Movie Guru Corey

        Once I heard that this film was written author Nick Hornby, the man behind High Fidelity and Fever Pitch, I was very interested.          This film centers around Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) and her immigration from Ireland to the United States or well, Brooklyn, New York in the case of the story. She gets to the US, was very scared, and home sick. She makes friends in the way of the Irish boarding house lead by Mrs Kehoe ( Julie Walters). One day while at a church she meets Tony (Emory Cohen) and the sparks fly. When tragedy strikes in Ireland, Eilis is caught between her future and her past.              Besides the story, there are many other aspects of the film that are excellent.  The performance of Saoirse Ronan as Eilis was amazing and should put her in top contention for best actress in the Oscar race. The set and costume design were b...

When you think of Pixar, you think of greatness like Inside Out and Toy Story. This week brought the second Pixar film of the year, the Good Dinosaur. We as the film viewing nation, get two Pixar films because it was thought that what they had with Good Dinosaur so far was not up to the par of Pixar. People were let go, things were redone and here we go. This has a great concept, what happens if the asteroid never hit and the dinosaurs lived.  Arlo is the smallest of three kids of Ma(Fracnces McDormand) and Pa (Jeffery Wright). The family is all about making their mark, or going above and beyond one self. Arlo's brother and sister do it pretty fast, but Arlo cant find his courage. When he is swept away by a river and dragged miles from anything he knows, he has to find courage to get home. This review is one where I am at a bit of a loss for words because really its not that there was so much wrong with it as in the fact there was absolutely nothing special about it. It really ...

         When doing a monster film especially after the classics of the 1920's and 30's, to me, there has to be decent amount of homage to the original while making your own thing.      This movie centers around Igor (Daniel Radcliffe) and his start as a circus hunchback. When a trapeze accident occurs Igor meets Victor Frankenstein to save the artist. Victor ( James McAvoy) sees something in him and springs him from the circus. The rest is legend.     Ok there are several notes on this film. If you call a movie Victor Frankenstein do not have the main character be igor, that's wrong. There is no development of the Victor or Igor characters. The monster is something of legenf, and he was mishandled as well. In the end when you remake a film it needs to be improved on and in no ways has this film done that. GRADE: D-

      Through this week there have been many good trailers that have come out over the past week, and there is one that almost took the gold, but then the Civil War teaser came out. Personally, I was not a huge fan of the last Avengers film, but this caught my eye.      This movie stars a whole bunch of people including Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr, and Anthony Mackie. The story centers around the split of the Avengers because of a bill that forces people people with abilities to register with the government. Some of the Avengers like it, some don't, take a look!

         Many people when looking at this film seem to groan say "why another Rocky film?", thinking that is the biggest mistake you will make about this film. He is in the film, but he has in fact become the mentor.        Adonis Johnson is the secret son of the late Apollo Creed thanks to an affair.   Adonis (Michael B Jordan) starts out trying to do the boxing to as a side career, but realizes that is not what he wants. Adonis moves to Philadelphia to train and hope to get Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) as his trainer. Balboa, in the beginning, is hesitant, but gives in, in the end. Rocky moves Adonis out of Micky's gym to get away from the gym mate that has challenged him to his first real fight. During the training, it is revealed that Rocky has a fight of his own to take on.      This movie works on so many levels, it kind of surprised. It works as a sequel in the Rocky, wh...

     With the Thanksgiving holiday coming up, the three new films of the week are now going to be released on the Wednesday before.       We first have the Rocky spinoff Creed, staring Michael B Jordan and Sylvester Stallone. This time Rocky is slid to the supporting role in favor of giving the son that Apollo Creed never knew, the spotlight.       We have the second Pixar movie of the year with The Good Dinosaur. This film explores the idea of what would have happened if the asteroid never wiped out the dinosaurs.       Finally, there is Victor Frankenstein, which stars James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliff. This film explores the friendship of Frankenstein and Igor during the creation of the Frankenstein monster.

