***1/2

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 Review

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The first Guardians of the Galaxy is one of my favorite Marvel movies in large part for how different it is from the rest of them.  There are definitely certain beats that it hits that are similar, but it is not just the same origin story we’ve seen a dozen times now.  Its combination of action, humor and music made for an perfect theater going experience and James Gunn voice was apparent throughout. Its sequel, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, doubles down on the things that made the first movie great.  Instead of trying to go bigger than its predecessor, it digs in deeper with its characters to make an unusual and wonderful sequel.

I won’t deny that Guardians 2 gets kind of messy at times.  There is plenty of convenience in the plot and characters have a habit of just flat out saying the themes in dialogue, tt splits the cast up into several smaller groups for most of the movie, limiting their ability to play off each other, and the final fight scene gets a little incoherent for stretches.  None of that did much to lessen my enjoyment of the movie.  

The plot involves giving the team exactly what they want, from Star-Lord meeting his dad to Rocket managing to push everyone away.  But like in nearly all fiction, maybe the things they wanted are not what they needed.  So obviously, things go awry.  That is true for returning supporting characters as well.  Nebula plays a big role again, with her allegiance shifting from being a villain to something more like a nemesis. Yondu, also sees a bigger role and reveals his true colors as the movie goes along.  At the end, you really feel like you know these characters better than you did before.

The balance between characters isn’t perfect.  Drax has little to do besides be nearly perfect comic relief and Rocket gets largely sidelined after the midpoint.  New character Mantis’s role is small and very little about her is revealed.  The movie also continues Marvel’s villain problem, with this movies bad guy ceasing to be interesting at all once his villainy is revealed.  I don’t know that these are really problems. The movie is stuffed as it is, I don’t really see how much more they could have done with Rocket or Drax or Mantis without adding significantly to the movie.  

The soundtrack, a big part of the first movies charm, is maybe even better here.  This movie features some deeper cuts, and a does a little more work to call attention to itself, but it all works in context.  It also retains the humor from the first movie.  My two biggest complaints are about jokes that just absolutely didn’t land for me, but those are small problems in the deluge of moments that did work.

It also, to my complete delight, further embraces the acid trip weirdness of Marvel’s cosmic characters.  We actually see the face on Ego The Living Planet. Yondu gets his full mohawk.  It is just overall more willing to get weird with things, and that is what I love about comic books.  I am glad to see them be rewarded for embracing this stuff rather than trying to sand it off.  We’ve come a long way from the X-Men refusing to wear yellow in their first movie.

Maybe I am still just riding a sugar rush after watching this movie, but I loved it unreservedly. I haven’t really felt that way about one of these since the previous Guardians of the Galaxy, I guess.  In some ways it is the perfect example of more of the same, in others is wonderfully different.  I liked all of it.

****1/2

The Fate of the Furious Review

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The Fast and Furious series, despite its recent success, is in a state of flux. As emotional as the previous entry’s climax was, it also pushed the ridiculousness to the absolute limits and removed a vital part of the series’ appeal. Fate of the Furious finds a way to forge ahead after the loss of Paul Walker’s Brian, but the loss of his grounding presence is felt. While it doesn’t attempt to match Furious 7’s cartoonish ridiculousness, it also can’t match the movies genuine emotion. Still, there is a lot to like about this 8th entry in the series, like an increased amount of The Rock and more cohesive plot.

The Fate of the Furious starts with Vin Diesel’s Dom and Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty on their honeymoon in Cuba. After a very entertaining race, Dom meets with Cipher (Charlize Theron), who shows him something that upsets him. When the team is contacted by Hobbs (The Rock) to join him on a secret mission to retrieve an emp device from Germany, Dom turns on the team, stealing the device for Cipher. While Hobbs initially goes to jail for his part in the operation, he is soon extracted by Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) along with a new forced ally, the previous movies villain Deckard Shaw. From there, the team travels around the globe trying to stop Dom and Cipher while Dom tries to extricate himself from her blackmail. There are some really good action sequences, like the prison break and an extended fight sequence on a plane that makes full use of Jason Statham’s skills.

