Recently watched movies!

[Dr Kain]

Cars - I only watched this movie once ten years ago, which was the day I bought it on BD. As such, it was interesting to take a new look at it and I gotta say that I was quite impressed with it this time around. It's still about 15 minutes longer than it needed to be, but I didn't find myself bored and I resonated with the characters and situations a lot more than I did then. Hell, it is probably no longer the weakest Pixar movie on my list, so I'm moving its original 6/10 score to an 8/10.

[klen7]

[canofhumdingers]

[O.Supreme]

[Dr Kain]

I actually thought Cars 2 was better. I loved the whole spy homage. However, we'll find out when I watch that one again since I haven't watched it since i saw it in theaters.

[lhb412]

Kamen Rider ZO

Keita Amemiya directed this short (about 50 minute) theatrical featurette and his sense of style and harder edged tokusatsu action make it a lot of fun. A somewhat amnesiac guy wakes up in a cave transformed into Kamen Rider with only the knowledge that he's to protect this kid, the son of a disappeared scientist. This rather grotesque cyborg thing with the ability to bud off a variety of henchmen monsters (including a terrifying stop motion half woman half spider) is also after the kid. As our hero remembers stuff and we learn some stuff about the disappeared scientist we're able to figure out exactly what's going on, but its really just an excuse for a series of chases and fights.

It's a shame this wasn't brought over to the US in the mid-'90s during the Power Rangers boom. I think it could have done well as a direct to video thing.

[O.Supreme]

[Dr Kain]

Cars 2 - You know how I said I thought this movie was great when I saw it in theaters while I didn't care for the first one? And then how this time around the first one impressed me? So yeah, this one was the exact opposite of that. The opening sequence is hands down the best part of the movie. That spy bit on the oil rig was awesome. And then the movie kind of just goes downhill from there. There is just way too much toilet humor and I have no idea who the movie's focus is supposed to be on as sometimes it feels like it wants to focus on Lightning, and then other times it wants Matter to be the main character. I still love the spy movie homages and Michael Caine is awesome, but this movie was made for kids first, adults third. Overall, I'm dropping my original score of an 8 to a 6/10 and this is easily the weakest of all of the PIxar movies.

[Dr Kain]

Cars 3 - I went into this with kind of low expectations and came out grinning. It was on par with the first one and was pretty much what the second one should have been. It doesn't help one bit that there is not even a single reference to the second one at all as if Pixar themselves forgot it existed, which makes me question why they just didn't call this one Cars and put a subtitle with it instead of the number 3. It really brings on the attitude people have today with calling anyone older than them an old man and the jokes are down right hilarious. Although, they do get old one in a while. ZING!! There is some really great stuff here and the movie doesn't fully play out the way you would expect it to. There's also a pretty cool scene in there that might please Twisted Metal fans. Nathan Fillion does a good job at playing a sleazeball millionaire while Armie Hammer is good at being the rookie douchebag. However, the star of the show has to go to the lady that voices the race trainer. She did an excellent job here. The jokes were a hit most of the time with maybe only one or two that I can remember being kind of meh. Overall, I give Cars 3 an 8/10.

The short before it was pretty cool too.

Oh, I do have to mention something about the trailers though. They showed us a trailer for Coco (should have been called Book of Life 2 though) which looked cool, but it was way shorter than the trailer they did for some Frozen short that is going to be shown with Coco. Why the hell they had a near 2 minute trailer for what is bound to be a 6-7 minute is beyond me. They pretty much showed what is bound to be the only good jokes from the short in this trailer too. Is Disney so scared of Coco being a new IP that they had to show a trailer for the short that will be before it? Or is Coco that bad?

[lhb412]

^I think I read that the the Frozen short will be something like 20 minutes long? More like a 'short film,' as opposed to the length of a classic theatrical cartoon short (6 minutes) or modern Pixar short (those are like 3 minutes, right?).

[Dr Kain]

[O.Supreme]

[Dr Kain]

I did find it weird how they added The Fabulous Hudson Hornet to the sides of Hudson during the flashback scenes when he was talking to Lightning even though they weren't there in the first movie.

