We're Split on a G.I. Joe Movie, Go (Action) Figure: Our Review of "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" (2013)

Directed By: Jon M. Chu (Step Up 3D) 

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, D.J. Cotrona, Channing Tatum, Jonathan Pryce, Adrianne Palicki, Ray Stevenson and Bruce Willis

Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of combat violence and martial arts action throughout, and for brief sensuality and language

Run Time: 1 hour, 50 minutes

Synopsis: The G.I. Joes are back and facing enemies from outside the U.S. and from within. With Cobra manipulating both sides, the Joes are going to have to fight for their very existence.

REVIEW

Andrew: Last night we finally got the chance to see G.I. Joe: Retaliation, the sequel to 2009s G.I Joe: Rise of Cobra, starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Channing Tatum, Jonathan Pryce, Adrianne Palicki, D.J. Cotrona and Ray Stevenson. You, Sarah, weren't really familiar with the G.I. Joe series until about a week ago when I had you sit down and watch the first one. So I want to get your take first of Rise of Cobra briefly and then compare it to Retaliation.

Sarah: Well, both of these movies are pretty ridiculous. The first one was ridiculous to the extent that it was almost felt like an animated movie. Things happen that would never happen in our world as they tended to defy laws of physics. It was just pretty unbelievable; pretty action packed. A lot like a Michael Bay movie actually.

Check Out The Teaser Trailer for Die Hard 5!

Andrew: Hello readers! Busy day for us here at Two Tickets For...! First we just posted our review of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and now we have a new trailer to share and boy does it look like fun.

First of all, did you even know they were making a Die Hard 5? We can't blame you if you didn't, but we think you'll be pleasantly surprised to check out the first teaser trailer for the new John McClane movie whose actual titled is A Good Day to Die Hard. It's the first time we see our favorite cop-in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time leave the United States, as this time he's fighting generic looking bad guys in Russia.

But you know what? I'm loving the use of "Ode to Joy" that goes along with the explosions. Count me in! Check out the trailer below and let us know what you think!

A Good Day to Die Hard is slated for release on February 14, 2013, and is directed by John Moore, who also directed the underrated Behind Enemy Lines.,


Courtesy: Yahoo! Movies

Thank Goodness For This Highly Original, Thoughtful and Excellent Sci-Fi Film: Our Review of "Looper" (2012)

Directed By: Rian Johnson 

Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels

Rating: R for strong violence, language, some sexuality/nudity, and drug content

Run Time: 1 hour, 58 minutes

Synopsis: In the future, time travel exists but is illegal. Only the mob uses it to send marks back in time to be killed by specialized assassins called Loopers. When they want to end their contracts with their assassins, they send their older versions back to be killed by their younger versions, a practice called “closing the loop.” One looper named Joe (Gordon-Levitt) fails to do so when he recognizes his older self (Willis), accidentally letting himself escape, causing a man-hunt and possible catastrophic changes to the future.

REVIEW

Andrew: Hello readers! Last night Sarah and I caught an evening showing of this weekend’s highly-anticipated science-fiction movie Looper, directed by Rian Johnson and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (The Dark Knight Rises), Bruce Willis (Moonrise Kingdom) and Emily Blunt (The Five-Year Engagement).

To quickly set it up, JGL plays Joe, a specialized assassin called a “looper” living in Kansas circa 2044. As Joe says in the movie, time travel hasn’t been invented yet but by 2074 it will have been and will be illegal so the only people who use it are the mafia. They send back their marks to 2044 where Joe and his fellow loopers wait for them and kill them immediately upon arrival.

One day, though, Joe hesitates to kill his mark because he recognizes him as his future self, who then escapes and the film sort of becomes a hunt between the two, though Older Joe ends up having an alternate agenda as well. We don’t want to say too much because the beauty of this movie was that…

Sarah: The marketing didn’t give, really, ANY of the story away. They lead you to believe the film is one way when it’s actually quite different, in my opinion at least.

A: Yeah, so props to people on the blogosphere and the film’s marketing department for not spoil anything. (More after the jump)

One of the best and most pivotal scenes in Looper between Old Joe (Willis) and Young Joe (Gordon-Levitt) takes place in this diner, prominently featured in the film's marketing.

