Summer Movie Reviews

I feel like this summer of movies started off slowly and didn’t really pick up until Toy Story 3 and Inception were released, but maybe I just wasn’t full-bore with the movies until the middle of the summer. There was also no type of movie like The Hangover early in the summer that can carry one’s thirst for movies until mid-July.

Anyway, I’ve seen some really good movies as of late in theaters — and some not-so-good movies. The movies I’ve seen this summer include The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Inception, Dinner for Schmucks, The Other Guys and Toy Story 3. Let’s run them down, from my favorite movie of the five to my least favorite.

1. Inception. I’ve seen this twice so far, and I loved every minute of it each time I saw it. Inception is the best movie I’ve seen in recent memory — the only two movies that come close to this masterpiece, in my opinion, are The Book of Eli and Gran Torino. Leonardo DiCaprio is at his very best (his performance even motivated me to rent Shutter Island.) Inception keeps you thinking throughout your time at the theater, and is very thought-provoking after you’ve left the theater. Movie-goers have to see Inception twice to fully understand and take in everything that’s going on in the movie. I was surprised how much faster the movie seemed to go my second time seeing it.

After I had seen the movie twice, I was talking about the movie with my buddy at work, and he interpreted the movie a bit differently than I did, and the way he interpreted it sent me for a loop in regards to the did-it-or-didn’t-it-fall scene at the very end of the movie. My sister, Megan, texted me right after she saw the movie, saying that she couldn’t believe that it was all a dream. I was a bit perplexed, since I felt like I had seen the spinning top starting to wobble. But my friend at work was dabbling with the idea that it was indeed all a dream. I think I have to see it again to figure this all out.

I loved how the movie tied in the beginning scene to the end of the movie. The movie begins with Dom Cobb, played by DiCaprio, on what turns out to be the shore of his subconscious (limbo), being dragged into a room to see an older man. The viewer is completely confused as to what is going on — you don’t know that you’re in Cobb’s subconscious – especially when the scene ends abruptly and cuts to a completely different scene, which turns out to be a dream that’s two levels deep.  At the end of the movie, when Cobb falls back into limbo in his effort to be kicked back into consciousness, we understand what the beginning scene was all about — Cobb had to be shot to return to consciousness.

Second, I loved how Cobb’s late wife, Mal, played by Marion Cotillard, was tied in through the entire movie. The viewer first learns that something is amiss with Mal when Cobb’s new dreaming “Architect,” Ariadne, played by Ellen Page, first experiences Cobb’s type of dreamworld. Ariadne understands Cobb’s dreaming concept at a freakishly fast rate. In fact, one of the cool scenes in the movie is when Cobb “tests” Ariadne by having her create a puzzle in two minutes that it takes one minute to solve, and she gets it in three tries. Anyway, Mal first appears in Ariadne’s first dreaming experience as a part of Cobb’s projections, and Mal goes nuts and kills Adriadne. That sends Ariadne back to reality, prompting her to leave angrily Cobb’s lab, but Cobb knows she’ll be back because reality won’t be enough for her after she experienced the ultra-dreamworld. Of course, she comes back.

Cobb’s wife also makes an appearance when Ariadne sees Cobb hooked up to his dreaming machine (yes, that’s what I’m calling it) and Ariadne jumps into his dream. We learn all about Mal and how deeply disturbed Cobb still is by Mal’s passing. Ariadne experiences Mal for a prolonged period of time, and realizes that the mission for the handful of people assigned to it will be very difficult to fend off Cobb’s projections of Mal during their third-level dream mission. And when they’re in the mission and end up in limbo, Mal appears again, only for Cobb to admit that he knew inception — planting an idea in someone’s head — was possible because he did it to his wife. I was so blown during that scene.

The mission of the group, as given by Saito (Ken Watanabe), is to infiltrate the mind of Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) through three levels of dreams in order to change Fischer’s mind about continue the business of his deceased father. Fischer splitting up his dad’s company would pay huge dividends for Saito, a big businessman in his own right. The three levels of the dream, designed by Ariadne, are quite the sight to behold for movie-goers. The kicks between dreaming levels and the militarisitc battles with Fischer’s projections are so awesome.

I strongly recommend seeing this movie, as you can probably tell. It’s one of the few movies these days that’s actually worth the 10 bucks. I really want to see this in 3-D now.

2. Toy Story 3. The aspect of the Toy Story movies that I really like is that all ages can love these movies. The kids love to see Woody and Buzz Lightyear, but adults can fully understand some of the emotional scenes and symbolism in the movie. In the series’ third installment, Andy (the toys’ owner) is going off to college, which leaves the toys without a real owner — and the toys haven’t been played with for years anyway (they’ve just been stuck in a toy chest.)

Without someone to play with them and Andy’s room being cleaned out for his journey to college, the toys will either get thrown away, donated, or put in the attic. Andy decides that he’ll take Woody to college with him, but leave the rest of the toys in the attic. Andy’s mother mistakingly throws the attic-bound toys into the garbage, but the toys escape and crawl into Andy’s mother’s car, which will take them to a daycare center called “Sunnyside,” which the toys believe is a nice place where kids will play with them. Once at Sunnyside, Woody begins the trek back to Andy’s house in order to go to college with him, while the others stay behind at what they believe will be a warm and fuzzy environment.

Instead, Sunnyside turns out to be a place where new toys are sent to the bottom of the rung by the toys that have been at Sunnyside for a longer period of time. The new toys are played with by the roughest kids and can hardly survive a day, and are locked up at night by the leaders of the Sunnyside toys. The chief leader, Lotso, is a big purple teddy bear that appears to be friendly on the outside, but is very much evil on the inside. The operation he runs at Sunnyside takes in new toys and wreaks havoc on them daily. To make matters worse, Lotso and Co. take Buzz and change his settings so that he can become a leader, too, and watch over Andy’s old toys. Buzz is turned into a monster.

On his way back to Andy’s house, Woody encounters a few toys at a house that tell him about the dangers of Sunnyside. Woody is faced with a dilemma — does he keep going to Andy’s house or go back to Sunnyside to rescue his friends? He decides to go back to Sunnyside, and when he gets back, he learns that a group-wide escape is nearly impossible. But Woody is convinced that if he could do it once, he could do it again. Woody and the toys almost make it out of Sunnyside (while re-programming Buzz) before being stopped by Lotso and Co. at the edge of Sunnyside. All of Andy’s toys and Lotso end up falling in the big garbage container at the edge of the Sunnyside property.

(EDIT: I forgot to mention that when Woody and the gang re-program Buzz, they do it incorrectly at first. While they get him back to being nice again, he’s speaking Spanish, and Spanish-speaking Buzz is hilarious. They eventually get him back to speaking English.)

What ensues is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster that very few movies recently — you know, with like, real people in them — have been able to match. The toys are put in the local landfill and come this close to being cut up into little bits and pieces and come this close to being torched with the other trash in a massive fire (Lotso had escaped from the trash and acts like he’s going to stop the landfill from moving the trash along, but doesn’t do it.) As the toys hold hands and prepare to burn to death, you’re left wondering, “Some kids movie!” Alas, the emotional heart-tugging is what makes this movie so great. The toys end up being rescued by fellow toys, and when they get back to Andy’s house, he takes them to the same house that Woody learned about the realities of Sunnyside, as the house turns out to be family friend. The movie ends with Andy handing down his toys to the little girl living at the house.

For some reason, while the way the movie ended was quite fitting, I feel like it would have been equally as fitting to see the toys succomb to death at the landfill’s fire – if the movie wasn’t partially pointed towards kids. I think a death at the fire while the toys held each other’s hands would have been the perfect symbolism to show that all good things must come to an end at some point, that evil unfortunately will sometimes win out over good, and ultimately, all that one can really ask for is that you have each other (the toys holding hands.) Alas, this is a kids movie. Let’s not kill off the toys. I strongly recommend anyone to see this movie.

3. The Other Guys. I loved this comedy. I was constantly laughing at the ridiculousness of this movie. Two New York City detectives (partners Allen and Terry, played by Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg) are in the shadows of other detectives largely because of Allen’s unwillingness to move from his desk and do some real detective work, but the overall storyline — Allen and Terry getting to do a huge case – is so loose that you kind of just forget about it and focus on the ridiculous scenes in the movie, and that’s not a problem. Just know before you watch this movie that’s not the kind of comedy that still has some semblence of a storyline.

