Dear John

Because you never asked for it, and well because its been a very slow news day, here is my review for Dear John. Channing "The Turd" Tatum has been making a name for himself as a dancer, military man, romantic, and general douche. It should come as no surprise he's attempted to bring all this talent together for one movie, well except for dancing, I guess we'll have to wait for Step Up 3D for that, Yay!

The film, if you can call it that, also stars Amanda Seyfried. Seyfried plays Savannah, a rich Southern girl who doesn't drink, doesn't do drugs, and is spending her spring break rebuilding houses for the poor by day, and hanging glumly around outdoor barbecues by night. Tatum's John is an Army guy on two-week leave in his seaside hometown, meeting Savannah through a random act of gallantry and soon escorting her everywhere around town, with plenty of random ex-boyfriends and family friends looking on in jealousy.

Savannah and John meet within the opening credits, but it takes forever for John and Savannah's romance to actually get going-- they're just too pure to rush things, I guess-- and before long the two weeks are over and the pair are communicating via letters (though the actual "Dear John" letter is still a long way off). This is all set in the spring and summer of 2001, so you know before too long someone will be staring in shock at a TV screen showing flaming towers, and John's remaining 12 months of duty are probably going to wind up being a lot more.

The longing that Savannah and John feel for each other might help move the story along, but Savannah is the kind of girl who swears she has flaws but never shows any (she wants to open a horse riding camp for autistic kids, because that doesn't sound ridiculous at all, and John is a reformed brawler who is now devoted to his emotionally distant and fragile dad, who is also a bit of a douche (only in the movie though, good actor otherwise). Savannah and John have about as much personality as characters in a pro-abstinence pamphlet. As the script lurches from one event to another, with no cause-and-effect at work whatsoever, at this point your supposed to be emotionally invested in the two main characters,  Unfortunately Tatum is a turd and Seyfried fails to deliver.

While watching this it honestly felt like time stopped, the movie moved along that slow. If your looking for the same magical warm feeling 'the notebook' gave you, you won't find it here.

I give Dear John 1/5, and that's being generous.

Coming to DVD and Blu ray May 25th, But you should save your money.

Clash Of The Titans (2010)

Running a little behind with this review, but it works for the people who haven't seen it yet, or anyone looking to see what I thought of the remake.

Let me start by saying that I was a fan of the original, and I'm generally a fan of most Greek/Roman or ancient mythology films. The original came out in 1981 and in my opinion is a classic in its genre, even though some of the effects compared to today's standards don't stand up quite as well, the effects in the original were done mostly with motion capture and practically, where as in the re-make it is very CG heavy.

The story pretty much follows that of the original. Perseus (Sam Worthington), the mortal son of Zeus (Liam Neeson), sets out on a mission to save the city of Argos from destruction at the hands of the gods. Why is the king of the gods and the rest of Mt. Olympus so pissed? Well, Man is tired as hell at the gods and they aren’t going to take it anymore!

Consequently, Man’s "thanks be to the gods" are not coming in at the rate they once were. You see, it's Man’s prayers that keep these deities immortal; and mankind ain’t meeting their quota!

Accompanied by a small group of soldiers led by Draco (Mads Mikkelsen) as well as his spiritual guide Io (Gemma Arterton), Perseus must deal with giant scorpions, witches, Medusa, and ultimately the most powerful and terrifying monster of them all, the Kraken.

Oh yeah, and he’s got to take on Hades (Ralph Fiennes), too. Perseus has a personal score to settle with the god of the underworld, who himself wants a little revenge against his brother Zeus.

I think for what Louis Leterrier was trying to do with the re-make, he did technically succeed, in that the movie is a big budget action adventure popcorn flick. What it isn't however is a classic, like some of the more recent tv spots will have you believe, I call bullshit on them.

Nothing really like any of the other more recent mythical films such as Troy or 300, this is not nearly as bloody or violent. In some ways it's ok, but the story moves along so quickly and should be this epic journey of awesomeness, but they have to "PG" it up for the younger audiences. Kind of a shame, a movie like clash could have had the potential to be a classic like "Gladiator", had there been less restraints on what could be done, meh, maybe in 20 years when they remake it again, we'll get the R rated version.

One thing I will say is if you haven't yet see it, catch it in 2D and skip the 3D garbage they slapped together, You'll get nothing but annoyed with the gimmicky carboard cut outs and probably end up with a headache as well.

I give Clash Of The Titans 3/5.

Kick-Ass

After seeing this last night I've come to the conclusion, the filmmakers behind Hollywood's latest superhero flick have declared war on family values.

"Kick-Ass" is bad news for lovers of all that is gentle and wholesome. But it's great news for fans itching to laugh dementedly as a little girl in a neon purple wig cusses like Tony Soprano and fires kill shots to the heads of many bad guys.

Director Matthew Vaughn has made an action comedy so bloody funny - double emphasis on bloody - fans might need to see it again just to catch the gags they missed from laughing so hard the first time.

The film is seriously, nastily violent, both satirizing the excesses of superhero flicks and showing genuine, hurtful consequences of the cartoon action Hollywood serves up.

As an 11-year-old masked vigilante, supporting player Chloe Grace Moretz simply owns this movie, deliriously complemented by Nicolas Cage as her doting but dotty dad.

That's not to take anything away from Aaron Johnson, solid but rather bland by comparison in the title role as a teen who takes on a superhero alter-ego and bumbles out to fight crime - without a trace of the special powers that usually go with the job.

It's just that in Cage and Moretz' Batman-and-Robin-style duo, Vaughn and comic-book writer Mark Millar have created one of the sharpest - and certainly most lethal - father-daughter combinations ever to hit the screen.

With a screenplay by Vaughn ("Layer Cake," "Stardust") and Jane Goldman, "Kick-Ass" is based on Millar and artist John S. Romita Jr.'s comic book, a series so fresh its eight installments were still being published as the film was shot.

Johnson (who stars as the young John Lennon in the upcoming "Nowhere Boy") plays Dave Lizewski, an average New York City comic-book geek who wonders why real people don't sally forth to become superheroes.

Buying a sleek wetsuit online for his costume, Dave rebrands himself as Kick-Ass, who quickly suffers for his hapless presumption in taking on brutal street thugs.

Yet Dave's pluck and resilience - plus a YouTube video of his exploits recorded by a bystander - turn him into a folk hero, making him a target for crime boss Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong).

Dave also comes to the attention of Damon Macready (Cage) and daughter Mindy (Moretz), true, hardcore caped crusaders who go by the names Big Daddy and Hit Girl and possess the skills and weaponry to really take a bite out of crime.

The three heroes wind up in an epic battle against D'Amico and his heavies - including his son, a supervillain wannabe hilariously played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse.

The movie bogs down here and there in side stories involving Dave's geek pals (Clark Duke and Evan Peters) and the high school hottie (Lyndsy Fonseca) Dave dreams about.

Mostly, though, "Kick-Ass" hurtles along breathlessly, from a brilliant opening gag to a climax whose action is hysterical but also disturbing, when Vaughn lifts the veil on the Hollywood silliness to show real, vulnerable people being hurt.

The filmmakers lined up independent financing to make "Kick-Ass," saying Hollywood studios were interested only if the action were toned down to the PG-13 range and Hit Girl were dropped from the picture.

If that had happened, the movie would have been a mild butt bump rather than the fierce kick in the behind it is. And it would have denied audiences the chance to see a wonderful young talent playing her heart out with no restraint.

With Hit Girl, Moretz is this year's It Girl, alternately sweet, savage and scary. Tearing about like the Looney Tunes' Tasmanian Devil, Moretz makes you believe she really could beat the stuffing out of grown men two or three times her size.

It'll never happen, but she deserves a supporting-actress nomination come Academy Awards time.

Following last year's deranged "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans," Cage creates another delightful madman, both as staccato-voiced Big Daddy and the vengeful Macready - who, twisted as he is, proves as loving a father as Ward Cleaver.

Prequel, please. Let's find out more about how Damon and Mindy became Big Daddy and Hit Girl in the first place.

I give it 4/5

Kick-Ass hits theaters this Friday 

Date Night

Steve Carell and Tina Fey are a major part of one of my favorite hours of TV every week (The Office and 30 Rock, of course), so the idea of both of them teaming up for a romantic comedy action film sounded like a great idea.  And for the most part, it was.  In Date Night, they were as funny as they are on their respective TV shows without being too over-the-top, and both were completely convincing as a couple whose night on the town takes a series of very unexpected turns.

