2014 Movies: Grumpy Bulldog v Tony Laplume

For whatever reason Tony Laplume still isn't allowing comments on his Film Fan blog, despite that it's not one I ever made "political" comments to for him to get butthurt about.  Anyway, in an entry last month he reviewed a bunch of 2014 movies, many of which I had also seen, so I thought it'd be fun to do sort of a Siskel & Ebert with his opinion and my opinion.

I'll try and copy stuff from actual reviews I've done so I'm not changing my opinion after the fact.

This was his take:

Interstellar

rating: *****

review: For me this was unquestionably Christopher Nolan hitting his highest note after The Dark Knight, and still his best film since, his most deeply piercing of the human experience, and the reason I personally became a big fan of Matthew McConnaughey.

This was my take:

Interstellar:  Most of this movie felt emotionally flat and I had a hard time suspending disbelief that some helpful aliens had told humans how to build a starship and space station and whatnot.  Though then at the end it's explained how that stuff happens.  The movie owes a big debt to Arthur C. Clarke, especially the end that first invokes 2001 and then 3001.  It wasn't the best Christopher Nolan movie but I liked it more than Inception.  Jessica Chastain's presence helps a little with that. (3/5)

Locke (Laplume)

rating: *****

review: Back when there was still chatter of Tom Hardy being the best actor of his generation, there was a lot of interest in this hugely ambitious and yet incredibly simple movie: Hardy talking into a phone the whole movie, and that's it.  I find the results fascinating.

Me:

Locke:  This is I guess what you could consider a "ticking clock" movie.  Tom Hardy plays a British guy who's driving from somewhere in northern England to London.  The whole movie is literally him on the phone to various people while on the highway; he is the only character actually shown on screen.  There's no real mystery about what he's doing:  he knocked up some older woman in London and miraculously she got pregnant and so he's doing the "right thing" by going to be there.  But of course she goes into labor on the night before a really important thing involving pouring concrete.  He has to deal with the woman going into labor, the concrete job, and his wife, none of whom are happy with him.  It's obviously not the most exciting movie ever, but it does a good job at really bringing the scenario to life.  You really feel like you understand Locke and what makes him tick by the end.  And there's a nice Dark Knight Rises reference when he says how he would have liked to break his drunken father's back. (4/5)

The Grand Budapest Hotel (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Believe or not, but for those who are aware that Isle of Dogs later became one of my all-time favorite movies, I haven't really immersed myself in Wes Anderson's films.  This was very, very easy to love, and hits the kind of notes most other films don't even dream considering while employing Anderson's trademark all-star ensemble cast formula.

Me:

Grand Budapest Hotel:  I'd been wanting to see this for a while, but never got around to seeing it in theaters.  Anyway, it's probably Wes Anderson's best movie in years.  Not that I didn't like his last couple, but they were more YA-flavored, whereas this is a movie for grown-ups.  It starts off with essentially 3 framing elements:  a girl going to the grave of an author who wrote a book about the hotel; that author doing a TV interview in 1985; and then when he visits the hotel in 1968 and meets the owner.  Then we get to the actual story in 1932 where the concierge of the hotel M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) is breaking in a new lobby boy named Zero.  And then one of his elderly lovers (Tilda Swinton, who this time is actually in a Wes Anderson movie) dies and he goes to her funeral.  There he finds out he's to inherit a valuable painting and when her son Dimitri (Adrien Brody) disputes this, Gustave steals the painting.  Mayhem ensues!  I'm sure for a lot of people they either really like Anderson's movies or they really hate them.  Obviously I've been in the former for a few years since I started watching them.  What's always great is that while on the surface they can seem silly or goofy or perhaps too precious from the brightly colored sets, the deliberately unspecial effects, the way none of the actors try to conceal their various accents so you have Americans, Brits, Irish, etc. all inhabiting what's supposed to be an Eastern European country, this is only a surface coating over serious issues.  In this case it's the start of WWII and the oppression that followed as well as really Gustave is kind of a pathetic figure, even if on the surface he seems so grand as the practically omniscient concierge; we see that he lives in a tiny room and hooks up only with old ladies to get their money.  So while it's a charming movie, it's also got a brain. (5/5)

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Yeah, it's the movie that allowed everyone to love Michael Keaton again, a brilliant jazz case study of legacy and stage acting, filmed as one long cut.  It's hard not to be impressed.