There are some weak spots. Charlize Theron is almost completely wasted as Cipher, spending most of the movie standing on a plane looking at a computer monitor saying nonsense like “hack them all.” While Statham’s face turn is welcome, it feels like they all but ignore the fact that he killed Han. That should be a big deal. Also, once recurring character gets the rawest of raw deals. The team dynamic is also not quite what it should be. Part of that is the movie itself, with Dom being forced to play the villain, but it also due to the lack of Brian to be the counterweight to Dom’s self-seriousness. The movie tries to find a balance with more of Hobbs and an increased role for Statham, but neither of them are really playing people. They are almost cartoon characters. Completely delightful, but they are far from the grounding presence that Walker was. In a movie series that has pushed far into the stratosphere of ridiculousness as this one, having at least one character that plays it a little small really helps.

I’ve read several reviews compare Fate of the Furious to the Pierce Brosnan James Bond movies. This is usually an unfavorable comparison – because people tend to be wrong about how awesome those Bond movies were – but I think it is both apt and part of what makes the movie so enjoyable. It is a spy movie, filled with ridiculous near future technology and action that underplays its ridiculousness. While the stunts aren’t quite as crazy as the last movie, the plot coils around on itself into the pinnacle of preposterousness. The movie even manages to pull off the villain reveal that Spectre tripped over so pathetically. Fate of the Furious doesn’t come close to ascending to the heights of Fast 5, but it is still a solid entry into what the series became after the movie launched the series to the top of the action movie heap.

***1/2

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

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rogueone

Like last years The Force Awakens, Rogue One is a Star Wars movie that exists to comment on Star Wars. Specifically on Star Wars: A New Hope. The Force Awakens was a restatement of purpose. It was A New Hope again, consciously and purposefully. It gave viewers new, immediately iconic characters to root for, but it didn’t break a lot of new ground. It was Star Wars as you always remembered it. I wonder how that is going to age, but it was the right move for last year, for getting people back into the series ten years after the middling prequels. Rogue One, on the other hand, seeks to remind viewers of A New Hope by filling in the cracks around that movie. It is a movie about how that movie came to be, with as many reminders as possible. It nears the ghoulish at times, like with its digital recreation of Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin, but for the most part it works at putting the viewer on the margins of the grand saga and giving a different perspective on the series.

Rogue One does have a completely different perspective than other Star Wars movies. This is not a tale in the grand saga of the Skywalker family and the force, while it is mentioned and plays a role in the movie, is not a big part of it. This is a grittier look on how the Rebellion got well and truly started, with Jyn Erso, the daughter of an Imperial scientist, conscripted by the nascent Rebel Alliance to find a message from her father that might give them information about the secret project he is working, which is in fact the Death Star. She is joined by Cassian and K-2SO, a rougher take on Han & Chewie to seek out her old mentor Saw Gerrera, who is said to have the Imperial Pilot that carried the message. Eventually this leads to them and a small handful of others taking on a dangerous mission as a last ditch attempt to give the Rebels a chance to stop the Death Star.

Perhaps the movie’s greatest flaw is that it doesn’t truly flesh out Jyn. It gives her a starting point and an endpoint, but it never really shows her change. Rogue One doesn’t do a great job of letting the viewer in on her thoughts, so it is hard to understand her changes. For the rest of the impromptu crew it works. The Viewer is meant to question Cassian’s loyalties at times, so his remoteness makes sense. The others from K-2SO, an amusing combination of C-3PO and Chewbacca, who is all quips to the badass duo of the force attuned blind warrior Chirrut Imwe and heavily armed Baze Malbus, are side characters with simple or no arcs, we are given all the information we need to sympathize with them. But Jyn, the protagonist, is kept just as far from the viewer as the rest. She gives a rousing speech before the start of the third act. It is a great speech, but it doesn’t really follow what we’ve seen from her character. It seems like there is a scene missing where she lets go of her reluctance to commit to the rebel cause.

Around the dangerous covert missions is the second point of Rogue One, which is that it works as connection tissue between the prequels and the original trilogy. That is where the numerous references to A New Hope come from; the movie is determined to set its place in the timeline to just before the original trilogy started. But there are also references to the prequels, like Jimmy Smits resuming his role as Bail Organa, adopted father of Leia. It is certainly a Star Wars movie, but while it does do anything to further the saga, it is a great story in its own right while also providing some much needed connective tissue.

Rogue One is deliberately not the crowd pleaser that The Force Awakens was, but for all that is was a movie about the series past, I think it delivered more new Star Wars moments. The characters, while in some cases reminiscent of other Star Wars characters, actually felt new. I don’t mean to denigrate The Force Awakens, which laid the seeds for the future of Star Wars and its character are sure to stick with viewers for a long time, but they also feel like there were created with more in mind than the story of just the movie. Rogue One just feels more impactful. As a one off, its character’s stories are told all in this one film. Between that and some of the best action scenes in the series, Rogue One is one of the most satisfying movies of the year.

