HBO's True Detective Ep. 1 & Ep. 2 (2014)

TV SHOWS ARE PEOPLE TOO GUYS! Okay technically they aren't people but they are important. Part of me actually wanted to sit in front of a bunch of moving pictures of lava and that guy from game of thrones... and Kiefer Sutherland as the bad guy apparently but I just didn't want to. Plus I don't get paid so I can write about whatever I want. This week I have been pretty much consumed with the new HBO miniseries True Detective so that's what I'll write about.

     If you haven't ever watched an HBO miniseries quick notes ; they are the best things on whenever they run, they usually get a way higher budget then they need for the short time they run, and because of the budget, and the fact that they're made over only a few months, they can often afford big movie stars like Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey ! Yay!

    Whoever cast these two is probably very pleased with themselves right now, while they haven't been huge stars in years McConaughey has had a massive resurgence in recent years being in three or four successful and critically acclaimed movies. Harrelson on the other hand is acting like he's still in character for No Country for Old Men and it fits perfectly. The basic plot could not be simpler Detective Martin Hart is a detective who's been working as a homicide detective in the Louisiana State Police Department for his whole career is suddenly partnered with Detective Rust Cohle an intelligent but strange cop who specializes in out of the ordinary type murder cases. The show opens with the arriving at their first crime scene together, a strange ritualistic looking murder of a young women wearing a crown of antlers, and Hart gets the captain to keep the two of them on the case, though their personalities frequently the clash they agree to work together to solve the case.... but that's not the whole show. The episodes are split between two time lines one of the two officers working together in the 90's and a series of interviews being conducted years later having both characters being individually questioned about what appears to be another murder done by the same killer.

    This is very much one of those shows that EVERYONE should watch. No one element of it makes it great, the thing as a whole is great. The two leads are the icing on the amazingly crafted cake. It's as well written and clever as any other detective show out there and is just so smart about every single element within it. Each episode so far (5 of 8) has managed to be a great self contained story that adds layer after layer of intense mystery. I've never seen a show like this get so gritty and harsh about the world it's set in and I cannot wait to see how it ends. As far as the episodes go specifically I would they're both just set up but the first is better than the second which fills the required "This is an adult show for adults so there must be adult nudity but only boobs" quota and doesn't accomplish much.

    I just cannot stress enough how much you have to watch this show, it's by far the best thing HBO has made in a while and it should shoot everyone who's involved career's to the stars!

   

Justice League War (2014)

   

    Justice League War is the latest entry into the DC Animated Movie Line. What's this animated movie series you ask? Well they are a long standing series of straight to DVD / Blu Ray animated movie set in the DC universe made by a variety of comic books talents from the DC's most successful branches. While on a large scale their only movie success has been the live action Batman movies they have had major small scale success with these lower budget comic book story driven movies. It started back in 2007 with Superman Doomsday a simplified version of the uber- popular  The Death of Superman comic arc from the early 90's.

    The idea here was to take the widely known series, shave off any excess characters and focus on putting the core conflict into motion. I consider this movie one of the better in the series, good action great writing, but most importantly a good adaptation of well known series; it didn't encompass every detail that hardcore fans may have wanted to see but it that didn't make it any less fun or exciting.

                      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Universe_Animated_Original_Movies is where you can find a full list of all the titles (21 including 2 coming later this year) and if you want my top three The Flashpoint Paradox , The Dark Knight Returns Part 1 and 2, annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd.......


    .....Justice League War!

    If you don't keep up with comic books (and I don't blame you) a while back the DC universe was reset into 52 new lines of comics called the new 52. It's been a successful en devour for them, allowing new writers to give their own twists on classic characters. Chief among these new books was Geoff Johns' Justice League Origins a new take on the crisis that brought together the original members of the Justice League (now including Cyborg and Shazam). The comic is fantastic, a must read for DC fans new and old. How's the movie? Well it's also very good! Like my list showed before it's my third favorite of these movies, and for good reason. Creative direction of this movie was given to the team who brought success to the comic, and even though it's much shorter it brings to light all the good things about Johns' book ; the dialogue especially considering what the movie is about. Bringing these characters together is a difficult task but this movie makes it look easy, it's pretty light on back story and assumes you know who all the characters are going in but once it gives them brief introductions it slams into play bringing forth beautiful art of great action and cool settings. Some of the story feels kinda brushed past and the villain really isn't explained well for non comic fans but I can guarantee you will enjoy this flick.

