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        <title><![CDATA[Movies - Reel Empire]]></title>
        <description><![CDATA[Reel Empire - Your Movie Network!]]></description>
        <link>http://www.reelempire.com/</link>
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                <guid isPermaLink="false">3287-484</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: ]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.reelempire.com/component/content/article/35-movies/3287-the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                In the days when the only way to view a moving image was to go down to your local cinema, remakes were common.  If there was a hit movie from ten years ago why rerelease the old version when you could make a grander remake with bigger stars.  This was the only way to relive the experience of a certain iconic story, and pass it on to a new generation.  Now in the age of home video and instant streaming there really is no legitimate reason at all to remake any film except to broaden its audience appeal, as is the case with this film.  Yet other movies are being remade over and over so that studios can cash in on a built in cult audience, selling the same old garbage to idiots who like throwing away ten dollar bills.  Remember when Tobey Maguire played Spiderman? You should, it was only ten years ago and its reboot is already coming out.  Is that necessary? Not at all.  Are they doing it just to make money? Absolutely.  Could it be an interesting experiment? Maybe.  

Some things should be remade.  Tim Burton’s “Batman” not gritty enough for you?  What if Chris Nolan directed it?  It becomes “The Dark Knight.”   Is one better than the other? Maybe, but not necessarily.  It's great to see two different takes on the same story.  Granted, it's a pastime for the most extreme cinephiles, but if a remake is done differently enough it may be worth seeing the exact same story again. But if done badly, which 99% of the time they are, remakes are just boring rehashes that were made for a quick buck.  But who among film fanatics hasn't wondered what a remake of “Star Wars” done by Scorsese would be like, or Judd Apatow’s version of “Ghostbusters,” Edgar Wright’s “The Shining,” or even David Lynch’s “Avatar.”  So why was “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” remade not but two years after the original? Because studios think you’re illiterate.  To be fair, the original didn’t get much of a theatrical release in the states, but it’s available quite easily in every other window of distribution.  Reading subtitles on a movie is not everyone’s cup of tea, but is it worth spending millions just to make a version that takes place in an imaginary Sweden where everyone speaks English all the time? 

Whether the gambit paid off remains to be seen, but it’s just a matter of time before the movie is massively profitable.  So despite it being way too soon, this might be one of those rare instances where seeing a different director’s take on familiar subject matter is worth it for its own sake.  “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is David Fincher’s take on the book and movie of the same name.  Fincher is one of the best directors ever, if not evident from all the stellar works in his canon, then surely based on “Fight Club” alone. 

Here's what you need to know about this movie: it's great but the other versions are better. The acting is great but the other version is better.  If you don't like watching people get raped then don't see this movie.  If you do like watching people get raped then go turn yourself in to the police because you’re a sociopath.  I've seen more of Rooney Mara naked than I ever wanted to, it’s pretty gratuitous.  You'd think in a place as cold as Sweden people would have sex with the sheets on.  There’s plenty of porn on the internet, it doesn’t need to invade a mystery movie.  Perhaps in the rape scenes it may have served the film to be as graphic as possible even nauseatingly so (more stomach churning than “Black Swan” if you can believe it), but for the rest of the sex scenes it serves no purpose to the story.  

Weirdly, the coolest part of the movie is the opening credits.  They play like a hyper-sensual music video.  It's awesome.  It will make you miss the good old days when music videos were still a thing that existed.  So the lowdown is this: the movie is great, another great film from Fincher, and it will be great again when Gary Marshall remakes it one day.
                ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
                <pubDate>Sat, 14 Jan 2012 01:40:29 -0500</pubDate>
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                <guid isPermaLink="false">3284-483</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[The Adventures of Tintin: ]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.reelempire.com/component/content/article/35-movies/3284-the-adventures-of-tintin</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                “The Adventures of Tintin” is the first animated movie by Steven Spielberg, and the past and the present collide.  The story is a return to the genre he does best, but the new technology is not all it’s cracked up to be.  Tintin is based on the old Belgian comic books about a news reporter who goes to exotic locales and has grand adventures in the era when adventures were still possible.  The movie is based off of only a few of the comics, of which there are around thirty, and tells the story of Tintin’s journey to find lost pirate treasure.  

This movie is like a combination of “Indiana Jones” and “James Bond.”  Because they animated it the possibilities for sequels are endless.  With a traditional live action movie you have to worry about the actors aging and you’d have to replace them, but here they could conceivably make as many as they want.  They could even write original stories once they run out of source material.  This could be the next big franchise to replace “Harry Potter” that the studios have been searching for.  The animation looks pretty amazing.  A few of the characters look weird, but for the most part they navigate both sides of the uncanny valley.  It’s as if the cartoonish characters have come to life, so no one actually looks realistic even though they look real (if that makes any sense).  Let’s just say bulbous noses abound.  

