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Sucker Punch

Chris — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 11:11:37 -0400

Rating: 3
Visually Awesome, But WTF story.

Night Porter, The

DVDFriend — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 04:56:06 -0400

Rating: 4
Not as weird as reading the cover may make it sound

A woman who was previously a Nazi prisoner returns to germany post-war. Through some really twisted luck, she's staying at a hotel where her torturer works as the night porter. They reconnect. I have no recollection on how this made it onto my queue, but I'm glad it did. It's a good movie. My little synopsis, and that of the cover, makes it sound really sick and twisted... and it is, to a point, but not as bad as you probably think. Also, the cover is pretty racy which will support your expectations. But, the shot from the cover is from a very brief scene in the movie. There isn't any other nudity. The Night Porter is part of what appears to be a Nazi support group; bad guys trying to come to terms with the fact that they are bad guys. That part is a bit weirder than the relationship.

Somewhere

DVDFriend — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 04:52:20 -0400

Rating: 3
A better title would've been "nowhere"

Stephen Dorf plays a movie star who doesn't really have much going on. He's not a particularly bad guy, or a particularly good guy. He has opportunity to get into conflict, and doesn't. He chills. He hires different strippers every night. Due to his ex-wife going out of town, he spends some time with his daughter. You might think that this is the stereotypical thing where he doesn't know what to do with her, and she doesn't know what to do with him, and they work through their differences... but it's not. They get along just fine. There aren't any issues there. He has to take care of her for a couple weeks before she goes to camp. Then she goes to camp, and he has some personal revelations, and the movie ends. While its somewhat interesting to watch this character, there's really not much going on at all. I guess it could be called a character piece, but there's not enough in it to hold it up to that title. Its ok. Not too bad. Not too good. Just like the main character.

Inside Job

DVDFriend — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 04:48:26 -0400

Rating: 5
A documentary about the financial ruckus of 2008. Financial institutions suck.

Blue Valentine

DVDFriend — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 04:47:40 -0400

Rating: 4
Blue Valentine

Mulan II

DVDFriend — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 04:46:50 -0400

Rating: 2
This is why Direct-To-Video has a bad reputation

I really like the first MULAN movie... more than a grown man should. I watched it again recently and, despite the songs, I really enjoyed it. It holds up well, is funny, and the songs aren't appalling. The trailer for MULAN 2 was awful. It looked like a bad movie. It ended up being an honest trailer, for the movie is bad. The characters are all the same. Whoever replaced Eddie Murphy did a pretty good job. The first movie is 2D with some 3Dish type sequences; the second one is all 2D and is on par with the 2D of the first. Some of the songs are bad rehashes of the originals. The new ones are pretty lame. It's primarily a love story between Mulan and her new boyfrined from the first. And, three guards happen to meet three princess sisters, and they all happen to fall in love at about the same time. Yay for love. The action is minimal. There's nothing exciting or endearing or fun about it. It would've been better left unmade.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

Chris — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:36:37 -0400

Rating: 5
Great way to end the series

Insidious

Chris — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:36:07 -0400

Rating: 4
Pretty Creeepy

Company Men, The

DVDFriend — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 12:44:07 -0400

Rating: 4
The commercials and 2 day run at the theater didn't do it justice

The advertisements were completely uninteresting, and it was in and out of theaters pretty fast. There was no buzz, and I didn't hear anything about it. I was pleasantly surprised to really enjoy it. It's about the economic woes of the last several years and how it affects several people whom all work at the same evil corporation. The moral of the story is that losing your job really sucks, and it sure helped me to appreciate mine even more. It should also inspire people to prepare themselves. Kevin Costner's character is the most understated, and also the best character. He had a great role. It attempted to end on an upbeat note, and it did, but it was pretty unrealistic.

Transformers, Dark of the World

Chris — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:41:15 -0400

Rating: 5
Plot Holes you could drive a truck thru, but it wouldn't make it very far with all those explosions and kick ass battles going on.

