"Battleship" (2012)

  My Grade

B-

 **SPOILER ALERT for the whole review**
I'm hearing a lot of griping about this movie. People are saying that it's essentially Transformers in the water. It's a solid argument I won't lie. It could have easily been called AquaFormers or something along those lines. But alas, this is NOT a Transformers movie. Thank God. Yes there are certainly similarities. Alien life forms come down our way and want to murder us all. Or do they? Battleship never actually addresses the reasoning for this alien invasion. In fact, in the movie, the humans technically fire first, creating an all out war. The aliens never speak in the film therefore we never find out their motives. What we do know though, is that they have landed several of their ships in the Hawaiian waters where there is a big Naval competition going on. Great timing huh? We know they are attempting to communicate with their home turf up in space using satellites and beacons that the human's created to attempt to contact the aliens to begin with. And now the remaining few Naval officers have to stop this from happening. Which is tough, because the aliens have thrown a giant force field up blocking in 3 of the Navy's ships, boats, whatever you want to call them and have blocked out the rest of the fleet. Two of three ships are destroyed so it's left to just the one led by pretty boy Taylor Kitcsh (TV's Friday Night Lights, John Carter) who basically JUST joined the Navy. Go figure.

So what we have here is the same setup we pretty much always get in these big budget end of the world alien invasion movies. The most unlikely of heroes will rise from the ashes where everyone expects them to fail but end of saving the day. Listen folks, if you didn't expect the lead character to save everyone and be rewarded for it in the end, then you are crazy...or you don't see a lot of movies. You know the formula of the film, you know exactly what's going to happen. With movies like this, it completely takes away any tension. Battleship also offers little story, but in my opinion that's a good thing. Transformers 2 and 3 tried to pack in to big of a story and it fell flat on it's face. Battleship at least knows it's a mindless action movie so every ounce of plot is given to us in the first (and awful) first 20 minutes of the movie. The final 2 hours is what you are here for. The action. The shit blowing up. The aliens getting wiped out. The human debris, you know...the works.

And with that, Battleship truly delivers. When you take away the need to think in a movie it becomes fun. This movie requires you to remove that thinking cap and just enjoy what's happening. The action in this movie was done surprisingly well. A movie like this always runs the serious risk of over doing it, and going way over the top. Battleship never falls victim to this, at least I didn't think so. All the action scenes were necessary to further the movie along. There was no excess of crap. The movie pulled itself back and toned down when it needed to. It continually set us up for the next big explosion. And when the action happened, it was bad ass. I was so completely entertained. The aliens didn't talk (like the Transformers do) so there was no stupid exchanges between them and the humans. It was just shoot and kill and that's it. The visual effects in all the battle scenes were awesome! When we saw the aliens faces and hands though, I thought they looked a little to video gamey (they looked like something out of Halo or Mass Effect or something). But eh, we barely saw them that much so it wasn't a big deal.

The movie had it's fare share of totally cheesy moments, mainly anything involving Brooklyn Decker and her band of misfits on the mainland trying to stop the aliens from sending their signal. The movie could have done without most of those scenes if I'm being honest. But overall, it has likeable characters even if they are a bit hammy from time to time. You kind of root for them. While we are on the character subject, if you are looking for a movie with Liam Neeson (Taken, The Grey), the new proverbial bad ass or hunky vampire Alexander Skarsgard (True Blood) then you might want to look elsewhere. Neeson has virtually no role in the action of this movie. He is merely an extended cameo here to give certain story elements to our main character. He does nothing bad ass here. Skarsgard dies about 40 minutes in. I was surprised they didn't give Liam Neeson anything to do though. His character sits outside this force field with a huge fleet at his command but they attempt nothing. Yes, I know the force field kills on impact...but they didn't even fire a shit load of missles and bullets at the thing...could have made for a fun scene and would have given Neeson SOMETHING cool to do. Guess not.

