Movie Reviews - The Last Airbender

So, there is a rumor going around that some moron somewhere is allowing M. Night Shyamalan to make The Last Airbender 2. My move is finished, and I can take time to update my sites again, so I figured that in honor of this awful, awful possibility, I would review the first "film", a movie which gouged an eye out of one of my favorite franchises of all time.

Movie Reviews - Fantastic Four (2015)

Uuuggghhhhh.

Movie Reviews - Terminator Genisys

I saw the first Terminator movie when I was probably too young to see it, but I enjoyed it. I saw the second movie not long after, and I loved it. It was just a spectacular movie, with great effects and action, and a really fun dynamic between the three leads. I've followed the franchise (the movie side of it at least) since. I liked Terminator 3, and I enjoyed things about Terminator: Salvation, but I always considered the second film to be the definitive installment, encompassing everything that made the franchise fun to begin with. This movie wasn't better, but I really feel like it gave the second movie a run for its money.

Warning: Reviewing this movie does sort of demand a certain number of spoilers, so spoilers ahead.

Movie Reviews - Inside Out

When I first saw trailers for this movie, I was genuinely worried. It reminded me of a movie from several years ago, Osmosis Jones, which was about a white blood cell cop who does impossible things to save the human that he lives in, with the help of a cold pill, which, in the movie, is like a kind of Robocop-esque guy. It is an interesting enough movie, and kind of fun, but these characters do things which are biologically impossible, because white blood cells and cold pills aren't sentient. They don't have their own free will, or a desire to do better and try harder. I was worried that this movie would be the Osmosis Jones of psychology. I know enough psychology to know that our individual emotions don't have their own agency beyond the fact that we sometimes can't help feeling them. Our emotions are dependent on our experiences, and they work for us whether we always realize it or not. Thankfully the movie sticks to this truth, and does it very well while telling a very good story about the human condition.

Movie Reviews - Jurassic World

I saw this movie a week ago, and I have been trying to decide how to go about reviewing it since then. Not because it is something special, or something profound, but because it really is a big nostalgia trip, with many similarities to the original movie. This isn't to say that I didn't like it, because I did. I just don't know how to talk about this movie without comparing it to Jurassic Park. So that's just what I'm going to do.

Movie Review - Tomorrowland

Welcome to the world of tomorrow! I'm going to be entirely honest, when I saw the trailers for Tomorrowland, from Disney, it felt someone was teasing a new theme park attraction. I still stand by that. The trailer did one thing well, though, and it took the Roland Emmerich approach and told us very little about the movie itself. Minimalism builds intrigue, and I certainly was intrigued, enough that I looked forward to seeing the movie. I didn't, however, let my expectations get too high. On one hand, I'm glad I didn't. On the other hand, I feel like those expectations could have been inflated a bit, because this movie was actually quite good.

Movie Reviews - Avengers: Age of Ultron (SPOILERS)

Nothing, nothing, will ever recapture what made Avengers so great. It wasn't Citizen Cain or anything, but before Avengers, no one anywhere believed 100% that a crossover story like this could be done, that stars from multiple series of films could come together as supporting players in a new story and work so well together. Afterward, no one anywhere believed anymore that they couldn't. It was a groundbreaking, triumphant study of the strength of human perseverance, driven by great writing that made the villain as likeable as the heroes. Avengers: Age of Ultron was a little different.

Movie Reviews - Cinderella (2015)

I have made no secret of the fact that I love fairy tales. I am pessimistic a lot of the time in my real life, so I find it comforting in my writing and entertainment choices to break out of that a little bit. Besides, ya know, magic. I like magic. Normally when I think about my favorite fairy tales, Cinderella isn't the first that come to mind. Usually I think of Beauty and the Beast (Holy Christ on a Bicycle, Emma Watson is playing Belle in the remake, squee!) or Sleeping Beauty (Maleficent is a BAMF), but this movie has me reconsidering that.

Movie Reviews - Into the Woods

It's a little late, but here, finally, is my weekend review!