Vector File, The

DVDFriend — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:30:50 -0400

Rating: 2
Emphasis on "not good"

Black Death

DVDFriend — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:30:12 -0400

Rating: 2
Sean Bean keeps picking movies that lets him wear his costume for Lord of the Rings

This movie is about a village that, during the plague, manages to go unscathed. Witchcraft is expected. Sean and his cross-bearing team are sent in to see what's up. While not horrendous, there's no real reason to watch it.

Transformers, Dark of the World

DVDFriend — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:28:23 -0400

Rating: 5
Apology accepted

Michael Bay never said "sorry" for Transformers 2. He said "sorry, but", and vowed to make up for it. He did on several fronts. I like transformers 2. I've seen it enough times now that I'm able to ignore most of the crap (of which there is plenty). The plot is incoherent. The twins are more annoying than funny. Giant alien robots shouldn't be walking around on a crutch. Don't kill a character if you don't want him dead (a double whammy on this one: Megatron and Optimus Prime). It's a complete disaster. But, it has giant fighting robots. Transformer 3 does away with the twins and other stupidness. We don't see robot testicles. I was initially concerned with the twins replacements, two tiny robots. Fortunately, they ended up being pretty funny. One of the first jokes was referring to Megan Fox as a bitch. Sam still babbles away at each joke until it eventually becomes funny. Sometimes its fast, sometimes it takes to long. But he's funny, as-is his parents as usual. Megan Fox is gone. Good riddance. I really hope her 15 minutes are up and we don't see her on screen anymore. Her replacement did a decent job. The movie starts with a lot of inappropriate shots of her. They weren't natural. They were flaunting her as if to say "See, Megan... you're not the only hottie out there". Transformer 3 is very big and very loud. It's a massive sensory overload in a good way. There's mass destruction, actual civilian casualties, and big robots fighting. And there's finality to the fights. When someone gets killed, you know they're not coming back this time. Optimus has always been the man, but in this one, it's like he's had enough and just starts destorying everything. There are victories in fights, and outright executions. It's too bad the story is such a disaster. Don't bother trying to follow along. If you ignore that advice and do so anyway, then I ask this: Why didn't megatron put his master plan into effect when he first woke up in Transformers 1? Why wait until he got killed, then ressurrected, then almost killed again? Transformer 3 is a crazy ride. It's going to have a lot higher rewatch value than Transformers 2.

Green Lantern, The

DVDFriend — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:16:33 -0400

Rating: 3
A fun movie despite it's efforts not to be

There's a lot wrong with THE GREEN LANTERN, but it manages to overcome it and be a lot of fun anyway. RYAN REYNOLDS plays his usual sarcastic character, but now he's in a mask and tights. The most overwhelming problem with it is the CGI distractions. Every commercial has looked like a cartoon, and so does the movie. They probably should've just made an animated movie. Another problem is the characters that are left dangling. A bunch of characters are introduced in the beginning. I thought it would get back to those characters, but it doesn't. It just uses them as necessary to push the story along. It's pretty sloppy. There's one mostly funny scene where Ryan approachis his girlfriend in costume, and she says something to the effect of "Did you really think I wouldn't recognize you just because you covered your cheek bones?" It was a pretty funny "put a mask on and no one recognizes you" cliche joke. But to this day I find it distracting because the mask barely covered his eyes never mind his cheekbones. Again, this comes back to the crappy CGI. Apparently they didn't know what the mask was going to look like. Lastly, the final battle is good, but there was a lot of lead up to a simplistic solution and a quick battle. I was really surprised when I saw that Martin Campbell (Casion Royale) directed it. Apparently he has some range as this is a completely different beat from the far superior James Bond movie.

Green Hornet, The

DVDFriend — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:09:31 -0400

Rating: 3
More interesting than it's commercial

THE GREEN HORNET never looked good to me. Seth Rogen does particular type of role, and that type of role never felt like a good fit for this type of movie. None of the commercials generated any interest for me. But, despite a complete lack of interest, it's not too bad. The opening scene is really great. That alone is worth the rental. After that, it's good enough to keep watching. It's pretty funny and the action is decent. I like the bad guy.

I Am Number Four

Chris — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:42:21 -0400

Rating: 4
Good enough to hope for an "I Am Number 5" some flaws, but enjoyable

Thor: Tales of Agard

Chris — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:41:42 -0400

Rating: 3
This one was a bit more childish than the others, probably due to its PG Rating.

