Movies
These are video movie reviews, movie trailers, and websites of the latest movies. The C1N Movie section includes Dan Culberson’s Hotshots Movie Reviews with a new review every week. We also show our C1N trailer pick of the week by Aaron Smith which is about 40 years younger than Dans taste. Show times and ticket avails are up. Look for film festivals, movie news, events, and news about the pictures here too.
“Chronicle” Is a Total Waste
Mar 4th
“What a Waste”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Chronicle is another one of those movies in which the gimmick is that the audience sees what the characters in the movie have recorded themselves with a camera, and yet we see footage from more than one camera and even footage from surveillance cameras, as well.
Right. What is the point of the gimmick, especially when such extraordinary lengths have to be taken to be able to show the person behind the camera, like, for example, when he is flying up in the air high enough to almost get hit by a passing airliner?
At the beginning of the movie, we meet Andrew, a high-school senior, and he establishes the gimmick when he sets up a camera on a tripod in his bedroom and then says to his drunken father outside the door, “I bought a camera, and I’m filming everything from here on out.”
Andrew takes the camera to school with him and keeps it recording while he is eating lunch by himself on the bleachers at the football field, and we see him creep out the cheerleaders who are practicing their routines and also see him get picked on by bullies.
Now, any intelligent person in the audience is going to figure out that this is going to play a part later in the movie. You guess which one.
Andrew has a cousin named Matt, and Matt tells Andrew not to take his camera with them when they go to a party together, but naturally Andrew doesn’t listen.
While they are at the party, Matt and another friend of theirs named Steve find something out in the woods, and they tell Andrew to come out and get it on tape.
It is a large hole with a loud unusual noise coming up out of it, Steve falls in the hole, and Matt and Andrew, who keeps the camera with him, of course, go down into the hole after Steve.
We don’t see what is in the hole, and the movie cuts to a different day when we see that the three boys have unusual powers that they are trying out and practicing, powers that allow them to manipulate objects with just their minds, and they learn that they can increase their abilities with practice.
So, do they do good or evil?
Chronicle is a total waste.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Wanderlust – Movie Trailer
Mar 4th
George (Rudd) and Linda (Aniston) are an overextended, stressed out Manhattan couple. After George is downsized out of his job, they find themselves with only one option: to move in with George’s awful brother in Atlanta. On the way there, George and Linda stumble upon Elysium, an idyllic community populated by colorful characters who embrace a different way of looking at things. Money? It can’t buy happiness. Careers? Who needs them? Clothes? Only if you want them. Is Elysium the fresh start George and Linda need? Or will the change of perspective cause more problems than it solves?
“This Means War” Has Four Ridiculous Endings
Feb 27th
“Four Ridiculous Endings”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
This Means War starts off with an excessive beginning like a typical James Bond movie and then quickly turns into a romantic comedy with two men trying to woo the same woman, except that in this case the two men are agents for the CIA.
The woman is Lauren Scott, played by Reese Witherspoon, and when she meets her old boyfriend on the street with his fiancee, she lies to them about her own boyfriend, even though she doesn’t have one.
However, when she tells her friend Trish, played by Chelsea Handler, about her encounter, Lauren says, “I’m going out. I’m dating. I’m meeting friends.”
Meanwhile, the two agents have been grounded by their superior for botching the mission that we saw at the beginning of the movie, and out of boredom, they both sign up for an online dating service.
One is FDR Foster, played by Chris Pine, and the other is Tuck, played by Tom Hardy, and not only are they partners, but they are also best friends.
Well, you can guess it. Trish signs Lauren up for the same dating service without Lauren knowing it, and FDR and Tuck eventually discover that they have both picked Lauren as the woman they would like to get romantically involved with and start dating to see where it leads.
When they find out that they are both dating the same woman, even though they make a gentlemen’s agreement to let the better man win, with all the resources of the CIA at hand, what do you think they will do to interfere with the other one’s chances?
And so we see FDR and Tuck date Lauren and watch the shenanigans that they both pull with supposedly spy equipment and expertise, and we are supposed to believe that the events could actually happen and that they are supposed to be funny.
This is where the movie starts to get really ridiculous.
And, of course, there is still some unfinished business from the botched mission at the beginning of the movie that keeps interfering with the romantic-comedy half of the story.
In other words, there are no surprises in this movie.
There is, however, a ridiculous ending.
No, make that two ridiculous endings.
No, make that three ridiculous endings.
This Means War is a no-surprises movie with four ridiculous endings.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
