Displaying Category: Movie

Here's how I see Shrek: a movie for adults with a story simple enough that kids can follow along. Many of the jokes are funny, but also predictable. In a way, my favorite part of these movies is picking out all the anachronisms and other things from modern life that don't fit into the world of Ever After. I didn't like the music, but not because it was bad, just because I didn't like any of it. The animation and especially the body language and expressive faces were absolutely top-notch. The 3D effects were also quite satisfying and they didn't try distracting you with it more than two or three times. In the end, I think it hit its mark for being exactly what you'd expect it to be, though I feel I have to knock it down a peg for also focusing on a story only adults can relate to, while also making that story so simplistic that it's tough to really care.

3/5

I will say right up front that my feelings regarding this movie are torn. While it is an undeniably entertaining movie filled with the sorts of medieval (PG-13) fighting and general uncleanliness you have come to expect from period films of this sort, it's also supposed to be about this Robin Hood fellow that we've seen time and again in other films and on television and so on. We know Robin Hood. We are comfortable with Robin Hood. This movie is about the Robin Hood we don't know. How he became an outlaw and what he is truly fighting for. We get a good look at his strength of character in order to give us an idea of how he'll act in future situations. We see what he's fought for and lost. What we don't see in this film is the man we've all grown to know and like (or dislike) as Robin Hood. This is an origin story and not the common story we've grown comfortable with.

This is both good and bad, I think. Obviously if we all know the story of Robin Hood and it's good and solid, there's really no point in telling that story all over again. If you're going to tell the story again, at least bring something new and fresh to the game. I can respect that. At the same time, though, I found myself sort of clawing at the characters and happenings wishing for my fingernails to find purchase on any familiar bits I could find. Other than character names, I was pretty much unsuccessful. The backstories for the characters are all different from what I know. The personalities portrayed are generally different. Well okay, basically Robin Hood is different from what I know. While traditionally, Robin is charismatic and charming, Russell Crowe's Robin is soft-spoken (except when giving speeches) and understated. That's not bad, it's just not familiar. In fact, Robin of Loxley isn't even of Loxley, he's Robin Longstride who takes on the name Loxley as a favor... blah blah blah plot points... it's just odd to me. And after all this effort to be different from the traditional stories of Robin we all know and love, the next movie is going to be forced to tread that well worn earth by virtue of where it falls in the storyline.

Finally, I found there to be a serious technical fault to the film, that the vocal track was mixed far too low to be heard over all the background noise. The spoken dialog seemed very muddy to me. Perhaps just my bad hearing, the friend I saw it with had no trouble understanding it, so perhaps it's just me, but I feel it cut into my ability to enjoy the film fully.

So did I enjoy the movie overall? Yes. Did it feel unnecessarily different from what I am familiar with and possibly contrived in parts to make it different? Yes. Did I have trouble understanding half of what was said? Yes.

3/5

Because this is a movie that I really felt I should see with friends and since my friends prefer to avoid opening weekend on the big movies, I figured I'd be seeing Iron Man 2 in the coming weeks. My plan today was to see The Losers, which clearly did not go according to plan. The theater manager explained that The Losers has been doing so badly that they decided not to run it today and instead were running Iron Man 2 on that screen. Then they told me they'd be opening The Losers up for screening again later tonight around 8:00 PM. Unfortunately, I had already bought a ticket to The Losers, but I definitely didn't want to be around that long. So, I instead went and saw Iron Man 2. Therefore, no ticketstub for Iron Man 2. And now for the review part...

Similar to the first movie, I feel like this second installment was all about setting up other movies. Clearly we're pointing to another Iron Man movie. There's an Avengers movie. There's the Thor movie. There may have been others that my superhero ignorance prevents me from seeing. Therefore, I feel there was a lot of time spent setting up for movies other than the one I was actually watching. Some might call that fan-service, I call it distracting. This also meant there were lots of different storylines, but none of them were ever really filled out. For whatever reason, I enjoyed the interaction between Pepper Pots and Tony Stark the most, but that never really developed into anything meaningful or satisfying and, once again, felt like it was being left for some future movie. There's stuff about Tony's father and his involvement with Vanko (the father of Ivan Vanko, aka, Whiplash) and the Avengers. And this stuff with the government wanting control of the Iron Man "weapon" and Stark's corporate nemesis, Justin Hammer (Captain Hammer? No.) played very well by Sam Rockwell. There's a lot going on and none of it was deep. Maybe it's great fun if you're a huuuuge fan of the comics, but for my money, that doesn't excuse an ADD plot. Finally, I am not saying I didn't enjoy it, I did find it entertaining, I'm just not sure it was a great movie. And don't let the $133 million opening weekend tell you otherwise...