Oscar nominee Billy Ray takes on a remake of the 2009 Oscar winning foreign film Secret in Their Eyes. He has a huge cast to back him up including Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts, Lee Noris, Michael Kelly, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Alfred Molina. The story revolves around a group of counter terrorist agency right after 9-11. They get a call about a body in a dumpster next to a Mosque that they were investigating. Ray (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Jess( Julia Roberts) went to investigate like it be any other case, except it isn’t, it ends up being Jess's daughter. The murder goes unsolved, and thirteen years later a second crack at it. To me there was chemistry that worked and some that don’t. The chemistry between Julia Roberts and Chiwetel Ejiofor is fantastic. The chemistry between Nicole Kidman and Chiwetel Ejiofor lacked, considering they are supposed to be romantically interested in each other. The selling point of the movie is going to be what the secret will be. Watching the ...

      This week brings us the second Christmas movie of the season, in the form of the stoner comedy The Night Before. Ethan, Issac, and Chris (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, and Anthony Mackie) are life long friends, and after the death of Ethan's parents, the tradition of partying Christmas Eve was born.        Years later they all agree that this is the last year for the partying. This year they were able to get tickets to the coveted Night Cracker ball. Everyone has their personal battles to deal with: Ethan is afraid of being alone, Issac is having a baby and Chris is trying to deal with being famous. All of these problems come out in full force during the film.      This film is directed by Jonothan Levine, who directed Levitt and Rogen in the cancer film 50/50 comes back to direct this film, while it is not as good it is not without some merits. The movie is very funny, with one of the better performances done by Rogen. I ...

          This week brings us the last in the Hunger Games series, Mockingjay Part 2. Following the success of the split of the last book of the Harry Potter franchise, Hunger Games also split it's last book in two films, in hope to mirror this success.      So with trying to not give too many spoilers away for those who have not read the book, the whole story of the last half of the book is to get Katniss (Jenifer Lawrence) to the presidential palace to kill President Snow ( Donald Sutherland).      This film is all about the action that part 1 sorely lacked. The problem was with the parts that were not action , primarily the Peta Katniss relationship, to me, seemed to not really work in the story. The large amount of the story is making Panem a democratic country. The relationship part just seems to be added. This why I believe the Mockingjay book should have one film. All of the story occured in ...

  So this week is the week where serious blockbusters of the holiday season start. This week there are three wide release films.    The big talk of the weekend will be how well will Mockingjay Part 2 do? Everyone will want to see how Katniss (Jenifer Lawrence) and company take down President Snow (Donald Sutherland).     For people that are not fans of the Hunger Games there is the Crime thriller Secret in their Eyes. It is the story of Jess (Julia Roberts) and her struggle to bring the murderer of her daughter to justice.       Finally, on the lighter note, there is the  Seth Rogen comedy The Night Before. It revolves around three friends with a history of partying on Christmas Eve going out for one final ride before they essentially have to grow up.

    There were a few decent trailers released this week that could have all made it to the trailer of the week this week. The winner, from what I have viewed, goes to the new Zoolander trailer.     This film has Zoolander helping Interpol investigating the murders of very attractive people who die with Zoolander's signature poses on their faces.    Coming to theaters Febuary 2016, the film stars Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Penelope Cruz, and Benedict Cumberbatch. Take a look!

    The 33 tells the story of the San Jose mine and its collapse in 2010. 33 men were trapped miles underground for 69 days and all ended making it. This movie tells the story of what happens above and below ground.     The key to this film was to try and make you feel for the miners and the families. It makes a semi decent attempt at it. With many of the disaster films where a rescue is needed, a formula comes with it , many fall into that, unfortunately, so does this film. When watching this film it really feels like you have seen so many of these elements before.  This unfortunately holds it back from being a great film.  There are some good parts to the film  though. The performance given by Antonio Banderas was the best I have seeen from him in avery long time. Also the way theey executed the collapse was very well done.   In the end it has some things going for  it but the story holds it back. GRADE:C

          It is very hard to write what would be considered a great sports movies, because all are generally done in the same way. When it comes to writer director Angelo Pizzo, who wrote two of what are considered the greatest sports films of all time, Rudy and Hoosiers. Since thoose films sports films in general have followed the same formula. So when we get to My All American it ends up with that formula.        Finn Wittrock stars as Fred Steinmark, a kid that grew up playing football. When it was time to go to college he gets rejected multiple times because they thought he was too small to play safety.  He finally gets a chance at the University of Texas from coach Darrell Royal (Aaron Eckhart). By the beginning of sophomore year he gets to start. This is the story of the whirlwind season.      Since I dont really know too much of the story I could not know what is really e...

