Nerd in the 'Noke

The Snowman (2017), R, 1h 59min - After I finished reading IT a few weeks back, I set my sights on this novel by Jo Nesbø, with hopes of finishing it before the movie hit theaters.  I ended up finishing the source material this past Sunday, which kept me from catching it on opening weekend.  But honestly I ended up being even more intrigued by the film after seeing that it was receiving less than stellar reviews along with its sub-par performance at the box office.  Thanks to an odd day off from work, I was able to see Tomas Alfredson's big screen adaptation yesterday afternoon, and while I feel as though the casting of characters was pretty good, the film itself is a bit disjointed and anti-climactic. The Snowman is based on the seventh of Nesbø's series of novels focusing on the exploits of Dectective Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender) of the Oslo (Norway) Police Department.  Hole and Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson), a recent transfer into the department, begin ...

Alien: Covenant (2017), R, 122 minutes - With Alien: Covenant, director Ridley Scott gives us the second prequel film to the horror franchise he launched nearly forty years ago.  Covenant takes place ten years after the events of 2012's Prometheus , a rapidly anticipated film, that didn't quite seem to live up to the public's lofty expectations. Covenant opens with a quiet scene that takes place long before the events of Prometheus between Peter Weyland (Guy Pierce) and his newly created synthetic David (Michael Fassbender).  The scene acts as a summary of that film's events (man's search for their creator) as well as a prologue for this film.  We then begin following the Covenant, a colonization vessel on course for Origae-6 carrying a crew of around fourteen members (all couples), two thousand would-be-colonists, over a thousand human embryos, and the latest model Weyland synthetic Walter (also Michael Fassbender).  Their mission is to colonize Origae-6 upon ...

Steve Jobs (2015), R, 122 minutes - I saw this film a little while ago and just haven't gotten around to getting my thoughts down 'on paper' so to speak.  As is evident by its title, this film focuses on its namesake, using backstage interactions from three landmark product launches to give us insight into the man behind Apple's rise to prominence in the computer industry.   This film from director Danny Boyle is very dialogue heavy, which may be a bit worrisome if not for the fact that the screenplay was written by Aaron Sorkin.  Michael Fassbender (Jobs), Kate Winslet (Joanna Hoffman), Jeff Daniels (John Sculley), Seth Rogan (Steve Wozniak), and Michael Stuhlbarg (Andy Hertzfeld) bring that screenplay to life in a very engaging manner that speeds the film along at a pace that belies its two hour run time. I was a little surprised when I saw that the entire film plays out over snippets from just three days over the course of twenty years, but it really provides ...

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), PG-13, 131 minutes  - X-Men: Days of Future Past represents the fifth film in the comic book franchise about mutants and their struggle for equality (seventh if you include the two solo Wolverine films).  It also marks the return of Bryan Singer as director on the franchise after having directed both X-Men (2000), X2 (2003), and contributing to the story of X-Men: First Class (2011).  Generally speaking, the first two X-Men films were fairly highly regarded as comic book films go, but after Singer's departure to direct Superman Returns (2006), X-Men: The Last Stand (again, generally) didn't live up to expectations.  This time around, Singer vowed to take an adaptation of a classic X-Men story line and use it to effectively 'fix' the issues that had been introduced by the earlier films.  After my initial viewing last night, I'd say that he was fairly successful in doing just that. Days of Future Past begins, wait for i...

300: Rise of an Empire (2014), R, 102 minutes - On March 9, 2007, a stylized sword and sandals epic based on a classic Frank Miller graphic novel stormed into theaters and set box office records.  At the time 300 may have only been known by comic book nerds, but after that early weekend in March the world knew not only of Miller's 300 Spartans, but of Gerard Butler and Michael Fassbender as well.  Seven years later - almost to the day - a sequel (of sorts) finally arrived, and had much the same effect on the competition when its opening weekend was said and done.  Only time will tell if Rise of an Empire will launch anyone into the nation's consciousness the way 300 did for Butler and Fassbender, but it was a much better follow up than I had anticipated. Shortly after the success of 300, Frank Miller announced that he was working on another graphic novel, a prequel of sorts that was going to focus on Xerxes.  Not long after that, a sequel film was also announced...

12 Years a Slave (2013), R, 134 minutes - I saw this film a week ago and it has taken me a few days to figure out how I felt about it, and I'm still not sure.  Actually, that's a lie.  I know that it sickened me.  It sickened me on a number of levels.  Not because it isn't a well made film - it is, it's one of the best I've seen this year - but because the content it brings to life is just that appalling. 12 Years a Slave is based on the memoirs of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free man in a pre-Civil War United States who was abducted from his home and family in upstate New York and sold into slavery.  Just hearing a story like that is disturbing enough, but then you see the circumstances in which it occurred it is that much more sickening.  Solomon wasn't taken from his home in the middle of the night, he was conned.  An able musician, he thought that he was entering into a business arrangement with two men, Brown (Scoot McNairy) and Ham...

X-Men: First Class (2011), PG-13, 132 minutes - Each summer I take a day trip down to Charlotte, NC with some friends to wander around HeroesCon (a comic book convention put on by Charlotte based comic shop Heroes Aren't Hard to Find). Part of the trip has always been stopping on the way home to get dinner and to take in a movie. The film selection tends to be comic or game based depending on what is in theaters at the time. Over the six years that I've been a part of these trips, we've seen some absolute wrecks (Prince of Persia: Sands of Time), and some half way decent flicks (The Incredible Hulk). This year's obvious choice, since it was just released, was X-Men: First Class. After Fox has done their best to completely ruin the X-Men franchise since X-2 (I am referring specifically to X-Men: The Last Stand and Wolverine: Origins), none of us had very high hopes going in. Just over two hours later, we all agreed that not only was this easily the best Charlo...