TWIN CITIES LIVE-June 18, 2014

TWIN CITIES LIVE
June 18, 2014

It's a day of sequels, animated movies, and Jonah Hill.  It's the first time one actor has been a part of all three movies I've talked about.  Here they are:

1. 22 Jump Street, starring Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, and Ice Cube
2. How to Train Your Dragon 2, starring Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, and Craig Ferguson
3. The LEGO Movie, starring Chris Pratt, Will Arnett, Elizabeth Banks, and Will Ferrell

Here's the video:






Video courtesy of Twin Cities Live/KSTP

You can find all of my past segments HERE.

As always, thank you so much for watching and your continual support. I truly appreciate it!

Movie Review: 22 JUMP STREET

22 JUMP STREET
Directors: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Starring: Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Ice Cube, Wyatt Russell, Jimmy Tatro, Amber Stevens, Nick Offerman, Peter Stromare

Most movies adapted from television shows rarely work, especially when a new cast and new characters are involved. Who would have thought that 21 Jump Street would have worked so well that a sequel would follow? Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill are back for another case as Jenko and Schmidt, respectively. The old church at 21 Jump Street that served as the police headquarters in the first film has been converted back to a church. How convenient for them that there is also a church across the street at 22 Jump Street that can now pose as the police headquarters.

Jenko and Schmidt are assigned their next case and this time it has them going under cover again as college students at MC State College. A new synthetic drug called WHYPHY is being passed around like candy, and one of the students dies of an overdose. The boys are given a picture of the girl getting the drug slipped to her, but the only identifiable feature of the dealer is a tattoo on his arm. Schmidt feels left out of their partnership after Jenko joins the football team and fraternity as fellow teammates Zook (Russell) and Rooster (Tatro) take him under their wing. Schmidt decides to pursue the case at a different angle by dating Maya (Stevens) who lives across the hallway from the victim.

If you are thinking that this plot sounds exactly like the first movie, but now they’re in college instead of high school, you are correct in your assessment. I was a bit worried when I first saw the trailer as it looked like a carbon copy of 21 Jump Street. In theory, this film should not work. Comedy sequels that completely rip off the jokes and plot of the first outing are typically insulting to the fans. Nick Offerman’s police chief has a not-so-subtle speech toward the guys describing how the police department was so happy with how the first task turned out that they want to send the boys out again on a similar case but with a bigger budget. This is exactly what studio executives pitch after a comedy makes the big bucks at the box office. They want the original cast to come back and make the same kind of movie again. The Hangover Part II is a prime example of why this is typically a horrible idea. That movie was a messy insult as it was the exact same movie as the first one. 22 Jump Street does that exact same thing, yet succeeds and surpasses expectations. Screenwriters Michael Ball, Oren Uziel, and Rodney Rothman have written about this exact commentary in their script. There are copious jokes and references as to how they are ripping off the first one. Even Mr. Tatum makes a reference to the premise of his movie White House Down at one point.

Tatum and Hill have this unique chemistry that completely works and is the reason why this rebooted franchise succeeds. Having two cops that are complete opposites is by no means a new concept, but I think part of the charm and humor is grounded in how well they play off each other. While it may have been funny having Jonah Hill paired up with Seth Rogen or James Franco, it would be a completely different kind of story and tone all together. Schmidt and Jenko are exaggerated stereotypes of the images people label under Hill and Tatum. Hill wrote the stories for the films, so I can assume he played into his persona a bit and made Tatum that good looking but dumb jock frat boy that Hollywood has probably labeled him at some point in his career. Ice Cube returns as Captain Dickson whose moments with Jonah Hill provide some of the best laughs in the movie. I’ll forgive him for making Ride Along. Dave Franco and Rob Riggle are back for cameos as prison inmates who offer some advice and help to Hill and Tatum.

The directing team of Christopher Miller and Phil Lord are the men behind The LEGO Movie and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. The LEGO Movie is another film of theirs that I would not have expected it to be as enjoyable as turned out to be. The laughs are pretty consistent throughout 22 Jump Street which was a surprise and a relief. It's hard not to laugh when Jonah Hill gets in way over his head wtih some of the more dangerous aspects of his job. The movie easily could have gone downhill fast. The comedy isn’t all the clever or original, yet it delivers. This is the baffling thing behind the movie. Everyone involved knows we’ve seen frat movies, spring break scenes, shoot-outs, buddy movies, terrible sequels, franchises, and they make fun of all of that along the way. I give them major credit for pulling this off so well. Make sure to stay through the credits, for a hilarious sequence that left the whole audience in stitches. I’m not sure what was funnier, the sequence or how my mother-in-law completely lost it because she was laughing so loudly.