Me:

I wrote kind of a long entry that concludes:

It's worth watching and now it's in wide release, so go check it out. (3.5/5)

Edge of Tomorrow (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: You may not realize this, but Hollywood really does go out of its way to try and make you hate its stars, after a while, and they'll do it in such a way that you think it was your idea.  Tom Cruise had already reached that point ten years earlier, and he had increasingly relied on action roles to keep his popular career going.  By the time this one came out everyone was tired of the act, but then enough people realized that it was actually pretty good that it deservedly became a cult hit.

Me:

Edge of Tomorrow:  or Live, Die, Repeat as they've renamed the DVD release, though in the credits it still uses the original title.  I suppose the latter title is a little more memorable.  It does seem unusual to rename your movie after it has already been released.  They probably should have listened to the focus groups.

The premise is like "Groundhog Day" combined with the HALO video game series or one of those sci-fi shooter games I've never played..  Aliens called "Mimics" (for some reason) have invaded Earth and taken over most of Europe.  Humanity mounts a D-Day type invasion, except as Ackbar would say, "It's a Trap!"  Tom Cruise is a former ad exec who gets busted down to private and becomes part of the front wave.  But when he kills one of the aliens, he gains the alien power to reset the day.  Except it only happens when he dies, so he has to die numerous times trying to fix things.

There's kind of video game logic to the plot as there's the easy tutorial levels where Tom Cruise trains with a female soldier (Emily Blunt) who has gone through what he has only in another battle.  Then there's the tougher levels to get off the beach.  Finally you have the big Boss level fight.  Though unlike "The Matrix Reloaded" for instance it doesn't actually feel like a video game.

Overall I really liked it.  There was a lot of sci-fi action and I'm a sucker for robot suits.  There was some humor, especially early on when he's first trying to figure out what's going on and when he's training.  The romance was a little lacking, but not nonexistent.  Although the Happily Ever After twist didn't necessarily make a lot of sense.  (3.5/5)

Inherent Vice (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Thomas Pynchon at last earns his Hollywood moment, and it was absolutely worth the wait.

Me:

Inherent Vice:  I was interested in watching this because I usually like PT Anderson's movies and not just for the initials.  Though I didn't really like his last one, The Master that much.  And I didn't really like this one either.  Maybe he should stop putting Joaquin Phoenix in his movies.  Anyway, this starts out pretty interesting, but it just piles on all these characters and plots and red herrings that after a while you have to wonder what the hell any of it means.  I just started drifting off after a while.  I guess you should expect that from a movie adapted from a Thomas Pynchon book. (2/5)

The LEGO Movie (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: In what might have come off as a shameless plug for toys, it actually turns out to be one of the great Will Ferrell movies, among other things.  Everyone just assumes in animated movies these days it's a Disney Pixar world, but neither Disney nor Pixar is capable of something like this.

Me:

The Lego Movie:  I finally got around to watching this.  It was as fun as advertised.  There are enough references to other stuff in it to keep older viewers like me entertained while it's not so adult that the kids can't watch it.  And there's a great message about creativity and also for those nerds who glue Legos together and only build stuff to specifications.  Alas I wish there hadn't been so much Will Farrell in it. (4/5)

A Million Ways to Die in the West (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Maybe you have to be the rare demographic that's familiar with both the western genre and Seth MacFarlane to appreciate it, but I found this hilarious, a spoof worthy of comparison with Blazing Saddles.

Me:

A Million Ways to Die in the West:  This was Seth MacFarlane's comedic Western that was unfortunately released the end of May when many of the big blockbusters were still playing.  Thus it didn't do all that well, not nearly as well as MacFarlane's previous "Ted."  Or maybe it was that people just don't want to see Seth MacFarlane unless he's voicing a loudmouthed fat Rhode Island guy or Boston teddy bear.

And watching this movie I'd have to say he's pretty much on par with Justin Timberlake or 50 Cent or Mos Def or one of those other musicians turned actors.  I mean it's not as bad as like Paris Hilton or Tara Reid, but when you're co-starring with Charlize Theron and Liam Neeson it's hard not to look outclassed.

Anyway, there are a lot of the crude jokes you'd expect about shit and farts and fucking; I mean it's written by the creator and two main writers of "Family Guy."  There were some decent laughs about mustaches and such too.  Overall, though, the story is pretty predictable.  I mean you know who he's going to end up with and you know the bad guy has to die.  I wouldn't put it on the same level as "Blazing Saddles" but it's not bad either. (3/5)

Noah (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Russell Crowe brings so much weightiness to his performances it can sometimes seem difficult to justify.  I think this one does.

