The Town or A love letter to Ben Affleck

If you havent' seen The Town stop reading my dopey blog, get out of the house and see it. This movie is up there with Inception for me as best movie of the Summer. Yes, it is still technically a summer movie as the other night began; first day of fall.

For years I have been a BIG Ben Affleck fan. As a die hard Kevin Smith fan you pretty much have to like the guy because he as been in 6 of Kevin's movies, and 7 if you count Kevin being an Exec Producer on Good Will Hunting. I can say, without shame, I really liked Jersey Girl and he was great in it. Daredevil I also found highly enjoyable. (Awesome Jersey Girl/Daredevil story found here at 4:50 in)

Perhaps more astonishing, I can say that I

saw Gigli in theaters on the day it came out. It was only me, my girlfriend at the time, and another couple in the theater. Frankly, I'm surprised it was that crowded. And while that movie is bad, it is not nearly as cartoonishly bad as the media and pop culture would have you believe. And more to the

point, Affleck is actually enjoyable in it. So call me an Affleck apologist, but I must agree with my boy Smitty and say the dude could play the Shark in jaws.

Starting around 2004 it seemed that it became fashionable to take a collective shit on Affleck's head. For whatever reason the combination of Gigli/Jersey Girl was just too much for people to handle. Most would say he made his "comeback" with Gone Baby Gone in 2007. But I would argue it came with his 2006 performance as George Reeves (TV's original Superman) in Hollywoodland. The performance won him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Then he turned his attention behind the camera with Gone Baby Gone. While the film and Affleck's direction of the film received rave reviews, some wondered if it was a fluke and perhaps he was a one hit wonder of a director.

Well, The Town proves it was no fluke. The highest compliment I can pay him for his directing work on this film is that for large sections I felt like I was watching a Martin Scorsese crime drama. He is becoming a force to be reckoned with as a director and I imagine he will have a choice of just about any script he wants for his next project.

Funnily enough Ben Affleck the director may have gotten the best performance we have seen out of Ben Affleck the actor since Chasing Amy. Making a movie where you root for the bad guy is a tricky and delicate game and more often than not I haven't seen it pulled of successfully. Not only did Affleck have to direct such a movie but he had to convincingly pull of the lead character. Perhaps we as the audience were not on the side of Doug MacRay the bank robbing thief, but we did care about him and we were rooting for him to change his life.


Ben also has a great supporting cast to work with and direct. Jon Hamm is amazing as always but does something completely different from Don Draper which is refreshing and awesome.

I have never seen a single episode of Gossip Girl so I had no idea who Blake Lively was but she had me convinced that Affleck just strolled into a bar in Charlestown and picked up the first chick he could find who was pretty, but trashy and addicted to coke and oxy. Great performance by her and a break out role for those uninformed of all things Gossipy and Girly.
Jeremy renner continues to impress. Fresh off the Hurt Locker he plays a great loose cannon/best friend to Doug (Affleck). The rest of the cast does a fine job as well, but I will let you see it for yourself.

If you have ever been to Boston and have an affection for the city the visuals in this movie are pretty amazing. I found myself saying, "Been there...been there," throughout the movie. The climax at Fenway Park is spectacularly shot and makes you wish you could walk out of the theater and catch a game. Like Good Will Hunting and Gone Baby Gone before it, The Town is a love letter to Boston.

This flick is coming out around the time a lot of Oscar buzz worthy films will be coming out and it deserves a lot of said buzz. So get out to a theatre and celebrate the "return" of Affleck. Never doubted the man for a second, after all, he was the bomb in Phantoms, Yo!

And one last video just for fun! Applesauce bitch!!

Lost: The Complete Series

Hello to anyone who might still be reading this. Sorry it has been so long. I can't seem to get motivated to write much these days. With that in mind I thought I would give video blogging a try. So below you will find my video review of Lost: The Complete Series on blu-ray. Hope you enjoy. I am still working on sound levels so it might be hard to hear in a couple spots. But if you crank it up to 11 it seems to work fine.

