Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
I wasn’t planning to see this in the theater, but went a few weeks after it was released because of its 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. For one of the rare times, I completely disagree with RT.
Character
Simon Pegg was clearly the comic relief and I liked him. Jeremy Renner was the problem. His character was muddled, at times also comic relief (and it was stupid to have two character do that), at times mysterious, and then it turned out he was skilled like the others. More importantly, these disparate elements happened randomly. Meaning, I understood the mysterious turning into the truth about his background, but even after the truth was revealed, he seemed to be clueless about some things, then acted like Pegg, etc.
Little things
My spirit was dampened at the end of the opening chase scene when that agent was killed by the woman. It felt so false for him to not suspect a strange, pretty woman who just so happened to be walking in that deserted back-alley at that time. That same scene on a regular street or a blindside ambush in the alley would have been much better.
Tom Cruise scaling the outside of the hotel tower was the major set piece and, while it was cool in its own right, it failed in the area of plausibility. How did no one inside the hotel see him climb it? And, after getting in to the server room, how come Tom didn’t do the safer thing and exit the room from the door and take the elevator down? Good action movies do not ignore such issues.
Logic and Structure/Plot
In the hotel sequence, how did the blonde woman (who stole the documents in the opening) not know what her buyer looked like? This was a major turning point in the story and it rested on something so flimsy. That officially took me out of the movie and I watched the rest without caring what happened.
Source Code
I liked it…except for the half of the movie that got twisted in its own mythology.
Premise
The science behind the technology should have stayed in the setup and not been an avenue for Jake Gyllenhaal to remain in that person’s body at the end. And the science should have been less complex…not use a near-dead soldier.
Take Me Home Tonight
I wish my friend had taken me anywhere but to a TV to watch this drivel. At least I didn’t watch the whole thing.
Character
The character of the fine actor Topher Grace graduated from MIT (in the backstory) and, rather than work in his field till he figured out his life, worked in a video store. That’s also known as working in Loserville. Regardless of his issue, the character was stupid and implausible with this ridiculous setup.
We were supposed to root for the guy, but he helped his friend steal an expensive vehicle. That’s not cool or fun.
Objective
All Topher wanted was to get the girl’s phone number. While that implied at least a little more, like one date, it was a lousy and trivial goal for a movie character. Worse (my friend told me this), Topher got close to the girl and had sex with her and, after a brief falling out, reunited…and then got her number. That’s how stupid the objective was- he accomplished it when it was no longer necesssary or meaningful.
Structure/Plot
He chose to lie to the girl of his dreams, a typical romcom device that felt stale here. Worse, not much into Act II, he opened up and told the girl the truth about most of his life, just not the part about where he worked. Say what? It’s all or nothing, the way he opened up meant he should’ve said everything. Obviously, that would’ve ended the movie 40 minutes in so the point was to not open up, but keep on lying or further cover the original lie.
Not one thing amused or intrigued me till that point so I stopped watching it.
Little thing
A bad movie shows its flawz early on and, aside from the above, a poster for Back To The Future was hanging prominently in the video store. The problem? The movie was set in 1984 and BTTF came out in ’85 (1985 is even part of BTTF’s plot!) and didn’t reach home video till a year later, ’86.
Red Riding Hood
Why did I stop watching this after 30 minutes?
Premise
Because the tone of the movie was muddled. It was supposed to be a fairy-tale setting, yet it looked silly…it looked like a low-budget set of a fairy-tale village. And then there was talk of a Father and, worse, the Father character appeared. Yup, a fairy tale with Christianity. Who the hell thought that was a good idea?!
Character
Because the lovely and talented Amanda Seyfried was the main character, yet she didn’t do anything.
Structure/Plot and Logic
Because the story insulted my intelligence when the villagers easily killed the wolf and thought their ordeal was over…they really thought the wolf that had been terrorizing them for 20 years and to which they offered animals to placate it could have been captured so easily. And they had never before tried to capture it. Ugh.
Sucker Punch
I was the sucker for watching this drivel. Good thing I didn’t pay to see it and good thing I fell asleep for parts of it.
Premise
Girls sent to a mental institution were forced to dance for outside clients. Say what? While I was still trying to understand that nonsense, the story revealed its real raison d’etre: showing the girl’s daydreams of elaborate fantasy-battle scenarios of her and her friends breaking out. And the daydreams happened when she danced…even though the first few minutes of each fantasy was her standing still, meaning she was hardly moving in front of the men so why exactly were they mesmerized by her dancing? And the dancing was never shown! If that’s confusing, you get the point.
The Conspirator
Good legal drama.
Little things
When Mary Surrat admitted to her lawyer James McAvoy that she knew of the original plot to kidnap- not kill- President Lincoln, I felt like most of the tension delfated from the story. Sure, there was still the larger issue of the injustice of her being tried by a military tribunal, but the way the lawyer was originally convinced of her guilt, the revelation of the kidnapping meant that she was still guilty of a crime worthy of the death penalty.
Dialogue
The first fifteen minutes turned me off because the dialogue sounded like it was from 2011 and not 1865. I mean, it didn’t have to be authentic to historians familiar with the entire vocabulary of the era, but it certainly should have sounded more like the old days than today.
Hall Pass
The studio should have passed on this idea.
Premise / Character
I’m not sure if the idea could have worked in any manner, but it was doomed from the beginning in this production. The wives giving their husbands a week off from marriage made them look stupid (regardless of the reverse-psychology that was established) and the guys taking it made them unlikeable (regardless of their occasional doubts about it).
Structure/Plot
Then the story had nowhere to go. The guys first sputtered in their freedom and hardly tried to find babes so that stalled the beginning of Act II just when the movie needed to rev up. And then later in Act II they did pursue other women and that made them look worse. (It also took too long- over 30 minutes- for Act II to start which was when Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis first went out.)
The rest of the movie was a mix of every tired gag the writers could think of to disguise the weak premise- stupid friends (and going out with Owen and Jason for no reason), mistaken identity, psycho-jealous boyfriend, car chase, etc.