Tag Archives: Chris Pine

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

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Wonder Woman 1984
Director: Patty Jenkins
Writer: Patty Jenkins, Geoff Johns, Dave Callaham
Sequel to: Wonder Woman
Based on: William Moulton Marston‘s comics character
Cast: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, Connie Nielsen, Robin Wright, Lilly Aspell, Amr Waked, Kristoffer Polaha
Part of: DC movies
Seen on: 21.6.2021

Content Note: rape (dubious consent at the very least), racism, white saviorism

Plot:
Diana (Gal Gadot) has been living among the humans for decades now, occasionally making an appearance as Wonder Woman, but trying to keep those anonymous. For her day job, she works as an anthropologist in the museum where she meets her new, rather eager colleague Barbara (Kristen Wiig), as well as TV personality slash investor Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal). While Diana does take a liking to Barbara, she distrusts Lord immediately. And with good reason – as an artifact that supposedly grants wishes goes missing. But not after fulfilling Diana’s biggest wish and bringing back Steve (Chris Pine).

Given it’s late cinema start, the cat was out of the bag regarding Wonder Woman 1984 and its quality, or rather lack thereof. With my expectatons approriately lowered, the film was ultimately okay, apart from the things that were categorically not okay.

The film poster showing Diana (Gal Gadot) as Wonder Woman in a golden, winged suit with the glowing lasso of truth.
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A Wrinkle in Time (2018)

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A Wrinkle in Time
Director: Ava DuVernay
Writer: Jennifer Lee, Jeff Stockwell
Based on: Madeleine L’Engle’s novel
Cast: Storm Reid, Levi Miller, Deric McCabe, Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, Chris Pine, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Zach Galifianakis, Michael Peña, André Holland, Rowan Blanchard, Bellamy Young, David Oyelowo
Seen on: 22.3.2021

Plot:
Meg Murry (Storm Reid) is an unusual child from an unusual family. Her mother (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is a scientist, as is her father (Chris Pine) – who has been missing for a while. He was working on tesseracts when he just disappeared. Meg’s genius little brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe) seems to know more about it. And he has made some strange friends who know even more than that: Mrs Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), Mrs Who (Mindy Kaling) and Mrs Which (Oprah Winfrey). The three women prompt Meg, Charles Wallace and Meg’s class mate Calvin (Levi Miller) to go looking for her father – all through the universe.

I was rather disappointed when A Wrinkle in Time never got a big cinema release here in Austria, and I still think I would have appreciated seeing it on the big screen – the film is at its best, after all, when it just creates visuals. Other than those, it is very fine, but not great.

The film poster showing the main characters arranged in a circle.
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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Director: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman
Writer: Phil Lord, Rodney Rothman
Based on: Stan Lee and Steve Ditko‘s comic
Cast: Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Brian Tyree Henry, Lily Tomlin, Luna Lauren Velez, Zoë Kravitz, John Mulaney, Kimiko Glenn, Nicolas Cage, Kathryn Hahn, Liev Schreiber, Chris Pine, Natalie Morales, Edwin H. Bravo, Oscar Isaac, Greta Lee, Stan Lee
Seen on: 17.12.2018
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Plot:
When Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is bitten by a radioactive spider, he finds himself facing a whole new set of problems – as if starting a new school wasn’t enough. But then he has to watch as Kingpin (Liev Schreiber) kills Spider-Man/Peter Parker (Chris Pine) who tries to keep Kingpin from using a dimension-crossing machine, and things get even worse. That’s when Miles stumbles upon yet another Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Jake Johnson) and he realizes that he might be able to find other Spider-Men in other dimensions. If they team up, they may stand a chance against Kingpin, although not all of them are of equal help.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse got a whole lot of advance prasie and all of it was absolutely deserved. In fact, I felt that it actually surpassed my expectations. It was funny, hit all the right emotional notes and was visually really interesting. Absolutely fantastic.