Me:

Noah:  As a non-religious person I had no interest in watching this but finally I was bored and so put it on Netflix.  I really didn't miss much.  The way it starts out with magic stones, swords, and rock giants made me think this was a Bible story if it had been written by L. Ron Hubbard.  It has been a while since I read the Bible, but I'm pretty sure there wasn't anything about rock giants helping Noah construct the Ark. Once the rest of civilization gets wiped away it gets awkward as Noah decides he has to kill his daughter-in-law's baby once it's born to ensure that Man dies.  But I'm sure it's not a spoiler to say he doesn't because well otherwise there'd be none of us here, right?  Though like Adam and Eve it's creepy to think we're all descendants of eons of inbreeding.  Anyway, like Darren Arronovsky's "The Fountain" you kind of have to wonder if any studio execs ever bothered watching the dailies and wondered, WTF?  How a piece of shit like this gets out the door is beyond me. (-5/5)

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: I mean, sure, if you're worried so much about how the villains come off, you might worry about enjoying this one.  But everything else is literally amazing.  There are no better Spider-Man movies than the Webb/Garfield/Stone ones.

Me (I wrote a longer version but this says pretty much the same thing):

The Amazing Spider-Man 2:  With Marvel doing so much business, Sony got dollar signs in its eyes.  This movie winds up doing too much too soon in a vain attempt to create a "cinematic universe" that wound up destroying the franchise.  The movie itself isn't terrible as Harry Osborn recruits Electro to help him get Spider-Man's blood.  That's what Spidey gets for being greedy with blood.  Electro's origin seems to borrow heavily from the Riddler in Batman Forever, which really wasn't a good movie to borrow from.  Dane DeHaan is creepy as Harry Osborn, making you yearn for the clueless rich boy air of James Franco.  Again Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone have good chemistry, but her death is completely forced and Peter's grieving is given about five minutes.  Between that and trying to introduce a whole Sinister Six all at once, the movie just never works.

Monuments Men (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Critics seemed baffled that anyone would waste time about making a movie around the guys who saved art during WWII.  I think the movie itself explains that, and does it entertainingly.  

Me:

I don't have an actual review but I did watch it in the theater one boring weekend and really liked it.  It's mostly a lot of older, noncombatants risking their lives to save priceless treasures from Nazi assholes.  It often walks a fine line between comedy and drama. (3/5)

John Wick (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: I admit I was pretty late to this party, so I'm still working at fully appreciating the results, but c'mon, this is Keanu Reeves finding a third defining film series.  Who does that???

Me:

John Wick:  This is like a modern, stupid version of Road to Perdition.  The story is pretty much the same where a hitman turns on his former employer because the employer's idiot son killed everything the hitman loved.  Only in this case it's a dog the eponymous character's dead wife left to him.  (And stole his old Mustang.)  Because of that I'm not sure if we're supposed to take the movie seriously or not.  Anyway, after that it's pretty much just assassin movie cliches. (1/5)

The Zero Theorem (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Terry Gilliam is sometimes just weird.  This is him being weird without really nailing the magic he finds in his best work.

Me:

The Zero Theorem:  I put this on one night expressly because I thought it'd be really boring and put me to sleep.  I think I had that idea because I confused Terry Gilliam with Terrence Malick.  It wasn't really boring, just weird.  In a strange "Blade Runner"-type future Christoph Waltz works at some company processing data which for some reason requires pedaling like a bike and using what looks like a big video game control pad.  He's kind of agoraphobic and wants to stay home to wait for "his call" so finally Management (ie Matt Damon looking like that Tim Gunn guy I think it is from Project Runway) assigns him to work at home on "the zero theorem" which is...you got me.  It's like supposed to prove that everything equals 0 or something.  To help him keep working Management assigns him a hooker who takes him to kind of a holodeck and so on and so forth.  I don't know what the whole point was, but I'm sure Tony Laplume would think it's brilliant. (And I guess he did on his blog back in February, though with his reviews it's hard to tell sometimes.)  (2/5)

Guardians of the Galaxy (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: It's very enjoyable, a huge breath of fresh air in the MCU, but it ain't quite Star Wars and it ain't quite Princess Bride, both of which it kind of wants to be.  

