Reviews – Page 116 – Matthew Liedke on Film

The Help review

Director:
Tate Taylor
Cast:
Emma Stone
Viola Davis
Octavia Spencer
Bryce Dallas Howard
Jessica Chastain
Rated: PG-13

Wow, Bryce Dallas Howard can really play one mean bitch.

The Help is about black maids working in a Mississippi town in the 1960s. The people they work for usually don’t treat them very well and the film delves into their plight. The two main maid characters were Aibileen (Davis) and Minny (Spencer), and after we find out their lives, we meet Skeeter (Stone), a young woman who has just finished going to school at Ole Miss and is now looking for a job in journalism.

As Skeeter gets to know Aibileen and Minny, she soon sees the difficulty they go through and decides to tell their story by writing a book and getting it published by a New York company. While this goes on, Minny begins working for a new person named Cecilia (Chastain), who is ecstatic to have a maid. And it just so happens that both Cecilia and Skeeter are starting to get under Hilly’s (Howard) skin.

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Rise of the Planet of the Apes review

Director:
Rupert Wyatt
Cast:
James Franco
Freida Pinto
John Lithgow
David Oyelowo
Andy Serkis
Rated: PG-13

Move over Burton, somebody got it right.

The latest installment with Planet of the Apes in the title is a prequel about the ape Caesar, and his rise as a leader. The film begins by following Will Rodman (Franco), a scientist who is working on a cure for Alzheimer’s disease at a genetic research facility. His reasons go deeper than just exploring things scientifically, as his father (Lithgow) has the disease as well. The genetic lab tests the experimental cure on apes however after one test goes wrong the lab is shut down and the apes are killed.

However, one ape was pregnant and gave birth to a baby before she died, Rodman is soon forced to take the young ape home. He soon learns, though, that the ape, named Caesar, had the experimental cure passed down genetically from the mother and that the cure actually dramatically increased intelligence. As the ape gets older more complications begin to pop up and he is soon forced to go to an animal control center. It is here that Caesar begins to get fed up with the life he and his fellow apes are leading and decides to revolt for freedom.

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Crazy Stupid Love review

Director:
Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
Cast:
Steve Carell
Ryan Gosling
Julianne Moore
Emma Stone
Analeigh Tipton
Jonah Bobo
Kevin Bacon
Rated: PG-13

Predictable? At times yes, but boy does it work.

Crazy, Stupid, Love follows the character Cal Weaver (Carell), a man who immediately finds out that his wife Emily (Moore) wants a divorce and informs him that she cheated on him with a man named David Lindhagen (Bacon). After finding out, the two split up and Cal lives on his own in an apartment. However, he becomes bored and heads to a local night club and tries to drink his problems away.

While there a young man named Jacob (Gosling), who is a smooth talking ladies man, takes pity on Cal and decides to help him out by getting him into some new clothes and meeting new women. However one woman, Hannah (Stone), a law graduate becomes one girl that Jacob can’t seem to seal the deal on. As the film goes on Cal enjoys his new life of being single a bit, but it eventually leads to things becoming more complicated.

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“No Strings Attached” got it wrong, this got it right.

“Friends With Benefits” follows the story of Dylan (Timberlake), an editor who has just been offered a job as editor for a major magazine. Upon arriving in New York, Dylan meets Jamie (Kunis), who is his sort of temporary agent to help get him the job. Before going to work, Dylan and Jamie spend some time together exploring the city and eventually become good friends.

After Dylan gets the job he settles into the city and continues his friendship with Jamie. Eventually the two get really close however do not want to start a relationship, with both of them having bad break ups in the past. The two then decide to just have casual sex instead of a relationship so they won’t have to worry about having the issues of dating, however this raises come complications through out the film.

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 review

Director:
David Yates
Cast:
Daniel Radcliffe
Rupert Grint
Emma Watson
Ralph Fiennes
Alan Rickman
Matthew Lewis
Rated: PG-13

The final adventure picks up immediately after The Deathly Hallows Part 1, jumping right into a phase of what to do next. The film starts with our trio of protagonists regrouping at Ron’s brother’s house and decide to ask the goblin who was captured in Part 1 to break into Gringotts to find another Horcrux.

After doing so the group returns to Hogwarts, where they are met by Neville (Lewis), and the rest of the students. Harry soon confronts Snape in front of the school with The Order of the Phoenix which leads the students and teachers of Hogwarts to make a final stand against Voldemort and his army.