Phil and Claire Foster are a happily married couple from the New Jersey suburbs who just need a break.  Between their busy jobs, their two kids (who leap into their bed wanting breakfast at 5am), and their hectic schedules, they have practically no time to themselves.  Even their weekly 'date nights' are usually at the same restaurant with the same meal every time.

So when they learn that two of their friends are getting divorced for mostly the same reason, they decide to shake their date night up a bit.  They get dressed up and head into New York for dinner at an expensive and impossible-to-get-into seafood restaurant.  When they can't get a table, they decide to throw caution to the wind even further and pretend to be the Tripplehorns, a party-of-two who appeared to be no shows for their reservation.

And that's where it all goes to hell.  It turns out the real Tripplehorns have gotten themselves into trouble with the mafia, and before the Fosters have finished dinner, the local goons show up to collect a mysterious flash drive that they don't have.  Now a panicked Phil and Claire must spend the rest of the night evading dangerous mobsters and crooked cops so they can track down the actual Tripplehorns (with the help of a perpetually shirtless Mark Wahlberg) find this flash drive, and get home.  Normal life suddenly never looked better.

Date Night definitely has shades of Adventures in Babysitting.  You've got the normal people from the suburbs up against the dangerous characters of the city having lots of misadventures along the way, and all of the characters you are rooting for learn some valuble lessons along the way.  In this case, learning that as a couple you work as a team, no matter how crazy life gets.

The funniest parts of the film are definitely the back-and-forth between Fey and Carell.  Their spastic reactions to everything that goes wrong makes you wonder how many times they went off-script and just how many takes it took to finish a scene.  (the blooper reel shown during the end credits suggests it took quite a few)

I didn't think the movie as a whole was side-splittingly funny, and it was a bit predictable, but it was very enjoyable and it even had a pretty impressive car chase scene.  I definitely recommend it to anyone looking for just a fun night at the movies.   

How To Train Your Dragon

I have to admit, I'm not always the biggest fan of the Dreamworks animated films.  I loved the first two Shrek films, but for the most part their animated movies as a whole seem way too obsessed with pop-culture references that become dated quickly and never seem to reach the storytelling highs that the Pixar films do.

When I first saw the trailers for How to Train Your Dragon, I assumed this would be another lackluster Dreamworks effort.  But wow, I am so glad to be wrong.  This movie is easily their best animated film and the best movie I've seen so far this year.  Granted, it's only April, but still...it's a good start.

Loosely based on the 2003 novel of the same name, How to Train Your Dragon is the story of Hiccup, a gawky, accident-prone teenager from a mythical Viking village (where all of the adults speak with Scottish accents and the kids speak with American accents for some reason) that is constantly under attack by all kinds of vicious dragons who torch homes and steal sheep on a regular basis.

While Hiccup is supposed to be learning how to be a dragon-slayer, he instead winds up befriending a dragon he shoots down, who he names "Toothless."  Toothless is a Night Fury dragon, supposedly the most elusive and terrifying dragon of them all.  But once they get to know each other, it turns out Toothless is actually kind of sweet...in a dangerous pet kind of way, and they go on to develop a sort of ET/Elliot-type friendship, much to the chagrin of his fellow classmates and especially his warrior-hero father, who's leading an army to destroy the rest of the dragons.  Needless to say, convincing everyone that dragons aren't so bad after all will prove to be as difficult as it sounds.

The 3D in this film was amazing.  Unlike Alice in Wonderland, which was converted from 2D to 3D and didn't necessarily need it, this was actually filmed for 3D and it looked as good as anything in Avatar.  The flying scenes alone make the movie worth shelling out the extra cash for the IMAX version, and the battle sequence at the end was equally impressive.

How to Train Your Dragon also benefits from a terrific voice cast, including Jay Baruchel (as Hiccup), Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, and America Ferrara.  We even get a mini-Superbad reunion with Jonah Hill and Christopher Mintz-Plasse voicing two of Hiccup's classmates.

I've never read the book, so I don't know if it's a good adaptation...but I can't say enough good things about the movie.  It was Pixar-good.  I loved that they got through it without a single pop-culture reference, and that it had an excellent story.  It also had what was probably one of the best dragon battle scenes I've ever seen.

Unfortunately, the movie opened to a lukewarm response at the box office last weekend (the sudden rise in 3D ticket prices certainly didn't help it), and the release of Clash of the Titans in 3D won't be doing it any favors this upcoming weekend.

But if you do get the chance - see this movie!  At the IMAX if you can.  It's incredibly good.