Alex (Ben Stiller), Marty (Chris Rock), Melman (David Schwimmer) and Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith) are leaving Madagascar, but their trip ends short with them crashing in a reserve in Africa. There, Alex is reunited with his parents (Bernie Mac and Sherri Shepherd) and the rest find themselves fitting in with their kind a little too well.
This movie takes a step in the right direction. Having introduced the characters in the first film, this sequel brings a stronger, more personal story and a much slower and tighter pace. Each of the characters gets a decent amount of time to themselves, although admittedly Gloria once again has the least amount of time and does not get her own story. Everything feels a lot more refined as the characters have more to do and more other characters to interact with. This movie even has its own villain, voiced by Alec Baldwin, and he's great as he always is when he plays the villain. They even found a way to bring humans into the mix that was funny and made sense.
I would argue though that these exact things that make it better than the first also bring with them their own problems. It does feel early on as if there are just too many story lines forming. There's around six or seven stories all introduced in the first half of the film and it's a little exhausting at first. As the movie goes on though, the stories begin to slowly melt into one another and create some great character moments. There are a lot of things I was expecting to not work, such as Melman's sudden infatuation with Gloria, that ultimately work out really well.
There are a lot of laugh-out-loud moments as well as some hearty chuckles and best of all there are a lot less groan-worthy jokes this time around. In the first there were a lot of jokes pandering to the younger audience but here there is far less of that. All of the side characters, like Julian (Sacha Baron Cohen) and the penguins are not only funnier here but they work into the plot a lot better. The whole movie has the same feeling to it that Toy Story 3 did having come off Toy Story and Toy Story 2. It's much more mature but still fun and entertaining.
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Alex the Lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Gloria the Hippopotamus (Jada Pinkett Smith) live in the New York Central Zoo, but Marty wants to live in the wild. He gets his chance when the four of them find themselves lost on a jungle island called Madagascar. They then have to befriend a tribe of lemurs and avoid both the natural predators and the predators inside themselves.
When I think of DreamWorks, my mind usually wanders to their movies that I don't particularly like. Shrek. Shark Tale of course. But I always seem to forget that they actually do make movies I really enjoy as well. Maybe it's because they're always outshone by Pixar but I tend to forget movies like Madagascar exist. But watching this again I remember now how much I enjoyed it the first time I saw it. There's not a whole lot to it and it feels like it was written by freshman writers, but it's an entertaining movie with some really great characters.
I really love Ben Stiller in this movie. He's not a very good voice actor but he brings a charm to the movie that works really well. David Schwimmer is great as the neurotic giraffe and Chris Rock, well, he's Chris Rock, and I'm okay with this. Sacha Baron Cohen plays King Julian of the lemurs and has some of the best moments of the film. The accent he uses amuses me to no end and I just like how he seems to be completely unaware of his surroundings and yet competent enough to prove himself as self-proclaimed King of the Lemurs.
The animation is probably the film's biggest downfall. That's not to say it's terrible. I do like the art style but it's pretty obvious they were going for simplicity and the actual animation is a little sophomoric. They're able to hide it with a lot of fast movement but when things slow down you can kind of see it isn't perfectly smooth. But maybe that's what they were going for, to go along with the art style. If that's the case, then it just didn't work for me. It's still not nearly enough to keep me from watching the film again, and I recommend you give it a try as well.
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Battleship is pretty much exactly what I was expecting. I could just see the writers shrugging when handed the premise and saying, "We got nothin'." It was a complete waste of two hours of my day sitting through this mess of boring CG propaganda.
The movie centers on Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch), a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy who encounters an alien invasion on what was to be his last day before they kicked him out of service. He ends up having to lead his ship as captain in a war against the invaders.
I'm going to just skip over the fact that this movie has absolutely no reason to exist. It's just a marketing ploy and I don't have a problem with those as long as they're done well. I'm more concerned with everything else that was pointless about the film. For instance: The aliens. Why are there aliens in this movie? Why couldn't you just make a period war film involving warring battleships on the high seas? I mean, okay, I know the actual reason there are aliens in this movie. Two weeks ago we got aliens in The Avengers. We're getting Men in Black III next weekend. Cowboys & Aliens. District 9. Transformers. I get it. But they just feel shoehorned into this for the sake of having them and that makes it lame and pointless.
The second useless thing is Liam Neeson. Don't get me wrong, I love Liam Neeson. I figured he'd be the saving grace in seeing this but he only gets about five minutes of screen time. They only got him so they could sell the movie with his name, but I don't think Liam Neeson has ever met that level of stardom, even now. They literally could have hired anybody else and it would have worked just as well. And Neeson acts like he just wants his check so he can go home. They actually forced in a scene of him yelling at somebody over the phone just so they could have a scene of him yelling at somebody. It's really pathetic to watch. The acting in general was fine though, but nobody ever really had any scenes in which to prove their acting skills so it's not worth going into. Oh, except for this one big black guy who lost his legs. I think he was an actual veteran they got just so they could use that character in the movie. Yeah, he was a pretty terrible actor.
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Spoilers ahead.
Starting a new little project on this blog and going to try and watch every film released in 2011 (at least as listed on Wikipedia) and as luck would have it, I must begin with a Nicolas Cage film. Now normally I like to do a video review of Cage’s films but I’m having some technical issues in that department so I have to resort to something barbaric like typing out the words with my fingers rather than speaking them with my mouth parts. Enough of my problems, on to the review!
The film opens during the crusades which were apparently fought by quipping Americans who may or may not be trying to do English-esque accents. I honestly can’t tell if Nicolas Cage is trying speak with an English accent and just failing or if it’s just the way his voice goes when he’s trying to speak in somewhat faux Olde English. Ron Perlman, on the other hand, doesn’t even seem to bother and honestly, his performance is more enjoyable because of it. Anyway, the two Crusadery chums are hacking their way through battles, killing for God and drinking with wenches and just generally having as good a time as two knights can. After a while though, they come to the realisation that they aren’t just killing deserving infidel warriors but also women and children too. They decide that enough is enough and leave the Crusades and go on the run as deserters.
So they find themselves wandering around medieval Europe. What are they doing? Well, that’s never really explained. Probably going from village to village and righting wrongs where they can. That’s the ind of shit that righteous outlaws are always doing from Robin Hood to The A-Team. Anyway, they come across a kingdom blighted by the plague where they are recognised and arrested. However they are given a holy quest by a plague-ridden Christopher Lee (in one of the more bizarre cameo appearances in film history). The quest is to deliver an alleged witch to a monastery where a rite will be performed that will remove the curse of the plague. Cage is reticent to sign up and work for the church again but ultimately relents in exchange for a guarantee that the accused witch will receive a fair trial and that he and Perlman are given full pardons.
They are accompanied on their quest by a priest, the unfortunately named Debelzaq, a swindler/merchant named Hagamar, another knight whose own land has been ravaged by the plague, causing him to lose his daughter, named Ulrich and a young aspiring knight Kay. They set off and, honestly, not much actually happens on the way. There’s a few deaths and few things which are possibly meant to make you wonder if the girl actually has supernatural powers or not whilst actually makes it pretty fucking obvious that she has supernatural powers. What happens could best be described as dude gets stabbed, there’s a rickety bridge on which no one dies, some demon wolves and then bam. They’re at the monastery.
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I'm reluctant to say whether I was ever a fan of Rugrats on Nickelodeon. Honestly I remember spending more of my childhood on The Disney Afternoon or on Cartoon Network. I guess I was a fan to some extent though because I do remember seeing this movie in theaters, and this is pretty much the first time I've seen it since then. And while I have a really hard time bringing myself to call this a "good" movie, it's definitely a very cute film that has a lot of heart behind it.
As his new baby brother is brought into the world, toddler Tommy (E.G. Daily) and his friends Chuckie (Christine Cavanaugh), Phil and Lil (both Kath Soucie) are not too happy with the addition. But after an accident sends them flying into the woods, they must put their other problems aside and find their way home.
I do have to say that there is a lot of stuff about this movie I don't like. It is an incredibly juvenile film, which is to be expected with the humor from the show. But I don't remember ever liking those jokes on the show either. While I like the idea of the kids having a hard time pronouncing words, it's constant and gets really annoying. Even the Smurfs and their incessant insertion of their own names in place of verbs and pronouns isn't quite as grading to listen to. There's plenty of talking about bodily functions and for that matter body parts that are sure to make the kids giggle but that's just never been my style of humor. There's always been another side to the humor that's a little more subtle that I've always appreciated, even when I was younger (I've, uh, never had many friends) and that's present here. There's also a few jokes that went completely over my head when I was little and most of them work for me now. There are a lot of really good laughs but there are also moments when I just sat there groaning at how much they were pandering to their demographic. And I guess that's fine but I'm nowhere near that demographic.
I have never liked Klasky-Csupo animation style. I've always found it to be just grotesque to look at. Even with a much bigger budget here, they weren't able to shake that, and there's a lot of little animation things that I really didn't like. Some of the character's movements are way over-animated, making it look very unnatural and being generally unnecessary. Speaking of unnecessary, this movie is a musical. Yeah, that wasn't necessary at all. And the songs are really awful too. There's a point about halfway through the movie where they stop writing their own (awful) songs and start doing renditions of established songs. I began to pine for the simpler days of them writing their own material. I can't even say this idea could have worked because the way the babies talk would have made it impossible to make the film a musical worth listening to.
