_You remember the ‘90s when the Mission: Impossible movies were wildly popular? And then Tom Cruise went all nutso, but JJ Abrams decided to reboot the franchise anyway (and bring in Felicity herself), and it was actually really good? Well, The Incredibles director Brad Bird decided he was going to top all of those.

No, really.

Mission: Impossible--Ghost Protocol decided to go above and beyond any badass action sequences that any of the previous Mission: Impossible films have done before it. And do it in IMAX. I know I’m sounding hyperbolic here, and I went full in expecting to have a good time, but I really didn’t expect to be completely blown away by how over-the-top (in a good way) this film is. Some of the stuff they do is fucking bananas.

READ MORE AFTER THE JUMP.
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__The first Guy Ritchie-directed Sherlock Holmes installment didn’t really do it for me. I thought the plot was completely jumbled and too much for the likable cast to overcome. However, I could recognize that the film definitely had a lot of great things going for it: namely the chemistry between Holmes (Robert Downy Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law) and the frenetic directing and fight choreography of Ritchie. I could buy that this Holmes was a martial arts master because of the slow-mo fight scenes where he deduces his opponent’s moves. But I couldn’t buy that awful plot.

For Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, I felt myself more willing to go along for the ride, especially due to the addition of Moriarity (Jared Harris), who gives Holmes a greater intellectual match. However, the sequel still cannot overcome its jumbled plot, but it still becomes a fun movie because of the sum of its parts.

A Game of Shadows follows Holmes as he tries to solve the cause for several bombings in Europe, which are being pinned on an extremist Anarchist group. He believes they are the product of mastermind Moriarty, but he cannot figure out what his evil nemesis is up to. Along for the ride is, of course, Watson, who is trying to embark on his honeymoon without getting killed, Holmes’ brother, Mycroft (Stephen Fry), and a mysterious gypsy (Noomi Rapace) who is trying to figure out how her brother is involved in all the bombings.

That’s the plot boiled down to the simplest I can. There is a whole bunch of Victorian-era politics that predate World War I that I was trying to follow, but it’s mainly best to just sit back and watch Downey, Ritchie, and Holmes do what they do best, which is to make you laugh, show some badass fight scenes, and solve some mother effin’ crimes. But is is the addition of Moriarty (and Harris) that give the film any sense of weight. He is the true foe of Holmes, and he tones down all the adrenaline rush of the action sequences.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows isn’t the most spectacular of films, but it plays on the strengths of everyone involved, and it entertains despite a bogged down plot.

--Darcie Duttweiler
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_You may be scratching your head and wondering, “a family movie from Martin Scorsese? WTF? The dude who brought me Goodfellas and Taxi Driver? No way!” Well, Hugo isn’t necessarily a children’s movie in the same vein as The Muppets, which is also opening this weekend. It’s slower, more methodical, and definitely more beautifully-crafted. Sure, it’s about a boy in his quest to uncover a secret, but, more importantly, Hugo is a film that’s meant to be a work of art for those who love movies.

At one point, Hugo (Asa Butterfield) takes his new friend Isabelle (Chloe Moretz) to her first movie, and she turns to him and says, “Thank you for the movie. It was a gift.’’ Hugo is Martin Scorsese’s gift to cinephiles in that he lovingly recreates many of the very first films ever shown but gives them a 3D makeover. This is one instance where the latest technology really does add to the overall package of a film. Hugo is a film for dreamers, but more about that after the jump!
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_The very first song in The Muppets, Gary (Jason Segel) and his puppet brother Walter sing the lyric, “I can’t seem to wipe this smile off of my face.” If that’s not an allusion to how you’ll feel the whole movie, then I don’t know what is. I loooooooved the Muppets growing up, and it wasn’t until that opening number that I realized how much I really missed a great Muppet movie. (Yes, I’m discounted Muppets from Space.) Lifelong Muppet-lover Segel and his cohort, which includes Bret McKenzie from Flight of the Conchords, have created a truly magical and fun Muppet movie that will hopefully relaunch the franchise. And it’s one of the best movies in a loooong time that’s perfect for the whole family.

The Muppets follows Walter, his brother Gary, and Gary’s gal-pal Mary (Amy Adams) on vacation in Los Angeles as they decide to visit the whole Muppets Studio. There, Walter discovers that evil oil tycoon Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) is going to buy the studio and bulldoze it to drill for oil unless the Muppets can scrounge together $10 million to buy it back. Walter persuades Kermit the Frog to rally the whole Muppet gang back together in order to hold a good ol’ fashioned telethon to raise the money. Trouble is everyone has gone their separate ways: Miss Piggy is in France working for Vogue, Animal is in anger management therapy, and Gonzo is a huge plumbing magnate. Plus, a TV exec (Rashida Jones) thinks that the Muppets are obsolete and not famous anymore. (How very meta.) So, can Kermit and Walter get the whole gang back together, and can they prove to the world how much everyone needs a little Muppets in their lives?