I mentioned in a recent post that I really enjoy musicals. One of my favorite movies is Mary Poppins. I have a favorite musical, Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I cried heroic manly man tears both of the times that I saw Les Mis in theaters. I don’t get the chance to see musicals on stage nearly as often as I’d like, but I have seen stage productions of Fame and Les Mis and loved them both. I also desperately want to see Wicked. As a fan of musicals, I openly acknowledge that there is a stark difference between a musical made for the silver screen, and musicals adapted to the silver screen from the stage. After the success of Les Mis, I expect to see a resurgence of movie adaptations of stage productions, and while I’m looking forward to this, I accept that this is sometimes going to be a bad idea.

I also love fairy tales. I am a dude, and I am proud that I love fairy tales. On these notes, Into the Woods.

Movie Reviews - Big Hero 6

I don't enjoy math, and I don't see the point of it a lot of the time, but even I understand that sometimes the simple application of addition can improve a product or situation exponentially. This movie, which I saw the local premier of earlier tonight, embodies this statement. This movie is almost entirely made up of seemingly unrelated things added together to create something better. Marvel Comics plus Disney Animation Studios equals a brilliant new medium for telling great stories to a broader audience. San Francisco plus Tokyo equals a vibrant, visually interesting story setting. A moving story of dealing with loss plus a really action packed, fun, and funny superhero origin equals Big Hero 6.

 

Something Awesome #35 - Movie Reviews - The Maze Runner

And already I contradict myself, and the next Something Awesome that I write is, once again, a movie review. Don't worry, I have a couple of non-movie review full length Something Awesomes coming soon. First, though, I gotta talk to you guys about a movie that I saw the local premier of tonight: The Maze Runner, and, spoiler alert, I really liked it.

 

Something Awesome #34 - Movie Reviews - Iron Man and Captain America: Heroes United

Not to long ago, Marvel Animation Studios released an animated movie that promised to introduce a new, high tech form of animation that combined CG and cell shading, unite two popular heroes in an original story, and tie into the then-recent Avengers film. That movie was called Iron Man and Hulk: Heroes United. I panned it, saying that it was advertised as a tie in to The Avengers only as a cash grab, that it was poorly written with lame humor, and that the animation still seemed unfinished. I don't really remember how I rated it, but I remember that I rated it low. For these reasons, I avoided the second movie in this series like the plague, and after finally getting up the courage to view it, I wish I'd done so sooner, because I actually really enjoyed it.

Something Awesome #33 - Movie Reviews - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a franchise very near and dear to my heart. The old '87 cartoon is one of the first shows that I ever remember watching and re-watching as a kid, and my desire to own a version of each of the four turtles characters in action figure form is a big part of why I collect toys now. I have enjoyed all of the animated series of TMNT, though I like some better than others, and I enjoyed the movie titled TMNT from '07, and both of the live action movies from the '90's (what third movie?). When it was announced that my arch enemy, Michael Bay, would be responsible for bringing TMNT back to the silver screen, I was apprehensive, and when the movie finally came out this evening, I naturally went to see it and witness how completely it had failed so that I might laugh derisively. Too bad for me, though, I didn't hate this movie.

Something Awesome #32 - Movie Reviews - Guardians of the Galaxy

As a fan of Marvel Comics, science fiction and fantasy, even I find it surprising that I actually know very little about the Guardians of the Galaxy. Yeah I have a peripheral knowledge of them, enough to know a bit about the various incarnations of the team, the power sets of the characters, and to love Rocket the Raccoon and Groot. Enough to know at the time of its announcement that this movie would have a tough release if the marketing weren't handled perfectly. Well, it was, selling the truly unusual concept of a man, a green girl, a giant covered in red tattoos, a raccoon, and a tree coming together and becoming super heroes on par with the Avengers to the general public. Thanks to its brilliant marketing campaign, the idea of this movie has hooked even the more down to earth Marvel movie fan and helped to expand what they will accept as film entertainment. It also taught me something. Well, two things actually: that Karen Gillan is hot even bald and with robot parts, and the Guardians of the Galaxy are even more awesome than I thought.

