I waited a solid week after it came out before going to see this installment. It’s been a long time since the last one came out and I really wasn’t in the mood. But compared to the other movies thus far released in the Twilight series, this one has been done the best. ‘Jacob’ is a more believable character, ‘Bella’ doesn’t bite her lip quite as much as she used to and ‘Edward’ stopped sparkling despite their honeymoon in the sun. I enjoyed that this movie hit on all the highlights of the first half of the book, though if you haven’t read it you may need to in order to follow all the nuances.

And that tidbit right there was why this movie, despite being better than the others, is so flawed. Is this the first time we’ve been introduced to ‘imprinting’? It felt like it and the explanation felt forced and incomplete. Are ‘Leah’ and ‘Seth’ related by blood or are they just pack siblings? What’s up with the random other vampires at the wedding? Why are they allowed? How are they family? Why does ‘Bella’ put up with all the hoopla surrounding the wedding in the first place?

All of these questions and more will be yours if you don’t read the book first. But if you do go read the book, the movie becomes a nice recap of the book, but this time with full color pictures.

I went and saw Moneyball and have come to tell you to save your money. This movie has no heart when it bills itself as a movie with emotion. From beginning to end I suffered through the chew spitting scenes that apparently we can’t omit from a baseball movie. Oh wait, yes we can if we want to. These guys just chose to give spit its own leading roll. Now, at least, you don’t have to worry that these idiot characters have mistaken their spit cup for their beer cup, (though they probably taste about the same) because you don’t have to go see this thing.

I’m a great lover of math, but this movie somehow manages to reveal the great new way to get players for your team by analyzing their stats without showing you any math except in one scene where a guy says they used a formula to compute all the statistics. Beyond that, they simply scroll numbers across the screen as a way to show time passing.

The random scenes about the main characters wife are forced and confusing. The main character as well as his wife prominently wear their wedding rings but are not together – pointless. These could have ALL been omitted without changing the movie even a tiny bit and I could have gotten a few minutes of my life back. The character who comes up with the formula to find players, can only look slightly startled and can only deliver his lines in a monotone.

This movie is passionless. I’m sorry I wasted nearly 10 dollars. I beg you not to waste yours.

Before going to see Super 8 last week, I was becoming very jaded with movies. I hadn’t purchased a DVD in years and walking out of a theater ‘not hating’ the movie, was the best reaction I could hope for. Super 8 surpassed all of my expectations. I LOVED this movie.

First, I’m very glad about all of the things that this movie wasn’t. It wasn’t a movie that taught us a stupid lesson (Avatar), it wasn’t a 2-hour long stupid explosion (Transformers), and it wasn’t the exact same stupid movie that we’ve already seen a couple dozen times (Green Lantern).

This was something new. It was fun. It had real people. I enjoyed watching their story. While Super 8 owes a lot to the Spielberg movies of the 70′s and 80′s, it doesn’t copy the story. While it feels a lot like Close Encounters, E.T., and The Goonies, it is it’s own story and never feels like a cheap ripoff of something greater. Super 8 shows that there is a huge difference between trying to rip off a great movie and trying to become like a great movie. The first is just the skeleton of some greater work with nothing to flesh it out. The second is a younger sibling that bears a resemblance to the older brother, but is a complete and separate and wonderful person on his own.

While Michael Bay has earned his place on my list of people who make movies that I will NEVER watch, JJ Abrams has earned his place on my list of people that I will watch EVERY movie they make.

EXCITEMENT!  I’m going to the movies for the first time in a while (unless you count the kids movie I saw last week) and I’m going to see a grown up movie.  Sure it’s about comic book characters and I used to watch it as a cartoon as a kid but it’s a grown up movie – I swear.

I decided to go see one of those vampire movies that rips off Twilight.

I ended up seeing Priest instead which is a story unto its own.  There are no pretty, twinkly vampires in this movie (I missed that a little bit, to be honest).  What there is, is a solid story about a priest with slightly super human abilities who, with he fellow clergymen and women, fight the scourge of vampires across the world.