[EricDent]

Not sure if I posted this here or not (I don't visit as often, mostly cause I am busy).

Recent Theater visits (2 of them with free passes given to me by family friends for my B-Day)

Wonder Woman: It was very good, and they totally went the right direction for this movie. They need to keep this sort of mood going forward. The "grim dark" stuff doesn't really work for DC Comics stuff (especially Superman).

Pirates 5: Was good, and I can bet there will be a Pirates 6 just to tie-up the series (odd numbers are not a good place to stop IMO). Depp was fun, but as usual Barbarossa steals the show (and Salazar was rather creepy as well).

The Mummy (Tom Cruise): Was better than people said on the internet, but still not as fun as the Brenden Fraser ones. I did like Russel Crowe as Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. Was kinda wondering if Van Hellsing (or at least his relative) was gonna show up, but I guess not. Hopefully the movie makes enough $ to warrant them going forward with the "Dark Universe" cause I kinda want to see more of this.

Recent DVD/Blu-Ray purchases: The Matrix (Blu-Ray) at HPB for about $7 (had a 15% coupon for my B-Day), and Blu-Ray Volume 1 of the Showa Gamera stuff (Gamera The Giant Monster, Vs Barrugon, Vs Gyaos, and Vs Viras) I have no plans on selling the dub versions, but for $1.99 couldn't pass it up (too bad we didn't have volume 2).

[O.Supreme]

Dragonheart: Battle for the Heartfire aka Dragonheart 4. Before I begin my review just to sum up a few things from the past. I hold the original 1996 film Dragonheart in very high esteem. It is probably one of my top 10 all-time favorite films, it may not have had such an impact on me if not for things happening to me IRL at the time when it came out. But the film in question - Battle for the Heartfire - was just released on Netflix, apparently Universal had more-than-expected positive feedback from them last film, which is itself a prequel to the first, so like the Alien franchise there is a plan to continue making films, all prequels, and presumably ending at a point that leads up to the first film to tie-up the story, but inevitably just makes things convoluted and confusing.

The story itself is ok, a bit different, and I think the rules about a Dragon sharing its heart with a human is getting a little reimagined, thus confusing as well. I liked the original idea better. Also it doesn't help that while we get prominent A-List actors to voice the dragons, the fact that there is no consistency makes it confusing (Sean Connery was the original-Draco, Robby Benson was his son Drake, Ben Kingsley was an unknown ancestor in the 3rd film named Drago, and the same Dragon -Drago appears in the 4th film, this time however voiced by Patrick Stewart...)

The story is of twins (a son and daughter) who were grandchildren of the couple from the 3rd film. They were born "cursed" (The boy has Dragon Scales on his back and has immense strength, the girl's face on one side has scales partially covering it, and eventually learns to manipulate fire). The story is of the twins being feared as *cursed* because of their appearance, an adoptive father raises them, but eventually they split up for reasons explained later, and eventually the boy becomes king of an area in England and under the guidance of Drago begins to become more virtuous. He eventually meets his sister who is now leading an invading Dane Army. She forces her brother to abdicate and exiles him. Eventually Drago discovers his heart is shared with BOTH twins and he forces them to reconcile, while the real villain is one of the Dane Generals. Also the tone of this film is all-over the place. Sometimes you get this feeling that the Dane Army is subjugating women as sex-slaves, but they never actually go down that road, thankfully.

In the end, the Twins reconcile, and are able to save each other from death by using the Dragons own fire which the sister initially stole from Drago. Drago then sacrifices himself, but the Twins co-rule the kingdom and live happily-ever-after (not married of course) . Universal evidently plans on making more films, which somehow will tie back to the first film, not sure how that will happen though. As a stand alone film, its fairly decent, as a *Dragonheart* Prequel however, none of these can even come close to the spirit of the original. 6/10

*edit* Almost forgot, I had a LOL moment when I saw the film had an editor credit for "Chuck Norris"

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1945155/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cr5

Yes his IMDB says Charles to differentiate him, but for a few moments, I had an image of Chuck Norris Punching & Kicking the film print to break it. THATS how THE REAL Chuck Norris would do it anyway heh...

