It's Not a Sure-Fire Hall of Fame Pick But It's Not a Bust, Either: Our Review of "Draft Day" (2014)

Directed By: Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) 

Starring: Kevin Costner, Jennifer Garner, Chadwick Boseman, Denis Leary

Rating: PG-13 on appeal for brief strong language and sexual references

Run Time: 1 hour, 50 minutes

Synopsis: Sonny Weaver Jr. (Costner) is facing a hectic day. It's the first day of the NFL Draft, his girlfriend and co-worker shares the news that she's pregnant, the owner of his team wants him to make a big splash, a stud prospect keeps badgering him and his new head coach keeps butting heads with him. When Sonny does end up making a big splash hours before the draft it has ramifications for how the rest of the day will play out.

REVIEW

Andrew: Hello readers! A couple of days ago (ok, like 4 days ago) we went and saw Draft Day directed by Ivan Reitman, the comedy director of such classics like Ghost Busters and Meatballs, and starring Kevin Costner (Man of Steel), Jennifer Garner (Dallas Buyers Club) and Denis Leary (The Amazing Spider-Man), just to name a few. 

In Draft Day Costner stars as Sonny Weaver, Jr., the beleaguered General Manager of the Cleveland Browns and we see all the trials and tribulations Sonny has to face during the biggest day of the year for him. 

Right from the start we find out that Costner’s Sonny Weaver, Jr. has lost his father, who just happened to be the former head coach of the Browns that Sonny recently fired, and that his girlfriend and co-worker, Ali (Garner), is pregnant. And all of this is spelled out in the first 3 minutes of the movie. 

To kick off this review I'll admit that while Draft Day had been getting a surprising amount of positive buzz I thought the marketing was terrible for it, so I didn't really intend to ever see this in theatres.

Sarah: Which shocked me, actually.

A: Well the trailers and the commercials for this movie didn’t make me want to see this movie. What about you?

A Nice Way to Cool Down on a Hot Day, But Not Much More: Our Review of "Ice Age: Continental Drift" (2012)

Directed By: Steve Martino (Horton Hears A Who) & Mike Thurmeier (Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs)

Starring: Ray Romano, Denis Leary, John Leguizamo, Queen Latifah, Jennifer Lopez

Rating: PG for mild rude humor and action/peril

Run Time: 1 hour, 34 minutes

Synopsis: The whole gang is back but when the continents start to shift it causes Manny, Diego, Sid and Sid's grandma are all split up from the rest of the herd. While floating out in the ocean they come across a pirate crew led by Captain Gutt, a monkey who's ahead of the game. But when Manny destroys Gutt's ship while trying to get back to his family, Gutt makes it his mission to get revenge on Manny and his herd.

REVIEW

Andrew: Hello readers! Full disclosure: Sarah and I live in an apartment with no central air-conditioning. We only have one window unit and it’s in the bedroom. So the rest of the apartment gets really hot in the summer. So we decided last night was as good as any to hit the movie theatre to take use of their AC and catch a new movie!

So we caught the latest installment in the Ice Age franchise – Ice Age: Continental Drift. It’s the fourth movie in the series and all four main characters are back: Ray Romano and Queen Latifah as Manny the wooly mammoth and his wife Ellie, Denis Leary as Diego the sabertooth tiger, and John Leguizamo as Sid the sloth.

We have to be honest – we had absolutely NO intention of seeing this movie in the theatres.

Sarah: None whatsoever.

A: Until Sunday basically, because while we were lounging around the apartment trying to stay cool, we stumbled across Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs on FX and we kept it playing in the background while we read. As the movie was going we kept finding ourselves laughing at silly things every now and then.

S: We found it more humorous than we had imagined we would. It was a shrewd movie by Fox because if it weren’t for FX, we wouldn’t have seen it Continental Drift in theatres.

A: Which was obviously the idea, and it worked. So well played, Fox.

