As Above So Below


Miles of twisting catacombs lie beneath the streets of Paris, the eternal home to countless souls. When a team of explorers ventures into the uncharted maze of bones, they uncover the dark secret that lies within this city of the dead. A journey into madness and terror, As Above, So Below reaches deep into the human psyche to reveal the personal demons that come back to haunt us all.

At this point I'm pretty much done with the "found footage" horror movies.  They really need to stop making these or make them few and far between instead of one every 2-3 months.  The theater has become saturated with them and they are pretty much all the same.  This movie took what felt like forever to get to the good stuff.  Once it did - there were a couple of really good parts for a "found footage" movie.  You still had that annoying thing of not really being able to see what is happening in the most intense scenes but the parts were they worked around that were better than most of these types of movies.  The ending fell flat just like pretty much all of these movies do.

I wouldn't really recommend anyone bothering with this movie.  It's not the worst of these kinds of movies.  I would put it right around the middle of the pack or a little higher due to a couple of really good scenes.  But it's still not something that you need to rush out there to theaters to see.

The November Man


Code named 'The November Man,' Peter Devereaux (Pierce Brosnan) is a lethal and highly trained ex-CIA agent, who has been enjoying a quiet life in Switzerland. When Devereaux is lured out of retirement for one last mission, he must protect valuable witness, Alice Fournier, (Olga Kurylenko). He soon uncovers this assignment marks him a target of his former friend and CIA protégé David Mason (Luke Bracey). With growing suspicions of a mole in the agency, there is no one Devereaux can trust, no rules and no holds barred.

This movie was a somewhat decent watch.  The problem is that it was supposed to be a political espionage suspense type of movie and there was nothing that you didn't see coming whatsoever.  You could see everything coming ten miles away that it started to drag after a while as you had to wait for the dots to be connected that you already knew would be.  Pierce Brosnan was good but the rest of the cast was pretty lame.  This probably could have been much better with a better cast and tighter story telling.

I wouldn't really recommend people wasting their time seeing this.  You can just catch this one cable or something if you really have nothing to do and it happens to be on.

When The Game Stands Tall


Inspired by a true story, When the Game Stands Tall tells the remarkable journey of legendary football coach Bob Ladouceur (Jim Caviezel), who took the De La Salle High School Spartans from obscurity to a 151-game winning streak that shattered all records for any American sport.

This was a textbook sports movie.  Lots of melodrama and adversity for the players and coaches to deal with both on and off the field.  Will they rise above it all?  If you saw the trailer, you pretty much saw the movie as it is formula in every way.  That being said, I am a sucker for these movies and this one was no different.

I would somewhat recommend people checking this movie out.  It's not a must see by any means.  It is an enjoyable sports movie though for people that like those.

Sin City: A Dame To Kill For


Co-directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller reunite to bring Miller's visually stunning "Sin City" graphic novels back to the screen in Sin City: A Day to Kill For. Weaving together two of Miller's classic stories with new tales, the town's most hard boiled citizens cross paths with some of its more notorious inhabitants.

This movie was pretty much exactly like the first one.  The stories and characters are pretty much taken right from the comic books.  But the movie is not about them as much as it is about the film style.  Its just as great in this one as it was in the first one.  It's so surreal and cartoonish but with real actors.  The whole thing really is amazing.  

I would recommend anyone who enjoyed the first one or was really into the visual look of the first one.  I don't have much else to say because thats really all these movies are to me.  Glorious filming style.

The Giver


The story of The Giver centers on Jonas (Brenton Thwaites), a young man who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Yet as he begins to spend time with The Giver (Jeff Bridges), who is the sole keeper of all the community's memories, Jonas quickly begins to discover the dark and deadly truths of his community's secret past. With this newfound power of knowledge, he realizes that the stakes are higher than imagined - a matter of life and death for himself and those he loves most. At extreme odds, Jonas knows that he must escape their world to protect them all - a challenge that no one has ever succeeded at before.

This was another movie about a future society based on a young adult novel.  The whole set up seemed very similar to The Hunger Games and Divergent and that should really make me sick of these movies by this point.  Yet I'm not for some unknown reason.  I like these movies even though they seem like knock offs of each other.  Not sure if that's a reflection of my views of society and how I think the future will shape up or if I just have some sort of patience for this.  The cast in this was good although I think they could have actually done more with the three teenage friends dynamic.  Meryl Streep was no necessary and seemed out of place but Jeff Bridges was perfect and great as always.  I did not read this book so I can 't really account for the book vs movie debate.

I liked this movie.  I would not say loved it or that it is a must see.  Not nearly as good as The Hunger Games or Divergent in my opinion but still a pretty decent watch.  I would somewhat recommend people checking this out.

Let's Be Cops


It's the ultimate buddy cop movie except for one thing: they're not cops. When two struggling pals dress as police officers for a costume party, they become neighborhood sensations. But when these newly-minted “heroes” get tangled in a real life web of mobsters and dirty detectives, they must put their fake badges on the line. 

This was a pretty simple concept and should have been a pretty basic movie with good laughs especially considering the two lead actors.  These guys are absolutely hysterical on New Girl so you knew that the chemistry would already be there.  Instead, they tried to infuse too much of a story that there is no way you are going to get that invested in emotionally because you only went to laugh.  This also made the movie too long.  This should have been 90 minutes at most and off the wall comedy from start to finish.  This is not to say that the movie was bad.  The laughs were great - especially if you like these two guys.  But there was a lot of down time in between that kind of made the movie fall into the decent range instead of being good or great.

