Archive for March, 2010

Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs

  • Written by Jason
  • Posted March 30, 2010 at 2:20 pm

A Review by Jason L. King

Starring: Anna Ferris, Bill Hader, James Caan, Andy Samberg
Directed by: Phil Lord, Chris Miller
Rated: PG
Movie Released: 2009
IMDB Link

Final Grade:

Sometimes you see a movie hoping a childhood memory can be recreated.  I remember sitting in a classroom years ago, and having an elementary teacher reading the class the book, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. All of us eager eyed little kids hung on every word the teacher spoke, as she told us about a small town called Chew and Swallow, a place where it rained food.  At the conclusion of the tale, we were given a writing assignment that had us penning our own tale of foods that rain from the sky.  After all, who doesn’t love childhood stories that explain why it would rain their favorite food?  Looking back on it, its one of the school activities that was a lot of fun back in the day (which was a Wednesday for the record) and so of course I wanted to have just as much fun as I watched the film Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs.

However, in the year 2009 my childhood memory was robbed from me.  Sony pictures worked very hard to bring Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs to the big screen.  Set in Chew and Swallow, the movie version has us following a strange lab nerd with rejection issues emerging from his lab and creating a machine that will make food rain from the sky.  At first, his invention seems to be a success but as time elapses, he realizes (thanks to the help of an intern weather girl who shares his nerdy obsessions) that his machine is causing the food to get bigger and bigger.  As the sky begins to open up and rain giant mounds of ice cream, large dough nuts  and steak, he realizes he must find a way of shutting down his machine for good before it crushes the town with mammoth meatballs.

I was really torn by this movie.  On many levels I enjoyed the flick.  It found a way of taking the beloved children’s story and brought it to life on the big screen.  The film in many ways puts imaginations of small children on the big screen.  The skies rain food daily giving the friendly people of Chew and Swallow something good to eat (and despite the rain of food, very little clean up is required).  If you could dream it, the movie had it pouring from the skies in giant proportions.  All that food raining from the skies makes you crave food in epic proportions.

Besides making you hungry, the film tries to tackle the issues of accepting who you are, as well as the sometimes troublesome relationship between a father and a son that are nothing alike.  Try as it may, the film really doesn’t succeed at either of these things well.  The inventor convinces the intern weather girl to be herself and embrace her….gasp….glasses….and a ponytail!  The end result is supposed to be that she begins to accept herself for who she is, and she does.  However, she is humiliated and called ugly on international television first.  Somehow the girl just blows it off like it is no big deal.  Sure, that’s a nice message in theory, but c’mon, to blow that off and just be chipper about it?  The film blew it’s chance for the girl to either A.) make a stand against the news anchor who mocks her by saying she is happy with herself, or B.) had her make a comment, or even wrestle with pain of being “different.”  Along side this, we have a father figure that shares no real interest in his inventor son’s projects.  At the end, the father works with the son (sort of) to try and save the world from giant meatballs.  All the ground work is there for something heart felt, however once the the trigger is pulled on this issue, it wound up being a dud.

Animation wise, I saw nothing new or amazing brought to the table.  In many ways, the film continued down the stale animation of yester-year.  Mix that in with a cliche plot line and at best mildly entertaining characters, and you have a film that tries to bite off more than it can chew (pun intended).  When it was all said and done, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, is a film that your young-ins will enjoy, but will have you wanting to snooze through it.  But that’s ok, it’s target audience is supposed to be the young ones.  And for a film that is really geared toward them, it does an ok job at achieving its simple minded plot.  If you have someone in your house that is under the age of eight, they will probably have a great time watching Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs.  However, if you are looking for a film that will re-kindle your childhood imaginations and memories, I am sorry to report that Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs just isn’t going to be enough to bring out that inner kid in you.