Session 9

Chris — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:41:04 -0400

Rating: 3
To Tense for me, Suspense/Horror fans will appreciate.

Deadwood: The Complete Series

Chris — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 13:01:46 -0400

Rating: 5
The best Western Television to have ever existed. It could of gone on for a few more seasons and remained the utmost quality.

Battle: Los Angeles

Chris — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 14:09:58 -0400

Rating: 5
AWEEEESOME

X-Men First Class

Chris — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:17:36 -0400

Rating: 5
Very Enjoyable, one of the best of the Sony Films

Hall Pass

Chris — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:17:16 -0400

Rating: 3
Average Comedy with some laugh out loud moments

Repo Men, The

DVDFriend — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:58:52 -0400

Rating: 3
A Tom Cruise hybrid

The commericals for REPO MEN didn't leave much to the imagination. A guy is responsible for reclaiming artificial organs when the owner of the organs isn't able to pay for it. Said guy has an accident, gets an artificial organ, and is unable to pay. So, the hunter has become the hunted. This movie stinks of MINORITY REPORT in a big way. That's a good thing to stink of. Minority Report is an extremely excellent movie. But Repo Men is not, despite having mostly the same plot. It's good, but it doesn't feel at all original. The fight scenes are pretty bloody and well done. There's a point pretty early in the movie where I thought "Hey, just like Vanilla Sky". At the end of the movie I concluded "Yep, just like Vanilla Sky". The twist has no chance of being a surprise if you saw the other spectacular Tom Cruise Movie VANILLA SKY. Watchable and bloody fun, but not inventive.

Drive Angry

DVDFriend — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:54:20 -0400

Rating: 2
Not at all what I thought

** Spoilers ** This is one of the better 2's out there, rating wise. It's kind of a big mess, but a fun mess. I thought this was going to be the Nick Cage version of Faster, and it sort of is, but with all sorts of supernatural elements. It's more of a cross between THE CROW and FASTER. Nicholas Cage plays Dwayne Johnson. He has some killing to do. There's a cult that kidnapped and killed his daughter, and now he needs to exact some revenge and also save his grand daughter. While he chases the bad guys, he in turn is being chased by "the accountant". The accountant is played by one of those guys you recognize from a hundred other movies, but you don't know his name. The accountant is a fun evil character. You call tell from the opening scene that something is going to be weird about the movie. By the time it's over, it's all explained. They do it bit by bit throughout.

True Grit

DVDFriend — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 17:42:44 -0400

Rating: 4
High production values, simple plot

Knowing

DVDFriend — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 17:42:15 -0400

Rating: 4
I knew that was going to happen

Well, not really. In 1959, a time capsule is buried at an elementary school. It contains letters and things from the school's students. In 2009, the capsule is opened, and the letters are handed out to the current students. The son of Nick Cage receives a letter that is all numbers. Nick, who happens to be a professor of certainty and randomness, determines that the numbers are dates and death tolls of major events. He tracks down the daughter of the girl who wrote the letter, and they try to figure out what's going on, and what it's leading up to. KNOWING is directed by ALEX PROYAS, who also directed DARK CITY. There are some creepy guys hanging out in this movie that clearly reminded me of Dark City. ** SPOILERS ** KNOWING is a much better movie than I expected. I wasn't expecting the strange guys to be aliens there to save some remnants of the human race. The apocalyptic event was cool, as was the garden of eden. (where'd that come from?). It was nice to see the family get back together, just like in Deep Impact, before annihilation.

