Every year the movies get bigger and their stars spotlight shines brighter and brighter! But I have to ask you the question? Just cause the movies are bigger does that make the actors better? Why did they get that role? Was it looks? A great agent? Married to the director? or maybe just maybe their good actors! If you’ve ever asked yourself the questions Are They Lucky or Are They Good? grab your earbuds and join in the fun as Jeremy, Craig and Doug try to agree or agree to disagree on some of our favorite actors today! If you like this episode you should check out Are They Lucky or Are They Good? Vol.1  for even more fun! And of course, feel free to let us know your your thoughts & feelings about all the actors and actresses we discussed and let us know what actors you’d like added to the list for our Are the Lucky or Are they good episode Vol.3. Your input helps make the show better!  You can call the voicemail number  260-573-0015,  or email us at: moviemadnesspodcast@gmail.com. You can also post them to Twitter, Facebook or the Ultimate Movie Geeks community on Google+

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Sometimes you have to go big! And thats just what we’ve done! Not our normal one, two or three reviews but eight!!! I’ll tell you if the fall and winter seasons keep delivering movies like these the year might just be saved! So grab your ear buds and listen in as we review the Christopher Nolan Sci-Fi adventure Interstellar starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain. The potential launch of a new franchise in Disneys Big Hero 6. What I think may be one of the best pure action movies I’ve seen in years John Wick starring Keanu Reeves. The ultra creepy Nightcrawler starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo and Bill Paxton. Usually we’re done by now but we’ve packed even more into this Mega Mini Review! We review the excellent WWII tank battle movie Fury starring Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman and John Bernthal. Rounding things out we have the family/courtroom drama The Judge starring Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall and our last two reviews to finally finish things off we review St. Vincent starring Bill Murray and Melissa McCarthey. And Dracula Untold starring  Luke Evans

Hey, send your movie reviews to moviemadnesspodcast@gmail.com or call the voice mail # 260-573-0015 or post them to Twitter, Facebook or the Ultimate Movie Geeks community on Google+

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Fury is a foul smelling, diesel guzzling, steel death trap. It’s also a new movie written and directed by David Ayer and starring Brad Pitt. The film is a rolling snapshot of the European theater in World War II and the men that fought there. What it is not is a war picture with a lofty purpose, like Saving Private Ryan, or one with a political motive, like The Hurt Locker. Fury is a gritty, gory story of five guys in a Sherman tank trying to survive the Great War. It’s simple.

Brad Pitt is Top Sergeant Don “War Daddy” Collier, a hard driving taskmaster who’s managed to keep his tank crew alive for years.  His crew: Boyd “Bible” Swan (Shia LaBeouf), Grady “Coon-Ass”Travis (Jon Bernthal) and Trini ‘Gordo’ Garcia (Michael Peña) are trapped with him in a WWII hell not of their own making. They are crawling through Germany in a tank that’s nearly helpless against the much more powerful German Tigers. They are crawling because Germany, at the order of Adolph Hitler, is fighting the allies for every foot of ground.  Enter Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman), a fumbling stenographer and typist, to fill out their tank crew. He is just as green as you might expect.

These characters are what makes Fury so special. There is very little character development, instead Ayer depends on archetypes. Look at nearly any WWII movie with Alan Ladd, John Wayne or Audie Murphy and you’ll see the same. My father was so good he could tell you in five minutes which character would be the hero, which the coward and which one would die. He was never wrong.

Yep, I could have told you what would happen with each member of the tank crew after I met them. Fury is so uncompromising in telling a good story that the background of the characters became secondary. This film is a journey from beginning to end, does it really matter what happened before? If you think so, demand a prequel!

Fury gave me the feeling I was an intimate…a member of the tank crew family, joining in as the group played, fought and even got drunk and obnoxious. That’s the importance of archetypal characters: it’s easy to match them to ones you’ve seen before and match them up.

This is not a movie about “guts and glory,” as some may suggest, but a movie about getting the hell back home in one piece. There is one exceptional moment when Don Collier sees a woman looking at the troops letting off steam in the town square. He takes the green tank driver, Norman, up to a pleasant apartment where they are greeted, not too pleasantly, by a woman and her cousin. Instead of what they expected, the Sargeant is just looking for a little hint of home. He finds it-an island of peace in an ocean of war.

The mistake is in making Fury more (or less) than it is. It’s a really good film, but it’s not about some grandiose scheme to win a war or destroy some foreign ideology. Fury is about squeezing as much out of life in a war and not getting dead. It’s also about killing so many Nazis that there are none left to kill you. George S. Patton once said, “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.” I never got a sense in the movie that anyone gloried in taking life. It was only expedient to kill the “other bastard.”

Ayer’s direction and Brad Pitt’s acting certainly headlined the piece, but everything in the film was top notch. Even the now familiar, “This is the best job I’ve ever had,” from the tank crew, fits. I would strongly suggest seeing Fury in the theater. The action and explosions are just too good to miss on the big screen.

Rating 4 Stars out of 5!

It was another slow week at the box office but I think we found a surprise as summer comes to a close! Lawless stars Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy and Guy Pearce but wait there’s more Jessica Chastain, Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke and Mia Wasikowska round out this amazing cast. Listen in and see what the guys thought about it. If you have seen Lawless send us your review or if you want to review any movie! Send us your reviews! You can email us moviemadnesspodcast@gmail.com or even better call the voice mail # 260-573-0015 We want your reviews!

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