Me:

Guardians of the Galaxy:  When this was first announced like most people I thought, WTF?  Especially when people mentioned this involved a talking raccoon and a living tree.  So I wasn't all that excited to see this.  But in some ways it was better than The Avengers.  Since they all pretty much had their own movies with their own girlfriends, there wasn't much in the way of romantic tension in that.  But with Guardians there's some between Star-Lord and Gamora.  Really when Star-Lord sacrifices himself to save Gamora or when Groot sacrifices himself to save everyone it was actually more more moving than anything in The Avengers.  I guess as Andrew Leon said it's because they actually become a real team, not just a bunch of people crammed together.  Since Chris Pratt had only been a comedic second banana to this point I wasn't sure how he'd do in a leading role, but he was good.  I was surprised too that Dave Bautista wasn't completely terrible.  Rocket Raccoon was kind of annoying, but it is awesome to see a raccoon with a big frickin' gun.  Overall it was a good time and I'd be more excited for the eventual sequel. (4/5)

Dumb and Dumber To (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Even though Jim Carrey is one of my all-time favorite actors, I confess one of the movies he's best known for I don't really know that well.  So this sequel is greeted, by me, as funny, but maybe not the best way to try and salvage his career at that time.

Me:

Dumb & Dumber To:  I wouldn't have paid to watch this, but it was on HBO so what the hell.  The plot is similar to the first one where two idiots go on a road trip to find a hot girl.  Only this time they're going to El Paso to find the daughter of Harry (Jeff Daniels) in order to ask her for a kidney.  Her adopted father is a famous scientist whose wife is trying to poison him so she sends a guy along to kill Harry and Lloyd.  And of course mayhem ensues.  There were some decent gags though obviously it's not as good as the first one.  At the beginning is a meta joke where Harry says, "Wouldn't this have been just as funny 10 years ago?" which is a reference to it taking 20 years to make the movie.  There's another reference to that after the credits.  Do you suppose since Jeff Daniels has had a more consistently good career in the last 20 years that's why it seems in this like Jim Carrey is more his sidekick?  Ponder the mystery. (2/5)

Snowpiercer (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Greeted as an instant cult favorite, I caught it later and enjoyed it, but not sure it's quite the treasure everyone says it is.

Me:

Snowpiercer:  Michael Offutt reviewed this and then I saw a Comcast commercial saying you could get it On Demand while it's still in theaters, so why not pay $1-$2 more than a matinee to be able to watch it in your home without annoying other people or obscene movie theater snack prices?  Anyway, as I Tweeted to Mr. Offutt, it's very strange, but mostly in a good way.  Like "Elysium" last year, this is a fairly obvious attempt at depicting class struggle.  Basically the Earth has frozen thanks to a chemical that stopped global warming a little too well and the only people left are on this big train called the Rattling Ark, which was intended by its John Galt-ish designer as a luxury train that would circle the world indefinitely.  So that's what it's been doing for almost 18 years now.  Curtis Everett (Chris Evans, ie Captain America) is one of the steerage passengers in the back of the train, eking out an existence eating protein Jell-O made from something really gross.  But Curtis has a plan for revolution--and this time it'll work!  So much of the movie is them trying to move from car-to-car, battling the evil goons, including this chunky balding guy who had a Michael Myers-ish quality of hardly saying anything and not dying.  The leader of the goons is a woman played by Tilda Swinton, who seems under the impression she's still in a Wes Anderson movie, which I found a little too hammy.  Along the way there are some surreal moments as they go through the upscale cars of the first class passengers.  There's a car with sea life inside and one with gardens and one with saunas.  The most surreal part is when they enter the schoolhouse car, where a teacher is indoctrinating young children on how awesome the train is.  I could share Curtis's look of WTF is this shit!?  Eventually you start to realize this is a lot like the second Matrix movie, only the video game-ish organization (find this guy, get this thing, go here, etc) seems far less artificial given the environment.  Overall it's a sometimes wacky and sometimes poignant concoction that is kind of that old school apocalyptic sci-fi like Planet of the Apes (the original) or Logan's Run, etc.  It's the kind of movie I'd probably like to watch again just to see if I get more out of it a second time. (4/5)

NOTE:  I don't think I have watched it a second time yet, nor have I watched the TV series prequel or remake or whatever. 

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: This kind of became the franchise where popular film careers came to die.  Undeservedly so.  This was another fine Chris Pine showcase with a fun supporting cast around him.

