A Descent into Dullness

I kind of feel like I shouldn't be counting Springbreakers or Don Jon as watched movies.  Since I didn't get very far into either.  I didn't even get to the spree crime bit of the former.  It was just sooooooo dull watching three college ladies try to find the money to party thru Spring Break.  Gave up well before James Franco shows up.  And as for the latter, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a really good actor.  So good that I truly hated his porn-addicted bro very quickly.  And so tapped out right around the movie date with ScarJo...

Cockneys Vs. Zombies didn't really bring anything terribly new to the zombie survival genre.  A group of Eastenders trying to rob a bank to save their grandfather's retirement home from demolition.  Which gets interupted by the sudden zombie infestation.  Very suddenly.  I mean they go out the door, cops all over the street.  Rush back into the back, spend about a minute grabbing some hostages and go out and street is all post-zombie attack.  Still a fun movie.  I mean someone drop kicks a zombie baby...

I spent part of 42 trying to figure what the most southern MLB team would have been then.  Did Atlanta have a team then?  I'm pretty certain it was well before Florida or Texas had a major franchise.  Anyway, great acting all around though I'm betting Robinson's recruitment wasn't as high intentioned as shown...

Monsters University is a..nice..enough prequel sequel.  Its nowhere near as touching as Monsters Inc.  I did like Nate Fillion's smug BMOC bad guy.  And there were lots of visually interesting monsters.  But still was a fairly cookie cutter college underdog movie...

And finally we've got White House Down, one of the better Die Hard at Blank type movies.  Much better than the last two actual Die Hard movies definitely.  This is the one with Jamie Foxx as NotObama and Channing Tatum as NotJohn McLaine.  I don't know when Tatum learned to loosen up his acting, but its a decided improvement over some of previous work...

The Croods: This charming and funny movie about a "caveman" family in a hyper deadly world  deserved more attention than it got...

Kings of Summer: Not quite as good as the indy-darling hype would make it seem, but still quite good.  Nick Offerman is definitely a high point in it.  And the teenagers, even when showing how clever they are, remind you that teenagers are idiots and we were all lucky to survive that period...

Much Ado About Nothing (Whedon): I do love watching a well-crafted Shakespeare play even if I tend to get lost in the larger casts.  But all in all great work from Whedon and various of his actor pals...

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol: I don't remember what the hell the master plan of the bad guy in this was (world chaos maybe?) but I do recall I enjoyed watching Cruise, Renner, Patton and Pegg running around the world trying to foil it...

The Cabin in the Woods:  Very funny in a dark and gruesome manner but also sad.  Partly because of the whole world loses if individuals win.  But also just how normalized mass murder becomes to the People Behind it All...

Porco Rosso: Cute and funny.  Michael Keaton as the lead voice is more than a little spot-on perfect...

Paranorman: A little kid who sees dead people vs. zombies except not really but really its a wicked witch but again not really...

Detective Dee & the Mystery of the Phantom Flame: Kung Fu Detective is freed from prison to solve a spontaneous combustion mystery by an Empress on the word of a Mystic Talking Deer...

7 Psycopaths: Drunken screen writer has to deal with dognappers, mobsters, a killer vigilante and writer's block. Plus Tom Waits and a bunny...

Chico & Rita: Animated movie about a pair of pre-Castro Cuban jazz musicians who fall in love and screw it up because of stupid and the fickleness of fame. Lots of great music of course...

The Raid: Redemption: Malaysian action movie where a SWAT team goes after a drug dealer in his fortified apartment building. And then things get all FUBAR. And then ass kickings and shootings and lots of violence happens...

A Cat in Paris: Animated movie about a cat who lives with a police detective's daughter during the day and goes out at night with a burglar. And then some gangsters get involved and so the little girl has to be saved by the burglar. And lots of running around the roofs of Paris...

Easily captures the pulp, high-adventure concept at the core of the series. I didn't see it on a 3-D screen, so I don't know how much that might have added to the feeling of non-stop frenetic action. Fun movie with some good voice acting. I especially liked Simon Pegg and Nick Frost being cast as the Thompsons...

Cute enough movie about the kid's of various Avengers who have to face down Ultron. One of the better animated Marvel comics movies. 'Course that is a pretty dang low bar there to clear...