Narcos

I've been enthralled with the Netflix series Narcos recently. It follows Pablo Escobar, the other Colombian cartel drug lords, the DEA, various politicians, and really does the best job of giving a holistic approach of telling the story of the massive war on cocaine in 80's. The name Pablo Escobar has always meant cocaine and crazy money to me. Growing up just after he was finally killed I've tried to watch various things and read a little bit about him and how massive his criminal empire was. He is super fascinating. The acting in the series is superb. The quality is excellent from top to bottom. The story is as interesting as any you can watch. I have no clue on how truly historically accurate everything is, but you certainly believe they've done their due diligence. The series tracks the beginnings of Pablo Escobar from being a smuggler of stolen goods and marijuana and how he became the largest cocaine kingpin the world has ever seen (I'm pretty sure anyway). I'm also secretly hoping the series brings back chest hair as something that's cool again. Bottom Line: 9.3 out of 10. I've been a fan of pretty much everything that I've seen with it and I can't watch it fast enough.

Ant Man: Everyone Loves Paul Rudd

Ant-Man is a much lesser known Marvel commodity than Thor, Iron Man, or Captain America, but it's the same franchise apparently. Ant-Man follows the story of Dr. Henry Pym, who creates a serum called the Pym Particle that shrinks matter without changing it's strength. It's works on people, and Ant-Man and the Wasp are born. Dr. Pym is played by Michael Douglas and it's a great role for him. Rudd enters the story as a thief with great morals who stole from a corrupt company who was taking money from customers. Rudd comes out of prison looking to get straight and be a bigger part of his daughter's life. Rudd is released from prison and struggling on his own. Dr. Pym tracks him and prompts him through various hints to rob the Ant-Man suit from his home. In the foreground another Doctor working for Pym Laboratories is trying to develop the Pym Particle again since Dr. Pym buried it and refused to be a part of any weaponization of his discovery. The Ant-Man suit is necessary to steal the new technology and keep the world safe. Evangeline Lilly plays Dr. Pym's incredibly good looking daughter. It's not the best of the Marvel films, it's not the worst. Rudd is excellent like usual, as is Douglas and Lilly. Michael Pena does a pretty good turn as a hyperactive, nervous thief. Bottom Line: 8.3 out of 10. If you like Marvel films, you'll like this one. Solid throughout, though a lot of the stuff with ants gets a little preposterous. Very good acting, decent script/story, and it's worth checking out whenever you come across it.

Prozac Nation

Prozac Nation is a biopic about author Elizabeth Wurtzel and her tremendous struggles with depression and mental illness throughout her college years. It's an amazing look at mental illness and incredibly personal. The movie tracks her complex relationship with her mother and father, who divorced when she was around 10 I believe. Some of the best scenes are between Christina Ricci and Jessica Lange as they crash into each other unveiling their weaknesses and struggles in incredibly emotional moments. It follows various college experiences and some of her writing successes. It's incredibly interesting to see a really good film about mental illness. This film would be a huge reason Christina Ricci is viewed as a good actress who still gets work. She's fantastic and the rest of the cast is very solid, including a very young Jason Briggs and Jonathon Rhys-Meyers. Bottom Line: 8.1 out of 10. Certainly worth watching whenever you come across it.

Jurassic World: Saga Re-Vamped

Jurassic World follows a very familiar tale of a huge theme park based on bringing dinosaurs to the masses. This theme park has some of the same geneticists (Dr. Henry Wu) from the first movie, which I respect and thought was great. The park is trying to push genetic limits (standard) and create new dinosaurs to create more revenue and are looking for a company to sponsor the new attraction. This dinosaur is going to be T-rex sized, but faster, smarter, etc. There is some great CGI and the newer dinosaurs are very impressive. Chris Pratt is a man who trains raptors to do some things like group hunting. Bryce Dallas Howard is the career women who is the GM of the whole place who has no time for kids or a personal life. Her nephews visit and become part of the mess. The smart, T-rex like dinosaur escapes and mayhem ensues. Disappointingly it was too similar to the original Jurassic Park for my tastes, but a similarly impressive achievement with CGI and monster creation. Bottom Line: 7.1 out of 10. It was entertaining, but familiar. Worth a rental for some mindless fun.

