This Week

Rango
(Gore Verbinski, 2011)

Jed: Rango is a triumph. Gore Verbinski and the ILM team with Crash McCreery leading the way did an excellent job. The cast is first rate with wonderful performances by Johnny Deep, Bill Nighy, Isla Fisher, Alfred Molina, Ned Beatty and Abigail Breslin. Ray Winstone, Claudia Black, Harry Dean Stanton-- it's a solid cast! Music by Los Lobos and Hans Zimmer is wonderful compliment to an irreverent and almost psychedelic tale of a captive chameleon who reinvents himself to become savior and hero to an old west town on the edge of modernity as the town triumphs over the selfish actions of evildoers. Some stunning animation and an appearance by Timothy Olyphant doing what might be one of the best Clint Eastwood impersonations ever. This was double-punchy goodness and is worth checking out. Far better than I expected! 6/7

Trailer

Suckerpunch
(Zack Snyder, 2011)

Man Zack Snyder why do you always manage to take a good idea, or a great idea even, and so totally blow it? Why? So what would, or could have been, an epic, sexy, violent, double-punch tale of nerd fantasies made real-ish, with a solid cast-- full of potential-- instead is a bland, barely sexy tease, with a misplaced, anachronistic soundtrack, cliche Synderisms (slo-mo, etc.) a thin plot and even thinner story. The acting is fair but irrelevant because the story is so poorly realized. The basic premises are fundamentally weak and the lines are often hilarious at times. The physical action is good and all the females leads are visually engaging, the set design and machinery, costumes, etc. are all pretty cool-- and the fantasy scenes try to do something fun. It all adds up to total fail. Maybe Emily Browning will go on to be an action star-- I hope so-- and I hope she never works with ole ZS again! This is a hard 5/7 for me because it should have been rated "R," it should have had nudity, and someone who can actually write should have written it. Sad. . . this movie could have been great! I'm guessing this is the director's cut? 5/7 (maybe 6/7 for a few seconds of action here and there). Oh, Scott Glenn. . . what happened?

Trailer