Kick-Ass 2

Kick-Ass 2 - 103min – R 

I was a fan of the original Kick-Ass film. This is one where Roger Ebert and I differed. He did not like the original at all. I enjoy it because it was a fun movie, even with the horrific level of violence and vulgarity in the story. Instead of repeating the same elements from the first film, this one gives us new things to think about and advances the overall story. Things escalate in this movie and if they go further with this franchise it’s going to have to escalate to epic levels of carnage. I give Kick-Ass 2 a cautionary green light, as it’s well-done, but may not be for everyone.

Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) has put away his costume and is trying to live a normal life, but it is empty and he is denying his true self by not going out and patrolling as Kick-Ass. Hit-Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) is also trying to make it as a high school student because she has made a promise to her guardian, Detective Marcus Williams (Morris Chestnut). They start out by doing what they can to keep living the civilian life. Kick-Ass, like a drug addict, can’t stay away from the life and gets Hit-Girl to teach him how to fight and improve his skill.

On the last movie Chris D’Amico’s (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) father was killed by Kick-Ass. He now wants to take revenge and become the world’s first supervillian. He makes his bodyguard, Javier (John Leguizamo), gather together a team of hitmen to become his league of evil.

Kick-Ass joins up with Colonel Stars and Stripes (JimCarrey) and his team of good guys to parole the streets. They are obviously going to have a standoff, blood will be shed. The climax of the movie was way too predictable but still a fun ride.

For this one, Matthew Vaughn moved from director to producer and gave the director’s chair to Jeff Wadlow. Wadlow’s resume is short, but impressive. Mark Millar is still involved in the writing on the project so I expected a consistent feel to the story. Big thanks to the team for moving forward with the story and not trying to rehash the original films success.

The main draw for me is how the characters are evolving, and time passes with consequences. The actions by the heroes and the villains all have a cost and this movie doesn’t let them off the hook. Do they need to make a sequel? No. But they did leave room for one if the script is right. Another installment would have to be off the charts in the violence department. You can only go higher with this kind of story. Anything smaller could threaten the franchise.

On that note Jim Carrey plays a character, who doesn’t use any guns. He uses an axe handle and a German Shepherd. They started filming before the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. Mr. Carrey has taken a strong position on gun violence in movies and because he has already completed this move was unable to pull out of the project. He decided to do no promotion for this move. He was reported as tweeting:

First tweet “I did Kickass a month b4 Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence. My apologies to e”

Second Tweet “I meant to say my apologies to others involved with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart.”

I think he has every right to take a stand and his comments were respectful and he is standing by his convictions. He said that he was initially drawn to the role because of the way that his character didn’t use any guns, however bludgeoning someone with a half inch of their life is just as violent and a damn sight more brutal.  A lack of gun doesn’t limit how violent this movie gets.

In my opinion, violence in movies doesn’t translate to violence in real life. As I write this I am just finishing listening to a report about the shooting at the Navy Yard. We have a problem in the country and it’s deeper than who feels whose rights are being trampled on. If everyone lived by this one simple policy things would go a lot smoother. Don’t be adick. Thank you Will Wheaton for providing us with a simple way of taking a look at ourselves and make sure that we are playing nice.

If you don’t stop and give in a little on an argument, you’re being a dick. If you feel that your belief is the only way that peace can be achieved, you’re being a dick. If you are too busy fear-mongering to listen to reason, you’re being a dick. If you think that all the problems can be solved by other industries changing their product but you leave yours untouched, you’re being a dick. Don’t be a dick.

If you decide that you can’t be a part of a project that you worked on so you decide not to help promote it and explain your reasons in a respectful way, you are not a dick you are Jim Carry.

How can you avoid being a dick this week?

The Debt

The Debt – 113Min – R

This one is going to be hard for me. This move has some great story elements that I do not want to spoil it for you. Let me give you this much, it was a great espionage film that had the all the right elements. The stars did a wonderful job of making the movie entertaining and the story had you on the edge of my seat a few times. The overarching subplots are quite involved and they do a decent job of keeping the past and the present characters inline. I would say that the best part of the film is the dynamic between the characters. For overall entertainment value I give it a green light.

The movie starts off with a blending of flashback and current time. The story starts to come into focus as we see a party for a book release. The book follows the actions of Rachel (Helen Mirren) Stefan (Tom Wilkinson) and David (Ciaran Hinds) when they were younger. These three Mossad agents were on a mission to capture a Nazi war criminal in East Berlin. The younger versions were played by Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, and Marton Coskas, respectively. The mission brings the three together in close quarters and under stress, they bond. The movie captures how events in the past come back to haunt the present. Everything we do has a price and sometime we must make amends

Director John Madden did a great job of taking the elements and blending the story together in an entertaining way. His films in the past, such as Shakespeare in Love to Proof, have focused more on human relationships. That experience shows in this film. This is defiantly more action-oriented than his previous films but he pulls it off.

The writing team that worked on this film’s screenplay also has an eclectic resume. Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman have worked on films like Kick Ass, X-men: First class and Stardust. Peter Straughan has worked on Men Who Stare at Goats, and How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. This list does not really ring as one that could make a leap to espionage thriller, but they do good work in this film. I do think the end of the movie has a softer climax than it should, which you can see more about under the spoiler heading, but overall the whole movie was entertaining.

