Thoughts: My wife had recently read the book by Emily Giffin, so she was very excited to see this. I was interested to see John Krasinski outside of “The Office”. Thankfully, John Krasinski is the only thing good about this movie. In fact in this review, if you see a “*”, go ahead and replace it with “except for John Krasinski, who is extraordinary.”

The plot is terrible. You don’t know who to root for*. The main character who is cheating with her best friend’s fiancée? The best friend who is kind of a not-nice-person? The fiancée, who refuses to make a choice? The random characters brought in for “comic relief”*? I couldn’t find myself wanting any of them to get a happily ever after*.

It seems like they took all of the original parts of the book and replaced them with RomCom cliches. Tearful breakup in the pouring rain while a crappy pop music plays as the main character has a flashback? Sure enough! Characters refusing to talk about things that could easily have solved their problems on day 1? In spades. John Krasinski, whose character is apparently hardly in the book, plays the part of the audience, sometimes literally saying what I was thinking. “You’re all so stupid!”, he yells at one point. “Make a decision!” His role was the only comedy in the Romantic Comedy. Thankfully, the movie shies away from physical humor (save for one scene), leaving most of the humor to come from Krasinki’s character making snarky comments about how dumb the whole thing is.

The main character is Hollywood Homely, ashamed to be hanging out with people she is much more attractive than. The fiancée looks EXACTLY like a young Tom Cruise; the scene with him wearing aviator sunglasses with his shirt open walking on the beach is pretty much the director admitting it.

Really, I can’t find much good to say*. It wasn’t completely awful like The Bounty Hunter, it just never gave you anyone to root for* because everyone was doing something dumb*.

Overall: I wouldn’t borrow it*. (terrible joke)
1.4/5

Thoughts: Thor is definitely a different kind of superhero. Most of a first movie made of a superhero is him getting his powers or dealing with them. Thor is an immortal (we think, they don’t really say) from another dimension/realm, whose powers are just a part of who he is. The movie doesn’t dwell on his powers (or lack thereof when he is banished), its just the story of Thor and how he learns humility from humans.

Thor introduces a lot of new concepts to the Marvel Movie Universe. The first three movies were all humans who either through science or technology gain powers they wouldn’t normally have. In Thor we meet an entire race of beings who are even more powerful than the heroes we’ve already met (*see “The Avengers” Discussion below) who have had powers for thousands of years. They live on a far away planet, that even SHIELD, the group that seems to know everything about all of the superheroes so far, doesn’t seem to know anything about. It’s not bad that all this is introduced, its just a little disorienting to think “OK, while Thor is on this alien planet fighting these people with a magical hammer, Tony Stark is in a cave building an arc reactor from a box of scraps”. Both of which are equally unbelievable in their own way, its just a step in a different direction, a direction the comics took decades ago.

As for the movie itself, it was pretty good. I love the main characters. Thor, Loki, and Odin were great as they should be. Odin is played by Anthony Hopkins with an Eyepatch of Power. You cannot have a more badass character than that (unless it’s Samuel L Jackson with an Eyepatch of Power, which also happens). For being a trickster god, Loki is actually a villain with motivations other than just screwing everyone over. You kind of feel sorry for him. Thor’s friends from Asgard were a little too comic-relief-y and the humans were vague and not very interesting, though better at comic relief. Natalie Portman plays the love interest, a scientist whose studies somehow related to both astronomy and theoretical wormholes. It’s more of an Informed Ability than anything we actually see on screen. Also, the love story is kind of something we’re told about but not really shown either. In fact, most of the Earth stuff felt a little rushed. Thor’s banishment lasts maybe two days, but the stuff in Asgard looks like it lasts longer (maybe it does, different realm and all).

The direction was different. There were a lot of shots tilted to the side, maybe to emulate the comic book feel, I’m not sure. I had to look up the director, as I wasn’t familiar with his work; turns out that I was familiar with him as an actor, as he played Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The movie was not shot in 3D, but converted before release. If I hadn’t seen Avatar in 3D a couple times, I wouldn’t have noticed the “cutout” feel you get sometimes, but the CGI sequences were rendered in 3D so the backgrounds sometimes look better dimensionally than the characters.

I think that after seeing this movie, Thor is now one of my favorite superheroes. Something about the way he carries himself and manages to be funny and awesome at the same time. He’s not an ass like Tony Stark, he’s just Thor. Know him, fear him.