For the most part it’s an enjoyable time at the movies.  There is one extended sequence in which there isn’t a single cut.  It makes it feel like a theme park ride, which is not a good thing at all.  It’s truly nauseating.  Cuts can benefit a scene like that, and just because you can do something with a new medium doesn’t mean you should.  It’s like how in Zemeckis’s motion capture films he was so enamored with the fact that his camera was not bound by any limitations that he over did it.  All in all this is a pretty fun movie and once it starts the action never stops.  The ending feels abrupt, the main thing the characters are looking for isn’t really found.  It’s as if they ran out of time or something and just ended the movie in the middle.  It really demands an ending with some resolution.  But while not perfect, it’s still good.  
                ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
                <pubDate>Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:35:00 -0500</pubDate>
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                <guid isPermaLink="false">3283-482</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[Young Adult: ]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.reelempire.com/component/content/article/35-movies/3283-young-adult</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                Diablo Cody sure likes to write movies about high school.  She got lucky and wrote one of the best movies ever made, “Juno,” about a girl in high school who gets pregnant, for which she was awarded an Oscar, the worthiness of which is debatable.  So right out of the gate, she is guaranteed that everything she ever writes, good or bad, will be produced and she will make tons of money for the rest of her life.  She followed up her first great script with one of the worst movies ever made, “Jennifer’s Body,” about a girl in high school who is actually a demon or some stupid thing.  Next up, “Young Adult,” or as it should be called “High school: all grown up.”  

“Young Adult” is about a woman, Mavis, who is depressed with her big city existence, and tries to find something meaningful by returning to her home town in order to seduce her high school sweet heart who is now married and a father.  It’s kind of a more honest and subversive version of standard romantic comedies like “My Best Friend’s Wedding.”  The main character is utterly reprehensible, which can be a really great thing in a film.  But if you start out with an unlikable character they damn well better be interesting, and interesting she is not.  Charlize Theron is a great actor but unfortunately the character is incredibly boring and not at all interesting to watch.  Patton Oswalt plays a former nerd who was ignored by Mavis, but is now the voice of reason.  He’s a good actor too but this film is just so boring you’d be better off watching him in the incredible film “Big Fan.”  The scope of the film is extremely small.  There isn’t a scene that Mavis isn’t in and the whole thing takes place over the course of a few days all in her home town.  It feels as though nothing really happens, because nothing really does.  Mavis and her internal struggle is the whole movie and if she doesn’t interest you then there isn’t anything else for you in this movie.  

In the end instead of learning that she is wrong and a terrible person, she learns that she has nothing to be depressed about in the first place and the whole film was just an unnecessary folly.   Many great protagonists don’t change by the end of a film, and instead become more entrenched in already held beliefs.  However here she learns something but it’s the wrong thing.  She goes from being a bad person to a worse person.  What changes is her desire to change.  There are things here to admire about the chances that they took with the script.  At least it’s not the same old story Hollywood tells over and over.  But while it’s admirable that they tried something new, they ultimately failed to make an entertaining movie.                  ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
                <pubDate>Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:06:15 -0500</pubDate>
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                <guid isPermaLink="false">3276-481</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[The Muppets: ]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.reelempire.com/component/content/article/35-movies/3276-the-muppets</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                Everyone loves the Muppets, and if you don't then there's something wrong with you, not them.  That's like saying you don't like ice cream or kittens.  The Muppets are everything that's right about show business.  Not necessarily subversive in an overt way but consistently comedicly simple and absurd.  If you watched the Muppets as a kid then there is a special place in your heart where they reside, and if you didn't then your childhood was robbed of something magical.

The Muppets have been stuck for almost two decades doing parodies of well known stories.  This new movie is the first attempt to return to their roots, and to what made them great on their TV show.  The TV show represents the height of their brilliance, followed by a handful of great movies, and then subsequently some not so great ones.  But they are back to basics and that's a good thing.

In this latest Muppet movie the Muppets must put on a telethon in order to raise enough money to save their old studio from being destroyed.  The movie is less about Kermit and the Muppets and more about a new Muppet named Walter.  And while at first this may seem a little disappointing, what you realize is that Walter’s story parallels the films writer and star Jason Segel’s real life experience making the Muppet movie.  It’s obvious that he was a true fan and made a film that honored the legacy of the Muppets.   Segel plays Walters brother and comic foil Gary, and Amy Adams plays Gary’s girlfriend Mary.   

