Within the past week or so I was able to see quite a lot of movies. Two of them were midnight showings even! And all of them were with Michelle (Wes joined us for Cabin in the Woods too)... for some reason I can't seem to drag Brian to the movies anymore! Of course, this isn't exactly "movie season" and with the exception of The Avengers I didn't really care for most of the movies I saw.
John Cusack stars as the famed author Edgar Allen Poe, and do you know what? He isn't half bad. In fact, he does an admirable job playing the brooding author. Unfortunately, this isn't a biopic and the historical figure is thrust into a ridiculously contrived storyline involving a serial killer whose murders are inspired by none other than Poe's classic horror stories. Detective Fields (Luke Evans) asks for Poe's help on the case, and things get more complicated when the killer captures Poe's love, Emily Hamilton (Alice Eve). While there's some gore and creepy parts, The Raven never manages to scare or even be all that mysterious. Oh, not to mention the big reveal at the end is a huge letdown...
Written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard, this horror movie is being praised by movie critics and fanboys alike. I, however, was not so impressed. I came into it being told that my mind was going to be blown... but it wasn't. Five college kids (Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz, and Jesse Williams) go to a remote cabin in the woods for a weekend and yada yada yada you can take it from there. Where the movie gets more creative, is that all of the horror movie cliches are being controlled by a bunch of men in a room somewhere underground. For me, this part was actually pretty intriguing and I feel that handled differently, I could have liked this movie. The way Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) and Hadley (Bradley Whitford) dryly joke about the deaths they are initiating--as everyone places their bets on who will die first and how--pose many moral questions. A more interesting movie for me would have followed that route. Unfortunately, much of the movie is spent watching uninteresting characters make out with mounted wolf heads or run away from redneck zombies.
Mei (Catherine Chan) is an 11-year-old genius who has a gift with numbers. A Chinese gang known as the Triad uses her to memorize a very long and important number, but of course other groups--including some corrupt cops and the Russian mob--are also after what they are after, and soon Mei is caught in the middle of some really dangerous stuff! In walks our hero, Luke Wright (Jason Statham), an ex-cage fighter who has a beef with the people involved and who finds himself drawn to the little girl. He does everything he can to help her and to keep her safe, which involves some serious ass-kicking! The action scenes are all really awesome--so testosterone-filled men should be more than happy--and there's some creative camerawork at times hinting at the type of movie it wants to be, but the dialogue and the acting bring the movie down to sometimes laughable levels.
The superhero movie of all superhero movies has arrived! Marvel's The Avengers, directed by Joss Whedon, is delightfully fun. The story centers around the imminent threat of earth's complete and utter destruction by Loki (Tom Hiddleston) who wields the power of the Tesseract. Scary huh? So Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D gathers together a team of superheroes that he calls The Avengers. But as the saying goes, you can't have too many cooks in the kitchen. Initially Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) do not get along. In fact, Hawkeye is "evil" for most of the movie. But eventually, the team puts aside their egos and work together. The final battle is epic beyond epic as we see every member of the team kicking some serious alien butt and destroying all of Manhattan in the process. Poor Manhattan. It's been destroyed in so many movies...
The movie really thrives on the perfect blend of comedy and action, which is what you'd expect from a movie based on comic books. And while Loki may not be the most menacing of villains--in fact, he's kind of puny--he has a wicked grin that makes him very entertaining. But while we know that The Avengers will come out victorious no matter what, the real battle--the one between themselves--is where the movie really shines. Watching Tony Stark put down Captain America or egg on Dr. Banner is highly entertaining! The actors all do a fine job of demonstrating the strengths and weaknesses of their various superheroes and it's a real treat to see them interact with one another. So go out and watch The Avengers!
P.S. Stay for the credits. At the very, very end was probably my favorite scene in the whole movie. So funny! Of course, it might have been funny to me because it was three in the morning...
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