Gangster Squad and A Haunted House: Poor Starts to New Year

Not much needs to be said about Gangster Squad. It is a boring 1940s gangster movie that stars an uncharismatic Josh Brolin as the leader of a group of tough cops who go rogue to bust the operation of notorious LA gangster Mickey Cohen, played by Sean Penn. there are also tonal issues, with Penn acting his hammiest, yet Brolin and his crew are almost dead serious. This is not a movie that be remembered in 3 months.

** stars

A Haunted House is not a good movie, it's really crude and not thought out too well. The jokes are few and far between however there are a few of them there. Nothing that will make anyone laugh too much, but there are a few chuckles. Many of the jokes are sexist and dumb, and I know I should feel bad about them, but I chuckled at times. More often than not the jokes are lazy and repetitive. I think this will find an audience of people who don't think about it too much.

** stars

My 2012 in Movies, by the Numbers

2012 was a big year for me in movies. Big in that I restarted my podcast, The Long and Late Movie Show with Russell Hainline and eventually the lovely Shira Selkovits. 2012 was also big in that I spent a lot of money watching movies this year. Between Netflix, Amazon Video, and movie theaters, I spent $1,496.53 this year. That's a pretty staggering amount in my case. After seeing this I wanted to delve a bit deeper and see what my spending was like at the theaters this year.

I have seen 72 films in 2012 that were released in 2012. For an non-professional movie-goer, I think this was a pretty good clip, a little more than a film per week. For a full list of the films I have seen in 2012 check out this list on Letterboxd. http://letterboxd.com/lategordon

First, here is a graph on which theaters I spent the most on this year:

Graph of my 2012 Spending at Theaters

My top theater this year was the AMC Orpheum 7 because after I moved into Manhattan in March of 2012, this theater was the closest one to me. Not counting food, I spent $318 out of a total of $722.30 there this year. These numbers could easily have been higher if I did not take advantage of AMCs deal of $6 movies before Noon numerous times.

Next, is my Theater spending per month:

Monthly Spending at the Movies

You can see that my monthly spending at the theater rises during the year until August. This makes sense. As the year went along better movies started to come out, including the big blockbuster summer releases.

There is hope for my 2013 to have a lower spend. I recently joined the website Moviepass, and for $30 a month I can see one movie per day. With there help, I hope my yearly movie costs drop by fifty percent and at the end of 2013, I don't talk about how much money I have spent at the movies, but rather how many movies I saw per month.

Quick thoughts on Jack Reacher

Jack Reacher has the parts to be a good popcorn action flick. For the most part it is successful. The action is well done, however the story is a mess. The villain's plan when given a once over, is really ridiculous and unnecessary.

Tom Cruise is good as the savant investigator Reacher. His performances in the action scenes are great. Cruise doing what Cruise does best. The direction of the action is also great. The two major action scenes, a car chase and a shoot out at a quarry are well done and exciting.

Werner Herzog as the main villain is scary and creepy. He delivers some great villainous speeches that seem a part of another movie.

** stars

Suburgatory: Current Lost in It

ABC's Suburgatory was a one of the few new comedies from last year that really resonated with me. The story of Tessa Altman (Jane Levy) and her father George (Jeremy Sisto) moving from Manhattan to the suburb town of Chatswin looked terrible before I actually watched an episode and discovered that it was a quirky fish out of water story. Tessa's characters was the right amount of silly and pretentious outsider that really worked when contrasted against the other inhabitants of Chatswin. It was easy to understand how it was renewed for a second season.

Suburgatory is now four episodes into its second season and I am getting the feeling it is losing what made it interesting; Tessa. The writers seem determined to give Tessa almost no interesting plot points and instead have concentrated the show around everyone else. George and Dallas have a budding relationship going with some funny quirks associated with it. Tessa's friend Lisa and her family have their own interesting story with the discovery that the older brother Ryan is adopted. Tessa is floating through scenes not even offering up any sort wry and witty comedic one liners like she did in the first season. Another issue is Tessa's foil, Dahlia,  who once was a source of salient knowledge delivered through a comedic shallow girl attitude (you have to see it understand what I mean here), has been unused to any effect this season.

I hope the writers can turn this around this season, I hate to see a show with such potential ruin it in only the second season.

Movies of the Weekend: The Bourne Legacy and The Campaign

There is not enough of this action

The Bourne Legacy is tough movie to think about. This fourth movie ofthe series is part fan service for the prior trilogy and part attempt to introduce a new lead character for a new series. However, the createors seemed to forget what made the original films a fun and different take on the action hero.

