Beginners

Beginners (2011)

Directed and written by Mike Mills

Stars: Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, Mélanie Laurent, Goran Visnjic and Mary Page Keller

Hello, my tens of readers out there in cyberspace. It has been awhile, hasn't it? I recently has a stint of working for eight days straight and I needed time to recover. I saw that Mike Mills' movie Beginners was On Demand. I saw the acclaim it got for Plummer who won Best Supporting Actor eariler this year. The movie is... well, there.

The movie follows the relationship between Oliver (McGregor) and his father, Hal (Plummer) as he is dying of lung cancer. That is basically what happens in the movie. The presentation of the film is a series of flashbacks when Hal came out as a gay man and started living the "gay lifestyle", before he was diagnosed.

Some of the story deals with Oliver meeting Anna (Laurent) at a costume party where they are immediately attracted to each other. They are both damaged people from broken homes. Geez, I don't how to properly review this movie without giving away spoilers.

My opinion on the movie was that it was trying hard to be a Woody Allen movie. It has a whimsical feel to it. I thought the chemistry between McGregor and Laurent was very good. Okay, let's be honest. I was goo-goo gaga over McGregor in this movie. He was mopey and downtrodden which made him exponentially hot.

I thought I would rave about this movie when I get to write it, but I felt that the movie was not memorable to me. Did Christopher Plummer deserve the Oscar for his portrayal? Personally, no. I think it was a career Oscar like some many actors are getting these days. They would get an Oscar for a blah performance because they were screwed over in previous year. I think that the award show hype machine is getting outta hand. They award people that have the most buzz instead of having the best performance of year. This is one person's opinion.

My Rating:

The Avengers

Marvel's The Avengers (2012)

Directed by Joss Whedon

Written by Joss Whedon

Story by Zak Penn & Joss Whedon

Based on the comic book series by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby

Stars: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johannsson, Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Renner, Mark Ruffalo, Clark Gregg, Cobie Smulders, Stellan Skarsgård and Tom Hiddleston

Currently #31 of the Top 250 Films of All Time on IMDb (as of this posting.)

Can I just say that I love being a geek? I love being a geek. I have getting into comic books in the past couple of years. I know the lore of the Marvel and DC characters. When I heard that The Avengers was coming. I literally had a nerdgasm. Further, when I heard that Joss Whedon was directing the film, I shouted, "Hallelujah." I will make this claim that Joss Whedon is God to me. There I said it. Being that I was busy with my unpredictable work schedule, I had time to watch the film yesterday. I made me giddy like a schoolgirl.

I wanted to say this upfront, I did not see Captain America before seeing this film. I knew the lore already and I didn't want to be disappointed in the lead up to this movie like I did with Thor or Iron Man 2. Going into the movie I did not want to be spoiled by anything that happened in the movie. I avoided the internet, review shows, anything. I wanted to go into this movie drawing my own conclusion.

Here is the setup, after Loki's (Hiddleston) defeat by the hands of Thor (Hemsworth) he is sent to deep space where he tries to harness the powers of a magical cube called the Tesseract that would lead a race of alien warriors called the Chitauri to destroy the Earth. In order to do that Loki teleports to S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters to take it with the help of controlling Hawkeye (Renner) and Dr. Erik Selvig (Skarsgård) to make his escape. Nick Fury (Jackson) determines that it is an act of intergalactic war. He needs to reinstate the Avengers Initiative which would be Earth's mightiest heroes together for the defending our planet. Black Widow (Johannson) and Agent Coulson (Gregg) search the planet to bring together, the egoistical genius Iron Man (Downey Jr), the demigod Thor, the Hulk (Ruffalo) and the First Avenger Captain America (Evans).

My honest opinion is that this movie is awesome. I would say that it was like the first Iron Man movie where my mouth was open in awe. There were some cool things that happened in this movie that I can't give away, but you'll know them when you see them. The team had there moments to shine and everybody had a purpose to be there. I'm glad that Loki was more evil in this movie than he was in Thor, because he was a whiny idiot that cried about being in Thor's shadow. He became heartless against humanity. The movie is almost two and half hours long. I thought that there were some moments that could have be cut out. Other than that, I had a blast with the movie. The small tease after the credits go me going about what will happen next.

My Rating: