Eva Green Is Having a Bloody Good Time: Our Review of "300: Rise of an Empire" (2014)

Directed By: Noam Murro (Smart People) 

Starring: Sullivan Stapleton, Eva Green, Lena Headey, Rodrigo Santoro

Rating: R for strong sustained sequences of stylized bloody violence throughout, a sex scene, nudity and some language

Run Time: 1 hour, 42 minutes

Synopsis: Told alongside the tale of King Leonidas' defense at Thermoplyae against the Persian Army's invasion of Greece, Admiral Themistocles leads the Athenian navy in a water-based defense against the Persian forces, who are themselves led by the warrior-woman Artemesia (Green).

REVIEW

(Editor's note: We originally saw this film the weekend of its release. Our apologies for the delay!)

Andrew: Hello dear readers! We just got out of seeing the LONG awaited sequel to Zack Snyder's hit 2006 film 300, this one aptly named 300: Rise of an Empire.

Sarah: Wow, it's been 8 years since the first one came out?

A: It’s been that long, yes. And this one was actually more of a side-quel to Snyder’s 300 as opposed to a direct sequel.  It takes place before, during and after the events with Leonidas and his 300 Spartans. 

300: Rise of an Empire stars Sullivan Stapleton (Cinemax's Strike Back) as Themistocles, the general of the Athenian navy; Eva Green (Casino Royale) as Artemisia, the commander of the Persian navy; as well as Lena Headey and Rodrigo Santoro reprising their roles as Queen Gorgo and Xerxes, respectively.

Two Tickets For...'s 16 Most Anticipated Films of 2014 (Or the Next 10 Months At Least)

Andrew: Hello readers! First off let me apologize by saying we're sorry we haven't had a chance to sit down and really hash our our reactions to this past Sunday's Oscars. Mayhaps we'll get to that this weekend. Secondly we want to say Thank You for checking out our Oscars Live Blog! We think it was rather successful and we've enjoyed doing it the last 3 Oscars and we look forward to doing it next year, too.

Now on to today's post! Now that the Oscars are over we wanted to take a gander at the films still to be released in 2014 that we're most excited to see. We do realize that we're already two months into the year but let's be honest: January and February are still generally the time of year when studios dump their worst movies.

Sarah: Right?! We're excited about this list we've put together, there are SO many good movies coming out this year! It was really tough to rank them!

A: But rank them we did! For clarification these are the films that we are looking forward to the most as of today. There will be plenty of films that come out this year that aren't on our radar, most likely some Oscar-worthy films. That said without further ado, in descending order, here are Two Tickets For...'s 16 Most Anticipated Films of 2014!

16.) Horrible Bosses 2 (November 26th)
S: A comedy that involves Kevin Spacey and Jennifer Aniston as bad guys…again. Done.
A: We thoroughly enjoyed the first film and with a hilarious cast that brings back Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Jason Bateman, Kevin Spacey and Jennifer Aniston...well, that's just a damn good cast.

Two Tickets For... Live Blogs the 86th Academy Awards!

Andrew: Hello readers! Tonight's the night, and at 8:30pm EST the 86th Academy Awards will begin! We're here with our third annual Oscars Live Blog and leading up the start of the show we'll be here to chat about predictions, fashion on the red carpet, movies in general, whatever!

The live blog starts at 7:00pm. We'll be back then to chat!

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86th Academy Awards Full Predictions!

Andrew: Hello dear readers! Tonight is the big night! The 86th Academy Awards a.k.a. The Oscars are tonight in Hollywood, and for the third year in a row Sarah and I will be competing against one another to see who can correctly predict the most awards.

Sarah: The past five days we've had fun posting articles breaking down a number of the bigger categories and then giving our predictions for them. Today we're posting our full predictions prior to our Live Blog of tonight's show!

A: For reference's sake, last year I correctly predicted 18 out of the 24 categories and Sarah correctly predicted 17 of the 24. Here's to hoping we both do better this year! Check out all of our predictions after the jump!

86th Academy Awards Analysis & Predictions: Best Picture

Andrew: Hello dear readers! It's Day Five of Two Tickets For…'s analysis and predictions and we're only one day away from the 86th Academy Awards. This week we've given you our analysis and predictions for all four acting categories, both screenplay categories, director, special effects, score, song and animated feature. Tomorrow we'll post our full and final predictions, but today we tackle the big one - Best Picture.

Best Picture

The nominees for Best Picture are:

- 12 Years a Slave

- American Hustle

- Captain Phillips

- Dallas Buyers Club

- Gravity

- Her

- Nebraska

- Philomena

- The Wolf of Wall Street

A: Okay Sarah, before we get to talking about the nominees themselves I just want to take a second and explain how the voting for Best Picture goes again, which will be instrumental in explaining my prediction later.

