Contest: Win LEGO Scooby-Doo Haunted Hollywood for Halloween!
Posted on October 4, 2016 at 3:58 pm
Copyright 2016 Warner Brothers
Bring LEGO Scooby-Doo home for Halloween!
Scooby-Doo Haunted Hollywood is set in a LEGO world. the Scooby gang try to rescue an old movie studio, which is not only threatened by developers who want to tear it down, but by a series of movie monsters, which are suddenly haunting the place.
I have a copy to give away! Send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with Scooby in the subject line and tell me your favorite Halloween candy. Don’t forget your address! (US addresses only) I’ll pick a winner at random on October 11, 2016. Good luck and Happy Halloween!
DESCENDANTS 2 – Disney Channel’s original movie “Descendants 2” stars Cameron Boyce as Carlos, Sofia Carson as Evie, Dove Cameron as Mal, Booboo Stewart as Jay and Mitchell Hope as Ben. (Disney Channel/Bob D’Amico/Craig Sjodin)
The story deepens in the music-driven sequel to the global smash hit “Descendants,” as the teenage sons and daughters of Disney’s most infamous villains — Mal, Evie, Carlos and Jay (also known as Villain Kids or VKs) — try to find their place in idyllic Auradon. When the pressure to be royally perfect becomes too much for Mal, she returns to her rotten roots on the Isle of the Lost where her archenemy Uma, the daughter of Ursula, has taken her spot as self-proclaimed queen of the run-down town. Uma, still resentful over not being selected by Ben to go to Auradon Prep with the other Villain Kids, stirs her pirate gang including Captain Hook’s son Harry and Gaston’s son Gil, to break the barrier between the Isle of the Lost and Auradon, and unleash all the villains imprisoned on the Isle, once and for all.
To keep up with the latest on the sequel, follow this hashtag: #D2Deets
Copyright Working Title 2016I really don’t like saying this. But Bridget Jones has the same problem as Adam Sandler and the rest of those Apatow-ish man-boys. They haven’t figured out that cluelessness and mistakes that are endearing in a 20-something are annoying and then just exhausting when they get older. Bridget, again played by Renee Zellweger though without the yo-yo weight gain, says in this film that she has to stop making the same mistakes and start making new ones. Well, she’s right. But it’s pretty much the same mistakes, professional and romantic disaster, though with higher stakes this time. The filmmakers, director Sharon Maguire (the original Bridget Jones film) and Helen Fielding (creator of the character and co-screenwriter) rely on a level of affection for the characters we first met onscreen 15 years ago and most recently saw 12 years ago, but make no effort to re-introduce them to those of us who, like Bridget, were a lot younger then, or introduce then those who are too young to have seen them.
Bridget, finally at her goal weight and in a good job producing television news, has still not made things work with Mr. Darcy (Colin Firth), who is married to someone else, someone frightfully capable and intelligent. Bridget decides, with some encouragement, to go off and have some carefree sex with a random guy to perk up her spirits, so she goes “glamping” at a music festival something between Burning Man, Woodstock, and Canyon Ranch. After a meet cute than involves her falling into a mud puddle, she does have a wild night of love with a very handsome American named Jack, played by Dr. McDreamy himself, Patrick Dempsey, whose performance would have been a lot better if his character had, well, any characteristics other than being not Mark Darcy in every way.
A few days later, Bridget and Darcy find themselves at the same party and he tells her he is getting divorced. Next thing you know, she is as they say in the UK, up the spout, and has no idea, as they say in the US, who’s the daddy. If you think this is wildly hilarious, wait until she brings them both to childbirth preparation class and they are mistaken for a gay couple. What a knee-slapper! And this comes after the excruciating farce of keeping them from finding out they are both possible fathers (and that she slept with both of them) and the excruciating farce of telling them. The only thing that works in this mess is Emma Thompson at her very best as the obstetrician. Apparently she wrote her own dialog as she is listed as co-screenwriter, and her scenes have a wit and crackle that is sorely missing from the rest of the film.
