Wall-E

Wall-E (2008)

Directed by: Andrew Stanton

Starring: Ben Burtt and Elissa Knight

Other Actors of Note: Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard, Sigourney Weaver, Kathy Najimy, John Ratzinberger

Plot: What if mankind had to leave Earth, and somebody forgot to turn the last robot off? After hundreds of lonely years of doing what he was built for, WALL*E (short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) discovers a new purpose in life (besides collecting knick-knacks) when he meets a sleek search robot named EVE. EVE comes to realize that WALL*E has inadvertently stumbled upon the key to the planet's future, and races back to space to report her findings to the humans (who have been eagerly awaiting word that it is safe to return home). Meanwhile, WALL*E chases EVE across the galaxy and sets an adventure into motion. Joining WALL*E on his journey across the universe is a cast of characters including a pet cockroach and a heroic team of malfunctioning misfit robots. Taken from www.imdb.com.

"My name is Wall-E Neville. I am a survivor living in New York City. I am broadcasting on all AM frequencies. I will be at the South Street Seaport everyday at mid-day, when the sun is highest in the sky."

Pixar has over a great period of time managed to impress me more and more as the studio has developed. While movies like "Toy Story" and "Toy Story 2", "Finding Nemo", "A Bugs Life", "Cars", and "Monsters Inc." have struck me as "good" movies, films like "Ratatouile" and "The Incredibles" have shown me how amazing that animated films can truly be.

"Wall-E" is no acception to this rule and quite possibly the best film Pixar studios has made thus far. It tells the tale of a robot who was left on Earth to clean up the planet while all the humans left on a giant intergalactic 5 year cruise 700 years ago. Wall-E is the last of his kind, several dead units are seen in early scenes of the film including one which he gets spare parts from.

Wall-E has apparently developed emotions over the years through collecting knick-knacks, watching old musicals, and befriending a cockroach. His life quickly changes when EVE, a search bot sent to Earth to find supportable life, lands one day.

Wall-E quickly falls in love and when Eve heads back to the ship with a plant that Wall-E presented to her in tow, he hangs onto her ship and follows her.

It's good to see Rodney from "Joe's Apartment" is still getting work.

There's very little that can be said about the acting in this movie. Both Wall-E and EVE are vocal but hard to understand and much of their chemistry is through physical actions rather than dialogue. So in this case the acting cred goes to the animators who gave two glorified appliances who can convey emotions through body language and their eyes only very emotional parts.

An odd choice this time is in past documentation the humans are represented by living actors with the President of BnL (effectively the president of the world) played by Fred Willard, this only serves to become confusing when Wall-E meets his first humans and they are all computer generated. This is attempted to be explained by the fact that all human beings have now become fat lazy slobs that do basically nothing on their own, they don't even walk, but even that leaves much to be questioned. This was the one thing I did not like about the movie, if they wished to use real actors they should have kept it consistent rather than changing it halfway through.

Wall-E acts out his romantic ideals while EVE is offline. Subtext, I'm sayin'

The animation as always is nothing short of beautiful, but this time especially Pixar have outdone anything which they have ever done previously, including last year's "Ratatouile." At times it seems very much like what is being played on-screen could be real.

Wall-E seems to unconsciously or consciously draw on several influences. The character himself is like a mixture between R2-D2 and Johnny 5 from the movie "Short Circuit" both in looks and in actions. The scenes on Earth are reminiscent of "I Am Legend" though this is undoubtedly unintentional as the idea for Wall-E came up years before the script for the Will Smith adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel became greenlit.

Scenes aboard the intergalactic cruise ship are without a doubt in reference to Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" with the ship's autopilot Otto bearing more than a passing resemblance to HAL 9000 and even "2001's" theme "Also Sprach Zarathustra" played during a climactic scene involving the captain attempting to stop the autopilot.

Proof that even robots can't figure those things out.

Possibly the most well done part of Wall-E is the satire. It is for all intensive purposes a post apocalyptic movie wherein the human race, now owned by a gigantic company known as Big n Large has effectively taken control of the entire world and through its wastefulness and consumerism has made Earth uninhabited.

So a group of robots known as "Wall-E's" are left to clean up the Earth while humanity remains in space, but apparently the Wall-E's malfunction or just get too old leaving only one left alive. When we see the ship later, Humanity has degenerated to fat lazy slobs whose connection to the world is through media, all meals are drank from large cups in liquid form, they never leave their hover chairs and a conversation between two people via video screen when they are both literally right next to one another hammers the point home.

There are also other nods such as a sign on the moon reading "Big n Large Outlet Mall, coming soon!" and Kathy Najimy's character after having her video screen inadvertently deactivated by Wall-E looking over the commons area of the ship she was born on and going "I didn't know we had a pool."

"Number Five... alive!"

Wall-E is a beautifully animated, written, and just made film. I have hopes that this may just be the film that finally breaks the barrier and gets nominated for a Best Picture Oscar instead of just Best Animated Picture.

I give Wall-E a definite 5 out of 5, SEE THIS NOW!