S: I actually hate to admit that I liked this movie. I found it entertaining, cute, light-hearted…to me the Ice Age movies are this generation’s The Land Before Time. So I find them to be cute and humorous at times. Not the whole time, mind you, but enough to be enjoyable.

Truthfully, these movies (to me) are mainly a game called “Can You Name That Actor?”

The motley crew that Manny and Co. come across, led by Captain Gutt (voiced by Peter Dinklage) and his first mate Shira the sabertooth tiger (voiced by Jennifer Lopez)

A: I swear I was going to make that exact comment! So since you bring that up, l’ll say that I thought the voice-acting was an obvious strength of this film. We’re not going to go in-depth into the comedy and if there was a social commentary the film-makers were trying to get across like we might with a non-animated film, but there was a who’s who of famous actors in this film and it was fun to guess who voiced which character.

The one we COULD NOT pick out was who voiced the film’s villain, Captain Gutt, the monkey pirate. I had no idea who it was going in but I knew I recognized the voice, so I was pleasantly surprised to see it was Peter Dinklage from Game of Thrones. His role as Tyrion Lannister on GoT is my personal favorite character, so I was very happy to see it was him as the villain here.

S: And Jennifer Lopez was Shira the Sabertooth Tiger, the first mate to Capt. Gutt and a potential love interest for Diego. Take or leave her, she wasn’t fantastic but she wasn’t bad either. It was very obvious it was her.

You also had some other stars in smaller roles, like Nicki Minaj, Drake and Heather Morris (Glee) as some teenage wooly mammoths; Joy Behar in a very small role as Sid’s mother, and Nick Frost (Paul) as Flynn the Elephant Seal.

Look! It's Heather Morris (Glee), Nicki Minaj and Drake as wooly mammoths! Obviously.

A: It was a very solid cast, and I don’t want to forget Keke Palmer (Akeela and The Bee) as Peaches, Manny and Ellie’s teenage daughter. She was perfect as a teenager being embarrassed of her father and your cliche teenager  things like that.

S: What’s funny to me is that in the promotions and things I’ve seen for this movie, I’ve seen Nicki Minaj more than Palmer, so I thought she was going to be the daughter.

Regardless, overall I thought the movie as a whole was very cute. There were some really funny parts that we found ourselves chuckling at…

A: You in particular were laughing a lot at Wanda Sykes’ performance as Sid’s grandmother.

S: Oh my gosh, Wanda Sykes was my favorite character. Bar none the funniest character in the film. Her character and Sid played off each other really well. She was cracking me up.

A: Let's change focus real quick and talk about it in regards to how it was for kids that might see it. Did you think it was scary at any point?

S: There was one point where the main characters are floating on an ice float and come across some sirens that was kind of freaky. It might have been freakier in 3D, but we only saw it in 2D. Still, we were caught off guard.

A:I honestly didn’t realize what was going on at first. You were the one that realized they were sirens, so well done there.

The obligatory photo of Sarah's favorite character in the film, Sid's Grandma, voiced by Wanda Sykes. In a film with plenty of very good voice-actor casting choices, she's definitely one of the highlights.

S: I knew what was going on but I didn’t expect them to look like the monsters they end up being. It has it’s thematic elements and can be suspenseful at times, but for the age of kids you’d probably take to this…kids have seen scarier I’m sure.

A: Gotchya. There’s really no bad language at all, and there’s not a whole lot of juvenile humor.

S: Yeah! I found that interesting. There’s more cute humor like with the little guinea pig things…

A: Which sounded exactly like Ewoks, by the way. But yeah, I was more into the humor like the elephant seal and his silliness. 

The animation was pretty top-notch, which is to be expected from this series. We're not sure how good the 3D version looks, but there were certainly some scenes early on that I assume were shot particular that way for the 3D version. But the water and icebergs and all those things looked great.

Yeah, overall It’s a nice kids movie the parents would probably also enjoy.

S: I would say it’s a better kids movie than The Lorax was. I was more entertained by this than I was by The Lorax.

A: Completely agreed. So then what’s our final verdict?

S: Ice Age: Continental Drift was good. Not great, but solid. Unless you have kids there’s no reason to see this in theatres. I might actually even just pass on it.

A: Of the franchise, where would this one rank?

S: I watched the second one today and it was just okay. The first one is my favorite of the series, hands down, but I would say Continental Drift is my second favorite behind the original.

FINAL VERDICT: Unless you have children, just pass on it.

(Out of Five clapboards)

Photo Courtesies: The Guardian, Us Magazine, Hollywood.com

Did It Need to Be Made? No, But We're Glad They Did!: Our Review of "The Amazing Spider-Man" (2012)

Directed By: Marc Webb ((500) Days of Summer)

Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Denis Leary, Rhys Ifans

Rating: PG-13 for sequences of action and violence

Synopsis: Raised by his Uncle Ben and Aunt May after his parents die in a plane crash, Peter Parker (Garfield) grows up to be a bit of an outsider but is also very bright. Finding his father’s old briefcase leads him to Dr. Curt Connors (Ifans) at Oscorp, where Peter is bitten by a spider that gives him incredible superhuman abilities. When an experiment Connors performs on himself turns him into The Lizard, Peter must balance stopping Connors and his fledgling romance with the beautiful Gwen Stacy (Stone).

REVIEW

Andrew: Hello readers! Sarah and I just got out of seeing Marc Webb’s reboot of Marvel’s Spider-Man franchise, The Amazing Spider-Man, starring Andrew Garfield (The Social Network) as Peter Parker/Spider-Man.

Sarah, this is another film we haven’t had a chance to preview since it came out on a Tuesday (thanks to the Fourth of July being on a Wednesday), but it’s certainly a film we’ve been looking forward to. That said, it’s only been 10 years since Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Man starring Tobey Maguire. What did you think of this reboot of a film franchise that’s really not that old?

Sarah: I liked it! I thought it did a really good job of being a good origin story. It stuck pretty true to the comic-book version of Spider-Man’s origin, whereas Raimi’s took a couple of liberties. It was obviously a lot grander in terms of scenery because of the 3D, which were pretty good for the most part.

But I liked it. It was a fun movie, like all the other recent Marvel movies we’ve come to know and love. So this one fits well with the rest of the Marvel film family that is out right now. What did you think?

A: I don’t want to compare it to the original too much, so based on its own merits I thoroughly enjoyed The Amazing Spider-Man primarily because of Andrew Garfield. I thought he was an inspired casting choice to play Peter Parker/Spider-Man. Garfield is actually 28 years old but he looks, sounds and acts just like a teenager should.

We think Andrew Garfield was the perfect choice to play the high-school version of Peter Parker. Even at 28 he looks more like a teenager than Tobey Maguire ever did.

And yes, this is very similar to Raimi’s original because they’re both telling the origin story, but other than adding in Peter’s parents…I liked that they kept him as a teenager in high school, because he is in the comics a lot, too. He’s always been a wise-cracker and they nailed that aspect.

S: He’s also a bit of a misfit in this one.

A: Yeah, he’s a social misfit. On the same token as Garfield, I thought Emma Stone (The Help) was perfect casting as Gwen Stacy. The two of them have a chemistry that you can only HOPE your two love interests will have.

S: Oh absolutely!

A: So that brought a lot to this film. I’m glad Webb focused a lot of the film on their relationship and on parts where Peter isn’t in costume, where he’s piecing together the mystery of his father and BECOMING Spider-Man. It was very similar, to me, to Batman Begins because in that film it takes a while before Bruce Wayne actually gets into his full costume. There’s even a point where Bruce goes out with a rough draft of his costume and sort of has a soft open, and there’s stuff like that here, too. Where Peter has the beginnings of his costume but not much else.

