Memorial Weekend Movie Update

Everyone have a safe and fun Memorial weekend.  We'll be here stuck to our desks giving you the updates on what looks to be a huge movie weekend.  So far we can tell you that it looks like Fast & Furious 6 is headed for a 100 million dollar weekend, while The Hangover 3 has slowed down and look for Epic to pick up speed as parents start to get the little ones out of the house, and don't count out Star Trek which is more than likely going to keep a spot in the top 3.

The results are in and the top 4 stays the same with Fast & Furious cruising to a huge victory which brings life to Fast & Furious 7, which was already in pre-production so it really didn't matter.  Fast & Furious has helped set a record weekend which is going to top 300 million and make it the largest Memorial weekend in movie history.

1. Fast & Furious 6                     122 million
2. Hangover 3                              51 million
3. Star Trek Into Darkness            48 million
4. Epic                                        44 million

Enjoy the show and your long weekend.  God Bless our troops

Fast & Furious 6

Since Dom (Diesel) and Brian's (Walker) Rio heist toppled a kingpin's empire and left their crew with $100 million, our heroes have scattered across the globe. But their inability to return home and living forever on the lam have left their lives incomplete. Meanwhile, Hobbs (Johnson) has been tracking an organization of lethally skilled mercenary drivers across 12 countries, whose mastermind (Evans) is aided by a ruthless second-in-command revealed to be the love Dom thought was dead, Letty (Rodriguez). The only way to stop the criminal outfit is to outmatch them at street level, so Hobbs asks Dom to assemble his elite team in London. Payment? Full pardons for all of them so they can return home and make their families whole again.

How’s this?  IF YOU ENJOY THE FAST MOVIES YOU NEED TO SEE THIS ASAP!

Do you love this franchise as much as I do?  If so, you are going to love this kick in the ass upgrade from Fast 5.  One of the hardest things to do with a movie franchise is to continually top the last one.  Some how Vin Diesel, Neal H. Moritz and whoever else is seated at the creative table when they are coming up with the story for these movies are able to pull it off.  Start to finish this movie is immediately in high gear and for the true fan who has been paying attention to the franchise since the beginning is going to enjoy this movie much more than the newly introduced fan.  Remember the end of 5 and the rematch race that Brian asked Dom for?  Well the beginning of this movie is going to get your adrenaline pumping and keep it there for 2 plus hours with some great new chases, and badass fight scenes that you have been waiting for.   As with any great franchise you have to eliminate some people to keep the story moving.  I’m not saying anymore because it would be a spoiler plus they did it in a way that keeps you thinking after you left the movie if they did it or not, the way the Fast movies have been doing it for the past couple of movies.  This is one sexy, tough, fast, and fun movie that you need to see with really good digital sound so the music and cars shake the theater walls.  I’m going to compare this movie to The Avengers (hear me out) in the way that they gathered a huge cast and was accomplished ample screen time for all of them that created a perfect balance for what I’m calling the best Fast movie so far.  Anyone following this movie knows who the next bad guy is for Fast 7, so be sure as always to sit patiently during the credits for the added scene, which by the way isn’t a button after the credits, it’s just after the movie ends.  I wanted to be helpful and let you know this so you don’t hold your full bladder watching the 7 minutes of credits roll by wondering if there is a button.  So I'm dreaming of a crossover of The Expendables and Fast & Furious, now that would be action lovers dream come true.  Dare to dream.  

Enjoy the show.  5 out of 5 NOS drinks

Epic

A teenager finds herself transported to a deep forest setting where a battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil is taking place. She bands together with a rag-tag group characters in order to save their world -- and ours.

If you’re not heading out of town this weekend or even if you are and the kids get bored, this movie is your answer.  A fun story about good versus evil and an interesting thought about how we see the world and the world views us.  A young girl Mary Katherine (Amanda Seyfried) arrives at her father’s house (Jason Sudeikis) only to find him and his three legged one-eyed dog just as distracted and odd as the last time she saw him.  When Mary Katherine unexpectedly finds herself in the world of the forest and has been given the task of keeping the bud of life safe she finds herself surrounded by the tree men led by Ronin (Colin Farrell) who must protect her and deliver the bud to safety before the evil Mandrake (Christoph Waltz) steals it and destroys the forest.  The kids will be entertained by some quirky characters that will keep the kids laughing and hopefully in their seats for 90 minutes.  Fun and touching story as all animated movies are with enough content to keep the adults intrigued. 

Enjoy the show.  5 out of slugs

The Hangover Part III

In the aftermath of the death of Alan's father, the wolf pack decide to take Alan to get treated for his mental issues. But things start to go wrong on the way to the hospital as the wolf pack is assaulted and Doug is kidnapped. Now they must find Mr. Chow again in order to surrender him to the gangster who kidnapped Doug in order to save him.

