Eclipse

Well, we didn’t get enough members in our Facebook group to force Chad to see this third installment of the Twilight series (which has now been morphed from a quadrilogy to a quintrilogy… and I will absolutely get to that in a moment), so it is just Gina and I for your reviewing pleasure.

Both of us have read the book series, and I was especially excited with this part of the story because it actually had some action. Go figure… action in a story that focuses on vampires and werewolves?

Kevin: I will say right now that this will be the best movie of this series… Even with the ridiculous addition of a fifth movie that divides the fourth book into two parts. I really hate that they are going to be greedy with this series!

Gina: It’s completely unnecessary. It is only to drag it on and make as much money as they can while they can, and it might ruin the fourth book.

Kevin: They’re trying to make up for how bad New Moon was… Yes, it was horrible! And I truly feel for anyone who didn’t read the book and sat through that garbage!

In contrast to New Moon’s divergence from the book, Eclipse followed pretty accurately (at least as much as a movie can). Something is always going to be omitted but they scrapped the right scenes. Take a hint director of Half Blood Prince.

The A-Team

Just a quick review, better late than never. All three of us saw this together and it was awesome! Lot’s of action, just enough plot without discombobulating the audience, tense action scenes, comedic interludes, (did I mention action?) and just an all around fun and exciting movie. The cast was perfect – Liam Neeson is always great, Bradley Cooper, the guy from District 9 (I always forget his name, and frankly I’ll mis-spell it too), and surprisingly Quinton “Rampage Jackson was good!

Was it cheesy? Yes. Was it plausible? No. But that is how the television series was and in that respect, it did exactly what it was supposed to do. Along the lines of Speed Racer, which was simple, flat, an looked like someone threw up skittles on the film strip, though mimicked the cartoon perfectly. Well worth the watch, and without going to the panel I will just give it a solid 8 of 10 stars.

Toy Story 3

Part three of the Pixar/Disney collaboration phenomenon is probably exactly what you would expect, not as good as the first two but good enough to enjoy while the kids can be visually absorbed in anything so you can relax. And yes, that is what it is.

Bringing Buzz Lightyear and Woody back together to help the other toys come to the realization that their life with Andy may be coming to an end now that he is going to college. Of course there are some misinterpretations and confusion as to what their fate will actually be, but we’re not going to go into the plot because it’s a kids movie. It has just enough to keep the adults interested and that’s good enough.

Gina: It didn’t nearly compare to the first two.

Kevin: That’s expected.

Gina: It is good for the kids.

Kevin: As it should be.

Gina: And it concluded nicely.

Kevin: I was really hoping for the Titanic style ending when they were stuck drifting toward the incinerator and gave up the struggle, held hands, and accepted their end.

Gina: HORRIBLE! It’s a kid’s movie!

Kevin: I’m just saying it would have been a heart wrenching, tear jerking conclusion to the trilogy.

Get Him To The Greek

We’re not going to waste too much time on this spin off of a great movie (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) because honestly Get Him To The Greek was not nearly what it could have been. With a background of Russel Brand’s character, Aldous Snow, already established to a point, the dreary character development was overdone. We were brought into Snow’s life a bit more, but was it necessary for this movie with the direction I assume they were trying to go?

While Get Him To The Greek did deliver a fair amount of chuckles, it did not deliver the movie that the trailers depicted it to be. We are all fans of Russel Brand and were quite excited for this film; especially knowing Aldous Snow was getting his own feature length film. Too bad it was the Snow twelve years past his prime… that really was the plot of the film, a washed up Snow who just put out an album called African Child (just as bad in the movie as it sounds here, but in a good way).

The main point to think about is how often do spin-offs of television shows work? Yeah, that’s probably why you don’t see the same thing on the big screen, and probably why this shouldn’t have been attempted.

Gina: I wish Aldous Snow had stayed in Sarah Marshall.

The Karate Kid

Kid moves to China, finds an enemy after showing interest in a girl, gets beat up, and realizes facing his enemy is the only way to earn respect. That’s all you really need to know if you have been under a rock and never seen the original. Though it is another Karate Kid movie, not a remake.

Geared towards a younger audience than the Ralph Macchio / Pat Morita version, micro Will, Jaden Smith (and I call him that because it was astonishingly like watching mini-me on the screen; acting, manurisms, etc) does a good job in his role as Dre Parker from Detroit. His timing is good, he’s charismatic on screen, and it’s easy to tell that he will follow in his parents’ footsteps for quite awhile.

Kevin: I found it hilarious that Jaden crying on screen was so much more believable than Jackie Chan.

Gina: OK?!?

Pat Morita was sorely missed as the mentor, but Jackie Chan as Mr. Han was a better fill in than anyone else out there at the moment, and it was good to see Chan on the screen again. His martial arts stunts are always stunning. The rest of the cast was decent as well but the only other stand out was the “bad kid”, Cheng, and not for his acting but for his overall mean persona. He looked like a prick!

Gina: I wanted to slap that kid for being such an asshole, but I guess that was the point.

Now, other than the fighting scenes, there was a real lull throughout the film. You really feel the two and a half hour running time, and that is never a good thing.

Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time

The first thing you have to take into consideration before seeing Prince Of Persia is the history of movie adaptations of video games… quite frankly they suck! Do I even have to mention Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros, or the best of the worst Double Dragon?

Now with that we can get to the movie. The Sands Of Time follows a child street rat, Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal), that is adopted by the King for showing an act of bravery and in turn becomes a prince. I’m thinking Aladdin? However his brothers hold a little resentment towards him for not being part of the bloodline. When Persia attacks a peaceful city after word of an arms dealing to Persia’s enemy, Dastan comes across a mystical dagger unbeknownst to its true powers. He then teams up with the city’s Princess to help uncover the true nature of Persia’s attack.

Packed with action there were few slow moments, which worked in its favor because those were definitely the low points of the film. It was said that Gyllenhaal did the majority of his stunts, and while watching, it was quite impressive to know with the amount of Parkour scenes.

Gina: It was entertaining. I don’t understand why it is getting such a bad rap. There was enough action without being too graphic for kids. Coming from Disney it was better than Alice In Wonderland.

Kevin: Well that’s not saying much!

New To DVD: Wolfman

Our newest installment of New To DVD is Wolfman, the remake of an American cult classic horror movie starring Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, and Emily Blunt. I don’t know if this is out already or if it comes out this Tuesday, but it really doesn’t matter because you really don’t want to see it. This had the potential to be a really stunning remake and the previews deserve an Emmy for making it look that way.

The acting was mediocre at best, there was an insulting lack of a storyline, and the special effects (save for a couple transformation scenes) make the original Clash Of The Titans look like Avatar. Del Toro honestly looked like he was wearing the Chewbaca mask from Step Brothers, and no not the movie quality one.

Our review? Chad fell asleep, Gina was web browsing on her phone, and I suffered excruciating pain lasting through the end so that I was able to plead you not to waste your time with this film.

Letters To Juliet

Well I feel like a real movie critic, reviewing a pre screening of a movie and getting it up on the site before it’s released… Yeah, it’s only twelve hours before the morning showing of it, but little victories.

The summers first chick flick (because I’m not counting Bounty Hunter or The Back Up Plan, which are not worth the film they were shot on) proves to live up to the genre with the bantering of young lovers who hate each other at first while having to work together for some un-noteworthy reason before finally realizing that they are actually into each other. Does it really matter the journey that they have to survive? Not really, it just provides the means to the end.

Amanda Seyfried portrays Sophie, a fact finder for the New Yorker who on her pre-honeymoon finds a fifty-year-old letter written to Juliet (of Romeo & Juliet if you didn’t know) asking for love advice and decides to reply, with subconscious hopes, to unearth a true-life love story. And if you men reading aren’t tuning out yet, the grandson of the letters author confronts her to “reprimand” her for her actions which is how she is introduced to one half of the star crossed lovers with whom she plans to reunite with her long lost love. Since Sophie’s fiancé is brutally (and hilariously)

Kick-Ass

As promised, here is the much anticipated review of Kick-Ass… and wow was this a whammy! (yes, I just said whammy) I don’t know where to start with this incredibly smart comedy, action, or however it can be classified. I know anyone who is reading this right now that has seen the preview is probably thinking I’m crazy, but stick with it.

Based on the comic book of the same name, Kick-Ass follows an average geeky high school student who is so curious why no one has tried to become a Superhero that, despite the logical reasoning’s of his friends, decides to pick up a secret persona to fight crime. Little does he know, there is already a father-daughter superhero team working to take down the biggest crime syndicate in the city, and Kick-Ass soon gets caught in the middle.

This starts off as the typical dumb teen comedy that you would predict from seeing the trailers, and then it takes a drastic turn. This becomes a full fledged, legit, superhero action flick along the lines of anything that has come from Marvel (minus Ghost Rider; which coincidentally starred Nick Cage).

Chad: It reminded me of Pineapple Express, where it starts out as a comedy and ends with ludicrous action.

Kevin: And man was the action over the top and gratuitously hilarious.

Gina: The whole movie, I was thinking “this is horrible, how could they make this little girl so brutal”, yet I thoroughly enjoyed it. But I think normal girls won’t like that.

Green Zone, Bounty Hunter, Hot Tub Time Machine, Clash Of The Titans 3D

So… It’s been a while since our last review. We have had a lot going on so here are some quick reviews on a few of the movies we’ve seen recently.

Green Zone:

This one I saw by myself (online for free, but don’t tell anyone). Now I’m not going to get into all the political aspects of how much of this was “truth” and what was Hollywood. Most likely, what ever your views on the war in Iraq are, they are going to be that regardless of this movie.

That being said, this pretty much was Jason Borne takes Iraq. I didn’t realize before I saw it that it was based on true events or that it was even an Iraq war movie. But it didn’t matter. Packed with action along side the intriguing plot, it was very entertaining and thought provoking. It got a lot of knocks saying that there wasn’t enough action, but I found it to be quite fulfilling. Though it was more warfare rather than hand to hand combat, as the Borne movies were.

Kevin: 8.25 of 10 stars.