Justin Cox Presents:

Year in Movies: May

Blah, blah, blah. Year in Movies. Blah, blah, blah.

Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder
This is the final of the four Futurama movies and it’s certainly feels like it. It’s a story that follows a group of feminist eco-terrorists that are trying to do something. I don’t really remember but it has to do with Mars. Anyway, once again Fry is the only person in the universe that has the ability to prevent the end of the world — there’s a few jokes made about that which I liked. The whole cast and crew is there and the film ends the series in style — well, not really. The ending leaves everything up in the air and makes me miss the actual series finale, “The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings,” which is a work of brilliance. It’s alright, but not wonderful.
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Get Smart
When I was a kid I was a huge fan of the old Get Smart reruns. The goofy spy who talked into his shoe and entered his base through a phonebooth was a lot of fun to watch. In this remake Steve Carell plays Maxwell Smart and the lovely Anne Hathaway plays Agent 99. The writing is great and Steve Carell’s comedic timing is perfect, as per usual. There’s a few nods to other spy/espionage/clandestine movies, notably the laser scene from Entrapment. I was laughing throughout the movie and enjoyed every bit of it.
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Taken
There’s one thing about Liam Neeson that is more true than anything else: he’s got massive hands. I first realized this while watching Les Miserables in high school. There’s a scene where he basically palms Cosette’s head and considering she was played by Claire Danes that’s saying a lot. After watching Taken I’ve realized another thing about Liam Neeson: he’s awesome. Taken is about an ex-CIA something whose daughter is kidnapped while vacationing in Paris. Neeson then goes to Paris and kills a lot of people while trying to get her back. The movie was written by Luc Besson so of course it’s basically awesome from the start. Go watch it, that’s about all I have to say. Oh, but someone needs to tell Maggie Grace that playing a teenager means more than just running around and hugging everyone by the neck. Good thing she’s only in about twelve minutes of the movie.
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The Mexican
A girl I knew in college told me to watch this movie so I did, four years later. It’s about a gun that Brad Pitt is supposed to steal. The bad guys send Tony Soprano James Gandolfini to watch over Pitt’s girlfriend, Julia Roberts. There’s a few wacky things that happen and a few filming gimmicks — like the traffic light — but overall the film is done in by the plot. It’s almost as if they tried to hard to write in the double and triple cross and didn’t pay enough attention to the story they were actually telling. Then, in the end, the actual story is told in about three minutes right before the film’s climax.
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Terminator: Salvation
As a friend of mine said:

Terminator 1 was good, Terminator 2 was really good, Terminator 3 was pretty good so Terminator 4 should be really, pretty good.

It’s a logic that makes sense and in actuality I guess it’s also true. T4 was “good” in the sense it was an entertaining movie. It didn’t, however, really have any significance in the overall Terminator story line. One of my friends told me that McG, the director, basically said the film was pointless in an interview but I couldn’t find it. There were a lot of flaws and some people are asking whose to blame, I’ll point the finger at Christian Bale for being a pre-madona and forcing a rewrite of the whole thing. Don’t let all this fool you, the movie isn’t horrible. It’s a solid and entertaining action flick that just doesn’t really seem to fit into the overall Terminator line. Maybe McG’s 30+ minutes of deleted scenes will change the overall tone of the film and make it a little more worthwhile.
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Serenity
Because FOX completely mistreated and mishandled Firefly from the start the series ended without any proper closure. River had just awoken and brought a whole bunch of interesting story possibilities that would never see light. Fortunately, the Browncoats rose up and Universal gave Serenity a final mission. The movie starts showing what could have been: River being taken on jobs to serve as protection for Mal and co. But the real story the movie focuses on is the dark secrets that River has trapped in her head that the Alliance so badly wants. It’s a pretty quality movie in it’s own right, but watched at the end of rewatching Firefly it’s the perfect series finale.
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Choke
Chuck Palahniuk, the author who gave us Fight Club, is the author who also wrote Choke. Like Fight Club and Survivor, another of his books, Choke features a darker look at the world then we’re probably used to and explores some twisted characters. Choke is about love and a man’s quest to discover who he is. Because Palahniuk wrote it it’s a lot more complicated than that, but you get the idea. Sam Rockwell stars and, if you’ve never seen Rockwell in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind you don’t know what you’re missing — he plays slightly disturbed and borderline psychotic extremely well. Choke has some funny moments and, like all of Palahniuk’s works, an interesting twist you don’t see coming. Check it out if you’re into his other works.
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