Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs - Movie Review

**

Starring the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah, Simon Pegg, Seann William Scott, Josh Peck and Chris Wedge.

My family got to see it for free, so that was worth it. But if you're debating whether or not to spend the $20 or $50 or whatever it'd cost to take your whole family, I'd wait for the DVD. And even then...

It bugs me when not only does an animated kids movie slip in dirty jokes and innuendoes every once in a while, but when they do it every ten minutes, it's really annoying. I'm glad it all sailed above my 3-year-old's head, but here's an example: Sid the Sloth tries to sneak milk from a sleeping water-buffalo thing. He grabs something under there and squeezes, and the buffalo wakes up. Next shot is Sid running for his life while yelling "I thought you were female!"

Another example: Sid sees a baby and declares "It's a boy!" Diego says "That's its tail." To which Sid declares "It's a girl!"

What did I enjoy? Well, the lost world they find under the ice is gorgeous. The plot has Sid steal three eggs to raise as his own kids. Turns out they're T-Rexes. It appears dinosaurs aren't extinct after all. (The first Ice Age movie established humans were on Earth). So where'd these dinosaurs come from? Manny, Diego and Ellie trek to a lost world where T-Rexes and apatosauruses and pterodachyls still roam to find Sid, kidnapped by Mama T-Rex.

Along the way they find a survivalist weasel named Buck, played with gusto by Simon Pegg. Buck was my favorite character in the movie. (Good summer for Pegg, this.)

Does it leave it open for Ice Age 4? Absolutely. Do I want them to make an Ice Age 4? Not really, no.

Oh, but Scrat? Still funny. Blue Sky studios should ditch future Ice Age movies but still include Scrat shorts in front of their future films.

The Unborn - DVD Review

THE UNBORN (*1/2) - Starring Odette Yustman, Gary Oldman, Meagan Good, Cam Gigandet, Jane Alexander and Idris Elba.
Directed by David S. Goyer.

A more accurate title might have been Beware the Dibble, but how scary would that be.

I can see why class actors like Gary Oldman and Idris Elba would be involved. Whatever they were paid, I'm sure their scenes only took about a week to film. So if Oldman's Dark Knight screeenwriter buddy David Goyer said "I have this part, it'll take you six days to film your stuff, here's a million bucks, will you do it?" Gary was probably like "Sure." And Elba, between filming Obsessed and his stint on The Office, probably thought "Hm, four days of filming and I get $200,000 and all my scenes are with Gary Oldman" well, who wouldn't jump at that?

Does it matter if the movie sucked? Off-screen to all involved, probably not. Those who paid to see it might have a different opinion. As I just pay my monthly Blockbuster Online thing, I still found this movie to be pretty lame, in that the scares aren't scary and the name of the ghost-monster is a Dibble. Maybe I wasn't hearing it right, maybe it's diblet or a dibbert, but I don't care enough to look it up.

Good paycheck movie, Gary. Now pick a project or two worth seeing.

Che: Part Two - DVD Review

CHE: PART TWO (**) - Starring Benecio Del Toro, Joaquim de Almedia and Demian Bashir.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh.

After I saw this, glad for the end to be there, that Che finally died, I went online and read an interview with director Steven Soderbergh said he regreted making the movie. Apparently worldwide it only made half its money back, small wonder for a 4-1/2 hour movie all in Spanish. Benecio Del Toro's heart was clearly in this project (he's still really good), but it seems this somewhat broke Soderbergh's spirit.

This movie takes place in Bolivia, when Che was older and sicker than he was in Cuba. He seems to know this revolution isn't going to go as well as his previous efforts. It's about a bunch of guys in green carrying guns in the jungle, hoping to kill some Bolivian soldiers and policemen. I was glad when Che was finally killed.

Fired Up! - DVD Review

**

Starring Nicholas D'Agosto, Eric Christian Olsen, Sarah Roemer, Molly Sims, Philip Baker Hall and John Michael Higgins.
Directed by Will Gluck.

This is a bizarre exercise in the three-act formula. Two football studs who sleep with every babe in their high school get the idea to go to the summer's cheerleader camp to get even more tail. The gorgeous girls from their own school are on one of the worst cheerleading teams in the state, so the two eventually develop human emotion and try to, like, actually help the squad win.

