Nerd in the 'Noke

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014), R, 102 minutes - Nine years after its predecessor, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For finally made its way to theaters last weekend. Those with either a keen eye or memory (or both) may remember that this film was one of the honorable mentions on my Most Anticipated Films of 2013 list. That was before further delays pushed its release to the end of this summer (and a repeat appearance on this year's list ). Sin City: A Dame to Kill For showcases the same grim, gritty, stylized violence that fans of Frank Miller's work have come to expect on either the page or the screen. Much like 2005's Sin City, the key with this film is to remember that it is an anthology, a collection of stories occurring in the same universe, even overlapping at times with the events appearing in that film.  As a result, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is not a typical sequel or prequel.  This installment is comprised of the following stories: Just Another Saturda...

Chef (2014), R, 114 minutes - I've heard a lot of great things about Chef since it was released earlier this summer and I was pretty excited when I was finally able to watch it last week. It is a smaller film that first hit theaters back in May so there's a pretty good chance that it's no longer playing at a theater near you.  The good news is that it looks like it will be available on blu-ray/digital/On-Demand in about a month. Written and directed by Jon Favreau, the film is about Carl Casper (Favreau), a chef who was once known for his creativity and who now finds himself at a crossroads in his life and career after a very public confrontation with food critic Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt). At the urging of his ex-wife Inez (Sofia Vergara) and with the financial backing of his ex-wife's ex-husband Marvin (Robert Downey Jr), Carl opens a food truck named El Jefe. With the help of his son Percy (Emjay Anthony) and his former line cook Martin (John Leguizamo), Car...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014), PG-13, 101 minutes - This reboot of the live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise came out last weekend and has already been successful enough at the box office that a sequel has been announced with a scheduled 2016 release.  That's all well and good, but what I had heard about the film itself over the past week was that it fell flat and wasn't really all that good.  I tend to try not to let a bunch of critic-speak sway my desire to see a film, but sometimes that's difficult to do when the prevailing opinion is negative.  I had a little free time earlier today and I decided to give it a shot and what I found was a film that at its core, got the TMNT vibe down pretty well. Now admittedly, there's not much depth to the story here, but honestly, upon re-watching the original 1990 live action Ninja Turtles movie prior to seeing this, there wasn't much there either.  This go around, the world's favorite wisecracking ...

The Giver (2014), PG-13, 94 minutes - The Giver is based on the 1993 story of the same name written by Lois Lowry and is the latest post apocalyptic/sci-fi society young adult novel to be adapted to the big screen.  I've never read The Giver myself, but having been fourteen back in 1993, I was definitely a part of the target demographic and remember it being pretty popular among classmates. This film version of The Giver takes place in a future utopian society created after an unnamed great war.  The elders who founded the community believed that the source of all misgivings and conflict in life was emotion.  They built a society devoid of emotion, which was accomplished by sterilizing the population of their memories and instituting a strict set of governing rules.  Everything from recognition of color (that of objects or even skin tone) to the enjoyment of music was lost, all in an effort for absolute equality.  The lack of emotion also means that no one ...

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), PG-13, 121 minutes - After being fairly successful at avoiding spoilers on the internet (or from others who beat me to seeing it), I was able to check out Guardians of the Galaxy yesterday afternoon.  Most people are probably wondering 'who the hell are they?' or 'what on Earth is going on with a talking raccoon and tree?'.  To be honest, my previous exposure to these characters is lower than normal when it comes to the Marvel films.  What I do know is that what little I've read was well written and very entertaining.  From the time Marvel announced that Guardians of the Galaxy would be joining their Cinematic Universe (MCU), I've been very excited (it landed on my Most Anticipated Films of 2014 list ).  Since the Guardians have never been even remotely mainstream (until the last year or so), a theatrical adaptation of their adventures posed the biggest question mark of any Marvel project to date and rightfully so.  B...

