Movie Guru Corey

When I was you I did enjoy watching Dan Rather on 60 minutes. I guess I was to young and oblivious to what happen that caused him his job. This film was based on a book by the women who this story centers around, Mary Mapes.  This does bring up the question as to how accurate can this film really be if it told by the person who is essentially the main character of the story. Watching it you can see there is a heavy push to say that Rather and Mapes were in the right,even if they really couldn't prove it. If you don't know the controversy, here it is. At this point of the Bush vs Kerry campaign, a lot of emphasis was put on the candidates military record. Mapes ( Cate Blanchett) heard of a possibility that Bush may have went AWOL from the Texas Air National Gaurd. What it seems from the movie is she grabbed at straws even if it might not be accurate. After it was called out by other news stations things really unravel fast. Now do we have all of the facts, no, but is it a c

I hope that everyone that has read my Halloween selection has evnjoyed it, both the good and the bad. For the final one I will go with my favorite horror film, John carpenter's The Thing. How can it possibly get any better than a shapeshifting alien that eats people. On top of the fact that they are isolated in a frozen tundra. How can it get any more terrifying.

I first do want to give this movie credit for the attempt at the political satire because its a very risky genre your either good or not, no inbetween.    Jane ( Sandra Bullock) is a political strategist who was good at what she did but lost her touch, so she retired. A couple years later she is brought out of retirement to help a struggling Bolivian presidential candidateand she accepts. As the race goes on lines get crossed and hands get dirty.   In the end to me how it ended was horrible for the story, there is no soft landing in political satire. That really killed the kick in the pants the film needed to make it a lot better. GRADE:D+

I suppose it is a little cliche using Halloween as an example of a good horror film on Halloween, but hey who cares! The big difference to me with this and most horror is the jump scares. To me, in this film, there were none. It just seemed to me there were a lot of creepy parts. There was just something about a person escaped from a mental hospital, in a shattner mask killing people that was cool.

This film was a marker for me in the sense that I really started to notice how horrible scary movies were getting.   Going in I thought this would be good because of it being a remake of what I had heard was not a horibble film...... Well I was wrong. For those who don't know the story a little girl's parents are murdered and the murderer is arested. The killer ecapes on the now grown girl's Prom night to exact revenge. All I can say is cheap scares do not work.

  Breaking the scary rule for the funniest movie about zombies, sorry Shaun of the Dead.   It is simply about a group of people trying to get from one place to another. What makes it good is they made a comedy where you actually care fore the characters, which is really hard to do. The movie also happens to be crazy funny so, how can you go wrong?

 Going into this film I had such high hopes for it, Brad Cooper has been pretty consistent in picking good projects. I am very sad to say this was not near as good as I was hoping.    Adam Jones (Cooper) plays a chef that was on the top and was able to get the Michelin star, twice. The power got to his head, and crashed.   He pops up back in England and with the help of Tony ( Daniel Bruhl) and Helena (Siena Miller) he makes a run for it.   Personally I believe its biggest problem is in the screenplay. It seemed a lot of conviences and very predictable. In the end solid performances, lacking story. GRADE: C-

When doing these bad scary movies I really try to look for ones that are super bad. This movie is all about what you sound like when you die and since it is of curbecause of a ghost. This film was super predictable the whole way through and on top of it there was no real end. Very aggravating!

Here are the movies coming out for this week: Burnt Our Brand is Crisis Truth Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse

      The first Scream is considered by many to be one of the greatest horror films of the 90s. It still blows my mind that you can make such a good film with so many horror cliches in the same film. Now people arent as fond of the sequals, but really it is more of the same, which most people are not fond of.

I do want to start doing some trailer post on a regular basis, so here is dirty Grandpa. This is something I heard about a couple months ago and did not think much of but after watching the trailer today, it seems very funny. Take a look.

I just wanted to give a quick thank you to people reading this blog it is more popular than I could ever imagine in these first two months. I am very greatful!

Now this is very much a Halloween movie but scary, no. What we do in the shadows is the funniest movie I have seen this year. The story is the daily life of four vampires renting out a flat in New Zealand and how their lives are turned upside down when an unwanted vampire shows up. Anyone that hasn't seen it, should. I know I broke the horror rule but this is worth checking out.

      Like previously said, there are the good horror films, and then there is the Lazarus Effect. This movie seemed to rip the plot of the action film Lucy, to a tee, and tried to make it a scary film. The scary thing about this movie is how little it changed from an action film. The basis is someone dies and is brought back to life. The twist is she uses her new found psychic powers for bad instead of good, well better intentions.  Venturing off in a different direction could have helped save it.

  This is considered by many to be a very well made horror film. Unlike with yesterday, this movie is a little less subtle than, It follows. This movie is based on a case of real life, paranormal hunters, Ed and Loraine Warren. It has decent scares and to me the best exorcism scene of any movie I have ever seen. To me, having some sense in reality can make it a little better too, like the film Exorcism of Emily Rose. Horror movies work when they do not go for the cheap thrills. This idea was thrown out the window when they did the spin off Annabelle.

