Short, Sweet, and Spoiler-Free as usual.

This movie is all over the place. It plays like a video-game adaptation and a Zach Snyder love letter to 13 year old boys inside every guy. The heroines, able warriors all, go about dressed in what amounts to glorified lingerie (which comes off as utterly ridiculous, even though they all look amazing!) and the set pieces derive from video and tabletop games, with one (my favorite) being heavily inspired by Warhammer 40,000 and Secret Weapons of the Third Reich.

Snyder employs his singular style but this film is much more style over substance than his other efforts. That said, I did enjoy the film for what it was. The only failure on his part I felt was not actually showing us a sample of Baby Doll's dance. But then again, the film is PG-13 and given that Baby Doll could essentially hypnotize men by her dancing alone, perhaps it was for mature audiences only.

Bottom line: It's okay. Crazy visuals, excellent camera-work and fight choreography. (Sweet Pea (Abby Cornish) in particular looks like she really knows what she's doing.) Sadly, a disjointed story that doesn't quite figure out what it wants to be until the third act, hurt this movie. Still better than most things by Michael Bay, but in that same kind of turn-your-brain off entertainment.

Short, Sweet, and Spoiler-free, as always...[more]...

Short, Sweet, and Spoiler-Free as always...[more]...

Short, Sweet, and Spoiler-Free as always...[more]...

Short, Sweet, and Spoiler-Free.

I really enjoyed this movie as a very good family film. The plot is straight-forward and shoe-horns itself with almost checklist-like regularity into the Hero's Journey construct. But that is to be expected in a film whose target audience is pre-teen.

Where this movie shines is in the visuals. Zack Synder again uses his speed ramping trademark in this all CGI animated adventure and once again, it looks absolutely fantastic, particularly in a sequence where the young owl hero is flying through a storm.

The first half of the second act does get a little slow, but just as the kids in the audience were starting to get fidgety the film picks right up and doesn't stop right up until the end.

Bottom line: Is it on par with Pixar? No. But then again, not many movies are. And this one is pretty good. Recommend you catch it in IMAX 3D if you can, because the visuals are where the meat is at. You've already heard this story a dozen times over.

A nice surprise was not related to the film per-se. Before the film, there is a new Road-runner / Wile E. Coyote cartoon in 3D! And it was great! I wish it had been a little bit longer.

Short, Sweet, and Spoiler-Free.

Wow. Just wow. Exploitation at its most gratuitous! Piranha 3D is a film that just dials it to 11. Every single time I thought, wow, they've gone too far, there's no where they can go from here. They would go further. Over the top T&A shots (the underwater part with Lakme, the flower duet was my personal fav) were only outdone by the ridiculously over the top piranha attack gore scenes. Some fantastic and memorable deaths in this one with some really top notch practical FX work.

It isn't possible for me to list out all the tributes to Jaws without spoiling them, but this was clearly a love letter to Jaws but done with tongue firmly in cheek.

A good time at the movies. Definitely one to see in a good crowd that will get in on the fun. I loved the director's use of the children to ramp up the tension when he wanted things to get a little more serious.

This movie goes too far and keeps going!

Bottom Line: If you mixed Jaws with a girl's gone wild video, you have a pretty good idea what to expect.

Short, Sweet, and Spoiler-Free...[more]...

Short, Sweet, and Spoiler-Free...[more]...

Short, Sweet, and Spoiler-free.

I went into this movie expecting another "Talledega Nights" or even "Anchorman". It's from the same team and I generally enjoy the Will Ferrell brand of insanity in his comedies.

While that kind of lunacy is certainly present in "The Other Guys". The film comes across really as more of a comedy buddy cop movie then as a standard 'Will Ferrell' comedy. Sure it has its moments of Ferrel-brand irrational comedy, but I didn't find that to be the funniest parts.

Mark Wahlberg acquits himself well as Ferrell's glory-seeking partner.

Bottom-line: Pretty funny afternoon matinee flick. I did find the closing credits infuriating though, as should we all.