Meanwhile we hit some standard plot signposts. The mean-girl rival cheer squad. The jerky boyfriend of the head cheerleader. The boys caught in a lie at the end of Act 2. The big competition. An insurmountable move that they, just somehow, surmount.

What am I rooting for again? Eh, in the grand tradition of Rob Morrow and Johnny Depp in 1984's Private Resort come these two. And lest it be accused of being a rip-off of Bring It On, there's a scene with the cheerleaders watching that movie, saying the lines with Kirsten Dunst and company.

And once again, it's one of those comedies where the outtakes during the closing credits are funnier than the actual movie.

The Pink Panther 2 - DVD Review

**

Starring Steve Martin, Jean Reno, Alfred Molina, Andy Garcia, John Cleese, Emily Mortimer, Lily Tomlin, Aishwarya Rai, Yuki Matsuzaki and Jeremy Irons.
Directed by Harald Zwart.

This might be amusing to nine-year-olds, but I think I cracked a smile once. Kevin Kline knew to bail, but somehow Steve Martin still got a talent around him to help him out, including getting the invaluable John Cleese to step in as Dreyfus. If you've ever wanted to see Andy Garcia and Alfred Molina engage in Three Stooges level gags (they do get their faces planted in cakes at one point) then this is your movie.

The plot has an international thief stealing the most valuable possessions in the world. The Shroud of Turin, the Imperial Sword, St. Peter's Ring, and of course, the Pink Panther. So inspectors from the around the world unite to find the thief. The inspectors are all fairly competant at their jobs and therefore come to view Clouseau as a fool. And who wouldn't.

Even Jeremy Irons shows up. Academy-Award winner Jeremy Irons as a reformed thief. I half-expected a third-act cameo from Michael Caine. Alas, it didn't happen.

If this movie was released forty years ago, it'd probably be a smash. But what's considered funny has evolved. Good comedy always comes from surprise, and this has none.

Optimus Past His Prime

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN

*

Starring Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, John Turturro, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Benjamin Hickey, and Kevin Dunn.
Directed by Michael Bay.

Ugh. This movie pretty much oblitherated everything I liked about the first one. Two and a half hours of crashes and explosions where the camera never stops moving, and not once at any point did I care about character on screen.

There's no real story here that I could discern beyond more Decepticons show up to destroy stuff, and the Autobots fight back. Some bits and pieces:

- About 20 minutes in, I decided to consciously watch for any shot where the camera doesn't move and the one scene lasts at least three seconds. I gave up after another 20 minutes. I actually felt a little dizzy during one scene where Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox kiss as the camera spins around them.

- You may have heard of the two Autobots that some are referring to as the Jar Jar Twins. They do across as characters Dave Chappelle might have done in a ghetto spoof. Beyond the annoying aspects of those two (one even has a gold tooth!) there's an old British transformer that shows up. Total Rudyard Kipling type. He even uses a cane. Why do the Transformers have such modern human behaviors and characteristics? Aren't they aliens?

- College apparently is a place full of horny supermodels just waiting to be overcome with lust for geeky students in the Shia LaBeouf mold or geeky professors in the Rainn Wilson mold.

- John Turturro was one of the most irritating characters from the first movie, but in doing the same thing surrounded by this movie, he comes out as the best thing this has going.

- There's one scene where Sam (Shia) accidentally finds a shard of the original Cube that's been sitting in his closet for two years. Right. And when he drops it, it eats through the floor and brings a bunch of their kitchen appliances to life as cackling little Decepticons. Reminded me exactly of what happens when you get a Mogwai wet.

- Remember the EPA jerk so memorably played by William Atherton in Ghostbusters? This movie has one of those, a bureaucrat sent by Pres. Obama who orders the Autobots to leave Earth (well, America, anyway) to see if the Decepticons will leave too. Since he was sent by Obama, I wondered if his title was Transformers Czar.

- You telling me that a tall temple in the middle of the Egyptian desert wouldn't have encouraged some archaelogists through the decades to look a little more closely at what might be behind that hollow wall?