Super 8

DVDFriend — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 22:46:47 -0400

Rating: 4
Good movie, even if you didn't see the first 7

This is an 80s Nostalgia type movie. It's JJ ABRAMS making the type of movie Stephen Spieldberg used to make. As far as I can tell, it's GOONIES with an alien. The kid actors are all very good. They hang out like kids of 80s movies. They swear like kids of 80s movies. They all have their own little quirks like kids of 80s movies. They go on adventures, get in trouble, and are good friends. You don't see much of that anymore. Like I said, it's pretty much Goonies. The movie is solid for the most part. Its about a bunch of kids (who act very well, especially the girl) who are shooting a movie on Super 8 film. They could've called the movie "camera" and been just as accurate. They're trying to get better "production value" by filming in front of a live train. Unfortunately, the train wrecks in a way that puts THE FUGITIVE to shame. The CGI is top notch. The military descends on the wreckage (on foot for some reason), to start the recovery and cleanup. You quickly determine some type of monster is on the loose even though the military says everything is just dandy. As the the situation escalates, the kids continue to shoot their movie. There are subplots in Super 8 and also the movie they're creating. There's tween a love story. And, there's movie making. So, most of it was pretty awesome. But, then it ended, and I was left scratching my head. ** SPOILERS ** First off, a pickup caused the train wreck, and the driver of the pick-up lived to tell about it. That was acknowledged early on, so I figured it would be addressed later. But, it wasn't. The acknowledgement was in lieu of explanation, a common tactic. The worse part though is when the alien leaves. All of a sudden he decides to go, so he just goes. See ya. But, why didn't he just do that to begin with? He had all of his rubic cube pieces, and he had a whole pile of metal rap. Since he had a giant magent anyway, I don't know why he manually collected anything to begin with. In some scenes, we see him wreak havoc to collect some stuff. In another scene, a car salesman opens some car hoods to see that the engine is missing, but otherwise there isn't any damage. So I'm left wondering what the heck it was all about. After sitting through all of it and enjoying it, I don't understand what happened. And, unlike some movies of recent years, I was fully alert throughout.

Smallville: The Complete Series

DVDFriend — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 21:31:18 -0400

Rating: 3
The whining has ended

FIRST DRAFT As far as I know, we've watched every episode of every season of Smallville. It's been 10 years, and it's finally over. Of all of those episodes, I don't know if I've ever actually paid attention to the entire thing. I'm like that with most shows. I'm usually coding while watching. Smallville was rarely better than pretty good. I can't recall any particular season or story line that was especially exciting or memorable. Looking back, all I really remember is the repetitive crap and whining. How many times have the lady characters been knocked unconscious? I don't have a count, but I know that they should all be vegetables in a hospital somwhere. How many times did someone conveniently lose their memory? How many times were powers lost or swapped with someone else, and how many times did he go evil? And just how abundant is this green kryptonite stuff? Superman just doesn't seem that tough with meteor rocks just lying around everywhere. Clark is easy to beat with those rocks. He always over comes it, but still, they beat him. I don't know why no one ever said "Hey, the kryptonite bullet worked pretty well. Let's do it again!" The problem with the plan isn't the weapons, it's the followthrough. They should reuse the same weapons. And the whining is the worst part. Clark started whining in his late teens and it feels like he continued into his 80s. There are only a handful of things he whines about, but he did it for 10 years. "I don't want to put lana in danger. We shouldn't date." Dude, she gets knocked out and kidnapped and nearly killed twice a week wether she's dating you or not. Then he whines about wanting to be human, then about not wanting to be human. It's a full decade of waaaaaaahhhhh. Superman's been wasting tissues instead of helping people. Smallville is the origin of superman. That origin should've ended 8 years ago. They dragged it out for 10 years substituting other super heroes for stuff that Clark should be able to handle on his own. They played every angle, then replayed them all, over and over until at last 10 years passed. What was the season with the witches? Was that season 3? Witches. Yes, a Superman show featuring witches. And, of course, the witches were the hot female characters possessed by evil spirits or something. So no, I never completely enjoyed it. Why did I keep watching it? It became a habit more than anything, and there are always little tidbits to look forward too, especially in the early years. It was fun to see how he'd use his powers. I remember him driving fence posts into the ground and things like that. And, it provided some good immature humor for myself and Gina. I like to put the word "super" in front of everything Clark related action. IE: "he's taking a super dump". "He's going to super cry". And, my all time favorite, "I think he's going to super-bang her". The latter comment was regarding the lovely Lana Lane after they spent 7 centuries not dating for some reason and were finally about to get it on. It was a tender moment that I corrupted with a childish lewd comment. It wasn't the first. It wasn't the last. Tender moments make me uncomfortable. Speaking of dating, that was another trainwreck of foolishness. When he finally got with Lana, i thought: "Hey, he finally got with Lana!". Then they couldn't even keep that going. Lana had to quit and go get a bit part in a movie somewhere. The Lois thing was less all-over-the-place, but even in the final hours they had to revisit that for the 1000th time. She had second thoughts. He had seconds thoughts. At least, finally, they both got over it. Of all the ladies in all of the episodes, I was always rooting for Chloe. She's always been my favorite, and I would've liked her to have her time in the super spotlight. Speaking of Chloe... super annoying in the highschool years. She's a 17 year old high school girl who's working cases like a 40 year veteran detective. And she had contacts everywhere. "I'll call my contact at the sewage treatement plant." "I'll call my contact at Nasa." Where did she get all of those contacts? Shouldn't she be doing homework? I recently watched the first few episodes of VERONICA MARS. Veronica is Chloe. It's as if someone saw some episodes of Smallville and decided to create a spinoff with Chloe as the lead character. In the final 2 hours of Smallville, the rehashed a lot of the same old stuff. I'm pretty sure Lois got knocked out once or twice. She was definitely in peril. I could tell you that with confidence even if I didn't watch it. But, it ended strong. Surreal, even. After watching the show for 10 years, it's comes down to the final few minutes where The Blur learns to fly, becomes superman, and saves the world. It's difficult to transition from 10 years of a red flannel shirt to the traditional superman outfit. I paid close attention during the closing scenes, and they were cautious about it. You only see him in the suit from a distance, or in extreme closeups that only show you part of it. Just when you think you're about to see the whole getup, it cuts to the ending flackback bookends, and you see a drawing of it. It's Chloe reading a book to her arrow based child, and at last he is referred to as superman. At that point I was able to get into the characters head for a few minutes, and look back through the fictional years. Chloe had been the most loyal friend and biggest contributor to the creation of Superman through the decade. After all that, she is reading about the legend that she helped create, to her child, who will probably never know her role. Superman had evolved from a kid on a farm to the mightiest person on the planet. The fictitious implementations of that fictitiously overwhelming. I liked the ending. Well done. Do I like it because now there is closure and no more whining, or would that ending have been just as effective 5 or 6 years ago?