Is it worth your trip to the movies? If you liked the first one, you will definitely enjoy the sequel. You can sign me up for 23 Jump Street.

RATING: 4 out of 5 TICKET STUBS

Movie Review: WHITE HOUSE DOWN

WHITE HOUSE DOWN
Director: Roland Emmerich
Starring: Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Joey King, James Wood, Richard Jenkins, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke

Sometimes a mindless silly popcorn action flick is just what you need after a long week. John Cale (Tatum) is hoping to gain a position as part of the US Secret Service. His relationship with his daughter Emily (King) is strained as she lives with her mother. She is book smart, good with technology, and is fascinated with President Sawyer (Foxx) and everything else White House related. John takes Emily with to the White House in order to gain some cool dad points with her.

John's interview with Secret Service Special Agent Carol Finnerty (Gyllenhaal) does not go as well as he was hoping for. They are former college acquaintances and she does not think he has the motivation and hard work ethic for the job. John can't bear to tell Emily the bad news, so they decide to go on a White House tour. A bomb explodes at the U.S. Capitol building and the White House is put on lock down. John and Emily ended up getting separately and now she's left alone in the bathroom while he is with the group. Posing as a repair service, a group of men led by Emil Stenz (Clarke), take the tour group hostage and start killing off members of the cabinet in order to get to the President. John escapes the tour group in attempt to find his daughter. At different times, both John and Emily have first hand encounters with the terrorists. Emily is able to record their actions on her phone and posts them on her blog. The video goes viral instantly and the faces of the terrorists are broadcast all over the news. Even though John is able to rescue the President from the leader of the terrorist group, their escape reaches quite a few road blocks as they realize the terrorist group is far more advanced than they realized at first.

When you go into a Roland Emmerich film, you should probably already know the quality you are getting yourself into when you buy your ticket. It is time to leave your brain at the door and grab a bucket of popcorn. You will be in for a massive action movie that will most likely have cheesy dialogue, implausible situations, massive explosions and some destruction of national monuments. What else would you expect from the filmmaker of Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012?

White House Down has all of that and knows it. I think Emmerich knows what kind of film he is making and makes the most out of it. The story goes to the extremes and is quite laughable at times due to how much these terrorists get away with. The number of explosions and times Channing Tatum dashes across a room of flying bullets is insane, but that is part of the fun. His guns never seem to run out of bullets either. The dialogue is always so serious that it deserves a couple of good laughs. It also helps if you bypass the fact that the casting of Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx is a little unconventional here. While they have both done action movies before, I would not say that this genre is their forte. Tatum seems a bit too young to play the dad to Joey King's character. Foxx also seems a bit too young and hip to play the President. Toward the beginning of the film and before the shit starts to hit the fan, he seems to be trying to pull of his Obama impression a little too much. In all reality, who really cares. The action kicks off into full gear early on and never lets up until the end. In order to like this movie, you have to go in looking to have a fun time and forget about three dimensional characters, a unique plot, logic, reason, and Academy worthy acting. Did I mention Channing Tatum spends good quality time running around in a muscle shirt?


RATING: ***1/2 (3.5 out of 5 stars)

PAUL'S 2013 MID-YEAR MOVIE RECAP

PAUL'S 2013 MID-YEAR MOVIE RECAP

I alway like to keep a running tally of all of the new movies I have taken in over the year. Whether they are the new 2013 releases, movies from the last few years I'm catching up on, or taking advantage of the old classics, I like to see how my movie watching is growing or decreasing and what the 2013 movie year is shaping up to be like. Let's see how this year has panned out so far:

The Sessions
Promised Land
Broken City
Side Effects
Amour
Take This Waltz
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Oz, The Great and Powerful
Side By Side
A Separation
Wreck-It Ralph
Compliance
Admission
The Silence
The Prodigal Son
Evil Dead
Flashdance
Days of Heavan
Jurassic Park 3D
Double Indemnity
Room 237
To the Wonder
The Place Beyond the Pines
ParaNorman
Iron Man 3
The Paperboy
The Great Gatsby
Bernie
Star Trek Into Darkness
Oblivion
Now You See Me
All Good Things
End of Watch
Lars and the Real Girl
The Way Way Back
Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil
Behind the Candelabra
Man of Steel
Beautiful Creatures
Stoker
Not Fade Away
Identity Thief
Mama

That's a total of 45 movies. Only three down from the 48 movies I saw at this point in 2012 Here's the 2012 list. In my opinion, 2013 has been kind of a dud regarding the quality of films released this year. During the springs months, there seemed to be flop after flop opening each weekend, and I just did not feel moved to waste money on a movie that did not look good just for the sake of seeing a new movie. I recently got married and went on a honeymoon, so my theater going was also put on the back burner throughout most of this past year. I turned to Netflix Streaming to catch up on some of the classics or other movies I may have missed in the past years.