I would somewhat recommend this movie - again especially to fans of the show New Girl.  You will definitely not be disappointed.  Just be aware that it is not as funny as it could have been and runs a little too long.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles


The city needs heroes. Darkness has settled over New York City as Shredder and his evil Foot Clan have an iron grip on everything from the police to the politicians. The future is grim until four unlikely outcast brothers rise from the sewers and discover their destiny as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Turtles must work with fearless reporter April O'Neil (Megan Fox) and her wise-cracking cameraman Vern Fenwick (Will Arnett) to save the city and unravel Shredder's diabolical plan.

This was one of the better all around reboots to come out of Hollywood in a long time.  I loved the turtles growing up and was beyond skeptical when I heard that they were going to reboot this.  When I first saw the trailers, I got even more skeptical because the turtles looked totally jacked up and their faces just didn't seem right.  Regardless, I was excited to see this and although the way that they looked annoyed me, that annoyance wore off as the movie went on.  Besides, the awfulness of how Splinter looked and the over the topness of Shredder (he was like part Transformer and part Edward Scissorhands) made the annoyance of the steroided up turtles the least of my annoyances compared to how they were.  With all of that being said - everything else about the movie was great.  The build up was quick paced and easy enough to follow.  The action was awesome - especially the whole scene on the snowy mountain. That 15 minutes alone would be worth the price of admission.  The comedy was still there - especially from Michaelangelo and they did an awesome job of getting all the turtles the same amount of screen time and showing their different personalities well enough. 

I would definitely recommend people checking this out.  It will be fun for the whole family. The adults who like them when they first came out will enjoy this as much as the children of theirs that they are taking to see them on the big screen for the first time. 

The Hundred Foot Journey


In The Hundred-Foot Journey, Hassan Kadam (Manish Dayal) is a culinary ingénue with the gastronomic equivalent of perfect pitch. Displaced from their native India, the Kadam family, led by Papa (Om Puri), settles in the quaint village of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val in the south of France. Filled with charm, it is both picturesque and elegant – the ideal place to settle down and open an Indian restaurant, the Maison Mumbai. That is, until the chilly chef proprietress of Le Saule Pleureur, a Michelin starred, classical French restaurant run by Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren), gets wind of it. Her icy protests against the new Indian restaurant a hundred feet from her own escalate to all out war between the two establishments – until Hassan's passion for French haute cuisine and for Mme. Mallory's enchanting sous chef, Marguerite (Charlotte Le Bon), combine with his mysteriously delicious talent to weave magic between their two cultures and imbue Saint-Antonin with the flavors of life that even Mme. Mallory cannot ignore. At first Mme. Mallory's culinary rival, she eventually recognizes Hassan's gift as a chef and takes him under her wing.

Honestly, this is one of those you saw the trailer you saw the movie type of watches.  There is nothing that surprises you or that you don't see coming.  That being said, it was still a very enjoyable watch.  This was a great movie about the importance of family and respecting other's cultures.  It is a great example of letting go of being so set in your ways and how greatness can really be found or experienced if you will let it in even if it is from where you least expect it. 

I would definitely recommend people checking this movie out.  It was a really great watch with great performances across the board.  You definitely leave the theater feeling good and you care about the paths of all the characters from beginning to end.


Get On Up


In his follow-up to the four-time Academy Award-nominated blockbuster The Help, Tate Taylor directs 42's Chadwick Boseman as James Brown in Get on Up.  Based on the incredible life story of the Godfather of Soul, the film will give a fearless look inside the music, moves and moods of Brown, taking audiences on the journey from his impoverished childhood to his evolution into one of the most influential figures of the 20th century.

This was a good and entertaining biographical movie.  There were a lot more laughs than I expected.  Chadwick Boseman is once again lights out playing a legendary figure.  The back and forth in James Brown's timeline was frustrating at first but it grew on me and they did a great job of portraying James Brown and showing where he came from.  And needless to say - the music was great.  

I would recommend people checking this out.  It's not a must see by any means.  But it's definitely a good and entertaining watch.

Life After Beth


Zach (Dane DeHaan) is devastated by the unexpected death of his girlfriend, Beth (Aubrey Plaza). But when she miraculously comes back to life, Zach takes full advantage of the opportunity to share and experience all the things he regretted not doing with her before.  However, the newly returned Beth isn't quite how he remembered her and, before long, Zach's whole world takes a turn for the worse.

The premise of the movie was great and so was Aubrey Plaza but the rest of the movie felt flat and failed to fully keep my attention or caring as it played out.  This could have been really great if it wasn't an artsy/independent movie.

I wouldn't really recommend anyone bothering with this.  I was pretty excited from the trailer but ended up pretty disappointed .

Into The Storm


In the span of a single day, the town of Silverton is ravaged by an unprecedented onslaught of tornadoes. The entire town is at the mercy of the erratic and deadly cyclones, even as storm trackers predict the worst is yet to come. Most people seek shelter, while others run towards the vortex, testing how far a storm chaser will go for that once-in-a-lifetime shot. Told through the eyes and lenses of professional storm chasers, thrill-seeking amateurs, and courageous townspeople, Into the Storm throws you directly into the eye of the storm to experience Mother Nature at her most extreme.

This was basically a documentary style remake of Twister.  The acting was pretty much garbage and any non storm stuff was boring as hell.  The actual storm stuff was great.  And I think the documentary style actually made all the weather related effects even better.  There were a couple of times where I actually caught myself completely awestruck by the effects on screen.  Unfortunately I was questioning leaving early any time they were not up there.

I would somewhat recommend people checking this out.  The effects were some must see stuff.  Unfortunately, the rest of the movie was wish I didn't have to see stuff.