Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Actors:  Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina

Rating:  7 out of 10, A Disney swashbuckler so we’re not curing cancer or anything here but it still provides an entertaining romp through ancient Iran with English accented (even the Americans) heroes and villains.  I’m told this is an adaption of a popular video game (completely out of my sphere on that) and you could see the efforts to connect the lead character’s antics with video game level gymnastics.  All that being said Gyllenhaal is a fascinating lead here, he’s really good as an action hero and I saw Dallas Buyer’s Club a few weeks ago.  To say the transition is startling would be a vast understatement.  There’s very little chemistry with Arterton but there’s a very accomplished stable of supporting actors to help carry a long movie.  It’s Disney, not deep, but action packed, silly, and enjoyable. 

MVP:  Jake Gyllenhaal as Prince Dastan shows some real panache

Odd Thomas

Actors:  Anton Yelchin , Willem Dafoe, Addison Timlin, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Nico Tortorella, Shuler Hensley, Kyle McKeever

Rating:  9 out of 10, A movie that totally snuck up on me.  A fairly low budget horror/thriller featuring a clairvoyant cook with supernatural powers to see the dead. He must confront a serious threat to his desert home town and uses his power to track down the evil dudes.  This really shouldn’t work but it does because of a truly engaging cast led by Yelchin, ably supported by Dafoe and Timlin.  The fresh take of the police actually buying into the mystical powers and using them was interesting.   A total surprise at how well this movie was and why I’d never heard of it before.

MVP:  Yelchin effortlessly carries the movie as Odd, seems capable of much bigger things

Last Vegas

Actors:  Robert Deniro, Morgan Freeman, Michael Douglas, Kevin Kline, Mary Steenburgen

Rating:  8 out of 10, I liked Last Vegas mainly because it has three of the best actors around as well as Michael Douglas. It was like one of the Hangover movies with a Viagra laced wolf pack. The story involved four lifelong friends now in their seventies who link up in Las Vegas for a bachelor party as the lone holdout, Douglas, finally gets married. There’s some very funny stuff here as the codger factor is applied to the youthful excesses of Sin City. All of these actors are superb and when you throw Mary Steenburgen into the mix you’re guaranteed an excellent movie. This isn’t very deep and it looked like they all had fun poking fun at themselves and their advancing age.

MVP:  Freeman as the very lucky enabler of the bunch

Delivery Man

Actors:  Vince Vaughn, Chris Pratt, Colbie Smulders.

Rating:  8 out of 10, This surprised the heck out of me. I went in expecting an over the top comedy centered around a guy who finds out that he’s the father of over 500 grown kids due to a vigorous policy of sperm donations twenty years before. It turned out to be a really nice film about a guy finding himself, connecting with life in general and the importance of family. Vince Vaughn portrays the prodigious procreator and finally tones it down enough to be genuinely likable. It’s the best thing he’s done in years and shows some real heart.

MVP:  Vaugh as the semi-hapless Starbuck who grows up at 40

300, Rise of an Empire

Actors:  Lena Headey, Rodrigo Santoro, David Wenham, Andrew Tiernan, Andrew Pleavin, Sullivan Stapleton, Eva Green, Hans Matheson, Callan Mulvey, Jack O'Connell

Rating:  8 out of 10, Everything you think it would be – heads flying off, bodices ripped open, and sexual encounters in the middle of battle – all so highly “realistic”.  It picks up the story directly adjacent to and after the battle of Thermopylae as Xerxes descends on Greece and focuses on the Athenians this time instead of the Spartans.  It was cool to see Strikeback’s SGT Damien Scott (Sullivan Stapleton) playing Themistocles – he looks to have a bright future as he was completely at home on the big screen.  The filmmakers went in a different direction this time trying to woo female viewers (guys were a sure bet).  In the first movie it was lingering shots of male abdominal six packs that were almost homo-erotic.  They abandoned that for some kick ass female characters that were stabbing and decapitating along with their male counterparts.  Eva Green plays the villain and is carving out a real niche as a spookily evil temptress “type” (I was going to but didn’t use the b-word – daughter’s influence again).  This movie was all about making the blood spurts as dramatic as possible (3D, don’t you know) and frantically maintaining a bare fingernail hold on the real history of the events.  It was a lot of harmless fun (except if you were in the Persian navy at Salamis) if not taken too seriously; exactly what I expected and I loved it.

MVP:  Stapleton showing some real screen presence as Themistocles

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Actors:  Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Shirley MacLaine, Adam Scott, Kathryn Hahn,

Sean Penn, Patton Oswalt

Rating:  8 out of 10, The best that can be said of this is repeating the wise words of my daughter, Ben Stiller is no Danny Kaye.  The movie was startlingly beautiful though  in the location shots of off the beaten places like Greenland, Iceland, and the Himalayas.  Those parts were so well done that it was almost like visiting them.  This is the third time I’ve watched this film and it grows in my estimation each time.  The gaping plot holes don’t distract from the amazing canvas the scenes of Walter’s travels are painted on.  Those scenes are devastatingly beautiful and worth the price of the contrived plot.  It’s always tough to remake a classic and this movie is eminently watchable but I guess I may have expected too much from it. 

MVP:  Stiller underplays his usual over the top personae and shows depth as Walter 

Neverending Story 2

Actors:  Jonathan Brandis, Kenny Morrison, Alexandra Johnes, Thomas Hill

John Wesley Shipp, Martin Umbach , Clarissa Burt

Rating:  5 out of 10, Since the first one was successful Hollywood sunk its claws into the sequel and tried to make the exact same movie.  This time Bastian spends most of the movie in Fantasia where they’re fighting the “Emptiness” instead of the “Nothing”.  The huge flying dog and Atreyu are back but this one can’t hold a candle to the original, even with the extra dollars obviously spent.  A story of kindergartners doesn’t translate well to teen-aged angst. 

MVP:  Clarissa Burt as the evil witch Xayide 

Neverending Story

Actors:  Barret Oliver, Noah Hathaway, Tami Stronach, Moses Gunn, Thomas Hill,  Alan Oppenheimer

Rating:  6 out of 10, I bought this on a whim fondly remembering watching this with my kids when they were very young.  I remembered a good, if child-centric story with a cool flying dog.  The age of CGI has not been kind to the special effects and it struggled to hold my attention without a rapt five year old at my side.  It’s a German story forced into an American milieu which led to some strange scenes but the child actors in this were very good.  It’s the story of the mythical land of Fantasia led by the Childlike Empress who’s struggling against a force called the “Nothing” with able child warrior Atreyu (very cool name). Fantasia is linked to the real world through a book and a bullied young Bastian finds the book and is drawn into the world of Fantasia.  I guess I’m going to wait for grandchildren to enjoy this movie again.   

MVP:  Hathaway as the warrior Atreyu, always surprised he didn’t turn out to be a star as an adult, ton of screen presence at an early age