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We end this arc with 'more' fighting, a chibi, and a plot twist who many would think only M. Night Shyamalan could make.
After what seems to be a meteor shower off the coasts of every major city in the world, the military is called in to treat it as a military attack from another planet. We spend a majority of the film following a specific group of soldiers as they traverse L.A. in search of a way out or a way to stop the invasion.
I can't begin to describe to you how worthless this movie is. I'm even having a hard time coming up with anything to say about it because nothing interesting happens in this movie. It is note-for-note exactly what you expect from the moment it begins to the moment it ends. It's actually kind of insulting in that way. What I mean is, this movie pulls the same exact stuff that just about every other wartime film pulls, especially with forcing emotion to the extent that it's so obvious that you don't feel anything. When they show a character with a child or whose wife is about to have a child, you know they're going to bite it. But I'm getting to this point where I actually sort of feel offended by that, like the writers are forcing the child in there just so that they can lose their father. What a horrible thing to do to that child you just invented! And to the soldier's wife for that matter, who now has to raise the kid on her own because you, the writer, specifically wrote that kid in there to stir up emotion when they kill off daddy.
And no, I don't feel like I'm spoiling anything. And if I am, I don't really care. There isn't a single character in this movie that I felt I needed to invest any sort of emotion into. I never cared whether any of them got killed off, but then again I could tell from a mile away which ones were going to make it in the end. I think the only person in the movie I was a little surprised about their fate was Michelle Rodriguez, and if you know her track record in movies then that definitely was a spoiler. Sorry, I don't care. Even the aliens in this are incredibly uninteresting. Actually their more confusing than anything because they spend several minutes trying to figure out how to kill them, ultimately with no purpose because we find out in later action scenes that their vulnerable to bullets and being blown up. Who knew?
I'm even having a hard time finding anything to praise on the technical side of this film. The effects are pretty basic for wide release sci-fi films these days, but everything else is extremely subpar. I have no idea whose idea it was to film this movie like a documentary and yet stick to a basic Hollywood movie structure but it was a terrible idea. It makes it impossible to see a lot of the action and just feels out of place. The dialogue is unbearable at times with the same speeches we've heard a thousand times, only written worse than normal with absolutely no passion to them. They got several good actors but none of them give the kind of performances they would in something with a better screenplay. It feels like all of them are there just to collect their paychecks, and frankly I can't really blame them.
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Sacha Baron Cohen is back, this time as Admiral General Aladeen, ruler and dictator of the African Republic of Wadiya. After being threatened by the rest of the world to stop oppressing his people, Aladeen travels to the United States to speak to the United Nations. But he is forced into a life of American mediocrity when his right-hand man Tamir (Ben Kingsley) attempts to murder and replace him. Aladeen now has to rise back to power and stop his beloved country from becoming a democracy.
I think Cohen is a very talented comedian. He does a great job in every movie I've ever seen him in, no matter how bad the movie itself is. But he's one of those people who is only able to deliver other people's lines well. His own material, for the most part from what I've seen, just doesn't work and is not funny. It especially doesn't work in a standard comedy format like this. The reason Borat worked was because it was a mockumentary. The jokes work most of the time because the people are reacting to real situations, and when it is staged they kept to the same film style and at least faked it well. Here it's just lazy, unfunny improv wrapped around a very thin plot.
This movie wants so desperately to offend, but because of how desperate it is being, and because we've already seen this done a million times (by Cohen himself even), it just doesn't work. It backfires and feels as desperate as it is, like they weren't trying as hard to make funny jokes but just say offensive things. There are several moments where lines come out of nowhere, without anybody's lips moving. It's incredibly obvious when they just dubbed in a quick joke, none of which ever work. There's a reel of lines and scenes they didn't go with that play during the credits and none of them are any funnier than the material they actually used, leading me to believe they just didn't come up with very good material. And it's kind of hard to come up with material when its on the spot like that, which is one of the reasons I'm slowly coming to really hate improv artists.
I can't think of anything about this movie that works, really. I think Anna Faris, who played Zoey, a woman Aladeen befriends in New York, is just as good as she ever is. That isn't to say she got any good jokes though. I like Faris, but she has nothing here. Nobody does. Chris Parnell shows up in this as a news anchor and I like him too but his scenes in this movie are just worthless. In fact, there are a number of scenes in the movie that have absolutely no reason to exist and jokes that just go nowhere. I do recall, early on, chuckling at a couple of things. I can't for the life of me remember what they were now, but I do remember it happened. After that though, I just couldn't wait to get out of the theater. The only reason I don't hate it is because it doesn't deserve my hate.
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Oh. Acclaim. Why am I not surprised?
A lot has happened between Underworld: Evolution and Underworld: Awakening. The humans have discovered the vampires, the lycans and their war and have decided to put a stop to it. Twelve years after the purging, Selene (Kate Beckinsale) awakens in a laboratory and set out to find Michael. But on her journey she encounters a little girl (India Eisley) who may be the key to finding what she's looking for.
This is a huge leap forward for this series and admittedly a tiny step backwards. First of all, the production quality far exceeds that of the previous three with much nicer cinematography (possibly necessary for the 3D, which I have not seen) and a lot more graphic violence than ever before. We're back to the crazy, over-the-top gun blazing and unabashed blood-gushing that this series does best, but the story is also a lot more engaging than it has been. The stakes are much higher now (no pun intended, vampires and all), not only because the humans have actually won the war against non-humans but because Selene is no looking for what's left of what she could call a family. There's also a group of lycans working on a serum that would be able to turn them into super-werewolves, able to absorb silver and be virtually impenetrable.
I had a lot of fun watching the first three movies, but this one really blew me away. It is action from start to finish and it only stops to let you breathe for a moment and then dunks you back into the excitement. Because so many things change so drastically between films, it takes a moment just to take it all in. But the film never gives the characters that moment like most other films would. It's nice to have that moment in those other movies but it would probably feel out of place and unrealistic here. These characters are running for their lives and they really never stop running. There are twists and turns all throughout this movie with characters dying when you least expect it and several unexpected surprises. I also thought it had some really great sound work, with plenty of metal crashing into other metal and walls, lots of roaring from the lycans and all sorts of other sounds that made it even more epic.
The only real downfall this movie has, and the only reason I don't give it the 10/10 that I wish I could, is the dialogue. I can honestly see this dialogue completely killing the film for anybody who doesn't already love these films. Almost every single line is exposition, a lot of which we don't even need, and they talk a lot. Sometimes it can be really campy and almost sort of work in a funny way, but other times it's just annoying and repetitive. I really wish they'd focused a little bit more on this because the rest of the film is so entertaining that it sucks that there aren't a lot of memorable quotes or anything. At the very least the movie should follow the "show-don't-tell" method that the other films sort of followed.
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Centuries before the events of the first two Underworld films, lycan (werewolf) Lucian (Michael Sheen) was in love with Sonja (Rhona Mitra), the daughter of the ruler of the vampires, Viktor (Bill Nighy). Their unity brought with it the rise of the enslaved lycans, leading to the war that we've all become well acquainted with in the present story.
Going back and telling this story is a little confusing to me. From a marketing standpoint, I find it odd that they would make an Underworld film without Kate Beckinsale. From a storytelling perspective, I don't see the point in it existing at all. We already saw this story in flashbacks and it was impactful at the time. Drawing it out and telling every little detail gets kind of boring as it goes on. It takes a lot of emotion out of a story like this when we already know exactly how it ends. It's also a pretty generic story they went with, hitting beat-for-beat everything you're expecting.
That being said, the emotion does work when you think of the film as its own thing. It's a tragic love story in somewhat of the vain of Romeo and Juliet, only it's with vampires and werewolves and that makes it so much more awesome. The chemistry between Lucian and Sonja works, but the chemistry between the two of them and Viktor is even better. I love seeing Nighy get a bigger role in one of these films because he seems to love making them. Viktor is way over the top in the best way possible, yelling and screaming and being a generally fierce antagonist. If you loved him in the first movie like I did then you'll really love seeing him throughout this whole film.
I wish I could say the action was as good as in the first two films. While it is, from a gore perspective, it's all shot way too close and it's hard to tell what's going on half the time. There's even a fight near the end of the film that takes place during a lightning storm and the flashing lights mixed with the close up shots make it pretty much impossible to see anything. They also use some effects more than once and that sort of cheapens them a bit. It's all still on a much lower budget than it wants to be but it does an okay job making up for it. They just could have done a better job staging everything and getting the camera in the right place.
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Twenty years after her mother murdered several members of the cloth during her own exorcism, Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade) decides to bring a film crew (namely one camera man, Michael (Ionut Grama)) to Italy and see if she can perform another exorcism on her mother. She inducts the help of Fathers Rawlings (Simon Quarterman) and Keane (Evan Helmuth) who work outside the Catholic church's endorsement.