S: Yeah I liked the costume. I liked this film’s Spider-Man costume WAY more than the original. It doesn’t look so cartoony up close. I hate to compare them but with things like that you kinda have to compare. I thought it looked sleek and I thought it was funny that Peter makes fun of how he’s in spandex.

A: Also, I like that he creates his web-shooters in this one. In Raimi’s they made Peter’s webbing come right out of his body organically, which bothered me. Webb’s stays true to the comic books.

S: I liked the 3D. There were times it looked a little too computer generated, which is expected sometimes. You can’t have a stunt guy do ALL those stunts without some CGI.

A: It was particularly cool when Spidey is swinging through the city and they show his point-of-view. The 3D as a whole wasn’t as good as in Prometheus, but it’s still worth it to see it in 3D. I’m sure it looks just fine in 2D, though.

What did you think of the villain, Dr. Connors a.k.a. The Lizard?

The Lizard looks pretty sweet and is a formidable foe for Peter, but his character arc left Andrew wanting more.

S: I thought the makeup done by Ve Neill was excellent. We like Neill because she’s a judge on one of our favorite shows, the SyFy reality show Face Off, and her work on Rhys Ifans (Notting Hill) was fantastic. The CGI used when The Lizard is fully changed was really cool. I think it would have looked ridiculous if it would have always been Ifans in make-up, but when he’s the full-blown Lizard the CGI was a good example of the motion-capture they use today.

When it was Ifans and they had prosthetics on him it looked great, too, but I didn’t mind the CGI either. I liked that The Lizard spoke. It caught me off guard…

A: Well he speaks in the comics.

S: Yeah, so I appreciated that. Did you like the villain?

A: I was left wanting more.

S: I think that says more to the character than it does to the physical bad guy.

A: Physically he looked great and he was finally an imposing to fight against Spidey. He was teased at in Raimi’s trilogy, so it was nice to finally get him in a film. But they worked him into Peter’s backstory and…I don’t know, it just left me wanting more.

S: I would say that wasn’t fully fleshed out, yeah. In fact they hint at the end that there’s going to be more to that story in the sequel. The Lizard didn’t have a malicious side, truly. He was just this crippled guy who wanted to get his arm back. And then he’s forced by Oscorp to rush the experiment and test it on humans, so he does it to himself and he snaps, so he’s more of a sympathetic character.

A: I didn’t hate him. He’s a much better villain than all the other Spider-Man film villains other than Doctor Octopus. So he was fine, I just think I would have been ok if the film focused more on Peter and Gwen’s relationship. I thought that was the stronger part of the movie.

A couple other quick points: there weren’t a boatload of action scenes, so when they hit they had more impact; Martin Sheen and Sally Field were perfect as Uncle Ben and Aunt May, as was Denis Leary as Captain Stacy; and I wasn’t enamored with James Horner’s score.

Rose and Jack, or Gwen and Peter? Seriously, there are times you wonder if the theatre swapped out the score for Titanic's

S: Yeah, it reflected a LOT of his Titanic score. There were times when he blatantly cribbed from Titanic. Then there were other times the music didn’t necessarily fit what was going on.

A: It wasn’t as good as Danny Elfman’s score in Raimi’s trilogy. And I suppose I have to compare it to John Williams’ Superman score and the scores Elfman and Hans Zimmer have done for their Batman films. It wasn’t nearly as good as those. You want a superhero score to be iconic like the above examples, and this one wasn’t.

S: You want it to be able to hear just a snippet of it and be able to instantly recognize what it belongs to.

A: And if you heard this one you would’ve thought it was Titanic.

S: The movie was a little slow at times, but you get that with an origin story sometimes because it has to build. I definitely think it’s one you have to see on the big screen.

A: I think this is one we’ll own someday.

S: And probably more from the standpoint that we like all the Marvel movies they’ve been making lately…

A: Well I also really liked Garfield and Stone’s performances. If anything, I’d say see this one in theatres because of those two.

(Out of Five Clapboards)

Photo Courtesies: Shockya, Flicks and Bits,  The Sun