not nearly as good as the first one, but i would argue that its better than the second, this movie follows the continuing adventures in the world of narnia. this one focuses on different characters, with aslan, the evil queen, and most of the kids amounting to little more than a cameo. if i remember correctly, this is one of the last stories in the series that includes very much of the kids. the rest of them deal mostly with other characters in narnia. tell you what, i'm ok with that. the kids from this series are a lot less interesting than some other children's fantasy series...chronicles of narnia: voyage of the dawn treader
not nearly as good as the first one, but i would argue that its better than the second, this movie follows the continuing adventures in the world of narnia. this one focuses on different characters, with aslan, the evil queen, and most of the kids amounting to little more than a cameo. if i remember correctly, this is one of the last stories in the series that includes very much of the kids. the rest of them deal mostly with other characters in narnia. tell you what, i'm ok with that. the kids from this series are a lot less interesting than some other children's fantasy series...
how to train your dragon
wayne's world
i'm pretty sure some major nostalgia is kicking in here, but this movie is actually really good! i think this movie came out at just the right time for me to really love it, all the humor is pretty junior high level, and i was in junior high at the time- perfect! this movie is based on a saturday night live skit that was created by mike meyers and dana carvey. i remember seeing the skit on snl once or twice (not too often because my parents would rarely let me stay up that late, and when they did they certainly werent apt to let me watch snl!), and always thought they were really funny! i think i was too young to really understand any of the sexual innuendo, so to me it was just a fun bit about two rock nerds in their basement. how exactly they turned that little sketch into a full movie (and sequel!) is kind of impressive, really. and to turn it into such a funny one at that! the story follows two slackers who make a public access rock show in their basement as they are offered a chance to make it big. the movie itself is more of a series of funny bits tied together as a makeshift movie, but those bits are so much fun! i remember reenacting many of them with my friends, even. watching it recently with my wife i began to realize that maybe this movie isnt as good as i seem to think it is... she does not have the nostalgic memories of it and lost patience with it quickly, opting to read a book or play on her phone after about the first twenty minutes! oh well, in my mind it still rocks, and even holds up to my memories all these years later. party on, wayne!tron: legacy
i dont think i have ever seen the original tron movie so i dont have any nastalgic recollection of the first one. i mostly just wanted to see this new one because it looked cool. well, it certainly did! the story starts 20 years after the original where jeff bridges character had created a world inside of a computer. it seems that he has been trapped in there ever since and his son has had to grow up without his father around. now incredibly wealthy (due to his father having invented some pretty amazing computery stuff), bridges' son has given up on doing anything worthwhile. one night he gets a message from his dad's old arcade. curious, he wanders in and discovers his dad's secret lab. he triggers the same mechanism as his father all those years ago and finds himself now a part of the computer program as well. over the past 20 years the program has been upgrading itself and trying to attain perfection so we see a vastly different version that the original movie. and boy is it an awesome version! the story of this film is not the draw here, the big draw is the amazing style and look of the computer world. the whole time i was watching it i knew that there was absolutely no substance to it, but the imagery was just so eye-poppingly amazing that i didnt even care! the hypnotic score by daft punk is the perfect combination to the slick visuals. this movie just drew me in big time! i know its not that good, but the look and sound of it just makes me want to go out and see it again as soon as possible!
the frisco kid
this one is pretty strange. it stars gene wilder as a polish rabbi who has been called to be the leader of the synagogue in frontier town california. it follows him as he tries to make it from poland across america during the 1840's. along the way he meets up with a no-good cowboy played by harrison ford (huh?!?). ford starts off trying to take advantage of this shmuck who has no clue about the old west, but slowly takes a liking to him. wilder does a fantastic job of playing the clueless rabbi, he has an innocent gentleness to him that he brings to every roll. the rabbi doesnt understand that the train robbers are bad guys or that the angry men want to kill him, he just continues to show kindness to them, even when they are in the middle of beating him up! one of the funniest parts comes when he's saved by a group of christians and neither one of them know what to make of the other! harrison ford does his grumpy/annoyed thing here, which fits quite well, and the two of them make a surprisingly fun duo! the movie is a bit too long and awfully slow in parts, but its still a fun relic of wilder's comedic heyday.