And while the story may rehash the structure of past Muppet movies, and the voices aren't quite right anymore, there's very little that’s not great about this movie.  Kermit, whose optimism in the past was always the engine that drove the films, now seems a little less so and it’s really Walter that drives the story.  And of course there could have been more scenes with some audience favorites like Gonzo, Swedish Chef and Bunsen and Beaker, you can’t please everybody.  The smartest decision that was made with regard to the production was hiring Bret McKenzie, from the Flight of the Conchords to do the music.  All the songs are funny and great, and will be stuck in your head for days.  Pound for pound this movie is more purely entertaining than any movie this year.  If we’re lucky the DVD will be twice as long and feature hours upon hours of extras, but until then you'll just have to see it again in the theaters. 
       
                ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
                <pubDate>Sat, 10 Dec 2011 02:20:31 -0500</pubDate>
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                <guid isPermaLink="false">3272-480</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[Paranormal Activity 3: ]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.reelempire.com/component/content/article/35-movies/3272-paranormal-activity-3</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                Halloween time usually means a new “Saw,” movie but it seems like those are over and done with for now.  Instead there’s the third film in the “Paranormal Activity” series.  These must be the new options, torture porn or fake documentaries that startle you with nothingness.  That sucks; horror movies used to be awesome (Hollywood! Make more horror movies like “Shutter Island” please!).  Each “Paranormal Activity” has gone further back in the timeline making this one a prequel and not a sequel.  The second film could be thought of as both because as it mostly takes place before the events of the first movie, the ending takes place afterwards.  With this one there is no return to the “present” of 2005, and it take place exclusively in the 1980’s.  This is a mistake as the ending has no resolution whatsoever.  SPOILER ALERT:  the ending is terrible and deserves to be ruined later in this review, you’ve been warned.  

These movies are so awful, so to say that this is the worst of all of them really says a lot.  And it’s not just a little worse than the others, it’s a lot worse.  Even people who are generally scared by this kind of film (the cinematic equivalent of yelling BOO!) will find it lacking in comparison to the others.  The first film was slow, awful, boring and quite terrible, but why shouldn’t it be?  It only cost ten thousand bucks to make, so give it a break.  The second film is the best one, which is like saying the BM that you took today was the best one (it’s still a BM).  But they barely were able to make the movie more interesting than the first despite spending a hundred times as much money on it (literally!).  At least the second film is able to shed more light on why the events of the first film took place.  This third film which predates the other two should have been all about that.  But instead it’s so vague and ambiguous that it’s actually annoying.  

One terrible thing about this film is that someone had the dumb idea of having the camera oscillate as opposed to being static like in the other films.  This was absolutely nauseating.  The directing of this film was by far the worst of all of them.  The worst thing however is the ending (HERE IT COMES!).  In the end you find out that the ghost that has been terrorizing these two girls for three straight films has something to do with a witch’s coven that summoned a demon for no particular reason.  But nothing is explained at all, there are just suddenly a bunch of creepy old ladies hanging around and then the movie ends.  One of the quotes used in the commercial is something to the effect of “the last fifteen minutes will mess you up for life.”  These were the least suspenseful and least interesting fifteen minutes of the whole movie, so whoever said that is a god damned moron.  The worst thing is that the story never returns to 2005 to find the main possessed girl confronting or killing the witches or anything.  A good ending can often save an otherwise terrible movie, but this one makes the overall movie so much worse.  There is nothing good here, but it probably already made a ton of money.  That’s the world we live in; good movies don’t matter anymore, just good marketing.  
                ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
                <pubDate>Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:55:01 -0400</pubDate>
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                <guid isPermaLink="false">3270-479</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[Moneyball: ]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.reelempire.com/component/content/article/35-movies/3270-moneyball</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                There’s no such thing as a bad sports movie.  Even the worst sports movie is still pretty good.  Watching sports is exciting, it has inherent built in conflict.  Add the drama and theatrics of movie making and its hard not to make a great movie that’s the best of both worlds.  Sports movies take two things and make something greater than the sum of its parts.  It’s like that old candy slogan, “two great tastes that taste great together.”  So based on that fact the movie “Moneyball,” should be great.  Except for one thing, this isn’t really a sports movie.  It’s just straight forward drama that happens to take place in the world of sports.  