The film poster showing Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) as Spider-Man jumping high over the skyline of New York.
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Wonder Woman (2017)

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Wonder Woman
Director: Patty Jenkins
Writer: Allan Heinberg
Based on: William Moulton Marston‘s comics character
Cast: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Connie Nielsen, Robin Wright, Danny Huston, David Thewlis, Saïd Taghmaoui, Ewen Bremner, Eugene Brave Rock, Lucy Davis, Elena Anaya, James Cosmo
Part of: DC movies
Seen on: 20.6.2017
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Plot:
Diana (Gal Gadot) grew up on the isolated island Themyscira populated only by women. But not any women: Amazons, warriors with an amazing lifespan from a time where gods still walked the earth regularly. Taught by her mother, Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) and her aunt Antiope (Robin Wright), commander of the guard, Diana grows up with a strong sense of right and wrong. So when the world outside literally crashes into hers in the shape of World War II pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), Diana is sure she is meant to help to end the war, even if it means going against the wishes of her mother.

I maybe wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about Wonder Woman as I would have liked to be (as it’s a female superhero in a film directed by a woman), but I did enjoy it a lot. Definitely the best of the DC movies so far.

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Star Trek Beyond (2016)

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Star Trek Beyond
Director: Justin Lin
Writer: Simon Pegg, Doug Jung, Roberto Orci, Patrick McKay, John D. Payne
Based on: Gene Roddenberry‘s TV show
Sequel to: Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness
Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Idris Elba, Sofia Boutella, Joe Taslim, Lydia Wilson, Danny Pudi, Greg Grunberg, Shea Whigham
Seen on: 26.7.2016

Plot:
The Enterprise is about halfway through their five year mission of exploring uncharted space. But five years is a long time and Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) starts wondering about other career options. Before things get very far, though, they all land at Starbase Yorketown. The base has recently rescued Kalara (Lydia Wilson), a scientist whose ship was attacked. The Enterprise is sent off to rescue the rest of Kalara’s crew, but things don’t go as planned: instead the Enterprise is destroyed and the crew is stranded on the planet Altamid.

Star Trek Beyond was an entertaining film again and – to a non-Trekkie like me – it felt like the trekkiest of the new films so far. There are still a whole lot of plot holes and not everything worked flawlessly for me, but I had fun watching it.

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Into the Woods (2014)

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Into the Woods
Director: Rob Marshall
Writer. James Lapine
Based on: James Lapine‘s (book) and Stephen Sondheim‘s (music and lyrics) musical, which is in turn based on a few Brothers Grimm fairy tales
Cast: Anna Kendrick, Daniel Huttlestone, James Corden, Emily Blunt, Lilla Crawford, Chris Pine, Billy Magnussen, Mackenzie Mauzy, Christine Baranski, Tammy Blanchard, Lucy Punch, Tracey Ullman, Meryl Streep, Simon Russell Beale, Johnny Depp, Frances de la Tour
Seen on: 11.3.2015

Plot:
The baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) dream of having a child, but due to a curse by the evil witch (Meryl Streep), they can’t conceive. But the witch offers to reverse the curse – if they bring her certain items: a cow as white as milk, hair the color of corn, a golden slipper and a red cape. They set off into the woods where they hope to find all of those items. As luck will have it, Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) runs away from her prince (Chris Pine) in golden slippers, Jack (Daniel Huttlestone) tries to sell his white cow, Litte Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) is visiting her gran in her red cape and Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy) and her blonde hair meet her prince (Billy Magnussen) – all in those same woods. But things don’t go quite as planned.

The first half of Into the Woods is extremely enjoyable. In the second half, the plot completely unravels, but at least cast and production design are still awesome.