Focus

I watched Focus, the Will Smith/Robbie Margot film about a crew of people who are con artists. They conduct business in elaborate ways and generally through slight of hand, or other various things, they get people's wallets, rings, watches, etc. Margot is trying to learn from Smith about the trade to become better. Margot is incredibly beautiful, so that's great. She does alright as a beautiful woman trying to figure out the con game. Will Smith is your standard, silky-smooth Will Smith. The movie is interesting, but it's frustrating at times and like most "who-dunnit?" capers it's tough to follow and a bit ridiculous sometimes. In it's defense, the ending was a bit of a surprise. Bottom Line: 5.9 out of 10. It was alright, but not much else.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

HBO starting showing "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" and I thought it worth a viewing this Sunday. Ben Stiller plays a negative asset manager, which means he handles photo negatives for LIFE magazine, which is a bit of a lost art. LIFE magazine is going to cease being a magazine and start being an internet magazine. Walter has worked with a certain photographer (Sean Penn) for 18 years and handled hundreds of his photos and millions of other negatives. Walter is trying to win the affection of Kirsten Wiig, who works in photograph accounts. He realizes his life is rather boring when setting up an online profile for eHarmony. Sean Penn delivers his last negatives, but #25 is missing, which he has deemed his "best work" and a reflection on the human condition, etc. He gave Walter a wallet with LIFE magazines motto on it in the package, but nobody can find the treasured negative. Walter goes on a search for Penn, who is a reclusive TRUE ARTIST (AKA hippy vagrant weirdo) who doesn't carry a phone, etc. He tracks him based on some of the other negatives to Greenland, begins having adventures, and follows him to Iceland. He keeps working on finding Penn to find the only missing negative that's ever happened during his tenure. There's the plot of his relationship with Wiig, Patton Oswalt as the eHarmony employee trying to help finalize Walter's profile, and his mother moving into an adult living facility while moving her piano in, that was the first wedding gift from her late husband (their late father). These things all move together as Walter has amazing life experiences while tracking down Penn. It's a "slice of life" tale that combines love, some adventurous moments, and the uplifting tale of Walter growing as a person. Bottom Line: 7.2 out of 10. I was a sucker for something sentimental on Sunday before football, so keep that in mind, but it was a "nice" movie that's kind of funny, has some interesting parts, and features Stiller & Wiig, who are VERY likable actors.

Sicario: Action/Drama Done Right

Movies I want to see I avoid as much of the trailers & information as possible. Sicario I saw a trailer for and knew I'd be seeing it. Great casting of Benecio del Toro (Unreal), Emily Blunt, and Josh Brolin, but they had me at "Benecio del Toro play badass drug cartel cop.". It gets paralleled to his role in Traffic, but this is MUCH different because it makes his Traffic role seem like he was a Pixar movie character. Sicario jumps right into the action by following Blunt, an AZ police officer in the kidnapping division, on an arrest/smashing into a drug cartel house. They find none of the people they are looking for, but the walls are lined with dead bodies and it's crazy. Blunt is added to a special task force that's going to actively get after the cartel responsible for the house of horrors. Brolin is the Government official running it, but del Toro is the fist of the operation, the Hand of God capable of just about anything. I don't want to talk a lot about the details of the movie, but I do want to say it's the best action/drama I've seen in a long time and that del Toro and Blunt will both be nominated for best acting awards and this will be on the block for best picture. Bottom Line: 9.4 out of 10. Great everything in this movie and it should be seen in theatres immediately. I love being around for Oscar season. I liked this more than the Martian, though they are very different movies.

