The 2013 Summer Movie Preview – Part 2

Ok, everyone, here we go! The second half of the Summer slate for 2013! There’s plenty of big movies in store, and of course, a handful of DOAs.

Click through to check out the second half of this Summer!

Lawless

In the hills of Franklin County, Virginia during Prohibition, a trio of brothers distill moonshine in the woods and smuggle it into the big city and sell it to organized crime. When a new special deputy is appointed for the area, things begin to get heated. Violence and drama ensue as the brothers struggle against the law and try to romance the ladies, all in the course of trying to build their white lightning empire.

It’s a pretty basic story, but all of the performers do a pretty admirable job, and the combination of period piece and gangster element is always a plus in my book. “Lawless” is no threat to make my Top Ten this year, by any means, but it did wind up a surprisingly entertaining time at the movies for me.

The 2012 Fall Movie Preview – Part I

With this weekend’s release of “The Expendables 2” and “ParaNorman”, the summer movie season is pretty much over. One weekend remains in August, and those movies wont have much room to run before school is back in session.

Nope, the season of the big blockbuster is behind us. It’s time to look ahead to the fall.

Not to despair, though, the fall brings sharp movies for the thinking movie fan. Movies which may have more selective box office appeal, but which may be some of the best movies all year.

So click through to take a look at the first part of this year’s fall preview. Today we’ll look at the last week of August, plus September, and then we’ll come back tomorrow with October and the first week of November. Together they’ll take us right up to the start of the Holiday movie season, and the November 9th release of Skyfall!

The Dark Knight Rises

“The Dark Knight Rises” is the concluding chapter to Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, the movie series that resurrected the moribund Batman franchise. Having given us the excellent “Batman Begins” and the legendary “The Dark Knight Rises”, the bar was set high for the grand finale, so one can hardly blame Nolan for wanting to give us something grandiose and epic for the final chapter.

And to a large extent, he succeeds. There’s plenty of Batman angst here, a sprawling cast of characters, a worthy adversary, and the city is certainly in peril. Yet the movie is so serious it’s smothering, there’s a dearth of action, and the “epicness” occasionally crosses the line into bloat.

There’s a very well made movie here, but I didn’t enjoy it half as much as I had hoped to.

Now Showing on Cable: “Red Riding Hood”

HBO’s premiere movie this weekend was this Spring’s “Red Riding Hood”, starring Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Virginia Madsen and Shiloh Fernandez.

“Red Riding Hood” is a full length movie, based on the classic fairy tale. The fairy tale, as everyone knows, isn’t all that long… it’s pretty much three scenes tops, right? Red Riding Hood walking to Grandma’s and meeting the Wolf, the Wolf racing ahead to Grandma’s before her, and then the climactic “What big eyes you have” and the rescue by the Huntsman.

As such, they had to expand the mythology a little in order to flesh out a feature-length film.

I’m certain a thousand reviewers have made a wide variety of plays off of the classic quote, but I can’t help myself… I have to say, “My, what a silly movie you have!”

2011 Holiday Movie Season Preview!!

This year, the start of the Holiday Movie season is November 18^th. That’s NEXT weekend already folks!! That’s when Hollywood releases “Happy Feet Two” and “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1”, two movies with valid expectations of large takes at the gate. The start of the second blockbuster season of the year!

Here are the movies coming up this Holiday Season that I’m most excited for. Check out Wednesday, December 21^st! “The Adventures of Tintin”, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”, and “Mission Impossible, Ghost Protocol”! That’s going to be a busy day!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

I think that everyone here realizes that this is the finale chapter in a long running series and not just a stand alone movie. Thus it carries with it the burdens of expectations and anticipation, but it also benefits from pre-established characters, settings, backstory, etc. etc. The question to me going in was not so much how was this movie, but how well does this movie end the entire franchise?

The answer?

Freaking Awesomely. This movie was so explosively good that I have to retroactively increase my respect for the franchise as a whole. If I had known things were building to THIS? I’d have paid much more attention to “Harry Potter and the Stone Goblet of the Azkaban Phoenix.”