Into_the_Woods

[SPOILERS]

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Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

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Star Trek Into Darkness
Director: J. J. Abrams
Writer: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof
Based on: Gene Roddenberry‘s TV show
Sequel to: Star Trek
Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Benedict Cumberbatch, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Alice Eve, Bruce Greenwood, Peter Weller, Noel Clarke, Leonard Nimoy

Plot:
After a couple of attacks on Starfleet by John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his subsequent escape to the Klingon home planet Kronos, Kirk (Chris Pine) and his crew are sent there with a new kind of missile to kill Harrison. Even though Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Scotty (Simon Pegg) have their doubts about the legitimacy of that mission, Kirk sticks to it. At first at least.

I expected Star Trek Into Darkness to be fun in a not exactly intelligent way. Nevertheless I had my problems enjoying it because it was just so damn dumb. But even that I wouldn’t have minded so much if the pacing had been a little better. It’s still enjoyable, but just not as much as I had hoped.

Star-Trek-Into-Darkness

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Rise of the Guardians (2012)

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Rise of the Guardians
Director: Peter Ramsey
Writer: David Lindsay-Abaire
Based on: William Joyce‘s books
Cast: Chris Pine, Alec Baldwin, Isla Fisher, Hugh Jackman, Jude Law, Dakota Goyo

Plot:
The Guardians – that is Santa (Alex Baldwin), the Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman), the Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher) and the Sandman – protect the children of the earth. But when a new threat shows up in Pitch (Jude Law) aka the Boogey Man, the Man in the Moon appoints a new guardian – Jack Frost (Chris Pine). Everybody is bewildered by that choice, most of all Jack himself, who is more preoccupied with finding out who he actually was before he became Jack Frost. But for the sake of the children, they start working together.

Rise of the Guardians was amazing. Beautifully animated, wonderful story and it all comes together in a way to make you cry and laugh and to leave you with a magical feeling and a smile on your face.

rise_of_the_guardians

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Unstoppable (2010)

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Unstoppable is the newst movie by Tony Scott, starring Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson and Ethan Supplee.

Plot:
Due to the ineptitude of one worker (Ethan Supplee), one of the trains in Southern Pennsylvania kinda runs off. Runaway trains are apparently not that uncommon, so everybody stays rather cool until it’s discovered that the train isn’t a coaster, but is under power and has picked up quite some speed. Now track manager [or whatever the official title is] Connie (Rosario Dawson) has to see to it that the damage stays as small as possible. She gets unexpected help from train-driver Frank (Denzel Washington) and conductor Will (Chris Pine) who are on the same track as the rogue train.

Unstoppable opens with the most dramatic credits I have ever seen: We see still standing trains, but the font, its animation and the frantic cutting suggest that we see the last few secones before an explosion. It is painful to watch – but it all goes downhill from there. Especially the cutting and Scott’s direction just never get any better.

[SPOILERS]

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Star Trek (2009)

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Star Trek is, in this case, the new J. J. Abrams movie starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Eric Bana and Leonard Nimoy.  

Before I go into anything here, a quick disclaimer: I am not a Trekky (sp?). I have seen a few episodes of the various shows (mostly Voyager and DS9), but I never really got into the fandom. So, if you want a review by a fan, maybe deadra will write one someday or maybe she’ll leave her comments here.

Plot:
Star Trek tells the beginning of it all – how everybody got to know each other, how Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Kirk (Chris Pine) became friends and how everything started on the Enterprise.
After the death of his father (Chris Hemsworth), James Kirk grows up to be a rebel, constantly challenging the rules around him. He joins the Star Fleet, where he soon excels – and meets new friends, Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and McCoy (Karl Urban). Soon they all get pulled into the troubles arising from a Romulan ship that seems to be stranded in time.

Despite a few plot holes, Star Trek is a very entertaining movie with good acting, a nice sense of humour and perfect special effects. Having never really liked the show(s), I didn’t expect much but I was definitely pleasantly surprised and had a lot of fun – also as a not-Trekky. [Though deadra did have to explain a few things to me – there were some insider jokes I didn’t get.]

star-trek-posters-01

[SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS]

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