Martin's Musings

The White House and other Washington monuments get blow’d up real good in the new film Olympus Has Fallen — good news for anyone who wasn’t satisfied by that kind of sight in movies like Independence Day or The Day After Tomorrow.

The film, directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), is big and loud, with lots of macho action and plenty of ’splosions to please the mostly male audience that’ll likely seek this one out.

Gerard Butler stars as Mike Banning, a former Secret Service agent who finds himself in the right place at the right time when North Korean terrorists take the President (Aaron Eckhart) hostage in the White House’s underground bunker. Through it all, Banning stays in touch by phone with national security bigwigs played by Angela Bassett and Robert Forster, not to mention Morgan Freeman’s Speaker of the House character, who is asked to step in as acting President.

Of course, Banning and those remote experts don’t always see eye to eye, but the former agent’s resourcefulness comes through more than a few times to prove them wrong and save the day.

Continue reading →

Oh, spring break.

The week when college kids head to warmer places and let their inhibitions run wild.

This rite of passage sounds so idyllic to so many people that it’s become a cliché over the years — one that’s played out in movies such as Where the Boys Are, The Real Cancun, and From Justin to Kelly, to name just three.

But whereas those movies have shown a mostly chaste version of what goes on when you put thousands of college kids together under the hot sun, add alcohol, and mix it all together, Harmony Korine’s latest film, Spring Breakers, gives a much different, much darker version of events.

Oh boy, does it. Continue reading →

Harry Houdini.

David Copperfield.

Penn & Teller.

Ricky Jay.

Those are the names of some great magicians.

Burt Wonderstone thinks he’s on that list, and the huge crowds that come to see his show every night at Bally’s in Las Vegas may back that up, but times are changing, and this spray-tanned egomaniac is not the star he once was.

Of course, I’m not talking about a real person. I’m talking about the title character in the new film The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, in which Steve Carell rebounds from the awful Seeking a Friend for the End of the World to show us how funny and endearing he can be when he’s in a comedy.

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Shall we get some of the expected clichés and puns out of the way now?

Pay no attention to that movie behind the curtain!

This Oz is not so wonderful.

No brain! No heart! No courage!

It’s wicked bad.

Don’t go off to see this Wizard.

Witch movie should you see this weekend? Not this one.

And of course … There’s no place like home (when you’re deciding whether to go out to see Oz the Great and Powerful).

From those lines you can probably surmise that this Wizard of Oz prequel is neither as great or as powerful as the 1939 classic film that inspired it. Not even close. Continue reading →

The calendar may say 2013, but at the multiplexes this year, it sure feels like 1988.

In January, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone both headlined their own action flicks.

Now Bruce Willis is reviving his John McClane character for another Die Hard sequel.

What’s next? A revitalization of the three actors’ Planet Hollywood brand? (If so, then pass me the Chicken Crunch!)

But anyway, that’s right: Wisecracking New York cop John McClane is back, for the fifth time. Don’t get too excited. In the earlier films in the series, McClane was the right man in the wrong place at the wrong time, completely outmatched against some real bad guys, but winning anyway thanks to his resourcefulness and charm. Those were great movies. In fact, the first one is a true classic.

As the series has gone on, however, McLane has increasingly been the wrong man in the wrong movie. And in this latest go-round, the cumbersomely titled A Good Day to Die Hard, he’s as unnecessary as he’s ever been.

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The new comedy Identity Thief couldn’t be more timely, what with the whole Manti Te’o girlfriend hoax story, the popularity of the MTV show Catfish, increasing concerns about privacy on Facebook, and instances of actual identity theft becoming more common.

Plus, it has Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy in the lead roles, and Seth Gordon (who directed the very funny Horrible Bosses) behind the camera, so it’s primed to tap into the zeitgeist in amusing fashion.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t really make good on that promise. Continue reading →

In Contagion, Steven Soderbergh made us all compulsive hand-washers, lest we come down with a sickness worse than the flu. After all, if Gwyneth Paltrow wasn’t safe, then what chance do we have?

With Magic Mike, he had men everywhere worried that our wives and girlfriends would leave us for Channing Tatum, Matthew McConaughey, or any other member of the cast.

Now, in Side Effects, he’s making us think that medications intended to help us could instead have adverse, unpredictable effects.

What is Soderbergh’s problem? Is he trying to make us all paranoid?

Well, if he is, it’s working. Continue reading →

There’s a scene, late in Zero Dark Thirty, in which CIA director Leon Panetta and his team are sitting around a table, looking at a model of what may be Osama bin Laden’s compound.

The analysts are giving their thoughts about just how sure they are that he is there, and whether they should take action, but none of them can say it definitively.

Then, from the corner of the room, one analyst announces that she’s 100% sure that’s it.

Who are you, Panetta asks.

“I’m the motherfucker who found this place,” barks Maya (Jessica Chastain), the redheaded analyst who spent more than 10 years tracking down Public Enemy Number 1, and is the only person in that room full of men who has the conviction and, quite frankly, the balls to stand her ground.

A decade of such obsessive work will do that to you. Continue reading →