Anyway, Battleship is not a good movie, quality wise. You can't expect it to be. It won't be winning any awards, nor is that the intention of a movie like this. But this movie is a seriously fun, entertaining thrill ride. It's chock full of excitement and plenty of solid action to go around. It has an engaging lead actor in Kitsch who does really well in carrying the film. It has a lot of great elements and is a worthy film to lose some brain cells to for a little over 2 hours. You won't be made fun of for seeing it...I don't think. I'm going to be crucified by the comic book nerds for saying this...but I kind of found this movie to be more fun than "The Avengers". Uh oh...I'm a dead man.

Oh and are you wondering if this has ANYTHING to do with the board game it's based off of? Um..no not really. There is one cool scene though where the pay homage to the game. Where they are shooting blind because their radar is down so they are using a grid system and firing almost blindly into the ocean to hit their target. Kind of like then game huh?

2012 Review #29: The Dictator

 It's been a while since I posted anything on here. I've been on vacation from work you see and I just got distracted way to easily way to many times and have not had the energy to post new movie reviews. I'm still on my vacation and I'm still lacking the enthusiasm to post anything but I don't want to fall behind. So these next two movie reviews will be short and will not be formatted the same as usual. Call me lazy, call me whatever you want. I don't care. Just be warned, the next couple reviews will not be my best.  So without further ado.

The Dictator stars Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat, Sweeney Todd) who I'm sure most of you remember as Borat a few years back. Now when Borat first came out it was unlike any comedy most of us had experienced before. It was partially scripted, partially unscripted and ad-libed. A lot of the people he encountered in the movie were not aware exactly what was going on, so the reactions were genuine. The movie was raunchy, foul mouthed, and just plain insane but it was fresh and damn hilarious. There has been talks of a Borat 2...but only time will tell if that is actually true.

The Dictator is one of Cohen's many characters he has portrayed in the past, but now he's one of the few who get's his own movie. The story follows his dictator character who travels to America but is then kidnapped and has his signature beard shaven and then thrown back into New York city trying to convince people he is the real dictator. Oscar winner Ben Kinglsey (Gandhi, Hugo) plays his right hand man who betrays him and swaps in a fake dictator to take the place of Cohen. OK it's not big on story, but obviously that's not what you want from a movie like this. You want funny.

You know what though? I didn't think it was all that funny either. I mean yes, it certainly had it's moments, but they seemed sporadic and inconsistent. Since Borat debuted we have seen a handful of raunchy, out there comedies and The Dictator gives us nothing new. And it's completely scripted too, it doesn't have any of that off the cusp, unplanned moments like Borat had. The writing here was not good, just a lot of poor joke telling. I mean, we have seen plenty of dick jokes, plenty of lesbian and gay jokes, plenty of crude humor about having sex with many women, blah blah blah. It just wasn't funny. It wasn't awkward either. One of the best parts of Borat was that it was incredibly uncomfortable to sit through, but in a good way.

I don't know folks, if you are looking for a good comedy to see right now, I could not honestly suggest The Dictator, but you are your own people and you have your own thoughts. Everyone's sense of humor is different.

"Dark Shadows"

Dark Shadows

Rated PG-13

1 Hour 43 Minutes

Starring

Johnny Depp

Michelle Pfeiffer

Helena Bonham Carter

Eva Green

Belle Heathcote

Chloe Grace Moretz

Jackie Earle Haley

Storyline

An imprisoned vampire, Barnabas Collins, is set free and returns to his ancestral home, where his dysfunctional descendants are in need of his protection. Remake of a cult classic TV soap.

Rotten Tomatoes Grade

41%

"The visuals are top notch but Tim Burton never finds a consistent rhythm, mixing campy jokes and gothic spookiness with less success than other Johnny Depp collaborations."