X-Men First Class

DVDFriend — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 03:46:45 -0400

Rating: 4
It's not Dark Knight

X-Men First Class is very good. I heard someone say that it does for X-Men what Christopher Nolan did for Batman. Eh. I think that's an exaggeration. X-Men First Class has a lot of characters, and it takes it's time telling the story. It's long, but doesn't get boring. The lead characters are excellent in their own ways. The other characters are a mixed bag. Most are good, but none are great. It seems the x-men movies are made without much consideration for the other movies. Wolverine didn't match up exactly with the first X-Men movie. First Class doesn't match up with Wolverine. I'm ok with that. They're each doing their own thing concentrating on making their own best movie. I'd rather they did that than try to beat things into consistency. It's all fiction anyway. It doesn't have to match up. The big inconsistency that Gina caught is that at the end of Wolverine Professor X could still walk. Wolverine takes place in the 70s (I think), and First Class is the 60s. The other inconsistency that both she and Brian caught was the EMMA character in Wolverine and First Class. I recognized the similarities but really thought it was two different characters. In Wolverine, her shell is really small diamonds. In First Class, they're giant. Aside from that, they seemed totally different. But, IMDB shows they're the same character. They are inconsistent in many ways. Now that I know that, I revert to my previous point of "who cares".

Speechless

DVDFriend — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 03:36:07 -0400

Rating: 3
Not as good as I remembered it

SPEECHLESS is a movie that I have fond memories of. Geena Davis and Michael Keaton are speech writers for opposing senatorial candidates, but they don't realize that until sometime after they meet. The spend the movie having witty conversations and trying to not get caught fraternizing. I haven't seen SPEECHLESS probably since it came out. It's always the with that I remember, a couple lines in particular. But, my memory of it is better than the content, or my sense of with has changed. My favorite part is a the "what would do if your wife came to you and told you that she cheated on you". Fortunately, that didn't disappoint. The rest of it was pretty good, but not nearly as good as I thought. The result is that it's an Ok movie. If I rated it when I first saw it I would've given it at least a 4. Then I would look back on it later and realize that was too generous. It is a 3 at best, but still fun.

