The Maze Runner
Holy crap, why haven't I heard of this before? Apparently it is a best seller, and it looks flipping great. Take the Cube, Hunger Games, Running Man, and big ole standard epic fantasy, and smash it all together, and that's what this movie looks like! The visuals are so vibrant and green, and then so scary and dark, it just has me feeling really good ... except that I can't name a single actor I saw. While that isn't necessarily a BAD thing, it doesn't inspire a lot of confidence on the acting. But I'm super interested in what I saw, and fill hopefully give it a shot in theatres as soon as I can.
Verdict - TREASURE
Maleficent
Taken me awhile to get to this one. Angelina Jolie gives the Sleeping Beauty story, and Disney's (current) most popular villain, another version of the Once Upon a Time or Wicked twist. The effects are super CGI-y, and all actors seem to take third or fourth seat to Jolie's lead and the CGI. This is not a film made for me, and I know that. But it looks even worse to me than normally these kinds of things do. I'm unwilling to completely through it under the bus, but for now, I'm hesitant ... at best.
Verdict - HESITANT
The Giver
Oh no. I didn't like this book when I had to read it before. But maybe the film version will be better. Lemme watch it now before I start going to far in on my thoughts on it.
...
Meryl Streep and Jeff Bridges, plus Katie Holmes. That is enough for me to give up right now. Take that, and then add in the ... ok, this'll sound weird, and perhaps this is unfair because of the way adaption works, but for this film to be so happy bright shiny in the early parts ... doesn't that defeat the purpose? When I read it, and what I remember, it was a world of grey and black and white, and color was a big deal, wasn't it? Am I not remembering that right? Well, whatever. I liked the music, didn't like anything else I saw, and know I don't like the source material. I couldn't trash this faster.
Verdict - TRASH
The Signal
Intriguing. A sci-fi thriller about inability to understand whats going on, aliens (maybe), monsters (maybe), big guns, Laurence Fishburne in a hazmat/space suit, and weird super obviously indy-styled memory sequences. I dunno what to make of it, but the visuals are amazingly cool, and I'm very interested in seeing a second trailer.
Verdict - TREASURE
AND THE REASON FOR THE SEASON ...
Hercules
The Rock fighting a bunch of monsters. Let me say that again, just in case you misunderstood me ... ahem ...
THE ROCK FIGHTING A BUNCH OF MONSTERS! BIG OLE LIONS AND BOARS AND MULTI-HEADED SNAKES AND ZOMBIES AND SPARTAN ARMIES! I wanna see this movie real bad. Actually showing the 12 Labors (which is my guess, though I'm unsure) looks incredible. This film is based on a pretty recent best selling graphic novel version of the 12 Labors, anyway, so whatever the real story here is, I'm stoked.
Not only for that, but it does a LOT of things the fantasy genre does real well, like setting scope. And no, not stupid bird's-eye swooping around New Zealand scope. I'm talking enormous temples to Athena, big ole swamps, huge armies, big ole caves! A lot of this stuff is practical (you can very much tell, AND there are pictures of the practical sets all over the internet) which is mindboggling, in that Conan the Barbarian kind of way. I'm super excited.
Verdict - TREASURE
Not a bad haul! I love feeling excited for the summer films, because for the last year or so I haven't been excited at all. This year is looking real real good.
The Trailer Park
I have zero interest in Maleficent. I didn't know that Herc had a trailer yet. I am all the happy.
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