Overall: Thor overcomes it’s weaknesses to become a quite enjoyable movie.
4/5

SPOILERS
“The Avengers” Discussion
Here we are, one movie away from The Avengers where all of the heroes get together. Let’s break down who we’ve met so far:

Iron Man (first appearance: Iron Man): Powered suit gives an ass the ability to fly and shoot lasers. Gets almost destroyed every time he fights, even after he upgrades his armor.
The Hulk (first appearance: The Incredible Hulk): Man who gets angry and grows into an unstoppable green monster.
Black Widow (first appearance: Iron Man 2): SHIELD Agent who fights people. No obvious powers.
Hawkeye (first appearance: Thor): SHIELD Agent who threatens to shoot people with arrows. No obvious powers.
Thor (first appearance: Thor): Thunder god.

We haven’t met Captain America yet as his movie comes out later this summer, but he’s a science experiment from the 40′s. The Hulk punched a guy once who had this same super-soldier serum: the guy broke every bone in his body.

The question my friend and I came up with after the movie is this: Why would Thor (or The Hulk) need to team up with anybody? I’m sure if anyone can make a believable scenario to make it necessary, its Joss Whedon, but it begs the question.

Also, as it stands currently, Iron Man is in the Avengers Initiative as of Iron Man 2 and we can assume Black Widow and Hawkeye are as well. But Hulk is on the run, Thor is stuck in Asgard, and I’m pretty sure the Cap will still be in the 1940′s at the end of his movie. How will The Avengers find time to get all of them in the same place at the same time and get them to unite as a fighting team without it all feeling rushed? I’m not worried, just very very curious.

Thoughts: The Academy Awards seem to be a fickle bunch. Sometimes they give the Best Picture to “Return of the King”, but most of the time it goes to movies I’d never heard of or movies I’d see but not be impressed with.

“The King’s Speech”, however, is deserving of “Best Picture”. It is perfectly shot, well edited, flawlessly acted, and even based on a true story. It is inspiring, funny, and true to life. I learned a lot about the recent British monarchy and was thoroughly entertained. Colin Firth dives into the role as the Duke of York/King of England. You can really see the pain of him struggling with his speech impediment. Geoffrey Rush was simply entertaining. Even Helena Bonham Carter proved that she can play normal people and not just crazed lunatics (even if she is one in real life). The rest of the cast of Harry Potter also played their parts well, as most of the cast are also in that film series. We actually had to pause the movie to take in the fact that Peter Pettigrew and Winston Churchill could be played by the same actor!

Overall: A great movie; inspiring, entertaining, and educational.
4.5/5

Leap Year (2010)
Summary:Amy Adams plays a career woman who longs to be married. When her boyfriend leaves for Ireland without proposing, she chases him down to ask him to marry her, on the one day she can according to Irish tradition. However, nothing goes right on the trip and she’s stuck with a miserable Irish man who doesn’t much care for her.

Thoughts: This movie has no idea what it wants to be. Is it a romantic comedy? Is it a travel comedy? All I know is that it failed at all of them. If you can’t tell that she was going to end up with the surly Irish guy, you haven’t seen many movies. 2/5

Eat Pray Love (2010)
Summary: A woman played by Julia Roberts leaves behind her perfectly fine life to “find herself”. She eats in Italy, prays in India, and finds love in Bali, while ignoring her husband and boyfriend back in the States.

Thoughts: What a throughly unpleasant movie. She leaves her husband, then her boyfriend, then flies around the world trying to make herself feel better. In the end, she does. It didn’t have anything to say to me, or I hope to anyone. 1/5

Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)
Summary: Bruce Campbell plays an Elvis impersonator in a retirement home who is convinced that he is Elvis and traded places with an impersonator when he got tired of being famous. No one believes him but another patient at the home, who is convinced that he is JFK dyed black as part of a cover-up. Together, they fight a mummy that is feasting on the souls of other patients.