The Burning

The Burning (1981)

Directed by: Tony Maylem

Starring: Brian Matthews, Leah Ayres, and Brian Backer

Other Actors of Note: Jason Alexander, Holly Hunter, Fisher Stevens

Plot:Cropsy, an alcoholic, sadistic caretaker for the summer camp called Camp Blackfoot is prank-ed by a group of camp-going boys who felt it was necessary to 'get him back'. The prank goes wrong and Cropsy is left in a hospital for five years, yet to no avail Cropsy is left to go back out into the world again but this time he is a changed individual inside and outside. Cropsy, back in society again for the first time in five years, feels more than obligated to pay a visit to some individuals at a place called Camp StoneWater, just across the way from his old stomping grounds...Taken from www.imdb.com.

"I am Murray, the invincible demonic skull! "

80s slasher movies are really a dime a dozen, an easy way of making a buck after "Friday the 13th" came out, everybody tried their hand at these damn things. What's worse is most of them were just gigantic piles of shit. Except "The Burning."

"The Burning" was the first film by Bob and Harvey Weinstein. Sure it was a cheap cash-in on the popularity of the "big guy with knife stabs naked chick" sub-genre but it was one that was well put together.

"The Burning" tells the tale of Cropsy, a prickish grounds keeper at Camp Blackwood who is so much of a likeable guy that the kids decide to play a little trick on him. Unfortunately this trick involves fire and Cropsy sleeps in a building that has a lot of gasoline cans in near vicinity to his bed. So Cropsy busts out of his shack engulfed in flames and tumbles down a hill into the lake.

So he gets taken to the hospital and the burns have apparently turned him into a mutant looking freak. Fast forward to five years later, Cropsy is released from the hospital and shows that he doesn't hold a grudge by stabbing a dumpy hooker with some scissors and heading off into the woods for bloody revenge.

Now in another camp across the lake from the burnt ruins of Camp Blackwood we meet our characters, none of them more important than the other in all reality. They then head out on a two day canoe trip and the magic begins.

"Hey, aren't you that guy from 'Seinfeld?'"

The acting in this film is far better than acting in any 80s movie should ever be. There's no simple line recetation, no characters that feel too fake. Every member of the cast does a wonderful job, so good that I actually have no specific mention of any one person who outshines any of the others. These kids seem exactly like, well, kids. They act naturally and realistically, there's no hokey lines or over the top scenes, it's all real and natural and the entire cast has great chemistry.

Of note are the first ever movie appearances of 3 soon to be popular actors: Holly Hunter (of "Raising Arizona" and "The Incredibles"), Jason Alexander (of "Seinfeld" and "Duckman") and Fisher Stevens (The only thing you're gonna remember him as is "the Indian guy" from the "Short Circuit" movies) and all 3 are wonderful in their roles.

Cropsy's attempts at filming a biography of the life of "Metallica" front man James Hetfield tragically never got past the August 1992 scene.

The effects in this movie (done by effects master Tom Savini) greatly overshadow those that he did in "Friday the 13th" only one year earlier, but it's not just the special effects that shine here, the cinematography is wonderful as well. The way the murder scenes are cut hearkens back to "Psycho" (Only you do see the outcome of the stabbing/cutting obviously.)

One particular scene, known in many circles as "The Infamous Raft Scene", is easily one of the most memorable horror movie kills you will ever see. The moment Cropsy stands up and raises those hedge clippers above his head the hairs will stand up on the back of your neck and send a chill down your spine.

Also, all of the killing (which doesn't properly start until almost an hour into the film) is done in the daylight. All of the murders are done in direct sunlight leaving no shadows or fog to obscure things, it's this detail that makes "The Burning" especially scary, it doesn't rely on the fear of the darkness trick that most other slashers do and still manages to have as much if not more impact than any of those movies.

The film's score, done by "Yes" keyboardist Rick Wakeman, is a bizarre mix of bluegrass and synthesized music that either creeps you out or makes you feel like you're playing "Castlevania" (sometimes both!) but fits the film perfectly and is easily better than the score for most films of the period and sub-genre.

You found hedge clippers! *cue victory fanfare*

I turned on this movie expecting some run-of-the-mill b-movie with a shoestring budget and a horrible storyline. But the storyline, written by Harvey Weinstein is a well thought out work based on a camp fire story told in New Jersey and New York campsites to this day works well as a horror film, easily fitting into a fairly realistic setting.

Originally most of the better effects used during the raft massacre and at a few other parts were cut out of the original version of the film by the MPAA, but the new DVD released fairly recently is the full uncut movie in all its splendor.

"Oh no! Somebody cut the fingers off this fake plastic hand!"

"The Burning" is just a well put together movie and a truly under-rated classic, it's horror the way it should be done and its easy to see how it helped launch several careers. It's great in story, effects, music, acting, and cinematography. A true lost classic.

I give "The Burning" a 5 out of 5, this deserves a place in your collection.