Me:

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit:  If you don't know, Jack Ryan is the guy from the series of Tom Clancy books that began with The Hunt for Red October, when he was a nerdy CIA analyst who convinces American officials a Soviet sub is trying to defect.  Later he went on to be president or something.  In the movies he was played by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and then Ben Affleck.  This movie is a reboot of all that and who better for Paramount to star in it than Chris Pine, the star of their Star Trek reboot, right?  In a couple early scenes we see Jack Ryan drops out of school after 9/11, joins the Marines, gets shot down and badly wounded, meets his future girlfriend Cathy at Walter Reed, and then is recruited by Kevin Costner of the CIA.  That's all a prologue to 10 years later when he has to prevent an evil Russian scheme dreamed up by Kenneth Branagh, who also directs.  It was surprising how few real surprises there were in this.  (The biggest for me was the woman who looks like Keira Knightley actually is Keira Knightley!)  I mean there's no real attempt at a big twist.  You think maybe Kevin Costner will be evil (he did play a turncoat Russian agent in No Way Out) or maybe Cathy will be a turncoat like Total Recall or something.  Nah.  It's all pretty straightforward.  I suppose a warning flag was when a movie with known actors like this was released in January, the typical cesspool for Hollywood movies.  (2/5)

The Drop (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: James Gandolfini must have been a very confused man.  He received endless praise for his TV work (hey, Bryan Cranston has received the same treatment, by the way), but anytime he did a movie he couldn't find any love.  This is another movie worth considering to try and figure out why.  Tom Hardy, meanwhile, does another accent job.  A movie I personally need to revisit at some point, too.

Me:

The Drop:  This was notable for being James Gandolfini's last movie and not much else.  It's written by Dennis Lehane of Mystic River fame and that's the sort of gritty attitude it's going for, only Brooklyn instead of Boston.  Tom Hardy, aka Bane and soon Mad Max but not Rick Flagg, runs the bar while his cousin Marv (Gandolfini) supervises.  The bar is really a front for the Russian or Chechyan mob, who routinely drop payments there, hence the title.  It's kind of a slow movie, but there's sort of a twist at the end.  Still, it's kind of a forgettable movie. (2.5/5)

The Theory of Everything (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Kind of the opposite of A Beautiful Mind, this is the Stephen Hawking movie that kind of asks you to be okay with the way his marriage ended.  Colors my whole perception of the results.

Me (not being very verbose):

The Theory of Everything:  It basically felt like a far more boring version of A Beautiful Mind. (2/5)

X-Men: Days of the Future Past (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: Hugh Jackman had become bigger than the X-Men franchise from the moment he first appeared in it, but at the same time he also forever found it difficult to outlive.  This is the exact moment in which he began to succeed, and it's all the more impossible to care about anything else happening around him.  Except Quicksilver.  That was the second brilliant thing these X-Men movies did.

Me (read the full review here but this is basically the summary):

This was the type of movie where as long as you didn't think too hard about anything it was fine.  Obviously the whole point was so they could launch a broader X-Men universe, because it's not enough to have a franchise; now you need a whole cinematic universe thanks to Marvel.  I think at this point they're running second behind Marvel in that department.  We have yet to see how DC's result is going to look and Sony's just sounds awful.

Of course the next X-Men movie is due out in 2016, providing Bryan Singer isn't in jail--or probably even if he is.  I mean Brett Ratner is probably available.

The only thing going forward is I assume we'd be seeing the McAvoy and Fassbender Professor X and Magneto, not Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, which kind of sucks.  The younger actors don't have the same gravitas for obvious reasons.  Overall I'd give this a 3/5.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: I originally thought of this as the Nick Fury movie.  Then I thought of it as the elevator fight movie.  Now I guess I really just have to rewatch it, and I still think it's one of the better MCU efforts, but it's still tough to think of the whole movie as a distinct achievement.

Me:

Captain America:  The Winter Soldier:  This is largely held as the best MCU movie.  It's a fairly good thriller more than a superhero movie.  Other than the unconvincing romantic plot it's a well-done movie that really brings Captain America into the modern era.  It's just too bad they couldn't have done it before the first Avengers so the character might have been better acclimated before taking on aliens.  As far as the MCU this had a much bigger impact on the SHIELD TV show but it did introduce the new Captain America, or the Falcon, and re-introduced us to Bucky.  And Robert Redford is probably the best Marvel villain to that point not named Loki.

The Expendables 3 (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: I love how this one commits to Mel Gibson being the villain.  If he can't be a Hollywood star like he used to, he ought to at least have interesting roles available.