Thoughts: With a plot like that, I expected more. I guess I shouldn’t have expected Bruce to kick butt like he did in the Evil Dead movies, but I did want a little more comedy and/or horror from this comedy-horror. As it is, I didn’t find it super entertaining. 2.5/5

Thoughts: This movie was billed as musical, which I think is false advertising. To me, a musical is a story that is progressed by having the characters sing songs in odd places to express their feelings about matters. It is not, as this movie is, a story about people who sing random songs on a stage. “The Music Man” is a musical: characters sing and dance in situations that are not normal about their feelings or to stir people up. “Burlesque”, to me, is not a musical: the only original songs are about working at a Burlesque club, sung on stage to patrons (save for one song completely randomly sung by Cher, the song that won a Golden Globe, which was on stage). Heck, “Coyote Ugly” had the same plot and just as many songs, the characters just didn’t sing them.

Other than that, the plot was cliche and predictable. The acting was merely OK, with Stanley Tucci outshining the rest of the singers-turned-actresses by a huge margin. Seeing the guy who played James the Bad Vampire in Twilight in another movie was pretty funny, as he looked like he wanted to eat all of the other characters. Cher was Cher, take that however you’d like, and Christina Aguilara was a surprisingly decent actress. Not leading lady material, but serviceable.

Overall:  You’ve seen this movie several times already in other forms, and selling it this time as a musical doesn’t add anything.
1/5

Thoughts: The first game felt like a demo because of the numbered test chambers. You were dropped into a room and told to get to the exit, over and over with each room being harder to solve until you managed to break out and defeat the AI that was forcing you to go through the tests. The game proved to have a pretty good replay value because you were encouraged to find the best way to solve the puzzles in the least amount of time using the least amount of portals. Except for the last level, where you go behind the scenes and have to figure out where the game wants you to go without having giant destination points and not being able to tell what surface is portal-able: I didn’t enjoy that part very much and never really wanted to replay it.

Most of Portal 2 is like the last level of Portal 1. There are a few test chambers in the beginning, in the middle, and at the end, but I would say half if not more of the game is trying to figure out where the game wants you to go in vast environments with 95% of the surface not portal-able. The story is great (there is a story!), the dialog is entertaining, there are some great twists, it makes sense as to WHY you are in these areas outside of test chambers, but its just so hard to figure out WHERE you’re supposed to go, and not just HOW. Maybe that’s a purposeful addition to the challenge, but its just not the same. Also, it seems like most of the areas only have ONE way to solve the puzzle/get where you need to go, meaning that if you wanted to play through it again, you’d be doing the same thing but you’d probably be able to do it faster because you’ve eliminated the “where am I trying to go” factor.

I’ll play through it again because I missed some achievements and there is developer commentary on every level, but I really didn’t see much replayability in the single player game itself. I haven’t played co-op yet, I may review it separately. Honestly, all I really want is more test chambers where I try to figure out the best way to solve the puzzle, not the only way. The game can redeem itself for me by releasing more levels. I don’t need more plot, I just want more challenge.

Overall: They tried to make a full-game out of a tech demo, but it turns out I just want more tech demos.
3/5

Thoughts: Dish Network users got free HBO this weekend, so I went through and recorded a bunch of movies. Combined with having all of the Starz channels free for a year, we have a lot of movies on our DVR. I decided to review each of them, instead of just the ones I see in theaters.

I watched most of the Sex and the City series with my wife a while back. I found most of it disturbing to my young mind, but the dialog was usually pretty clever. Then we watched the first movie as the series didn’t really end so much as just stop. The problem was the first movie was completely forgettable. I couldn’t tell you anything about what happened in the first movie.

The problem with the second movie is that not only is it forgettable, its boring. You really feel that the characters are bored with their lives because you, the viewer, are just as bored as they are. Even when they all ignore their problems to go to Abu Dhabi (funnily, the real Abu Dhabi wouldn’t let them film there), you’re bored watching them hang out at the hotel and ride camels. A lot of the movie is spent with the characters finally starting to mature. It’s been 12 years, it’s about time. The problem with watching characters spending a whole movie maturing is that it’s boring. The first movie was an OK coda to the series (that I remember), but this one just takes that coda and stretches it out.

It’s completely unnecessary, lacks any charm the series ever had (clever dialog is replaced by terrible puns like “It’s against the law: Jude Law!”), and I’m afraid to say it, kind of racist. The always-right Americans go to the Middle East, don’t respect any of the customs of the country, get arrested, and come out the heroes because the women of the Middle East really long to be consumers of terrible New York fashion like the girls. I’m not sure what message that is sending out, but I don’t think its the one they wanted.