I don't really understand this film. It sells itself as being legitimate, even going as far as to give a website right before the credits for "more information." But then it goes on to show all the people who worked on the film, including the actors. I understand trying to engage the audience through the illusion of realism but even if I do take it as a real thing, I still don't understand the point of it. The filmmakers seem to have a very negative view of the Catholic church, but considering the subject matter I don't really understand their motivation. If this were actual footage then it would make sense but I know it's a screenplay they're working from so there motives don't really work.
Two or three exorcisms are performed, but they are relatively brief and really show off how low the budget was for the film. I wouldn't say the rest of the film is boring exactly, but it's definitely forgettable. I like the twist the film takes after they perform the exorcism on Isabella's mother Maria (Suzan Crowley), but then the movie stops early and doesn't give us much reason to care about what happened. If they had spent less time preparing us for the mediocre exorcism of the mother and focused more on what happens after, this could have been a very interesting and possibly even memorable film. As is though, it's just a standard, dull horror flick that's only worth checking out if you literally have nothing better to do.
Final Verdict: 
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It's a zombie apocalypse and while some are, well, dead, the rest are surviving the only way they know how: Taking in the pure joy of slaughtering the walking dead. Known only by their native cities, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) are on a journey across California on their way to anywhere that isn't full of zombies.
I feel like I've made this point plenty of times before but I am not a fan of zombies. I feel like the exist solely for the purpose of making gory horror films. Apparently the makers of Zombieland feel that way too and have fully embraced the concept. And I guess in a way that works but it's still not enough to get me to care. There are some elements to the film that I really like but that feel like they would have worked better in something that took itself a little more seriously. Columbus has a set of rules for survival and one of the main ones is to "enjoy the little things." That's a good rule to have that situation, but when they're having just as much fun fighting off zombies as they are doing anything else, the rule sort of becomes pointless.
Most of the fun of the movie comes from the killing of zombies, which again I just don't care for myself. To me, zombies are no better than storm troopers. They're just mindless, soulless, nameless targets and I have no investment in their killing. That being said, when you can at least make the kills entertaining in a way other than just slaughtering them, it can work. And in the third act of this movie it does work. It takes place in an amusement park and they're killing the zombies while riding the rides. That works. I just wish it hadn't taken until the end to have it work. For the rest of the movie it's just not all that funny or exciting to me.
And on that note, there is a major difference, especially in a film like this, between killing off zombies and murdering living people. If somebody gets eaten by a zombie that's fine, but when a living person is killed in some way by another living person, and it's played up for laughs, I just find that to be mean-spirited. This is done only a couple times in the film and it feels really awkward, like we're supposed to be laughing at a human being being scraped across the pavement. The second time it happens it could have worked much better if there was some sort of emotion put into the scene, but it's just like "Oh, you killed a living person. That kinda sucks." It's not funny just because it happened, you have to back it up and keep the scene going too.
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Scary Movie has to be the single greatest idea in the history of cinema. Let's take a movie that was a self-aware comedy and make a self-aware comedy referencing it! Genius! Yeah, I don't know what brought this film to fruition but it sort of hurts my "there are no bad ideas" philosophy.
The movie is a parody of Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Matrix for some reason and a bunch of other movies from the year or two before it came out. Anna Faris plays Cindy Campbell, a teenager whose friends start getting killed off by the Ghost Face killer from Scream. It's basically the exact plot of Scream, beat for beat, with a few jokes thrown in here and there.
I do find it kind of funny that Faris' performance in this is actually more entertaining than Neve Campbell's (gah, I just got the reference in Faris' character's name) in the Scream series. She's the highlight of the film because her comedy is the most subtle, with her constant screaming at every little plot twist and how she runs like a complete idiot. She's the only strong comedian among a bunch of generally annoying people acting out a very lazy and mostly unfunny screenplay. It's bad enough that the movie feels like they took the script from Scream and just altered it a little bit, but they even go as far as to flat-out say that it's the same dialogue as in Scream at one point. It's a terrifying look into the future of the franchise, with two of the writers going off to do Date Movie and the ungodly Meet the Spartans (they even sold Date Movie as being "from two of the writers of Scary Movie").
Most of the humor is forced and extremely juvenile. One character's entire gag is that he just gets high throughout the whole movie and another's is that he may or may not be gay. Some of the jokes work well at first but by the fifth time they shove them in your face it just gets old. If you thought it was odd that I said Faris' part as being "the most subtle" of the film when I described it earlier, trust me, I was being serious. There's nobody in the movie that stands out to me as just being completely and utterly annoying like, say, Matthew Lillard was in Scream, but there's just this overall feeling that the movie was scrictly made for the fun of it. And I'm okay with that but I'm a film critic and I have to say that what they came up with is only fun for them.
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Years after the Woodsboro murders have finally ceased, Sidney (Neve Campbell) has decided to come home for a book signing. But her return also brings the return of the Ghost Face killer, and it's up to Sidney, Gail Weathers (Courtney Cox) and now-Sheriff Dewey (David Arquette) to protect Sidney's family.
So we're back with a fourth installment to the Scream "trilogy," and it doesn't seem to know what to call itself. Sequel? Reboot? Remake? It can't keep its story straight. Whatever the case, we're back to constant name-dropping and references to other horror franchises. I get that it's the point of the movies, but just referencing movies doesn't make you witty or insightful. It makes you look like a pretentious film snob. Luckily the movie makes up for it by adapting to the new decade rather well, with plenty more blood, a higher body count and a story that's actually really disturbing.
Of course I hate spoilers, so it's going to be hard for me to explain exactly why, but the ending of this film is far darker than the first three films. It's the first in the series where the psychotic killer actually seems legitimately psychotic and not like an actor overdoing it. But that also feeds into the biggest problem of the film where it doesn't know if it wants to be overly campy or realistic.There's a scene where a character gets a kill that would immediately kill a real person, but they drag it out for laughs. The joke actually works really well, but then they follow it up shortly after with somebody being stabbed and somebody explaining how "it's not fast like in the movies." Well, you clearly pointed out that this is a movie. So which is it? Make up your mind!
Really, if it wasn't for the ending this movie would feel almost identical to the originals. The kills are just a bunch of stabs like in the first two and I'm never given a reason to care about most of the deaths. But the ending pulls out some big guns and brings out a lot of bizarre psychological drama that was missing in the first films due to bad acting and shoddy writing. Not that this is lacking in both of those qualities, but it works better than it used to. I'd suggest Scream 4 to anybody who saw the original films. If you didn't like the originals, then this is a movie that you might enjoy or you might not, but either way it's interesting to see it. If you did like the originals then of course you're going to like this one because it's the same exact thing, just newer.
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While working on Stab 3, the Ghost Face killer rises again, seeking out Sidney (Neve Campbell) once again. With the help of Gail Weathers (Courtney Cox) and Officer Dewey (David Arquette), she has to stop the murders again and solve the true mystery of her mother's death.
This is still the same basic crap from the first two, but there is a bit of a twist to it. Being the third in the series, and possibly the last when it was made, they seemed to have a better sense of humor about themselves this time around. Instead of constantly reminding you of better movies you could be watching, it actually makes fun of its own franchise. It's more apparent than ever that We Anderson isn't out to make a good movie as much as he is out to make a fun movie. This time we get a lot more than just stabbing. There are several kills that at the very least mix things up a bit, so by that account alone it's better than the first two.
But while it is funnier than the previous films and a little bit more interesting with its kills, it's also got a lot of drawn-out and boring moments to it. Where the first movie has some pretty classic moments in it and the second has at least some artistic stuff that I did appreciate, this is more of a film that I enjoy while watching it but completely forget about after having done so. Even right now I'm just grasping at memories of the film I just watched, trying to string together a coherent opinion on it.
The story is a lot more involved and a bit deeper than the previous films, but the way things end up in the end is pointless and stupid. It sort of feels like they came up with the rules for a horror film (which they again feel the need to spell out for the audience) and just lazily put together a story to meet the demands. It's not that it's not interesting to follow but it certainly isn't shocking or even memorable. I ultimately doesn't mean anything and doesn't really change much of anything about the series, other than a motive or two.
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I really don't have a lot to say about this one so I'm going to be very brief. I guess I need to explain the plot, of which there is none. After the release of a movie based on the events that took place in the first Scream, Sidney (Neve Campbell) is having to deal with a copycat murderer on her college campus. She also has to deal with Gail Weathers (Courtney Cox) getting in her way and the newly released from death row Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber).
This movie is beyond lazy. It straight up tells you that it's going to be a worse movie than the first, and as far as quality goes that's definitely true. This movie pulls the number one thing you cannot pull in a horror film which is to be utterly boring and slow-paced. There are very few kills and they are spaced out quite a bit. The people who get killed have even less emotion behind them than in the first movie so I never really care when any of them get it. Some people are only on screen long enough to explain why they exist in the movie before being killed and not fulfilling that existence.
And again, my biggest problem with the first was that these movies do not know whether they want to be legitimate horror films or if they want to just make fun of horror films. At least in this one you have a lot less talk about movies, especially in the third act. There is a little bit more subtlety in some of the referencing and there's actually one scene that I genuinely liked, but mostly it's just a boring guy stabbing a couple people just like the first.