****1/2

The Adventures of Tintin Review

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Tons of movie review clichés come to mind when thinking of The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. “A non-stop thrill ride” or “action packed.” For once those clichés are completely true. With Tintin, Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have made the best action/adventure movie since Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Based on a series of Belgian comics, The Adventures of Tintin is a truly wonderful experience. Once it hits its stride, it never slows or lets viewers catch their breath. It is easily the most fun movie of 2011.

Spielberg is the modern master of the adventure movie. There has been nothing for the last 20 years to match the Indiana Jones series. Tintin is Spielberg at the height of his powers. Every moment of this movie is just brimming with action. Fistfights, gunfights, and a marvelous pirate swordfight. It also features possibly the single best car chase I’ve ever seen on film. It is literally a thrill a minute.

Even with the constant motion of the plot, the heart of the characters comes through. There is the comically bumbling Detectives Thomson and Thompson, the drunken but stouthearted Captain Haddock, and the devious villain Saccharine. Tintin himself is somewhat bland, a solid everyman who never quits but lacks outstanding characters traits. Which is the intention, he plays the straight man to everyone else’s funny man.

The plot involves Tintin buying a model ship, only to find a piece of a map to a magnificent treasure. While he tries to unravel the mystery of the Unicorn, the name of the model ship, he ends up in a race against a monstrous criminal with only the aid of a bumbling drunken ship captain.

The only flaw of the film is its method of animation. It maybe could have been live action, or it could have been traditionally animated. But no, they used that incredibly off-putting and terrible uncanny valley monstrosity motion capture. The technique has been used to great effect in live action films, but the films that use it exclusively are uniformly bad looking. Tintin actually looks better than most, but many of the characters are more cartoon shaped, playing off the look of the comic characters, rather than trying to look like real people. Still, it is an unfortunate choice.

The other problem I had was also a viewing problem, but this coming rant is largely unrelated to Tintin. For the love of God can 3D movies die already. I can not think of a single film that has been improved by being in 3D. It makes the screen darker, the already overpriced tickets cost more and encourages bad filmmakers to show something coming out of the screen right at you! Wow! As far as I’m concerned, 3D can fuck off and go away forever. If I have a choice, I will never choose to see a movie in 3D, and have actually decided not to see films because they were only available in 3D near me.

The Adventures of Tintin, though, is really great. Any lovers of adventure owe it to themselves to see this. Spielberg and Jackson are a dynamite combination. This is just a wonderfully fun movie.

It is Time to Meet Them

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The Muppets Review

I saw The Muppets last week. You should do the same. It is a terrific movie, even for those who are not already fans of the Muppets. It manages to both cash in on viewers nostalgia while still offering something new.

Some of the new additions to the Muppets world are this movie’s main characters: brothers Gary and Walter, as well as Gary girlfriend Mary. While these characters eat up a lot of screen time, they never feel obtrusive. Rather than pull attention away from the real stars, Kermit and Piggy and Fozzie, they offer new viewers a lens in which to view the old beloved characters. Gary and Walter love the Muppets, and they help show new viewers that they should love them too. It is especially amazing how likable Walter is, considering he is a new Muppet made just for the movie. He could have been the Scrappy Doo of the movies, but his sunny optimism and suitably reverent of the true Muppets that he is a wholly welcome addition.

The movie plays off the fact that the Muppets have been largely out of the spotlight for most of the last decade or so. In the movie they have been broken up as well. Their triumphant return to movie theaters is also a triumphant return in the movie. At the behest of Walter and to save the old Muppet theater, Kermit tries to get the band back together for one last show.

As they travel the country to collect the troupe and prepare for the show, the jokes and bits start coming fast. Not all of the jokes hit, but they move on so fast soon there will be one that if hilarious. Some are great, like Fozzie;s fall to performing with the knock-offs the Moopets and Rolf’s tale. The musical numbers are also largely great, though it doesn’t appear that Jason Segel can dance even a little.