- Ever watch NBC's Chuck? Shia LaBeouf does a decent impersonation of Chuck having a flash.

- I don't mind quick in-jokes, but a fifteen-second shot lingering on a guy's dorm-room wall where the Bad Boys II poster is displayed was really cheesy.

12 Rounds - DVD Review

*1/2

Starring John Cena, Aiden Gillem, Ashley Scott, Steve Harris and Brian White.

A by-the-numbers actioner that would have starred Patrick Swayze or Jean-Claude Van Damme twenty years ago. John Cena has a good physical body but he's a terrible actor. A criminal sets up a series of booby traps like a D-grade Riddler and forces a cop (Cena) to solve the clues and go on his little scavenger hunt if he wants to see his kidnapped wife again. The action's not that exciting, the villain suffers from talking too much when he has plenty of opportunities to just kill the hero, and Cena is a black hole of charisma. I even liked The Marine more.

The Secret Life of Bees - DVD Review

***

Starring Queen Latifah, Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys, Sophie Okenedo and Paul Bettany.
Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood.

Consider it the Fried Green Tomatoes of 2008. Dakota Fanning is the little white girl who runs off from her abusive daddy. She's joined by her nanny, played by Jennifer Hudson, and the two share a Huck-and-Jim relationship. They eventually wind up where they want to, at a honey shop owned and run by African American sisters in the 1964 South.

Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys, and Sophie Okenedo play the three sisters, and with this cast, you'd think there'd be a scene where they burst into song, but no such luck. The movie takes a walk down a two-hanky path by a golden sunset, and I enjoyed the journey, not really knowing where it was going and being good with that.

Che: Part One - DVD Review

**1/2

Starring Benecio Del Toro, Julia Ormond, Rodrigo Santoro, Demian Bichir, Oscar Isaac, Edgar Ramirez, Victor Rasuk, and Catalina Sandino Moreno.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh.

Soderbergh is a great director. He can be experimental sometimes, glib other times, and here he's in more of an experimental phase, reminding more of Terrence Malick's Thin Red Line than anything else. This movie is about being along for the ride of a revolutionary who overthrows what might be an oppressive government, but it's about as informative as the Les Miz musical on French politics.

My history teacher told us how Che Guevara was a murderer who helped put Fidel Castro in power. The one portrayed here is more of the Robin Hood, T-shirt-inspiring antihero. It's not every insightful or informative, but it's beautiful to look at, and Benecio Del Toro gives a solid central performance. It didn't instill me with a desire to see Part Two.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li - DVD Review

*

Starring Kristin Kreuk, Chris Klein, Neal McDonough, Michael Clarke Duncan, Moon Bloodgood and Robin Shou.
Directed by Andrezj Bartkowiak.

At least the 1994 Street Fighter movie starring Jean Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia was campy from beginning to end. This movie is like a superhero origin story that takes itself way too seriously, then breaks into heavily-edited fight scenes. Kinda reminded me of Elektra more than anything, and Kristin Kreuk as 2009's sure made me miss 1994's Ming-Na.

The dialogue is atrocious, particularly with the two cops following Chun-Li.

Sample dialogue:
"We got orders, Nash. We're off the case."
"What orders?"
"Orders, Nash!"

The two cops are played by Chris Klein, who looked like after Election and American Pie he might have a career, and Moon Bloodgood (Apocalypto), who has a cool name but needs to find better material. There are really some stunningly incompetant scenes in this movie, where it seems like actors are pulling lines out of a cliche hat and then delivering them with no idea how it incorporates into the rest of the story. Klein just knows he needs to be tough. McDonough (as Bison) and Duncan (as Balrog) know they're evil. Kreuk knows she has daddy issues.

Ninety minutes of just playing one of the Street Fighter games would be far more entertaining.

The International - DVD Review

**1/2

Starring Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Ulrich Thomsen and Brian F. O'Byrne. Directed by Tom Tykwer.

This paranoid thriller might have been more enjoyable for me if the final 30 seconds of the movie weren't in the trailer. As is, it's an adequate time-killer, but with banks falling apart left and right all over the globe, its premise of an all-powerful bank murdering its competitors is a bit too preposterous to take seriously. Certain scenes, though, would have really cool flourishes to them, or crisp editing, and I'd think "Oh yeah, Tom Tykwer's directing."