Killers, The

DVDFriend — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 03:28:52 -0400

Rating: 3
Started off with potential, but ran out of steam

For the first few minutes, I had high hopes for it. I found it witty and engaging. But, it didn't last long. While somewhat amusing and minimally watchable, it was never again as good as the first few minutes. It reminded me a lot of Knight and Day, but not as good.

The Roomate

Chris — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 13:10:57 -0400

Rating: 3
Single White Female for 2011, not really that great, but not really that bad.

Shrek Foreverafter

DVDFriend — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 04:15:31 -0400

Rating: 4
The best one since the first one

Kung Fu Panda 2

DVDFriend — Sat, 28 May 2011 00:24:18 -0400

Rating: 4
A worthy sequel

I love the first KUNG FU PANDA movie. I watched it last night in preparation for the lunch time viewing of the second one today. Right from the beginning, I was really into it. I laughed a lot and enjoyed the characters. The animation and background were, as expected, stunning. But, I believe the 3D took it's toll. I always remember the fireworks from the first movie. The collors are vivid and brilliant; it really stands out. There were more fireworks and more opportunity for such vivid brilliance in the second one, but they didn't burst off the screen like they did in the first, because everything in 3D just seems darker. I think I'd prefer the 2D. Also, I was fighting sleep throughout, so that was a little distracting. Those things considered, there was a good portion of the movie where my enthusiasm peaked at "eh". The fights are very elaborate. It's nice to see PO be such a key figure on the team. They all work together well; he just blindly jumps off cliffs and roofs and things because he know that the crane will be there to bring him in safely. Like the first one, there is a lot of momentum in all of the action scenes. They start running and don't stop, wreaking havoc as they go. All good stuff. And it is funny. I laughed out loud several times. Jack Black really delivers on this characters. All of the other characters pale in comparison. The second most active character is TIGRESS. The other characters still have very little to say and not much to do other than support PO. But, PO has been fully accepted and integrated. If he was still something of an outsider, which they could've done, I'd be dissapointed. He proved himself in the first one, and they didn't try to rehash it. The ending is great. A bit unbelievable, yes, but our baseline is talking animals that know kung-fu, so we've already established that we can suspend disbelief. I would like to see it again in 2D while awake and determine if my tiredness and/or the 3D were factors in me giving this a 4 instead of a 5. The first one blew me away all the way through; the second one wasn't as successful, but still very good.

RED (not the bruce willis one).

DVDFriend — Tue, 24 May 2011 01:31:08 -0400

Rating: 4
A story of a man and his dog

Brian Cox is an aging man whose current best friend is of the canine persuasion. They're out fishing one day, and they are accosted a group of Houligans who end up killing the dog. Brian tries to handle the situation via diplomatic channels, and he has help from people who should be able to help, but they are blocked due to the power of one of the perp's dad. Things escalate. Then they get really bad. It's mostly a character movie primarily focused on Brian Cox, but there is a bit of action. The coolest thing about it is that when Brian does have to get into scuffles, he does so convincingly. It's not that he sits there trading punches with people or does spin back kicks. But, he's an aging warrior who is smarter and more experienced than the hooligans, and when push comes to shove, he really just shoves once. It's pretty cool.

Dollhouse: Season 2

Chris — Mon, 23 May 2011 15:52:23 -0400

Rating: 5
They wrapped it up really well, and was sad to see it go by the time it ended.