My Grade

C-

**spoiler alert**

I've never seen the original show, as it was a tad bit before my time. I know it's a cult classic and I know a lot of people had issues with Tim Burton remaking it into a feature length film. I think they had a good reason to feel this way. The movie shows that there was a lot of source material in the show and they attempted to pack a lot in to the film. It's a very busy movie yet at the same time not much really goes on, and it never really takes off into anything special. This is the eighth collaboration between Burton and Oscar nominee Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd, Sleepy Hollow) and I think I have to finally cave in and say...enough is enough. They obviously work well together, that goes without saying, but it's growing very tiresome now.

The movie is all over the place with story and characters. It has to much to incoporate into a less then 2 hour movie. I feel like they didn't do the original characters any justice and made them all a little to campy and silly. This was kind of like the Brady Bunch movie mixed with maybe the Adams Family movie. They tried to make a funny story out of it but it came off as almost uncomfortable. Some of the characters were clearly meant to be major parts of the story but were just left on the sidelines most of the time. Take the Vicki character. Supposed to be the love interest for Barnabus but with the excpetion of the beginning of the film, she only pops up for a minute or two. Then they decide to give her a back story almost at the end of the film and I was like "Um, what?!"Same with Chloe Moretz character. There's no sign for the whole movie that she's a werewolf, but at the very end...she turns into one. And has the cheesiest line in the movie, "Woof". I'm sure this is what her character was in the show, but come on, that was ages ago, a lot of today's youth won't know this.

None of the performances were all that engaging. Usually Burton has a knack for crafting unique, twisted, quirky performances from his actors, but not this time. His wife, Oscar nominee Helena Bonham Carter (The King's Speech, Harry Potter series) is somwhere between "normal" and "strange" and that doesn't work well with her. She plays creepy very well, but she wasn't put to good use here. Depp is a very reliable actor, but even he could not save this film. He does character work better than most people, but this particular character was a lame blend of Jack Sparrow and maybe Sweeney Todd. This version of Barnabus was not fun, cool or entertaining.

The whole movie was a few notches below the line of being just mediocre for me. I know this isn't a well written review, that could be do in part to the fact that I'm in a bad mood today. But this movie was just so generic and boring. It didn't have the energy I was hoping it would have in it's story and characters. Now the movie looked incredible. Beautifully dark and haunting set pieces. Perfect costuming. Realistic looking visual effects. It nailed the techinal side of the film. But the pieces of the puzzle did not come together neatly because of it's weak story and un charasmatic performances. It was dull. Maybe that means I'm dull...you be the judge. Be a hater, I don't care. :-)

The River Cancelled by ABC

Well bad news for fans of the Oren Peli/Steven Spielberg TV horror series "The River". Yesterday ABC took the axe to the show that ran for 8 episodes at the end of this TV season. This does not come to much of a surprise though. The show continuously had very weak numbers in the ratings department (averaging around 3 million people a week) and that's not a good sign if you want a second season. It also received mixed reviews and didn't get that cult following it might have needed for ABC to possibly think of giving it another go. But let's face it...they never intended to keep it around. The network is kind of famous for going through shows like clock work.

No word yet however if Netflix will be picking up the show. It was reported a few months back that they were in "talks" to give The River some life with a second season, but that news has been dead ever since it was announced. Who knows, this could be a good sign that they will. ABC would have to cancel it for it to happen so...I guess time will tell.

On other ABC news, they have also cancelled the Ashley Judd thriller "Missing". On a positive note though, they have renewed the TV guilty pleasure of the year "Revenge" for a second season, which I am really excited for!!

"Community" Renewed for Season 4!!

It is official ladies and germs! NBC has graciously renewed the struggling comedy "Community" for a fourth season. It will get 13 episodes in the 2012-2013 TV season. Even better news is that it was not announced that this will be the final season of the show. Not like "30 Rock" who did get a confirmed final season. So there is still a chance for the "six seasons and a movie" Abed has spoken out before.

You don't need me to rant about Community, I've done that enough on my blog. One of my more read articles is about the show, and you can find the link for that on the right side of my blog under the "most popular articles" section.

