Iron Man 3 (86.6%)

The final installment of the Iron Man trilogy (besides, of course, The Avengers and a rumored sequel, and probably plenty of other appearances in other Marvel movies), Iron Man 3 lived up to its legacy.

In the weeks following The Avengers, a sleep-deprived Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) tells the story of how Iron Man met his match. Beginning the story at a New Years Eve party in 1999, Tony meets a disabled businessman named Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), who asks Tony to join him in a corporate endeavor he calls Advanced Idea Mechanics. Stark not only refuses, but humiliates Killian by telling him to wait on the rooftop and then leaving him there for the rest of the evening.

Fast forward to the days following The Avengers. Tony Stark is having panic attacks remembering the alien invasion. Plagued by hypnophobia, he spends countless hours building various versions of his Iron Man suit. However, when a string of bombings are traced back to a terrorist known as The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), including one that severely injures a close friend of Stark's, he issues a personal threat to The Mandarin, going so far as to give his home address. The Mandarin responds by bombing Stark's home, and he only narrowly escapes with an Iron Man suit, leaving the world believing that he is dead.

Long story short, Stark does a bunch of detective work linking the explosions to Killian, discovers that The Mandarin is a fraud, and has a massive fight on a loading dock in which every suit prototype is destroyed, and it's pretty awesome. But I won't spoil anything else for y'all.


Breakdown time. The movie will be scored a grade out of 100%. The grade will be based on
Quality of Film-35%
Concept and Storyline-20%
Performance of Actors-20%
Public Opinion (lifted from iMDB)-10%
Personal Interest-10%
Originality-5%

Quality of Film-30%
It's an Iron Man film, and follows the basic Marvel movie setup, except we see a new director for Iron Man. John Favreau steps out on this one, letting Shane Black step in, which may explain the non-linear storytelling. Still, overall, it's an exceptional Iron Man film, and a pretty decent summer blockbuster.

Concept and Storyline-17%
Once again, the storytelling is non-linear. It can be a bit hard-to-follow if you're not a Marvel fanboy like myself, and when I first saw the movie in the theater with my brother, I had been about 56 hours straight without sleep, so I will admit that I dozed off at one point, but the concept is really rather ingenious. The Iron Man weapons are destroyed, The Mandarin gives way to an earlier, more personal villain, and Stark's love life is almost ruined, which is always interesting to see. (Forty percent of a love life, anyways.) Overall, it was a satisfying installment.

Performance of Actors-18%
Robert Downey, Jr. is Iron Man. I know it, you know it, Stan Lee knows it. That's hardly acting. Now, Guy Pearce's Killian (especially earlier on) seemed a bit overdone. Other than that, you can't really complain. Once again, it's a Marvel movie.

Public Opinion-7.6%
Once again, from iMDB.

Personal Interest-10%
Iron Man is my favorite superhero, has been my favorite superhero, will always be my favorite superhero. I'm glad to see the trio completed and look forward to seeing Iron Man in future Avengers installments.

Originality-4%
You can't expect a modernization of a superhero staple like Iron Man to be too original. Nevertheless, the superhero movie has been around for a long time now, and it still fits the bill. The new looks at The Mandarin, Tony's inner demons besides alcoholism and being an asshole, and the inner workings of several fictional companies do bring plenty to the table.

Total Rating: 86.6% (B)

The Great Gatsby (86.5%)

The Great Gatsby is a massive blockbuster starring Leo DiCaprio (oh how I love Leo DiCaprio) to bring a timeless novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 drama of the same name, to life as never before on the silver screen. Leonardo DiCaprio's done it before, rather exceptionally too, in "Romeo & Juliet", but that was a long time ago, wasn't it?

The plot is simple. A World War One veteran from the Midwest named Nick Carraway (Tobey Macguire) moves to West Egg, New York to support his writing through a stock broker job, meets his extravagant neighbor Jay Gatsby (who he later describes as the most hopeful man he had ever met), attempts to reunite with an attractive relative of his, Daisy (Carey Mulligan), who's own husband, Tom (Joel Edgerton), is having an affair himself. Shenanigans ensues. Oh, and it's all set in suburban New York in the early 1920s.


