The Crazies

Kevin: I’m kinda torn on this.

Chad: It was AWESOME!

Kevin: Well yeah it was awesome… I just didn’t know what to make of it at first; not quite horror, but kind of suspense thriller.

Chad: Yeah, more like a survival movie.

Kevin: It was good that they went that direction with it. It was not the norm. It could have fallen into the typical cliché of the genre, but instead they had their own thing going.

Chad: Speaking of cliché… How bout that guy shooting the dead crazy out of nowhere. It’s about time someone just blew the head off instead of just looking at them to see if they were dead or not and giving them a chance to attack again. Not that he was all there himself, but hey…

But what happened to the third hunting buddy, he just went walking away there at the truck stop.

Kevin: Oh yeah… Well I guess he got nuked!

Cop Out

Because of her hatred for Tracy Morgan, Gina did not join Chad and I for this. I know, I know… It’s hard to believe since he is pretty hilarious.

Chad: Agreed. But he wasn’t as funny as I thought he’d be in this.

Kevin: At least he’s not nearly as annoying as Chris Tucker.

Directed by Kevin Smith (yes, the Kevin Smith that has brought us such comedy classics as Clerks, Mallrats, Dogma; and I could probably list all of his movies), follows the line of previous cop comedies as Bad Boys and Rush Hour, and sports a musical background like that of Beverly Hills Cop. While not as much action as Bad Boys and missing the high pitched and barely audible voices of Rush Hour, Cop Out does pair Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan who combine for quite the juxtaposed duo.

Chad: I think they were terrible together.

Kevin: Nah… they did all right.

Chad: OK... But the Mexican guy from Half Baked was not believable as the gangster AT ALL!

It’s the typical plot you would expect. Jimmy Monroe (Willis) and Paul Hodges (Morgan) create chaos trying to capture the bad guy, and though meaning well, cause a huge mess for the police force and get suspended without pay. This causes Monroe to resort to selling his rare baseball card to pay for his daughters wedding. The card gets stolen, ironically, by a baseball obsessed drug runner who orchestrated the bad guys our duo were originally after. And our comedy caper begins!

Shutter Island

We’re going to get right into it this time… The three of us, in a conversation regarding Shutter Island before it was released, predicted the main climactic twist, which lead to predicting a lot of what played out throughout the film. But it didn’t matter; it was engaging nonetheless.

There was not really anything Scorsese did wrong in his most recent endeavor based on the novel by Dennis Lehane. He really made this a masterpiece and will at the least get a Best Director nomination; and very probably take the win. From the opening scenes it was apparent this would become a treasure of cinematic brilliance likened to some of the Alfred Hitchcock classics. You really feel like you’re in a 1950’s movie theatre. The score itself made the movie, simplistic and powerful, and immersed the theatre in the dark, edgy, psychological scheme. In fact, we tried hard and couldn’t really find anything to complain about.

Gina: I could have done without the male wang.

Chad: I guess it added to the shock factor, but that is like an automatic half a star off.

Camera work really acted as a dimensional supporting role considering the mysterious feeling the island housed mental institution portrayed. The cinematography was stunning, and even though it was one of the most disturbingly creepy places I’ve seen, the landscape was beautiful to take in.

Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief

Well first off, I just want to say what a wonderful movie experience we had for this. We had the 50 year old smoker trapped in a 16 year olds body hacking out a lung through the entire show to the left of us, the drunk guy behind us burping at the most inopportune times (as if there is a right time to burp in a movie), and the guy a couple of rows in front of us pulling out his cell phone to text every ten minutes. NICE.

Anyhow, The Lightning Thief is the first installment (of probably many considering the popularity of Harry Potter) of the Percy Jackson and The Olympians book series written by Rick Riordan. Now, all three of us made the point to read the book before we saw the film and were treated to a godlike copy of the Harry Potter books. So we are going to do our best to review the movie without being biased.

Kevin: What the hell did they do?!? They butchered the story.

Chad: It’s so frustrating how much was changed from the book. It was made by the director of Harry Potter, but the Marauders Map… Really? Way to steal ideas!

Gina: Right off the bat within the first minute you could see everything was changed. So disappointing.

Well, we tried.