Posts Tagged ‘Captain America’

Short Take: Full of action and fun to watch, but not exceptional

Director: Joe Johnston

Screenwriters: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely

Cast: Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Hayley Atwell, Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci

Length: 2h 4m

Synopsis: The year is 1942 and America is on the verge of militarily entering WWII. Brooklyn native Steve Rogers (Evans) has been applying to join the service but keeps getting denied. Nevertheless, he refuses to give up, and on his fifth attempt he is pulled aside and offered an opportunity to enlist after convincing the recruiters he is looking to fight for freedom, not just looking for a reason to fight. Across the Atlantic the dastardly Red Skull (Weaving), an ex-Nazi, has found the Cosmic Cube, a source of immeasurable energy which he plans to use to take over the world one country at a time. To combat his efforts the U.S. military authorizes Rogers to be a guinea pig for a new Super Soldier serum, which gives him great strength and speed. With his newfound abilities he becomes Captain America, and fulfills his dreams by doing his part to protect the innocent. But even for him, defeating Red Skull will be a tall order.

Read the rest of this entry »

With so many bombs like "The Green Hornet" trying to sell 3D (converted no less), which don't even warrant a normally priced ticket, why should we not still consider 3D to be a money-grabbing gimmick that doesn't add enough to the viewing experience to justify the higher ticket price?

Dear Hollywood,

Please stop pushing 3D.

The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides has underachieved in terms of earning first weekend grosses for 3D showings, with more audiences opting for 2D prints. Now, with $90.1 million earned its first weekend in just the U.S., and over $400 million to be earned worldwide by the end of its first full week, the film can hardly be considered unsuccessful. However, numbers show that American audiences’ interest in 3D could be waning. What everyone is trying to figure out is whether fewer 3D tickets sold means audiences are no longer seeing the value in 3D technology or they are becoming less inclined to fork over the extra cash for a 3D ticket.

Guess what Hollywood – if Americans are indeed sick of 3D it’s because of both reasons.

The list of recent movies released in 3D where the extra dimension actually added to the viewing experience is extremely short, including only Avatar, Tron: Legacy, How to Train Your Dragon, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Coraline, and Monster House. Notice how four of those six are 100% animated, and the two “live action” films are ones which were greatly reliant on digital effects to the point where one could justifiably consider them mostly animated as well. This is not a coincidence, and such a pattern does not help the argument that 3D is the future of the medium. Personally, I won’t give that claim any consideration until I see a truly live action film wow me like the six just mentioned.

Read the rest of this entry »

What could "The Expendables" teach us, besides why you don't want to pick a fight with any of them?

Back at the beginning of Summer we gave a preview of three films that were to come out that have something in common. What these films share is a focus on a tight-knit group of ex-military soldiers who work towards a shared goal of some kind. With The Losers it was about getting revenge, with The A-Team it was about living up to one’s duties as a patriot, and with The Expendables it was about serving the human condition. As you may have noticed, the motivations of the groups got progressively nobler, from serving selfish incentives to fulfilling an intangible obligation to heroic morals; namely the moral that the strong have to protect the weak. The three movies, and by extension the three groups in these movies, may share a similar basic premise, and may interact within their respective contexts in a similar way, but their differing motivations distinguish them from each other more so than we may have anticipated. Likewise, they also shared more in common than we previously thought. What exactly, though, can we learn from comparing them further?

Read the rest of this entry »

Short Take: Shows more promise in future Marvel films than in itself. Entertaining, but disjointed.

Director: Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Elf)

Screenwriter: Justin Theroux (Tropic Thunder)

Cast: Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes, Tropic Thunder), Don Cheadle (Brooklyn’s Finest, Hotel Rwanda, Ocean’s 11), Gwyneth Paltrow (Two Lovers, Iron Man), Scarlett Johansson (He’s Just Not That Into You, The Spirit, Vicky Christina Barcelona), Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler, Domino, Sin City), Sam Rockwell (Everybody’s Fine, Moon, Frost/Nixon)

Length: 2 hours 4 minutes

Synopsis: Picking up where the last film left off, the film follows Tony Stark (Downey Jr.) as he struggles to overcome a number of obstacles after revealing he is Iron Man.  Stark fights to keep the U.S. government from taking the Iron Man technology while also competing with fellow arms businessman Justin Hammer (Rockwell).  However, Stark has bigger problems like Ivan Vanko (Rourke), an angry nemesis out for revenge against the Stark family, as well as the threat that the piece of machinery keeping him alive may also be slowly killing him.  On top of all this, Stark tries to cultivate his budding romance with Pepper Potts (Paltrow) while also flirting with his mysterious new personal assistant Natalie (Johansson). Read the rest of this entry »

Publicity photo for Johnston's "The Wolfman"

Director Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer, October Sky, Hidalgo) spoke with FilmJournal.com about his upcoming movie The Wolfman starring Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt, Anthony Hopkins, and Hugo Weaving, which opens February 12th, as well as some ideas regarding is next movie The First Avenger: Captain America.

Regarding The Wolfman: Johnston had only three weeks of pre-production, he says, because the studio “had already spent so much money and had gone down this road with Mark Romanek, and said, ‘We have to start shooting the movie at this point.’ I think a lot of it involved possibly actors’ contracts and a release date. Fortunately for me, Mark Romanek [the film's original director] made a lot of good choices. He cast some great actors”—the three leads were all aboard by this point—“I was able to cast a few more good ones, and I was able to change a few of the locations that I didn’t think were great.”

Concerning Captain America: “We’re in prep,” Johnston says. “Rick Heinrichs is production-designing and we’re set up down in Manhattan Beach [California]. It’s the part of the process that I love the most,” he enthuses. “We have eight or ten really talented artists, and we all just sit around all day and draw pictures and say, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we could do this?’ It’s that phase of the production where money doesn’t matter: ‘Let’s put all the greatest stuff up on the wall and [then later] see what we can afford.’” The film, he says at this early stage, will begin “in 1942, 1943″ during World War II. “The stuff in the ’60s and ’70s [comic books] we’re sort of avoiding. We’re going back to the ’40s, and then forward to what they’re doing with Captain America now.”

To read more (which we recommend) see the full article.

May 6, 2011

For those who haven’t yet heard, a release date had been announced for Columbia Picture’s fourth Spider-Man movie, which is May 6, 2011.

This will make Spider-Man 4 the third superhero movie scheduled to come out that summer, accompanied by Thor (June 17) and The First Avenger: Captain America (July 22).

Director Sam Raimi and actors Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst will return. Gary Ross is currently writing the script.

Source: Variety