This is just very exciting news! After all the rumors floating around, which now that I think of it, were never confirmed by anyone from NBC...it's nice to know we will still get more of Greendale Community College next season. I'm also very hopeful that we may get more seasons from them as NBC has not said it's the last. So fingers crossed folks! This is very good news! No word yet though if Chevy Chase or Dan Harmon will be coming back for next season. Given their recent "feud" who knows what will happen with that.

"Community" will end it's 3rd season next Thursday May 17th with a 90 minute finale! 3 new episodes back to to back!

"Cougar Town" Moving to TBS!

So good news on the TV front! Shows like "Community" and "Parks & Recreation" are still technically on the cusp as no official word has been said about them. However, the word is that both shows will more than likely be renewed next season, but only with half season orders. And unless a miracle arises both shows will have their final seasons next year as well. It has already been confirmed that NBC comedy champ "30 Rock" has been renewed for it's 7th and final season at a 13 episode order. I personally stopped watching 30 Rock a few months ago as it had completely lost it's way for me. The ratings for the show have slipped to an all time low averaging around 3 million viewers.

But back to the good news, assuming you are a fan of ABC's "Cougar Town" of course. It was hinted at earlier this week that the cable network TBS would pick up the show for it's fourth season should ABC cancel it. Well, this was made official today. ABC has not actually cancelled the show yet, but they won't get a chance. TBS will make Cougar Town part of their original programming next year and we will see new episodes in 2013. No matter what way you look at it, for me, this is awesome news! I have been a fan of the show since day one back when it was in it's early stages of being about cougars dating their fresh meat men and tossing them to the side. But then it developed into something completely new and different almost out of nowhere. It completely threw that story to the side and molded itself into a witty, charming, and just hilarious sitcom about a group of friends. It's like "Friends" if they were drunk on wine all the time. It has such a wonderful cast led by Courtney Cox, Christa Miller, Busy Phillips, Ian Gomez, etc. etc.

The show currently airs on ABC until it's finale on May 29th which will be one hour long and will feature guest star and show producer David Arquette. Apparently Courtney and David (who were married for quite some time if you did not know) are able to continue working together with their production company as well as acting together on this show as well as Scream 4 last year. Next week we will also get an hour's worth of new episodes. It will be off the air on the 22nd because of Dancing with the Stars.

I bet Abed will be very pleased to hear this news....

"The Avengers" (2012)

The Avengers

Rated PG-13

2 Hours 22 Minutes

Starring

Robert Downey Jr.

Chris Evans

Mark Ruffalo

Chris Hemsworth

Scarlett Johansson

Jeremy Renner

Tom Hiddleston

Samuel L. Jackson

Storyline

Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. brings together a team of super humans to form The Avengers to help save the Earth from Loki and his army.

Rotten Tomatoes Score

93%

("With a script that never forgets its heroes' humanity and no shortage of superpowered set pieces, The Avengers lives up to its hype -- and raises the bar for Marvel at the movies.")

My Grade

B+

Well, Marvel's "The Avengers" has done it! It has broken the all time 3 day opening day box office record. In it's first three days of release the film grossed $207 million, shattering the previous record held by "Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part II" which earned roughly $169 million in it's opening weekend. Many people predicted this would happen, and I was one of them who suspected it would rake in a shit ton of moolah. How could you not think it would be huge? So then what about it? Is it the best superhero movie to date? Does it live up to the hype and then some? Well, that will depend on who you ask, as everyone will have their own opinion on the matter.

I've never read a comic book in my life, just not my forte. I have however, seen almost all the movies based off various comics and while I'm not a "nerd" for these movies, I do enjoy the majority of them on a cinematic level. When it comes to just the Avenger based movies, I absolutely loved the first "Iron Man", I was totally surprised by how good "Thor" was, and "The Incredible Hulk" was a much needed reboot of that terrible "The Hulk" movie. Only one I was not impressed by was "Captain America". Personally, I found the movie to be dull on story and action, but it looked fantastic. So is the sum as good as it's parts? For me, yes and no.