Lucy (2014), R, 90 minutes - I don't know about anyone else, but when I first saw the trailer for this film, I thought to myself 'that sounds like Limitless with Scarlett Johansson instead of Bradley Cooper'.  Of course Cooper's character willingly took drugs whereas Johansson's does not, but with Lucy, director Luc Besson explores the same basic concept of a person becoming able to access the entirety of their brain functions. Lucy (Johansson) begins the film as an American student in Taipei.  After a crazy night out with her new boyfriend Richard (Pilou Asbaek), she's forced into being a drug mule for his employer Mr. Jang (Min-sik Choi).  Mr. Jang is planning on distributing a new synthetic drug across Europe.  CPH4 increases the user's ability to access their brain's functions (the average human only accesses about 10% normally).  Before she is able to get her flight out of Taipei, an altercation causes the bag of CPH4 in her belly to rupture, f...

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), PG-13, 130 minutes -  As I began writing this review, I was surprised when I realized that I had never reviewed 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes. So here it is in short: I really enjoyed Rise. I felt as though it worked well as either a prequel to the original franchise or as a franchise reboot (which is the route actually being taken by these newer films). Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a direct follow up, beginning with a prologue filling in the events immediately following the end credit sequence of Rise when the infected neighbor had a nose bleed at the airport, beginning the global spread of the 'simian flu' virus caused by ALZ-113.  We then jump ahead about ten years to a time when the majority of humanity has died as a result of the flu. The ape population led by Caesar (Andy Serkis) out of San Francisco has flourished in the wild. They've begun building their own civilization and their intelligence continues ...

The Host (2006), R, 119 minutes - After thoroughly enjoying Snowpiercer the other day, I decided to look into Joon-ho Bong's other films.  I figured what better place to start than with The Host (not to be confused with the 2013 Stephanie Meyer novel-based film of the same name), the film that he was working on when he first discovered Le Transperceneige (the graphic novel inspiration for Snowpiercer). The Host revolves around the appearance of an amphibious monster years after the illegal dumping of formaldehyde polluted Seoul, South Korea's Han River .  The Park family runs a food stand along the banks of the river and during the monster's first public attack, their youngest, Hyun-seo (Ah-sung Ko) is swept up by the monster and taken back to it's lair in the sewers beneath the Wonhyo Bridge.  Hyun-seo's father Gang-doo (Kang-ho Song) was one of the people who came in contact with the monster in the effort to fight it off.  After the government swoops in and q...

Snowpiercer (2013), R, 126 minutes - Earlier this year I stumbled upon a trailer for a dark and gritty dystopian thriller starring Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, Octavia Spencer, and Ed Harris.  It was listed as having been released in 2013 but I hadn't seen or heard anything about it before.  How could I have missed a film like that?  After a little digging, I learned that the film - Snowpiercer - was a project of well regarded South Korean director/writer Joon-ho Bong that was released in South Korea last August and was scheduled to make its American debut this summer. The film opens with a prologue of newscaster voice overs that explain that on July 1, 2014, after seven years of debate, seventy nine countries across the globe agree to launch a substance known as CW-7 into the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere in order to combat the effects of global warming.  The counter effects of CW-7 were underestimated and shortly after its dispersal,...

22 Jump Street (2014), R, 112 minutes - I think that everyone can agree that 2012's 21 Jump Street was a surprisingly successful reboot of the Johnny Depp starring television show that aired between 1987 and 1991.  In my mind 22 Jump Street is almost as surprising, primarily because of the way it goes about continuing the buddy cop story of Officers Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum). Oftentimes a sequel - especially in the comedic genre - will try so hard to duplicate the successes of the film before it that it becomes formulaic and repetitive.  22 Jump Street actually wholeheartedly embraces this but manages not to overdo it.  Following a bust that goes wrong at the beginning of the film, both Deputy Chief Hardy (Nick Offerman) and Captain Dickson (Ice Cube) remind Schmidt and Jenko that they got where they are because they didn't do the same old thing, that they need to stick to what they know and go about things they way they did on their previous as...