Wanted

Wanted (2008) :Unbiased Review


Director: Timur Bekmambetov

Starring: James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Angelena Jolie

Other Actors of Note: Terence Stamp

Plot:"Wanted" tells the tale of one apathetic nobody's transformation into an unparalleled enforcer of justice. In 2008, we're introduced to a hero for a new generation: 25 year old employed slacker, WESLEY GIBSON. Wes is the most disaffected, cube-dwelling, clock-punching drone this planet has ever known. His boss chews him out hourly, his girlfriend ignores him routinely, and his life plods on in interminable boredom and routine. Everyone knows this disengaged slacker will amount to absolutely nothing, and so does he, until he meets the sexy, foxy woman named FOX, and then everything changes. Wes' estranged father is murdered, and the deadly Fox recruits him into The Fraternity, a secret society that trains him to avenge his father's death, by unlocking his dormant powers. And oh boy does he have powers, as she teaches Wes how to develop his lightning-quick reflexes and phenomenal agility, he discovers that The Fraternity lives by an ancient, unbreakable code: to carry out the death orders given by emotionless Fate itself. Wes, with his wickedly brilliant and sexy tutor, plus the paternal guidance of The Fraternity's enigmatic leader, SLOAN, young Wes grows to enjoy all the strength and success he ever wanted. But, slowly, he realizes there's more to his dangerous associates than meets the casual eye. And, as he wavers between new found heroism and vengeance, Wes will come to learn what no one can ever teach him; that he alone controls his destiny. Taken from www.imdb.com.

Don't make Angelina angry. You won't be able to suppress giggles when she's angry.

An unbiased review?! What on earth could that mean? Aren't all reviews in and of themselves biased? Hey semantics, I thought I told you not to bother me while I'm reviewing! Basically what this boils down to is I have not read "Wanted", the comic miniseries by Mark Miller and J.G. Jones. I will be judging this movie solely on its own merits, not on how good an adaptation it is. Now hold on, fans of the series, get the sand out of your vagina, I will be doing a biased review once I read the book, until then you're gonna have to dry your tears and read further, or don't, I'm sure there's 15 pages of Lolcats you could be reading now or something of that nature.

"Wanted" starts out by introducing us to Wesley (James McAvoy) a working class office drone with a bitchy girlfriend that's cheating on him with his best friend, a bitchy mountain of a woman boss who enjoys cursing more than I do, and basically the shittiest life anyone can think of.

This all changes when Wesley's father is assassinated after doing a bunch of kickass things like jumping between two sky scrapers and head-butting through a plate glass window (His superpower appears to be that he's a soccer hooligan) so Wesley is kidnapped by an elite group of super assassins known as "The Fraternity"

He first meets Fox (Angelina Jolackofactingtalent) at a grocery store where she gets in a big gunfight with the man who killed Wesley's father and then there's a big preposterous car chase and then we're introduced to Sloan (Morgan Freeman) who thankfully does not narrate this movie.

So anyway he trains to become an assassin, finds out that the anxiety attacks he has are actually super adrenaline rushes that give him the ability to shoot the wings off of flies and curve bullets and all that nonsense and that's all I can tell you about this without spoiling anything.

Head butting through CG glass: The most useless of super powers

So acting. You're probably expecting me to slam Angelina Jolie, but at this point it's really been said. She plays the same character she always plays the stoic bad ass women with a past where she lost someone very near and dear to her, she's mildly bitchy but in a cool way, she's the sex symbol of the film, most of her performance involves a pouty look whilst holding a gun or driving a car, so on and so forth. So yeah, Angelina Jolie does a great job at playing a 2 and a half dimensional character, moving on.

Morgan Freeman on the other hand, plays the same character as usual only EVIL. So pretty much the guy he played in "Dream Catcher", he doesn't play a big role but there is a certain pizazz to hearing him say "mother fucker." It's like watching Betty White call someone a douchebag, it never gets old.

The real stand-out here is Scottish actor James McAvoy. He looks and sounds like a cross between Zach Braff and Shia LaBeouf and you really buy him as the complete loser who suddenly becomes ultra badass, I hope to see more from this guy as he really does seem like a rising talent.

Driving over 100 miles an hour, laying on the hood of a sports car, firing a shotgun. Tooootally plausible.

The effects in "Wanted" are good. Did you ever want to see an action movie kick "The Matrix" in its stupid smarmy face? Wanted does that and more. We get something not tired and boring done with bullet time, we get car chases that make no sense and we don't care because they're awesome, we get a scene where a guy shoots a bullet to stop another bullet!

What Wanted does suffer from is having action so fast paced that the viewer can't tell what the ever loving Christ is going on on screen. You WILL get back that headache you got from watching "Transformers" as well as the upset stomach you got from "Cloverfield" back in full. When the film isn't blurry from spinning around or the director trying to get cute and pull the same shaky-cam crap that Christopher Nolan did at the end of "Batman Begins", the backgrounds get blurry and slow and it hurts your eyes as well as your head.

However, the fact that this movie out-awesomed "Shoot 'Em Up" when it comes to car chases and action sequences gives it a slight edge over all the shoddy camera work. This movie will probably work better on a small screen.

Wesley has seen "The Boondock Saints" too many times.

Storywise, Wanted starts out well then about the time they bring in the magic loom that gives the assassins targets from "Fate" it kind of ruins it, but you forget the magic loom and the story takes a turn that makes it good again.

To put it simply, "Wanted" is "Fight Club" with guns. Pure and simple, the story takes most of the same turns, the message is more or less the same, the narration is even similar. If you want to know whether you'd like this movie you have to ask yourself 2 questions. 1) Do I like "Fight Club"? 2) Do I like things that are awesome? If you answered yes, then happy viewing.

1942 called, they want their gun back.

"Wanted" is a balls to the wall action movie with a "fuck you" attitude (I know this cause they say it a lot) and a pretty decent plot.