No Comments
Filed under: Animated, Family, Movies

Must See Movies: The Godfather

  • Written by Jason
  • Posted March 24, 2010 at 9:15 pm


The following is part of a Box Office Boredom series of articles called Must See Movies. Through our musings we hope to share with you why we consider a film to be relevant in the world of film.



If I were asked what my favorite film of all time would be, it would have to be 1972’s The Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola.  Of course, this sound to be a typical answer by a film critic, cinephile or simply put a film snob but before you write me off as another cinematic wannabe, give me some time to try and explain myself.

For years and years I have heard cinema elitist speak of the Coppola masterpiece as a film that ends all films, only to be rivaled by The Godfather Part II.  Oddly enough, it was a film that I had never seen.  It wasn’t until somewhere in the year 2000 that I actually embarked upon my first experience with the Corleone family and it was one of the films that has changed my out look on the world of cinema.  Today, I boldly attempt to share with you a few of the many reasons I believe this film is one of the celluloid treasures that you must see.

Constantly imitated but never duplicated The Godfather is first and foremost a film about family.  Few films have come close to showing this side of organized crime, aside from a possibility of something like Martin Scorcese’s Goodfellas and the long running HBO series, The Sopranos.  However, despite their best efforts to replicate The Godfather, they really don’t hold a candle to the film.  In the Godfather, you are presented with 2 very different families that are intertwined.  First and foremost you have the Corleone Family, a “family” derived from a life of criminal acts.  Under the leadership of their “Godfather” Don Vito Corleone, members of the Corleone family may not always be next of kin, but their loyalty can be traced through a blood line that goes all the way back to Sicily.  The second family again is also known as The Corleone Family, this focusing on the father figure Vito, and his children, Sonny, Fredo, Tom and Connie. Despite being a family plagued by hot headed tempers, social ineptitude, marital violence and more the Corleone family is drawn together closer because of their familial ties to each other, thus proving that in their world, blood is thicker than water.

It’s because of this, we get an in depth look at how a family that is surrounded by crime stays together.  Their father, Vito is feared by many, yet is a genuine, gentle family man in his home life.  Vito is a father that loves his sons unconditionally and will stop at nothing to provide the very best for his children.  Vito, despite his criminal ties is much like many of you, with aspirations that someday his children will be better off than he was.  He speaks of how he dreamt of Michael becoming a politician or a lawyer- someone who pulls the strings, rather than a man forced to work like a puppet for a puppeteer.

With all of this focus on the family, one could find it very entertaining to know that the phrase “Corleone Family” was thrown out by Coppola as a way to please the Italian-American groups at the time.  In an attempt to appease their wishes, Coppola was told not to use the word “mafia,” “mob” or “la cosa nostra” while portraying Italian immigrants on screen.  From this derived the concept of “the five families” and Coppola’s vision of making The Godfather not just another crime or gangster flick but instead interweaving the importance of family ties into the criminal underbelly.

Coppola’s classic la cosa nostra tale revolutionized the way organized crime was viewed by cinematic audiences.  Prior to this crime films all followed an all so familiar pattern.  Leading back to crime’s cinema beginnings in 1903’s The Great Train Robbery, crime films, especially gangster films all followed a similar  plot line.  The film’s main character would be pulled off the beaten path of good as a way to obtain power, wealth or other worldly goods they could not obtain by following the straight and narrow.  As they continued to gain their power, control and wealth, it ultimately became their down fall.  Usually finding themselves in a shower of gun fire, the good guys won out in the end.  However, Coppola flips that model on its head.  The Godfather doesn’t end in a hail of gunfire.  The “good” guys don’t win, and Michael becomes the next Don of the Corleone family.  Unlike it predecessors, The Godfather almost glorifies the criminal underbelly rather than criticizing it.  The Corleone Family is shown in many ways as an every day business, with Michael as their business leader.  However, where the film does follow the tried and true pattern echoes in the ending of The Godfather Part I and Part II, in scenes where it is evident that Michael is forced to continue to seclude himself from the world around him and leave behind the normal familial joys that most of us take for granted.