Back to the films of 2013. There were some definite standouts, but overall I found myself disappointed in many movies. Evil Dead and Oz, The Great and Powerful should have been great, but I left just appauled about how bad they were. I wanted to love The Great Gatsby, but left disappointed. What's worse, a movie that is bad because it's bad or a movie that is bad when it had the potential to be oh so good?  We still have the rest of the summer blockbuster season and the fall movie calendar looks to have some great selections, so I will be curious to see if 2013 redeems itself.

Best of the 2013 Releases So Far...

The Way Way Back
Side Effects
The Place Beyond the Pines
Star Trek Into Darkness

Worst of the 2013 Releases So Far...

Evil Dead
Oz, The Great and Powerful
**Boo on Sam Raimi for BOTH of these choices

I'd love to hear your thoughts!  What are your picks for best and worst of 2013?

Movie Review: SIDE EFFECTS

SIDE EFFECTS
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Vinessa Shaw, Mamie Gummer

Steven Soderbergh has tackled such diverse subjects as airborne viruses, male stripping, casino heists, and drug trafficking. In his latest, Side Effects, he and frequent screenwriter Scott Z. Burns tackle the world of pharmaceutical companies. Emily (Mara) is thrilled that her husband Martin (Tatum) has been released from jail. Martin was taken away on their glorious wedding day for insider trading. At first life seems to be getting back to normal, but Emily's past bout with depression and anxiety seems to creep back into her life.

A work party with Martin's colleagues is more than Emily can handle. Martin realizes Emily has taken a turn for the worst. She decides to take things into her own hands by driving into the wall of a parking garage. She survives and is put into the hands of Dr. Banks (Law), a psychiatrist with his own issues in life. Banks puts her on a variety of anti-depressants and anxiety pills but none of them seem to work for her. He consults with her former shrink Dr. Victoria Siebert (Zeta-Jones) about her past and learns about a miscarriage that she has failed to mention to him. Dr. Siebert suggests a new experimental drug called Ablixa. Emily hears good things form a friend (Gummer) about it and decides to test it. Meanwhile, Dr. Banks is being paid $50,000 to be part of a study on the side effects of Ablixa. Emily believes the drug is really working for her, but Martin sees her going further down the rabbit hole.

Emily's paranoia and Dr. Bank's continual fight for her, despite the affect it has on his career and marriage, keep the focus and tension building. The movie takes some interesting turns making sure the audience is never too far ahead in the story. As soon as you think you what the film is about or where it is headed you get spun in a different direction. Many people are drawing comparisons to Hitchcock’s great thrillers. Soderbergh is not merely copying out of the Master of Suspense’s book, but using those techniques to keep the viewer guessing. A good score is vital to any thriller. Thomas Newman’s score subtly plays underneath the action leaving its presence known but without ever forcing the audience into an unwanted reaction or emotion.

Soderbergh typically uses many of the same actors from movie to movie, which I appreciate in his body of work. Law, Zeta-Jones, and Tatum are all veterans to his style of working. Rooney Mara has proven yet again that she is a force to be reckoned with. One would think that after playing Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo she would want a break from such heavy material. Her performance as Emily Taylor is no walk in the park. She slowly peels back the many layers of her character to keep us glued in to what her ultimate motive may be.

Soderbergh has mentioned his plans to retire and that this is his last feature film to be released in theaters. With that comes the retirement of Peter Andrews and Mary Ann Bernard. He uses those pseudonyms whenever he is the cinematographer or editor on his own movies. His Liberace biopic “Behind the Candelabra” will premiere on HBO in March. I have always been a fan of his work and appreciate his diverse and experimental approach to the films he makes. Some are big box office successes like Ocean’s 11 and Erin Brockovich while others are pure indie trials like Bubble or The Girlfriend Experience. I seem to be the only one I know to have liked Magic Mike. Side Effects is his best movie in years, and it is not to be missed if you like taught thrillers that keep you guessing.