           I really wanted to like this movie, I thought it had a very entertaining trailer. It has a very big cast including Diane Keaton, John Goodman, Alan Arkin and Ed Helms. On top of that, as embarrassing as this may be, I do have a soft spot for sentimental Christmas movies.            To put this in as short of a summary as possible, it is the day before Christmas at the parents house (John Goodman and Diane Keaton), it is all about the crazyness that ensues on the day.          First of all this film is advertised as comedy when it is very much not. It is very much on the drama side with a  slight comedy. Another problem it has is way too many characters in one film. When there are so many characters in one movie it is hard to develop any of the characters to the point where people care. With so many characters it is also hard for the story to have fo...

This week we get a calm before the storm that is Hunger Games. There are three films in at over 1000 screens starting tomorrow The 33: The story of the Chilean miners and their 2010 rescue after the mine collapses. My All American: My All American is the story of a kid who was thought to be to small to play football and how he ends up with a scholarship to the University of Texas. Love the Coopers Finally,there is the family comedy Love the Coopers about a family's return home for a Christmas feast.

Today is the day we honor our veterans we have many films that honor these men. Saving Private Ryan The story of a troop trying to bring a last living son home. Lone Survivor: Story of Marcus Luttrell and his account of what accored during the failed mission of operation Redwing. The Great Escape: The courageous story of how men captured by the German army during world war 2 create and hatch a plan to escape the camp. Honor the veterans most of us don't know what they went throufh, bu they have fought for us.

When people think of Pixar and the desire for the sequel, people wanted one to the 2003 Finding Nemo. In this film we find the quirky Dory has disappeared due to what looks like sleep swimming, and as we all know she has some memory issues. By the end of the trailer she does seem to remember some things, which is a very interesting concept. We will get to see what happens June 17, 2016. 

Ok, a couple weeks ago was the release of the trailer that broke the internet, now this weekend there was a realse of a Japanese trailer with tons of new footage. There was far less use of the Oscar Issac character Poe this time around which I didn't think would happen. There has been a lot of Rey and Fin, maybe there is a surprise in it for when the film comes out. I do love the trailer it has the action that feels the same as the original trilogy which is exciting. I do hope that keeping Mark Hamill out of the trailers doesn't mean bad things for Luke. We will see!!

This is a movie that can be for everyone from kids to adults. As a kid I loved watching the vhs cartoons, they were always so funny. So coming into this I had high expectations, which most of the time is not good. The basic story of the film is Charlie Brown trying to make him feel worthy enough to talk to the new red headed girl. This film does have remanats of the old movies while bringing heart that doesn't seem like it was in them. It is a worthy movie for the Peanuts franchise. GRADE:B

Since I did go on a whole thing about star wars earlier in the blog I say stick with the theme. Here is the new international trailer! Discussion coming soon......

I may be a little biased here I was one of the very few it seemed to not be totally dazzled by Skyfall, to me, I compare it to Casino Royale. This time around there is an attempt to shut down the 00 program in light of more technological means. While this is happening Bond is following one last tip from Q and it leads Bond to a connection to his past. In the end this is a very long movie but I don't believe there is any way it could have been shorter. The problem comes in the story. The main vilian played by Christoph Waltz seems to be under utilized and under developed. The whole thing with the complete connection to the past was not used to its potential.  In the end it is no where near the worst bond , if I had to say, probably my second favorite in the Craig saga. GRADE: B-

This week starts the the big movies of the holiday season with the release of Spectre and Peanuts Movie. These films are both projected to do well, only time will tell.

Another entry into the horror comedy genre comes with Scout Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse.  Three scouts ( Tye Sheridan, Logan Miller, and Joey Morgan) are out on a campout when a zombie outbreak occurs. While trying to go to a party and discovering the outbreak, the scouts run into a tough cocktail waitress Denise ( Sarah Dumont). It becomes about getting through the zombies using the skills they learned as scouts. This movie is no where near perfect, but going in expecting perfection is a big mistake. There are decent amount of very funny parts. The movie is here to entertain. GRADE: C+

For this weeks featured trailer I have the new one from the Kung Fu Panda franchise. The first two films were good, I have no worries about this film. Adding Bryan Cranston to the cast will be a huge plus too. Kung fu Panda 3 hits theaters January 29, 2016