3/5

Hmm... how to describe this movie...Well first off, I'll say that it really did kick-ass. A high school kid decides he wants to be a superhero just to do something about the crap that goes on in the city that everyone else just stands back and watches (or records on their cell phones and posts on YouTube). He doesn't have super powers and barely any fighting ability, but he is a hero in the sense that he is trying to do good, which also makes him a little insane, but that's not really part of the story. You mix in gratuitous violence and pervasive language and you've got sort of a cross between Superbad and Ninja Assassin. Oh yeah, it's that good. Oddly, the parts that made me cringe the most weren't the over-the-top fighting scenes, but the scenes where the hero is spending time with this girl he likes who only spends time with him because she thinks he's gay. Now that was painful. And hilarious.

4/5

What I got from this movie: girls are really mean to each other; guys are generally rational and see shades of gray in an "it's complicated" spectrum. Anything else you might want to know about this movie can be inferred from the source material, that of some Nicholas Sparks novel. Which is to say, there was nothing particularly outstanding about it and it was plainly predictable. That's not entirely bad, you go in with expectations and you come out with exactly what you were looking for. Therefore, I can't really recommend one way or the other, whether you see this is entirely based on what you are looking for in a movie.

3/5

A classic film filled with character, personality, and charm about a young hero learning about his destiny as a demigod and... oh wait, that was the original movie. This would be the remake in which people fight mythological creatures and say awkward lines that probably looked really good on paper, but fall flat when spoken out loud. Sure, the effects are now computer generated, so a giant kraken looks giant, and Medusa actually comes off real well and there are "scorpiochs" or something... But what you reproduce with digital clarity, you strip the personality from. The effects in the original movie were impressive because they were dealing with such simple technology (stop motion animation). Now, they're just like everything else, so what do you have to fall back on? Well, it certainly isn't plot, writing, or great characters. In the movie's favor, I still came out of it entertained. Not blown away or overwhelmed, but I wasn't bored... much. Oh, and I did not see the 3D version.

2/5

This is going to be a difficult movie to describe, being as I can't talk about all the wonderful things I want to talk about for fear of spoiling the whole thing. Suffice to say, the cinematography is brilliant, the writing is satisfying, and the story is significantly more complex and interesting than it seems on the surface and in trailers. My only disappointment is that it never gets into the horrors of mental institutions as I was hoping/expecting. Really, I didn't miss it. Once I realized I wasn't going to get what I wanted the film very quickly redeemed itself by magnifying its depth with a brilliant plot twist. More please!

4/5

Tim Burton does Alice in Wonderland. Great sets (mostly digital). Great costumes. Great music. What's missing? Oh yeah, the story! Actually, the story is fairly well proven, the problem is, I'm not real sure the message holds very well into adulthood. Not that the message isn't valuable, it's just that, by adulthood, I think we've all heard it enough to make the sound of it a bit tired by now. So you know, be your own person, have original thoughts, and smart confident women are hot Got it. Oh, I also did not see this movie in 3D. I was a lot more interested in having a nice clear picture of all the gorgeous settings, then the gimmicky use of 3D Burton employed in this film. At least based on what I heard from reviewers and friends. And all that said, I still got a little choked up as Alice strode into battle with the Jabbewocky.

3/5

I was skimming over a list of the all-time worldwide box office takes for movies and realized that the vast majority of the movies listed are either science-fiction or fantasy. So why then does science-fiction and fantasy programs do so poorly on television (with only a few exceptions)? I asked a friend who suggested it basically comes down to budget. Sci-Fi and Fantasy cost more to produce, and if you can't make it convincing, viewers are going to lose interest. Maybe? I don't really buy it. I feel like quality writing, characters, and story are going to trump effects. Is it maybe that a good sci-fi/fantasy series needs time to develop, but often gets pulled too soon by the network when it doesn't perform off-the-bat? I don't know, I'm just asking questions here, but it does seem like an interesting contradiction worthy of at least some discussion.

Talk about a title that leaves you out of breath! So here we have director Chris Columbus taking on another series of young adult novels only instead of bringing us the excellent Harry Potter, he drops a mediocre Percy Jackson at our feet and smiles uncomfortably. I realize we shouldn't have very high expectations for adventure movies targeting kids and teens, but I suppose I was hoping for more. Straight up, this movie suffers from a bad script full of forced jokes that feel very played out. There's also the overall story, which suggests that demi-gods are as common as... witches and warlocks in the modern world. But in this case, we're squeezing in a lesson in Greek mythology and the true meaning of family. Awwww... It felt like a stretch to me too. There were some moments that weren't as bad as others, but they were fleeting. Any time I started to feel like something might actually get interesting, it was quickly suppressed by crappy dialog. So sad. Well, I've moved on.

2/5