The Godfather also is a tale of modern capitalism.   Surrounded by illegitimate activities, Michael and Vito are both portrayed as businessmen.  Their family business is discussed just like you would expect it to be discussed in any board room across the country.  In their line of work, much like any other business in America, the goal is to become rich and successful by selling their product.  Whether it be gambling, booze, women or personal protection, The Corleone Family looks out for number 1, even if that means making someone an offer they can’t refuse.  This differed from previous gangster flicks, as Coppola again strove to make the Corleones look like legitimate businessmen rather than cut throat criminals.   Coppola even furthers this by including a conversation between Michael and Kay where Michael justifies working for his father by saying “My father is like any other powerful men, be it a president or senator.”  When Kay replies with “presidents and senators don’t have people killed.” Michael recants with “Now who is being naïve?”

Aside from the way The Godfather revolutionized the traditional crime saga, the film also had an over all amazing effect on the studios as well.  With out going into great detail, Paramount studios was one of the lowest grossing studios in Hollywood.  By taking a chance on a young auteuristic director, the studio found themselves in a commercial success and a film that received an academy award for best picture.    While Coppola can not fully be credited for this, it was a film that began a 70’s revival of cinema, or a second “golden age” of cinema.  It was through the gambles that studios took on finding young directors like Coppola, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas that set the footing for modern cinema that you see on screen today. However, Coppola and company still followed many of the old school rules despite forging new ideas of their own.  The Godfather is riddled with instances of scenes that are throwbacks to French New Wave film noir and lighting that replicates German expressionism.

Of course what makes the Godfather work so well is the acting involved.  Marlon Brando gives the performance of his life as Don Vito Corleone, with his raspy voice and subtle gestures.  (While yes it is true that he stuffed his cheeks with cotton balls to appear “older”, it is common myth that he did this on set.  Instead, this method was only used during Brando’s screen test).  Beside him, James Caan, Robert Duvall and of course none other than Al Pacino.  At the time Pacino was a up and comer, someone whom the studios had little faith in.  Martin Sheen, Dean Stockwell, Rod Steiger all auditioned for the role and Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, and Dustin Hoffman were all offered the part of Michael Corleone, (but all refused).  Alain Delon, Burt Reynolds and Robert Redford were all suggested to Coppola but instead  Coppola saw through Pacino’s inexperience and struggled to cast him anyway.  In the end, Pacino created what may be known as one of the most infamous, most loved characters in cinema history.

When its all said and done, I could probably write an entire novel on what makes this film relevant, and why it is one of my favorite films.  However, I don’t think the readers want to hear more of my drivel as I drool over this celluloid classic.  If you haven’t had a chance to watch The Godfather, I encourage you to check it out.  Its one of the films that defines cinema as we know it.

1 Comment
Filed under: Articles

Where The Wild Things Are

  • Written by Jason
  • Posted at 12:36 pm

A Review by Jason L. King

Starring: James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara, Chris Cooper, Catherine Keener, Mark Ruffalo, Forest Witaker
Directed by: Spike Jonze
Rated: PG for mild thematic elements, some adventure action and brief language
Movie Released: 2009
IMDB Link

Final Grade:

From the first time the trailer for Where The Wild Things Are came onto movie screens around me, I heard people shriek.  ”Oh my god, they got the FONT right…it’s so awesome!”  That’s right, I had a group of people that were discussing a font, and not the actual movie.  Now, personally all the talk of fonts makes me geek out a bit.  After all, as a journalism student in my earlier days, I once took a class that devoted half a semester to the study and formation of fonts.  Secondly, as one of the few fans of the light-hearted romantic comedy, America’s Sweethearts, my thoughts were swept away thinking of Hal Wideman (Christopher Walken) sending the studio the opening credits of his film and asking, “Do you like the font?  I can also do it in blue.”  In all my years of watching movies and being surrounded by people who love movies, this is the first time I have ever heard a font geek-out moment.  And to the credit of the makers of Where the Wild Things Are, they did get the font right in this live action adaptation of the beloved children’s book.

