3 Days To Kill

 

In this action-thriller, Kevin Costner is a dangerous international spy, who is determined to give up his high stakes life to finally build a closer relationship with his estranged wife and daughter, whom he's previously kept at arm's length to keep out of danger. But first, he must complete one last mission - even if it means juggling the two toughest assignments yet: hunting down the world's most ruthless terrorist and looking after his teenage daughter for the first time in ten years, while his wife is out of town.

There was pretty much no real hook to this movie and it struggled to decide what kind of movie it wanted to be.  Because of those two things - the movie pretty much played out like a snoozefest.  It started out good action wise with the hitman stuff but then the action kind of went away for way too long.  They tried to do the dad with regrets reconnecting with the daughter thing but this too just ended up being annoying because they pulled so many heart strings and it all seemed so forced that I just pretty much didn't care.  The only plus in the movie was Kevin Costner's performance.  I'm never usually a fan of him but he was pretty good in this part.  Unfortunately, everything else around him was poop.

I wouldn't really recommend people bothering to check this out.  It's all pretty forced and indecisive on where it wants to go and there has to be better options out there for you to spend your time and money on.

Robocop

 

In RoboCop, the year is 2028 and multinational conglomerate OmniCorp is at the center of robot technology. Their drones are winning American wars around the globe and now they want to bring this technology to the home front. Alex Murphy (Kinnaman) is a loving husband, father and good cop doing his best to stem the tide of crime and corruption in Detroit. After he is critically injured in the line of duty, OmniCorp utilizes their remarkable science of robotics to save Alex's life. He returns to the streets of his beloved city with amazing new abilities, but with issues a regular man has never had to face before.

This was one of the more watchable remakes that we've been bombarded with over the last couple of years.  It was pretty much a straight remake with some little tweaks here and there.  It looked a lot sleeker than the orginal obviously and the action scenes were great.  The only thing that was off to me about the movie was that the movie seemed like present day-ish as opposed to in the future where the first one was clearly a "futuristic" movie.  Not sure if that makes sense or not.

I'd recommend anyone interested in seeing this to go ahead and check it out.  It's not an insult or downright awful like most other remakes have been.  It's a good watch and is exactly the type of movie that it advertises to be.

The LEGO Movie

 

The original animated story follows Emmet, an ordinary, rules-following, perfectly average LEGO minifigure who is mistakenly identified as the most extraordinary person and the key to saving the world. He is drafted into a fellowship of strangers on an epic quest to stop an evil tyrant, a journey for which Emmet is hopelessly and hilariously underprepared.

WOW!!!  By no means did I think I would walk out of this movie loving it as much as I did.  Besides the animation being amazing, the humor throughout the script was hilarious on so many levels.  Whether it was mocking legos/lego play, being a satire of regular day to day life in today's world, or the pop culture references throughout, this movie pretty much had me belly laughing throughout.  The voices were PERFECT!!!  I have been a huge fan of Chris Pratt and am so glad to see him starting to fully breakout even if it is starting via voiceover.  The guy has been the best part of Parks & Recreation on television for years and is going to become a major star in the very near future.  The guy is very talented and has a hilarious delivery.  Morgan Freeman and Will Arnett were also perfectly voice casted and funny as hell.  And then to add a total 180 degress emotional hook to the whole story - there is a very realistic and human element introduced (saying anything more would give too much away) that is introduced towards the end of the movie that takes all the laughs and turns them into a shocking attachment that you didn't even realize you really had to a story about Legos and really drives the story home. 

I absolutely recommend that everyone check this movie out.  Kids will love it (although they may not understand the scope of the humanized ending).  Adults will love it probably even more than the kids because of that ending.  This is easily my favorite movie to be released at this point in 2014.  Again - never saw me putting those words in writing. 

The Monuments Men

 

Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men is an action-thriller focusing on an unlikely World War II platoon, tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners. It would be an impossible mission: with the art trapped behind enemy lines, and with the German army under orders to destroy everything as the Reich fell, how could these guys - seven museum directors, curators, and art historians, all more familiar with Michelangelo than the M-1 - possibly hope to succeed?  But as the Monuments Men, as they were called, found themselves in a race against time to avoid the destruction of 1000 years of culture, they would risk their lives to protect and defend mankind's greatest achievements.

This is easily the best war related movie I've ever seen with pretty much no war related violence.  I've never been one to care about the arts and what not but this movie was done in such a way that they managed to make me care.  The camaraderie between the group of soldiers was very apparant from the get go and entertaining throughout.  They managed to make you laugh through som pretty serious material and you were definitely effected by their losses as well.  It was awesome to finally see Bill Murray outside of the "artistic comedy" realm.  I wish he would go back to making the movies that made him so big.

I would definitely recommend people checking this movie out.  Like I said - I've never been one for the arts or a history buff for that matter, but this movie made me very interested in both.

Nebraska

 

After receiving a sweepstakes letter in the mail, a cantankerous father (Bruce Dern) thinks he's struck it rich, and wrangles his son (Will Forte) into taking a road trip to claim the fortune. Shot in black and white across four states, Nebraska tells the stories of family life in the heartland of America.

This is one of those movies that you know is great as you are watching it because of the simplistic way of filming and non-spoken acting in family dynamics.  It's also one of those movies that I didn't find nearly as great of a watch as I knew the filmmaking was.  That's not to say it was a bad movie.  I enjoyed it and thought that the family dynamics portrayed were very honest and real.   I would say it was a good movie - but not great like most critics would promote.  The story is very simple and its really the characters in the family that carry the whole thing.  The one knock I can honestly make is that this movie did not need to be nearly 2 hours long.  They could have shaved off like 20 minutes and it would have been much better.

I would somewhat recommend people checking this out.  Again - it's not a bad movie.  It's just not a Best Picture worthy movie in my book even with the great style of simple, basic filmmaking that it went with.

Philomena

 

Based on the 2009 investigative book by BBC correspondent Martin Sixsmith, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, Philomena  focuses on the efforts of Philomena Lee (Dench), mother to a boy conceived out of wedlock - something her Irish-Catholic community didn't have the highest opinion of - and given away for adoption in the United States. In following church doctrine, she was forced to sign a contract that wouldn't allow for any sort of inquiry into the son's whereabouts. After starting a family years later in England and, for the most part, moving on with her life, Lee meets Sixsmith (Coogan), a BBC reporter with whom she decides to discover her long-lost son.

Right from the start I thought this was going to be a blatant heart string pulling movie.  I kept laughing about how they thought that they would pull the wool over the eyes and the big reveal would be that the reporter was her son and how telegraphed it ended up being.  However, I was dead wrong.  I guess the swerve was that the movie did not play out like that.  It ended up being a very touching story with two amazing characters and how they were on this journey together for very different reasons and both came away from it for the better.  As much press as Judi Dench gets just like always, Steve Coogan put forth an awesome acting performance in this movie and was so beyond believable/relatable for me. 

I would absolutely recommend people checking this movie out.  It was a very good watch and had a great hook into making you fully care about the travels of these two characters.