That's really the biggest problem. I feel like the main point of the Scream movies is actually to take those clichés and tropes that it's mentioning and make a better movie. It's smug and it's pretentious, and what's worse is that it fails on every level. It feeds into its own clichés and becomes what it is making fun of. If that's the purpose then it's not something I want to see and if it's not the purpose then they are failing. It's basically a series of movies that tell you to go watch better movies.
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Selene (Kate Beckinsale) and Michael (Scott Speedman) are back, this time with a much bigger foe to defeat. The war has amped up with the awakening of Marcus (Tony Curran), the first vampire. He is on a mission to wake his brother William (Brian Steele), the first lycan, and it's up to our two heroes to stop him.
With this sequel comes a much bigger budget, allowing for much more action, a lot more lycans and even a better story. I was pretty scared when I saw the opening completely retcon the entire first film, with the war now having started over 750 years ago with the first of each species. But the way it plays it far more than makes up for it. We get a lot more character development for Selene this time around and learn a little bit more about her past. The mythos feels a lot more established this time around and that helps to make things a little more interesting.
Marcus is a much more formidable foe than Viktor in the last film. Being the first of the vampires, he has a bat-like look to him when he transforms. It's a really nice makeup job that creates an original looking character. There's also a lot more drama that comes along, with Selene and Michael getting deeper into their own relationship. It's like the exact opposite of Romeo and Juliet because they're both immortal. I think what I like most about these films, and this one especially, is that despite being incredibly blatant and over-the-top for most things, there are little character elements and moments that are very subtle and at times can be very emotional.
That being said, the one big problem I have with this movie is how blatant it is about some things. There are a lot of flashbacks, which are explained through "blood memories" and I can buy that, but it's used for exposition into the previous film for a lot of the first act of the film. I never really feel like that's a good way to introduce newcomers to a franchise. They should have watched the first one, especially in a story that continues immediately from the last like this one, and even if you really are desperate for newcomers then why can't you be more subtle about it? Have characters mention little things or even just look at a photograph or something. Audiences can pick up on that sort of thing really well. Plenty of people do it every week watching television.
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In a war between vampires and lycans (werewolves), Selene (Kate Beckinsale) has always fought on the side of her vampire brethren. But after meeting Michael (Scott Speedman), a human who has recently been bitten by a werewolf, she begins to wonder which side she really wants to fight for.
I've avoided these movies for a very long time now because they just haven't looked all that interesting to me. I love vampires and I especially love werewolves but the trailers for these movies have always made them look incredibly bland and straight-to-video-ish. But now that I've actually watched the first, I have to say I was rather entertained. This is by no means a well-produced film of course. The effects are really terrible and the action scenes balance between boring and ridiulous, but the story is actually kind of interesting. It's pretty generic when you get to the base of it (heck, it's practically Avatar in more than one way), but the element of vampires, werewolves, and the possibility of them combining in some genetic way is incredibly cool. The way that plays out is kind of a letdown as far as visuals go but the journey there is more enjoyable than I expected.
I do have to admit that about half of the enjoyment (if not a bit more) comes from the terrible production of the film. It bounces in and out of the "so bad it's good" territory with punches missing by a mile and some completely ludicrous moments in the action that I couldn't help but laugh at how awesome they were. It took a while to get to those moments though as I found the first half of the film to be kind of boring. There are a couple moments here and there that were bizarrely hilarious, and I do like how the story developed in hindsight, but for the most part I just didn't find myself caring about any of the characters until about halfway through. They all went from being boring and generic to being interesting and, in some cases, even pretty emotional by the end.
Underworld feels like an Asylum movie with a slightly bigger budget and a group of people who actually care about what they're doing. I didn't realize there were several recognizable names involved until the credits began to roll, mostly because the acting was about what you'd expect once you see the production quality of the film. It's still not really something I'd recommend you go out and hunt down immediately but if a friend asks you if you've ever seen it, and you haven't, let your friend show it to you. It'll be fun whether you genuinely enjoy it or riff it the whole time.
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In the late 1700s, wealthy businessman Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) is turned into a vampire and his family cursed by a witch (Eva Green) until Barnabas learns to love her. He is buried and then unearthed in 1972 and must adjust to life in the new century while rebuilding his family name.
I don't feel like I'm in a minority when I say that I've never seen the original Dark Shadows soap opera upon which this movie is based. Apparently I am in somewhat of a minority in saying that I'd never even heard of it before this film was announced. And it would seem the people marketing this film knew about people like me because they sold it as being somewhat different than what it actually is. They've been selling it as a "Saving the Club" kind of movie when it's really more about Barnabas and his wanting to rid himself and his family of their curse. In this sense it's much better story-wise than the trailers let on, but it's also very unbalanced and a little tiring near the end.
For the most part, the movie rolls along pretty fluidly. The beginning feels a little rushed, just to get backstory out of the way, but then it keeps a steady pace. Around the beginning of the third act it suddenly takes a very dark turn and then another dark turn and rushes into the climax, only to have the climax be very confusing and rushed. From what I can only assume, it seems that they were trying to fit a lot of plot lines from the show into the film all at once. There are a couple moments that are probably more amusing to people who watched the show, and from what I could gather they were kind of amusing to me as well, but it felt like if they wanted to throw these things into the movie they could have been handled better. It feels like the movie had its fun with its own stuff, but then realized it was an adaptation and decided to throw all of that stuff in too without having it mix well with the rest.
The Collins family is made up of Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer), Roger (Jonny Lee Miller), Carolyn (Chloë Grace Moretz), David (Gulliver McGrath), the live-in psychiatrist Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter) and groundskeeper Willie Loomis (Jackie Earle Haley). The movie doesn't spend a whole lot of time with any of them, spending most of its time on the relationship between Barnabas and Angelique (the witch). But we are given enough time with the family to care about them and at least stay interested in them being in the story, which is more than I can say for the main love interest, Victoria Winters (Bella Heathcote). Barnabas has two love interests in film, one who dies in the backstory without giving us any reason to care about her other than the fact that Barnabas cares about her, and Victoria who has pretty much the exact same treatment. I find it funny how, being set in the 70s, the film makes several references to the women's rights movement and yet the love interest has absolutely no personality of her own. She is given her own backstory but it's really not all that interesting. It's also just shoved in as a way to show why she and Barnabas belong together.
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There was an idea called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people so they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to fight the battles we never could.
Please visit leetNEET.com for this review as well as other awesome reviews/nerd-related news!
My rating system:
5 = Perfection.
4.5 = REALLY good, but lacking that oomph to make it 5.
4 = Great.
3.5 = Above average. Definitely worth a look.
3 = Average.
2.5 = Below average. If you like its genre, you probably would like it.
2 = Not terrible, but not something you would like.
1.5 = Bad, but still worth checking JUST to make fun of how bad it is.
1 = BEWARE! EVIL! NOT EVEN WORTH MAKING FUN OF! WILL LITERALLY MAKE YOU SICK!
Even if you've never seen a slasher in your life, you know the formula. They're so overplayed that just about anybody could make one, and it's usually the first type of movie a filmmaker sets out to make. Enter director Wes Craven, who made his name creating one of the most prominent horror franchises of all time with A Nightmare on Elm Street. In the 90s he got the bright idea to make a pseudo-parody of the slasher genre, but in making Scream he ended up just making a slasher that is so lazy that it tells you how bad it's going to be.
I don't really know how to explain the plot of this movie because there really isn't a plot to it. A killer comes in and starts killing a bunch of kids. It stars Neve Campbell, Skeet Ulrich, Rose McGowan, Matthew Lillard, Jamie Kennedy, Courtney Cox and David Arquette. The catch is that it is a completely self-aware film, with characters constantly referring to other movies and how cliché everything is in horror films. But the movie itself does a lot of these clichés. And I get that this is sort of the point, but why would you set out to make a bad movie? For nostalgia? Watch the old movie. Rerelease it. If you make a movie that is intentionally bad, you can't possibly have a movie that is more than "bad."
If the movie actually tried to break more rules than it does then it might have been more interesting. Instead they opt to only break some of the rules and keep others in tact, making it so you don't know which ones are going to be broken and which ones aren't. Okay, that could work, but then you throw in the other cliché where every actor is awful. I don't know if this was intentional but it doesn't feel like it. It feels like the actors really are just bad and it makes guessing who the killer is incredibly easy. Well, that and the fact that they basically explain it right out to you. They never make it hard to figure out what's going on and seem to ignore a lot of rules of slashers. For instance, at one point a character labels himself a suspect. But because the scene is filmed in a way that doesn't make him suspicious at all, you know it can't be him now. That and they don't really give you a whole lot of options on who it could be.
But maybe solving the mystery isn't really the point. Maybe it's all about the endgame and how things play out once you've had the big reveal. Once you get to this point, once the killer has revealed himself, the movie just stops caring. It explains straight up to you that it is lazy and that it's taking the lazy way out. Ultimately there is no purpose to this film and it rubs this in your face at the end.It's just Wes Craven's smugness on screen for two hours (yeah, why did this have to be two hours again?). We get it, you like horror films. We don't need you gloating about your knowledge of them on screen. And really I wouldn't even have a problem with that if he had actually made a good horror film.