the avengers
what a turd. i had no interest in watching this movie other than the fact that its got sean connery in it (clearly in it for the big paycheck) and the soundtrack has a song from one of my favorite bands the verve pipe. the movie is a remake of the british show from the 60's and is absolutely dreadful! the characters played by uma thurman and ralph fiennes are completely vapid and a waste of space. the characters dont ever talk to each other, they just reply to the worthless british snobbery with more 'witty' british snobbery. and connery, playing the evil bad guy (who for some reason at one point wears a giant teddy bear costume...) does the most generic thing any bad guy could possibly do: he creates a weather controlling machine! this stupid premise was a joke back when it was used in the 80's cartoon g.i. joe- do they really expect us to take it seriously?!? its too shallow to be a drama, its too generic to be a thriller, and its too lame to be a send up of the original. why exactly does this movie exist? no answer? didnt think so...
green lantern
i hate to say it, because i really love ryan reynolds, but this movie was kind of a dud. i grew up loving comic books, but green lantern never interested me. i guess that should have been an indication for me when i saw this one, huh? the story follows hal jordan, an ace pilot in the air force, as he is called to wear the ring and take up the helm of a green lantern. the movie, though epic in scale, feels really disjointed. we get to see the unhappy pilot who struggles with his father's death years earlier in an airplane related accident, but it never feels like a real motivation. we see the grand scope of the green lantern corps and all the strange creatures through out the galaxy that also have taken up the ring, but they never play any sort of real part of this story. we see the all encompassing evil that is the bad guy parallax, but its threat is never really conveyed. they even fail to truly explain what it is that the ring does. we know its the physical manifestation of will and hope, but what exactly does that mean? with out any explanation or attempt to justify its power, hal jordan can make a race track appear out of nowhere to save a helicopter. um, what does that have to do with hope? we never really see hal struggle with this new position except in the most shallow of ways: showing off to a roommate, trying to figure out the oath of the green lanterns, etc. there was much potential, but very little of it is realized with this film. sure, the effects looked pretty cool, but to what end? it felt like much of it was designed to distract the audience from the lack of storytelling. things just kind of happen with little rhyme or reason. how does hal suddenly have the strength to go from worthless hack to galaxy saving lantern in the course of one day? and that last scene! really? there was no reason behind it other then maybe everyone involved knew they didnt stand a chance of getting to do a second one so they wanted to go for it. what ever the case, this movie was a disappointment. a shiny disappointment, but that didnt help much.
sorcerer's apprentice
i've never been a huge fan of nicolas cage. i give him a pass from time to time when the movie is really good, 'adaptation' for example. but those movies are few and far between. this one is a bit of fun in spite of him. we follow a young man as he is introduced to the world of sorcery, its strange and mysterious history, and how the bag guy is trying to reveal himself and take control over the rest of the world. it fell victim to the trap so many big movies that are trying to start a franchise do: it keeps promising the great things that will happen next time while delivering very little in the first movie. and like so many of those potential franchise starters, this one didn't start anything.harry and the hendersons
buying the cow
you know, this one is a lot better than i thought it was going to be! it follows jerry o'connell's character as he is given an ultimatum from his girlfriend: get married or get out. she leaves him for a month to give him time to think. over the course of that time he talks with friends about the big decision, being told by his best friend, ryan reynolds, that its foolish to take the plunge. as that month passes we see a big (and rather unexpected) change in his friend as he finds his soul mate. the story was a lot stronger than the title would suggest, doing a pretty good job of exploring the situation, not just for laughs but also go allow o'connell to really struggle with the issues in his life. it doesnt end at all as i would have expected which is another nice surprise. just a warning: there is a lot of naked ryan reynolds! (i never thought i could get enough ryan reynolds, but this isnt what i meant...)