Some of the funny scenes in this movie include Allen and Terry arguing over whether a lion or a tuna would win a battle and a flashback of Terry mistakingly shooting Derek Jeter (Jeter yells something to the effect of, “I’m Derek Jeter! You shot me!” Also, Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) play two high-profile cops. When the two of them are chasing after another suspect and end up on the roof of a very tall building, the two exclaim, “Aim for the bushes!” and the two jump off the building, only to land face-first on a Manhattan street. You have to see the scene to understand how ridiculous it is. The movie immediately cuts to the funeral, and Terry whispers to Allen something to the tune of, ”They jumped off a 20-story building.” The ensuing whisper fight is pretty funny.

Also, the cop from The Hangover (the “IN THE FACE” guy) is in The Other Guys, as well. The Hangover cop, played by Rob Riggle, is Martin in this movie. He’s a cop that constantly gets on the nerves of Allen and Terry and always beats them to crime scenes. At one point in the movie, Martin and his partner are at a classroom teaching little kids about how to be a cop (definitely an omage to The Hangover, especially when Martin asks the kids if they have any tasers to hand back.) When they get called to a crime scene, Martin asks the kids to hand back the guns (yes, the kjds had the guns) and asks if any kid wanted to come on a ride-along to the crime scene. They take a little girl. Pretty funny.

The moral of this movie is essentially, “Why haven’t Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg been together in more movies?” The two are awesome together. Definitely go see this movie. I loved its ridiculousness. My buddy and I have created a scale for comedies (1-10), with 1 being Dumb and Dumberer and 10 being The Hangover. The Other Guys is an 8.5.

4. Dinner For Schmucks. I have to tell you, I was disappointed in this movie. But in the group of four that I saw this movie with, I was the only one who didn’t absolutely love this movie, so I’m probably the incorrect one about this movie. I found myself squirming around in my seat in this movie because it had so many awkward moments — kind of like how I find myself quickly changing the channel when I’m watching The Office due to extremely awkward moments (the two wouldn’t have an actor in common, would they?)

I also found the whole dead mice thing very odd and unappealing when they weren’t at the dinner (the mice demonstration is hilarious at the dinner.) I don’t know – maybe I just felt like someone carrying around dead mice during their everyday lives and dressing them up was just plain odd and really not that funny. It was also disappointing that the actual dinner for schmucks was a relatively pretty small part of the movie even though it was previewed to be almost the entire movie. The movie spent way too much time introducing us to all of the characters and their situations. At some point, the viewer understands what’s going on with the characters, and too much introduction to their situations can stall the movie’s progress.

Of course, this movie had some hysterical parts. My favorite was the scene where Tim (Paul Rudd) goes to see Kieran’s picture gallery. Kieran (Jemaine Clement), a painter, is the boss of  Tim’s girlfriend, Julie (Stephanie Szostak.) The pictures in Kieran’s gallery are literally all of himself — it’s incredibly funny. Also funny is the fight between Barry (Steve Carell) and Tim’s old girlfriend, as well as Zach Galifianakis’ first apperance, when he’s wearing some sort of orange sweater cut off around his neck.

I think my buddy said this movie was an 8.5 on the 1-10 Comedy Scale. I said 7.5, but now I’m thinking maybe 6 or 6.5. This movie should have been better given the cast. Wait until this comes out on DVD and Redbox it — not worth the 10 bucks in my opinion.

5. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. I was roped into seeing this movie by my future brother-in-law (he’s a nerd), and let me tell you, this is two hours of my life that I will never get back. I felt like it was the typical Nicholas Cage type of movie (you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.) Except in this one, Cage has magical powers, and he teaches his “apprentice” the same magic in order to, you know, fight off the source of all things evil! This is the worst movie I’ve seen all summer. Dorky and unimaginative. When you watch this movie, you may very well be thinking about all of the better ways that one could spend the money used for the movie’s special effects. I strongly recommend not to see this movie.

I’ll have a Part 2 of summer movie reviews if I see enough movies by the end of the summer to warrant another blog post.

“Wait, I thought the author of this blog was supposed to be writing about sports. His last post was about Jersey Shore, and now movie reviews? I want to read about Buck Showalter and the Ravens’ cornerback situation.”

Well, sorry. I like to write about other things besides sports. And what do you want me to write that hasn’t already written about Showalter? If it’s any consolation, I’ll probably be doing a post soon about Jeremy Guthrie’s turnaround. Regarding the cornerbacks, again, what do you want me to say that hasn’t already been said?