The film tells the story of a little boy named Max, whom is constantly ignored by his siblings and even his parents.  One night, after being a very bad little boy while playing make believe in his “wolf suit” his mother sends him to his room. Trapped alone in his room, Max travels to an imaginary land of the wild things where a group of over sized monsters make him their king.  But as Max and the wild things both learn, sometimes being one big happy family is harder than anyone can imagine.

What is so weird about this film is the way director, Spike Jonze, made this film to be a cross between two genres that normally don’t mix.  In many ways the film has the look and feel of an “indie” or “art” film, however follows a tale that is a beloved children’s book.  Somehow, Jonze was able to craft the two together to get a “art-house worthy kid flick.”  This is both a good and bad move for the film.  In many ways, Where The Wild Things Are breaks the mold of the standard children’s tale.  While it still keeps many of the elements of a flick aimed at younger audiences, it visually dares to be different.  Because of its dare to be different the film is a breath of fresh air.  However, the direction this film took also has its setbacks.  Because of the slower moving pace and “different” feel of the film, I don’t think it was a film that would keep the attention of a younger child for the entire run time.

Where the film does succeed is by bringing to life Maurice Sendak’s “Wild Things.”  Through the use of over sized animitronics, Jonze finds a way to bring to life the colorful characters that covered the pages of the classic kids book.  In many ways, the creatures looked so life like, and yet so imaginary at the same time.  It was amazing to see the delicate balance between the two work so well.  Lending a hand to the success of the wild things was the voice talents of James Gandolfini, Chris Cooper, Catherine O’Hara and Forrest Witaker.  Each of the voices seemed familiar, yet worked well with the characters they were portraying, although it was hard to hear “Tony Soprano” as a large talking beast with an anger management problem.

Where this film goes wrong is in the storyline.  Jonze took a book that is 48 pages long and has only 338 words and tried to adapt it to a full length feature film.  Since Sendak’s book was low on the word count (and you can’t only have a 1 hour wild rumpus), Jonze and friends create complex characters.  Carol (played by James Gandolfini) in many ways mirrors young Max in the real world.  Someone who has a creative imagination, is starved for attention and is quick to lose his temper.  On the other hand, Alexander also shares traits with Max- attention starved and ignored.  Max must learn in the land of the wild things that anger controls your life if you let it.  He must learn that it takes hard work from all involved to be part of a family.  He also learns that sometimes you can’t always be right and have to compromise with others.  However, this heavy themed film may go right over most kid’s heads.   After all, Sendak’s original book was aimed for the ages of 4-8 year olds and the film is very obviously geared towards an older crowd.

Oddly enough for a “family” film, the flick is very depressing in many facets.  There film is heavy on the anger issues, physical “cartoon” violence, and deals with issues like abandonment and depression.  The film even sort of ends on somewhat of a “downer” note.  Mixed in amongst these themes are some great one liners and some classic memorable scenes.  But the problem is these memorable scenes are too few and far stretched.

I have a hard time saying that Where The Wild Things Are, is a family film.  It’s obviously geared toward a “older” family.  Young kids are going to have a very hard time sitting still through this film as it is slow moving and filled with a lot of dialogue.  Older crowds may find enjoyment in the visual nature of the film but wonder how their beloved book got made into this film.  When it comes right down to it, I have a very hard time recommending this film despite finding tidbits of enjoyment in it.  In many ways, I think you and your family and friends are better off reading the book, or finding a way of starting your own “wild rumpus” rather than watching this flick.

I did however want to point out that one of my favorite things was a special feature on the film’s dvd.  There is a section titled “The absurd difficulty of filming a dog barking and running at the same time.”  The segments title tells it all.  It’s a 5 minute segment of Jonze and friends trying to film a 5 second clip of a dog running and barking at the same time.  Turns out it’s harder to do than you think!

