Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Movies review: Project Almanac and Jupiter Ascending

There was a long dirth of movies I wasn't interested in seeing. It ran from Guardians of the Galaxy to around Thanksgiving. And I think I'm finally caught up.

Birdman was an interesting idea, but it wasn't that interesting in execution. I did like how they edited it to make it look like most of the movie was one continuous shot. Why wasn't that mentioned in the marketing?

Into the Woods was great. There were a few things cut from the full play, but the increased production values made up for it. Glenn Close is no Bernadette Peters, but Chris Pine was fantastic in the song Agony. Might buy. Eventually.

But today I came to write about the movies I saw this weekend.

Project Almanac is a time travel movie. Never would have gotten that by watching the trailers. This is another movie made without a steady cam. Sure, sure, you want it to look home made. I try not to give my camera to the epileptic.

A kid got accepted to MIT, but doesn't have the money to attend. He's looking through the basement lab of his dead father for some experiment he can submit for a scholarship and finds a time machine he was working on for DARPA. He and his friends and his sister who films absolutely everything get the time machine working and screw up time.
It's a decent movie. Predictable. I'm glad I saw it, but won't be buying it on DVD.

Jupiter Ascending is the opposite end of the production quality spectrum. They got to go overboard on set and costume design. The worst special effects in this movie were Channing Tatum's beard. But, and I can't say for sure what it was, but everything on Earth seemed awkward. It bothered me. Much the same happened in the Thor movies. But get away from Earth and the movie starts coming together.
From the trailer I was expecting a movie about an Earth girl who was the lost sibling of a family that ruled the galaxy. And the siblings spent more time fighting for power than ruling and didn't want to let their sister get a share. But the spunky girl from Earth grew a spine and took power over them all.
The real story is about how the dead matriarch of a galactic corporation left her share of the family to her reincarnation. And this girl on Earth happened to have the same genetic code as their mother. The kids didn't want to let Earth girl come to power and take over Earth, because Earth is where the plan to harvest all life to make a potion that makes people young, again, and would be worth a fortune. The Earth girl gets shoved around a lot, makes some foolish decisions, and her bodyguard saves her ass repeatedly.
Glad I saw it. Will not buy.

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