    As everyone knows not all horror films can be good. This genre has no middle they are either bad or good. The Apparition   is not one of the better movies. It is about an entity that comes from a different dimension  an grows in power as people start to believe in it. Now this doesn't seem like a bad idea but there was no explanation to it beside it being a crazy experiment. Cheap thrills and no real ending.  Perhaps you guys enjoy this film, but this is a pick for the bad horror department.

     Like I said in my preview post Halloween means scary movies. This week, I will be spending each day going through the best and the worst, according to me.      I first wanted to talk about a film that is on the better side. It Follows came out earlier this year and I was surprised on how much I liked it. It was something of a rather simple concept but it did work on each level. One thing that I do like is subtle horror, not a film that is constantly is going for the jump scares. In the case of this film you get cursed when having sex with the wrong person. The curse follows you until it gets you very subtle until it gets you, subtle to the end. If you liked the film or not let me know in the comments.

Halloween time means time for trick or treating and scary films so all this week we go through some of the best and possibly, some of the worst. We will try and have fun.

      There have been several renditions of Steve Jobs in the past but this one is heads above the rest of them. It is hard to really know where to start with this film, starting with director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. You then add the likes of Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, and Jeff Daniels who all give fantastic performances, it is hard to drop the ball.      This film centers around three iconic moments in his life: 1984 Macintosh release, 1988 Next release, and the 1998 imac release. The film goes through some of the biggest struggles including with his first daughter Lisa. When it comes to bio pictures I am not usually a fan, but this was different, it did not seem so long and drawn out, which plagues most bio pictures. The final thing is Fassbender really nails his Jobs performance which is essential for a film like this,     In the end this film deserves a place at the Oscars, to me, so far, Fassbender is the front runner for best actor. GRADE: A-

       Woodlawn is the story of how one team overcame diversity to excel as a team. In this case there is a religious component put in this film. As I have said in past reviews Hollywood tends to glamorize religion for the sake of the "story". Sad to say, this is one of those  films.         This film is one that echoes the Denzel Washington film Remember the Titans. One year the black community is segregated into the white community and they do not like it. In the case of Woodlawn what brings the team together is a sports chaplain (Sean Astin), instead of football camp. When they come together, they really start to win. The similarities in both films is really hard to ignore when watching woodlawn.       Don't get me wrong this film is not nearly as bad as some of the other religious films. There are parts that are just so cheesy and cliched, its at times hard to watch. It seems the idea of hitting a happy ending home was most important. GRADE:C-

When it comes to the Hasbro film adaptations most people do not expect it to be very good, sadly this film is one of those examples. Jerrica (Aubrey Peeples) lives with her sisters and aunt (Molly Ringwold). This is a family that is close and has music that bonds them. When a recording of Jerrica goes on YouTube it goes viral. With her aunts house being foreclosed she decides to do it to try and save the  house. Once her famous life begins a link to her past forth new challenges. In the end it just stays by the books. It could have been so much more. It's sad I was hoping for more from it. GRADE:C-

  I have to say I love Vin Diesel, I follow him on Facebook, he brings a charm to his characters and this one is really no different. Having said that it did lack in may places. For the most part the film is very predictable, there seems to be a lot of conveniences and oh come on moments.  Diesel plays Kaulder, a man that is more than eight hundred years old because of a curse put on him by the witch queen. After the events of the witch queen, he spends his life hunting down witches that break the treaty put in  place to protect humans from witch magic.  Its a tough balance that Diesel's character must keep.  I do somehow believe that if this movie had an R rating it would have been a tad better. GRADE: D+

 As much respect as I have for Bill Murray and his career, looking back at what  I watched, I really am not sure I can make heads or tails of what I watched.    Murray stars as Rich Lanz, a down on his luck music agent, who brings his talent (Zooey Deschanel) to Afghanistan to sing for the troops. His client ditches and takes his money and passports. Lanz gets help from two gun smugglers (Danny Mcbride and Scott Caan) and some interesting things happen.   The problem is this is a very loveable cast but the script is all over the place and lacks focus that could make it better. GRADE: D

For me three posts on one film is not something I usually do but I feel now there is more things to address about it can nsidering it will likely be either the biggest or second biggest film of the year.   People have exploded online that through all the trailers there is not a single scene with him in it. There have been people that have gone as far to say that luke has turned into the Villan of the film Kylo Ren. This makes no sense at all.  At least to me it seems if he would have went to the darkside, it would have been when his father tempted him. Having said this, it seems weird that there is nothing from him. To me a better theory would be that Luke's son turned to the dark side and became Kylo ren. We will all just have to wait and find out.