86th Academy Awards Analysis and Predictions: Best Original Screenplay, Best Adapted Screenplay & Best Director

Andrew: Hello readers! It's Day Four of Two Tickets For...'s analysis and predictions for this Sunday's 86th Academy Awards! Yesterday we covered a couple of the biggies in Best Lead Actor and Best Lead Actress, which you can read HERE if you missed those. Today we continue discussing some major awards as we tackle Best Original Screenplay, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director. That will also be the order we go in, so let's get to it!

Best Original Screenplay

The nominees for Best Original Screenplay are:

- American Hustle, by Eric Warren Singer & David O. Russell

- Blue Jasmine, by Woody Allen

- Dallas Buyers Club, by Craig Borten & Melisa Wallack

- Her, by Spike Jonze

- Nebraska, by Bob Nelson

A: Okay Sarah, I think this is actually a pretty competitive category as I could see four of these nominees being legit contenders (Nebraska being the only one not). Give me your thoughts on Best Original Screenplay.

86th Academy Awards Analysis and Predictions: Best Actor and Best Actress

Andrew: Hello readers! Day Three of our coverage leading up to this Sunday's 86th Academy Awards is here. Yesterday we discussed the categories for Best Animated Feature, Best Song, Best Score and Best Visual Effects (which you can read HERE if you want to give those a gander), and today we'll be delving into the two big acting categories - Best Lead Actor and Best Lead Actress. 

Sarah, because of the film we just watched last night in our attempts to get caught up on Oscar films, let's kick things off with the Best Lead Actress category shall we?

Best Lead Actress

The nominees for Best Lead Actress are:

- Amy Adams, American Hustle

- Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine

- Sandra Bullock, Gravity

- Judi Dench, Philomena

- Meryl Streep, August: Osage County

For a while now the consensus has been that Cate Blanchett is the easy front-runner in this category, Sarah. Last night we were finally able to see her performance as a woman having a bit of a mental breakdown following the arrest and death of her Bernie Madoff-like husband. After watching Blue Jasmine do you think she's the easy call here or does she have some true competition?

86th Academy Awards Analysis and Predictions: Best Animated Feature, Best Song, & Best Visual Effects

Andrew: Hello readers! We're back with Day Two of our Oscar analysis and predictions leading up to this Sunday's 86th Academy Awards. Yesterday we got off to a good and popular start with our breakdown of the Supporting Actor and Actress categories (click HERE to view those), and today we're going to switch from acting and take a look at the categories for Best Animated Feature, Best Original Song and Best Visual Effects. 

Let's kick it off with the animated films, shall we?

Best Animated Feature

The nominees for Best Animated Feature are:

- The Croods (DreamWorks Animation)

- Despicable Me 2 (Illumination Entertainment/Universal Pictures)

- Ernest & Celestine (La Parti Productions)

- Frozen (Walt Disney Animation)

- The Wind Rises (Studio Ghibli)

Alright Sarah, you've seen three of these nominees compared my only having seen two of them. I'll let you take the reins here.

86th Academy Awards Analysis and Predictions: Supporting Actor & Actress

Andrew: Hello dear readers! Sorry that we have yet to get our review of The Lego Movie posted yet, been a little busy moving into our new apartment and getting it all set up. But while we've been a little busy to post that, we wanted to make sure we took the time this week for our annual analysis and predictions for the Academy Awards! 

The 86th Academy Awards are this upcoming Sunday, March 2nd, and we're a little behind on our prognosticating. Because of that we're going to shake up the order that we discuss/predict the categories. So we're taking a page straight from the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences and kicking things off with the Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress categories!

Not unlike last year, one of these categories seems like more of a sure thing than the other. Let's get to it.

Best Supporting Actor

The nominees for Best Supporting Actor are:

- Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips

- Bradley Cooper, American Hustle

- Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave

- Jonah Hill, The Wolf of Wall Street 

- Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club

Okay Sarah, on its face this seems like it should be a very competitive category, but it doesn't seem like it's actually going to be does it?

Like a Bad Museum, Clooney's Latest Film is a Bit of a Bore: Our Review of "The Monuments Men" (2014)

Directed By: George Clooney

Starring: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville & Cate Blanchett

Rating: PG-13 for some images of war violence and historical smoking

Run Time: 1 hour, 58 minutes

Synopsis: Towards the end of WWII, a select unit of art experts is sent into Europe to find, protect and return famous and not-so-famous works of art from the Nazis.

REVIEW

Andrew: Hello, dear readers! As you may know we’ve been on a bit of a break because of our recent move from New England to Georgia, but we recently were able to see a couple of films this past weekend and we’re getting back into the movie reviewing game! 

The first film we saw this weekend was The Monuments Men, a recently released film directed, written and produced by George Clooney and starring George Clooney plus a host of other big names: Bill Murray, John Goodman, Matt Damon among others.

The film is based on the true story of a squadron of art historians and experts that went overseas during World War II on a mission to save famous art and artifacts from Hitler’s rule.

So, this is one that we have been looking forward to for a while, especially since it got pushed back from it’s original release date in December to February...

Sarah: Which means that it wasn’t able to be a contender for this year’s Oscars.

A: Correct. So, now that we’ve seen it, what did you think of The Monuments Men?