I have been very pleased with the work that Focus Features has done. Many of the films I have enjoyed have come from them. Now that I have started to look at the people who make the movies, I have a new perspective. Production companies that have done a great job in movie making keep popping up. I am going to have to keep my eye out for their next projects.

Warning: Spoilers!! Top Secret!!!

One of the most gripping scenes was when they were trying to get the doctor out of Germany. I was completely nervous on that scene. it was well times and everything was paced marvelously. They paced it like a heist movie, making sure that things had to hit right or everything was going to be lost.

I like Sam Worthington He is a fine actor, but throughout the film his accent was muddled and inconsistent. He did a great job showing the emotion and delivering the suffering, but the accent made me look like the RCA victor Dog. The casting on the older version of him was a bit off as well. His older self and younger self did not play convincingly enough.

I thought that the fight with the very old Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen) and older Rachel was the failing in the ending. It is just not exciting to see them fight. I was much more concerned with her sneaking in to the news room and into the Hospital than I was with the fight. Perhaps have her meet the reporter and give him an interview after they find the Nazi dead would have been a better ending.

What is one movie that was told out of order that really entertained you? Tell me about it.

X-Men:First class

X-Men: First Class – 132Min – PG-13

While I was walking out of the movie I overheard some people saying “Sheesh! Can’t they get any comic book movie right?” Before I jump into the review I just wanted to point something out to the hardcore fans. Movies will never be just like the comic books. They are stories that are used as a starting point for films. There are so many different factors that go into making a movie that it is almost impossible to use the original storyline as an exact blueprint for films. You can read more about that later in the Movies IMHO blog. For today, I am just going to write about X-men.

X-Men: First Class tells us the story of the origins of Professor X and his school. It takes us back to the beginning even before the Professor was a professor. Learning about how the movie universe started was a good step in setting down the two different versions of the X-Men. Yes this movie takes liberties from the comic books, but it does do a good job of going back and laying out some of the past history between Professor X and Magneto. I liked watching the foundation of the war between the humans and the mutants. We see the development of the relationship and friendship that brings Charles and Eric together and how they worked with the same goal but from two completely different motivations. From an entertainment standpoint, this movie gets a green light from me. I know that some aspects were changed from the comic book but it was still an entertaining movie. Go and see it if you enjoyed any of the previous films.

We start this movie off back at the concentration camp where we see Eric Lensherr (Bill Milner) as a boy use his powers for the first time. It’s important to see the back ground of how Magneto (Michael Fassbender) became the person he is. We see how his life has shaped his outlook on life. Charles Xavier (Laurence Belcher) has a completely different origin and it’s interesting to see how the dynamic between these two friends evolves. Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto started a mutant movement with one ideal in mind but have two different concepts on how that should be accomplished. This movie also shows us the creation of the rift between friends and between mutants and humans. I see this movie as not an attempt to bring it closer to the books but more of a prequel to the movies’ storyline.

We also get to see how some of the other characters get their start, we see Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) or Beast as he is know in the X-men, Raven or Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) gets an introduction, Kevin Bacon plays Sebastian Shaw the leader of the Hellfire Club. All of the performances were done well and the casting was great. Some of the characters they highlighted were either obscure or unknown to me. Azazel (Jason Flemyng) was a small character in the books. And I had never heard of Riptide (Alex Gonzalez). Angel was played by Zoe Kravitz and she was great, but I never heard of her character before.

The Director (Matthew Vaughn) did a good job of bringing this story to life. I have seen one of his other movies, Kick-Ass and enjoyed it. As far as an adaptation for a comic book story goes it was pretty spot-on for most of the movie’s elements. They had a great cast and a director who had a clear vision of what he wanted to relay. Vaughn’s cinematic timing is also good, we did not have an over use of mutant powers at the beginning of the film they build to a climatic end. John Mathieson who has been the cinematographer on several great movies is at the camera on this movie and it proves to be a good investment. Matheson’s eye for composition is great. One of my personal favorite films of his is K-PAX. Loved it.

I am going to go over some specific scenes that I really liked in the movie but I am hiding them under this Warrning Link below so I don’t give away any spoilers.

WARNING!! THERE BE SPOILIERS HERE!!

One of the most touching scenes and makes me feel almost bad for Eric is when Charles shows him how to tap into his power. The way they did that was really good, it allowed us as viewers to get behind Eric’s tough exterior and let us see how much pain he is still in.

One of the others is sticking with me is how close Raven and Charles were, I have not followed the books but I think this is a huge departure from the comics. I liked watching her start out with the ideals of Charles but ending up facing the reality that Eric presented her. Again, it gave me more of a connection to her as a person than just a bad guy.

Rose Byrne did a great job as the token human in the group; she played a CIA agent who is a characterization of who she was in the books, but still an advocate for mutant human relations. I did not want to mention her in the main review I thought her new role would have been a spoiler for some.

There are others but I just wanted to test out this feature incase I really wanted to talk about the movies in detail and still keep the spoilers away from people who do not want them.

Ok this week’s question is going to be, what side are you on, do you side with Magneto and side with The Brotherhood of Mutants, or are you with Professor X’s X-Men? Let me know what team and why in the comments.