Tammy

Where do I start with Tammy?  I like Melissa McCarthy alright, but maybe I just don’t always get her comedy?  Or maybe it just wasn’t that funny?  She plays Tammy, a woman that finds out her husband is cheating on her and also gets fired from her job the same day.  She’s had enough and decides to take off and leave town, but having wrecked her car, needs to borrow one from her grandmother, played by Susan Sarandon.  The only way the grandmother will let her take it is if she can go along on the trip.  This should have been a funny road trip type movie, but the “humor” just wasn’t there for me – the grandma was getting drunk all the time, McCarthy’s physical comedy wasn’t funny, and the jokes just fell flat over and over.  The only time I really liked it was when she’d let her guard down and it got a little more serious – which doesn’t seem quite right for a comedy.

Maleficent


Disney’s classic movie, Sleeping Beauty, came out in 1959 and was the tale of Auora, a princess who had a curse put on her by the evil Maleficent.  The new Disney film, Maleficent, is the view point of Maleficent who is so richly played by Angelina Jolie. In the story, we know that she casts a curse on Auora and at the age of 16 she would prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die.  But did you ever wonder why Maleficent cursed Auora and why she was evil?  This tale was fun to watch and it captured my interest from the very beginning. I really enjoyed how the writers took a cartoon character and made her into a person with emotions while still telling the story of Sleeping Beauty. It was dark at times but through it all there was a charming element beneath the surface of the character.  I really liked the movie!  (Just a personal note, this movie is geared for maybe older kids due to some of the intense scenes but then again, the dragon in the original movie scared me!)

 

The Signal

I wanted to like this movie.  And it’s not really that I didn’t like it, but I can’t tell if it was trying too hard or not hard enough.  It starts out with a few friends that have tracked down a signal from a computer hacker and decide to confront him.  After things go bad when they try to locate the person, they find themselves split up and waking up in a sterile, hospital-like facility being told they have been “infected” through an encounter with aliens and are highly contagious.  From then on, it’s all about trying to figure out what actually happened, surviving the ordeal, and trying to escape from the facility – all the while having more and more unexpected things happening to them.  I liked the idea and the premise, but just felt like it was a bunch of scenes thrown together without much connection at times.  I didn’t know what was going on half the time, which was fine, but it was almost too much that way – not enough details to really understand it all until the very, very end.  And I still don’t understand the reasons for a lot of things that were in the movie – which is what they were going for, I guess.  Not horrible, but not great, either.

Hercules

Watching this movie with Duwayne Johnson, “The Rock”, as Hercules is a pretty good way to watch a movie! This isn’t the type of movie I was expecting as I’ve seen several in this genre before  It focused more on the reality of the man instead of the mythological one.  The mythological story of Hercules is included in the film and was done in about the first 10 minutes of the movie,( being a demigod and all the feats he had done to attribute to the legend of Hercules). After that- the real story starts.  Hercules and his group of followers are mercenaries.  They’ve all heard the stories of Hercules but to them, he is just a man who has become their leader and their friend.  The story gets intense as they are hired to kill a tyrannical warlord for the King of Thrace.  There are a lot of battle scenes which surprised me.  There weren’t any made up monsters or other Greek gods in this film – it focused upon the flesh and blood of man and the sins that can haunt one person. The battle scenes were epic as were some of the twists and turns the movie threw in.  I really enjoyed Duwayne Johnson in this role as he didn’t overact and the other actors such as, Ian McShane and Rufus Sewell really added some fun to the story.  It was better than what I thought and I probably would watch it again for a whole new take on the legend of Hercules.

 

Earth to Echo

I wasn’t too impressed with this one.  I guess it was supposed to be like some Blair Witch Project with a lot of the movie filmed on a camcorder by a 13 year-old, which wasn’t great.  And the story seemed like they were trying to combine E.T. with The Goonies with Super 8 with Stand By Me.  Those were all good movies, but I didn’t need to see them again – especially all in one film!  It was actually a LOT like E.T., having kids discover an alien from another world and trying to help him get home without adults finding him or hurting him before he can leave.  And of course the kids can leave their houses, be gone all night, go pretty much anywhere on their bicycles (no matter how far) with almost nobody questioning anything.  They can also decipher anything the little alien can send to their cell phones!  In those ways, it was almost ridiculous how unrealistic it was.  Maybe it was meant for a younger audience, but even so, for such a big story there wasn’t much to it overall.