It is a celebration of the Muppets, but also a reintroduction. The movie doesn’t just look back on the Muppets and their history, but it does in a way that welcomes new fans to the fold, not excluding them for not being familiar with the past. As long as the viewer has no preconceived notions about musicals or puppets, The Muppets is sure to entertain. It is certainly more sweet for old fans of the Muppets, though. Whoever your favorite Muppet may be (mine‘s Rowlf), they will get a moment or two to shine. Unless your favorite is Rizzo the rat, who barely appears. I was flooded with warm memories of the Muppets upon watching this, and most of my Muppet related memories are about Muppet Babies.

This is the best family movie of the year, and one of the best movies of the year period. It manages to be funny without being insipid or vulgar, something not many movies accomplish. The Muppets will entertain kids without talking down to them and entertain adults without seeming childish. It is really, really good.

You Call this Archaeology? Part 4 Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

So now, it is time for the last, at the present, of the Indiana Jones movies, the much-maligned Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I know a lot of people don’t like this movie and think it is a crime against the rest of the franchise if not cinema itself. Those people are wrong, and probably stupid. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, while not without its foibles and a few sour notes, is an excellent continuation of the series. It takes the impossible task of making a sequel after 20 years that still feels like the earlier films and not only succeeds, it turns the time gap into one of the films greatest strengths. I have two goals in this review. The first is to show why I like the movie so much. The second is to show how wrong you (the hypothetical you that dislikes this movie, because I‘m sure most people reading this are smart enough to see how awesome this movie is) are for hating it. Sounds easy to me.

Like with the rest of the movies, we can look to the opening scene for a statement of intent. In Raiders it was the Indy/Belloq rivalry, in Temple ‘Anything Goes’ and in Crusade it was Jones Sr./Jr. The opening scene in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a statement of intent for the rest of the film. Only it seems that most viewers were too distracted by CG prairie dogs to notice. The first sound heard is Elvis Presley’s Hound dog. That is important. It is one of the most famous songs from the ‘50’s and the film is trying to establish setting. It is the same as the shot of the mushroom cloud in a few minutes. This is Indiana Jones in the nuclear age. By this time, the pulp heroes of the ‘30’s that he is based on had disappeared. In their place rose Sci-Fi movies and creature features. Concerns over the dangers and opportunities presented by new science trumped interest in mysticism and the occult. Indy no longer belongs. The world that exists in 1956 is not the world of 1936. Seeing the mushroom cloud in Indy’s brave new world moment. Such people fill this world as Mac, Indy’s treacherous supposed friend and the villainous Irina Spalko with her interest in pseudo-science. We also get the message that while the world has changed, Indy hasn’t. He is still quick with a supposedly witty quip or an opportunistic escape.

The sticking point for people seems to be Indy’s escape from a nuclear explosion via refrigerator. It is patently ridiculous. Much like him being drug for a few miles behind a truck on rough terrain. Or escaping a crashing plane in a life raft. Judging an Indiana Jones movie on realism is flatly refusing to entertain the film on its terms. I can only assume that the people who decided that this scene was where suspension of disbelief was irrevocably broken has never went back an examined the plausibility of the previous films. The unbelievability is a feature, not a bug and it has been that way since Raiders of the Lost Ark. I agree that in some cases, it crosses the line of acceptance, like most of Temple of Doom, and I’ll agree, grudgingly, that the fridge scene fits that bill. It is but a small thing, and an unimportant one to boot. (Also, the fridge was lead lined, what more do you want?) The important thing is the mushroom cloud. That is the image that should dominate Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

One of the biggest reasons I like Kingdom of the Crystal Skull so much is that it is the only Indian Jones sequel. It is the only one of the movies to pick up on theme’s and characters from previous movies and advance them. In fact, it plus Raiders and Crusade tie together to make an effective trilogy. Temple of Doom can safely be ignored. Raiders of the Lost Ark is the story of Indiana’s romance of Marian Ravenwood, but neither appears or is mentioned in Last Crusade. Something must have happened to them in between, and the films’ chronology places 2 years between the two movies. It also has Indy chafing against the bureaucracy of government agencies. He is willing to risk life and limb to help them and they are more than willing to deny him his prize. The Last Crusade is about Indy fixing his relationship with his father, about both of them realizing the importance of family. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ties those two ideas together. While Indy was preserving one family, he was ignoring another. The lessons he learned in the third movie help Indy resolve his problems from the third.

And we get a stupendous motorcycle chase with Shia LaBeouf looking exactly like Marlon Brando in the Wild One. Now an old man, Indy’s backseat dialogue mirrors his father’s. It is also why the reveal that Indy is Mutt’s dad is not much of a surprise at all. The movie could be any plainer about what was going on. For the next hour of so the adventure is as fresh and pop-y as it ever was. A breathless rush around the world, with only the most tenuous claim archaeological research.