I am having problems embedding the video so check out THE VIDEO REVIEW HERE.

And then check out THE NEW MAN IN CHARGE HERE.

No Helmets on this one, instead it gets 5 out of 5 Dharma beer cans...

Get Him to The Greek

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of waking up at 4:15 and walking right out the door to catchGet Him to The Greek before I had to go to work. Like most of the movie going public these days I will pay to watch anything Judd Apatow and Crew put together. But I think the reason I like Judd's work so much is because he reminds me of Kevin Smith, in that he makes R-rated comedies that have a big heart. Some will argue that Judd is better at it than Kevin, I just say Kevin was ahead of his time. Either way, I love them both and I was excited for this flick as soon as I saw the trailer...

For those of you who don't remember rock god Aldous Snow, we first met him in another Apatow production, Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Only he was clean and sober in that flick and his career was soaring to new heights with his hit song, We've Gotta Do Something.

Snow steals every scene in already hilarious Forgetting Sarah Marshall, so it's exciting to see him get his own spin-off movie. And joined by the always hilarious Jonah Hill, they make a great comedy duo. In this flick we catch up with Snow several years after Marshall, he has now fallen off the wagon after a nasty break up and does enough drugs that even Keith Richards would say, "Hey, slow down, mate." Along with that his latest album African Child has been labled the worst thing to happen to Africa since Apartheid. This is where our adventure begins.

As made clear in the trailer this is a drug comedy mixed with a road comedy. But there is a moment (and I won't go into much detail here so you can experience it for yourselves) in the middle of the movie where, as my friend The Reel Rhino says, "you actually see the characters as real people." To put it another way, there is a moment where shit gets real. The movie continues to be funny throughout but it becomes a story of redemption and recovery for Snow. As for Jonah Hill's character Aaron, he comes to grips with the disillusionment he feels for the music industry and his place in that industry. Beyond that he repairs his troubled relationship with his girlfriend (played by everyones favorite First Daughter and Mad (Wo)Man, Elisabeth Moss) and helps Snow on the road to recovery.

For Jonah Hill I thought this was a a big step forward. He has proven he can bring the funny but he takes some nice dramatic turns in this and proves he can be a "leading man" even if it is not in the most traditional sense.

The serious moments in Greek are not as many as, say, Apatow's Funny People...but they are just as profound. I would call Funny People a serious movie with some funny parts and Greek a funny movie with some serious parts. And I would call you silly if you don't hit a theater soon and check this one out. It's Apatow, man...the dude can't miss! 4 1/2 helmets out of 5!!!

MacGruber

Well as the opening theme song says, "He made a fu#@ing movie. MacGruber!!!" Indeed he did. As always, here's the trailer...

Now let's face it, as awesome as SNL has been for (nearly) all of it's 35 years, the movies based off their most famous sketches have never really lived up to expectations and have often been pretty terrible. There are exceptions of course...Waynes World and The Blue Brothers come to mind. But as Rotten Tomatoes recently pointed out...there are far more failures than success when it comes Lorne Michaels and Co.'s attempts to take what is funny for 2 minutes every week and build a feature film out of it.

While MacGruber is certainly not The Blue Brothers or even Waynes World, I enjoyed it. My first reaction when I walked out was, "Wow, that was stupid...but fun." I had very low expectations coming in for the obvious reason of how do you make a movie out of MacGruber? The SNL sketch is the same every time. MacGruber, Kristen Wiig, and that week's host are trapped inside a building with a ticking bomb. MacGruber is confident he can get out of the sticky situation with only the random materials within the room. But despite Kristen Wiig's pleas of, "10 seconds, MacGruber!" he get's distracted, talks too much, and in mid-sentence....KABOOOM! And hilarity ensues. Given that premise I thought this could be the worst SNL movie since It's Pat or Stuart Saves His Family. But this movie is very self aware and has some solid actors to back up it's combination of vulgarity and "stupid" comedy.