While this could very well sound like the sappiest, lamest movie ever, The Muppets is the perfect mix of sincerity, happiness, and humor. The movie doesn’t take itself too seriously, and even offers up classic Muppets meta humor (“this is going to be the shortest movie ever”). Everything is lighthearted and tongue-in-cheek, but nothing feels too grownup or cynical. Sure there are moments of weight, like when Kermit sings a song about how long it’s been since he’s seen his friends, and it’s downright sad and tear-inducing. But then there are absurd Flight of the Conchords-esque songs like “Am I a Man or a Muppet?” that are so pitch-perfect and ridiculous that they’re an amazing fit with the Muppets world.

By the time Kermit sings “Rainbow Connection” you’ll be downright giddy and delirious from smiling so damn much, whether you are a boy or a girl, a kid or an adult, a man or a Muppet. The Muppets might just be one of the best family movies I’ve seen in a long time because it made me feel all gooey and fuzzy in my heart. And this is coming from a cynic like me. Do yourself and your family a favor this Thanksgiving and head out to see The Muppets. 

--Darcie Duttweiler
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_Watching the opening wedding scene in Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 is like being a guest at your friend’s friends’ wedding. You don’t belong there, and you frankly don’t give a shit about the copious amounts of toasts occurring. You just want to get to the free booze and maybe make out with a cute groomsmen on the dance floor. Is that too much to ask for? Yes, yes it is. Because instead of a beautiful film with nuance and complexities and fun, Breaking Dawn is a boring, slow film that is laughably awful at several parts. When will Hollywood understand that splitting a film into two parts is quite possibly the worst idea. It makes for the first half to feel completely unfinished and lacking, not the gripping cliffhanger they (or rather, their pockets) anticipate.

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Being a writer sucks sometimes. Like today, for instance, when my lovely computer crashed and ate my entire Footloose review, which was quite eloquent and insightful. Trust me, you would have loved it. But, because I'm lazy, you're stuck with this one instead. I promise it will be concise and straightforward with small nuggets of insight.

Footloose, for any of those who've lived under a bridge for the past 27 years, is about a city boy, Ren (newcomer Kenny Wormald) who moves from Boston to Bomont, GA after his mom dies. Quickly he learns that the small town has some weird laws prohibiting public dances outside of church functions because some high schoolers died in a drunk car crash several years before (why they don't just outlaw driving instead is beyond me). Upon his arrival in Bomont, Ren catches the eye of the minister's wild child daughter, Ariel (Julianne Hough) and befriends a yokel named Williard (Miles Teller). Somewhere in there Ren does an angry dance in a warehouse on his yellow VW bug, and my friend, who never saw the Kevin Bacon version, snickered profusely.

Director Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow) has lovingly remade Footloose with much of its original elements. Ariel's red boots pop up, as does Ren's red velvet prom jacket. While most of these elements are welcome additions, such as new renditions of popular soundtrack tunes, the film is almost too similar to the original. The 2011 version wasn't given enough license to make it feel new and fresh and become its own film. I wish they could have made it just ever so slightly different from the original. Although, all the Step Up type choreography was pretty entertaining.

The performers are decent. While Bacon had a dance double, Wormald is a backup dancer turned actor, and it shows. Same goes for Hough. Both actors are slightly wooden and don't really light up the screen until they start dancing. Teller, on the other hand, lends the movie most of its comic relief and steals the show, much like his original counterpart, Chris Penn.

I went into Footloose prepared to dislike the remake. Why remake such a cult classic? But I couldn't help wanting to kick off my Sunday shoes and cut loose. I hate myself for admitting that...

--Darcie Duttweiler
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Although The Ides of March is one of those movies my dad would have tried to get me to see and 12-year-old me would have wrinkled her nose at, the fourth film from director George Clooney is a well-written and acted film that dives into the last days of a presidential primary. While it may not be the “political thriller” the trailers are trying to sell you, the film is still engrossing and engaging.

