Movie Review- Django Unchained and Ten Minutes of The Gangster Squad

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Yesterday morning, we caught the first ten minutes of The Gangster Squad. I realize from that sentence, it sounds like we theater hopped, which we didn't. Theater hopping is a huge no-no in my book, I think it's stealing and just disrespectful to those who made the film and who are in the theater viewing. I love movies too much to theater hop.

We caught the the first ten minutes of The Gangster Squad because the AMC Sixteen in Burbank goofed and loaded the wrong movie. It wasn't on my hot to see list, but now I can confidently avoid seeing The Gangster Squad. Yes, I am judging a movie by ten minutes. Ten minutes and terrible reviews.

Luckily, we had tickets to Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained. I wasn't too sure what to expect out of this controversial and polarizing film, but Tarantino never seems to make a bad movie and the cast is great, so I was sold.

Django Unchained has several things done right. The screenplay is fantastic. A compelling and original story with just the right mix of serious and levity to give it heart. It's 100% Tarantino in tone and the whole stylized spaghetti-western theme just works. I think that he is the only modern film maker who could have pulled it off. It's so his signature style.

Tarantino has created fantastic characters as a foundation and found the perfect cast to bring them to life. The writing and the cast make this movie. 

Django Unchained  has great heroes and villains. I loved seeing Christoph Waltz as a good guy this time. He just steals the show every time he's on the screen. Jamie Fox does a solid job of carrying the movie. He is one of those actors that I often forget about, but always give a great performance. He's so versatile. Speaking of versatile, I physically didn't recognize Samuel L. Jackson and probably wouldn't have, except for his distinct voice gives him away. I loved Leonardo DiCaprio, who is another scene stealer and I feel is often underrated. 

Django Unchained feels like a companion piece to Inglourious Basterds. In both movies Tarantino has written such rich characters and strong underdog seeks revenge based plots. It's impossible to not be swept up in the stories and to find yourself rooting for the heroes. These are two of Tarantino's best films. 

I throughly enjoyed Django Unchained and think that it's one of the best movies of the year, very deserving of the accolades that it has received. The only negatives are that it runs a bit long (But that is Tarantino) and that Tarantino should not have cast himself in a minor supporting role. It was painful to watch, especially the strange Australian accent that he attempted. 

A great movie, definitely one to catch on the big screen!

Forks Over Knives vs. The Perfect Human Diet

There is no question, that the 2012 documentary, The Perfect Human Diet, wants you to think that it's the antithesis to the 2011 documentary Forks Over Knives. The Perfect Human Diet even plays off of the Forks Over Knives movie poster, except the fork has pierced a slice of steak. 

Additionally, the movies would seem opposed, one exulting the benefits of a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle and the other promoting meat as essential to the human diet. However, after viewing both movies, I feel that they have one big similarity that probably hits harder at the obesity epidemic, than whether an individual decides to consume meat.

I think both films are loaded and bias. This doesn't mean that they don't have wise pieces of advice, but that the message loses a bit of power when the message is so slanted to one side. Forks Over Knives is slickly produced and relies more on individual testimonials, while The Perfect Human Diet, is very dry and academic, heavy with human evolution History and interviews with nutritionists.

Both movies went back and forth over the meat issue. However, both also brought up the need for the elimination of processed foods. This is what struck a chord with me. Neither film had me convinced on the meat issue, but processed foods are clearly bad and we all know it, this is the discussion that we need to be having. 

The Perfect Human Diet explored the processed foods idea the most, explaining how weight gain really started when we transitioned from Hunter/Gatherers to an agrarian society. Our primary food source started to become heavily dependant on products like wheat and corn, stuff that makes up a lot of our processed foods. We began to eat more and more sugar. Processed food consumption is at an time high and is especially frightening when you look at Childhood obesity numbers. 

One of the dietitians interviewed for The Perfect Human Diet, brought up a great point. He mentioned how nutrition is up there with religion, politics and money as a hot button topic and something to avoid discussing at parties. He went on to mention that nutrition is like a belief system. I totally agree with his statement, as nutrition is so personal.

It seems like people fall into two camps.

The first, are people who follow a specific diet, could be anything- vegan, Atkins, juicing - but it's something that they firmly believe works for them. They may or may not be right, but their ideology is unchangeable, until they decide for themselves that they want to change it, unusually because something else might work better.  This can even account for people with terrible diets, like my mom. She was firm in her Mid-west, meat and potatoes upbringing. She had a stubborn, "If it was good enough for my parents..." attitude. It was immutable. 

The second type of people, are those who make terrible nutrition decisions and know it. They don't want to talk nutrition, because they don't want to be lectured or reminded of their own bad choices. They don't deny it, but they also don't want to talk about it and they especially don't want to talk about it to people with a firm nutrition ideology.

I really enjoyed chef Jaime Oliver's Food Revolution reality show and was quite shocked that people didn't embrace his advice, especially when it concerned school lunches. In fact, people (including parents) thwarted his efforts to improve school food. He didn't seem to be trying to do anything radical, it was mainly a focus on more fruits/veggies and less processed food, less sugar and fried crap. People did not want to hear it. It goes back to nutrition being a taboo subject. People don't like to be told that they are making terrible health choices and they certainly don't want to be told that they are extending those choices to their children. It's a health and parenting criticism, double taboo!

Personally, I think that we need to find ways to work around nutrition being a taboo subject. You cannot fix a problem that people won't talk about. 

Hyper Smash

Movie Review- Jack Reacher

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Jack Reacher begins with the point of view of a sniper as he takes out five people on a river front promenade in Pennsylvania. It's tense and the tension doesn't stop through this action packed thriller.

Admittedly, there are moments where the plot feels like a movie of the week on Court TV and despite the riveting opening sequence, it took a bit to get going. However, once it drew me in, I was sold.

Tom Cruise is great as Jack Reacher, a former military police officer, wiz crime solver and current drifter. He is a man who enforces the law, by floating above it.  I loved Robert Duvall as a the range owner. Duvall stole every scene that he was in. The casting director did a great job with finding guys who looked most like stereotypical Russian thugs to play the part. The movie revolves around broad character archetypes and works. It's plot movie, not a character driven drama.

The action sequences in Reacher are some of the best that I have ever seen. I caught myself holding my breath, because they were so exciting. I really appreciated that they were not overdone. They managed to pull off an extremely exciting car chase without explosions, cars catching air time or flipping over. It was just a good, old fashioned car chase. The fight sequences were the same way. They were incredibly brutal, but they never crossed over to being absurd. The guys got winded and the fights ended fairly quickly. All of the action was rooted in realism, making it far more entertaining and unpredictable.

This movie is violent, very violent. Almost violent in a Quentin Tarantino way, just shy of that brutal. I can handle violence and gore, but I cringed a lot during the movie. Much of the violence is implied and I have a very vivid imagination!

Paramount Pictures really missed the mark with the release date. Yes, it's very unfortunate that this movie came out the same time as Sandy Hook, but that's not why it underperformed at the box office. This is not a Christmas movie. This is not an Oscar contender and it just can't compete with onslaught of movie choices that come out this time of year.

Jack Reacher is more of a summer movie. If it had been released appropriately, it surely would have been first at the box office and bigger money maker. The movie is really well done and highly entertaining, it has the unfortunate fate of being swamped by heavy competition.