Movie Reviews: Grown Ups 2, Crystal Fairy, Pacific Rim, The Attack, Byzantium

Are you a movie buff? Or maybe you just enjoy the occasional dinner and a movie date? Either way, Patch would be thrilled to have you on board as a movie blogger! All you have to do is shoot a quick email to Ryan Martin at ryan.martin@patch.com.

Pacific Rim  

• Run Time: 125 mins. 
• Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Charlie Day, Rinko Kikuchi, Rob Kazinsky
• Rated: PG-13

Patch Blogger Mark Glass: ** "It’s clearly summer by at least two measures other than Cardinal baseball - the outside temp, and the onslaught of aspiring epic-scale action blockbusters. Here comes the latest big-budget offering, with Earth battling a parade of aliens from another dimension that rise through a rift in the Pacific Ocean. These attackers are like oversized Godzillas, amped up with ‘roid rage and the ability to develop new traits and skills. They’ve been held at bay for over a decade by supersoldiers..." Full Review

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The Attack  

• Run Time: 102 mins. 
• Starring: Ali Suliman, Dvir Benedek, Uri Gavriel
• Rated: R

Patch Blogger Mark Glass: ***½ "If you want to be both enlightened and bummed about the persistence of terrorism, this subtitled drama by Lebanese director and co-writer Ziad Doueiri, shot partly in Israel, should do the trick. An Arab surgeon living in Tel Aviv is receiving the highest honor in his field by the Israeli medical community. Before he can fully enjoy it, he finds himself treating a spate of casualties from the latest suicide bombing. Even worse, his wife of 15 years..." Full Review

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Byzantium  

• Run Time: 118 mins. 
• Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Gemma Arterton, Caleb Landry Jones, Daniel Mays, Jonny Lee Miller
• Rated: R

Patch Blogger Mark Glass: **½ "In the mid-1990s, writer/director Neil Jordan seemed poised for ranking with the industry’s best and brightest after The Crying Game, Michael Collins and Interview with the Vampire. Since then, his output from behind the camera and/or with the pen has been less in both quantity and quality. In this film, he again explores romantic drama from an unusual perspective. The result is interesting, but hardly a return to the form of his early critical and commercial successes..." Full Review

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Grown Ups 2  

• Run Time: 101 mins. 
• Starring: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, Salma Hayek
• Rated: PG-13

Nick Schager, The Riverfront Times: "Like its 2010 predecessor, Dennis Dugan’s comedy has no real plot to speak of, instead pretending to care about schlubs played by [Adam] Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, and David Spade dealing with adult issues—Sandler is unprepared for wife Salma Hayek’s pregnancy; Spade meets the son he never knew; Rock frets over his daughter dating—while really focusing on a series of random goofing-off incidents involving ogling sexy dance teachers, getting peed on by angry deer, and discharging 'burp snarts' (a burp-sneeze-fart combo)..." Full Review

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Crystal Fairy  

• Run Time: 100 mins. 
• Starring: Michael Cera, Gaby Hoffmann
• Rated: Not rated

Alan Scherstuhl, The Riverfront Times: "With an offhand precision that suggests he might prove one of his generation's major actors, Michael Cera lays bare two specific human weaknesses in writer-director Sebastián Silva's altered-states/group-dynamics road drama Crystal Fairy—weaknesses you'll likely recognize from life rather than from other movies. The first is the pushy, wheedling neediness of the people who crave drugs too much. Not the full-on junkies, but the friends you worry will become junkies, the ones who, when not high, are trying to find ways to suggest everyone gethigh, and when high only want to discuss whether they're high enough..." Full Review