Sticking point number 2 for many people is that the maguffin leads to aliens and not some religious mystical discovery. Frankly, this complaint is asinine. As I alluded to earlier, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is deliberately echoing the zeitgeist of ‘50s, which means aliens and monsters. Indy is still the pulp hero from the 30s, but it is not the 30s anymore. The early parts of the film use a hammer to establish the time period, with popular music of the time and references to greasers and McCarthyism. It is brilliant, placing the pulp hero in a different milieu. Drawing the line at the existence of aliens, period, in the world seems a strange choice, since no one had problems with the veracity of Hindu death cults, the powers of the Ark of the Covenant or meeting immortals thanks to drinking from the actual Holy Grail. The Sci-Fi twist is one that makes perfect sense for what Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is doing. Same goes for the giant ants. They fit in perfectly with a crazy sci-fi adventure. This is why the Mutt as Tarzan scene fails so terribly. That obvious reference flat doesn’t fit in the rest of the movie. It is jarring and definitely strains suspension of disbelief. Luckily, it last all of 1 minute.

There are several one those jarring moments in Kingdom. Not as many as in Temple of Doom, but enough that it doesn’t rise to the level of Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Last Crusade. Those are two the best adventure movies of all time, Kingdom isn’t near that level. But it is not the unholy abortion that people want to make it seem. It is a good, very good even, adventure movie. It is certainly better than any entry in the genre since the Last Crusade. (I would love to be proved wrong about this, by the way. Just don’t say National Treasure or I’ll laugh in your face then push you down.) All that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull needs to be enjoyed is a willingness to engage it on its own terms. A willingness not to go in wanting exactly Raiders of the Lost Ark again. An open mind. Too bad that seems too tall a task to ask of most viewers.

You Call This Archaeology? Part 2 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

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Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Welcome back to my week long re-watch of the best series of films to ever be released in American Cinemas, in my humble opinion at least.  Today I’m reviewing what in my opinion is the weakest of the Indiana Jones movies, though even at that is a mostly enjoyable 2 hour adventure.

Raiders of the Lost ArK gets almost everything right, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom messes it all up. Still, it is a hard movie to hate. The problem is that it is impossible not to compare it to the rest of the series and it cannot hold up to that comparison. To Lucas and Spielberg’s credit and the movie’s detriment, they didn’t simply rehash Raiders. Temple of Doom is darker and despite being built around some supposedly cut Raiders’ set pieces more ambitious than the first movie. Unfortunately, its reach was beyond its grasp.

The first and biggest problem with Temple of Doom is its attempts to top Raiders of the Lost ArK. The attempts to make this one bigger pushes it beyond the limits of believability, both in the narrative itself and in the special effects. Indy’s feats were on the outer cusp of believability in Raiders, possible if improbable. With Temple possible is thrown right out of the window. Part of that is the tone of the film sung to the viewer in the opening musical number. Anything goes. (If you don’t enjoy the musical number this is definitely the wrong movie for you.) That holds throughout the movie. Anything goes in terms of what Indy is capable of. Have Indy jump out of a falling airplane on an inflatable life raft into a waterfall? Sure, why not. Anything goes. Too bad the special effects couldn’t quite make it believable. Indy’s greatest strength is in his humanity. That his adventures, while exotic and amazing, are within his abilities. The situations do not have to be even remotely believable. The magic stones and Indian murder cults are not this movie’s problems. Its biggest flaw is that often I do not believe that Indy could do what he is doing. Which is not that frequent, but it happens. Like the crash scene I mentioned already. He occasionally gets pushed out beyond his capabilities by the movies attempt to top Raiders. And while Raiders has the face melting scene, Temple of Doom is filled with effects that have aged poorly.

