Ryan Reynolds

Woman in Gold

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Woman in Gold
  • IMDb: link

Woman in GoldDirector Simon Curtis‘ Woman in Gold is an odd film not good enough for awards consideration but also choosing not to become an action-suspense film about stolen Nazi art. Much more a straightforward drama, I’d compare it to 1998’s A Civil Action, a more engaging film with a similar arc of a lawyer whose money-first philosophy is changed by taking on an emotional case he can’t possibly win.

Based on the true story of Maria Altmann‘s (Helen Mirren) attempts to regain possession of her family’s lost masterpiece from the Austrian government, Woman in Gold is a slow-moving drama starring Ryan Reynolds as the lawyer hired by Maria to take on a foreign government. Reynolds and Mirren work well together as the unlikely pair to take on Austria (even if Reynolds casting seems like an odd choice). Well-acted and shot against the backdrops of Vienna and southern California, the story is intriguing if never fully engaging. Despite its cast (which also includes Katie Holmes, Tatiana Maslany, Elizabeth McGovern, and Jonathan Pryce) Woman in Gold is a good film that never fully lives up to the promise it offers flashes of early on.

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Blade Triple Feature

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Blade, Blade II, Blade: Trinity
  • wiki: link

Blade Triple FeatureRe-released in a new three-pack Triple Feature Blu-ray Wesley Snipes‘ Blade trilogy is far from the best comic book movies have to offer. Collecting Blade, Blade II, and Blade: Trinity, the set has one good movie, one mediocre flick, and one so awful it might as well be an Underworld movie. Each comes with its original special features including commentaries for each film and assorted featurettes and trailers.

Snipes is fine as a human/vampire half-breed based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. The first film, other than introducing the world and its core characters, is largely forgettable. Blade II, involving the hero teaming with a group of vampires (most notably Leonor Varela and Ron Perlman) to take on a new deadly version of vampires known as reapers, is the only one that holds up to multiple viewings. As for the horrifically bad third film, introducing Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel as vampire hunters and Dominic Purcell as the most ridiculous version of Dracula ever, the less said the better.

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Croodly Entertaining

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Croods
  • IMDB: link

The CroodsTo be honest there’s not much to DreamWorks Animation’s The Croods. The simple premise of a scared family of cavemen braving a world of uncertainty they are ill-prepared for does, however, offer some laughs along the way.

The Croods consist of the curious and precocious teenager Eep (Emma Stone), her more obedient and dimwitted brother Thunk (Clark Duke), her feisty grandmother Gran (Cloris Leachman), her terror of a baby sister, and her parents Grug (Nicolas Cage) and Ugga (Catherine Keener). All of Eep’s life Grug has kept the family safe by hiding in their cave from anything new which could be dangerous, only allowing The Croods into the light to gather food when necessary. Even Grug’s bedtime stories underline his philosophy for his family’s need to be obedient, cautious, and fearful every day of their lives to stay alive.

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Shockingly, R.I.P.D. isn’t D.O.A.

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: R.I.P.D.
  • IMDB: link

R.I.P.D.Based on the comic series by Peter M. Lenkov, R.I.P.D. stars Ryan Reynolds as a recently slain dirty cop who is drafted by the Rest In Peace Department for his unique skill set and sent back into the land of the living to catch escaped souls hiding out on Earth. To teach him the ropes, Nick (Reynolds) is paired with Roy Pulsipher (Jeff Bridges), an persnickety lawman straight out of the Old West who has hunted souls for centuries.

The comparisons to Men in Black are too obvious to ignore, but R.I.P.D. does have one thing going for it that the MIB franchise has been missing since the late 1990’s: a fresh take. As goofy and unoriginal as the concepts behind R.I.P.D. are, the movie puts its own spin on things while delivering an impressive production design as well as sense of fun missing from far too many of this summer’s movies. The weapons of the film are a mix between MIB and Hellboy while the design of R.I.P.D. headquarters, once again borrowing heavily on other films (most notably MIB), creates a nice mix of out-of-control underworld bureaucracy and an incredibly clean police station.

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Turbo

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Turbo
  • IMDB: link

TurboTurbo is a good reminder that most animated movies fail to reach the heights or depths of live-action theatrical films. Most fall somewhere in-between. That’s not to say this tale about a snail competing in the Indianapolis 500 isn’t a good movie. Turbo is a cute, fun, and mostly entertaining 96-minute story about chasing impossible dreams and the complicated relationships between brothers that’s likely to please, but not wow, the whole family.

Our story centers around two pairs of brothers who share quite a bit in common even though one pair is human and the other are snails. We’re introduced first to Theo (Ryan Reynolds), the dreamer who yearns of nothing more than being fast enough to race his idol (a charismatic human driver voiced by Bill Hader), and his far more down-to-earth brother Chet (Paul Giamatti).

A pair of accidents involving Theo get the pair banished from their garden home and provide Theo with the unbelievable speed which allows the snail to chase his dreams.

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