He’s been in retirement for a while and the vampires are presumed defeated when his niece is kidnapped –  by vampires.  Against church wishes, he goes out to get he back, or kill her if it’s too late and she’s been infected.  He’s joined by the girls boyfriend, played by Cam Gigandet – one of the bad vampires from Twilight.  Here Gigandet plays more of a cowboy.

I found the story line to be compelling and pretty well thought out.  I don’t really know why the world looks so nuclear winterish but maybe they tried to nuke the vampires at some point.  It was a little hard to go along with the semi father child relationship between the priest and the boyfriend since they look to be about the same age but there were still times I found myself buying it.

Over all this is a nice movie.  It’s based on a comic book series and now I REALLY want to go find out what happens next.

I recently saw “Mars Needs Moms” and was SEVERLY disapointed.   I thought this was a kids movie when in actuality it was a show-kids-how-to-be-brats movie.  The main character is called Milo and  played by Seth Green who I normally love but this character was unlovable from.  Complaining at the top of his lungs when he doesn’t close the door?!  I instantly disliked the kid. When he told his mom he wished he didn’t have a mom I wanted to yell at him.  His mom took a different tact and played the guilt card, making sure he saw the tears streaming from her eyes before closing the door,  leaving it to the most selfish movie kid I’ve ever seen to come up with the fact that he was a jerk all on his own.  Only in the movies does that actually happen – real children aren’t usually capable of such self reflection and then taking action on the results.  The miracle brat does though – just in time to see his mom kidnapped by aliens.

This is where the movie perks up, teaching us that old women are crones and that Mars’ society is one in which they dump the boys down the garbage shoot.  We also find out that the family unit of ancient times has been broken by the evil old woman and art and beauty are irrelevant so all girls must be soldiers.  All sexist in the extreme but new in that it discriminates against both genders.

However, it is at this point that I ask the animators, why did ‘Ki’, the main female character and aid to our ‘hero’ the brat child, have her crack showing throughout the film but no other character does?  Not the men in the garbage pit who only have only rudimentary clothes, not the mom, not the old woman and not the THOUSANDS of other female Mars women.  Why doesn’t Ki get clothing?  Why do you need to sexualize her?  It’s WAY gross.

Don’t take your kids to this movie.  Don’t go on your own.  Ignore this movie whenever possible.  Don’t even read this post.

Did I mention that I went and say Harry Potter?  Did I mention that I went at the midnight showing?  Did I mention that I’ve now seen it 3 times with plans to see it a 4th time?!

I haven’t enjoyed a movie this much since Starship Troopers.  And this one is a whole lot better than that one.  I think there are a couple things that they left out that wouldn’t have taken them too long to put in, one of which was Harry telling Ron that he’s not into Hermione.  But there are a couple things that were changed that improved the flow as well – Ron doesn’t get mad at Harry for kissing Ginny and then later gets mad at him for wanting Hermione (doesn’t really make sense that Harry’s playing both sides of the fence and George’s bit in the Ginny/Harry kiss scene is one of my favorite).  Also, Hedwig gives Harry away instead of his choice of spell which seems more plausible to me since  I don’t think Harry is famous for ‘stupify’.

There you have it.  If you didn’t want to hear about these spoilers then you should have seen the movie already.

My husband just finished his 3rd 48 Hour Film Challenge.  It’s a three minute film that he and some friends had to complete in 2 days.  They were given a line that had to be used and told to use a specific prop as well.   My sister did one out in Michigan so apparently these things crop up all over the place.

Here’s the video:

Seems like a good time of year to put in another plug for my husband’s movie Life Room. Halloween is, after all, the time to get scared and what better to get you scared than a zombie movie.  Destined to become a cult classic (at least for the people in our family), you can find this movie at Amazon.com or you can go to the website http://liferoom.ovrnite.com/.

I gave myself a blast from the past yesterday when I managed to find “Puff the Magic Dragon” on the internet.  Not the song, but the movie based on the song.  I remember it being really sad and that I cried every time I saw it way back when they were showing it on TV.  When I watched it this time, I found the colors to be dull and I wanted to skip parts becasue I was bored, but  I can see how my mind was caught up in it as a child since it’s scary to think the boy’s parents could be so worried.   I remember thinking he was dying.

Have a look and see what you think of it.

What fun – I just went and saw Astro Boy in one of those cheap for kids summer specials and was pretty surprised by how good it was.  I skipped it because it looked silly when it was first run – the hero is way more cartoonish looking than the other characters – and it still had some really ridiculous flaws in the story line (Why does a half decent dad just go along with starting a war?  Why would a smart kid go along with a dad who goes along with starting a war?).

My kids were totally sucked into it though and I enjoyed the long list of voices that I could recognize (I usually prefer unknowns for voice roles).

But by far the best part of the whole thing were the 3 free tickets a total stranger gave us at the door.  WOO HOO and THANK YOU total stranger!  I’ll get the popcorn.

I’m waiting with baited breath for the summer movie season to start. I saw Iron Man and was adequately satisfied but now have to wait a couple weeks before the next movie I want to see comes out. I can remember years ago (in the year of Die Hard 3 and ID4) that EVERY week there was at least one movie I wanted to see and at least one more that I was willing to give a try. Now I don’t get that. And believe me I haven’t gotten more choosy – I’ve gotten considerable less so. It is getting to be that I think I might branch out into Bollywood.

There’s a new movie coming out – a documentary – called Babies. Someone gave it a tagline of “If you liked March of the Penguins, get ready to fall in love with Babies.” Now as a parent I know that the perfect audience for ANY movie about babies is babies themselves. For some strange reason, that’s not the target audience and this thing is rated PG! I’m shocked at them and their lack of what must be my money making foresight.

Or I was until I read that the babies crawl unsupervised through herds of cow. Then I understood it a little better – this is a horror flick.

I recently introduced my kids to the joys of ‘Annie’. I tried to explain ‘orphan’ to one of them and that led to me thinking of the most famous orphan of all and since I’ve got Netflix (this is not a paid endorsement unless you count the fact that I pay them) and it’s currently a ‘play instantly’ movie, I just pulled it up on the old blue screen (my nickname for my computer) and let them immerse themselves in an American classic.

Did I mention that they lvoed it?

My wife insists that I’m just getting older and grouchier in my opinions of movies nowadays. I think that it’s fairly sad that I can’t think of a movie in the past few years that I have liked unconditionally. There have been many that could have been better (Star Wars), a few that have been very good with minor problems (Dark Knight), and some that should have been awesome but ended up being stupid (Avatar; Indiana Jones).

With the technology to make movies into anything that the mind can imagine, and prices shooting past ten bucks to go watch a flick, why can’t more of these movies be awesome? Am I being too picky? Is it wrong to expect better from movies? I know that in Hollywood they make dozens of crappy flicks, and scores of remakes just because they’re guaranteed to make some cash. I’m just hoping for a couple of movies a year that are genuinely awesome.

I’ve just started watching ‘How Stella Got Her Groove Back’ and with the blue faces and the yelling, it kinda reminds me of ‘Braveheart’. It is still very early in the movie and I expect the two to diverge pretty quickly but it’s kinda fun to see that kind of similarity.

The true torture associated with my movie watching addiction is my inability to remember the release dates. It was easier when I worked at a movie theatre and the information was basically shoved down my throat week after week. Now though I manage to always get excited about seeing the movie a week earlier than it will come out. Which means I usually end up seeing a desperation movie. It hasn’t gotten so bad that I’ll watch something like “Ninja Assassin” twice and pay $9 each time, but I will watch a movie I really think I won’t like just so I can get a fix.

Just remember, it isn’t a problem unless other people have a problem with you doing it. Or something like that.