Me:

I didn't write an actual review, but it was pretty lame and not as good as the first one or really even the second one. (1/5)

Transformers: Age of Extinction (Laplume)

rating: ***

review: I love how these movies suddenly just dive into a dystopian future in this one.  

Me:

Age of Extinction:  Again, it'd be hard for me to describe the plot of this.  Marky Mark Wahlberg is some kind of inventor who finds a truck in an old movie theater that turns out to be Optimus Prime, who's all broken up even though all he had to do was scan another vehicle to fix himself.  Meanwhile there's some kind of plot to make Transformers that goes awry.  And some dude called Lockdown hunting other Transformers.  It was a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.  The hapless new Autobots were kind of funny but Drift was way less cool (and more racist) than the original IDW comics version, Hound was not as cool as the original TV one, and Crosshairs was nothing like the original Crosshairs.  And the Dinobots don't talk?  No "Me, Grimlock, kick butt!"?  What happened to fan service, goddamnit!?

A special note:  I rented my copy of this movie from a Redbox in Portland, Oregon and watched it in Yreka, California before taking it back to a supermarket there the next morning.

Let's Be Cops (Laplume)

rating: **

review: If Jake Johnson had significantly changed his persona from New Girl for this, he might have gone on to have an actual movie career.  Still enjoyable.

Me:

Let's Be Cops:  Amusing though overly long farce about two idiots who get mistaken for cops and end up taking on police corruption and drug dealers. (2.5/5)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Laplume)

rating: **

review: I always thought the Transformers were far too big in their movies.  And essentially it's difficult to love these movies for the same reason.  Only here, it just seems more egregious.

Me:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014):  With Michael Bay involved and Megan Fox starring, I was planning to hate this, but I didn't, which is kind of a backhanded compliment.  The turtles look kind of weird and Splinter the rat looks really gross, but otherwise it's a lot better than the last 3 Transformers movies.  The plot is fairly cliché, with a weapons designer trying to create a crisis to then solve said crisis, but it's not like you can expect a whole lot. (3/5)

Left Behind (Laplume)

rating: **

review: Kind of technically the last time Nicolas Cage was in something the studio actually expected someone to see while making it, a remake of a prior set of films based on the book series.  Too bad the whole budget was blown on Cage, although it's still interesting to think he made it at all.  In some alternate reality there're people who equally believe the whole series will be filmed someday, much like the Narnia books.

Me:

Left Behind (2014):  I knew I wouldn't like this movie but I just wanted to see how lame it was.  In 2005 if you said a movie starred Nicolas Cage and Chad Michael Murray that would be a big deal but 10 years later they've fallen far enough to star in straight-to-Redbox religious trash like this.  I never watched the probably even worse Kirk Cameron version but this mostly features a plane Nic Cage is flying when the Rapture hits.  Pretty much all the kids are beamed up (because all kids are good...lol) but otherwise it seems kind of random.  Why is an old man beamed up but not his senile wife?  Senile people are condemned to Hell?  The Rapture itself was pretty lame.  There's just a flash and people are gone, including Nic Cage's son whom his daughter is hugging and yet she for some reason spends half the movie looking for him.  Anyway, if you want to see an awesome Rapture there's a great "American Dad" episode that was far more entertaining. (1/5) 

Exodus: Gods and Kings (Laplume)

rating: ****

review: Yeah, it's Ridley Scott waxing poetic about the sad lives of great men, on a biblical scale, but for me it's always been the showcase for Joel Edgerton's best performance.

Me:

Exodus, Gods & Kings:  I was surprised at how old-fashioned this was.  Not really as much as the old Charlton Heston movies, but there was actually a “god” (played by a little kid) and no really plausible explanation for how all those plagues happened.  Kind of expected more from the guy made Prometheus and Blade Runner.  There was also a lot of old-fashioned Hollywood casual racism in casting white people Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, Sigourney Weaver, and Aaron Paul as Egyptians.  Hey, just give them a tan and black hair and it’s all good, right?  Um, yeah, right.  Seriously, you think I’d believe Jesse Pinkman as an Egyptian?  Fuck you, Ridley Scott.  Anyway, a lot of the background of Moses seems cribbed from Gladiator and Robin Hood; financially I think this did more like the latter.  As a backhanded compliment it wasn’t as asinine as Noah.  So there’s that. (2/5)

A lot of these are surprisingly similar in score, but obviously some are not.  Now we should contact Netflix and see if they'll give us a show; they'll greenlight just about anything for one season, right?