RED

Ehhh... See it in the theater while you have time I guess.


Not that the movie is bad mind you, just a bit slow and campy at time. There are some slick action sequences and such, but overall you'll be familiar with most of the characters right away. Bruce Willis is always cast in these down-n-out law enforcement type roles, which his role in this movie isn't exactly but it's awful close. Morgan Freeman is doing his best intellectual impersonation (with just a bit of action). You'll recognize lots of faces though you may not know all the names. And the movie plot is also pretty predictable so it makes it difficult to be surprised when things happen farther along (like the twist on the twist near the end, I saw it coming an hour earlier).

Regardless, it was overall a fun and enjoyable movie. I'll probably buy it when it comes out on video, and I'd suggest seeing it in the theater before it's gone. Go for a matinee with a bunch of friends and you'll do well. There is a lot of little stuff happening ont he screen, and if you don't have a very large screen to see it all you'll miss a few little bits here and there.

Iron Man 2

B+

We saw this recently with some friends at the Kerasotes (now AMC) Showplace ICON theater in Saint Louis Park. We had the VIP seating in the balcony (nice comfy chairs, tables, lottsa space and leg room). These seats are a bit more expensive than the regular admission seating and require reservations/pre-purchase, but they're worth it for the big-deal and/or long movies you really want to see in a theater.

Anyway, you've read the review we did for Iron Man last year. I have to say that IM2 suffers from some of the same problems. Bits of the movie are just plain too long and quite boring, some sections could probably have been left out as they lend not much to the movie over all, and my FAVORITE thing to pick on... scenes in the TV commercials and theater trailers were not in the actual movie (I really hate when studios do that).

Still, generic plot stuff: The son of a Russian scientist that Stark's father worked with years ago on the Arc Reactor (remember the first movie) either bought, stole or somehow acquired plans to the chest power source Tony uses to keep himself alive and power his armor. This guy (who for those familiar with the Marvel Universe is called Whiplash) builds his electric whip weapons and goes after Tony in Monaco at a car race. He fails cause Stark has a portable briefcase sized version of the armor and was able to beat Whiplash, who is arrested.

One of the sub-plots running through the movie is that Tony is slowly being poisoned by the very device keeping him alive, and he's been working on a new design without success. He takes some kind of drink he made up to stave off the effects of the heavy metal poisoning, but is still losing the fight.

Anyway, Whiplash gets out of jail and is hired on by one of Starks competitors who wants not only the power source, but armor suits of his own to sell to the military. Oh, somewhere in between the initial fight and these new suits being developed (remember how I said parts of it were too long?) Rhode's takes the Mark II suit (the silverish one) and hands it over to the Air Force, who in turn hand it off to this guy Hammer that's working with Whiplash now. They mod the heck out of the suit adding weapons and such and call it War Machine, which Rhodes still pilots.

Meanwhile, Stark continues thinking he's dead soon, and starts giving away his company (to Pepper) and tossing out compute files and papers and such, getting drunk and throwing parties.

He eventually discovers that the new element he needs to make a new power source that won't poison him was thought up by his father 20 or more years ago and left hidden in plain sight for Tony to find years later (which he does). Tony ends up creating this new element based on Dad's design and builds a new chest piece that miraculously not only gives him renewed strength gut heals him of the heavy metal poisoning as well, all with-in a few seconds.

Just in time, as Whiplash is taking over all these drones he built for Hammer, including the War Machine suit, and going after Iron Man again.

Big fight ensues, where whiplash dies, the drones are destroyed, Rhodes recovers and helps in the fight, and everyone that needs to live does so.

See? Pretty easy to sum up this movie. Provided I left out a couple people, and a bunch of junk that doesn't really matter to the story.

A good movie if you can get through the boring bits (and there are more than a couple) but worth seeing in the theater regardless if your a fan.

Oh, they find Thor's hammer in the desert of Nevada at the end of the movie (for the upcoming Avengers movie next year).

We did enjoy the movie, and we actually intend to see it again here soon, partly because we did enjoy it, partly because I started day-dreaming in parts of the movie and missed some bits (remember, boring bits). Still pretty good movie with quite a few funny bits thrown in.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Must own, no. Would I mind owning it? I'll buy a previously viewed DVD form the local video store like we did for the fourth Indiana Jones movie ($3.99!!).