I give Wanted an unbiased 4 out of 5. It isn't perfect but it's a lot of fun and should definitely be rented if not bought.


To those of you fans of the book I'll give a "real" review of this as soon as I read the series so quit your whining...fucking plebs.

Teeth

Teeth (2007)


Directed by: Mitchell Lichtenstein

Starring: Jess Weixler, John Hensley, Ashley Springer

Plot:Dawn grows up in the shadow of a nuclear power plant. In high school, while her biology class studies evolution, she realizes she may have a hidden curse, an "adaptation." She lives with her mom, step-father, and hard-edged step-brother. She likes Tobey, a guy at school, and he likes her. She takes a pledge to remain chaste until marriage, so they date in groups, watch G-rated films, and don't kiss, but the power of teen hormones is great, so temptation beckons. Dawn has an admirer in Ryan, and when she breaks it off unexpectedly with Tobey, she turns to Ryan for help. Will he be her mythical hero and rescue her? Or can she find her way as her own hero, turning the curse into an asset? Taken from www.imdb.com.

"What? Generic character? I'm all kinds of original like I... I uh... um... shut up."

Teeth opens in a nice little town located within stone's throwing distance of a nuclear power plant where two young children (a girl and a boy) are sitting in a kiddie pool while the boy's father and the girl's mother enjoying another's company when the boy screams, he's had the tip of his finger bitten almost entirely off.

We then shift to an abstinence seminar where the girl from the previous scene, now all grown up, gives a speech about "staying pure" and saving your gift for when you're married and all that. We're then introduced formally to Dawn as she has a conversation with her friends and character Tobey who quickly becomes the object of Dawn's affection.

There's a good deal of sexual tension between Dawn and Tobey and she tells him that they can no longer see one another for fear of temptation, of course she decides against this and the entire bloody thing begins.

"Gratuitous breasts? NOW I'm watching a run-of-the-mill horror film."

Womanhood has been used in horror before, be it in "Ginger Snaps"' creative use of the menstrual cycle and the changes of womanhood to be mistaken with lycanthropy to Ripley incubating a xenomorph with a womb in "Alien Ressurection" the concept of the usage of the vagina as a horror plot device is not new or groundbreaking.

However, Teeth from the beginning opens your mind and puts forth a lot of thought provoking points involving empowerment of women. From fending off rape and molestation to getting back at someone who's used them Teeth explores all of these ideas in a way that makes you think.

The acting in this movie is fair, no real stand-out performances except for Jess Weixler as Dawn who plays a role somewhere in between Angela Bettis from "May" and Emily Perkins in "Ginger Snaps." She is delightfully awkward and naive perfectly playing the part of a virginal teenage girl.

DO NOT WANT!

The rest of the chracters are pretty average though John Hensley as Brad is so 2-dimensional that you can practically see the dotted line where he was cut out of paper as the generic punk-rock, over-sexed, drug abusing, slacker step brother with the skanky girlfriend who "just doesn't know any better" a few times it seems the writer is trying to give Brad some depth but these moments are never elaborated upon.

And watch Lenny von Dohlen as Bill as he's really the only male character in this movie who's worth any sort of attention as for once a loving and supporting step father who cares for Dawn as if she was his own child, a relationship that's not seen very often in ANY movie, let alone horror.

"Oh my God, this script is horrible past the first 30 minutes!"

Much of the more thought provoking material in this film is presented as comedy. The teen abstinence group including Dawn's two best friends who refuse to go see an R rated movie and even a PG-13 because even it will have "heavy making out." They become worried when the group goes to the local make-out place that all the teens go to even though it's mid-day and they're in a group. They can also be seen criticizing the biology teacher as she's speaking about evolution.

There's also the sex-ed class where the teacher refuses to say the word "vagina" and the diagram in the book of the female reproductive organs has been covered with a giant sticker as it has been deemed "inappropriate."

The biology teacher speaks about rattlesnakes and how they adapted a rattle on their tail for them not to be stepped on and then goes on to say that's it's not known whether this adapted over hundreds of years or was just a genetic analogy (Questionable movie science, EXCELLENT!) this of course is just a further explanation of why Dawn is the way she is, though I think the nuclear power plant at the beginning gave us all the information we needed.

A look you never want to see on a woman's face if you're in a horror film.

Effects-wise, Teeth is done very well. When Brad's finger is bitten off it looks like he had it bitten off and when that scene comes, and don't play coy with me you know exactly what scene I'm referring to whether you saw the movie or not, it's convincing. Between the sickening crunch and the unobscured view of a male crotch spurting blood it sits with you.

This gag gets tired after a while though, it's used on 3 separate occasions and one accomplishment I did not want to have in my life was becoming desensitized to the severing of a penis in a movie. It goes from "OH MY GOD THEY SHOWED IT!" to "Okay now this is just getting ridiculous" rather quickly.

It should also be noted that I have no clue how this movie could have possibly gotten an r rating from that cult of nazi-like raters known as the MPAA. I am not proud of having seen that many severed penises and being an avid fan of horror movies that push the envelope I've seen more than I care to already.

Oh look, even the actress is getting tired of all the tired stereotypes.