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Today on Gaming with killatia we're taking a look at the newest fighting game for Xbox Live arcade and the Playstation Network Skullgirls. Developed by Reverge Labs this game has the shot to become on of the top dogs of the fighting game genera. However some choices made by the developers prevents Skullgirls from being the perfect fighting game. Is this game still worth your money? Watch and find out!
House of the Dead 4 review up now on Gotgame.com
Batman comes back for a quadrilogy, this time played by George Clooney as he battles Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman). But as these new threats arise, so does one at home as Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred (Michael Gough) becomes ill. It's up to the Caped Crusader, Robin (Chris O'Donnell) and Alfred's niece Barbara (Alicia Silverstone) to stop the villains and try to find a cure for their friend.
Let's get one thing straight right off the bat: This is not a good movie. This is one of those rare reviews that reminds you to always be aware of the fact that I do not review movies based on their quality but on my own person enjoyment. And I really enjoy watching this movie. It takes itself much less seriously than Batman Forever and it actually helps to make it more entertaining. Nobody involved in this project seems to care at all. They all look like they're just having a fun time making a Batman movie and they don't care if it turns out to be crap. Clooney especially keeps a grin on his face through the entire thing as if they're holding his paycheck right of screen. He never acts for a single moment as if he took the job for any other reason than the fact that he couldn't turn down playing Batman. That being said, I for one thing he should have been playing Batman from the start, but that's beside the point.
The point is that this movie has a very bad script made incredibly entertaining by bad direction, bad production and very bad acting. Schwarzenegger tries way too hard and yet doesn't seem to be trying at all, which is both confusing and hilarious. Thurman really hams it up and has fun with her role, but she's the worst thing about the film for those very reasons. All of her dialogue is over the top, clichéd lines that feel like they're more out of a really bad stage show than a movie where subtlety is key. But nothing about this movie is subtle and that's one of the reasons it's so fun to watch.
But as awful as most of the movie is, I honestly have to say that this is the only Batman movie of its series that actually has some really emotional moments with Bruce Wayne. He and Alfred have a couple of scenes together that build on their relationship in a way that none of the other films ever touched upon and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that it works really well. It's the only of the films to actually give Bruce more than just a vague brooding past. It allows him to be human and more than just the other half of Batman.
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Batman (Val Kilmer returns, again, this time to fight Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones and Riddler (Jim Carrey). They've come up with a plan to steal the thoughts of everyone in Gotham and to find out who the man is behind the bat cowl. But this isn't the only problem for Bruce Wayne has taken in Dick Grayson (Chris O'Donnell), a boy who lost his parents in a horrible accident, and his identities begin to clash.
This movie takes a huge turn from Batman Returns, going for a much campier, lighter feeling akin to the Batman television series from the 1960s. In fact, it feels exactly like a modernized version of that. Even Kilmer's performance as Batman is almost identical to Adam West. But where that show was intentionally goofy and able to pull it off really well, this movie is only intentionally goofy half of the time. The other half is spend brooding and trying to develop a serious psychological story but ultimately being able to come up with nothing. It is pure agony having to sit through any point in this film where the villains are not on screen, hamming it up big time. But it's even worse when they are on screen.
Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones have never been this annoying. I like both of these actors, and you can tell they're having fun with this project, but their fun is my pain. They are not funny and their characters are very poorly written. Their plan is incredibly convoluted and the way it plays out makes absolutely no sense. It all feels so contrived. The heroes never seem to be in danger and every death is met with apathy. There is absolutely no emotion when Dick Grayson's parents die, partly because the scene is done so poorly and partly because Chris O'Donnell is such a terrible actor. The way the villains are dealt with in the end completely contradicts the entire point of both Batman and Robin as characters.
This is also an incredibly ugly film. About half of the movie is filmed at an angle and all of it is filmed at awkward distances. Every action scene is filmed too close, making it impossible to see what's going on, and the staging of every scene in the film is completely lacking of professionalism. It feels like a Batman movie made by a student filmmaker who doesn't understand a thing about Batman.
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Now we come to the part where all the fighting starts! We have a battle with man and beast, a battle between clone and original, and a battle...at a theme park?
Well, this is unexpected. This is my longest episode yet...probably because I decided to shove in some amusing education and context for the film. With that said, I quite enjoy this movie, and I hope that by watching this review you can understand its manic joys as well.
That film, my friends, is called:
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Batman (Michael Keaton) returns indeed, and just in time too because a new threat has surfaced. A malformed man known as Penguin (Danny DeVito) has risen from the sewers of Gotham and has plans to take over the city to avenge the way it has treated him. With this also comes Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer), better known as Catwoman, as she becomes another road block in both Batman and Bruce Wayne's lives.
It's funny how pretty much all of the things I said I didn't like about the first Batman movie are the things that I loved about the second. This time around the villains are unapologetically the main focus of the film, but it works because the characters are actually defined with their own backstories and motivations. Penguin was abandoned as a child and wants revenge. Catwoman is less straightforward but her problem is that she's gone insane. That's actually probably my biggest complaint about the film, that the way Selina Kyle becomes Catwoman doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. But the way it plays out from then on, watching her slip more and more into madness and never understanding what her own goals are, works really well into the Batman mythos.
Danny DeVito gives possibly the best performance of his life in this movie, with the help of Stan Winston's amazing makeup for the character. Just like the story, it's gritty and slightly disturbing to watch, but Penguin is also the biggest comic relief of the film and has some great lines. He's a much more interesting take on a Batman villain than Joker was. It's also a much bigger change than from the comics but it works very well.
As I said, the story is much darker this time around, but that's because it's a lot more emotional and has much more character development. The first felt like a big budget action movie while this feels like a big budget action character piece. The endgame is also much more important the story, with Penguin plotting the whole time. The stakes feel a lot higher than they did throughout the first film and it's not just a villain moping about a superhero spoiling all his plans. Penguin actually does a much better job at getting things done and manipulating the people. And most importantly, Batman feels important to the story. Batman, Penguin and Catwoman all have similar traits that play off each other throughout the film and help you sympathize with all of them. It plays the psychological angle in a subtle and deep way.
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This movie means a lot to me. Batman is actually the movie that got me interested in film, way back in 2003. It's the first movie where upon watching it my jaw dropped and I had to find out who had directed it. Upon watching it again now and setting aside nostalgia, I really can't say that it's as great as I once though. Or, for that matter, that it's even a good movie at all.
The story introduces Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) and his alter ego Batman as he tries to stop the Joker (Jack Nicholson) from causing chaos in Gotham City. Along the way he becomes entranced by photographer Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) who also meets the eye of Joker. The two battle through the city as it celebrates its 200th anniversary.
Now, there are two major problems I have with the film and one of them is the way they use the title character, Batman. Batman gets very little screen time with most of the film focusing on Bruce Wayne, and that's not just normal for a Batman story but its essential. This movie tries to find a balance between the psychological side of Batman and the fact that the reputation of Batman has been altered through time to focus much more on his rogue's gallery. The problem with this is that we see Joker way more than we should or need to and it takes away from Batman being the title character. The worst offense though is the fact that Batman is on an all-out killing spree throughout this movie. He's just knocking off thugs left and right, despite the fact that one of the most important things about Batman as a character is that he does not kill. Okay, so maybe they decided to come up with their own Batman for the movie? Well that's fine I guess, but I really don't like what they did. He comes off as cold-hearted and apathetic. He's out for revenge rather than vengeance, and that just doesn't work for me.
Joker is done better, although they do the same thing with him that they do with Batman. You only see him in his "makeup" very little while most of the time it's just Jack Nicholson's mug on screen. They found a way to keep both character's faces uncovered for as much of the runtime as possible, something that was obviously in their contracts and something that many people have since done when it comes to masks in films. It's a very annoying practice, especially when you want to see the character you came to see instead of the actor portraying him. Nicholson does a good job with what he's given though and I do like their version of Joker. He's much more laid back than most but he's still obviously psychotic and crazy. It just feels a little forced and I don't feel like we needed the backstory so much.
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We all know the story of Alice in Wonderland, but this isn't that story. This is the story of what happened many years after that. When doing a sequel to such an established work, it would really work better if it kept the same tone and got its facts straight. And even if this movie was more faithful to the original stories, it's still far too boring to matter.
Alice (Mia Wasikowska) has stumbled back into Underland many years later, but things are not as she remembers. In fact, she doesn't remember having been there before at all. Despite this, the citizens of Underland need her to come to her senses and help them defeat the wicket Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and bring the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) back to power.
I am a huge fan of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but what I love the most about the books is that they intentionally make no sense. The whole point of them was that there was no point, that they were strictly for entertainment. Sadly over time people have forgotten this and feel they need to make sense of everything. And even that can work sometimes if given the proper script and the proper director. But this movie, as I stated, is not the original story. It's a sequel to those stories, and as such it should keep things more accurate to the book. But what they do is they have Alice forget things and remember them wrong, allowing them to do whatever they want because they can just use the excuse that Alice remembered it wrong in the stories. And even that I can almost accept, but the movie takes itself far too seriously. Everything is so moody and serious and it just is not right for Wonderland (and as I pointed out a moment ago, they even changed the name of the place, using that same excuse).