Breakdown time. The movie will be scored a grade out of 100%. The grade will be based on
Quality of Film-35%
Concept and Storyline-20%
Performance of Actors-20%
Public Opinion (lifted from iMDB)-10%
Personal Interest-10%
Originality-5%

Quality of Film-32%
Even for a big-budget blockbuster of a classic novel, director Baz Luhman went a little over-the-top with this one. It felt almost perfectly as if I was back in America of the 1920s, if it wasn't for the rap music playing at the parties. Seriously, guys? What's up with that? And honestly some of the fade effects were pretty cheesy too. 

Concept and Storyline-17%
Besides varying some in the device used to tell the story, the film largely remained the classic novel but on the movie screen. It may have been a bit dull at some moments and a bit noisy at others, but for the most part I was kept very entertained by a very fluid and in-depth story played out in what I really must admit was a very good representation of the 1920s.

Performance of Actors-20%
Leonardo DiCaprio is far too often one of those actors that just seems like themselves in another movie. This time, he really wasn't. After his first appearance, I didn't even see Leo DiCaprio on screen. I saw Jay Gatsby, eccentric millionaire. The same can be said for Macguire's performance (though I did start thinking Spider-Man after my roommate pointed it out). Other than that, our actors all behaved themselves and performed their roles excellently. Also, I'd like to point out how well the costumes were assembled. Perfect 20.

Public Opinion-7.5%
Once again, iMDB has spoken on this one.

Personal Interest-8%
Though I wasn't tracking this film for months before release, I knew from the moment I saw the preview that I was gonna watch this movie this summer. Though I don't think I've read The Great Gatsby since my freshman year of high school, it's still one of those books that kind of just stuck with me, and I knew that Leo DiCaprio would make it into one hell of a party on screen, even if it did involve him running over a (for the time period) scantily clad woman with an expensive car.

Originality-2%
I'm sorry to say it, but making a screen version of The Great Gatsby is, unfortunately, not that uncommon. According to Wikipedia, it has been done about seven times, with operas, TV versions, and even webcomics to boot. Still, not a bad take.

Total Score: 86.5% (B). Nice run, everyone!

World War Z (91%)

World War Z is a big-budget attempt to make a movie out of a novel, but a novel that is told in an interesting format, through interviews with various fictional characters set up all over the world over the course of a couple decades sometime in the early-to-mid 21st century, concerning an all-out war between humans and flesh-eating, mindless victims of a destructive virus referred to as African Rabies. In our movie production, we see a UN worker named Gerry Lane experiencing the Great Panic first-hand as he travels the world in search of a way to stave off the oncoming zombie pandemic, and save his beloved family.

I saw this film about a week ago, so my memory may be a bit hazy, but I have to say that World War Z was a success, especially after months (even years for some of us) of expecting it to totally suck. As a die-hard fan of zombie films (even if they are a bit overdone as of late. I'm looking at you, Warm Bodies.), I was expecting something a little bit more Max Brooks-esque. What I found instead was a beautifully woven interpretation of Brooks' beautifully written "World War Z", played on-screen by an equal parts terrifyingly badass and adorably family-oriented Brad Pitt. As far as turning the novel, which spans several decades and a plethora of characters, into a single coherent film goes, I thought that director Marc Foster's approach of taking the events of the book and weaving them all through one character worked pretty well. There were some pretty lame scares, but there were some breathtakingly genius moments that we haven't really seen in zombie films, such as (spoiler alerts) a magnificent airplane crash with the undead flying through the air, soldiers using near-silent bicycles to sneak past a horde of zed in a rainstorm, or even large masses of zombies pushing and shoving each other to the point that they just become a wave of terror.

That being said, visually, the film left a bit to be desired. Though the CG undead have come a long way since 2007's "I Am Legend", it still felt fake, even rubber at moments. Nevertheless, I've heard rumors of Foster attempting a trilogy, and I would absolutely love to see more of the World War Z book played out on the big screen (Yonkers, anybody? That would be sensational.)

