Movie Review: Step Brothers

Rating: 5.0 out of 10

Review: Stupid. That said, I didn’t mind it, and actually laughed out loud a few times. This will not win any awards in any category, but if you just want to laugh at some stupid Will Ferrell humor, this is a good one. It is not in the same class as Old School or Anchorman, but still had its funny/weird moments.

Movie Review: Black Snake Moan

Rating: 8.0 out of 10

Review: Really good. I wasn't expecting to like it much, but it is a really good movie. great music, great acting, great plot, and nearly naked Christina Ricci. What more could you want?

Movie Review: Bridge to Terabithia

Rating: 4.0 out of 10

Review: Kind of weak. Had a very "My Girl" feel. Unfortunately, I didn't like the direction the movie took near the end. I think the story could have been a bit better.

Movie Review: Gattaca

Rating: 7.0 out of 10

Review: This was a pretty good futuristic sci-fi movie. The plot was quite good and provided a good thought-provoking story. What if everyone was genetically enhanced and the few normal people were treated like they were second-class citizens? Good story. Not a very action packed movie, but quite good.

Movie Review: Wanted

Rating: 5.0 out of 10

Review: I was fairly disappointed. I thought this would be a cool assassin movie with lots of cool Matrix-style action. And it kind of was. Unfortunately, the plot was very weak and the movie was quite gory. The special effects are good and the unique method of altering the physics of the world was interesting. It just didn’t grab me and though it was just okay.

Tran-Siberian Orchestra

So, Sarah and I went to see TSO again this year. The "one" word I can use to describe TSO is "over the top". The lights, lasers, smoke, fire, pyrotechnics, music volume, and a Xmas story are all way over the top. And it is awesome!

I will admit, they do verge on cheesy, but I think, mostly, they just rock. The first half of the show is their Xmas stuff with great rockin' Xmas music and a very good guy narrating a story. The story is the same as last year and Sarah thought it wasn't that good a second time.


But, after their "half-time", they came back with much more just plain rock. It really was amazing. They did a pretty cool version of Flight of the Bumblebee and a Chariots of Fire (with lots of fire) that should be on their upcoming CD. All in all, a great show that you should try and see at least once.

Movie Review: The Dark Night

Rating: 7.0 out of 10

Review: Everybody has been hyping this movie as the greatest thing ever! Unfortunately, it didn't live up to the hype for me. I thought it was good, but not fantastic. It was WAY too long. I felt like it was dragging on and on near the end. But, Heath Ledger is amazing and should win an Oscar. The visuals are great. It's just that the story just drags on and on. I couldn't figure out where the movie was going and it didn't seem like the Joker had a cohesive plan. I don't know, it just felt a little random.

Movie Review: Run Lola Run

Rating: 8.0 out of 10

Review: Very good German language film about a girl running. Well, that's what most of the movie is about. Sort of. I guess it's about feeling helpless/unable to fix a situation and how every action you make, no matter how small, can affect the outcome greatly. Movie was very well done and the music was great. I don't want to give too much plot away, so just go and watch it.

Movie Review: Tropic Thunder

Rating: 8.0 out of 10

Review: Great movie about the making of a Vietnam war movie with pretentious/overrated actors. This was a hilarious movie. The whole concept of a movie about the filming of an over-the-top Hollywood blockbuster movie that is over budget and over acted was great. The actors play stereotypical big name actors and they are fantastic in their humor/portrayal of the Hollywood scene. Great movie, go see it. Oh, and Robet Downey Jr. is amazing! This is the best character acting I've seen in a long time. (What is funny, though, is that it's his character who's doing the amazing character acting. Just adding another layer of funny and confusing)

Movie Review: I Am Legend

Rating: 4.0 out of 10 (original)
Rating: 7.0 out of 10 (alternate version/ending)

Review: The first half of the movie is great. It's about the last guy on Earth after some sort of virus thing has "killed" off the rest of the population (or turned them into vampire/zombies). It has some good action sequences. And it has a bit of foreshadowing to tell the audience that there is more going on than they realize. The problem is that the last half of the movie pretends like the whole plot development and foreshadowing stuff didn't matter. And the ending is just stupid. It makes you mad at the movie. Why go through all of the work of setting up an interesting plot line and ending if you are just going to throw it away for a stupid ending? Well, it turns out that there are two possible ending on the Blu-Ray disk (and possibly the DVD as well). I'm not sure what the back-story on the "alternate version" is, but it is a much better movie. Watch this version, only. The plot development and the foreshadowing make much more sense in this version and the ending is not idiotic. So, in summary, the plot is not as good as the book version, but if you watch the "alternate version", at least you won't end up hating this movie.