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Horrible Bosses review

Director
Seth Gordon
Cast:
Jason Bateman
Jason Sudeikis
Charlie Day
Jennifer Aniston
Colin Farrell
Kevin Spacey
Jamie Fox
Rated: R

One part where this movie failed was making a convincing argument that Jennifer Aniston’s character was really a horrible boss.

The film follows three characters, Nick (Bateman), Kurt (Sudeikis) and Dale (Day). All have fairly average jobs and life would probably be going just smoothly for them in the day-to-day grind of the work place, if not for them having the worst bosses in the world. Nick’s boss Mr. Harkin (Spacey) tricks Nick thinking he’s getting a promotion, Kurt has to deal with his former bosses son Bobby (Farrell) taking over the company and running it into the ground and Dale has the misfortune of having a boss played by Jennifer Aniston who wants to sleep with him when he’s already engaged.

Being completely fed up with their situations in their careers, they decide to take action and hire a hit man to get the job done. They go to a bar in a bad part of town and meet the character Mother Fucker Jones (Fox), a man who says he can get the job done. However they soon find out that Jones just got out of prison and can only be their murder consultant and that they have to pull off the killing on their own.

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Zookeeper review

Director
Frank Coraci
Cast:
Kevin James
Rosario Dawson
Leslie Bibb
Joe Rogan
Rated: PG

Yes, this movie is just as stupid as the trailer makes it out to be.

Zookeeper follows around, not surprisingly, a zookeeper named Griffin (James), a man who is dedicated to his job but also wants to marry his long time girlfriend Stephanie (Bibb), however when she turns him down and breaks up with him, he is left heartbroken and continues his day to day routine for the next five years.

Cut to the present and Griffin is the lead zookeeper and very well liked by the animals and the staff, so things seem to be alright. However, we find out that Griffin may want to leave to work at his brother’s car dealership. As this happens Stephanie comes back into the picture, so the animals of the zoo come around breaking the code that they have to not talk to humans and help Griffin get the girl he’s been wanting. but things get complicated when Griffin starts changing who he is.

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Super 8 review

Director:
J.J. Abrams
Cast:
Joel Courtney
Riley Griffiths
Elle Fanning
Kyle Chandler
Rated: PG-13

E.T. with more explosions!

Super 8 is the story of a group of friends who must be no older than 13. The group are all movie fans who want to make their own, and are led by their friend Charles (Griffiths), who’s directing the film. His friend Joe (Courtney), is the special effects expert and the main protagonist of the film. Joe and his father have been dealing with issues since the death of his mother, which happened six months prior to the movie starting.

One night the group sneaks out to shoot a scene for their project, and bring along a classmate, Alice (Fanning), to play a part in the film they are making. They go to a local train stop to shoot the scene and while there the group sees a major train crash after a pick up truck hits a locomotive head on. After this the military comes to clean up the mess, the situation gets even more suspicious as people and appliances begin disappearing.

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May 2011 Mini Reviews

Water for Elephants: 2 out of 5
Water for Elephants started out fairly promising. It used a premise similar to Titanic using flashbacks to tell the story. The performances were fine, especially from Christoph Waltz. The real downfall of the film was the climax. It just seemed really improbable and too nicely wrapped up. I was very underwhelmed by the end.

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Kung Fu Panda 2 review

Director:
Jennifer Yuh
Cast:
Jack Black
Angelina Jolie
Dustin Hoffman
Gary Oldman
Jackie Chan
Seth Rogen
Lucy Liu
David Cross
Rated: PG

Add another to the “good sequels list.”

In Kung Fu Panda 2, we once again follow the character Po (Black), the giant panda who became a kung fu master after finding that he was the prophesied ‘Dragon Warrior.’ Now Po lives with the other ‘Furious Five’ fighters as well as their master Shifu (Hoffman) where they are constantly fighting against bandits and the like, keeping the nearby villages safe.

Meanwhile, a new enemy arises, a Peacock named Shen played by Gary Oldmann. Shen has discovered the powers of gunpowder and plans to use them to rule all of China, and the first place he takes over is his city where he was born into royalty and was exiled. Upon finding out that Shen has taken over the city, Po and the Furious Five are sent to deal with the problem, however Shen has a bigger past with Po then the protagonist realizes.

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