[lhb412]

^In retrospect, movies like Dragonheart and Casper were pretty ahead of the curve in terms of CGI characters in film.

I watched all of Universal Studios' Kharis films, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, The Mummy's Ghost, and The Mummy's Curse. They all kinda blend together. I think Tomb is my favorite, because Hand is technically probably the best but it takes so long for the good stuff to get started while Tomb has the Mummy walking around pretty much from the beginning. Tom Tyler's Kharis does look the best: his tall muscular build suits better than Cheney's burly physique, plus they blotted his eyes out frame-by-frame in post and that looks cool!

I know Lon Cheney Jr. hated the Mummy makeup, but he must have also hated the permanent wedgie Jack Pierce was giving Kharis!

Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy isn't the best A&C movie, but it might be the best of Uni's Mummy sequels. Some of the guys' bits fall flat, but there's a few great ones. The scene where they're each trying to get rid of the cursed amulet at a table in a café had me in stitches. The titular Mummy, Klaris, has an interesting looking face but they really screwed up on his wrappings: it's a jumpsuit and it looks like a jumpsuit and it never looks like bandages.

Another problem: this movie doesn't really mesh the monster element with the A&C element very well. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was at all times both a A&C film and a Universal monster rally. This movie could just as easily drop the Mummy with minimal changes and have it just be about an ancient treasure.

[Dr Kain]

Resident Evil The Final Chapter - Holy "OH GODZILLA! WHAT TERRIBLE LANGUAGE!", what the hell did I just waste 15 years for? What was that thing I even just watched? I have never seen a movie edited together in such a choppy, half-assed method before as I have with this. If you thought shaky cam was bad before, you ain't seen nothing until you watch this steaming pile of garbage. There were so many camera angle changes that I decided to start swooshing at each one and got tired of it in less than 2 minutes. In fact, I decided to count the number of times the camera angle changed for one minute at the 38:00 mark and I counted 68. That is less than a second per angle. In fact, I think the longest time the camera stayed on one shot was for 8 seconds.

Wow, a full paragraph and I haven't even gotten to the characters yet. They were crap. For as bad as Extinction was, at least it tried to make you care about the cannon fodder. This movie just throws in people who die not even five minutes later. And the characters that are there for the majority of the movie are not even named.

Oh, that isn't evren talking about how Paul Anderson himself forgot how he even ended the last movie. THe last movie ended with Wesker and Alice in a heavily armored white house. This movie starts out and Wesker is back with Umbrella and it turns out the doctor from the third movie was a clone.

Then we have Alice, who makes no sense. The Red Queen (who is not even the same Red Queen as the first one even though they say it is supposed to be) tells her she doesn't have her powers, but she clearly does throughout the entire movie given how invincible she is.

Claire is pretty much only here to because LOOK, GAME CHARACTER!!! Oh, and they pulled the same stunt at the beginningn of the movie by having James Marcus in it. You know, the Leech Man James Marcus from Resident Evil 0? Turns out the woman the Red Queen is based on was his daughter. WTF?

Next up are the monsters, or lack thereof. I'm not sure which is worse, the fact that there are only two major big bads in this movie or that they are not even actual Resident Evil monsters. There is not even a Tyrant final battle at all. It's human vs human. WTF?!

Finally, the whole resolution is so god damned stupid. If you really don't want to know, stop reading right here. However, I suspect you won't care, and you shouldn't be wasting your time with this movie anyway. It turns out all they needed to do to cure the entire world was drop a vial of the anti-virus on the ground and the wind will spread the anti-virus across the world to kill off all of the zombies and crap. THAT'S IT?! Who the hell thought this up, a five year old? You know what it should have been? That the antivirus is launched up into the atmosphere and spread that way, but nope, that would require the filmmakers to actually give a damn about this bullet ridden corpse of a franchise. What's even more hilarious is that the moment Alice drops the vial on the ground all of the thousands of zombies running towards her just drop dead like dominoes. ARE YOU "OH GODZILLA! WHAT TERRIBLE LANGUAGE!" KIDDING ME?!