Anything goes with the tone as well. The villains are more visibly villainous, probably because no one need to be told how evil Nazi’s are. There are murders from the opening minutes. Not death by ancient trap, but actual murders. This movie is notably and intentionally darker than the rest of the series. It is right there in the title Temple of Doom. It is about Indiana Jones breaking up a child slavery ring. While it is darker, it is also goofier. Indy’s two sidekicks are wholly comic relief. Short Round is mostly enjoyable as Indy’s young double, though it has uncomfortable racist overtones. Willy Scott is a crime against the rest of this film. Marian was capable, if in over her head. Willy is completely out of place and wholly unlikable. She undermines the movies attempts to set up a central family dynamic among the three protagonists. She is even more of a child than Short Round. By the end of the film, the viewer is supposed to believe that they have grown together into a believable family unit, but the relationship between Indy and Willy never feels real. Indy and Short Round, however, become a very believable father/son duo. The setting and subject are much darker than the rest of the series, but it is counter by increasingly jokey and forced humor. Nowhere is the divide more visible than in the dinner scene at Pankot. While Indiana tries to get to the bottom of the rumors of the stolen stone and the rise of the Thuggee cult, Willy and Short Round face a farcical array of disgusting looking food. One side of the table is dark and mysterious, the other if filled with bad gross out jokes. Anything goes, no matter how schizophrenic it makes the experience.

While there are failures in tone and effect, they do not overwhelm the quality of the adventure. The opening scene in Shanghai is nearly perfect; from the song and dance routine to the chaotic shoot out to the car chase, it is a scene worthy of the best of the series. Once they get into the Temple, the movie picks up. Indy’s forcible induction into the Thuggee cult, through the Black sleep of Kali (reminiscent of Hot Potting from Rider Haggard’s She, though less murderous), lays it on a bit strong. It manages to continue the tone of being both startlingly dark and laughably silly at the same time. Telling, perhaps, is that Indy is saved by Short Round, not Willy. There is no chemistry between Indy and Willy; I can easily believe that the thought of sending her to her death wouldn’t snap him out of it. However, when Short Round arrives he does manage to snap Indy out of it. Those two have a connection that Willy doesn’t share.

The last half hour of Temple is a whirlwind that, aside from some badly aged special effects, is on par with Raiders. The freeing of the slave children is Indy at his put upon finest. From then on the film gets away from the purely dark and purely silly and is purely fun. The mine-cart chase sequence and the iconic confrontation on the bridge are both excellent scenes. They are bigger in scope than anything in the previous movie, but that doesn’t work to their advantage.

In all Temple of Doom is a flawed film. Indy is not quite the same character as he is in the rest of the series. He is more cynical and seems greedier. It feels as though Ford is playing Han Solo instead of Indiana Jones. The combination of the poorly conceived sidekicks, more Willy than Short Round, and the badly aged special effect keep this film from matching the rest of the series. As a simple adventure movie, it is fine. Slightly too dark for kids and slightly too silly for adults, but a reasonably pleasant ride for all that. Unfortunately, it is hard to view this movie without comparing it to its predecessor and sequels. In that light, it simply cannot hold up. Being the weakest film in an excellent series is the worst one can say about Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, but that is enough to get it damned in most circles.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 Review

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After 10 years of being the dominant pop culture phenomenon, Harry Potter seems poised to finally fade into the background with the release of the final film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. It is not going to disappear, not with the theme park and whatever is going on with Rowling’s new pottermore website, but with no significant new content on the horizon, Potter’s popularity will certainly diminish. Luckily, for Potter fans, Deathly Hallows Part 2 ends the series with a suitable bang. Continue reading →

They Don’t Make’em Like This Any More.

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Super 8 was certainly a pleasant surprise. Going in I had no expectations; before the release I’d barely heard of it. I had heard the name J.J. Abrams and before this I was wholly indifferent to his work. I liked Star Trek but not Cloverfield and I absolutely hated Lost. Then I read reviews of Super 8 that compared it favorable to Spielberg’s output from the 70’s and 80’s and I knew I had to go see it. Jaws, E.T, The Goonies(which I know doesn’t quite count, but close enough), those were the movies I grew up with, wearing out the VHS tapes with repeated viewings; if Super 8 could manage to evoke similar feelings then it was a must see. Super 8 did not disappoint. Though it is comparable to those movies it is more than a nostalgic throwback, it takes the themes and style from movies like E.T and Jaws, but is definitely its own story. For better or worse, Super 8 is a modern take on the themes from those classics, and while not perfect, it is eminently entertaining. Super 8 is likely the best movie of the summer. Continue reading →

Very Classy: X-Men First Class Review

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Much like the previous X-Men movies, X-Men: First Class seizes an overlarge portion of the X-Men mythos and struggles valiantly to weave it into a coherent story. This is no easy task; much of the X-Men’s history is poorly conceived, discordant and just plain contradictory. First Class, though, manages better than the previous entries did to create a coherent film. Still, it tries to do much more than it has the time or the material to. Continue reading →