Parents should know that this film includes very raunchy humor with explicit sexual references and situations and comic nudity, theme of question of paternity, very strong language used by adults and children, and alcohol.
Family discussion: How has Bridget changed since the first film? Is she making the same mistakes or new ones?
If you like this, try: the earlier Bridget Jones films, “and Baby Mama” and the “Catastrophe” series on Amazon
I always say that the success of a superhero movies depends on the bad guy. So, shouldn’t a movie that is all bad guys be really great? That’s the idea behind “Suicide Squad,” a sort of “Avengers” (all-star hotshots who don’t play well with others have to work together as a team to save the world) crossed with “The Dirty Dozen.” And it kind of works. On the one hand, it is an August movie, the cinematic equivalent of the shelf in the back of the grocery story with the dented cans, irregulars, and day-old bread. On the other hand, it approaches a nicely messy, authentically amateurish, form equals content vibe that suits the subject matter. If these guys made their own movie, they might overlook some of the fine points, too.
Our scrappy little band of anti-heroes live in one of those “lock them up, throw away the key, throw away the Constitution, and any record of their existence while you’re at it” sort of prisons. Will Smith plays Deadshot, an assassin with a young daughter he loves. Margot Robbie is Harley Quinn, a psychiatrist turned psychopath with the demeanor of a school girl, locked in a romantic tangle with the Joker (Jared Leto) so twisted it makes Sid and Nancy look like Dick and Jane. Somewhere behind full-face tattoos, Jay Hernandez is Diablo, a gang-banger with the power of fire. Somewhere inside a reptilian rubber suit (maybe it is CGI, but it looks like rubber) is Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Killer Croc, and I never quite figured out what he could do besides fight and swim. Jai Courtney plays the Aussie thief Boomerang. Neither one of them is intelligible.
They get a chance to escape the abuses and isolation of prison life when national security expert Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) says that their special skills make them the world’s only hope against the terrorism threat that entities with supernatural powers will pose. “The world changed when Superman flew across the sky. It changed again when he didn’t.” (Cut to super-coffin)
Waller is certain she can control them. Whether she can or not, there is no alternative. And so they are assigned to Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), who informs the motley crew that each of them has an explosive injected into his/her neck, and that he will not hesitate to blow their heads off if they disobey or even if they vex him. “I’m known to be vexing,” Harley Quinn pipes up helpfully, well aware that saying so she proves her point. And then it’s off to the big confrontation with some moments for (1) some bad behavior, (2) some exchanges of confidence and bonding to let us see that these guys may be bad but they have their good points and while they may have made some poor choices, they have feelings, too, (3) a few reminders that these are the bad guys, (4) some setbacks and death of a tangential character to show us how serious this is, and (5) weaknesses becoming strengths, strengths becoming weaknesses, a chance to see that some of the good guys aren’t so good and some of the bad guys aren’t so bad (and deaths are not necessarily deaths).
Here is what the movie gets right: B**** please. Margot Robbie is a huge movie star who owns this film and every moment she is on screen in “Suicide Squad” you get your money’s worth and then some. Anything else that works in the film is an extra cherry on the sundae. #imwithharley so give HQ her own movie PDQ.
Smith and Kinnaman are also excellent. Most of the best of the rest was in the trailer including one exchange which inexplicably was cut from the film. In fact, given the many evident recuts and reshoots, Warner Brothers should just have turned the footage over to whoever made the trailer and let them control the final print. The soundtrack veers into Spotify playlist mode but there are some good choices.
Here is what it gets wrong: Writer/director David Ayer, whose speciality has been military and law enforcement stories, does not understand the right tone for a comic book movie. Compare Marvel/Disney, which managed to create distinctive and right-on-the-money tones for Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Ant-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Deadpool and yet make us believe they could exist in the same universe, and made that work in the “Avengers” movies without shortchanging anyone. Second, note the reference to the evidence of reworking above. Third, note the very first thing I said. Comic book movies are all about the villain. In this case, with villains as the the good guys, they really need someone specially evil for us to root against. The villains in this film are terrible in every category, starting with the special effects, which should be primo, right, Warner Brothers? But most importantly, a movie that spends too much time introducing us to the Z-team’s backstories never provides us with the basics about the powers and threat of the bad guys so we have no way of knowing what we are hoping for (other than obliteration) from the final battle. Wait, so this and that didn’t work but this and that do? Really? And what happened to those SEALS?