I never thought director Tim Burton was right for this story. I have never understood why people thought that was a good idea because his stories aren't crazy and all over the place. They're confined and sensible, even when they're being dark and silly. I will admit that the visuals are pretty nice, but they're not up to Burton's standards. It doesn't look like a Tim Burton film and it certainly doesn't feel like one. It feels as though there was a ton of meddling from the producers trying to make it as acceptable to mainstream audiences as possible while ending up making it bland and lifeless. Even the credits feel far too much like everything else out there, and completely different from who Burton normally does his films. It's a lot like Planet of the Apes in that way, how it just feels like he either didn't care or he wasn't allowed to care.
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A group of neurotic New-Yorkers being dumped into the jungle and left to, rather pathetically, fend for themselves, has undeniable potential on the gag/pathos scale. As does the ironic twist that these city slickers are a gang of pampered zoo animals. So, with genuinely innovative animation, and some impressive acting talent, Madagascar should be, at least, diverting escapism. So why isn’t it? Simple. Madagascar isn’t funny. Which begs the question, why would one review this as a comedy, as opposed to “just” a children’s film? There are a few answers, the first being that it is a comedy. It is quite clearly pitched as a comedy and it’s certainly fair to expect a family movie to chuck in some laughs. But lazily referencing a talent pool of superior film is not comedy. Neither is, much as it pains me to admit it, being really, really in-your-face. Madagascar sadly falls prey to the notion that these things add up to a coherent script, plot and character be damned! Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, the writing team behind both Pirates of the Caribbean and Shrek, understand that this isn’t the case. The first Shrek had moments of genuine poignancy and was consistently funny when I watched it again as a real person (read; grownup). Pirates 1 may not exactly be Woody Allen, but Captain Jack is – in that movie, anyway – a laugh.
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What do you get when you cross Pac-man and Katamari? This game.
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Welcome to another installment of the Garfield Retrospective. After winning a pet talent competition, Jon drags Odie and Garfield off to Hollywood, where the fat cat becomes enamored with life in the fast lane. Only the unstoppable force that is Desiree Goyette can bring him back down to Earth!
Here in the UK we managed to prove that there really is a more effective way of sinking an animation studio than how Titan AE did with 1992's James Bond parody 'Freddie As F.R.0.7' (later to be known overseas as 'Freddie The Frog'). Surely it can't be THAT bad, though, can it? After all, it stars Sir Ben Kingsley! .....Ohhhhh yes, it really can :(
A pocket-sized review of the classic (but sadly overlooked) 1998 PC puzzle game 'Robosaurs Vs The Space Bastards'
for those who are interested, heres the ENTIRE PLOT for the avengers 2012 film. I still have my doubts on this film. im trying so hard to ignore the fangirls/fanboys point of view, because it's still considered a movie. I'd rather watch film brains review first from TGWTG, cus I've seen him review "The Raven " before it came out in the states. I'm watching clips of the film, and all I'm seeing, is the hype factor. no emotion of it being fun for me, whatsoever. even the medeocer reviews such as robcheskord from youtube, and his alternate reviews as batman youtube channels, that are nothing BUT fan hype and just using only descriptive words like "its awsome, funny, hot guys, hot girls, special effects amasing they are wut? lets dance" ......be honest with yourself. casual film watchers, or not, still add factors that our to your liking, not the fact of what the people want to here. anyways with out a further adue, The Plot:
Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson), director of the espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D., arrives at a remote research facility during an evacuation. The Tesseract, an energy source of unknown potential, has activated and opened a portal through space, from which the exiled Norse god Loki (Tom Hiddleston) steps through. Loki steals the Tesseract, and uses his abilities to control the minds of several S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel, including Agent Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), and the physicist Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard), to aid in his getaway.
In response to the attack, Fury reactivates the Avengers Initiative. Agent Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) travels to India to find and recruit Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), while Agent Philip Coulson (Clark Gregg), visits Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and requests that he review Dr. Selvig's research on The Tesseract. Fury himself approaches Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) with an assignment to retrieve the Tesseract from Loki. During his exile, Loki met and allied with a warmongering alien race called the Chitauri. In exchange for the Tesseract, the Chitauri agree to help Loki subjugate Earth.
Iron Man, Captain America, and Agent Romanoff travel to Germany to apprehend Loki, who is stealing iridium needed to stabilize the Tesseract and demanding that the civilians kneel before him. After a battle with the heroes, Loki surrenders and is escorted to a S.H.I.E.L.D. plane. However, Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Loki's adoptive brother and the Norse god of thunder, arrives and takes Loki from S.H.I.E.L.D., intending to reason with him on his own. Thor gets into a confrontation with Iron Man in a forest, and after Captain America breaks up the fight, Loki is eventually taken to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Helicarrier, a flying aircraft carrier, and placed in a cell designed to contain The Hulk.
The Avengers argue amongst themselves over how to deal with Loki, and Rogers discovers that S.H.I.E.L.D. are planning to harness the Tesseract's power to develop weapons. Fury admits that the events in New Mexico a year before made S.H.I.E.L.D. aware of other extraterrestrial races that may threaten Earth. Weapons developed from the the Tesseract would form a means of deterrence. As the group argues, Hawkeye, along with Loki's other possessed agents, attack the Helicarrier and disable its engines. As Iron Man and Captain America attempt to restart the damaged engines, Dr. Banner transforms into The Hulk (voiced by Lou Ferrigno), despite Romanov's efforts to calm him down, and runs amok inside the ship, battling Thor. During a fight with Hawkeye, Romanoff discovers that knocking him unconscious breaks Loki's mind control. Meanwhile, Loki escapes, traps Thor in the cell that contained him, and ejects it from the ship, but Thor escapes as the cell falls and crashes into a field. Agent Coulson tries to fend off Loki with an experimental gun, but Loki stabs him in the chest, killing him.
Fury uses Agent Coulson's death to motivate the Avengers into working as a team. Stark and Rogers realise that defeating the team will not be enough for Loki; he needs to overpower them in a public way so as to validate himself as ruler of Earth. Using a Tesseract-powered device built by Dr Selvig, Loki opens a portal to the Chitauri fleet over Manhattan, summoning an invasion. The Avengers rally in defense of New York, but quickly conclude they will be overwhelmed as wave after wave of Chitauri soldiers descend. Captain America, Thor and Hawkeye evacuate civilians, while Iron Man battles with enormous, flying serpents covered in metal Armour, and Dr. Banner transforms into the Hulk again and goes after Loki, beating him into submission. Agent Romanoff makes her way to the portal device, where Dr. Selvig, freed of Loki's mind control, reveals that Loki's staff can be used to close the portal.
Meanwhile, Fury's superiors attempt to end the invasion by launching a nuclear missile at Manhattan. Iron Man intercepts the missile and takes it through the portal toward the Chitauri fleet, where it detonates. Iron Man's Armour runs out of power and he falls back through the portal, quickly plummeting to the ground, but The Hulk catches him and he survives. With the Earth saved, Thor escorts Loki and the Tesseract back to their home-world of Asgard, and the other Avengers go their separate ways. Fury notes that the Avengers will most likely band together again if and when the world needs them.
During the credits, the Chitauri leader approaches his master and tells him that humans are not the weak race that Loki promised, and attacking Earth again would be an act of suicide. A shadowy figure turns around and smiles menacingly.
END. Well there you have it. thought the movie, it seems like they leave out alot occurring to the characters Bruce Banner/HULK, and seems like hes hardly in it. not saying he should or shouldn't, just from this writing retrospective, dosent seem like alot. sure I havent seen the movie yet, but I can gather from the scenes, I will not be interested at all or have a sence of "The Fun Factor". still if it's your feel of being sucked into the vast storage of and if I'm correct, it's being illegally downloaded as we speak, as movies always are when it comes to the interwebs. at the beginning of the story, its just what we've been seeing, nick furry gathering a team. I just hope that for when hes doing this, it's not showing scenes from the other movies, of when he's doing so. stalk footage in other words, or using the stalk footage, just shooting the scenes in different locations. smart movie, smart..... anyways, it also seems like it drags. on too much. we don't even get to see an epic fight scene till the end. I could be wrong, or maybe they wernt hoping to have a gigantic fight scene untill the next movie. yes, I'm talking about the end credits. I have no idea who this character is, but I'm assuming it's Mandarin, cus rumors have flown that the sequel to avengers, will be tied with, Iron Man 3, or its just gonna carry out to be either title avengers 2 or some creative name fallowed by the avengers, or simply titled Iron Man 3.
for those who are interested, heres the ENTIRE PLOT for the avengers 2012 film. I still have my doubts on this film. im trying so hard to ignore the fangirls/fanboys point of view, because it's still considered a movie. I'd rather watch film brains review first from TGWTG, cus I've seen him review "The Raven " before it came out in the states. I'm watching clips of the film, and all I'm seeing, is the hype factor. no emotion of it being fun for me, whatsoever. even the medeocer reviews such as robcheskord from youtube, and his alternate reviews as batman youtube channels, that are nothing BUT fan hype and just using only descriptive words like "its awsome, funny, hot guys, hot girls, special effects amasing they are wut? lets dance" ......be honest with yourself. casual film watchers, or not, still add factors that our to your liking, not the fact of what the people want to here. anyways with out a further adue, The Plot:
Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson), director of the espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D., arrives at a remote research facility during an evacuation. The Tesseract, an energy source of unknown potential, has activated and opened a portal through space, from which the exiled Norse god Loki (Tom Hiddleston) steps through. Loki steals the Tesseract, and uses his abilities to control the minds of several S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel, including Agent Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), and the physicist Dr. Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard), to aid in his getaway.