father of the bride
i remember loving this movie as a kid, i'm not entirely sure why though. usually i was in to big action movies or comedies, but for some reason this little chick flick was on my list of movies i loved. after rewatching it recently with my wife (which, by the way, was the first time she had ever seen it! shocking!), i realize that my love for it was not so strange after all. this wholesome family comedy actually is pretty funny! the movie starts with steve martin and diane keaton having the perfect middle (ok, upper) class family. the daughter just arrived back from a semester abroad and returns home with the man she fell in love with while there. and the two of them announce that they are getting married! martin does not exactly take this well. the film plays up his hopelessness about affording the wedding of his daughter's dreams, but the real challenge for him is coming to terms with the fact that his little girl is all grown up. its touching, its playful, and whenever martin short is on screen, its way over the top! its pretty saccharin sweet, but i really enjoyed it! i'm sure the nostalgia factors into it pretty heavily too, but i'm ok with that...a christmas carol
ugh. everyone knows this story, so why did they feel the need to remake it without changing anything or adding anything new? what a waste of time! not only does this movie follow every single version of 'a christmas carol' that came before it, it also looks terrible! the motion capture computer graphics are unbelievably fake! the faces either look really fake, or frightening- and not the kind of on-purpose frightening. its the same old story of scrooge with absolutely nothing new to add or to say, on top of that the animation looks horrible and sloppy- they certainly havent fixed the 'dead eye' problem, in fact it seems like they have taken a step back, this thing looks much worse than 'polar express', and that was five years earlier. i know that this thing originally came out in 3D, and every scene of the film makes sure you know that its supposed to be seen in 3D. it uses every 3D cheap trick in the book, but unfortunately i didnt watch it in 3D, so it just looks cheap. i watched it with my wife, and about 35 minutes in i had to stop the movie because it was just so bad! the story was lifeless, the scenes felt like exact recreations shot for shot of the george c. scott version from 25 years ago, which we have already seen. and that animation! i couldnt get over just how terrible everything looked! when they showed the ghost of christmas past (which is a candle with a face- again, really terrible looking) and it brought them to scrooge as a young child, the child version of scrooge was so embarrassingly detestable looking that i shut if off immediately. just for the sake of giving it a second chance, i did finish watching the movie, hoping for something new or interesting. turns out i shouldnt have wasted my time. and please, dont waste your time either- this thing is terrible!!!
the other guys
dumb, but fun! ferrell and wahlberg play two cops who work in the police station pushing paper for the crazy free wheeling cops who act like bruce willis in die hard- destroying everything to get the bad guys (samuel l. jackson and dwayne johnson, perfectly cast!). when something happens to the two crazy cops, ferrell and wahlberg decide that they are going to try and fill that void. as you might expect, things dont work out so well for them...the two of them do a good job with their roles, ferrell is in classic form, always saying the wrong thing to hilarious results. wahlberg is pretty good here, he is more than capable but sometimes plays the straight guy a little too straight. over all though there were some pretty good laugh out loud moments. i'm sure the outtakes and bloopers from the movie were fantastic!
armored
the film follows a bunch of guys who were for an armored truck company. the get the great idea to try and steal the money that they are hauling, trying to make it look like they were robbed. of course things have to go wrong and everyone is at odds with each other as the whole plan falls apart. pretty generic film all around. well except one scene: where we see the hero running past a bunch of foot wide pipes as the camera is on the opposite end of the pipes, it moves past them at the same speed as the runner, creating a sort of animated cinescope, saves the movie from being a total crapfest. other than that creative shot, its not really worth your time.
addams family values
i must have been in some kind of mood when i saw this movie because i really enjoyed it! this is the sequel to the addams family movie, and its actually pretty good. i had seen the original back when it first came out, but had never bothered with this one, and i was pleasantly surprised! as you know, nine tenths of these addams family movies are all about lame puns about being dead, but for some reason i was really enjoying them this time! perhaps its the wonderful acting by the cast, made up of raul julia, angelica houston, christina ricci, and christopher lloyd, but something about it clicked just right! the story follows the family as they welcome the arrival a new baby into the family. also, uncle fester finds a new lady (who's just in it for the money) and pugsly and wednesday are sent to summer camp. i dont know how, but everything just worked in this one! i dont have very fond memories of the first film, but this one was a lot of campy fun!
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