“Moneyball,” is about a new economical and statistical approach to the game of baseball called sabermetrics.  But really it’s about the general manager of the struggling Oakland A’s.  If it sounds boring to you, well then you’d be absolutely right.  It’s not like “Patton,” where you finally got to see a war film from the perspective of the man in charge.  Turns out the day to day business affairs of a sports club aren’t that interesting.  This movie is incredibly boring and deliberately slow paced.  And that’s fine in a drama, but runs contrary to the structure of a sports movie.  The acting is fine, and the story is interesting enough to a certain degree, but there are a million ways to make this movie more compelling which were never utilized.  Not to mention, this movie could have been a half an hour shorter and lost nothing.  

There are funny parts to this movie courtesy of Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, but it is just… so… slow… Usually, any movie based on a true story is more interesting because of three things:  First, the mere fact that you know its true makes it somehow more incredible, fascinating and unbelievable.  Second, the minutia and specificity make it generally more intriguing and original.  And third, when something is true it usually doesn’t fit well into standard Hollywood story structure and therefore has unexpected twists, turns, and outcomes.  But sadly that wasn’t enough to turn a fairly ordinary drama into a bona fide sports movie.
                ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
                <pubDate>Sat, 15 Oct 2011 02:27:32 -0400</pubDate>
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                <guid isPermaLink="false">3266-478</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[Our Idiot Brother: ]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.reelempire.com/component/content/article/35-movies/3266-our-idiot-brother</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                There is this inverse correlation with movies.  The simpler a movie is the harder it is to get made.  But one of the hallmarks of quality is often simplicity.  Every year studios make billion dollar movies that are terrible, and yet someone else can spend almost nothing and make something better.  It’s madness.  How can it be easier to get something made that’s more expensive and ultimately awful than it would be to make something cheap, simple, and great?  These are rules that exist only in some weird alternate dimension, at the nexus of art and commerce.

“Our Idiot Brother,” could not be a simpler movie based on a simple premise, and yet through uniqueness and outstanding performances it is incredibly effective.  Paul Rudd stars, along with an amazingly well balanced cast, as a guy who is so naïve and trusting that it frequently gets him into trouble.  Ultimately the character doesn’t change but rather the audience’s perception of him does, and we appreciate his unique perspective.  After getting kicked out of his house he ends up living with each one of his three sisters and sequentially messes things up for each one.  The success of the film is in having a compelling protagonist.  It’s his lack of complexity which is endearing.  Throughout the whole film he wants only one thing, and that’s to get his dog back from his ex-girlfriend.  This film works because of the cast.  Each actor is better then the next.  It’s also a really funny movie in addition to being very sweet.  

It’s so refreshing, which is ultimately frustrating for a regular moviegoer.  Because this caliber of movie should be common place, it should be the norm.  It shouldn’t be extraordinary, but rather perfectly ordinary in every way.  In fact there was a time, before CGI was cheap and before studio executives were all trying to steal money from tweens, when most movies were smart character driven films made for an audience of adults.  This is a good movie and if you pay money to see it instead of seeing “Transformers 9: Rise of the Boner-bots,” or Kevin James in some piece of garbage, maybe one day there will be more of this kind of movie and less of that kind.
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                <category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
                <pubDate>Thu, 13 Oct 2011 22:35:04 -0400</pubDate>
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                <guid isPermaLink="false">3257-477</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[Rise of the Planet of the Apes: ]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.reelempire.com/component/content/article/35-movies/3257-rise-of-the-planet-of-the-apes</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                Most of the “Planet of the Apes” movies are great.  The original was written by two of the best writers of the time.  It is still the best one of the bunch.  They rank in the following order of quality: the first, the second, the fourth, the fifth, and the third.  The third is the worst.  It is similar to how they make movies today, where it just exists to provide context for the next one in the franchise.  Tim Burton’s remake was greatly anticipated, and although he got the costumes right, the movie was ultimately a disappointment with an ending that is inexplicable.  So naturally, there was reason to be skeptical of this new reboot.  

“Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” is one of the dumbest titles for a movie ever as it conjures up images of a planet ascending upwards out of its orbit covered in gibbons, but the movie itself is incredible.  It’s the story of a chimp named Caesar, who through medical experiments gains the intelligence of a human.  He is misunderstood and fits into neither world, but ultimately rises to become the leader of the apes.  It is essentially a remake of the fourth movie but it is very different.  Fans of these films will recognize many references to the old films, which hint at future movies.  You’d think a movie where there is no dialogue for extended periods of time would be boring and you’d be wrong.  The story is great and tragically heartbreaking.  It pulls off an amazing trick that never occurred in the old films, which is by the end you are rooting against humanity and for the apes.  The special effects are crazy.  The way that they could capture the actor’s performances and super impose real looking apes on top of them is pulled off brilliantly.  This movie should win every special effects award Hollywood can crap out.  