In response to the attack, Fury reactivates the Avengers Initiative. Agent Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) travels to India to find and recruit Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), while Agent Philip Coulson (Clark Gregg), visits Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and requests that he review Dr. Selvig's research on The Tesseract. Fury himself approaches Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) with an assignment to retrieve the Tesseract from Loki. During his exile, Loki met and allied with a warmongering alien race called the Chitauri. In exchange for the Tesseract, the Chitauri agree to help Loki subjugate Earth.
Iron Man, Captain America, and Agent Romanoff travel to Germany to apprehend Loki, who is stealing iridium needed to stabilize the Tesseract and demanding that the civilians kneel before him. After a battle with the heroes, Loki surrenders and is escorted to a S.H.I.E.L.D. plane. However, Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Loki's adoptive brother and the Norse god of thunder, arrives and takes Loki from S.H.I.E.L.D., intending to reason with him on his own. Thor gets into a confrontation with Iron Man in a forest, and after Captain America breaks up the fight, Loki is eventually taken to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Helicarrier, a flying aircraft carrier, and placed in a cell designed to contain The Hulk.
The Avengers argue amongst themselves over how to deal with Loki, and Rogers discovers that S.H.I.E.L.D. are planning to harness the Tesseract's power to develop weapons. Fury admits that the events in New Mexico a year before made S.H.I.E.L.D. aware of other extraterrestrial races that may threaten Earth. Weapons developed from the the Tesseract would form a means of deterrence. As the group argues, Hawkeye, along with Loki's other possessed agents, attack the Helicarrier and disable its engines. As Iron Man and Captain America attempt to restart the damaged engines, Dr. Banner transforms into The Hulk (voiced by Lou Ferrigno), despite Romanov's efforts to calm him down, and runs amok inside the ship, battling Thor. During a fight with Hawkeye, Romanoff discovers that knocking him unconscious breaks Loki's mind control. Meanwhile, Loki escapes, traps Thor in the cell that contained him, and ejects it from the ship, but Thor escapes as the cell falls and crashes into a field. Agent Coulson tries to fend off Loki with an experimental gun, but Loki stabs him in the chest, killing him.
Fury uses Agent Coulson's death to motivate the Avengers into working as a team. Stark and Rogers realise that defeating the team will not be enough for Loki; he needs to overpower them in a public way so as to validate himself as ruler of Earth. Using a Tesseract-powered device built by Dr Selvig, Loki opens a portal to the Chitauri fleet over Manhattan, summoning an invasion. The Avengers rally in defense of New York, but quickly conclude they will be overwhelmed as wave after wave of Chitauri soldiers descend. Captain America, Thor and Hawkeye evacuate civilians, while Iron Man battles with enormous, flying serpents covered in metal Armour, and Dr. Banner transforms into the Hulk again and goes after Loki, beating him into submission. Agent Romanoff makes her way to the portal device, where Dr. Selvig, freed of Loki's mind control, reveals that Loki's staff can be used to close the portal.
Meanwhile, Fury's superiors attempt to end the invasion by launching a nuclear missile at Manhattan. Iron Man intercepts the missile and takes it through the portal toward the Chitauri fleet, where it detonates. Iron Man's Armour runs out of power and he falls back through the portal, quickly plummeting to the ground, but The Hulk catches him and he survives. With the Earth saved, Thor escorts Loki and the Tesseract back to their home-world of Asgard, and the other Avengers go their separate ways. Fury notes that the Avengers will most likely band together again if and when the world needs them.
During the credits, the Chitauri leader approaches his master and tells him that humans are not the weak race that Loki promised, and attacking Earth again would be an act of suicide. A shadowy figure turns around and smiles menacingly.
END. Well there you have it. thought the movie, it seems like they leave out alot occurring to the characters Bruce Banner/HULK, and seems like hes hardly in it. not saying he should or shouldn't, just from this writing retrospective, dosent seem like alot. sure I havent seen the movie yet, but I can gather from the scenes, I will not be interested at all or have a sence of "The Fun Factor". still if it's your feel of being sucked into the vast storage of and if I'm correct, it's being illegally downloaded as we speak, as movies always are when it comes to the interwebs. at the beginning of the story, its just what we've been seeing, nick furry gathering a team. I just hope that for when hes doing this, it's not showing scenes from the other movies, of when he's doing so. stalk footage in other words, or using the stalk footage, just shooting the scenes in different locations. smart movie, smart..... anyways, it also seems like it drags. on too much. we don't even get to see an epic fight scene till the end. I could be wrong, or maybe they wernt hoping to have a gigantic fight scene untill the next movie. yes, I'm talking about the end credits. I have no idea who this character is, but I'm assuming it's Mandarin, cus rumors have flown that the sequel to avengers, will be tied with, Iron Man 3, or its just gonna carry out to be either title avengers 2 or some creative name fallowed by the avengers, or simply titled Iron Man 3.
For part one we see fairies get sucked into a wormhole, cats that can fly and a world where only magic weapons can be used. It's starting to sound like a really strange JRPG.
Discuss/view other reviews here!
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This is a spoof review show. I'm making that clear right off the bat, because my aim is to entertain, not to troll. I don't want people to think what I'm saying in these videos are real. I want them to have fun.
These are the first seven videos of this show. New videos are scheduled about every Thursday (give or take a day).
{"video":"
In our second review of the Donald Strachey film series, the gay PI goes undercover at a conversion therapy clinic to find out why an ex-gay poster boy committed suicide, and faces some personal demons.
Everyone knows a bad movie. What happens when we take a bad movie and try to defend it.
You either go crazy, or discover a never-before-seen message.
Michael Bay's 1998 asteroidal disaster movie. Let's defend this Hollywood staple.
{"video":"
After a mishap leaves Garfield stranded downtown, the fat feline finds himself far from home, facing up against a gang of alley cats, and meeting his long-lost mom!
Then, everybody dances! WOO!
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Operation-Manafall/337520612969493 You might know this game as Secret of Mana 2, but this video is titled by the only name it was officially released as. This was a Japan exclusive game in the Mana series that many people aren't aware existed, but let's change that starting right now!
Submit your own videos about this game on RPGFanatic.net !
http://rpgfanatic.net/advanced_game_wiki_database.html?game=Seiken+Densetsu+3
What could possibly go wrong!?
Well, I finally finished Ninja Gaiden III, despite being off put by all the reviews surrounding it, and Spoony call it shit on twitter. Needless to say most critics seem to hate on the game. I'm not saying their hate is not without reason, Ninja Gaiden III is indeed full of flaws and moments that make you go "Really? This really happened?" throughout the story. However I found the game to be pretty decent, and what better way to express my opinion on the internet then to make a review article. I'll do my best to avoid any major spoilers.
Feel free to review my review, I did this pretty much all in one sitting and it's more of a template for if I felt like making an audio review. I like to think I made some major improvements from when I did one of these for Duke Nukem Forever.
Story
...
“But before we get started, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask
you.”
“And what’s that?”
“Who is this ‘Icarus’ guy this game is named after? Can I meet him?”
“Um…actually, no. But let’s not worry about that.”
“…Why not? What happened to Icarus?”
“Let’s just focus on you right now.”
– Pit and Palutena engaging in a typical conversation you should expect from this game.
...
So last week, my buddy Tom (aka Heisanevilgenius) and I went out to see The Raid: Redemption. Then we made a little video about it to share our thoughts. You should DEFINITELY go see...
You can SUBSCRIBE to Warning! Readers Advisory!, Better Off Read, and What We Watched over at Chasing the Muse.
Follow Derek the Bard on Twitter @DerektheBard.
...
Check out our awesome site for more stuff: http://purplecough.blogspot.ca/
Twilight. Yes, I'm a 26 year old guy who actually read this book. Why you ask? Well, mostly because it’s such a big name series now that I wanted to know what all of the fuss was about. Sure it’s a chick story, but I like romances like the Austen novel Pride and Prejudice and some films like Leap Year. And if people are going to be discussing and arguing over this book, I wanted to at least have a well informed opinion about it. For those of you who don’t feel like subjecting yourself to 498 pages of paranormal romance gush, well, that’s why I’m here.
Now what follows are my own personal opinions and observations. You may agree or disagree with me, that’s perfectly fine. But these are the issues that I saw while reading through the book.
So, with that in mind, let’s dive right in!
