I just returned from a business trip to China. The good thing about flying nonstop from Frankfurt to Hong Kong and back is that you have plenty of time for inflight entertainment. Cathay Pacific has a nice bouquet of shows, music and movies on offer. So despite sleeping, I managed to watch 6 movies and want to give a short review for each one.
X-Men - Days of Future Past
I'm a bit on the fence about X-Men in general. I kinda like the movies, but then again I never found them to be outstandingly good. But I liked this one. There are some plotholes in its logic of events, but if you don't think about it too hard (which you mostly don't do), it's a good X-Men movie and, at that, an entertaining action flick with excellent special effects. I particularly liked Quicksilver. The kitchen scene where he manipulates everything actually was the main reason I wanted to see this film, the scene was posted as an animated gif on FinalGear earlier. The biggest gripe I probably have with the movie is that the plot is a little chaotic. Still, not bad.
Verdict: 7/10
Guardians of the Galaxy
I read before that the characters in this one may sound somewhat disturbing at first, and I wholeheartedly agree: a raccoon, a talking tree, a green woman and many more fancyful figures take part in this flick. However, it being a Marvel production, I must say this is an excellent movie. The main reason is that it was sad without going for the heartstrings, it was funny without being cringeworthy and it had good action without going over the top. Without ever having heard of Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy before (like me), you can just sit back and enjoy a really really good sci-fi fantasy movie. It's like a Star Trek/Star Wars action comedy, but solely in a good way. Excellent music, too!
Verdict: 8.5/10
Hercules
I didn't plan to watch this one, but it was rather short in runtime and thus one of the few movies I managed to squeeze in before landing in HK. Anyway, it's a quite simple plot with the classical good vs. bad pattern and a somewhat obvious twist towards the end. Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson works quite good as Hercules, but on the other hand, JosephFiennes was laughably bad as one of the bad guys. The massive fight scenes (and effects in general) were good, though they pulled an A-Team: lots of kills with swords and lances, but not a single drop of blood to be seen. It is an ok movie, but nothing special. I don't regret watching it, but I wouldn't want to see it again either. It is pretty much what you expect when you hear: the Rock plays Hercules.
Verdict: 5/10
Jack Ryan - Shadow Recruit
This is a reboot of the CIA-Agent Jack Ryan, who has previously been played by Alec Baldwin (Hunt for Red October), Harrison Ford (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger) and Ben Affleck (The sum of all fears). I liked all of these previous movies, some more, some a bit less, but overall I think they're excellent spy thrillers. So we have a reboot now, telling how Jack Ryan (in this case played by Chris Pine) made it to the CIA and furthermore from a deskjob to an active agent, and also how he met his later wife Catherine (Keira Knightley). Plot: the Russian baddie (Kenneth Brannagh) plots to crash the US Dollar by manipulating the financial markets and to throw the western world into a deep financial crisis. Though Kevin Costner also has a role, I quite like the cast of this flick. Nonetheless, it is quite below the surefooted and thrilling storrytelling that gave all the other movies its quality. Brannagh is a good actor, but neither comes across as a believable Russian as well as a serious baddie here. Knightley spends most of her screentime with whining and thus is somewhat annoying. Pine would be another goof Jack Ryan, but since the movie is lacking substance and pace, Shadow Recruit never really takes off and therefore is not more than an ok spy movie, but nowhere near the quality of the previous Jack Ryan thrillers.
Verdict: 4.5/10
Godzilla (the new one)
This was the one I really wanted to see. Though not many people were in favour of the previous Godzilla (with Ferris Bueller), I quite liked that one. I assumed that the new one would be much better, and though it was much closer to the original Japanese Godzilla movies (which I love even if they are ridiculous by today's standards), it was let down by a half-baked, ridiculous story. The plot definitely snapped my suspension of disbelief, not because of the gigantic creatures I saw, but by the very constructed storyline that is much more distracting than helping. Additionally, as opposed to the old Japanese movies, almost all of the monster fights happen in the dark, so franky put, you don't see much of them. I assume that they did this to add thrill, but for me it doesn't really work. So what I ended up with was seeing way too much annoying human drama and not nearly enough Godzilla vs. MUTO(s) fighting. Thus, honestly speaking, I still prefer the previous and also the original ones over this. Disappointing.
Verdict: 5/10
The Monuments Men
Unfortunately I missed the end of this one, but somehow I feel like I also didn't miss much. I like the idea, independently from that it is based on real events: a group of art specialists travels to Europe shortly after D-Day and closely follows the Allied lines beating back the Nazis to secure the countless pieces of art that Hitler and his companions stole. The movie has an excellent cast (George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Kate Blanchett), but the plot is disturbingly jumpy. I constantly felt like I was watching a series of random outtakes which do not really fit together. Also, the "look, we're old buddies!" mood which is supposed to make the Monuments Men very likeable never sparked, simply because it wasn't introduced and developed, rather than just spoonfed in heaps. Alltogether, though it could be an excellent movie, it is nothing but poor screenwriting and characters which you're forced to symphasize with. In contrast, the Nazis experience the same treatment in the other direction, clearly overdosing and unintentionally ridiculing it to a U-571 level. Overall, a surprisingly poor movie.
Verdict: 4/10