The Martian

The Martian is Gravity + Apollo 13 + Castaway + Macgyver. It's the story of a Mars mission that ends abruptly following a powerful storm. In the storm a man is left behind, but that man is Matt Damon (astronaut/botanist Mark Whatney), and he's invincible and awesome. Damon's character finds himself covered in dust, wounded, and without anyone within a thousands of miles, probably more like hundreds of thousands of miles. His status report is incredibly grim, but he has steely resolve, true grit, Jason Bourne blood, knowledge of botany, and testicles the size of bowling balls. He sets about various tasks to grow potatoes on Mars, increase battery life on his rover, create water for the garden, etc. NASA frantically tries to figure out ways to get first supplies, and then a rescue to astronaut Mark Whatney. A great cast is assembled with Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Michael Pena, Kate Mara, Sean Bean (SPOILER, he actually lives through this movie firmly planted on Earth) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (I needed to look up the spelling again). Drama is everywhere, but you find yourself legitimately pulling and caring about every twist and turn in the Mark Whatney saga. The lady next to me in the theatre was squirming, laughing, gasping, and was clearly emotional invested in the film. Matt Damon is just too damn likeable. Bottom Line: 9.4 out of 10. Fairly certain this is my favorite film of the year and therefore the early favorite for Best Picture Oscar as well as another Best Actor nomination for Matt Damon, possibly a win. Run and see this in theatres, though I feel seeing it in 3D like I did is unnecessary.

The Water Deviner: Russell Crowe is Ruggedly Handsome

I rented the Water Deviner thinking I'd get an uplifting tale of success through hard work and defying the odds. Crowe plays a father who had three sons fight for King and Country (Australia fought for England in WWI, etc) who were listed as deceased after a large battle near the Aegean Sea. Crowe's wife commits apparent suicide drowning in a shallow pond by their home because after four years she lost hope in her sons returning. Crowe decides that would be the perfect time to start looking for their bodies. Britain sent a team to recover "dog tags" and mark the lost soldiers from WWI. Crowe has the impressive ability to locate water in the Australian desert and that helps him locate two of his sons who perished during the intense battle. He befriends various Turks despite the fact they are not on the friendliest of terms. He finds that his eldest son was sent to a POW camp and he continues the search against all odds and the wishes on the British government. It's interesting and he is quite the diplomat as the gorgeous Olga Kurylenko falls for him because she's in the same situation waiting for her husband to return from the same battle. Bottom Line: 7.1 out of 10. It's a good story and an able cast, but it does get a bit boring and long throughout the story. I'm glad the running time is around 100 minutes because much more than that would have been too much. Worth a rental if you're looking for an uplifting drama.

Kingsmen: The Secret Service

I rented Kingsmen: The Secret Service during my 1/2 price week at Family Video. It had surprisingly good scores on Rotten Tomatoes and I figured it was worth a shot. Colin Firth plays the "primary" agent of the Kingsmen, a secret agency not funded by any government, but one that stands for true independence and gentlemanly pursuits and honor. Colin Firth is perfect, Michael Caine is excellent as well as the "agency" head of the Kingsmen, Mark Strong is great as "Merlin", the trainer extraordinaire and finally Samuel L. Jackson plays the villain, though it's a more whimsical role than what we're used to with Sam Jackson sadly. The plot follows Jackson's character as a billionaire technology mogul who is offering an implant that will allow free internet and phone service to anyone with it. You know his reasoning is diabolical, but you don't know exactly how. A Kingsmen agent (Lancelot) is killed trying to rescue Mark Hamill (I know, you can't kidnap a Jedi) and the event makes the Kingsmen dig into Sam Jackson a bit more. Meanwhile a former Kingsmen agents son (Agent died in 1997 saving Colin Firth's and others lives by jumping on a grenade) is a bit of a rogue/rebellious youth with a ton of talent and ability, but he's spending his life being a loser in England. He calls the number on the back of a medallion given to him as a five year old and it's a direct line to Firth to get him out of a tough legal spot that would include grand theft auto, destruction of police property, etc. He's enlisted to become the next Kingsmen agent with eight others. The movie follows a fun, stylized form from Matthew Vaughn. The violence and action is fun, a bit ridiculous, but very impressive. It's a fun, unique story that makes fun of a lot of movies that follow the similar vein of a Bond-like film. Crazed, megalomaniac bad guy, sophisticated spy, global destruction/domination being the stakes. Bottom Line: 8.1 out of 10. It's a fun time that has a few surprises up its sleeve. Worth the price of a rental if you're looking for a fun action movie.