Overall: Boring, uncomfortable, kind of ruins the pretty good series.
1/5

Or not.  Its the same transfer as the DVD, every flaw right out in the open here on the trailer.

They’ve had 6 years to fix this kind of stuff back (this one is a brightness adjustment!), but it looks like they haven’t touched it.  Lazy Lucas, was Lazy.

AUGUST 2011 UPDATE: Looks like this has been fixed for the final release, along with several other things. There are still many glaring mistakes however.

From Star Wars 2011 Changes

Last night Lucasfilm announced officially that they will be releasing all 6 Star Wars movies in theaters again, but this time IN 3D! (you have to shout it) Starting in 2012 when Episode I is released, with one a year coming after that supposedly.

I’m not excited as one would expect. In fact while I am a Star Wars fan, this only give me bad feelings. Let me break them down for you.

Bad Feeling 1: 3D Release

I am not opposed to movies being shot in 3D when it serves a purpose. Computer animated features that are already modelled in 3D are acceptable, along with movies the director shoots specifically to be in 3D as with Avatar. However, a lot of movies have been forced to be in 3D after the fact and suffer for it. In fact, 3D is such a big thing now that Warner Brothers is talking about actually forcing Christopher Nolan to shoot his next Batman movie in 3D even though he doesn’t want to do it. The studios can charge more a ticket, and people will pay it.

Now Lucas has decided to ride this 3D wave and convert the Star Wars movies to 3D. These movies were not filmed in 3D, so they will have to be converted. By hand. Frame-by-frame. They’re going to take a year per movie (which is better since most movies only have a month or so before release). I’m sure we’re talking hundreds of man-hours per movie. Actually my rough estimate is if they spend an hour per frame, it will take over 20 man-years to do one movie. That’s a lot of work.

And for what purpose? Have people be clamoring for classic movies to be released in 3D? Didn’t we laugh at James Cameron for wanting to release Titanic 3D? This 3D thing is widely regarded as a money-making scheme for the studios because they can charge more. Does Lucas not think he has enough of our money? At least the Special Edition release in 1997 was (1) celebrating an anniversary, (2) used as a test bed for the prequel effects, and (3) was basically a fundraiser for the prequels which we all thought we wanted. What are these releases going towards? The live action TV show that Lucas started making then decided he wouldn’t make enough profit off of it to make it worth-while? Doubtful. Other movies since Lucas has been talking about for years how tired he is of Star Wars and wants to make his artsy films again? Artsy films aren’t that expensive. The restoration of the original theatrical versions? Yeah right.

It’s all about having more of your money.

Bad Feeling 2: Cost

Save Star Wars 1: A New Hope was all about how Lucas said that restoring the original versions of the movies for the Blu-rays would cost too much. Now a few months later they’re saying that they can go through all 6 movies and make every frame 3D. At over 120 man-years of work for all 6, that’s going to be very expensive. Then rendering them out, then distributing the files, then advertising, we’re talking a few hundred million dollars at the very least.

But Lucas still says he doesn’t have the money to restore the originals. If you break it down, it averages that 8% of the original film was altered for the Special Edition. And that original film exists in an archive somewhere. Even if he wanted to do it on the cheap, they could find those original film elements, scan them only, then insert them into the rest of the scan, and release that in the same package. Then they wouldn’t have to spend more on advertising as its all in one package. If you can buy Under Siege 2 on Blu-ray, why not the Academy Award winning version of “Star Wars”? Oh yeah, because its too expensive.

Currently, 3D movies are around $13 a piece in my area. If my wife and I went to each movie, we’d be spending over $150 seeing each once. And I haven’t even considered the home video releases! I’m sure they’ll release each movie individually on 3D Blu-ray the years they come out (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017), then in 2018 they’ll be a boxed set with bonus features that weren’t available on the individual releases, which equal even more money.

Bad Feeling 3: More Changes

“Star Wars” was released in 1977. Even in that year, there were two versions, the Stereo audio mix and the more complete Mono mix. Then in 1981 it was re-released with its “EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE” title, and a new first shot of the Star Destroyer going overhead with a different starfield and better compositing on the Star Destroyer. Then in 1997 the Special Edition was released, which had a hundred other changes not including audio changes. Then the 2004 DVD release had even more changes, with even more audio changes. The rumors are that the 2011 Blu-ray will redo the audio again, and I’m sure the image will be tampered with as well. I’m sure by 2015 Lucas will have found more things to tweak with “Star Wars”, which will create yet another version, none of which will be the one that won him the critical acclaim and awards.