Fool me once, it’s my fault, fool me twice, well I would say it would be my fault again for believing it would not happen to me again.  Damn It!! No negativity here, and we do our best to enjoy the show and take it as it is.  As we all know from part II director Todd Phillips used the same story with a different setting and what I thought was still an entertaining movie, didn’t live up to the greatness of the first.  That I can handle, rarely does a sequel measure up to its predecessor.  A lot of hype and some great word of mouth made me believe this was a return to the greatness of The Hangover, not so much.  Now don’t get me wrong, it had a few fun spots that I really enjoyed, but if you see the trailer you have pretty much seen the movie.  There was a sense that everyone (the cast) knew this is the end so they showed up and did what they had to do to complete the project.  It was a fun story with some great set up moments that were really leading to something good and then they just suddenly fizzled out.  Whenever the wolf pack would end up in a bad situation they would do something crazy to get out of it and that was a joy to watch.  This movie had great setups but they never expanded on them.  Sad face.

With all of that said, it was still a decent movie that had some great callbacks to the original and got us caught up on what some people are doing now.  We all wanted to know what happened to Carlos and our wish is granted as Alan (Zach Galifianakis) and Tyler A.K.A. Carlos (Grant Holmquist) have a special heart to heart.  Stu (Ed Helms) and Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) play dogs and Phil (Bradley Cooper) does what he does best, try to save the day.  Honestly, the aftermath scene ¼ of the way through the credits is hilarious and I would like to see a movie about how all of that happened.   If you want to see the end of this trilogy on the big screen I understand and don’t blame you, but if you want to save a few dollars wait for the rental.  But that’s me and the great thing about movies is we all have different feelings towards them.  That’s why we enjoy them.

Enjoy the show.  3 out of 5 Giraffes

Star Trek Into Darkness

When the crew of the Enterprise is called back home, they find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization has detonated the fleet and everything it stands for, leaving our world in a state of crisis. With a personal score to settle, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one-man weapon of mass destruction. As our heroes are propelled into an epic chess game of life and death, love will be challenged, friendships will be torn apart, and sacrifices must be made for the only family Kirk has left: his crew.

The best place to start is to say that I’m not by any means a Trekkie and that was apparent during this movie because the fans were laughing and crying at moments that I wasn’t.  But the Trekkie next to me was polite enough to wait until the start of the movie to begin opening her childproof candy bag, thank you for that.   I’m not completely up to par on my Trek but J.J. Abrams is intelligent enough to know that not everyone is and he has done so well with the creation of his two Star Treks that even the casual Star Trek fan will be able to follow along and even get all the throwbacks to the Treks of old.  This was a balls to the wall fun movie from the opening and keeps the pedal to the floor the entire time.  It’s J.J. Abrams; of course it’s going to be a great movie.  With that said not only does he do a fantastic job with the story, but also he gets us more involved with the characters and their relationships with one another.   The fun factor of this movie is off the charts, Simon Pegg (Scotty) is hilarious as always, Chris Pine (Kirk), Zachary Quinto (Spock) continue their complicated relationship, Karl Urban (Bones) and John Cho (Sulu) get in on the fun along with Zoe Saldana (Uhura) and Alice Eve, (Carol) thank you very much J.J.  As far as Benedict Cumberbatch (Khan) let’s just say that this man needs to make room on his mantel for awards that he will be winning over the course of his acting career. 

Grab your friends and some popcorn and prepare for a fast paced kick ass movie with adventure, awesome story, great graphics, and non-stop fun that keeps you entertained for 2 plus hours.  This is in my opinion an upgrade from the first movie and you are guaranteed to enjoy this, that’s my non-Trekkie opinion, and that’s all that matters.  One thing is for sure; all the Spock fans are going to leave this movie with giant grins and serious woodies over this movie. 

Enjoy the show.  5 out of 5 communicators

The Great Gatsby

An adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Long Island-set novel, where Midwesterner Nick Carraway is lured into the lavish world of his neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Soon enough, however, Carraway will see through the cracks of Gatsby's nouveau riche existence, where obsession, madness, and tragedy await.

Honestly I can’t remember the last time I saw a trailer for a movie as flashy as this one, and it made me think one thing, no way I am seeing this in 3D!  From the get go this movie struck me as a look at how bright and lavish this is, don’t you want to live like this?   Hell yes, we all want to live like Gatsby but that’s where this ended for me, and my A.D.D. took over and I started thinking that this was shot to display it’s beauty in 3D, but from it’s opening weekend box office production it seems I’m wrong in that regard and many movie goers enjoyed it.   The acting was superb as you would except from the Dicarpio, Edgerton, Fisher, Maguire, and Mulligan, and I was a little surprised that Dicaprio took on this role, but as he always does he knocked it out of the park, the movie just wasn’t the typical heavy drama we are used to from Leo.  Jay Z who I think is a musical mastermind added the tunes to this, which felt a little, misplaced, meaning I imagined original pieces and better placed use of the music.   This feels like a negative review but I was actually entertained by the show, in case you couldn’t tell.  After the dust clears I would recommend this as a renter, but if you choose to see this colorful masterpiece on the big screen, then you should do that.

Enjoy the show.  3 out of 5 martinis old sport