For those two or three people who don’t know, Twilight is about a girl named Bella Swan, who moves from Phoenix, Arizona, to Forks, Washington, to live with her dad. While there she ends up falling in love with a boy from her school named Edward, who just happens to be a vampire… and who also just happens to be one of the few vampires in the world who has sworn off eating humans. And that’s pretty much all that happens in this story. I’ll admit the idea of a story with a vampire who didn’t want to be a killer and fell in love with a human was kind of interesting to me, I think it could have had a lot of cool development and tension. I’ve always been drawn towards “what if” stories, especially ones that take a new look at a well established character type. That being said, this is a terrible example of that type of work. The author takes an interesting premise and turns it into a four book soap opera. The first half of Twilight is basically Bella narrating about boring high school stuff and how strange Edward acts, building towards the big reveal that anyone who read the back cover summary already knew was coming. After that, nothing happens until around page 380 when a trio of vampires shows up and threatens Bella’s life. She runs back to Phoenix to escape, but one of the Evul vampires follows her, luring her into a trap only to have Edward & Co. save her life at the last minute. Of course, Bella blacks out during the only part of the book where there might have been any action, coming to just in time to have a “Don’t leave me” scene between her and Edward, and then end the book with Edward taking her to prom.
All of the possibilities for tension and character development in this type of story are thrown by the wayside in favor of an unrealistic and unbelievable romance between Bella and Edward. Most of it really amounts to little more than pages and pages of padding, with Bella playing “He loves me, he loves me not”, and then more pages and pages of atrocious dialogue once we establish that Edward does in fact love her. When the story does finally introduce some sort of tension as the Evul vamps arrive, it is so contrived and forced that it just ends up being stupid. The characters are forced into actions and situations not because it is what they would naturally do, but because it’s what the plot says they must do. And to make matters worse most of the decisions have no logical basis whatsoever.
...
It's time to 'Hop' away from this film!
I love reviews...and I love books!
That's why I'm going to start a review show here where I review books.
Here's a list of Books I'll be looking at (In no particular order):
- Alfie's home
- Latawnya, the naughty horse learns to say no to drugs
...
Leave comments. Did I overreact?
Interested in hearing about a forgotten point 'n' click adventure from the 90s?
Interested in hearing analysis of the game's design and the risky gameplay choices that didn't pay off?
...
{"video":"
We take a look at one of the literary community's first gay PIs in this made-for-TV novel adaptation. When a self-published investigative journalist is found dead over his public 'outing' of prominent political figures, Strachey must take the case despite his personal feelings, and find out who the mysterious 'third man out' is before somebody gets away with murder.
Click for my Kindle 3 Review:
http://mark-us-now.blogspot.com/2012/04/my-reviews-kindle-3-kindle-odyssey.html
the not so neutral retelling of square enix's direct to dvd debut.
About
star legends is made by spacetime studios, a american based company
Story
I didn't notice
Gameplay
...
About
pocket legends is made by spacetime studios, a american based company
Story
I didn't notice
Gameplay
...
Posted on April 1st 2012, this was the April Fools joke of the year. Of what though? Find out!
Here is my review of the Collector content of the game:
I also talk about the game itself! Bear in mind, this is my first review of an actual game, and my first vlog style review with issues. Please keep this in mind as you watch:
Open your eyes! For the place that’s not in any map
Because it isn’t an illusion
Each one of us, has their very own
Treasure that everyone is seeking
Please visit leetNEET.com for this review as well as other awesome reviews/nerd-related news!
...
I've tried with Better Off Read to pick movies that people might not have heard of, but which are probably worth a watch, even when they're awful. For this week, I tracked down in the $5 bin at HMV my favourite Jack Nicholson film of all time.
...it also gave me an excuse to make a Bravestarr joke. HOW OFTEN DO I GET TO MAKE BRAVESTARR JOKES?!?! So for those of you who might have forgotten about it in the deluge of Nicholson's better known films, allow me to introduce you to:
You can SUBSCRIBE to Warning! Readers Advisory!, Better Off Read, and What We Watched over at Chasing the Muse.
...
Check out our super cool site for more videos: http://purplecough.blogspot.ca/
{"video":"
When all the color goes out of their lives, Jon suggests that he and Garfield take a vacation. However, things go awry when first Jon makes plans to go camping, and then a... DEADLY PANTHER?
The hell...?
Recently, some friends of mine suggested I become a critic...
Reason being; I apparently have a talent for dragging things I don't like into the metaphorical bushes of my scrutiny and verbally fucking them in the arse with eye-wateringly long paragraphs full of big words and bloody stupid metaphors until the object of my almost holy wrath has a little cry and ceases to exist.
Now I don't know about you...
But I'm pretty sure that there's more to being a critic than simply sticking a chloroform rag over the face of the latest release and hauling it back to your basement so you can poke at it with lots of sharp, pointy objects. Of course, the real trouble is when it wakes up and lets out a shrill little cry and you suddenly find yourself being trampled under an army of Self-Righteous fanboys.
So, In conclusion...
I'm an insufferable twat.
However, I'm bloody good at being a twat and therefore I award myself 5 stars.
About
Dragona online is published by Gameclub, the game is made by a asian based developer
Story
I didn't notice the story
Gameplay
...
I went out and saw another movie! Hurray! This time, its a little film you may have heard of called...
You can SUBSCRIBE to Warning! Readers Advisory!, Better Off Read, and What We Watched over at Chasing the Muse.
Follow Derek the Bard on Twitter @DerektheBard.
...
Our Website: http://sib-lings.com/ The Dark Lord switches Sissy and Bigdog's roles, will wackiness ensue? And will the Ice Cream Suit taste sugary!?
I love the original Planet of the Apes movie, I do not love Tim Burton’s re-imagining of it. I’ll tell you why.
1. The original movie presented a lot of the ideas and themes in an intellectual and engaging way, one of my favourite scenes is the trial, it carries the tension while still showing the apes ignorance in their intelligence, all through dialogue. The Burton film vaguely pulls from these ideas but casts most of them aside for a more action oriented revolution movie (we are pretending the sequels to the original don’t exist).
2. I don’t think it is so hard to believe that apes can evolve in a natural way to be as intelligent as humans. So why does Burton need to fly an ape training space station into a time vortex nebula cloud thingy? It is unnecessary and makes the whole story even more convoluted than it ever had to be.
...
{"video":"
Someone wrote the Book of Love, then these guys made a game out of it. We take our first Wank at the eye-rolling erotic thriller mystery genre.
Hello everyone! I'm back with a review of something that came with a video game! This time, I take a look at what comes with the Collector's Edition of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. Once I get a good enough capture device, I should be able to review some actual games.
 |
Captain Marvel and Black Adam in a never-ending struggle for bling! |
[Originally posted on http://obsessive-geek.blogspot.com/]
Summary: Young Billy Batson, recently orphaned paper boy
in Fawcett City, finds himself in a world of magic and adventure when a
wizard named Shazam grants young Billy the powers of Captain Marvel,
The World's Mightiest Mortal. With the Speed of Mercury, Wisdom of
Solomon, Stamina of Atlas, Courage of Achilles, Strength of Hercules and
the Power of Zeus imbued into him, Billy must foil the evil
machinations of Dr Sivana and Theo Adam, the latter of which becomes the
villainous Black Adam.
Part adventure story, part superhero tale, part tragedy, part triumph.
All these things encapsulate the first volume of the magnificent Power of Shazam. To anyone who still truly wants to see what fun can be in a superhero story, this is the read for you.
Written by Jerry Ordway in 1994, the graphic novel itself largely eludes
the excesses of comics at the time. Not a single scene of over the top
gore, pitch black grittiness nor excessive sexual exploitation (save for
one comedy bit with a Betty Page look-alike) can be found anywhere in
the book's 94 pages. Instead, Power of Shazam opts for the
vintage feel of the 1940's. The heroes are heroes, the villains are
villainous, and everyone else is there as spectators to grand battles in
the sky. From the opening with C.C. Batson, his wife and guide Theo
Adam in an adventure serial like Egyptian tomb to Captain Marvel's first
fight on the WHIZ radio station roof , everything seems to go on as if
the 1940's never truly ended, giving the book a timeless feel.
While functioning as the origin story of both The Big Red Cheese and his
evil counterpart, the tale itself (like all good retellings) adds small
bits of its own to the mythos of the Captain. The dialogue itself
functions more towards the old golden age delivery than anything modern
for the 90's, nevermind today's writing. The characters are all
endearing, from the vile Theo Adam to the appearance of Uncle Dudley,
with Billy Batson leading the charge. Billy is of greatest note, not
only being the star of the whole dang thing, but by portraying the pain
of loss, loneliness of being and orphan and confusion and gradual
improvement in his super powered adult alter-ego.
The best part of it all though? The Fun. Despite all of the tragedy
surrounding a young boy left alone to fend for himself on the streets,
nothing can stop the lighthearted tone of it all. The climax bring it
all to a triumphant conclusion, but I won't spoil it here for you.
If you want to buy it now, go to Amazon. You can get it for cheap and I promise you that you'll never feel that you've wasted a penny.
So Power Rangers is a huge success and you want a piece of the action, but you have all the budget of a hack internet reviewer. What do you do? You repackage stock footage from a show that bombed. What started life as the less than successful Gridman became the most well known Power Ranger cash-in that Saban didn't make themselves. The toys were a hell of a lot better than Megazords, but can the show live up to that? Behold the literacy-challenged show, Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad!
If you thought the title of this movie is stupid enough, wait until you actually start watching it!
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