Something Awesome #31 - Movie Reviews - Hercules

Been a while since I've been back here again, twenty-two days to be exact. Twenty-two average, boring days where there wasn't a whole lot of awesome really going on, except awesome of my own making, some of which will be posted here relatively soon. My life has been pretty un-awesome, and there haven't been any movie releases in the last few weeks which have caught my interest, until this evening with the release of Hercules, starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as the titular hero. If you are new to the blog, then you may not know that I love Greek mythology. I'm no expert on it, but I enjoy it, and I have more than a modest knowledge of it. Of all Greek myths, the story of Hercules (or Heracles as he should be called in a Greek setting, as Hercules is the Roman counterpart) is the most popular, and the most-often butchered. Probably the best adaptation to date was the TV series in the nineties starring Kevin Sorbo, Hercules: the Legendary Journeys, and it was still wildly inaccurate because of its nature as an episodic series. Due to the story's horrible track record, I had low hopes for this film, even though it looked better than past attempts. I almost didn't go to see it tonight when it opened. Having seen it, however, I'm glad that I did.

Something Awesome #30 - Movie Reviews - Transformers: Age of Extinction

There are some things that are inescapable. People will always die, Justin Bieber will remain famous for doing nothing that contributes positively to the world, and Michael Bay will keep making dumb action movies, like the Transformers movies. These are facts of life, and they cannot be avoided. It's also a fact that the Transformers movies only peripherally capture what made The Transformers great as a TV series back in the '80's. It's true that you have to have some knowledge of the Transformers universe to follow the plots in these movies completely, and that there are going to be holes. However, I will continue to defend these movies (except for the second one, it was just trash), and despite myself, I feel that this review is going to devolve into me explaining why, unless I get the explanation out of the way quick.

Something Awesome #29 - Movie Reviews - How to Train Your Dragon 2

I've had this blog for a while now, but, sadly, I haven't had it long enough to have been able to review the absolutely spectacular movie How to Train Your Dragon when it was released. It is for this reason that readers of this blog are unlikely to know that I am a huge fan of the Dragon's franchise, from the movies, to the books (upon which the movies are very loosely based), to the weekly animated series on Cartoon Network, which recently completed its second season, under the title Dragons: Defenders of Berk. Why wouldn't I love these stories? They are the perfect blend of humor, adventure, fantasy, and slice of life, and in the case of now both movies, some of the greatest visual effects work that I have ever seen or could ever imagine seeing. I was lucky enough to find time to go this evening to see the local premier of the sequel. I'll admit, I was apprehensive going in despite some really positive feedback from other critics, and let's just say that my apprehension has since been happily put to rest.

Something Awesome #28 - Movie Reviews - X-Men: Days of Future Past

I just got back from my first ever midnight showing of a movie, and what a movie to see as your first midnight showing. What a movie. I could sum up Days of Future Past in one word: awesome. In fact, I kind of want to end the review there. Awesome, score out of ten, done, because this movie just needs to be seen to be believed, but I'm not that kind of reviewer. Just understand that I don't want to spoil this movie for all of you. For once the trailers for this movie didn't give the entire plot away. For this reason, a lot of what I say here will be pretty vague, as the spoiler-y stuff that I put into these reviews is usually stuff that can be figured out from the trailers and therefor not really spoilers at all.

Something Awesome #27 - Movie Review - Godzilla (2014)

I can't say that I'm a huge Godzilla movie fan, as I've only seen a few of them. If fact, the Godzilla movie that I've seen most is probably the one with Matthew Broderick, the only good aspect of which was the design of the monster. This said, however, I've always thought that the classic Godzilla was cool both as a creature and as a character. I never really gave a crap about the whole "warning against the nuclear age" thing that was the reasoning behind the original movie, I just think Godzilla is badass and I wanted to see him destroy things and/or people and other monsters. When Godzilla was announced, I was understandably pretty psyched. A modern Godzilla movie with our current level of special effects could be something really spectacular to look at. I knew right away that it would be a cool movie one way or another, like the Transformers movies, but I never guessed that this movie would turn out to be so much more than that.

 

Something Awesome #26 - Movie Review - The Amazing Spider-Man 2

So it has been a while since I wrote a true Something Awesome, and while I did want to write one on Captain America: The Winter Soldier back when it was just out, that fell into the black hole of time when my login wasn't working (it isn't reliably working now, but I'll take what I can get), and at this point there isn't anything left to be said about that movie. Heck, I don't know if there is anything left to say about this  movie, but I love Spider-Man and its characters (when they're done right), and one way or another my thoughts and opinions on this movie will be put to text. In a way, I'm glad that my first full length Something Awesome in so long will be on something that I care so much about.