It is good to see more than one female character and this film has four strong and powerful women of different races. But the gender politics of the film are less than one might wish. Both female Suicide Squad members are there because of the men they love, and the female villain is alternately weak around the man she loves and strong but not as strong as her brother. Viola Davis, as always, is sublime as a woman who may be only human but is in every way a match for anyone, superpowered or politically powered.
It’s better than “Batman vs. Superman” and “The Fantastic Four,” but it falls frustratingly short of what it could have and should have been.
NOTE: Stay through the credits for an extra scene, but you don’t have to stay after that.
Parents should know that this film includes extended sci-fi/fantasy violence with some graphic and disturbing images, torture, abuse, many characters injured and killed, skimpy costumes, sexual references, some strong language
Family discussion: Who was the worst villain in the movie? Who caused the most harm? What could “bad guys” do that the “good guys” could not?
If you like this, try: “The Avengers” and “The Dirty Dozen”
Whoever thought that the “Fast and Furious” series would keep getting better while the once-smart “Bourne” series is the one that drives off a cliff?
During the boring parts of this movie, I played a game I made up that I called “Same or Different.” For example, in one of the earlier Bourne movies, our hero, the once-amnesiac CIA assassin Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) grabbed a limited-use anonymous cell phone for a particularly clever maneuver. In this one, he grabs a small tracking device handily left out in a bowl like peanuts at a bar for happy hour. Same or different? Different because the first one was plausible and this one was ridiculous.
The earlier films had exceptionally well-staged fight scenes that felt like real people who get out of breath and hurt each other and jockey for advantage. In the first moments of this film, in addition to completely unnecessary jumps between five different locations around the world for no purpose, he knocks out an enormous professional fighter with one punch. Same or different? Same answer as above. And if we distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys by how much collateral damage they inflict on the world — how many innocent bystanders get killed, the answer here is more same than different.
There are franchise films made for fan service and then there are those that do not even service the fans, are merely a cash grab, and retroactively devalue the franchise.
This is a movie that asks us to believe that the head of the CIA and a Mark Zuckerberg-young titan of the world’s coolest social media company, a sort of cross between Google and Facebook and Twitter and Snapchat, decide to have a conversation of the utmost secrecy in a posh Washington DC restaurant, the kind where everyone eavesdrops on the big shots at the next table, especially reporters, politicians, and Hill staffers.
The first three Bourne films transcended the action/spy genre with a gritty, almost intimate feel far from the glossiness of James Bond, and with an expanding, deepening storyline that, as the then-LA Times critic Manohla Dargis said, began with the existential in “Identity” (Who am I?), extended to the moral in “Supremacy” (What did I do?). With the third film, the question of culpability extended to the larger “I” of the government: Who are we and what have we done? We will put aside for the moment the non-Bourne “Bourne,” which mistakenly went in the direction of a secret government program that was more “Captain America” than Bourne, with a mysterious ability-enhancing drug that removed the somber reality that resonated with the era of waterboarding and Abu Ghraib. There is plenty to explore and attempt to expiate now, and the movie tries to touch on contemporary issues explored in far more compelling — and terrifying — terms in documentaries like Alex Gibney’s “We Steal Secrets” and “Zero Days.” It just doesn’t do anything interesting with them while it is piling improbable motivations and preposterous situations almost as high as the carnage and wrecked cars.
Parents should know that this film has constant spy-related action-style peril and violence, many characters injured and killed including many innocent bystanders, themes of government corruption, and some strong language.
Family discussion: Who should decide the balance between privacy and security and how much information about those decisions should be public? What real-life events inspired this story?
If you like this, try: the other “Bourne” films and “Zero Days”
