Nerd in the 'Noke

Tomorrowland (2015), PG, 130 minutes - Tomorrowland is a film that has intrigued me since I saw the first teaser trailer.  I had heard good things about George Clooney's involvement in this family friendly sci-fi flick from Disney and the fact that it was co-written by Brad Bird and Damon Lindelof (and directed by Bird) certainly didn't hurt either. Clooney provides the star power to help draw in an older audience, but Tomorrowland actually centers on a teenage girl named Casey Newton (Britt Robertson), the daughter of a NASA engineer (Tim McGraw) with a seemingly unlimited imagination, positive outlook, and a bit of a rebellious streak.  When the film starts, she's arrested during one of her many attempts to hijack the cranes being used to decommission a NASA launch pad (once the pad has been deconstructed, her father is out of a job).  After her father bails her out, she finds a pin in her belongings that she has never seen before.  When she touches it, she is...

The Monuments Men (2014), PG-13, 118 minutes - Everything about this film screamed 'Tim you need to see this!'.  It's a war flick, a period piece, it tells a little known WWII story, and it sports a George Clooney gathered ensemble cast. This film is based on the non-fiction book titled  The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel and tells the story of a World War II platoon made up of museum curators, artists, and historians who are tasked with recovering art stolen by the Nazi's before Hitler orders it all to be destroyed as the Reich falls.  This is easier said than done as the Nazi's stashed their stolen goods in the most random of places: mines. The platoon consists of Frank Stokes (Clooney), James Granger (Matt Damon), Richard Campbell (Bill Murray), Walter Garfield (John Goodman), Jean Claude Clermont (Jean Dujardin), Donald Jeffries (Hugh Bonneville), and Preston Savitz (Bob Balaban). ...

Gravity (2013), PG-13, 91 minutes - Wow.  I dropped the ball on this film.  How did I not see this one in theaters?  I'm actually having a pretty hard time figuring that one out myself.  I love films set in space.  And I don't just mean the crazy sci-fi/fantasy stuff, but films about the space program.  Sci-fi based in reality.  This one was directed by Alfonso Cuarón (I loved 2006's Children of Men).  And while I've never been a huge Sandra Bullock fan, I've never had anything against her either.  Certainly not enough to keep me from seeing a film.  I remember seeing the trailer in theaters, but not being all that impressed at the time.  As positive reaction to the film came out after its release, I had apparently myself convinced that the trailer I saw was slow and boring, but I'll be damned if I can find it anywhere on the good old world wide web.  All that I can come up with is that I wasn't really paying attention....

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), PG, 87 minutes - The past couple of months my NetFlix queue has bogged down. Seemingly everything that I want to see has been a new release to the home video market and as a result has popped up on my queue as 'a long wait'. Well, I've finally waited out the 'long wait' and the majority of my queue is available again so it's time to get back to burning through a couple NetFlix movies a week. One of these movies was Fantastic Mr. Fox - a stop motion animated, Wes Anderson directed movie based on Roald Dahl's book of the same name. I remember a time in my youth when reading through any and all Roald Dahl books you could was the cool thing at school. Fantastic Mr. Fox is one that I never got too. I have no idea how the film compares to the movie, but there is little doubt that the on screen version is a Wes Anderson film. The tone and humor falls right in with other Anderson flicks such as Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, or...