However, Teeth is it's own worst enemy. Mitchell Lichtenstein tries really hard to be Lucky McKee, he really does. And he falls flat on his face doing it. While Teeth starts out as a thought-provoking horror comedy about female empowerment and female sexuality it turns into the kind of film that would be played in the 70s in a theater that smells like feet and the floors are sticky for reasons you just don't want to know.

Spoilers abound beyond this point, skip down past the next picture if you don't want the film ruined for you.

About 40 minutes in Teeth loses its drive and then the plot follows with it. What was once about empowerment quickly just becomes annoying, Bill the stepfather is the only male character in this movie that isn't a complete asshole. Okay the love interest I can buy becoming a sex crazed rapist, and the step brother is a given, but the second love interest who we're introduced to as a socially awkward generally nice guy becoming a complete jerk was a bit much, and the gynecologist with a penchant for fisting was just a bit too far, and I called the old man before that even happened, I was expecting the the stepfather to take a shot at Dawn before the movie was over the way things were going.

Unfortunately in its rush to empower women, Teeth manages to successfully degrade men in a script that can only be described as the paranoid delusions of any man with a teenage daughter. But even that's lost as Dawn seems to lose her drive to turn herself in for killing someone and uses her ability for revenge which just ends up exploiting women more succesfully than any slasher movie ever could by taking sweet innocent (albeit naive) Dawn and turning her into a vengeful bitch. The movie loses all it's power, all it's message, and all it's point.

"Okay now pull her lips apart so you can see her teeth. Let's make this metaphor as blatantly obvious as possible"

Ultimately Teeth is a 70s exploitation film ala "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers" pretending to be an intelligent thought provoking horror movie. It's schizophrenic and lacking in plot.

I give Teeth a 2 out of 5, don't bother with it.

The Incredible Hulk

The Incredible Hulk (2008) with Retrospective comparison to The Incredible Hulk (2003)


Directed by: Louis Leterrier

Starring: Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, William Hurt

Other Actors of Note: Tim Blake Nelson, Ty Burrell

Plot:Depicting the events after the Gamma Bomb. 'The Incredible Hulk' tells the story of Dr Bruce Banner, who seeks a cure to his unique condition, which causes him to turn into a giant green monster under emotional stress. Whilst on the run from military which seeks his capture, Banner comes close to a cure. But all is lost when a new creature emerges; The Abomination. Taken from www.imdb.com.

"No worries Betty, I mean testing experimental technology on yourself worked so well in Spider-Man and The Fly."

The Hulk goes into a more real world in this version of The Incredible Hulk. Explaing the Hulk's origins in the first 5 minutes it gives this movie time to use the already established mythos to play around a bit. This story borrows a great deal from the 70s TV show and constantly nods back to it with little in-jokes like an obligatory Lou Ferigno cameo, the playing of the "lonely man" ending theme from the show, scenes of Edward Norton hitchhiking, and using the alias "David" There's even a couple of nods at the comic like whenever Betty throws Bruce a pair of bright purple stretch pants and there's a little nudge nudge wink wink moment like with the yellow spandex comment in X-Men.

With no disrespect to Eric Bana who delivered a good performance as Banner in the first Hulk film, Edward Norton makes the role his own and plays it well as everyone predicted he would. He makes a much more interesting Banner and seems more everyman than Bana was ever able to accomplish

The Hulk this time is given a good villain. The Absorbing Man last time was a horrible choice, it would be like making a Daredevil movie and then having Stiltman be the villain. Tim Roth as Emil Blonsky manages to overcome the fact that he's 2 feet tall and become a character that's both badass and terrifying all throughout and as he grows more powerful it just gets worse.

Edward Norton and Tim Roth: Actual scale.

Liv Tyler manages to overcome the fact that she can't act by not talking a lot. This was a good choice on the director's part as Liv Tyler's best ability is to look pretty and smile/cry when the need arises. She does that well.

And while I respect William Hurt and the job he did in this movie, Sam Elliot was born to play Thunderbolt Ross. He just had the voice and the stage presence to pull it off perfectly.

"I can't stop coming! It feels so good!"

Visually the Hulk is a beautiful movie and one primary color shines throughout, green. The director appears to have not wanted us to forget it and truly you can't find a frame in the entire film that doesn't have at least one shade of it though it's more subtle at times than others. It was an interesting choice visually and I liked it.

The comic book panels from Ang Lee's Hulk have been done away with. It was a neat idea but it just makes watching cumbersome and hard to concentrate on. On a plus side the Hulk looks less like a big green Robert Z'Dar and more like a giant green Gary Busey. There are complaints that he still looks CG but this only seems to be during action sequences there are many scenes where I could swear there's a large animatronic unit in place. But here's a side-by-side comparison.

"Even Shrek look more realistic than Hulk!"

"Busey smash!"

As you can see the new Hulk looks tons better than the old one. The action is a bit toned down in this movie as compared to Ang Lee's film. While the original film had the Hulk smashing tanks and fighter jets and jumping several miles in a single bound through the desert, this one brings things back to the comic and TV show roots. Hulk rather than being 15 feet tall (as in Ang Lee's film) is a mere 9 feet (the one in the comic was 7 feet tall originally) and remains that one size consistently. What's more the Hulk can't jump more than several feet at one time which was somewhat disappointing but at the same time makes more sense.

"So you're saying the 'beef it's what's for dinner guy' played this role last time?"