The Avengers first half moved a bit slow for me. I understand it's important to first build up our story, get our characters together, and so forth. But it's my feeling that they did all this a little to casually. Most people in the theater know who the characters are, and they know why they are coming together. All great action movies still require story like any other well done film, but perhaps they could have trimmed a few minutes here and there. I love a long movie as much as the next guy. For instance, I sat through all Lord of the Rings films (which all clock in at or around 3 hours) and the movie moved so briskly that it seemed like I was in the theater for only an hour. A solid blending of storytelling, character development and action will make a 3 hour movie fly by. Problem for me with the Avengers is that it felt like 2 hours and 22 minutes. The first half dragged for me, I'm sorry to all the comic book fans who were so desperately waiting for the release of The Avengers, I don't mean to insult you all on personal levels, that's just how I viewed it.

Now the second half is a whole different story. It was jam packed with breathtaking action. Recent action movies like "Transformers 2 and 3" can take a queue from The Avengers on how to do it and do it well. You don't need to go over the top and into the realm of ridiculousness (even when the story is already at the level of fantasy unbelievability) to be cool and fun. When the group was finally together out in the city fighting off Loki's horde of aliens, it was bad ass. When Bruce Banner transformed into Hulk and destroyed that flying alien robot snake thing it was jaw dropping. When he scaled buildings and annihilated those aliens it was totally sweet. Same goes for all of them. Thor beating the shit out of them with his hammer, Captain America doing the same. Iron Man flying around, and Hawkeye with some of the cooler arrow shooting moments in movie history. Black Widow...well...she helped too. The sum of the parts banding together to save the day was just awe inspiring for action flicks. It was loud, but not to loud. It was explosive, but not drawn out. It was just awesome. Without a doubt some of the greatest action moments in recent film history.

The characters are all so well developed and played. Downey Jr. is charismatic as Tony Stark/Iron Man and he provides a good portion of the comic relief. I was hesitant at first over the casting of Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/The Hulk (after Edward Norton had to turn down the role) but I believe he held his own. Perhaps a little depressing at times, but then again, that's kind of how the character has to be. Chris Evans as Captain America was far more appealing in The Avengers then he was in his own film, and way more likable. Chris Hemsworth is probably the only person I could ever picture playing Thor. Sam Jackson was great, but didn't seem to have a large enough role in the grand scheme of things. Obviously his Nick Fury characters is the hub of the Avengers but I assumed he'd be a bigger part of the fighting...but then again, I don't know much about the series. Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow was OK but we don't have enough of a back story for her (she was featured in Iron Man 2) to really feel either way about her (at least I didn't). This is also true for Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye. He had no back story. He didn't get his own movie beforehand. So I don't know where he came from. Renner is great performance wise, but I didn't see the importance in the character. While I thought the first half dragged focusing primarily on the heroes we already knew well...they should have spent more time developing Hawkeye and Black Widow.

The Avengers is definitely a movie you should see in theaters if you have the chance. I am not here to knock the movie, because I really enjoyed the whole thing. It has fantastic action, and a lot of great performances with some really wonderful characters. I just wish it was maybe 20 minutes shorter (or faster paced at the length it's at now). This is more than just a mindless popcorn flick, it's a genre defining movie as action movies from here on out can learn a thing or two from this. You don't have to be overly silly with your stunts and you don't have to go insane with your visual effects. If you keep it balanced and controlled, you can make a damn fun roller coaster ride of a film like "The Avengers".

I still think "The Dark Knight Rises" will break the opening weekend record....anyone else agree?

**UPDATE...I was wrong about that last statement...ha**

The Dark Knight Rises Trailer #3!

The new trailer for The Dark Knight Rises starring Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, and Gary Oldman, directed by Christopher Nolan. I am so gosh damn excited for this movie. I don't think I've been this pumped for a movie...ever. This trailer looks amazing:

Funny De-Motivational Poster