The best thing this movie has going for it is it's R rating. Lines such as , "I'll fu@k anything in this room, just tell me what you want me to fu#k!!" as well as MacGruber's patented ultra violent and equally absurd "throat ripping" would not have been possible without the R Rating. And while I am too lazy to look it up, I think this may have been the first R rated SNL movie. They should keep that in mind for the future because, at least in this case, it made all the difference.

Over the last couple years Kristen Wiig has become one of my favorite SNL cast members and is becoming one of the best comedic actresses around. Her (small) performance in Knocked Up is one of the best parts of the movie, and she was excellent as Maggie Mayhem in Whip It. She stays on a roll this time as well. In one scene she enters a coffe house nervously disguised as MacGruber, who walks her through everything from what to say to how to drink her tea via an ear piece. The comedic timing is brilliant and can't be done justice by my rambling text...so check it out for yourself. That scene alone is worth the $5 to get in.

Some reviews have said MacGruber is this years The Hangover. That is far from the truth but it's an enjoyable, funny flick. So if you've already seen Iron Man II and are looking for something to see this weekend, it get's my recommendation and 3 out of 5 helmets...(going to try and have a different helmet each week)

KICK ASS

So, Kick Ass. What can I say...it was an all around good time. Sort of Super Bad meets Super Heroes. If Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Judd Apatow, and Robert Rodriguez had a movie love child this might be the result. For the unfamiliar, check out the trailer.

It is an ensamble cast but the story revolves mostly around Kick Ass himself and his dreams of being a super hero and getting the girl. Surprisingly I was quite invested in the romantic relationship between Kick Ass and his dream girl Katie (played by the charming Lyndsy Fonseca who HIMYM fans may recognize as Ted's future daughter who appears at the beginning of several episodes.)

But while the RomCom stuff between those 2 is highly enjoyable this is Hit Girl's movie. Played by the young Chloe Moretz She steals every seen she's in as you can see here...

And of course, this being America, people are very uptight and easily offended so this movie, and Hit Girl especially, have created some controversey. Even Australia got squeamish about this one...

"In January 2010, an uncensored preview clip of the film was attacked by family advocacy groups for its display of violence and use of the line "Okay you cunts, let's see what you can do now," delivered by Chloë Moretz, who was 11 at the time of filming. Australian Family Association spokesman John Morrissey claimed that "the language [was] offensive and the values inappropriate – without the saving grace of the bloodless victory of traditional superheroes". In response to the controversy, Moretz stated in an interview, "If I ever uttered one word that I said in Kick-Ass, I would be grounded for years! I'd be stuck in my room until I was 20! I would never in a million years say that. I'm an average, everyday girl." Moretz says she cannot bring herself to say the film's title out loud in interviews, instead calling it "the film" in public and "Kick-Butt" at home. Christopher Mintz-Plasse expressed surprise that people are angry about the language but do not seem to be offended by the many people killed by Hit-Girl."

It's not a movie for little kid's...it's rated R for a reason. So the outcry seems silly. The "saving grace of the bloodless victory of traditional superheroes" doesn't exist in the movie becasue that's not the kind of movie it sets out to be. It's a movie about what would happen if real people tried to be super heroes...sort of. The first time Kick Ass tries to "fight crime" he gets a knife in the gut and almost dies. This isn't Spider-Man so keep the kids at home if you think this isn't for them. It definitely earns it's R rating, which is what makes it so enjoyable. Besides, any movie being protested or surrounded by controversy is just that much better. Case in point...

My favorite part of the whole thing was perhaps somewhat subtle and would go unnoticed by most people I imagine. Nicolas Cage makes a birrliant acting choice with his "Big Daddy voice". It is a spot on impression of Adam West from the 1960's Batman. If you've never seen it check it out below before you go see Kick Ass.

I'm sure people in the theater thought I was crazy when I laughed at everything Big Daddy said but if you are and old school Batman fan you will love it just like me.

My main complaint with the movie was they didn't give Christopher Mintz-Plasse, (aka "McLovin") who plays the "villain" Red Mist, enough to do. I guess it was nice to see him do something a little different this time (HINT HINT Michael Cera) but he was not nearly as funny in this as he has been in Super Bad and Role Models. But it appears there will be a sequel so maybe he will have more time to shine there.