Certain liberties were taken with Banner and the Hulk in this one that I support. The Hulk is played out much like King Kong with Betty Banner, he seems less than human and doesn't even talk until the last 10 minutes of the film when he utters the now legendary "Hulk SMASH!"

Banner is portrayed as Shellshocked and is even a bit reminiscent of Sylvester Stallone in First Blood as he has flashbacks from when he was the Hulk. Banner is portrayed as tortured but not helpless, he is seen learning several sorts of anger management and maybe even learning to control the Hulk itself.

Also of note is this change to the Hulk's origin. While the original had the rather unbelievable origin of being hit by a nuclear bomb blast this one says the Hulk was a mistake in trying to recreate Captain America's supersoldier formula (Though Cap is never directly referenced the Super soldier program is mentioned as having been closed down in the 40s and is later referred to as having been "put on ice" perhaps in allusion to Captain America's being frozen.)

Indeed the story is where this Hulk succeeds over Ang Lee's Hulk, while Lee's had a lot of action and decent acting it was also poorly written and had a lot of questionable ideas (Hulk Poodle anyone?) the problem was that in between scenes of the Hulk tearing shit up the movie was slow and at times boring. The scene leading up to the final confrontation with Absorbing Man seemed to drag on forever and when it finally got there it was nigh impossible to see. Now admittedly while the new Hulk's fight scenes don't give you the headache you got from watching Transformers' fight scenes, dammit they try! The fight scenes in The Hulk are really just payoffs, but even with the Hulk only making 4 onscreen appearances in the entire film you never feel gypped, the in between scenes are just as interesting and the Hulk's presence is felt and even dreaded at times especially early in the film.

"Look if you turn it upside down the car moves to the other side of the tube. Neat."

Two things of note, as well as introducing The Abomination as the primary villain there's a big allusion to a sequel as we another Hulk rogue The Leader appear toward the end, admittedly only briefly but it's a sign of good things to come.

And finally the best scene in the goddamn movie, I will not spoiler tag this as it is common knowledge at this point and was quite the buzz on the internet for months before this film came out. At the end of the film Robert Downey Jr. appears as Tony Stark.

The scene is at the end of the film, not the end of the credits, which is a wise decision as the credits to a Marvel comics movie have more names on them than the guest list to Paris Hilton's vagina. This was also infinitely more satisfying than the tack-on scene at the end of Iron-Man for me. Mostly just because Samuel L. Jackson is 10% of the time a good actor and 90% of the time a guy who says fuck a lot and talks about his distaste for reptiles on aircraft. That and this more than a "Hi I'm an ominous black guy standing in your living room with an eye patch" Downey Jr. alludes to an actual "team" though if you've been paying attention they've been mentioning S.H.I.E.L.D. and Stark Industries all over the place.

I give 2008's the Hulk a 5 out of 5, make it part of your collection!

Kung Fu Panda

Kung Fu Panda (2008)


Directed by: Mark Osbourne and John Stevenson

Starring: Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Ian McShane

Other Actors of Note: David Cross, Seth Rogen, Jackie Chan, Angelina Jolie, Lucy Liu, James Hong, and Michael Clark Duncan

Plot:A CG-animated comedy about a lazy, irreverent slacker panda, Po, who must somehow become a Kung Fu Master in order to save the Valley of Peace from a villainous snow leopard, Tai Lung. Set in the legendary world of ancient China, this is the story of Po, our unlikely hero, who enters the rigid world of Kung Fu and turning it upside down. Po ultimately becomes a Kung Fu hero by learning that if he believes in himself, he can do anything. Taken from www.imdb.com.

Suddenly I'm reminded of the end of Street Fighter

Kung Fu Panda is the story of Po, an overweight Panda who is the ancient Chinese equivalent of a comic book geek. The movie treats us to a dream of Po as a wandering Kung Fu master (the greatest line in the entire movie "There is no awesomeness for awesomeness... or attractiveness." is delivered here) it is then that he is rudely awoken by his father Mr. Ping (played by James Hong) a duck who runs a noodle shop and hopes for his son to one day become a noodle master as their family are "noodle folk."

We cut to the top of a shrine in the small village where we are introduced to Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) a small red panda who is sitting tranquilly in his garden when he is attacked by The Furious Five each of which is a different animal and represents a different animal style Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Viper (Lucy Liu), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Mantis (Seth Rogen), and Crane (David Cross).

Shifu is then called into the shrine by his wise old master Oogway (Randall Duk Kim) who, after a hilarious scene involving him slowly blowing out a horrendous number of candles, alerts Shifu in an ominous tone that "Tai Lung will escape." Tai Lung being the villain of this piece, a snow leopard kung fu master and former student of Shifu who hungered for the dragon scroll and almost killed Shifu for it. (Shifu is easily the darkest family animated film villain I've ever seen, moreso than Syndrome)

Because of Tai Lung's eventual escape Oogway instructs Shifu to hold a contest to decide who will be the Dragon Warrior and be able to read the scroll of unlimited Kung Fu power that Tail Lung hungered for so much, and is possibly the only way to defeat the vengeful snow leopard.