The first thing missing is the action. Legacy is filled with scenes of people yelling at each other, yelling into phones and not much action. Worse yet, the characters yell about random code works such as "treadstone", "blackbriar" and "outcome" constantly without properly explaining them. As a reboot to the series, it is a mistake not to reintroduce us to the Bourne world. Having Ed Norton with a constant upset face yelling these three words in every scene is disappointing and confusing.

The other issue is the new lead, Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross. He doesn't have a compelling story. I couldn't buy him as a hero, for much of the first part of the movie, he is a junkie searching for a fix. On his search for his fix, he finds and protects a doctor played by Rachel Weisz, and the two go on an adventure to find the cure for Cross's addiction. Not exactly a guy you want to ever cheer for.

The Bourne Legacy doesn't leave up to the legacy of its predecessors, the lack of action, the confusing story and the lack of a interesting hero, really made this a disappointment.

** Stars

The Campaign suffers from the same thing that has plauged most of the comedies released in 2012. It is only sometimes funny. Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis, the candidates running for congressman of the 14th district of North Carolina. Both characters are buffonish to the point where you can't believe at any of these men had any chance at successfully using the bathroom much less run a political campaign. There are some funny scenes, my favorite is whenFerrell and Galifianakis trash talk each other before their first debate. However, most of the scenes are just over the top silly and not very funny. The movie needed a straight man for one of the leads to play off. Two buffons riffing off each other just doesn't work.

There is potential for better comedy here, especially since Jason Sudeikis, John Lithgow and Dan Ackroyd are wasted as supporting characters. It feels as though there was more to the screenplay originally and was chopped down to fit the 85 minute run time.

** stars

Killer Joe: I Might Not Look at Fried Chicken the Same

A drug dealer, Chris (Emile Hirsch), who owes his suppliers money, plans with with his father, stepmother, and sister Dottie (Juno Temple) to kill his mother in order to take the proceeds of her life insurance whose beneficiary is Dottie. Chris arranges for a contract killer, Joe (Matthew McConaughey) to kill his mother. Since Chris doesn't have the money to pay Joe's upfront fee, so Joe offers to take Dottie as retainer for his services. As is often the case, things don't go as planned.

That's the plot of William Friedkin's Killer Joe, based on the play of the same name. A rather simple story, but that's not what makes Killer Joe a great film.

What makes Killer Joe work is McConaughey's fantastic performance as Killer Joe Cooper. Throughout the movie, he uses his natural Texas charm to make his Joe both a charming and menacing character. There are two amazing scenes in the film, one where Joe and Dottie are alone in a trailer home and the final scene with the entire family, McConaughey slowly builds the character of Joe into a both an alluring and disturbing personality.

The last twenty minutes of the movie are tense a slow build to a fiery conclusion, even though final minute or two felt rushed and unexpected, with not enough justification of what happened. Those final two minutes are not enough to turn me off from Killer Joe.

***1/2 stars

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - Honestly, a fun time

There has been major lack of fun at the movies this Summer. Movies such as Dark Shadows and Battleship are a couple of the movies that have ridiculous premises but had a major lack of fun. In Dark Shadows, the execution was boring and Battleship took its premise too seriously to really enjoy itself. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter knows what kind of movie its audience expects and delivers on those expectations well.

Benjamin Walker plays the United States' 16th president, who at a young age, has his mother taken from him by vampires. On his quest for revenge he meets and receives training from the mysterious character played by Dominic Cooper's Henry Sturgess. We are also introduced to many other characters and events that are key to the Lincoln's known legend such as Lincoln's Axe, Mary Todd, Stephen Douglas and the Lincoln-Douglas debates and the of course, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War. It was a lot of fun to see how the writers of the movie fit in Honest Abe's vampire hunting within his rise from shopkeeper to lawyer to President.

Honest Abe with his trusted weapon

Speaking of the vampire hunting, the action scenes in Abraham Lincoln: VH are fun and inventive. From vampire attacks on a Civil War battlefield to fights on top of stampeding horses, the action is cool and unique. The scenes are shot well, and though I didn't see it in 3D, I don't think i missed much.

There are things that could be better about the movie, such as a more compelling, defined villain and a better explanation on the rise of Lincoln as a politician. However, these are minor squabbles that only slightly get in the way of the movie being a good time.

**1/2 stars