Overall I highly recommend this one. See it in theaters if you can, it's worth it. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 76% and calls it, "Not for the faint of heart, Kick Ass takes the comic adaptation genre to new levels of visual style, bloody violence, and gleeful profanity."

SOYLENT GREEN Review

Just a heads up before we get started. I am not going to attempt to write spoiler free reviews. It's to difficult and I really just don't care. So if you see that I am reviewing a movie/show that you haven't seen and you don't want it spoiled just skip that entry. We good? Cool.

So Soylent Green. For the unfamiliar this 1973 flick stars Charlton Heston in a sort of post apocalyptic world, where he uses guns, and is overtly chauvinistic towards women. So pretty much every Charlton Heston movie ever made. But in case you are interested here is the trailer...

Well....nothing like a nearly 4 minute long trailer to give away the entire plot of the movie. What were they thinking? Did anyone in 1973 who had seen this trailer still not know what Soylent Green was. If the conveyer belt of cadavers and then the cut away to a conveyer belt of Soylent Green "crackers" wasn't enough of a hint they then go as far to show skid steer shovels picking people up and dumping them in the back. They had the potential, I guess, for a Fight Club/Sixth Sense kind of reveal but it didn't turn out that way. But yeah...in case you still can't figure it out, Soylent Green is made of people. But don't take my word for it...watch as Charlton Heston chews the scenery and reveals the not so secret secret of Soylent Green....

Not much else to say about this one. As far as Heston sci-fi flicks go this one ranks well above The Omega Man and far below Planet Of the Apes. That trailer pretty much sums it all up: the future sucks and people unknowingly eat other people...and oh yeah, women are literally equal to furniture...the end.

If you are curious what the professionals have to say,

"SciFi.com film reviewer Tamara Hladik calls the film a “basic, cautionary tale of what could become of humanity physically and spiritually [if humans do not take care of the planet.]". She points out that "there is little in this film that has not been seen in other films", such as the film's depiction of "faceless, oppressive crowds; sheep mentality; the corrosion of the soul, of imagination, [and] of collective memory". While she notes that the director has a "tendency... to overuse Charlton Heston" in scenes depicting this beleaguered, futuristic dystopia, she admits that the film "often succeeds despite [the missteps of] its director."

Hladik argues that the "most powerful moments do not belong to Heston['s]" police detective character Thorn, whom she calls a "dubious, ambiguous hero". Instead, she calls Robinson’s characterization of the aged police researcher Sol Roth the "most moving passages" which give the film "conscience and soul". She acknowledges that the film has "imagery [that] is powerful and haunting", such as the scenes in which riot control vehicles scoop up protesters with metal shovels, as if they were garbage. Her overall impression is that "the profundity of humanity's transformation [in the film] is dealt with in less than a masterful manner"."

Rotten Tomatoes has it at a 71% but I say skip it. If you are really in a Heston kind of mood, stick with Planet of the Apes, The 10 Commandments, or hell even Waynes World 2...

Until next time...

WELCOME WELCOME WELCOME

So my buddy Ryan over at, http://reelrhino.blogspot.com/, (AKA the blog I hope to live up to) has inspired me to start writing my own movie centric blog. I am not a writer I am just a guy with a computer who likes movies and tv a whole lot. I will try to be funny, interesting, and entertaining but I promise nothing. I will try to keep the language PG13, but I am an avid Kevin Smith fan, so again, I promise nothing.

At the very least I hope to write a new entry once a week and hopefully more than that. We'll see how it goes.

I will try and post not only blog reviews but video reviews as well. The goal is to one day get a podcast going with Ryan but that may be pie in the sky, who knows...

You can follow me on facebook, http://tinyurl.com/kid-in-the-helmet, and twitter twitter.com/kidinthehelmet

So stay tuned. Next time I will review SOYLENT GREEN for no other reason than it is the movie I watched most recently.