Watched a few things that I can’t rationalize giving full reviews to, so we’ll bang these out real quick.

Don Jon– Joseph Gordon Levitt’s writer/director debut is not a good movie. Boring, trite and cliched, this was a hard one to watch to the end. Jon is a young man who has no problem being with women, but a lot of problems with actually connecting with them. You watch this obvious character transition slowly take place in New Jersey with terrible accents. The MPAA made him heavily edit the content to get a R rating, so maybe he had to take all the jokes out with the “adult content”. Crummy accents all over the place, but I did like seeing Tony Danza dad it up here. Skip it.

DC Universe titles: Young Justice, Justice League: War and Son of Batman– Young Justice is a TV show that lasted 2 seasons and I didn’t hear about it until recently. It’s basically the junior varsity Justice League with Kid Flash, Aqua Lad, Miss Martian, Super Boy and Robin (Dick Greyson) as the founding members who are essentially overseen by Batman. They go on covert missions, leaving the Justice League to take on the ‘world events’ so to speak.  Awesome writing and animation, I really liked the first season getting through it in about a week. I was stoked to see they made a second season, which I will be starting soon, as I wanted more the second it ended.

Justice League: War on the other hand I found disappointing. DCU movies tend to be amazing and I found this one to be under that standard bar of quality. I didn’t like a lot of the voice work and the animation isn’t too swift. Story is good at least, telling the origin of the Justice League who come together to stop an alien invasion led by Darkseid. Highlight for me is the constant verbal sniping between Green Lantern and Batman.

Son of Batman is the first time Batman meets his son Damian. After knocking costume boots with Talia al Ghul years ago, she kept their sons existence secret.Deathstroke kicks up a hornets nest when he attacks The League of Assassins, killing (!?) Ra’s al Ghul (Talia’s father). Knowing Deathstroke is going to be a rather serious threat, she leaves Damian in Batman’s care while she handles things.  Batman takes it surprisingly well! Damian is a colossal maniac of a brat though. Considering who and how he was raised, that’s not surprising. When Mom loses to Deathstroke, it’s up to Bats and son to set things right. And so Batman gets his new protege. One of the better DCU movie releases, but still well behind the crown jewel, The Dark Knight Returns. I’m not too thrilled with Damian’s voice, but it did grow on me. Animation is good, but there are a few weird direction choices (Ra’s does this weird defensive move using a sword against a bullet that looks terrible and makes no sense, for example).

Next release for DCU is Batman: Assault on Arkham which looks really promising.

Ride Along– My second buddy cop movie in about two weeks. Ride Along stars Ice Cube as the hardened vet cop and Kevin Hart as his possibly soon-to-be brother-in-law. Kevin has a  lot to prove to Cube and ends up going on a police ride along to show that he’ll be able handle the police academy (Kevin is a high school security guard). I liked The Heat more, Melissa McCarthy giving the best comedic performance out of the four. I really like Kevin Hart, and if you know his stuff you know the exact guy he plays in Ride Along. They are very similar movies, it really comes down to which cast you like more.