Breakdown time. The movie will be scored a grade out of 100%. The grade will be based on
Quality of Film-35%
Concept and Storyline-20%
Performance of Actors-20%
Public Opinion (lifted from iMDB)-10%
Personal Interest-10%
Originality-5%

Quality of Film: 32%
Though including the aforementioned breathtaking scenes and a pretty good amount of on-screen life, the shakiness of the camera got to be a bit much in some cases (or was that just the adrenaline?). I would have liked to see better, for example, when the fuselage of the airplane was ripped apart and undead went soaring through midair. During the scenes in the medical research facility, I enjoyed the use of the security system, but felt like it was distracting at times from what was actually happening before me. Also, once again, I would like to see the undead evolve further visually.

Concept and Storyline: 19%
"World War Z" was a complex book, and we all knew the adaption would be hard. However, Foster pulled off the movie fairly well, introducing the Great Panic, and the early attempts at stopping the virus spread. I would have liked to have seen more origins, though the investigation of Patient Zero was a neat take. Other than that, the first part of the book was covered pretty well.

Performance of Actors: 19%
It's difficult to get children to act well, especially in a horror/action/disaster movie like this. Constance and Rachel (portrayed by Sterling Jerins and Abigal Hargrove, respectively) worked for the roles. We saw a variety of emotions (excitement, relief, fear, anxiety, terror, joy, sheer love for their father, even whimsy in the beginning of the film), we saw two adorable little girls, and we saw a functional family (completed by Pitt and Mireille Enos, and Fabrizio Guido, who plays a young boy named Tomas that acts as part of the family). None of our military men left anything to be desired, and all of our doctors seemed professional. Not perfect, but professional.

Public Opinion: 7%
This one's simple enough to explain. I currently just lift my public opinion off iMDB, and I am not ashamed because I feel like that's the best method (I could look at box office statistics, but I haven't worked out a system yet).

Personal Interest: 10%
Having been introduced to World War Z by my older brother near it's initial release when I was in middle school (or early high school. Somewhere in there), I had long been anticipating a movie based off Max Brooks' work. When I first heard about the project back in 2010, it furthered my interest, and I very closely mulled over every scrap of information I could get on this movie, until the day that I saw it on opening weekend (I couldn't make opening night, but hey I'm only human.)

Originality: 4%
It's not entirely original, which would be preferable usually, but World War Z is an original take on an underrated book. And it's not a remake of Hellraiser (I heard one's in the works. Keep your eyes open. It'll be terrible, for sure.)

With our breakdown in mind, our total score for World War Z is 91%, which I believe is a B+. A valiant attempt, but we'd love to see them do better next time (I'm telling you. Battle of Yonkers.)

Best Of 2013: The Movies I Expect To Kick The Most Ass

Hopefully, on this list, we're looking at what is going to be about twenty-five truly kickass movies from 2013, Anno Domini. At first, the movie reviews are pure speculation, based on media buzz, the actors connected with the movies, the directors, and the basic storyline. After I've seen the movie, however, or at least after it comes out, I make sure to much more fairly rate the movies based on:
Quality of Film-35%
Concept and Storyline-20%
Performance of Actors-20%
Public Opinion (lifted from iMDB)-10%
Personal Interest-10%
Originality-5%

Movies that I've seen and verified the review are in bold print.
Movies that I have yet to see and have partly based my review on previous series installments are in italic print.

HONORABLE MENTION:
-Warm Bodies (60%)
-After Earth (62%)
-Now You See Me (66%)
-Aquaman (69%)
-Jack Ryan (70%)

THE BEST:

20. The Lone Ranger (70%)
19. The Kings Of Summer (71%)
18. Oblivion (72%)
17. A Band Called Death (73%)
16. American Idiot (74%)
15. This Is The End (76%)
14. Oz The Great And Powerful (80%)
13. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (83%)
12. The Wolverine (84%)
11. Romeo & Juliet (85%)
10. Kick-Ass 2 (86%) 
9. The Great Gatsby (86.5%)
8. Iron Man 3 (86.6%) 
7. Despicable Me 2 (87%)
6. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (88%)


TOP FIVE:
5. Star Trek: Into Darkness (89%)
4. Man of Steel (90%)
3. Ender’s Game (91%)
2. World War Z (91%)
AAANNNDDD....
1. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (96%)

Comment your personal opinions. I'd be glad to discuss.