    The thing that I enjoyed most about this movie is how it plays the character's personality's off each other so well, I cannot imagine a live action Justice League movie turning out this well (and it won't) and I look forward to the future of DC's well animated library of short delves into some of my favorite characters.

RoboCop (2014)

   Film critic sin, I have in fact never seen the original RoboCop in it's entirety. It struck me as one of those movie that could never live up to all the hype so I can review this movie on it's own merit. However I am going to watch the original in the coming days and I may write a second review based on how it compares to the original. For now you just get the movie as it is. That's not so bad. Calm down.

   So for this movie RoboCop is about two main things, the titular character Alex Murphy's RoboCop (played by Joel Kinnaman) and the world outside of the United States (Which is played by the opening scene of the movie). Circa some time in the future one company based out of Detroit builds robots to replace law enforcement, they are used in what appears to be every slightly underdeveloped nation in the world and create environments of completely controlled peace, it isn't shown to a great extent but I got the impression that the people were living under the thumb of the machines. The main thrust of the narrative is that the head of this company (played by Michael Keaton) is trying to get an act repealed that will allow him to integrate robuttz into the law enforcement agencies in the US and to do this he wants to take a disabled cop or veteran or what have you and rebuild him or her into a robot cop. CopBot. Or like... android cop!

We are then introduced to officer Alex Murphy of the Detroit P.D. who through strenuous sub plot background shenanigans is injured in a car bombing nearly fatally. The company approaches his wife about rebuilding him as a robocop, yada yada yada you get the idea and 3 months later scientist man (played by Gary Oldman) has him built back up into a robot body. ROBOCOP.

   Yes while the poster may show off the new silly black suit the movie does feature (start and end) with the classic silver suit. It looks awesome. The movie overall is one of the better remakes at this level. Apart from a few little quirks it manages to deliver a solid and somewhat compelling story of a man struggling to keep his humanity. It has some really strong moments (that I don't want to spoil) and it went waaaay farther into how depressing of a situation Murphy's is than I thought it would. This movie contains some seriously dark and somewhat freaky outta left field moments that I genuinely wasn't expecting. RoboCop is also filled with some pretty solid action scenes, nothing too cray or too fancy but visually impressive and kept me mostly excited. Generally the performances of all the actors are great, legitimately everyone from Samuel L. Jackson to the Tin Man himself. Seriously it feels like a lot of money and time was poured into this movie, almost like someone cares about the property and the beloved icon....


   BUT the film is far from perfect. It feels very cut down, it charts in at about 2 hours but feels way way shorter, a lot of the little scenes fly by, the situation with the family doesn't feel important enough and neither of the actors playing his son or wife bring a lot to the table. Some of the effects fall a little short , and the movie's overall visual aesthetic is a little bland, they don't do a lot to the overall setting to make it look like it's any number of years in the future. Also to be perfectly honest the whole thing kinda falls apart towards the end, the last action scene is bad, the final confrontations with the two main antagonists is weak, and the only thing about the end that feels right is Murphy getting back into the silver suit. Do all of these things totally ruin the movie? Wellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll not exactly, but it's nothing special.

 
   For me the movie is slightly above average and maybe worth a look if you're scrounging for something to do but I can't imagine anyone clambering to the theater to see this one. It's kind of a shame because with a little more work, maybe a few scenes reworked this movie could be something really cool. Unfortunately it's just kinda sorta there, I mean it came out in the middle of the week they don't really seem to care that this movie was even finished. Considering how expensive it probably was to make and the amazing cast that filled out its ranks I will remain slightly dissapointed that this didn't turn out to be more than it was. The first 3/4s really deserves a better ending then what we got here.