RATING: **** 1/2 (4.5 out of 5 stars)

Movie Review: MAGIC MIKE

MAGIC MIKE
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Matthew McConaughey, Cody Horn, Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer, Alex Rodriguez, Kevin Nash, Olivia Munn

Channing Tatum uses his brief real life history as a male stripper as the idea behind his latest collaboration with director Steven Soderbergh. Mike Lane(Tatum) makes the majority of his income as a stripper in a male revue called Xquisite. During the daytime he works construction in the Tampa area and dabbles in homemade furniture. He meets Adam (Pettyfer) one morning on a new construction site. Adam seems fairly shy and introverted, but he and Mike bond throughout the day. Mike runs into Adam later at a club as he is promoting audience members for the Xquisite show. Adam is persuaded to head over to the revue by Mike and two young girls out celebrating a twenty-first birthday. Adam's eyes are wide open as he experiences a male revue for the first time. He watches as "Magic Mike" and the rest of the crew including: Tarzan (Nash), Big Dick Ritchie (Manganiello), Ken (Bomer), and Tito (Rodriquez) put on a choreographed show. He gets thrust onstage himself to have dollars bills thrown at him by the giddy drunken ladies. The easy money is all too alluring for Adam and he decides to join the show after an offer from Mike and club owner Dallas (McConaughey). Being the newbie that he is, he is given the moniker "The Kid" as his stage name.

Even though the money is pouring in, life is not always a jolly good time for our young dancers. Adam's sister Brooke (Horn) finds out about his new endeavor when she discovers the G-strings laying around and catches Adam shaving his legs with her razor. She struggles with the thought of him being a stripper but tries to put trust in Mike to keep him on the straight and narrow. Mike's flirting towards her doesn't help matters. Mike would ideally like to leave the stripping behind to start up his customized furniture business. He runs into problems with the bank as he doesn't have good credit as he primarily deals in cash tips. Adam begins to delve deep into the night life. He is making good money and hooking up with beautiful women. Sounds great except he is becoming cocky and falling deeper into drugs and alcohol.

Soderbergh is dealing with lighter material here than we have been used to seeing him do lately, but it still retains that Soderbergh feel. Using the pseudonym Peter Andrews, he is also the cinematographer on his own movies. He seems to use a lot of wide shots and natural lighting to set up the scenes. He sets the camera up and just lets it capture the scene as it unfolds. Characters come in and out of the frame without a lot of choppy editing to cover it up. I wish the studio would have promoted his name more during the marketing blitz. Who am I kidding. People are coming out for Channing Tatum and other hunks stripping, not because it is the latest Soderbergh offering.

The screenplay by Reid Carolin is pretty basic. You have the simple premise of a young naive nineteen-year old being enamored by the money and women that comes with being a stripper only to have him crash and burn when drugs and alcohol come into play. It has a simple morality story to it. Magic Mike isn't as campy as Showgirls and it isn't as gritty as Boogie Nights. It falls somwhere in the middle. The movie does not fully invest into the struggle Mike has with started his business nor do we really learn about some of the other characters like Big Dick Ritchie, Ken, and the other strippers. Am I asking for too much in the way of character and plot development? Maybe. Tatum co-produced the movie with Carolin. Along with Soderbergh, they have a great cast that perfectly fits these characters. McConaughey is impressive and gives one of the stronger performances in the movie showing more sides to Dallas than one might expect. At the end of the day, the fun of the movie is that it is about male strippers. Those scenes make the movie work. The fun choreography and behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to be a stripper is interesting. I can only assume it is fairly accurate due to Tatum's past. The legions of women and gay men buying tickets are not going for gritty plot twists and stylistic film making. They are going for the rock hard abs of Joe Manganiello and chiseled Channing Tatum body. There was applause before the movie and during the movie.

RATING: ***1/2 (3.5 out of 5 stars)

First Look: MAGIC MIKE

First Look: MAGIC MIKE
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Olivia Munn, Matthew McConaughey, Joe Manganiello, Adam Rodriguez, Matt Bomer

The Oscar winning director of Traffic, Contagion, the Ocean's Triology, and Erin Brockovich teams up with Channing Tatum again in a story loosely based on Tatum's pre-Hollywood life as a male stripper.  Tatum plays the lead character as he teaches a young newbie (Pettyfer) the ins-and-outs of the job all while struggling to have a normal life.  Matthew McConaughey portrays the club's owner.  TV stars Matt Bomer ("White Collar"), Adam Rodriguez ("CSI: Miami"), and Joe Manganiello ("True Blood") co-star as fellow workers at the club.

The trailer and poster were just released this past week.  I must admit, the feel of the movie is not at all what I thought it was going to be about.  I guess I assumed it would have this gritty, rough, drug-filled tone to it.  By the looks of the trailer, it seems lighter, funnier, and more romantic than I had imagined.  I also think they should have showed more skin in the trailer.  Maybe that's just me though.

What are your thoughts?  Are you excited to see it?  Does it look like a dud like Striptease, a cult classic like Showgirls, another Soderbergh hit like Ocean's 11, or will it just get lost in a summer of huge blockbusters ?