IMAX: Hubble

DVDFriend — Wed, 18 May 2011 04:09:47 -0400

Rating: 5
Mesmerizing

This is a 3D IMAX movie that I watched in 2D on blu-ray. It briefly covers the history of Hubble, and shares some amazing images. It's narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio. I guess Morgan Freeman was busy. I recently read a lot about Hubble on Wikipedia. I got so much more information from that than from the movie; the movie just kinda says "it was launched in 1990, fixed in 2003, and then on the last maintenance visit, we had some trouble with the bolts". It's far from enlightening and, dare I say, not terribly educational. But it's beautiful. Watching a space shuttle lift off in blu-ray with surround sound (courtesy of my Home Office Theater), the views of the stars, and Earth, etc. It's really amazing if you're into that stuff. It's one of those "boy, I sure am small and significant" types of experiences. The star nursery in orion is mind boggling

Jason Goes to Hell

Chris — Mon, 16 May 2011 12:52:43 -0400

Rating: 2
Wife made me watch it on Friday the 13th.

Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes!

Chris — Mon, 16 May 2011 12:52:19 -0400

Rating: 5
Amazing first season of all my favorite Marvel Heroe's!

Robocop

Chris — Mon, 16 May 2011 12:51:24 -0400

Rating: 5
Unrated Edition extra minute, adds tone to make the film quite excellent.

Due Date

Chris — Mon, 16 May 2011 12:50:55 -0400

Rating: 3
Decent Flick, but overall forgettable.

Thor

DVDFriend — Mon, 09 May 2011 19:52:17 -0400

Rating: 4
Of the very little I know about comics, Thor is the one I know the least about (so far)

I like the onslaught of comic book movies we've had over the last several years, starting with X-MEN. For the most part, they take the material seriously and try to make things realistic even though, natively, they are not. Most of the super heroes are super heroes not because of super powers, per se, but because of mutations or technology. Superman is the only exception I can think of at the moment. I know nothing about Thor, but at face value it was a hard sell. He's the God of Thunder (right?). How do they make that realistic? Well, you start by not calling him the God of Thunder. While they never actually tell you the source of his power, they never try to convince you that he's a god. It's just that they are so powerful and technologically advanced that some could easily perceive them as Gods. Thor and his buddies are simply super advanced beings from another realm. The other realm isn't heaven'ish or Mount Olympus'ish either. It's just another place, far away, that you can get to via a Stargate. In short, they pulled it off. I thought it would be tough sell, but it wasn't. The movie is fun and the action is good. There's quite a distinction between the two locales of some dusty American city, and the alien home world, but they make it work. A lot of how they get it to work is via comic releif; people on earth poke fun at the "gods", not realizing what they're doing. There are couple of gags at the beginning, at least one of which you've seen in the commercial, where Thor is starting to assert his dominance, and he gets tazed and drugged before he can get to the climatic crescendo of his declaration. There were a lot of bits of comic relief, more so than the other marvel movies I think. But, due to the nature and inherent unbelievability of the characters, it was necessary, and it worked. Knowing nothing about Thor, I enjoyed the movie on most levels.

Last Man Standing

DVDFriend — Mon, 09 May 2011 19:32:11 -0400

Rating: 3
Good Old-West-Meets-1950s shooter

Thor

Chris — Mon, 09 May 2011 13:10:29 -0400

Rating: 4
One of Marvel's finest to date. It could of used a bit more action on Midgard, but Hawkeye cameo was key.

Deadwood - Season 1

Chris — Mon, 09 May 2011 13:09:36 -0400

Rating: 5
The finest western television ever made.

Black Panther: Animated Series

Chris — Mon, 09 May 2011 13:09:14 -0400

Rating: 4
Very Anti-White America but a good story line.

Team America: World Police

Chris — Mon, 09 May 2011 13:08:25 -0400

Rating: 5
One of the most hillarious movies of all time. Especially the unrated version

True Grit

Chris — Mon, 09 May 2011 13:07:34 -0400

Rating: 5
An excellent Western with a great job by Bridges, Damon and that little girl.

Total Recall

Chris — Mon, 09 May 2011 13:07:08 -0400

Rating: 5
Still a Sci-Fi Action Classic. It really doesn't get better than this Era of films, next on the watch list Robocop Uncut.

From Paris with Love

DVDFriend — Thu, 05 May 2011 03:52:05 -0400

Rating: 3
John Travolta sure does have a potty mouth

This is a fun action movie. ** SPOILER ** The thing that got me about the movie is that I kept waiting for John Travolta to end up being the bad guy, or at lease a partial bad guy. But he's not, and that was the surprise ending for me.