Our Preview of This Week's New Releases (for Friday, September 28th)

Andrew: Hello readers! We're back with another weekly preview (sorry for them being sporadic lately) and boy is this one a doozy. We have a few wide release films coming out such as the new Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis film Won't Back Down; the Anna Kendrick led a cappella film Pitch Perfect; a new animated kids film in time for Halloween, Hotel Transylvania; and most importantly, one of the most highly-anticipated science-fiction films to come along in quite a while - the Joseph Gordon-Levitt/Bruce Willis time travel film Looper.

Sarah, I want to kick things off with the one we're most excited about, and that's Looper. It's directed by Rian Johnson, who isn't very well-known to the general public but he started to make a name for himself with 2005's high school noir film Brick (also starring JGL), 2008's The Brothers Bloom, and a couple of well-received episodes of AMC's Breaking Bad. The exciting thing about Johnson, to me, is that he wrote the film as well and it has a killer set-up. (More after the jump)

Official Trailer for Looper

Explosions! Gunfire! One-Liners! Chuck Norris!: Andrew's Review of "The Expendables 2" (2012)

Directed By: Simon West (Con Air)

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jean Claude Vanne Damme, name an action star from the past 30 years and he’s probably in this

Rating: R for strong bloody violence throughout

Run Time: 1 hour, 42 minutes

Synopsis: Barney Ross (Stallone) and his crew of mercenaries, The Expendables, are called into action and sent to Bulgaria to recover sensitive information that went down with a plane. When they run into a competing mercenary named Vilain (Van Damme) and their mission goes awry, Ross and his boys go looking for vengeance.

REVIEW

Sarah: Andrew is still away on work,but did he got the chance today to see The Expendables 2, starring just about every big action star of the 1980s and 90s with Liam Hemsworth thrown in for good measure. I mean they have to throw at least one young actor in there to get some of the younger crowd. This is not a movie that I will be seeing, one because I didn't see the first and two because it just doesn't really appeal to me.

But, Andrew, you've seen the first one and thought it was a fun action movie. What did you think of this new one?

This Kingdom Might Be Better on a Stage: Our Review of "Moonrise Kingdom" (2012)

Directed By: Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenanbaums)

Starring: Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, Bill Murray

Rating: PG-13 for sexual content and smoking

Synopsis: In a small New England town in 1965, 12-year-olds Sam (Gilman) and Suzie (Hayward) run away together after falling in love through numerous letters to each other. This causes Sam’s Khaki Scouts leader, Scout Master Ward (Norton), and the town police officer, Captain Sharp (Willis), to start an island-wide search for them.

REVIEW

Andrew: Hello readers! Tonight Sarah and I saw the latest film from director Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom. It’s been a few years since Anderson’s last film, the stop-motion The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and even longer since his last live-action film, The Darjeeling Limited. In typical Anderson style, his new movie looked pretty quirky going in but had a great looking cast with Bruce Willis, Ed Norton, Frances McDormand and Bill Murray to name a few.

Essentially it’s about a love story about a pair of 12-year-olds, Sam and Suzie, who run away together. Sarah, I’m having a little trouble figuring out exactly what I think about Moonrise Kingdom. I don’t know how I feel about it.

Sarah: Well I do, I’ll take it from here. I felt that this movie was like watching a play. Very much like watching an on-stage performance. I actually felt like it would transition to the stage VERY easily. The scenes were very well crafted to be very small scale, which was very cool. I loved the way this movie was filmed. It’s supposed to take place in the mid-1960s and there were shots and scenes where…I’m not sure if they used a filter or what, but Anderson was able to make it look like he filmed it in the 1960s.

There’s a beach scene at one point where the shots of Suzie looks like (to me at least) Ursula Andress in Dr. No. Just the softness of the edges and the way the whole scene looked. It was really, really creative the way the scenes were portrayed and written out. It seemed to be between the two main characters, Sam and Suzie, that a lot of the dialogue was ad-libbed. Like they were given the scene and were just meant to act out the scene on their own. It was very impressive.

I really enjoyed it. There was a lot more depth to it than I expected going in.

Many scenes in Moonrise Kingdom feel like they belong on a stage, particularly many of the smaller, intimate scenes between Suzy and Sam.

A: On a very technical level there are a lot of things that I agree with you on. It LOOKS great, which is par for the course for Wes Anderson. It DOES look like it was filmed on old stock, which we’ll have to look up later and see if it was. I’m curious to see if it was filmed on old film. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Moonrise Kingdom was filmed on 16mm film.) Wes Anderson is notable for being very particular and being very precise with what all is in his shots – the costumes, the sets, everything is done on purpose. All for the character of not only the actual characters, but also the setting of the stories and atmosphere he wants to convey.