Short, Sweet, and Spoiler-free...[more]...

I don't want to review this. I really can't without breaking my spoiler-free policy. But here goes...[more]...

Short, Sweet, and Spoiler-Free...[more]...

Short, Sweet, and Spoiler-free.

Pixar. Pixar. Pixar. Why is it that you alone can pull of what seems elusive to the rest of Hollywood? Why is it that you never turn out a bad film? Why is it that you manage to make all your films appeal to viewers of all ages?

I was already 'grown up' when Toy Story 1 came out. And I loved it. Love Toy Story 2. Toy Story 3 might actually be my favorite of the bunch. Wow this movie was good. Managed to get me to tear up even!

Just go see it!

Short, Sweet, and Spoiler-Free...[more]...

Short, Sweet, and Spoiler-Free.

I wanted to like this film a lot more than I did. The first half is brilliant. Jonah Hill is hilarious and Russell Brand reprises his 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall' role as the insane rocker Aldous Snow. There are some nice surprises from the peripheral cast here as well, Rose Byrne is hilarious as Jackie Q, a living parody of today's manufactured pop starlets, and Sean 'P-Diddy' Combs is good in all the scenes he's in as a desperate record company exec. There's even a small role for Colm Meaney in this one.

The song lyrics are hilarious. The antics are hilarious. And the performances, some of which are really over the top, are just great.

Something happens towards the end of the second act however. It's as if the filmmakers decided that they didn't want their film just to be a stupid farcical romp and tried to throw some kind of story in there. With some kind of life lessons from Alduos Snow. That's where the film took a turn for the worse in my opinion.

By the end, I was just glad it was over. Weird score on this one. First half would get huge high marks, but last act hurts this one a lot.

Short, Sweet, and Spoiler-free. Okay, I'll admit it, this is not my cup of tea. But my movie-girlfriend wanted to see this, and since I'd just dragged her to Kick-Ass (she liked it) I figured I owed her one. I went into this cold and was pleasantly surprised on a number of fronts...[more]...

Short, Sweet, and Spoiler-Free...[more]...

Short, Sweet, and Spoiler-free as always. Iron Man 2 delivered what it promised. A lot of people felt let down by this film, but I think that's partially because everyone was caught by surprise by the success of the first film.

This film started off strong and I felt it lost its way a bit in the middle, it got a little muddled and a little slow. But made up for it by the end.

One thing that was really obvious in this picture was that Marvel Studios is really starting to treat their films like their comics.
Whereas in the first Iron Man film we stayed pretty much with Tony Stark and his immediate entourage with only a nod or small cameo to hint at the larger Marvel-verse. Iron Man 2 throws other characters into the film almost as much as the title character, Black Widow and Nick Fury especially. I think the difference I had with other folks who did not like this film as much as the first, is that I really enjoyed getting a glimpse at what Marvel has in store for us with the Avengers. But here's hoping the individual stories don't get too muddied along the way.

Short, Sweet, and Spoiler-free.

I watched a very good documentary called "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters". It is about Steve Weibe's attempt on the world record score on Donkey Kong held by Billy Mitchell. The movie is epic. After being laid off, average-at-everything schmoe Steve decides that he's going to go for the high score at Donkey Kong. The target, a record set back in the 80's by video game legend Billy Mitchell. Complications and personalities ensue.

It starts off about one man's quest to be the best at one thing, in this case, Donkey Kong, and winds up being about the universal struggle about the individual versus a vast empire built around a cult of personality and all the politics and douchebaggery that entails. It is a fantastic film.

Some folks might think that Bill Mitchell gets a raw deal in this flick, in fact, I was on board with that point of view. He is the antagonist by default because he is the record holder and therefore the guy with something to lose. But the doc filmmaker's skewer him with his own words and his behavior in the arcade towards the end of the movie pretty much seal this guy as a douche.

Oh yeah, and Bill, get a haircut ya prick.

Short, Sweet, and Spoiler Free...[more]...