Not to spoil things, but this movie isn't the Joe's against Cobra. Cobra doesn't exist (yet) so you get to see the precursor to that.

If your familiar at all with G.I. Joe from the cartoons back in the 70's & 80's, then you'll recognize some of the character names while watching this. A number of your old favorites do NOT make an appearance in this film, but that is somewhat understandable since this isn't the whole Good Guys vs. the persistent Bad Guys yet (no Cobra).

Still, it was quite entertaining overall. I thought they did a pretty good job of bringing the franchise up to date, and found some good people to play the key roles for the most part. Some of the history has been altered, and I can kinda see why it was done that way. Those alterations do a good job of explaining why certain 'outside military' personnel were brought in to the fold, and also does a good job of setting up for future movies in the line.

To keep things short: Duke was seeing this girl, and this girl's brother was a geek assigned to his team for some operation overseas. Things went bad and the brother died. The girl went all Gothic and evil on Duke, and went to the dark side unbeknownst to him.

A few years later, Duke and his team are charged with transporting some new weapon the Gov just bought, and his ex-girl shows up to take his new toys. The Joe's show up during this fight, and Duke and his buddy end up joining them since he has some history with her.

Turns out the ex-girl is working for the really bad guy, and he has lots of other really bad guys working for him. Remember Snake Eyes from the cartoon? He has a 'brother' who's one of the bad guys, and they duke it out at the end. The head bad guy turns out to be Destro, and the dead-brother ain't so dead, and he becomes The Commander (and creates Cobra from the ashes of the other lead bad guy's remains).

Of course the movie does end there, but the writers or whoever built-in a couple spots were a sequel can show up, and I expect there will be at least one.

Overall the movie was good, entertaining and mostly well thought out. There aren't many plot twists, but they are creative and thought out. The movie ended up being mostly predictable for me, but I enjoyed many a school morning watching cartoons before heading out for the day, and G.I. Joe was one of them so I'm still pretty well versed on the history and people involved.

If some friends wanted to go see it again in the theater, I probably would. And when it comes out on video (provided there isn't some big deal alternate version or something on Blu-ray) I'll most likely stop at the video store and get a previously viewed DVD. The movie wasn't bad, but I can't see spending $40 on a Blu-ray disc for it (unlike Ironman which I bought on DVD and then later on Blu-ray, gave the DVD to my parents).

Your kids would like seeing this movie I think. It's high tech, but not so technical that young teens wouldn't understand what's going on (provided they like this kind of movie).

The special effects and overall cinematic experience can't be ignored though. If your going to see this movie, try to catch it in a good theater before the run ends. It'll make a difference.

Star Trek

This was odd for me. I'm not a huge fanboy of Star Trek or anything like that, but I've seen enough of it often enough to have a good feel for the 'universe' and history of Star Trek.

That said, they've just rewrote the book.

Lots of TV shows and stuff talked about this movie as a prequel to the rest of everything (Trek before Trek ever was I guess). It's not a prequel. Don't go into it thinking that or you'll be disappointed if you do (ask Maryanne about that).

This movie was really quite good (note: not GREAT). The writers have taken a very special opportunity (to me it seems that way) to reinvent the entire series all over again. Of course, they use time travel to set the whole thing up (seems to be a rather large crutch the writers continually fall back to) but it still works alright if you just let it be.

The interesting thing with this is that now future teams of writers can do whole new stories, create an entirely new history basically, for all of Star Trek. Hopefully, that's what everybody was thinking when they were writing and shooting this, and they'll jump on the possibility of creating a more up-to-date version of Star Trek for the movie theaters in the years to come.

I'm not dropping specific spoilers (just in case your one of the 17 people in the world that hasn't seen this yet) but it's still not the greatest movie it could've been.

Still, I'm getting this on Blu-ray when it's out.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Ok.

We've seen it. Friends said it was actually bad and not to bother.

Not that I mind that they changed the origin story for this character quite a bit (though in small ways) and introduce characters now that he never met until later in his life (and had him meet them now), and changed the appearance of some characters from the first three movies (though this is technically a prequel), it still was pretty good.

It dragged in spots, some portions of the movie should've ended up on the editing room floor in my opinion, but all-in-all I'll probably buy this on Blu-ray when it comes out.

