Movie Review: Suicide Squad

Tuesdays are $5.00 movie days at Bay Park Cinema just a couple miles up the road from us. So Ben & I went to see Suicide Squad after he was done at work. If I had been smart, I'd have stopped to buy tickets on my way to pick him up. Both the 9:50 and the 10:15 showings were sold out when we showed up about 9:40. We got tickets to the 10:45 show and went home for a bit.

Suicide Squad was all right. It was exciting. There was some really cool imagery. A few laughs. The soundtrack was awesome. Unfortunately, there were too many main characters and not enough story to go around. It would probably have been great as a series. You know, spend an hour or two fleshing out each character's story with a common thread pulling them all to the final epic confrontation. As is, there were some characters that just seemed extraneous. Some story elements that, because they were never developed well and didn't add anything to the climax, could have been skipped altogether. Such as Captain Boomerang or the whole Joker story line. They could have taken those out, used the time to develop other characters and made it a better movie.

If you're looking for some mindless action ... well, you could probably find better. But if you're running out of movies that got good reviews, this one isn't all bad.

Happy Anniversary

Becky and I celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary yesterday. 21! Woo Hoo! 21 years with such an attractive, intelligent, talented woman. I really am the luckiest guy in the world.

We went out to eat at Applebee's then caught Star Trek: Into Darkness. Dinner was good. The movie was good. As Becky put it, Star Trek was exciting, action packed, full of special effects and yet they still managed to find time to make us care about the characters.

We also saw a longer trailer for Man of Steel than I've seen before. Oh man, it looks soooo good. I mean, like worth going to the theater even if Star Trek wasn't good. And Star Trek was good! I don't mean to diminish it was in any way. The Man of Steel trailer was just that awesome. So awesome that as we walked out of the theater Becky asked, "How broke do we want to be this paycheck? Like should we take the boys to see Man of Steel this weekend?"

I vote yes.

Planet of the Apes

This past Friday, instead of watching a movie from our Blockbuster queue, Becky and I actually went to the 2nd run theater down the street to watch Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The trailers made it look like it had potential, which, you know, is better than trailers that suck.

Wow. If I had known just how good it was I'd have gone weeks ago and not flinched at paying full first run theater prices.

It starts out with a very exciting sequence introducing us to the main human characters (a genetic researcher and his family, friends, work associates) and the situations they're in that provide the context for the rest of the show. Then it slows down to a sweet story about characters that care very much for each other . . . with tensions gradually increasing towards the inevitable uprising the movie is named for.

The way they develop the main ape, Ceasar, as the leader of the uprising is executed amazingly well. Despite his development during the "slow" portion of the movie, it is still incredibly engaging. I found myself, literally, on the edge of my seat in anticipation. Such that when it happened, it was like an emotional explosion. And I was totally cheering on the apes.

Two opposable thumbs way up. Becky and I both loved this movie. It was exciting, well made, had some thought provoking depth. There are several parts that we think are too intense for a four year old, so we're not letting Tabby see it. Yet. However, we're definitely sending the boys.

Inception

Becky and I celebrated our 19th anniversary the other night with dinner at Chile's, a walk at the Green Bay Botanical Gardens and watching Inception. Even though this entry is going to focus on Inception, I have to admit the movie was not the best part of the evening. I really enjoyed the long, liesurely walk. The weather was perfect for it. The gardens were beautiful. I'm not really sure what else to say about it though except that if you ever get up to Green Bay, you should visit the botanical gardens.

So, anyway, the movie was good. Not as exciting as I thought it would be after seeing the trailers. I mean, plenty of action, but a lot of it seemed to be there merely for the sake of having action in the movie. It really wasn't an action flick. It's a psychological thriller about a man named Cobb who leads a team of individuals into peoples' dreams to steal their ideas using a process called extraction. Of course, that kind of activity is illegal. The whole "entering dreams" thing is really the only sci-fi/futuristic element of the story, though. It could otherwise take place today in this real world.

Cobb's team gets hired to do something radical. Instead of stealing an idea, they are to insert an idea - inception. Most people believe it's not even possible, but Cobb does. Or at least, he's willing to try for the chance at a clean record and a normal life with his kids. But there are complications that go beyond merely the technical difficulties of inception. I'm not sure how to say more than that without ruining the thriller aspect of the movie.

It was put together well. The characters are acted out well enough that I wanted to see them succeed. The action was fun to watch, even if it seemed gratuitous at times. The extraction and inception concepts are illustrated well enough to not lose us in either the boring tedium of someone elses fantasy or the complexity of something totally foreign. What really made the movie good, though, was how the characters' projections, their subconsious ideas, enter the film, interact with each other and affect both dreams and reality. The movie blatantly sets up a "was this all real or a dream?" conundrum in the end. Personally, I don't think it matters and it seems somewhat of a trivial debate considering that it's a work of fiction. The important thing is that it's a well imagined work that was fun to participate in.

Rango

Tabby: Dad, you haven't played pony yet today.

Me: You're right, I haven't. I'm going to eat lunch right now, though.

Tabby: Okay, I'll wait while you eat lunch. Then we can play pony.

Me: I was thinking about going to a movie.

Tabby: /gasp! Can I come?

Me: Do you want to see a movie?

Tabby: Yes! And we can eat popcorn and drink soda!

Me: Okay, let's go to a movie.

So we went to the nearby budget theater. While the boys went to see Limitless (which they thought was an awesome show), I took Tabby to see Rango.

Rango was a fun movie. Weird, artsy, but lots of fun. Good storyline, well developed theme, great characters. I've got to admit that after watching the movie, I kind of worried about it scaring Tabby. The bad guys are frightening. Heck, a lot of the good guys are frightening! It's violent for a kids' film, kind of dark at times and coarse in an out west, cowboy way. More foul language than you find in, say, a Barbie movie. Tabby seems to have done fine with it though.

(This Movie About) Vampires Suck(s)

Becky and I tried to watch Vampire's Suck on Friday. The trailer made it look like it had potential. Which is what trailers do, I guess. We went into it knowing it could either be hilarious or a 10 minute sketch drawn thin by the length of the film. We hoped for the former, but were willing to laugh at the latter.

Turns out giving it credit for 10 minutes of laugh worthy material would be generous. Unless it somehow got funny after the first 1/2 hour. That's about as long as we gave it. 20 minutes in I was like, oh come on . . . let's just actually watch Twilight. And you know, other than the baseball scene, I really disliked Twilight.

But we continued watching Vampires Suck for another 10 minutes anyway before giving up on the jokes being anything other crass sophomoric garbage. The acting was bad, the production value poor. I'm sure some of that was intentional camp, but it wasn't pulled off well.

This is already way more words than movie deserves. If you want my advice, just skip it.