The entire village is invited to come watch the contest to decide which of the Furious Five will win but the road to the temple has a horrendous number of stairs and Po being the overweight panda that he is takes ages to get to the top. But Po reaches the top of the mountain just as the doors to the shrine close and lock. He begins devising ways to begin and several failed attempts are made before he devises the gold fashioned "Let's strap a bunch of bottle rockets to something and see if it will fly." It lands Po in the arena just as Oogway is picking the dragon warrior and the aged turtle ends up picking him to be the dragon warrior much to the dismay and even anger of Shifu and the Furious Five who plot to make the panda quit.

"My moves are like lightning, my attacks like thunder, and my line delivery bland and stale like old bread!"

The voice acting in this movie is very well done. Jack Black is perfect for the part of Po and his voice and nuances fit well with the actions and behaviors of the character even in the more serious moments of the film. The two who really shine here though are Dustin Hoffman as Master Shifu who plays the part well but then again when has Dustin Hoffman ever dropped the ball. Of course the greatest is Deadwood's Ian McShane as the evil Tai Lung who just conveys the roll of a scary, powerful, and even cool villain perfectly. Lesser films would've picked the likes of someone with a deep gravelly voice like Clancy Brown to play the role and I salute the casting director for not doing the obvious.

As far as the rest of the cast go Michael Clark Duncan is more or less the most obvious choice for the captain of the Rhino guard that keeps Tai Lung from escaping. James Hong is as always a very animated and entertaining character and his voice fits perfectly with his character.

The Furious Five fits very well also, four of them anyway. Jackie Chan and Lucy Liu do naturally good jobs in their roles as Monkey and Viper and though Seth Rogen and David Cross are wasted comedically as the mostly serious Mantis and Crane they do their job fine.

The one weak link, predictably for me, was Angelina Jolie. I have always said that Angelina's "acting" involved her saying one liners and striking sexy poses and this only goes to prove my point. Never before has Jolie had a role where she couldn't rely on that aspect of her, even in 2004's animated film Shark Tale she played just an animated fish version of herself and was still able to rely on this formula. In this film, Tigress is not a looker, she's not some furry icon, in fact there's nothing in her appearance that even denotes her being female. Left to fall back on talent she doesn't actually have, Jolie falls flat here and is really the only weak performance of the film.

This picture is a LOLcat waiting to happen.

Visually this movie is beautiful. All the sets are done amazingly realistic and incredibly beautiful, though the most visually impressive set has to be Tai Lung's prison with its dark blue corridors and torches which reminded me a great deal of underbelly of Sauron's tower in the Lord of the Ring's trilogy, there's even a similar pan through the inside of the prison not unlike the scene from LOTR.

However, the opening sequence, which comes in an animation style somewhat reminiscent of Samurai Jack or Okami left me wishing that that would have been the visual look of the film. It was beautifully done and easily twice as good looking as the computer animation and I wish they could have done it in that style but I suppose since CG is the hot thing now the movie had to abandon some of its potential.

The fight scenes are choreographed perfectly, many of them reminiscent of Jackie Chan and Stephen Chow films, all of them fast paced but still able to be watched and comprehended as more than people moving around the screen really fast. The only downside is that the last big fight seems less impressive than those we have seen up until this point, Po's victory seems more accidental than it does skillful up until the very end.

"My existence is entirely superfluous!"

Storyline-wise Kung Fu Panda is very well mapped out. The big message in this one is that one can do anything they put their mind to and Po as the fat lazy weak and cowardly Panda is the most unlikely of heroes. Shifu and Tigress' attempts to discourage him and make him quit are many but he never gives up. The underlying message is that anything can be special if you believe it can. It's a good message and unlike many movies of this style doesn't become tedious and repetitive and distract from the entertainment.

The scenes with Tai Lung were surprisingly dark and his escape from the prison only sets the scene for how terrifying he can be. Even in his final fight it is quite clear his intent is to kill his adversary not simply "win." It's more common than it used to be but its nice to see family entertainment that is willing to make its villain actually evil. Though the more tragic side of Tai Lung is shown as well, you see his growth from a cub and his descent into the power hungry maniac he becomes later.

"I'm gonna come at you like a spider monkey!"

Stylistically this movie makes the point that Kung Fu isn't just a side-point, it's an integral part of the plot. Make the animals into people and this film could easily be a real Kung Fu movie in the slightly comedic style that Jackie Chan and Stephen Chow have become so popular for. It's an American tribute to the Kung Fu movie, that both pays homage and honors its subject material perfectly.

Visually and tonally Kung Fu Panda is the PG-rated animated cinematic equivalent of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill in more ways than one.

"My English accent makes no sense!"

Kung Fu Panda is a fun, entertaining, and satisfying experience for anyone of any age. I give it a 5 out of 5. Make it a part of your collection.

The Happening

The Happening (2008)



Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Daschel

Other Actors of note: John Leguizamo

Summary:The film revolves around a pandemic that begins in New York City, and quickly spreads across the eastern United States. The pandemic is a toxin apparently spread by the wind that has a devastating mental effect on humans. Victims that breathe the toxin become physically disoriented, exhibit loss of speech and then commit suicide by the closest means possible. Some victims kill themselves by jumping from buildings, throwing themselves into barbed wire, and driving vehicles into trees. Taken from Wikipedia.