       So by now most of the free world has seen the latest trailer for the Force Awakens. From what I have read and heard most of what people are crazy for this film.     It was interesting to me that through the whole trailer, nothing in terms of what it is about, which could be bad or good depending on the way you look at it. There are many interesting little tid bits in the trailer.  It was interesting to see one of the characters, unknown to us now, going through down star destroyers.    Over all, this has the feel of the original three films, which lacked in the prequels to me, quite horribly. I do hope that is something that I can count on come December 18th.    The question on everybody's mind is how will it do in the money department. We all know it has the potential to be really big but how big? Will it break the 650 million record set by Jurassic World? There is also the dismal 350 million return of the Revenge of the Sith. There is the case of the ticket inflation

Here it is,discussion of the trailer coming tomorrow.

  Having  Spielberg and Hanks do a film together usually means great things from Saving Private Ryan to The Terminal, they have always done good work together. Things don't change with the new film, Bridge of Spies.   Hanks stars as Jim Donovan, a lawyer pushed into defending a known Russian spy Rudalph Able (Mark Rylance). The story ih how even though Donovan doesn't agree with what Able did, he still believes in a fair trial for him. The story goes on to an American pilot being shot down over Russia and how bad the United States want him back.     This film doesn't seem to be marketed as the blockbuster status Spielberg films usually are but it doesn't make it any less good. It makes me want to be there in East Berlin to see what really happened and that is hard to do. GRADE:A

From the time I first watched Hellboy I knee that I'd always be a fan of Guillermo del Toro. To me he seemed to be a master visual story teller.    We move on to this year's Crimson Peak and for at least a lot of it. I'm not really sure if it was marketed the wrong way, but horror for this film is a very big strech. This film is very much a mystery with horror elements in it. A lot of people get mad with misrepresentation like that.  The film centers around Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) and the paranormal encounters she encounters once she marries Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston).    In the end, not a terrible film, just one where the third act was not all I hoped it would be. GRADE: C+

As many people that grew up in the 1990s I was stoked to see what could be done with a movie. Fast forward to 2015 and here we are.  Zach (Dylan Minnette) moves to Delaware with his mother (Amy Ryan) next to Rl Stein (Jack Black) who first seems to not be very nice, but he is hiding a secret.   This movie is highly entertaining, having said that there a few convieniant points in the script. GRADE: C+

Perhaps not reading the book didnt help when I viewed this film because the more I thought about this the more that it struck me as a hallmark movie.    Ashley Judd plays Ave, a middle aged women that runs a family drugstore and is a big part in her small town of Big Stone Gap. The big thing with the plot is why doesn't she have a man. Her world gets turned upside down when her mother passes away. She then goes on to try to meet the father she has never met.   In the end the characters end being very one dimensional with a story that does very little in helping those characters develop. Much like a hallmark film. Grade: D-

     The topic of 3D always comes up this day in age when it comes to film. These days it seems so many are in 3D, sometimes for what would seem to be no reason at all.With two out of the last three films I have seen in 3D things have changed.      "The Walk" brings a master of animation director Robert Zemeckis ( A Christmas Carol and Polar Express) to the story of Philippe Petit and his legendary walk between the twin towers to the big screen. Something with a story such as this needs visuals that will blow your mind, and all I can say is wait for the walk.   In the end it is a very solid film, but somehow I believe  the PG rating kept it from being the best it could have been. GRADE: B-

        Looking back at before the summer had started Pan was so nothing I really looked forward to. It had an interesting cast   ( Hugh Jackman Amanda Seyfried) and a respected director Joe Wright (Atonement). Having my expectations high, to me, did not seem to be a terrible thing..... I was wrong.        This story is all about how Peter Pan makes it to Neverland. To people who grew up on the story, it is not the way you think. Hook is switched to a good guy at this point and they face off against Blackbeard, not a pan villain.        In the end the film seems to lack the magic that Peter Pan deserves. GRADE: D

  This is a movie that, to me, really sells  itself on the performance of its lead actors. The leads sell it in a huge way.  Emily Blunt starts as Kate Macer, a senior tactical officer in the Arizona branch of the FBI. One day after a big raid she is recruited to do an off the books job by Matt (Josh Brolin) and his partner Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro). Through the film she is dragged along for one reason or another.     In the end this is a very rough look at what life in that business is really like that is really sold by the performances of the leads. This is a great addition in the career of Dennis Villenueve. GRADE:A-

    This movie is something that is really hard to put a grade to. This movie while very predictable is also very good, which is a hard thing to do.     Matt Damon stars as Mark Watney who is part of a manned mission to Mars with a team that includes Jessica Chastain and Kate Mara. A massive storm comes and they are forced to abort the mission. On the way to the escape shuttle Mark is hit by a piece of antenna and thrown an unspecified distance. He is thought to be dead but not suprisee. He wakes up, realizes that he is alone and begins to fight to survive.      This is director Ridley Scott's best film in years. I was able to see this movie in 3D and it is something to see. GRADE: A-