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What’s not to get excited about when you hear the phrase “robots boxing?” It sounds like an awesome spectacle of machinery and special effects in an era where Transformers has made us bloodthirsty for robots beating the shit out of each other. Real Steal attempts to make robots fighting less fantastical by putting them in the boxing ring in a near future when humans grow weary of seeing just regular ol’ dudes fighting each other. It’s not so far-fetched really, but after watching robots claw away at each other via the commands of a controller, Real Steel made me long for an old-fashioned boxing flick any day. Especially one without a precocious little kid.

Real Steel opens with a down-on-his-luck Charlie (Hugh Jackman) who’s lost his robot in a fight with a bull at a country fair. When he finds out his ex-girlfriend has died and left him a child he’s never met, he realizes he can basically sell the 11-year old to a rich aunt in exchange for some dollar dollar bills to buy another robot. Only catch is that he has to watch the kid for the summer, so Charlie and his son Max hit the road to fight robots and learn life lessons from each other.

Along the way, Max digs an old sparring bot out of a junkyard and cleans him up. Turns out it mirrors the actions of the person in front of it, so Max does what any kid would do--teaches it how to dance. Oh, and Charlie, a boxer from days gone by, trains it out to be a real boxer instead of a flashy, splashy robot fighter, and the little bot ends up winning some major fights. This journey eventually sets up Charlie and Max to pit their small bot up against the world champion robot in a robot version of David versus Goliath.

And Evangeline Lilly is in there somewhere as the owner of the boxing ring Charlie used to train at and his sub-plot love interest.

Real Steal isn’t BAD. In fact, some critics are really applauding this film. But, for me, it just felt so schmaltzy. Sure, robots fighting is pretty cool, I’ll give you that. But, the human element the film kept trying to cram down my neck was this father-son dynamic of a dad who needs to grow up and a boy who just needs a dad. This may make me sound hardhearted, but it just felt so forced. I didn’t really feel it at all, and I hate any movie that tries to manipulate my feelings so blatantly. Plus, Max was so obnoxious to me that I couldn’t get behind him at all--or his weird robot dancing. Furthermore, the brief romance with Lilly’s character was so tacked on that it just didn’t seem necessary.

This movie made me long for a real boxing flick, with real blood, sweat, and tears, not something that is praised for being “almost human.”

-- Darcie Duttweiler
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Moneyball Brad Pitt
I’m not typically a huge fan of sports movies. Sure, I can get swept away into the emotion of it all and root for the underdogs. And yeah, I can sit on the edge of my seat in anticipation of the outcome of the big game or fight. Moneyball is a movie for people who don’t like sports movies--and maybe for those that do too. Granted it’s not necessarily your typical rock ‘em, sock ‘em sports movie. But what would you expect from a film that was written by The West Wing creator, Aaron Sorkin?

Moneyball is the story of Oakland A’s general manager and ex-baseball player, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), who tries to make the A’s a winning team, despite having a third of the budget of basically every other team on the planet. When he encounters an economics Yale graduate, Peter (still fat Jonah Hill), who thinks about baseball in stats and numbers rather than judging the players’ personalities and looks, he snatches him up in hopes of reinventing baseball.

Together, the two set out to put together a team full of misfit toys who are cheap and effective but have been overlooked by the other major teams. Throughout this process, Billy and Peter butt heads with the A’s coach (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), the owners, and basically everyone else in baseball. The film also takes a look back at how Billy went from promising rookie to a scout before settling in as the A’s general manager. Robin Wright is also thrown in to play his wife for a brief snippet. Just FYI.

This may sound kinda boring to those who want a traditional baseball flick. And you do get to see some games, but I was pleasantly surprised at how riveting this movie actually was. It’s slightly long, granted, but Moneyball is so sharply written and well-acted that the film comes together quite cohesively. They even thrown in some clever and funny moments to keep the story chugging forward. Pitt and Hill also have great chemistry, and Pitt has never been better with an incredibly nuanced performance.

Moneyball might not be for the thrill seekers who love a great sports flick, but I don’t want to describe it as a strategies and statistics movie because that sounds boring as shit, and this film is not. It’s subtle yet powerful, quiet yet moving, and offers a great performance by Brad Pitt.

--Darcie Duttweiler
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Drive gosling
Don't let the Drive trailers fool you. Drive is not some nonstop action thriller in the vein of anything starring Vin Diesel. Instead, Drive is a truly intense, highly-stylized, modern film noir. It is as violent as it is beautiful, as quiet as it is hip, and well-acted as it is gorgeously shot on the streets of L.A. Drive might not the action movie for people who love Transformers. It doesn't come at you guns a'blazing—rather, it moves methodically and swiftly, moving steadily to a bloody denouement with a quiet force that will transfix you.

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