Prisoners

This movie starred Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenwhatsits.  Jake plays a cop with a neck tattoo.  I didn't think that was very realistic, and kind of pulled me out of the film.  But other than that it was an interesting film with twists that caught me off guard.  I usually have a hunch about what is going to happen in a movie and was pleasantly surprised to find out my hunch was wrong about this movie. They make you think one character is a bad guy but it turns out he is just a troubled victim.  Interesting.  David Dastmalchian does a great job in this movie.  He plays the troubled victim.  Of course Hugh Jackman's character mistakenly kidnaps someone after his daughter is kidnapped so maybe the theme of the film is mistaken kidnappings.  I enjoyed the rationalization of the actual culprit that they wanted to teach parents that god was bad after their son had died.  Victims being victimized by police and by the parents of the victims.

Lee Daniel's The Butler

This movie was an interesting overview of the Civil Rights movement in the US from the 50s through to today.  The film was inspired by a Washington Post article written about the White House butlers and their take on Barack Obama being elected president.  Forest Whitaker did an amazing performance as a long suffering fellow.  Oprah Winfrey was his pain in the ass wife.  Whitaker's. character showed the travails of the 30s through to the 50s.  His two sons were used as vehicles to show the 60s through to the present.

Elysium

This movie was made by the same fellow that did District 9, that was amazing, Neill Blomkamp, a South African.  This film was political in that it centered on health care and the inequality of its distribution.

The story is about a guy, Matt Damon's character, that gets a lethal dose of radiation at his scary industrial job, and does whatever he can to save himself, but he also learns that an old flame's child is sick too, and works to save her as well.  Damon uses an exoskeleton to help his deteriorating body.

What I really enjoyed about District 9 was the way the interesting world was revealed to us.  I wish that there was more of that in Elysium.  There was a scene where Matt Damon's character goes to his parole officer and that parole officer is a robot.  That is the kind of interesting stuff I would like to have seen more of.  I look forward to more movies from Blomkamp.  

Also the film locations that Blomkamp uses are very unique, Soweto for District 9 and I think a dump outside of Mexico City for Elysium.  He should do some filming in Detroit before they clean it up too much.

I think that this movie was a little too Hollywood in the end, the little girl gets cured.

The Wolverine

I have to admit that whenever I think of wolverine I think of the movie Red Dawn when the Ruskies invade 'Murica, and the high school mascot of the high school kids is a wolverine.  There is that scene where they all yell Wolverine.

But this is a movie about mutant wolverine that can't seem to croak and is indestructible.  In this movie a Japanese fellow, that Wolverine had previously saved during double u double u 2, that same fellow Wolverine saved from the atom bomb, tries to steal Wolverines powers and kill Wolverine in the process.

Of course there is some devious mutant that poisons Wolverine, and everyone seems to have guns in Japan, as if Japan were 'Murica with gun shops on every street corner, "I'll take some sushi, a pack of cigs, and an Uzi to go please."

This ends in typical Hollywood fashion, bad guy dead, good guy alive and with all kinds of girls fawning over him as he heads off into the sunset in a fancy jet.  Yeah!  Wolverine!

But don't leave yet, they give you a hint about the next Xman flick.

Pacific Rim

This was a very fun movie.  I have always loved the old Godzilla movies and the idea of Kajou.  I think this movie caught some of the weirdness from the originals.  I always enjoyed baby Godzilla and they hinted at this idea, and they also had very interesting characters.  One part that was interesting was the little Japanese girl that cried, Mana Ashida.  We watch Japanese dramas and that girl always cries in the show that she is in, so when we saw the trailer and saw that she was in the movie, we figured there would be weakness water coming out of her eyes, and sure enough there was.  It made me think of all the times I cried as a child and wished that I could've made money from those tears.  Charlie Day and Charlie Hunnam were good in this movie, Day's character was very interesting and sufficiently strange.

Star Trek: into darkness

Khan!  Is some white guy?  I liked Ricardo Montalbahn as Kahn in the previous version.  Nice accent, and he showed his passion for his people. It is too bad they did not use someone like Benicio del Toro or Javier Bardem for this role.  It would have referenced the older movie, respected the previous choices made.  I think their choice for Khan made the movie less memorable.  But it was still a decent movie, although it makes me worry about the choices they will make on Star Wars.

Zero Dark Thirty

This movie just pissed me off.  I was just interested in the killing of Osama Bin Laden, not all the fuck ups by our intelligence community.  The first half of the movie should have been videos of George Bush holding hands with our Saudi Arabian allies, then showing the nationality of the 9/11 attackers, mostly Saudis, then the invasion of Iraq, maybe some cut scenes showing the bank accounts of the family members of the 9/11 attackers increasing with Saudi money, then after about an hour of that stuff, give us the mission to kill Bin Laden.

But no, let's sit and watch bumbling bumble bees.  It would've been better to just show the Navy Seals train for an hour.  Saudi Arabia should be a parking lot.