Remember Sabertooth for the earlier movies? He looks a lot different now, and exhibits powers we hadn't previously seen in him. We get to see Gambit in a bit of action, and he does well. We also get to see a young Cyclops burn through a school.

It was odd don't get me wrong, and it felt like the movie jumped around a bit as I lost track of things at one point (and there is quite a bit to keep track of) and the 45 minutes or so spent on Wolverine's childhood-to-manhood was a bit much (and kinda boring). Still the last half-hour or so makes up for a good chunk of the mistakes (ok, they're mistakes to me).

I'd see it on eh big screen if you get a chance, just try for a matinee show if you can. Not a must own or must see, but well worth $5 bucks on a weekend if you have the time (and your a fan of the series).

Angels & Demons

Ok.

We've seen it.

For a Prequel story, they worked awful hard at making it a sequel (seemed that way to me). BUT the main character, Langdon, doesn't do the same kinds of things he did in the first movie, doesn't even act quite the same way. You remember in the Code when he was thinking through a problem they did a nice special effect to show us what/how he was thinking? You won't see that here.

The story is good, though the plot twist was obvious and expected (I nailed it not an hour into the movie, and when I say nailed I mean dead on).

Still, it was interesting none-the-less, though I'm sure I'll think twice before I purchase it on DVD/Blu-ray when it comes out. It just wasn't that memorable. In fact, we created our own double-feature and saw another movie after this one (see next review) and after that movie I had to ask what we saw first because I simply couldn't remember. That's how forgettable Angels & Demons is. It was bad, it just wasn't all that great either.

IRONMAN

If you haven't seen this yet, what the heck are you waiting for????? First really, truly good movie I've seen in a couple years. We're planning on seeing it again tomorrow!

When I heard that Robert Downey Jr. was playing Tony Stark, I was a bit worried. I've seen Downey in a couple other action-type movies (like US Marshalls for example) and was not impressed. He did ok in those, but that's about the best I could say.

He was PERFECT for Tony Stark. His style of humor delivery fit perfect, and he was believable as Stark. I was quite surprised, and happy to be.

I was a slight bit annoyed with the way Pepper was written, but it still works with this movie.

YOu have to understand that I'm a Marvel fan and I'm quite familiar with the backstory for Ironman. This script changed a few things here and there, and took a few liberties with established history of Ironman, but again for this movie it works quite well, and I found myself very engrossed throughout the entire movie (first time in years too).

Oh, if you haven't seen the movie yet, please do yourself a favor and STAY SEATED UNTIL THE CREDITS ARE DONE. Little bonus for you after the credits, which also points the way to a couple more movies in the future.

I really, really enjoyed this movie. Maryanne really enjoyed this movie (which was a bit surprising as well). All of our friends and their kids that we saw this with really enjoyed the movie. The special effects were quite good, though noticable in a few places. The story was well done, and we even get introduced to a few 'future' characters like War Machine.

This is a must see. It's also a must own. For me, it's a must see again. I really hope they get the DVD out later this year.

Go see this movie. Unless you don't like Ironman, or don't like comics, or don't like action movies, or don't like fight scenes, or don't like real character developement, then don't.

But trust me, you'll like this movie anyway. GO! Do yourself a favor and catch it in a theater before it ends its run.

Transformers - July 6, 2007

Her perspective: Must See

Synopsis: In 2003, the Beagle Mars Rover was launched. We were told that it crashed. It's final transmission was classified top secret. It was the only warning we were given. Now the dueling alien races of the Autobots and the Decepticons have brought their battle to earth and the future of humankind is hanging in the balance. It's their war, but it's our world!

Review: This is one that you need to see on a big screen. The fights are a bit hard to follow due to the constant "morphing" while the action is going on. The special effects are quite impressive, though, and the story line is a little slow moving at times, but very well thought out. The writing was great, with quite a bit of humor. I was also impressed that they were able to use the original voice of Optimus Prime.

However, if you know nothing about the Transformers going into the movie, you will be somewhat confused. I knew a little bit from watching bits and pieces of the cartoon when I was little, but I never got into it, so I didn't fully understand everything.

Shia LaBeouf is really coming into his own establishing himself as a leading man. However, I think he will always be an underdog type character. Josh Duhamel was excellent in a military role and I think we will be seeing much more of him.