So a lot of the technical aspects I agree with you, were great. But I think the thing for me is it comes down to…I’ve never been a BIG fan of Anderson’s quirky scripts and style. The way his characters speak, in particular. I know it’s all done completely on purpose but it all just sounds fake and forced to me. Not to say a lot of the lines and the situations in the film weren’t funny, because they WERE, but I think that’s also a testament to the actors themselves. There were a lot of funny actors in this film, including Kara Hayward and Jared Gilman.

So my hesitation comes from the fact that I like a lot of the aspects of the film, but I wasn’t buying the story a whole lot and some scenes just felt out of place to me. Like a scene towards the end where a flood happens. Things just kind of happen for no particular reason, at least it appeared so to me, and it took me out of things.

It’s a good movie and I enjoyed watching it, but I don’t know exactly how I feel about it until I process it more. Maybe I’ll have to see it again to fully know how to say what I want to say about it.

S: Maybe. I don’t mind his scripts. I find them to be choppy with a lot of quick, tight words that you have to catch. They’re meant to be funny…but again I think there’s a suspension of disbelief that you need to have. That’s why I was okay with it, because it was like watching a stage play.

I know it’s fake, but it was kind of nice to watch a movie that acted LIKE movie. It was meant to be fictional. There are things that happen where I go, “Yeah, that wouldn’t happen in real life,” but that’s nice.

A: I think, and again this could totally just be me, but my favorite character in the movie was Bruce Willis’ Captain Sharp because I felt through most of the movie his lines and his delivery felt the most normal. It kind of showed me a different side of Bruce Willis I haven’t seen in a while either, which I liked.

But you know what? Here’s the thing: I really, really enjoyed The Fantastic Mr. Fox and I loved the dialogue in it.

We both think the strength of Moonrise Kingdom lies with the cast, like (from left) Murray, McDormand, Norton and Willis. Even if Andrew had the same express as these four many times during the film.

S: See and I didn’t! I didn’t get it at all. Maybe if I went back and watched it again having seen this and having a better idea of how Anderson writes, then I would probably understand that one a bit better.

I think it’s pretty amazing that this guy can go, “I have this movie I want you to be in,” and the A-listers come running. That’s a testament to him as a director. So I was impressed.  I guess you have to process it a little more and come back to it. I definitely think this will make the Oscar circuits…

A: Yeah, but it’s a lot different than your normal Oscar bait. I’ll be interested to see what the pundits say as we get close to award season, when the other big stuff starts coming out.

Real quick, I do want to say I loved the cast, which you mentioned. Again, Willis was my favorite but I also really liked Ed Norton. I thought he was hilarious as Scout Master Ward. Murray and McDormand played well of each other, Gilman and Hayward were very cute together, and even the other Khaki Scouts were good.

S: Yes, I really liked the boys who played all the other Khaki Scouts. They were probably my favorite.

A: So overall we enjoyed it, but I wasn’t in love with it.

S: It’s definitely not one you have to see in theatres, but you SHOULD see it at some point.

FINAL VERDICT: Netflix it.

(Out of Five clapboards)

Photo Courtesies:  Collider, Ella & Louise, Movie Film Review

It's "Die Hard" but in a SPACE PRISON: Our Review of "Lockout" (2012)

Directed By: James Mather & Stephen St. Leger


Starring: Guy Pearce, Maggie Grace, Peter Stormare


Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and language including some sexual references


Synopsis: Ex-CIA agent Snow (Pearce) is falsely accused of murder and sentenced to 30 years in MS One - a maximum penitentiary facility in space. It just so happens that the President's daughter, Emilie (Grace), is on a humanitarian mission to the prison around the same time when a prison break occurs and she's held hostage. As a compromise, Snow is sent to MS One to save the President's daughter while also holding his own reasons for wanting to go.


REVIEW


Andrew: Mark this day down, readers, because today is a first. Today is the day Sarah and I completely disagree on a movie and we get the opportunity to play "point-counterpoint" and I'm REALLY looking forward to this.

Last night we saw the new sci-fi action flick Lockout starring Guy Pearce (Memento) and Maggie Grace (Taken). From the first time I saw the trailer for this film and it made me laugh I have been looking forward to seeing this one, and I have to say: I THOROUGHLY enjoyed it.

