Posts

Showing posts from November, 2012

Rental Review - Brave

Image
Brave (2012), PG, 93 minutes - Brave is the most recent animated effort from Disney/Pixar.  In my book, Pixar's involvement made it a must see, but just like The Amazing Spider-Man, it came out at an inconvenient time this past summer.  Fortunately, we didn't have to wait ages for its home video release. Brave tells the story of Merida (Kelly Macdonald), a Scottish princess who loves archery and runs as free as she can (she has more tomboy in her blood than princess). Her father King Fergus (Billy Connolly) holds an archery tournament for Merida's hand in marriage at the urging of her mother Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson).  Not wanting her destiny to be chosen for her, Merida decides to enter the competition herself.  She wins and embarrasses the Lord's and their sons who came to participate.  After the impending fight with her mother, Merida storms out into and comes across a witch's hut.  She wishes that things were different so that her mother wouldn't con

Review - The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2

Image
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 (2012), PG-13, 115 minutes - I find myself oddly conflicted right now.  The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 is not a film that I would have chosen to see myself (I went with my fiancé, who has followed the films after reading the books), but, unlike some of its predecessors, I do not feel ashamed for admitting that I've seen it.  I’ve made no qualms about my dislike for the first Twilight film (and I won’t waste time by rehashing the many reasons here).  But each subsequent entry has proven to be better than its predecessor.  Breaking Dawn Part 2 continues that trend in my opinion. If any of the Twilight films could be recommended for the male audience, it would be this one. The story has finally gotten beyond the Bella/Edward/Jacob love triangle and actually introduces a touch of suspense and action into the mix.  Part 2 picks up, as one might imagine, right where Part 1 left off, with Bella having just given birth to her and E

Rental Review - The Amazing Spider-Man

Image
The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), PG-13, 136 minutes - When The Amazing Spider-Man was first announced, I had the same thought that a good majority of people had at the time: 'it has only been three or four years since Spider-Man 3, do they really need to reboot the franchise so soon?'  Then they announced that Marc Webb would be directing (I thoroughly enjoyed his (500) Days of Summer from 2009).  Then shortly thereafter the announcements that The Social Network's breakout Andrew Garfield would be Peter Parker and personal favorite Emma Stone would play Gwen Stacy (as Peter's original love interest as she was in the comics).  At that point I knew that I was on board with a Spidey reboot, even if we weren't all that far removed from Sam Raimi's trilogy. If I was 'all-in' so to speak, you might be wondering why it has taken me five months to get a review posted. Well, The Amazing Spider-Man came out the week of the July 4th holiday this past summer, and

Trailer Talk - World War Z (2013)

Image
I haven't read Max Brooks' novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, which is the source material for this upcoming Brad Pitt flick.  It is a book that I have heard is quite good, but bears very little resemblance to this big screen counterpart based on internet chatter. Having heard that, World War Z still looks like it could be pretty entertaining.  Brad Pitt is almost always good, and a quick look at imdb.com shows that he is joined in the cast by the likes of Matthew Fox and David Morse.  It is also directed by Marc Forster, who has a pretty diverse list of films to his credit including Monster's Ball, Stranger Than Fiction, and Quantum of Solace.  The zombies don't appear to be your run of the mill undead either.  They move quickly and en-mass, almost like a wave crashing down on the shore. We've got a few more months to wait before World War Z hits theaters.  It doesn't release until June of 2013, but base on this initial trailer I think

Review - Deftones - Koi No Yokan

Image
Well here it is: my 100th post on the blog formerly known as "Somebody Check My Brain" and "Brooks Hatlen's Library".  It's sort of hard to believe that I have stuck to blogging actually, albeit with some delays here and there.  As the description in the header for "Nerd in the 'Noke" states, this is primarily a place where I share my thoughts on movies, but from time to time I have been known to post about other interests such as music or comics.  To celebrate my 100th post, I thought that it might be fun to revisit something a little different from the earliest days of the blog: a music review.  But before I get into my review, I would like to thank all of you that have taken the time to check in and read my thoughts.  Because of Blogger's stat tracking, I have been completely surprised at just how much this blog has been viewed.  It started as a place to collect and share my thoughts about things that interest me.  I can honestly say t

Review - Skyfall

Image
Skyfall (2012), PG-13, 143 minutes - The tagline at the end of 2008's Quantum of Solace gave us the standard post credits promise "James Bond will return".  And return he did, just a little bit later than we had hoped (thanks to a delay caused by the fallout of MGM's bankruptcy and the legal limbo the franchise found itself in), this time around in Skyfall.  Not only does the latest Bond adventure mark the twenty third trip into the field for Ian Fleming's fictional British super spy, but also the 50th anniversary of the 007 film franchise. Skyfall is a very personal story for MI6's best agent as he sets out to eliminate the agency's most recent threat: a former agent whose motive comes from what he perceives to be a lack of loyalty on the part of the agency, and more importantly from M (the head of MI6) herself.  Bond does this after surviving a botched operation in which he was shot after being caught in the line of fire.  A shot that was ordered by

Trailer Talk - Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Image
Zero Dark Thirty is director Kathryn Bigelow's first film since her Oscar winning effort The Hurt Locker (Best Director and Best Picture in 2010).  It is based on the hunt for, and death of Osama bin Laden thanks to Navy SEAL Team 6 in May of 2011. The Hurt Locker was a very small budget film, filled with great performances from relatively unknown actors at the time.  This time around, she is armed with a much larger budget for another military thriller and a cast filled with promising and veteran stars.  Jessica Chastain has proven to be a force with roles in recent films like The Debt, The Help, and The Tree of Life).  Joel Edgerton was excellent in Warrior, and Mark Strong and Kyle Chandler are good in just about everything they work on. With all of the classified information that revolves around such events, we may never know how accurate this portrayal of the story is.  It will be interesting to see how politically charged the film turns out to be.  The Hurt Locker was