Action: Looper or Taken 2
This weekend we have a highly anticipated sequel to the much loved Liam Neeson action film Taken, which isn't so surprisingly named Taken 2, hitting the multiplexes. In the film Brian Mills, the ex secret agent killing machine has been hired as security in Istambul, and his beloved daughter and ex-wife fly there to make a surprise visit. This time the entire Mills family is targeted by the parents of all the people Liam Neeson killed in the sex trafficking network that kidnapped his daughter Kim in the first film. At the beginning the ex-wife is cozy-ing up with Liam Neeson a little bit more because her new husband probably doesn't have nearly the same size penis as the Oscar Shindler's. This is supposed to make you care about her when she gets kidnapped at the beginning while Liam Neeson once again talks tries to talk his daughter out of another possible abduction. After that I don't really know the rest of that goes on, but I'm sure Liam Neeson takes down an entire organization of criminals and hugs his ex-wife and daughter at the end as they walk off into the sunset, not detailing any repercussions after killing upwards of 50 people and causing thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property damage throughout which ever cities he goes through. That made it sound like I really hated the first movie, but it was the exact opposite really.
The problem I already have with the sequel is that it seemed extremely forced. While I was excited to hear they were making another one I was deathly afraid that they were just doing it because they could make a pretty cheap shoot em up movie, and receive tons of dividends even if it was lackluster.
The first movie worked so well because it prided itself on it's no-nonsense attitude. In the last movie the criminals only real motivation is money, and to say alive which made it seem possible for a man to come in and completely destroy everything they had been doing for years and kill them all. Whereas now we have a bunch of distraught Albanians who are pissed that this man killed their kids even though they fathered a gaggle of complete shitheads.
The first movie it was about one man trying to rekindle the love he had with his daughter, and he earned it by killing tons of people who kidnapped her and basically showed her why he couldn't always be there for her while she was a child. Now the motivations are all messy, and the annoying ex-wife who you wanted dead in the first one is now one of the people he's fighting to save. Please, if I ever have an ex-wife and she gets kidnapped, I would pump my fists and say "you didn't want to be married to me, so why would you want me to save you? Bitch." The movie just seems very forced and the critics aren't receiving it as well as the first as it currently holds an ugly 18% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer.
Last weekend I strongly urged you to go see Looper if you wanted to see a film that is both inventive, and badass. This weekend I strongly suggest that you do the same thing. For it being the best action movie I've seen in awhile it only earned a tepid 20 million last weekend and didn't even make half of Hotel Transylvania which is just disappointing to say the least. If you have even the slightest bit of curiosity in the film then you'd probably really enjoy it. If you just haven't gotten around to it yet I suggest you see it sooner rather than later because next weekend boasts a lot of fun across the board with new films Seven Psychopaths and early Oscar contender Argo hitting screens near you. So go check it out. See a movie that deserves an audience.
As for Taken 2, I'll still probably see it at some point because I adore Liam Neeson. He's exactly 60 years older than my nephew Finn and he always carves out a good performance no matter how shitty the movie is. Plus Liam Neeson says "shit" on Sportscenter and loves celebrating athleticism.
Still,I'd probably see Looper a few more times before checking it out, and I've already seen Looper twice.
Side Note: The teaser trailer of A Good Day to Die Hard (Die Hard 5) has just hit the internet and you must watch.
Family: Frankenweenie
Over the past decade or so it's been pretty difficult to endorse Tim Burton films, but he returns to his roots with Frankenweenie, a 3D stop animation Disney flick that follows the current trend of making a children's farce out of classic Hollywood horror and monster films (ParaNorman, Hotel Transylvania and Frankenweenie are all in theaters as we speak). While Burton's most recent attempts at filmmaking have been lackluster to say the least Frankenweenie brings him back to his early days before he started directing features and he focused on animation and specifically stop animation.
This new Frankenweenie film is a feature length adaption of a short he made back in the 80's by the same name. In the film a boy can't come to terms with his recent dog's death so he vows to try and revive it by getting it struck by lightning like Frankenstein. All said and done this is Burton's love letter to all his favorite classic horror movies and he gets to showcase the talents that made him such a unique and popular director during the past few decades.
Frankenweenie currently sits fresh, with a very high score of 85% on the tomatometer and has been garnered lots of great critical acclaim. It remains to be seen what kind of numbers it will bring at the box office as stop animation tends to draw a lower crowd these days, but Burton is one of the best at creating a strange a beautiful world with his animation and it could be a hit.
The question though is can Burton return to the upper echelons as an elite director as he once was considered. Shortly after he produced several of his big time animations in the 80's he began his feature career and between the years of 1988-94 he released probably his most beloved films to date (Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scizzorhands, Batman Returns, A Nightmare Before Christmas and Ed Wood). He was a director who managed to attain critical appeal as well as commercial appeal while making films that were wildly different in tone than most directors. After that he's managed to pull out a few solid movies but since then his largest criticism has been that his films ooze with style, but lack substance. His characters are often flat, and lack any motivation that can make the audience relate. He paints a pretty picture every time but that pretty picture is of a sewer drain or something of similar or less personality. At least his recent track record seems to indicate that. You'd have to go back all the way to Corpse Bride or Big Fish if you wanted to see something vaguely original that worked. Other than that it's just been regurgitating the same stories we've seen a million times before but his Burton-take on them (Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Planet of the Apes, Dark Shadows).
That is why I think Frankenweenie is very important to Burton's future. I'd like to think that maybe he's done a 360 and is right back at where he established his roots so he can go forward from this moment and continue to make interesting films that we actually feel like watching. I've always enjoyed his style and his zany sense of humor. I even have a poster of a sketch he drew as a child on my wall from when I went to the traveling Tim Burton art show a few years ago. I'm rooting for Frankenweenie to do well because not enough time is spent making stop animation features and if this one can get commercial success maybe Disney wouldn't be complete pussies about putting more money into future stop animation projects. But Disney keeps dumping 250 million dollars into movies like this...
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