Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Details: Released in 2017. A little under two hours and twenty minutes long. Stars Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista.

I think what needs to be understood about this movie is that this is a fun movie. This is a comedy. If you’re looking for a serious story or a space opera, this isn’t it. There are some emotional points throughout the movie, but if you take the few moments of drama with the overwhelming amount of jokes and fourth wall breaking moments, it’s clear this is not a super serious film.

Movie Review: The Magnificent Seven

Details: Released in 2016. Over two hours long. Stars Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, and Ethan Hawke.

If you’ve seen trailer for this movie, then you should have a pretty good idea what this movie is going to be. The Magnificent Seven is a remake of an older movie of the same name, which was a movie that took heavy inspiration from the classic Akira Kurosawa film, Seven Samurai.

The premises for all these movies is the same: a town is beset by wrongdoing from a group of bad guys. The town takes all their possessions and go out and hire seven men to help defend the village and defeat the bad guys.

While this movie is unlikely to win any Oscars, I greatly enjoyed the movie. It’s your standard Western, remade with modern stars. Most recognizable are Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, and Vincent D’Onfrio. This isn’t there best work, but they are good and help sell the movie.

The story is your classic underdog facing impossible odds story. I have a weakness for these kinds of stories and as such, I enjoyed this story very much. It doesn’t get more courageous to me than seven bad guys in a bad world putting their lives on the line for a town that has nothing to do with them, to risk their lives for the principle of protecting others. I know it’s a cliche story, but I can’t help getting choked up when being told this specific type of story. There’s a lot of familiar Western action here, which isn’t bad a thing.

Overall, a good movie with some good Western action. If you like Westerns, I recommend it.

Score: 6.7/10

Movie Review: Jurrasic World (2015)

Details: About two hours long. Stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard.

What the hell did I just watch? Once again, Rotten Tomatoes has deceived me on how entertaining a movie is.

This movie is ridiculous. In the films defense, I generally hate these kind of scare movies because of how stupid the characters act. In my real life, I often have to deal with people who do things completely devoid of all caution or rational thought so when I see that kind of behavior on screen, it instantly sucks me out of the experience and reminds me I’m watching a badly written story. Even so, the characters in this film make stupid decisions and pay for it.

It’s hard to watch this film and not compare it to the first Jurassic Park, what I consider the gold standard of dinosaur movies. The build up of tension, the constant terror, and a rewarding climax at the end with meaningful themes strewn throughout. This film is not like that. This is your standard popcorn chewing action movie with no real explanation and some memorable set pieces thrown in. It checks off all the boxes for a B movie and that’s okay in a way. It is entertaining in its own right, if you don’t take it seriously. However, I just found it to be a half-assed rehash of the first Jurassic Park. There were also tons of product placement.

Worth mentioning is Chris Pratt. Pratt shows again that he can act with charisma no matter how thin the plot is. Applause.

Score: 4/10 I’m rating harshly because I expected more when I shouldn’t have. Jurassic World can be an entertaining movie. Just prepare yourself for some cheap thrills and turn off your brain before viewing.

Movie Review: The Lego Movie (2014)

Details: Animated adventure film starring Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, and Will Ferrell among others. Run time is one hour and forty seconds.

Since this is my first movie review,  I should state how these reviews will go. I am only going to discuss the aspects of whatever I’m reviewing that were interesting to me. I am unlikely to cover every character and element of the plot in the film. Now let’s get to it.

Originally, I had very low expectations for the movie. It was difficult to imagine a Lego movie that portrayed any kind of meaningful story and was not just one big advertisement for Lego, similarly to how Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle was a big advertisement for those little burgers/digestive-tract-self-destruct devices.

However, a friend raved about the film. Of note is that this friend hypes everything he remotely likes like Macho Man Randy Savage selling a Slim Jim. However, I figured if the movie was not completely terrible, it may be worth a watch.

So, me and two friends went to the movie. There was a Toys R Us on the other side of said theater in case the movie was so great we needed to buy some Legos afterwards.

Overall, the movie wasn’t bad. Frankly, it was exactly what I expected. It was as if someone with an Adderall addiction went off their medication and wrote the screenplay for this film. In other words, it was written to imitate a child’s perspective and it does this well.

There were many funny moments. Morgan Freeman’s performance was noteworthy. Although, I feel like I will love just about anything where I get to hear Morgan Freeman’s voice, i.e. the voice of God.

The funniest moments easily belong to Batman (played by Will Arnett). One scene that stays with me (*SPOILERS*) was when they flew Batman’s Batplane into the sunset, and someone comments that they are going to crash, to which Batman retorts, “Yeah, but it’ll look really cool.” They then fly through the sun leaving a bat shaped hole in the sun (*END SPOILERS*).

Ultimately, should you watch this movie? If you’ve ever owned Legos or if you have children, then yes. I watched the movie in the afternoon with an audience filled with kids.

Speaking of children, sometimes you forget how different adults are from children. In this case, the kids ignored all the parts I found funny and instead laughed at all the places I didn’t. They still seemed to enjoy themselves though.

Score: 7/10