                                                   
                                                     CATCH YA LATER ROBO FANZ

THIS SUIT IS PRETTY STUPID YA'LL

That Awkward Moment (2014)

 

                                 


   This review is going to be difficult for me. Partially because I love the comedy trio presented here, Zac Efron whose trying to push his way back into the lime light, Miles Teller one of my favorite comedic actors of all time despite having seen him in only one other comedy role (21 and Over is my favorite comedy) and Michael B. Jordan who has been in a lot more than either of the other actors and can play any role with personality and charm. However the actual difficulties will be spelling the word awkward which I'm bad at and avoiding puns like "That Awkward Moment when you have a really great cast and hire a dying seagull to write your movie" or "That Awkward Moment when you cut a trailer that's so dishonest you should never work in the film industry again" or even "That Awkward Moment when a movie really disappointing you, despite it being reviewed terribly".

    Look at this picture, THIS is an official promo pick for the movie and three of them don't even look like they actually look it together in the same room at the same time. For those of you who don't know That Awkward Moment is a movie about three jerks living in New York who, devoid of personality and bad with relationships start hanging out with each other again after being great friends in collage. When Mikey (played by Michael B. Jordan) is asked for a divorce by his wife his two old best buds decide to team up and stay single together until he's back in his feet. So what's the title all about you may ask? The awkward moment in question is, if you can believe it, when a girl asks you to make a decision about defining your relationship.

                                                                           Yeah.

    Comedy ensues. I've seen all three of the actor's be funnier elsewhere and this movie has a serious sense of being bogged down with two key issues ; ABYSMAL WRITING and being cut down. Despite being R rated the movie only really uses it to go into dick jokes and very light non nude sex scenes. At about 90 minutes I felt like I was missing half the locations, half the background characters, and half of the OTHER TWO MAIN CHARACTER"S STORIES. It's like they set out to make and upsetting movie just to upset me. Here we have three awesome actors, they make Zac Efron's character Jason (They also never give last names) a complete douche bag who is super concerned with his "roster" of girls he calls up just to sleep with and they never give the other two characters the time or the credit they deserve they're just plot devices that revolve around him being a jackass who can't commit to girls because he's "not in the right place in his life" boo fucken whoooooo. And yes the movie is about him finally finding the girl who changes him. YUK YUK WELL BLOW ME DOWN. Then out of no where time just passes and it's never clear for how much time has gone by between scenes. The movie opens giving up the date of the last scene but that doesn't explain how some of these people got so attached to one another and went to work so few times over the course of a meh unknown number of days. One of the only repeated scenes that works is them sitting in a coffee shop being stupid New Yorkers and they cut off those scenes randomly in the middle every single time.

 
    The writing only makes everything worse, it's one thing to have bad characters in a bad setting with bad pacing but if the writing was good it would be easier to look past some of the film's other problems. One of my favorite games to play while I was trying not to leave was count how many times they use the same locations and just shoot from a different angle because they re-use every single set multiple times. The writing is just too simple and too cliche ridden, I felt sick watching parts of this movie where the most commonly used words are fuck, shit, idiot, and girls. It would be one thing if they could make that funny but no one could make that funny. The emotional scenes in the movie don't resonate because of this, they either come of really goofy and awkward (That Awkward Moment when I giggle during a funeral scene) or too cliched and unrealistic. While the writing is terrible I'll give this movie a little bit of credit for the few scenes that work really work. When I said the movie was marketed poorly it's because if you watch the trailers it very rarely shows the any of the female characters , nor do they show any scenes related to the plot. It's just the three guys hanging out with each other making bro comedy, and that stuff kinda works BUT does not warrant the rest of the movie which kills all it's own funny.

   I guess I shouldn't have expected much more than tragedy from the January comedic release. I really disdain this feature for it's inability to come out with it's great cast and nail all the punchy post college age bro humor but it doesn't even give itself the opportunity filling in the gaps between "serious scenes" with bad low brow humor, overly sexualized scenes that don't break the R rating, and way too much unnecessary cursing. Top it all off with a weak supporting cast, bad cinematography and an all around unlikable main character and you have "That Awkward Moment when you make a shitty comedy and market it badly to try and trick me". Shame on you.

The official Maple Merchant January Pick is Paranormal Activity the Marked Ones

Cheering Sounds

But you should probably go see any Oscar Nominated movies you haven't yet seen instead.

Bigger Cheering Sounds!