Drag Me to Hell - Movie Review

***

Starring Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, David Paymer, Adriana Barazza, and Reggie Lee.
Directed by Sam Raimi.

I must admit, for all the movies I've seen, and many were forgettable, I've never seen any in the Evil Dead trilogy. If this movie is any indication, though, I need to check them out.

Raimi has fun like few horror movies do, knowing when to go for laughs, when to go for thrills. Is it perfect? Far from. Is it fun? Yes. Funny? Yes. "Here, kitty, kitty" brought the house down.

I guess my main complaint is that everyone and their dog will see the twist ending coming from the second it's set up.

Ellen Page dropped out and Alison Lohman jumped in to the lead, which is good for Lohman but bad for the movie's box-office, as Page's star-power might've aided in a bigger opening weekend. Lohman plays a bank teller who is cursed by a gypsy woman who's getting evicted. For the rest of the movie she must fight away demons trying to drag her to hell.

UP - Movie Review

***1/2

Starring the voices of Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer and Jordan Nagai.
Directed by Pete Docter.

Pixar can do no wrong.

Saw this with my six oldest kids, and all enjoyed it. Had to take my two-year-old to the bathroom during a crucial scene, so I do want to see it again, probably not until DVD, to see what happened in those three minutes.

I wouldn't say it's the best in the Pixar library, but it's somewhere in the middle. And the middle of Pixar's library get three-and-a-half stars.

Ed Asner voices Carl, a 78-year-old widower who sits in his house alone, pretty much waiting for death. But when circumstances mean he may lose his house and be forced into a retirement community, he fills enough balloons with helium to fly his house away. On to South America!

Except a pudgy wilderness scout is along for the ride.

The story's message - "You're never too old to follow your dreams" - is a nice one, and the villain, revealed late, is one of the scarier ones to appear in a Pixar movie.

The Hangover - Movie Review

THE HANGOVER (***1/2) - Starring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Heather Graham, Justin Bartha, Mike Tyson, Jeffrey Tambor, Mike Epps, Ken Jeong, Rachael Harris and Rob Riggle.
Directed by Todd Phillips.

There weren't any gutbusters, but this is probably the funniest movie I've seen since Pineapple Express. And I think I would've laughed more if the trailer hadn't given away so much.

One of the clever conceits of this movie is that it's all about the sidekicks. Whenever you see a rom-com starring, say, Matthew McConaughey or Patrick Dempsey, and he has three best friends, you could see them being played by these three. And these three are the stars rather than the sidekicks. Bradley Cooper plays Phil, the married-but-wishes-he-could-womanize type (think Vince Vaughn from Old School), Ed Helms plays the henpecked geek (think Daniel Stern from City Slickers), and Zach Galifianakis plays the "special" brother of the bride (can't think of a comparison; it's a uniquely brave and funny performance).

These best men are taking their buddy Doug (National Treasure's Justin Bartha) out for a wild night in Las Vegas, but they wake up the next morning with Doug missing and no idea what happened the night before. They then have to retrace their steps with what clues they can find.

Phil: Was I in the hospital last night?
Stu: Am I missing a tooth?
Alan: Guys. there's a tiger in the bathroom!

Coulda done without seeing the 90-year-old man's butt though.

Transporter 3 - DVD Review

TRANSPORTER 3 (*1/2) - Starring Jason Statham, Robert Knepper, Natalya Rudakova, Francois Berleand and Jeroem Krabbe.
Directed by Olivier Megaton.

I've been having bad luck with DVD rentals lately. I enjoyed the first two Transporter movies for their escapist trashy action, but I just saw this yesterday and I can hardly remember anything about it. I remember a redhead Russian girl trying too hard to be sexy. I remember an invasive soundtrack. I remember a lot of camera angles where you couldn't actually see the face of the person talking, which lends itself easily to dubbing in other languages. In fact there were a few actors where I swear they were dubbed in English, and they were speaking in their native tongues. Easier for international distribution that way.