1 Comment
Filed under: Drama, Family, Movies

Podcast: 3/20/2010 (Post-Oscar Edition)

  • Written by Jason
  • Posted March 20, 2010 at 1:25 pm

The latest episode of the Box Office Boredom Podcast is now up for your listening pleasure. In this episode we take a different turn from the usual and spend the half hour talking about the Academy Awards and our thoughts on Hollywood’s Big Night

Also in this episode Isaac Strohman tries to eat his microphone! Or at least thats what it sounds like as he gets a bit too excited about Transformers 2 and a few other Oscar moments!

We also encourage you to join our online discussion page by becoming a fan on facebook. Become a fan of BoxOfficeBoredom.com and join in the debate.

If you aren’t a subscriber to the podcast, subscribe via the link on our sidebar and get every new episode downloaded into Itunes or your favorite podcast software. If you want to be a one- time listener (but why would you just want to listen to just one?), Listen on the embedded player below, or just click Here and it will take you directly to a embedded QuickTime file in a new window.

No Comments
Filed under: Podcast

2012

  • Written by Jason
  • Posted March 18, 2010 at 12:32 pm

A Review by Jason L. King

Starring: John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Danny Glover, Oliver Platt, Chiwetel Ejofor
Directed by: Roland Emerich
Rated: PG-13 for intense disaster sequences and some language
Movie Released: 2009
IMDB Link

Final Grade:

According to the Mayan calendar, December 21,  2012 will be the last day on Earth.    For those of you political buffs that’s a little more than a month after Sarah Palin could potentially be elected president.  For those who could care less about the political circus, that is means you have only 2 more Christmases to spend with your family.    Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not telling you the end is near.  I haven’t put on my tin foil hat and hit the streets with my homemade cardboard “repent: the end is near” sign just yet.   However, a few people out there may think I’m close, after all I do listen to the Glenn Beck radio show on a regular basis.  But in the back of my mind, and maybe even yours, there is that inkling of a thought asking you: “What if the Mayans were right?”

Now you know as well as I do, there could be a ton of answers to that question.  Maybe the Mayans did know that the end of the world was happening on December 21st, 2012 or maybe they just ran out of paper.   After all, if you were a Mayan calendar scribe, wouldn’t you want to pick an ending point so your calendar would be complete?  Maybe his son had a baseball game, so he took a day off and just never came back to work.  Maybe the calendar scribe caught a nasty cold and then never finished the calendar.  We could play the what if game until we are blue in the face.  But as a movie buff, knowing that potentially the end of the world is coming in a little under 3 years means I should probably help you focus on watching “good” movies.  After all, do you want to be watching The Adventures of Pluto Nash on the day of the apocalypse?

Director Roland Emerich is known for his colossal end of days type entertainment.  As the director of Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, and now 2012, Roland has shown us the destruction of mankind and their national monuments for the last decade and a half.  Emerich’s films have become known to be based extremely loosely on scientific fact, and focus more on the “what if” rather than the “is that logical?”.  2012 is no different.

After a slow start the film follows a divorced writer (Cusack) and his two kids who stumble upon a government  site in Yellowstone (and a cheap plug for “Goodnights” underpants) the film finally gets to the point.  During their strange camping adventure, they are told by a crazed, end of days, wilderness AM radio host (Woody Harrelson) that the end of the world is near and the government knows about it.  In preparation for the end times, the leaders of the world are creating giant space ships to transport them off earth once the end times begin.

At the same time a young scientist ((Chiwetel Ejofor) -for the record that name is pronounced “chew-it-tell edge-oh-for” or “Chewy” as I like to call him) discovers that the earth’s core is heating up, causing the crust of the earth to break open, continents to shift and giant tidal waves in the oceans.  As a government scientist, he wants to warn mankind before it is too late.