Movie Review: Kung Fu Panda

Rating: 7.0 out of 10

Review: It was actually better than I thought it would be. The action and kung fu bits were really well done. Jack Black is hilarious as always (almost always; we don’t count Nacho Libre). Not much to say, except that it is a solid cartoon that stays true to the Kung Fu vibe throughout.

Movie Review: Bolt

Rating: 7.0 out of 10

Review: Took my 2.5 year old son to see this. He and I both liked it quite a bit. It is a CG movie about a dog who is an actor portraying a super hero dog, but the dog thinks he is really a super hero. Hilarity ensues. While the dog is funny and a solid lead character, the little hamster steals the show. I would recommend this movie to most everyone, mostly because of the hamster. He is hilarious and has some very quotable lines.

Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull

Rating: 7.0 out of 10

Review: Okay, I wanted to hate the plot at first. I thought they went way too far outside of the whole Indiana vibe, but I now think I was wrong. If you look back on movies like the Temple of Doom, I mean, come on. You can’t get much more out there than a guy magically yanking another guy’s heart out. So, I am good with the direction they went. Other than that, I loved all the throw backs to the old Indy movies with quotes and reappearing actors. It was great. The reason I only gave it a six is because all of the action sequences were way too over the top. They were so unbelievable that they were laughable. They should have let up a bit on those. Otherwise, a good edition to the Indy series.

Movie Review: Cloverfield

Rating: 8.0 out of 10

Review: The plot of Cloverfield is that you are watching a video tape left over after some sort of thing attacks New York. And you get the privilege of experiencing the events along with the characters as if you were right there with them. This was a good monster flick. Not really horror, but somewhere between Blair Witch and Godzilla in style. The suspense of not knowing what is going on with some very good visuals and lots of action made this one of the better monster movies I have seen.

Movie Review: Be Kind, Rewind

Rating: 5.0 out of 10

Review: I have a fondness for Jack Black movies. His movies are usually hit or miss, though. This one was pretty much a miss. This movie was about a VHS movie rental store in the slums that suddenly finds that they have no movies to rent. So, Jack Black and Mos Def have to start filming their own versions to rent to people. The plot isn’t bad and I like whole concept, but the execution wasn’t great. The movie took too long to get to the good stuff and they went all science-fictiony at one point when they did not have to do so to develop the story. All in all, it is not a bad movie to watch if it comes on television.

Movie Review: Diminished Capacity

Rating: 3.0 out of 10

Review: This is a fairly slow drama, sort of a romantic comedy, that doesn’t really have much in the way of romance or comedy. It is actually kind of a depressing movie. The plot is that a father and son are having memory troubles and they are using each other as support to go out into the real world to sell a rare baseball card. It was alright for a sappy movie, I guess. My biggest problem with the movie was that the most exciting part of the movie had people wrestling around on the ground over the baseball card. That was the climax of the movie? It was an extremely lackluster ending to a pretty boring movie.

Movie Review: Swing View

Rating: 4.0 out of 10

Review: I liked the story. It was about an election that was so close that it comes down to just one vote by one guy. Of course, this guy is a lazy, unemployed, red neck guy who just doesn’t care. So, the movie turns out to be about how low politicians can stoop to get what they want and how far is too far. I thought it was a great idea for a movie. The problem was that the dialog felt like it was written by a 10 year old. The script was just bad. The connections between the father and daughter never felt real because of the awkward dialog. This is a fun movie to watch if it is TV someday. Just don’t expect great character development or witty banter.

Movie Review: Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Rating: 7.0 out of 10

Review: Forgetting Sarah Marshall is one of those movies that may have slipped past your radar, but was actually a decent comedy. It’s about a guy trying to forget about his recent break up. Of course, this proves to be quite difficult when he keeps finding her around every corner. This is actually a pretty good romantic comedy, even with its very vulgar content. Believe it or not, but this movie has the most nudity that I’ve seen in a movie in a long time. The guy nudity kind of got a little over the top; but, it was done to be funny, of course. I wouldn’t say the whole movie was great, but it definitely had its funny parts. A decent romantic comedy with some crude, but usually funny, content.

Movie Review: Iron Man

Rating: 9.0 out of 10

Review: Excellent action movie. The plot is great, the visuals are great, the dialogue is great, and the acting is great. The only thing I can say bad about it is that the whole movie is about the beginning of the Iron Man story. It is not about the “super hero” Iron Man, but about how he came to be. I guess we can wait for Iron Man 2 to see him in full superhero form.

Movie Review: War of the Worlds

Rating: 5.0 out of 10

Review: This is a retelling of the classic War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. The biggest difference is that this version is set in modern U.S. instead of turn of 1800’s England. The action is great and the visuals are fantastic. The story just does seem substantial enough for a good movie. The ending is kind of anticlimactic and doesn’t hold up to 21st century expectation of an action movie. All in all, a fairly good action movie with a plot that doesn’t hold up in the end.