"Look honey, I think I see your personality over there"

In the wake of 911 disaster movies have taken on a whole new tone. The Mist was about how in the face of crisis people will fall back on irrationality and superstitious belief and turn on one another and even calm rational thinking isn't even necessarily the right answer, War of the Worlds was about doing what it takes to protect those you love, Cloverfield was about going through hell to find a loved one, I Am Legend preached hope in the face of overwhelming odds, and Diary of the Dead spoke of some sort of outlaw heroism by showing the world the truth about what's going on through media.

So what's the Happening's big message? That's a very good question, I think it has to do with overpopulation or us destroying the environment or some such noise.

Pictured:The Man with no balls, the girl with no voice, and the woman with no soul.

The film opens in New York Central Park where two women are sitting on a bench reading a book, suddenly everyone freezes in place, some of them begin walking backward. As one friend stares in bewilderment the other pulls a large pin from her hair and jams it into her neck. The scene then flashes to a construction site where people begin jumping off the roof in droves. The scene is particularly haunting and well done.

So now we flash to Philadelphia where we meet our protagonist Elliot, a high school science teacher who is bewildered by the disappearing honeybees all over the world. Shortly after some exposition he's called out of his classroom to the auditorium where he's briefed by Principal That-Guy-Who-Played-Cameron-in-Ferris-Bueller (Alan Ruck) that a terrorist attack has just happened and they're closing school.

From this point on Elliot, his wife Alma (played by real life mannequin Zooey Daschanel), Julian (John Leguizamo), and his daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez) get on a train out of Philadelphia. The train stops in a small town abruptly and the crew finds out they're in the middle of the strike zone and speed away to get out.

"Don't look into her eyes sweetie or she'll turn you to stone."

So now let's go on to performances. This shouldn't take long because there's only 3 worth nothing.

I'm sure by now you've all heard about how bad Mark Wahlberg is in this movie. Not true. The character Elliot is a dweeb, a HUGE dweeb and Wahlberg plays the part brilliantly. The thing is, since it's Mark Wahlberg we're expecting a lantern jawed deep voiced man's hero like Thomas Jane in the Mist. But whereas Jane played an "everyman", Wahlberg's more of a "that guy." He plays the character as it should be played, but even in that he's a bit weak.

John Leguizamo is the only one who appears to remember good acting and what it's like. The problem is he only has maybe 15 minutes of screen time. (But I assure you, those 15 minutes are much appreciated)

And now Zooey Daschanel. You may remember her from the movie Big Trouble adapted from the Dave Barry novel and starring Tim Allen and Ben Foster. She played the monotone sarcastic teenage daughter, and while I commended her for her monotone voice and general dull acting in Big Trouble, I wasn't aware that that was all she could do.

Zooey (cause I'm not going to keep typing Daschanel) is the most horrible actor in this movie. The only emotion she seems to be able to show is to either give a blank stare or smile, her voice never gives the impression of anything, she delivers her lines in a cold robotic way. She has all the personality of a block of wood, I swear GlaDOS was a more convincing human being.

There's even a scene where she confronts Leguizamo's daughter (who doesn't speak for the majority of the movie) and says "We're not so different you and I, I don't like to show emotion either." Which is very true, in fact she must fucking hate it more than racism and the holocaust.

"Oh shit, I forgot to get the final score on the Yankee's game!"

Having watched this movie and seen that it has an R rating I'm not sure why. Since language and nudity are out as I think Whalberg says fuck once and the nudest you see anyone is an old lady in a nightgown it would have to be on violence. But here's the deal, there's very little of it. The deaths are fairly clean, sure there's a bit of blood but not much. The needle in the neck is bloodless, bodies falling from the sky and flying through the windshield of a car aren't shown, people shooting themselves in the head is heard but not seen followed by them dropping to the ground with a neat little hole in their forehead. The infamous lawnmower death only shows a bit of blood spraying out the side before cutting away and the only gorey death in the film where a zookeeper feeds both his arms to lions pulls away when the first arm is torn off and then shows the second one being pulled off and quickly cuts away again. I didn't find this particularly any ballsier than anything done in The Sixth Sense, perhaps since it's living people it's a bit more traumatizing but not a great deal. Children's deaths are implied but I don't ever recall seeing one corpse under 20. The closest thing we have is woman's teenage daughter heard committing suicide on a speaker phone as well as two dumb teenagers who get shot breaking into a house both of whose deaths show very little.

The story is also a bit wonky. This whole thing branches around the bees disappearing but The Happening only seems to affect human beings as in several scenes dogs are shown unaffected which is strange considering it's an airborne toxin, and even the well put together theories within the film of the plants putting out the toxin leave a lot unexplained.

There's a lot of loose plot lines, many characters die before they seem to meet their potential and most of the movie is just a bunch of people running away from the wind. The Happening appears to be more about shock and spectacle than actual storytelling, it's reminiscent of Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds in this way. Even the usual Shyamalan twist is less of a twist and more of a "I ran out of ideas, so I'm gonna do this now"

"Quickly! Everyone watch the TV ominously!"

The Happening's key problem seems to be that it doesn't go anywhere and we're not made to love the characters, we're just along for the ride. It's bland and slow like much of Shyamalan's other films but it does a better job of keeping interest than say Signs, The Village, or Lady in the Water did. It's not great but it's still watchable and somewhat enjoyable.

I give the Happening a 3 out of 5. Rent it or catch it on second release in theaters.