And I remember Prison Break's Robert Knepper playing the bad guy sans southern accent, prone to shooting his own men when they backtalk.

Jason Statham's a cool action hero, and I emphasize once again The Bank Job is one of 2008's best movies, but more often than not, I don't know what Statham's thinking with some of his choices. For this third installment nuking the fridge, I blame the director. I appreciate being able to watch a car drive off a bridge and crash into the river below in one take. Maybe even a little slowed down. In this movie it speeds off the bridge, then hovers in the air Matrix-style, then quickly plunges into the river speeded-up again. Why three different speeds on one five-second action shot?

Passengers - DVD Review

PASSENGERS (*1/2) - Starring Anne Hathaway, Patrick Wilson, David Morse, Dianne Wiest, Andre Braugher, Clea Duvall and William B. Davis.
Directed by Rodrigo Garcia.

Some movies have twist endings that add a layer to everything you've seen and it remakes you rethink everything. This movie had an ending that rendered the first 90 minutes meaningless, and since those minutes were slow and meandering, I felt like I lost on two levels.

Good cast, though.

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian - Movie Review

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: BATTLE OF THE SMITHSONIAN (***) - Starring Ben Stiller, Amy Adams, Owen Wilson, Hank Azaria, Robin Williams, Steve Coogan, Ricky Gervais, Bill Hader, Christopher Guest, Jon Bernthal, and the Jonas Brothers.
Directed by Shawn Levy.

This felt like Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In: The Movie. For kids. There are so many characters thrown at the screen, so many puns and asides and one-liners, that some of them have to be funny. And some are. And by the end, I'd felt like I'd had a sugar rush. Is it better than the first one? Maybe. It's not worse.

Ben Stiller returns as our everyman Larry, now a successful infomercial entrepreneur, but he's saddened when he learns that most of the exhibits from the natural history museum are going to be archived under the Smithsonian. Then he learns an evil pharaoh is going to come to life with the magic tablet, and he could bring about world domination.

In addition to the crowded cast listed above, there's cameos from two Office regulars, two Reno 911 regulars (who also wrote the script), two Apatow vets, Darth Vader, Oscar the Grouch, George Foreman, Abraham Lincoln, American Gothic, and a giant octopus.

Rising above the fray is Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart, who's ready to verbally joust as quickly as Kate Hepburn against Cary Grant, even if Larry isn't up on his jiminy-crickets rat-a-tatspeak.

Star Trek - Movie Review

STAR TREK (***1/2) - Starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Bruce Greenwood, Winona Ryder, Eric Bana, Ben Cross, Chris Hemsworth, Tyler Perry and Leonard Nimoy.
Directed by J.J. Abrams.

The even numbered Star Trek movies tend to be the better ones, but when Star Trek 9 and 10 disappointed, and Enterprise got cancelled, the franchise seemed about dead. Enter J.J. Abrams, stage left.

This reboot, featuring a young Kirk and Spock, is about as good as anyone can hope. Chris Pine, who's been in some forgettable movies (Blind Dating, Just My Luck) and had one funky turn in Smokin' Aces, has the right amount of fortitude and swagger as James Tiberius Kirk, rebellious punk who is talked into joining Starfleet. There he butts heads with a Vulcan brainiac named Spock, befriends a gruff doctor named Bones, hits on a linguist named Uhura, etc.

The general plot, upon reflection, doesn't really matter that much, which is one reason why I can comfortably say this is NOT the best Star Trek movie ever (Khan and Voyage Home are better; this is about on par with Undiscovered Country or Final Conflict). It's about the revisitation of the characters, and how Abrams has set it up to let this crew boldly go whereever they feel like.

Karl Urban, who was one of the weaker actors in Lord of the Rings and who's had a string of crummy movies (Chronicles of Riddick, Doom, Pathfinder), is great as Dr. McCoy. It strikes me as a performance where he studied DeForest Kelley for a while, and then he made the role his own. Simon Pegg brings exactly the amount of humor I would hope for in Scotty. Zoe Saldana brings much needed futuristic feminism to Uhura. Each cast member gets their moment.

(It also a space-time continuum subplot that may reveal where Season 6 of Lost is going.)