As many of you may guess what follows in the destruction of city after city as the crust of the Earth opens up and swallows city after city and tidal waves attack the remaining shore line.  Cusack and his family begin narrowly escaping the disaster and continue forth to find the “secret space ships” that will save them as mankind is destroyed.

2012 will be right up your alley if you want to see the CGI destruction of every major city and landmark around the world.  Emerich takes great care in making sure to destroy everything he can think of through giant Earth quakes, tidal waves or by simply having it swallowed into the abyss known as the earth’s core.  The CG work is spotty at best.  You go from scenes that look visually amazing, to scenes that look so incredibly fake that you want to laugh out loud.    Visually when it comes to disaster and destruction of mankind, no body quite does it like Roland Emerich.  Emerich is sort of the “extreme natural disaster” master.  People who see his work know that going in and can easily overlook the lack of any logic and even some corny effects from time to time.  Die hard Emerich fans are much like Michael Bay fans, they don’t go in to the film looking for the highest of quality or intellectual thought- they just want to see stuff explode.  In the case of 2012, Emerich delivers.

Where 2012 goes awry is the ridiculously long run time of two and a half hours of destruction.  The film easily could have been made into a great mini-series but instead they felt the need to drone on for two and a half hours and make it one giant epic theatrical release.  Sadly enough, one grows old with the earth swallowing up city after city much faster than Emerich does.  To top that off, Emerich tries to build an arching story line with multiple characters, many who could have had less time on screen.  We spent too much time dwelling on Chewy’s father who was a jazz musician on a boat  and his aged friend, an old man who had been estranged from his son for years.     Much like that plot line, there were many smaller parts like this that drug on and on having little to do with advancing the plot.  A plot line involving President Danny Glover (yes, I said Danny Glover) droned on past that story line’s high point.  As a viewer, you’d be much happier to have a tighter focus on this film rather than jumping around from story to story surrounding the apocalypse.

I’m sure many a self pro-claimed critic will find ways to bash on the film’s ending.  Don’t worry folks, I’m not going to spoil anything.  All I am going to say is a film like this is very hard to end.  If you end with the destruction of the world and every one in it, movie goers leave the theaters feeling quite sad.  However, if you let some people survive, you really haven’t created the “end of the world” either.  Point is Emerich was doomed from the beginning on this one, and so I think one should be very careful when throwing stones Emerich for his ending on the film.

However, if one was throwing stones at Emerich’s film, one could point out the very spotty acting in this film.  Cusack is enjoyable yet seems to phone it in with little new brought to the table.  Amanda Peet puts on a forgettable performance as well.  Chiwetel Ejiofor and Oliver Platt give a great performance.  The two actors work very well together and the film works well when they are together on screen.  As I noted before, Danny Glover plays the role of the President.  If my memory serves me right, Glover was saying  he “was too old for this shit” back in the 90’s.  Well, Glover should have listened to himself  back then.  He doesn’t fit the role of President at all, and delivers an all around terrible performance.  However, the silver lining in the cloud known as “Glover’s Presidential Performance” was that his daughter was played by Thandie Newton.  It is my belief that years ago someone challenged someone in the world to find the worst actresses of all time.  Spanning the globe that man presented the world with Kirsten Dunst and Thandie Newton  (it wasn’t until years later, that same person discovered Kristen Stewart, and Katie Sackhoff).  Point is, Newton as always is such a terrible actress that she makes every one around her including Glover look like a talented and gifted muse.

When it is all said and done, 2012 had it’s moments.  If you are looking for a drawn out, forgettable popcorn flick then the film might be for you.  However, if you are going in and looking for substance or quality you may want to run away quickly.    I leave you all with this thought: with a supposed only 2 years left on the earth, choose what you watch wisely.   There are plenty of films worse than  2012 out there.  However, if you pop 2012 into the DVD player just don’t be surprised if you feel like the end of the earth may actually occur before the end credits roll.

No Comments
Filed under: Action, Drama, Movies, Science Fiction
?>