Overall, I give this... whatever the hell it was, a 1/10 and that 1 is only because it is over. Let's hope the next time they attempt a Resident Evil movie franchise they get someone that actually cares about the source material and horror in general.

[klen7]

i wrote up a long response to seeing Power Rangers, most of it about age appropriateness of a franchise considering I watched it with my 5 year old daughter... but when i hit the submit button it disappeared. Anyway the short version is that when the movie wasn't shying away from being Power Rangers (last 30 minutes, any scene with Alpha) it did well... when it was focusing on teenagers "with attitude" (first hour and a half) it didnt do much for me. Billy was likable, Alpha was great, Cranston brought seem intensity to Zordon.

[Dr Kain]

I felt the opposite. I thought the first 90 minutes was the strong piont while the last half hour was meh.

[klen7]

^ I think it was more me taking issue with the target audience. It was fine for an origin story, and the ending is rushed, but things like sexting/revenge porn scandals, bull masturbation, etc put this at high school level and above, whereas for me PR was a part of Elementary and Jr High experience that i share with my kindergarten age kid. I am not saying they need to have Bulk and Skull type humor in the movie to appeal to a younger audience, but I have to wonder what their franchise plan was because the target audience for the film will be too old/cool for the sequel whenever that comes out. I actually wrote a lot about age appropriateness and what made PR such a phenomenon when it hit the scene in the long post i lost, but thats the short version.


Headshot - One of the most criminally wrong things Star Wars The Force Awakens did was to cast Iko Uwais, the most explosive martial artist currently active in cinema, and put him in a role where he just stands there then runs away. This movie continues his streak of explosively violent martial arts films with a movie that isn't quite as stylish as the Raid flicks, but more gory than most mainstream slasher flicks that have come out in the past 15 years. The story is a bit thin, but the choreography and gore effects work make this worth a watch. It's odd that some of the best martial arts film are coming out of Indonesia now. It's easy to try and compare this to The Raid films due to the overlap in talent, and this movie pales in comparison, but the artistry of the violence on the screen is something lacking from most Western action flicks. It's on Netflix, and I went to try and buy a bluray for my collection, but no release yet...

[Dr Kain]

While I didn't care for the masturbation joke myself, trust me, kids talk a lot differently these days. I hate a fifth grade girl in one class i was in start with playing a latex glove with had to blow up as a balloon and she started to shape it and said, "Hey look, it's a boy's penis."

[lhb412]

[klen7]

The Raid 2 is essential viewing for martial arts fans. The first one had a special soundtrack added after the fact by a Linkin Park guy that feels a little out of place to me, but is generally praised.

You should probably watch them in order but the first 10 minutes of the 2nd film close off every thread from the first film.

[Benjamin Haines]

[Dr Kain]

The Mummy - This was actually not all that bad. In fact, there were quite a lot of great moments and pieces of dialog that turned out quite strong. The worst points of this movie are the really really REALLY terrible dialog (especially in the last 5 minutes of the movie) and the fact that it feels like it is like the third or fourth movie in an already established franchise. It hardly feels like a Mummy movie at all. It also doesn't help that they completely screwed up Egyptian mythology as Set is NOT the God of Death!!


Another negative is that this would have been so much better as a horror film. I don't care if big action set pieces are the cool thing these days, we don't need another action cinematic universe. Giving us a horror one would have given this universe a fresh spin because then it would be trying to something different from Marvel, DC, the Godzillaverse, etc.


That is not to say there weren't cool things found, because there were a lot of interesting ideas here. Not to mention some fanservice to Universal's library . Unfortunately, this movie is undone by Universal's own future amibitions as it forgot to be its own movie. They really should have just started with a movie based on the monster hunter organization or not called this one The Mummy.


Comparatively, I'd say this movie is better than Rise of the Dragon Emperor and The Scorpion King, along with most of the sequels to The Mummy's Hand, but fails to live up to the expectations set by the original Karloff film and the first two Brendan Fraser movies. I'm curioius to see more of what this universe has to offer, but I'd like a god damned beginning first. I give The Mummy a 7/10.