This has been a pretty lousy summer for movies.  It’s getting harder and harder to pinpoint the last good summer.  Every year studios spend close to a billion dollars each on a single film when for the same amount they could probably make a hundred movies, at least ten of which would undoubtedly be better than the single billion dollar catastrophe.  But this film is the diamond in the rough.  It’s one of the only films this year that wasn’t a disappointment in any way.  And it is a remake that is definitely worthy of the beloved original.  
                ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
                <pubDate>Wed, 12 Oct 2011 14:49:31 -0400</pubDate>
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                <guid isPermaLink="false">3248-476</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2: ]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.reelempire.com/component/content/article/35-movies/3248-harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows-part-2</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                Here it is.  Finally.  The ending that people around the world have been waiting for.  Well, people who don’t read, anyway.  It’s been building to this very moment for seven films and a whole decade.  So how was it?  Was it everything you thought it would be and more? Or was it something you had to see just to get closure.  Are you relieved that you don’t have to see any more of these wizard movies? Or are you sad because you won’t ever get to again.

This, the eighth and final Harry Potter movie, picks up right where it left off in the last film.  Unfortunately the trend these days, in an effort to milk the cash cow until it’s a miserable dried up corpse, is to split up what should be one movie into two.  This has the effect of making twice as much money and also two bad films that are each half as good as one good film would have been.  So in the first part what you got was a whole lot of building to something with no resolution to speak of, and in this film a whole lot of boring tying-up of loose ends.  When you split up a movie like that you take away all the satisfaction that could possibly be gleaned by the audience.  The best part of the movie was all the revelations about Snape’s character.  The worst part of the movie was the incredibly boring and anti-climactic final battle between the good wizards and the bad wizards.  Don’t see it in 3D unless you want to lose your lunch.  

Hollywood will never learn the lessons of films like this because they are too greedy to care about quality and the artists are too hungry not to compromise their vision.  Some day in the future you will see one movie split up into a hundred bite sized chunks and they will call it “television.”  And on that day the cinema will be dead.  But until then we are all stuck having to watch movies that are twice as long and half as good as they could have been.  It’s bittersweet to dream of the world that could have been. 
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                <category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
                <pubDate>Wed, 05 Oct 2011 23:14:16 -0400</pubDate>
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                <guid isPermaLink="false">3247-475</guid>
                <title><![CDATA[Captain America: The First Avenger: ]]></title>
                                <link>http://www.reelempire.com/component/content/article/35-movies/3247-captain-america-the-first-avenger</link>
                <description><![CDATA[
                                Marvel Comics is on a quest to make every single one of their beloved characters into a mediocre movie.  It’s unclear how this one slipped through the cracks to actually be any good.  They are all leading up to what will undoubtedly be a terrible “Avengers” movie.  The crossover madness started with “Ironman,” a good movie with only a tiny little scene after the credits indicating all the movies would be connected.  But since then they have just been pumping out movies purely as contextual set up for the “Avengers” movie.  One of which was all for naught, “The Incredible Hulk,” because its star isn’t even going to be in the “Avengers” movie.  That one ranks among the worst of them along with “Ironman 2,” and “Thor.”  But somehow miraculously America’s super soldier made it through unscathed.  

“Captain America” is a rare treat, a super hero period piece.  “The Rocketeer” was one that was great for its day.  And the most recent X-men prequel was also one that was done well.  This one is the story of a weakling whose only ambition in life is to be a soldier and when he finally gets his chance he takes part in an experiment which turns him into Captain America.  This movie could have been extremely bad, but the story was handled so expertly that it is actually one of the better movies of the superhero genre.  And for fanboys in the know there are a million hidden references for you to discover.  It’s not easy to take a character that is so incredibly flat and give him depth.  That feat was accomplished by having the triple threat of extremely capable writing, directing and acting.  And the special effects in this movie are unbelievable.   

So many of these movies go so horribly wrong that when one finally does it right it’s kind of amazing.  This movie wasn’t even on the radar for most people this summer but it turned out to be one of the better blockbusters in a sea of awfulness.  It really makes you wonder why they can’t make them all just as good. 
                ]]></description>
                <category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>
                <pubDate>Wed, 05 Oct 2011 22:52:30 -0400</pubDate>
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