters. So you think with an fascinating idea like that they would be able to at least translate fairly well onto the big screen.....right?

Well they tried that in 2010, with the release of Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, based on the first book in the series. Looking at the film from a critical perspective, I thought it was....ok. If you had never read the books, it was a semi decent family adventure film that would be fine to rent on a rainy day. Looking at the movie from a fan perspective however, the movie was an absolute mess. Major plot elements were either changed from the book or deleted entirely (I know the film version always deviates from the source material and is never always faithful to the book but this was ridiculous) and the film felt like it was trying too hard to become the next Harry Potter. But, somehow the film made a ton of money, enough to warrant a sequel, which brings us to today's film: Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters.

In this second installment, we find that Percy Jackson (played once again by Logan Lerman) is living at Camp Half Blood, a camp for demigods that protects them for monsters and trains to fight against them (think Hogwarts for half-bloods....I'm sorry that's the last Harry Potter joke I promise). One day, when the barriers around the camp start to mysteriously break down, it is discovered that the tree helps protect the barrier at camp has been poisoned and only the Golden Fleece from ancient myths can save it. Percy, who has not been on a quest since he saved Olympus in the last movie,  heads out to retrieve the Fleece from the dangerous Sea of Monsters with his two friends Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) and Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) and his new half brother Tyson (Douglas Smith), who happens to be a Cyclops. They must obtain it before Luke (Jake Abel), who turned to the "dark side" can use it to resurrect his evil master.

As I went into this movie, I tried going in with an open mind as a fan. I liked what I was seeing from the trailers, as it looked much better than the last film. Plus, I had some hope that this could become a decent franchise, especially with the concept behind it. I mean everyone gets a second chance, why not the Percy Jackson films?

Unfortunately, all hope I had left for this becoming a good film franchise is officially gone. This film was....not good. At all. There are some good elements, which I'll cover in the next paragraph, but the bad stuff outweighs the good stuff.

The major positive I can find with this movie is that most of the actors seemed to be pretty game with their roles. Logan Lerman is becoming one of my favorite actors, especially with his fantastic turn in last year's The Perks of Being a Wallflower. He was one of the good parts of the last Jackson movie and he looked like he was having a fun time in this role again, coming off as a likeable action hero. Another big standout to me was Dionysus, the god of wine (played by Stanley Tucci), one of the heads of the camp. Anytime Tucci is on screen in any film, he is just mesmerizing to watch. Here is no exception, even if he is only in the film for a short time. He just chews scenery and stays true to the character in the book, giving him a very dry sense of humor.

But by far, the best actor in this whole movie is Nathan Fillion as Hermes. Fillion has always one of my favorite actors, coming off as extremely likeable and charismatic, making him a joy to watch on screen. As Hermes, he's a blast to watch, deftly blending humor with some more serious moments (there's one line that had me laughing out loud that I won't spoil. All I'll say is....if you watched him on Firefly you'll appreciate the joke like I did). I'm glad that Fillion is getting more roles and here's to hoping he's on screen more in the future.

Ok so that's the good stuff....now for the bad stuff. The biggest problem I had with the film was the pacing. It was all over the place. Sometimes, the film moved along briskly and other times it just seemed to drag on very slowly. The director, Thor Freudenthal (which I find very funny considering this is a movie about Greek mythology that's directed by a guy named Thor) does a poor job directing the film and throughout the movie, I did not know whether I should feel excited, bored etc.

Another big problem I have is the CGI.....the CGI looked like it was something you would see in 2006. I mean we've made huge technological advancements since then, why did we have to use something that looks....incredibly outdated? It may be a minor nitpick, but to me, it was way too noticeable.

Finally, the last thing that bothers me is the ending. Speaking from a fan perspective, I was not happy with the fact that they added this one part that was not in the book at all.  Without spoiling it, all I'll say is that it felt completely unnecessary and that it did not to be added. As I've said before, not all movies based on books are going to get things right, but this just did not need to be added.

Overall, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters was not particularly good. The pacing was awful, the CGI looked horrible, and the whole thing felt too...familiar. The only reason I can't bring it to the D range is because I did enjoy most of the performances in the film (especially from Nathan Fillion). Even though there's three books left to be adapted in this series, I think it's time for this franchise to be laid to rest.

Grade: C- (and that's being EXTREMELY generous because the actors' performance made me not want to physically hurt myself after watching this.)