Sunday, July 31, 2011

QUICKIES:LATEST DVD AND MOVIE REVIEWS

CAPTAIN AMERICA- Steve Rogers gets the big screen treatment in a film that is a good film but not great. Rogers starts out as a skinny asmatic who desperately wants to fight the Nazi's. His size makes him 4F but once injected with super serum he turns into Chris Evans and kicks butt against Red Skull, played as well as could be by Hugo Weaving. The films spends too much time in the past and Captain America is kind of a dull superhero, but the action scenes are very well done and Evans is fine as Rogers. The effects making Evans into a scrawny shrimp are well done and seamless. I just wish they had propelled him forward in time sooner with a more fish out of water scenario.

3 stars out of 5.

SUCKER PUNCH- One of the worst movies of the year. Tedious, overwrought but pretty to look it, it reminded of another Zack Snyder film 300, which I also didn't care for. The guy can direct, as Watchmen and Dawn of the Dead were brilliant. But this is his first, and hopefully last, film that he wrote and directed. The writing is awful, the story moronic and the fact that most of the movie takes place in a girl's head takes any kind of suspense or mortally away from this drek. Somebody should have stepped in and told him this film was not going to work. It didn't. Perhaps if it had been done in a hard R fashion instead of this weak PG-13 something could have been salvaged. But they didn't and this waste of time was created. Avoid at all costs.

1/2 star out of 5.

SOURCE CODE- I'll admit, I didn't have much interest in this film when it first came out. Not only is it a great movie, it's a great sci-fi film. Jake Gyllenhall stars as a soldier in a top secret experiment to go back in time to help prevent a terrorist attack. He has only eight minutes each time to find the bomb, the bomber and save the girl in Groundhog Day fashion. It's funny, exciting and well worth the rental. A must rent.

4 stars out of 5.

SEASON OF THE WITCH- This film got some of the worst reviews of the year. True to form, as with every Nicholas Cage movie over the past decade, I strongly disagreed. This was an excellent movie filled with action, suspense and thrills. Cage plays a Templar Knight who deserts with Ron Perlman after an attack on a castle causes the deaths of innocent women and children. Later captured, he is given a chance to redeem himself by transporting a suspected witch for a trial in a faraway town. We are left wondering is she a witch or not? Previous scenes let us know that witchcraft does exist in this world but innocent people along with the guilty are being prosecuted and we don't know which she is until very late in the film. A great popcorn film.

3 and half stars out of 5.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon: Third Time’s The Charm

It’s no secret that I really, really didn’t like the last two Transformer movies. True, I missed out on the whole Transformer toy craze by a few years so the nostalgia factor was not a concern for me. What I did see were two lousy movies. The first one was okay in a giant robots are cool kind of way, but the historical inaccuracies made me think Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann had written it. The second was just plain awful with an incomprehensible script, insipid dialogue, and borderline racist overtones. I spent more time looking at my watch than I did the screen. So my hopes for this one being any better were very low. I was wrong.

This was not only a great Transformer film but it was also one of the best summer tent pole pictures that have come out this season. Shia LaBeouf returns as Sam Witwicky, who as he is getting older is looking more and more like a Mini-Me version of Liev Schreiber. Sam is broke, unemployed and desperate for work. Victoria Secret model, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is Sam’s new girlfriend, Carly, replacing the fired Megan Fox for calling director Michael Bay “Hitler.” Not a good thing when the producer is Steven Spielberg who is Jewish and a huge backer of the Holocaust Project, a film study of survivors of the World War 2 concentration camps. Unfortunately, as much as a pain in the ass Megan Fox is, she can actually act. Whitely is sure fun to look at but her acting skills are somewhere between The Situation and a gravy ladle.

After finally being hired by a manic John Malkovich, Sam is accosted by a senior VP, played to the twitchy hilt by Ken Jeong. Both provide great comic relief. Jeong knows who Sam is and what he’s done, having worked for NASA in the past. He informs him that there is a big cover-up over the original moon landing, but before he can tell any more, he is killed by one of the Decepticons.

Sam returns to the base holding Optimus Prime and the other Autobots and informs them of what he has found out. While there he encounters a prickly administration suit, played by Oscar winner Frances McDormand, and an old battle comrade Lennox (Josh Duhamel). Optimus returns to the Moon to rescue Sentinel Prime, voiced by Leonard Nimoy, and get him back to Earth. Once here, all hell breaks loose as the Decepticons try to turn Earth into a slave planet.

For the most past, this film is non-stop action. The last forty five minutes is mostly a disaster film where Chicago and its inhabitants are reduced to rubble and ash. Unlike the previous movies, there is a plot line that can be easily followed, the dialogue doesn’t sound like it was written by someone for whom English is a second language, and there are many, many great moments from fun cameos to sci-fi references for the geek crowd, like myself.

Best of all, the 3-D actually works for once. There was a lot of worry as Michael Bay’s hyperkinetic style is exactly the kind of directing that would never work in the format. But as they filmed it in 3-D, rather than the awful conversion technique they have used to ruin many a flick like Clash of the Titans, Bay has had to slow down his editing and, as a result, has directed one of his best movies in a long time. Maybe all his films should be in 3-D from now on.

Hit or miss writer Ehren Kruger steps up to the plate, possibly to apologize for the mess that was the last Transformer movie he wrote. The script is funny, action packed and, most surprising, linear. You didn’t have to know anything about the mythology of the Autobots or Decepticons to follow the story. In the previous film you would have needed Cliff Notes, a flow chart and a Rhodes Scholar to explain the plot. Not so here and, at two and half hours, this film surprisingly breezed by.
So if you’re in the mood for some wanton destruction, giant robots, an uber-hot Victoria Secret model and some solid laughs, this is the film for you. It may not win any Oscar’s (other than special effects) but there are worse ways to spend a summer day. I highly recommend it.

4 stars out of 5