Exodus: Gods and Men was a movie I thought would be great, then terrible, and then okay. It ended up being pretty good. I am a massive fan of Christian Bale (The Dark Knight Rises, Out of the Furnace) and Ridley Scott (Alien, Gladiator). Bale has had numerous hits over the last decade. I’ve seen 13 of his previous 15 movies, and I’ve been a big fan of all of them. Once as reliable as they come, Scott has had some misses in recent years, most notably The Counselor and Robin Hood. Both of these movies should have been great, and both underwhelmed.
Bale plays the role of Moses. Say what you will about Bale, but he’s not afraid to venture outside the norm. He takes chances. I love him as an actor. In the last 5+ years, only a handful of actors have been better (DiCaprio, Pitt, Gosling, Gordon-Levitt, Michael Fassbender, Bradley Cooper, and Tom Hardy) come to mind. The traditional heavyweights outside DiCaprio and Pitt (Hanks, Will Smith, Washington, Cruise, Day-Lewis, De Niro, etc.) have dropped out of the spotlight. Others (Day-Lewis, Hanks) have fallen into the pattern of doing the same movie repeatedly (Tom Cruise saves the world, Denzel Washington saves a plane, a train, a subway, a boat from catastrophe, etc.). Others have gotten into the habit of just making movie after movie to earn a paycheck without the intent of making a great film (De Niro).
Interstellar is a good movie that aims to be not just a great movie but a movie that people talk about for years and years to come. I imagine that there will be a circle of fans who will do this, but I think, for the majority of people, this will be a movie that they enjoy but won’t ever think of as being unique or legendary. I think this movie tried too hard to make that lasting impression rather than just live in the moment of making a great film. As I will mention below, this movie could have been much more straightforward and, in doing so, much more effective. I felt the first 45 minutes of the movie created a cast of characters and a setting in which numerous stories could have been told, and the film could have succeeded. I say this because Interstellar is, first and foremost, a space exploration movie with overtones of the importance of human relationships and weighing what is best for society against what is best for an individual. However, I would like to know if I recommend the movie. And I do recommend it. As much as I wanted it to be great, it wasn’t. But it was still good. At 168 minutes, it is at least 45 minutes too long. And the spaceship scenes themselves are absolutely brutal. There is way too much dull talk of esoteric physics that went straight over the heads of 90% of the audience. It wasn’t needed and forced you to try to use your brain to comprehend everything that was happening. That wasn’t why I was there. I go to movies to not have to use my brain.
Lord of the Rings meets The Hunger Games. That was what many people were using as a comparison to Wes Ball’s The Maze Runner. I figured the movie would be a surefire hit if that was the comparison. Its reviews on Rotten Tomatoes have been mixed, but there have certainly been more positive than negative ones. As I write this review, remember that I read the book. I read the book this summer when I saw that this movie was coming out in September. I did not realize at the time that this was a book about young adult literature. I should have done my research, but I was hooked by both the title and the book’s premise. While the book was well written, I kept asking myself why I read it as a 38-year-old man. I had the same conversation with myself as I sat watching the movie on opening weekend. This is a cool movie…if you are a teenager. But never did I feel like it was a cross between Lord of the Flies and The Hunger Games. 
Without a doubt, Martin Scorsese’s (
If one trailer in 2013 left you thinking, “That movie could either be good or terrible,” it was the trailer of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. This movie stars Ben Stiller, more or less, outside of his usual comedy genre. This movie is certainly not There’s Something About Mary or Meet the Parents. This isn’t the equivalent of Ed Helms in