Sarah, on the other hand...

Sarah: Was not impressed AT ALL. Everything from the storyline to the action screamed cheesy and ridiculous. From the very first action sequence I was like, "What the..." I was just not impressed. There is a chase scene in the first sequence that really was like something straight out of a video game with Pearce poorly overlaid on the computer animation.

Pearce plays ex-CIA agent Snow and is sent to MS One to save the President's daughter played by Grace

A: Of all the things I could possibly concede to you in this review, the special effects in that opening sequence are the one thing I will give you. They're terrible, look like they were made with a video game, and they shouldn't have been allowed in a film that isn't direct-to-DVD.

That said, the rest of the special effects in the movie are actually pretty damn good. It's pretty obvious that almost all the CGI budget went towards the outer-space scenes and not that first sequence, because the space scenes were on par with Star Wars or Star Trek most of the time.

S: And I will give you that - the rest were pretty sweet even if the action left some to be desired. The storyline also left a lot to be desired. There seemed to be three different storylines going at one time and they all seemed to compete. There is Snow (Pearce) and this secret mission that is somehow connected to the CIA and Secret Service. The there is Emilie (Grace) who is going to this space prison to check out and see if tests are being performed on the inmates for deep-space travel research, THEN there is the whole all the bad guys wake up and the ship falls out of the sky thing. And NONE of these lines seem to come together in any sort of discernible logic.

A: To that I'll say I felt the three storylines actually did thread well together when all was said and done. To say why would risk spoiling the end game of the movie, which I was impressed with because my expectations FOR the plot weren't very high.

It's pretty obvious this is a "guy movie" and unapolegetically so. It has explosions, it has gunfire, it has the damsel in distress, it's about a PRISON IN OUTER-SPACE, and it has Guy Pearce playing a guy who could be a future descendent of Bruce Willis' John McClane. It's pretty clear that's what they're going for - right down to both characters having a particular fear (McClane = flying/Snow = heights), smoking (they even make a point of it to say nobody smokes in the future except Snow), and the pithy one-liners (which cracked me up).

Snow lighting one up during the chaos reminded Andrew of John McClane in Die Hard

Andrew’s Note: Guy Pearce probably saved this movie with his comedic timing and delivery. He was perfectly cast for it and I’m glad to see him in something like this. The back-and-forth between him and Grace was maybe my favorite thing about the movie.

S: NO, see HERE'S where I draw the line. A "guy" movie? I think that is crap. You and I have seen many *quote, unquote* guy movie that I have actually really enjoyed. 21 JUMP STREET could have been considered a "guy" movie but no, I really liked it and so did many other women who I know that saw it. So to give the chauvinistic line "oh it's just a guy movie" to summarize why this movie is crap is just an excuse.

The one-liners and weak story were annoying. The THREE different times when the heroes are hiding and the bad guys walk right past them, then turn around and NO ONE is there was ridiculous. The fact that when the President sends in the air strike and NONE of the pilots are like "hey maybe we should take out the guns on the station instead of just trying to weave around them" is a joke. 

This movie could have been good, really good in fact if they had just stuck with ONE storyline. They leave a little at the end, I believe in the hopes that this first one would make enough to entice a sequel, and it just leaves you kinda going, "That's it?" 

A: I'm not saying that this is a great movie, by any stretch of the imagination. Is it possible that I'm letting those things you just pointed out slide a bit because it's a Luc Besson produced movie about a prison in space? Sure. But what I'm trying to say is that if some of our readers like a cheesy action flick that can essentially be boiled down to "it's Die Hard in space," then they'll like this movie like I did. If they don't, then this isn't the movie for them.

Joseph Gilgun plays Hydell, the crazed convict who starts the prisoner takeover of MS One

S: Correction, a SUPER cheesy movie in space. And while I know you didn't think this is a great movie, the fact that you enjoyed it is enough to make me gag a little. 

So, readers, I think that it's safe to say that this isn't a movie that you should drop what you're doing and head to the theatres to see. It's probably not one that you ever really need to see, but we have finally given you a review where we really did not see eye-to-eye on this one, and probably never will. So happy movie viewing because there are some fun ones coming out over the next couple of weeks that we are excited to see!

A: I WILL be seeing The Cabin in the Woods tomorrow while the wife works, so look out for that review soon!

(Out of Five)