I understand wanting to tweak things, but it will be almost 40 years old by then. Let’s just leave it alone, please. Save Star Wars

The show has been off the air for over ten years now, and four years ago several of the members got together and started riffing on more recent movies, which they called RiffTrax.  They release the riffs as MP3s that you sync up with your DVD of the movie and listen along.  It’s just as funny as the original show, but the movies are more familiar.  Bad movies like “The Happening”, mediocre movies like “Twilight”, and even good movies like “Casablanca”, anything is possible.  They’ve even gotten to the point where they can release Riffs the day before a movie comes out on DVD!

Last year they started something new: RiffTrax Live.  They perform their jokes during whatever movie to a live audience, which is then broadcast live to theaters around the country.  We went to the first one, “Plan 9 from Outer Space”, but somehow missed the Christmas Special (with special guest Weird Al).  I decided to make up for it by going to see the stoner classic “Reefer Madness.”

“Reefer Madness” is a quaint little movie that is all about how “marihuana” will addict you instantly and drive you insane to the point of homicide.  It’s so over-the-top that its funny on its own (we had already seen it with a couple friends), that we were very excited to see what the RiffTrax guys could do with it.  Turns out, a lot.

RiffTrax Live allows the guys (Mike, Kevin, and Bill) to do a lot of things that I miss about MST3K.  They showed a few short films before Reefer, just like they did on the show if a movie couldn’t fill their whole time slot.  The shorts were hilarious.  It was the best of what short films have to offer riffing.  One short fit in the “did people actually do this?” genre (housewives shouldn’t wash their clothes in gasoline), another into the “what situation would you need to watch this?” genre (things you can do with grass, like decorating gift boxes and making art), and the last into the “what on earth were they thinking?” genre (an animation about cartoon animals going to the north pole and being killed by bear things).  They had me cracking up.  The “Grasses” one was so ridiculous on its own that I was literally crying from laughter.  The perfect riff for me comes from a balance of the movie already being ridiculous enough to laugh at and is further enhanced by the riffing.  Each short and Reefer Madness itself fit the bill perfectly.

Another thing I miss about MST3K is watching the host and the robots interact with the screen (they were shown in silhouette along the bottom of the screen like you were sitting behind them).  RiffTrax Live does it one better by sometimes pushing the 4:3 movie to the side and having little windows next to it where you can watch the guys watch the movie and joke with one another.  Sometimes their expressions enhanced the jokes in ways the audio-only could not.  Part of my wishes they would show the whole movie like that, but I could see where it would get distracting, because sometimes if you don’t pay attention to the movie, you get lost and the jokes don’t make much sense.

(Speaking of the jokes, this has to be hard for them.  They spent 10 years on TV just throwing jokes out there with no feedback, then do the same on the internet.  Doing it live lets them see how an audience reacts to a joke, and lets them play off of the funny ones and gloss over the ones that didn’t work.  And seeing their expression when a joke didn’t go over was funny too.)

Finally, something I could never get from MST3K or RiffTrax.com is camaraderie.  Sometimes you go to the theater and don’t know what to think of the people next to you.  There is something about knowing what you’re in for that gives you a sense of friendship with those around you.  When you see RiffTrax Live, you know exactly what it’s going to be, and you know its going to be hilarious.  Laughing out loud with a theater full of people is a fun experience.  Laughing out loud with a theater full of people and hearing a theater full of people on the screen also laughing makes it better.  Knowing that all around the country there are hundreds of theaters with people in them watching the same thing and laughing at the same parts makes it more than “going to the movies.”  It makes it an experience.

Sure our theater (Bloomington, IN) had technical difficulties, but even then we in the audience were making jokes ourselves, riffing on the lack of movie.  Because we knew what we were there for, and knew it would be worth it.

October 28th there will be a Halloween RiffTrax Live, where they will do the original “House on Haunted Hill”.  I’ll be there, my wife will be there, and I’m sure that everyone that was in my theater will be there, joining in with hundreds of others around the country in a truly unique experience.  “Join us, won’t you?”