More Movie Reviews

Last weekend I was given a few free days of all the premium movie channels. Now, I always have Showtime at my fingertips, so I was really only excited to see what Starz and HBO had to offer me. I don't know why Starz had the preview, but HBO was doing it because of the second season premiere of their show "Game of Thrones". I guess they thought if people saw the episode they would be so intrigue by what was to come they would be almost happy to plunk down a few extra bucks a month for the privilege. They tried this last year and I would love to find out the success rate because it certainly didn't work on me. Just like last time I didn't watch a single second of the show. However, the access to the movie channels did give me a chance to catch up on some movies I had been too lazy to rent. Again, these reviews have very little to do with the actual movie and more likely something else which just caught my eye. Apparently, this is the time when last year's big-budget summer movies finally start to show up as these reviews are very superhero-centric.

-Your Highness This is the perfect example of the kind of movie you watch during a free preview weekend. I thought the previews were funny, but not enough to go to the theater. Then I planned to rent it, but there was always a better option. Well, when it's free and on-Demand there is no more putting it off. Whether you will like this movie or not depends entirely on how you feel about Danny McBride. I happen to think he's very funny so I laughed several times and thought it was pretty good. The only thing which bothered me were the accents - they were inconsistent among the cast. I think they were supposed to be English but McBride essentially didn't attempt one, James Franco's came and went, while Natalie Portman not only went for the English accent, she went heavy. Yes, you won an Oscar - we get it. Stop trying to be Gwyneth Paltrow.

-Thor I feel like this whole film was written and filmed just so they could keep the upcoming "Avengers" movie under 4 hours. I don't really understand what the plot was or why Natalie Portman was involved in it and it also didn't really explain the backstory of Thor. Apparently the filmmakers assumed the only people who would be watching this would already be familiar with it. However, it did succeed in introducing Loki (who is the main villain in the movie coming out this summer) and gave people a glimpse of Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye - a character who is also in "Avengers" but in no way needs or deserves his own movie. I'm sure they could have gotten the Thor and Loki stuff into the "Avengers" movie, but it would have been far too long and complicated of a process and I'm going to guess that film is going to be heavy on action and light on plot, so the less dialog they had to write for it the better. Think of this movie like the vegetables you have to eat between dinner and dessert. Also, one spoiler alert: at no point does anyone yell, "Take back what you said about Thor!" Disappointing.

-Green Lantern Easily the worse superhero movie I have seen in a while, which is saying something. You know, someone needs to tell people that not every comic books needs to get the movie treatment. The villain was boring and fairly-easily defeated, the story was flimsy and the entire production was way too reliant on green-screen technology. I understand that it is easier to CGI in some special effects versus stringing a guy up with wires, but when 95% of the movie appears to have been done that way it is too much. While the cast was large, I would guess only about 7 actual actors appear on screen and the rest are just voice-overs of cartoons monsters. At least Blake Lively was very attractive, even if I spent the entire movie waiting for her to break into the terrible Boston accent she used in "The Town".

-X-Men: First Class The exact opposite of "Green Lantern", this is probably the best superhero movie I have seen in years. I've always believed that the best way to make a really good comic book movie is to simply take the time necessary to write a quality movie which just happens to be about superheros. Focus on the story and the characters instead of the CGI  and special effects and you would be amazed at the difference in the quality of the film. Basically, write the movie for the larger audience who may not be familiar with the people and you'll find that the time spent developing the characters enhances the entire thing. This is what made the "Star Trek" re-boot so good, is the same thing that happened here and is exactly what was missing from the first two comic book movies I talked about. You know I don't generally use these movie reviews to tell you what to watch, but if your only other options are "Thor" and "Green Lantern" you should definitely go with this one.

-Adjustment Bureau I went in thinking I was about to watch a sci-fi movie about a secret society of magical people who control the entire world without any of us knowing it. On the surface this is what it appears to be, but as you get closer to the end of the movie you discover it's actually a chick flick about not letting anything or anyone (no matter how powerful or mysterious) get in the way of true love. I'm assuming this confusion is why this movie wasn't more successful when it was initially released - it was marketed to the entirely wrong group of people. This is what happens when you make a sci-fi love story or an action chick flick - the wrong people go to the theater, hate the movie and it gets poor word-of-mouth reviews. But, the main thing I came away from this movie with was a deep questioning of whether or not I could pull off wearing a fedora.