If you’ve seen the show or one of their previous movies, then maybe you’re like me and weren’t all that impressed. I could take ‘em or leave ‘em – they were more nostalgic than anything. But this movie marks them forever for me as a great group and this show was their best effort ever! I cannot rave enough about this movie and I didn’t like the main character (Walter) at all. How can you love a movie and not like the main character?

Go see it – you’ll understand!

Watch and enjoy.

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’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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Here’s the video: