Vin Diesel returns as Riddick in Riddick, the third movie in the series. The first, Pitch Black, remains the best one. This movie is more cute than anything, which is a weird thing to come away with from a sci-fi action movie with a notorious convict as it’s main protagonist.

Riddick has been left for dead (again) on a rather inhospitable planet. He MacGyvers it up, patching up his wounds and setting up a little home for himself. He even gets a space dog pet (it’s really cute as far as space animals go). Riddick gets to show off his good side. Everyone else just has a problem with doing whatever it takes to survive. Things go pretty well until he realizes that the natives will soon be making more trouble than he could handle. Finding an abandoned station, he sets off an emergency beacon to try and hitch a ride off planet. Two groups show up to claim the bounty on Riddick’s head, one dirty merc group and another with a more military background lead by a man who has ties to Riddick’s past.

The movie is more or less a survival tale. First against the environment, then people and then the environment again. Vin Diesel does what he loves, playing a bad ass in space! The movie hits all the marks of an VD action flick on a budget. It’s got copious amounts of decent CG that keeps on trucking. It’s just short of 2 hours, has some good action and sets up a sequel. If you’ve seen the other 2 movies, I say check this one out. It’s nothing special, but it isn’t half bad either. Does that sound too ambivalent?

I didn’t think Kick-Ass really needed a sequel, but it turns out I enjoyed seeing Kick Ass and Hit Girl again. The first movie was a dirty romp of a comic book movie that ran it’s story in a complete beginning to end arc. K-A2 brings us back to the life of Dave Lizewski who hung up his spandex suit after blowing up Red Mist’s father in the first movie. With his crazy idea of being a super hero put to rest, he goes back to being a high school kid, but soon finds himself bored of the mundane. He approaches Mindy Macready again who has yet to put her knives and nunchakus away as Hit Girl. She trains him again to hit the streets as Kick Ass and after a change of heart, she hangs up her cape and Kick Ass goes off to join a like minded vigilante super hero group. This stokes the fires of Red Mist again who is bent on revenge for his father. Donning a new name moniker, he makes his own super villain group to destroy Kick Ass and the city.

A lot of what made the first movie stand out is back, the cursing, the laughs and the violence and the moral fiber of what it means to be a real hero. The main cast is all back with Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Chloe Grace Moretz and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. CMP really goes for it, pushing Chris D’Amico as far into insanity as he can go. If Lex Luthor was a stupid kid with uncontrollable rage, he’d be Chris D’Amico.

While I liked seeing these guys again, I was left a bit ambivalent in the end. While not a bad movie, it didn’t do anything too great either. The characters are the best part, some good action scenes (the green screen work is rough), but it’s an easy movie to skip. I think I missed director Matthew Vaughn from the first movie the most as he had a much more interesting and kinetic eye for the material than Jeff Wadlow. Too been there, done that.

The Lone Ranger got brutal press reviews when it came out in the summer of 2013. It was like the gates of hell had been opened in a theatre and humanity had to condemn it. Going in, I tried to keep an open mind and I pretty much got what I expected.

First, let’s look at the big names behind The Lone Ranger. Directed by Gore Verbinski and Executive Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, two guys known for huge summer blockbusters. Main star Johnny Depp in another character roll (Jack Sparrow being the other character roll that gave him a massive career resurgence 10 years ago) in a summer blockbuster. If anything, which I think is what bothered most critics, this is a really bombastic and excessive movie. Two huge action sequences set on a train (where it looks like most of the budget was spent) that are really over the top with a few rather violent smaller action set pieces in between. This is a Western so shoot outs are expected and it isn’t gory at all. A lot of people do go mowed down. In the end I really liked the story, but it takes a long time for the movie to get on with the revelation of who all the villains are (which wasn’t a surprise) and their motive. I think the end motive is good, as is Tonto’s backstory. It clocks in at almost 2 and a half hours so it did feel drawn out. The easiest cut would be the odd scenes with the boy and old Tonto, I don’t understand why that was in the movie let alone written. That would shorten the movie by maybe 5 minutes which isn’t a whole lot, but those scenes added nothing and wouldn’t have been missed. Plus all of that make up work on Depp would have been skipped.

The other problem I think is in the general tone of movie which was a bit schizophrenic. A lot of it is played straight and realistic, but Depp’s Tonto goes for comedic relief with almost every line of dialog he has. Plus, Lone Rangers’ horse pretty much has magic powers. He has no problem getting onto the roof of buildings at the most convenient of times. He drinks booze too. Silver is a deus ex machina with 4 legs.
That brings us to the acting which was great all around. Armie Hammer did a good job as John Reid (Lone Ranger) and he had great chemistry with Depp. I really liked William Fichtner as Butch Cavendish, he plays a filthy outlaw with great aplomb. Johnny Depp did what I though he was going to do, it’s a cartoonish spin on a Native American. He made a flamboyant pirate with Jack Sparrow and for Tonto he moves and reacts like a silent film star. I don’t think it was a bad choice, but I don’t think he’ll be remembered for this roll.

In the end, The Lone Ranger isn’t nearly as bad as many made it out to be. I’d say it’s just a good movie…just the thing to watch on a cozy snow day.

I’m a big fan of Ken Marino who is best known for his comedic start with The State TV back in the 90’s. He’s been making a bigger name for himself with his continued work in TV (Party Down, Children’s Hospital, Eastbound and Down, Burning Love) and more and more movie work. I think he’s one of the more under rated guys in comedy right now, but it looks like he’s catching on.

Ken Marino leads Bad Milo a horror comedy about Duncan and his intestinal monster. Yes, a monster that may or not have originated in the bowels of hell, but definatly lives in human bowels.

Bad Milo is a fun little creature feature about the ills of our modern day stress and anxiety. Duncan has a lot going on in his life. A terrible boss that puts him in high stress situations through manipulation and lies, an absentee father that he’s stressed about his entire life and the pressure of a newly pregnant wife. Duncan feels like the walls are closing in on him and the pressure builds up to such an extreme amount that he gets debilitating intenstinal issues. What starts as the need to spend some serious time in the bathroom urupts into Milo, a monster that actually has the best intentions for Duncan. It wants to get rid of all the things that bother Duncan. When the dead bodies start piling up, Duncan has to figure out a way to keep everyone safe around him.

Marino is great in this, he really knows how to sell the insanity of a butt monster. It’s a wild concept that works surprisingly well. It’s not a gory horror movie (much is left to the imagination) but the puppet work for Milo is well done. He’s kinda cute for a murderous monster and seeing a physical creature with the actors helps sell the believability of it all.

While it’s not a movie for everyone, if you can laugh at the premise it’s a good bet you’ll enjoy the hour and twenty minutes with Bad Milo.

What a fun movie! I wasn’t expecting too much from The World’s End, but it grabbed me from the start and never let go. Having lower expectations can help sometimes.

The World’s End can be seen as the third movie in the Pegg/Frost/Wright collaboration universe. Even though they don’t share characters or a trilogy plotline, they do share the same soul. They also share the same genre bending approach of story telling. While Shaun of the Dead clearly starts as a zombie movie, it’s the last act where the horror/gore really gets cranked up to meet marks for John Romero homages. Hot Fuzz less so, it starts with it’s feet in one lane and then shifts it’s weight over to insanity for it’s wild reveals and heroism. The World’s End is much like Hot Fuzz where you think you know what your watching and then they switch it up at the end of Act 1.

I like this much more than Hot Fuzz with it’s better characters, pacing and humor. Peter hasn’t done much with his life since high school, unlike his 4 other friends. They share a past as best friends, grow apart and come back together to indulge in Gary’s desire to “get the band back together” to relive their pub crawl attempt from 1990. At the 4th stop they find themselves smack dab in the middle of an alien assimilation plot. Sticking together, they do their best to get out of their home town in one piece.

I loved Simon Pegg as Gary King, a man who never grew up and clings to one night in his teenage years as the peak of his life. Nick Frost as Andy continues his streak as a brilliant foil for Pegg’s characters. Martin Freeman as Oliver, Paddy Considine as Steve and Eddie Marsan as Peter round out the stellar main cast. They convincingly play as old friends and each keep up with the quick and spastic wit that the movie is infused with. There’s a manic kind of direction and editing here that works really well (Edgar Wright is one of my favorite directors). Extensive and well done visual effects ratchet up the intensity and fun of the movie. Brilliant dialog with a really satisfying ending make this one of the bigger surprise movie treats for me. My favorite project that Simon Pegg has done so far.

After the terrible XMen Origins: Wolverine, a lot was on the line for The Wolverine. Origins followed the equally terrible XMen 3: The Last Stand which meant the entire franchise seemed to be teetering on the edge of being left behind for newer and greater Marvel characters. Thankfully, this solo run for Logan turned out to be a much more focused and enjoyable movie.

Wolverine shares a similar problem as Superman. He’s basically invincible as his bones are near unbreakable and his healing powers are so powerful. He can basically eat bullets and flesh wounds stitch themselves together in a matter of seconds. So what can you really threaten him with?

The Wolverine looks back to Logan’s past and shows that he has far more mental scars than physical ones. After the events of The Last Stand he isolates himself in the woods as avoiding people seems like the best course to take. He’s pulled back when a man named Yashida, who he helped survive a devastating event decades earlier asks to see him one last time. When Logan makes the trip to Japan, he’s told that he can be made mortal through the tech advances that Yashida’s company has made through extensive research. Logan passes on the offer but when Yashida dies that night, it triggers a power grab among the Yakuza and Yashida’s daughter, Mariko, whom he left his company to. Logan is trapped in the middle as his mutant powers are crippled by a mysterious woman named Viper while he tries to protect Mariko and unravel the mysteries that Yashida left behind.

It’s an interesting tale with real character development for Logan in gorgeous locals. The action scenes showcase their comic book roots with big one man vs an army fights, high speed train battles and epic final “boss” fights. There’s some cool fight choreography, the SFX are well done, but the final act is really tiring. It’s a predictable twist with execution that you will either love or hate and to me it was disappointing after such a strong first two acts. There are so many comic book movies now that it all kind of blurs together now. Hugh Jackman still gives us the best real world Logan we can probably hope to ever see, but I’m not sure if that’s good enough anymore. There’s a lot riding on this years XMen movie from Bryan Singer. Will people care for the next step in this universe with all the other Marvel movies coming down the pipe? The Wolverine is a competent movie and a step in the right direction, but if you skip it, you really aren’t missing anything.

A year has passed since the first Hobbit movie so it was time for Peter Jackson and company to bring us back to Middle Earth in The Desolation of Smaug.

With almost everyone in New Zealand on the crew, Peter Jackson has again crafted another gorgeous movie. A real treat to look at in nearly every sumptuous frame, Desolation brings us back to the world where Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs and a whole ecosystem of fantasy creatures live and breath. It’s another convincing visual achievement (stunning set design, costumes, make up and CG work), but as a story I couldn’t shake the feeling of apathy. It’s a big poke at Lord of the Rings to simply say that you spend 9 hours watching people walking to a mountain. Obviously there’s a lot more to it than that, but the feeling of just meandering around is hard to ignore.

Sitting in the theatre I kept trying to figure out what I was feeling as it was an odd mixture of boredom and excitement. I really enjoyed seeing the movie, but not actually watchingit. Events are just sort of strung along, dragging you with it. Characters come and go seemingly because the wind started blowing in a different direction. Gandolf is at one point in lock step with the Dwarves and Bilbo to get to Erebor to take back the Dwarven kingdom and then he suddenly says he has to leave them. “Stay on this path through the forest or your dead, I’m off to go talk to a dirty wizard about something I just thought of. I’ll catch up with you. Maybe.” This kind of weird separation happens a lot so whenever they cut to a character who was off doing his own thing, I kept thinking of the 60’s Batman logo spinning into frame with an announcer yelling “Meanwhile!”.

While this journey has action scenes throughout (the river sequence is fantastic) it did little to keep me from being blasé about everyone. You already know who makes it out of this story so it feels like it doesn’t matter if some creature is swinging a pointy object at them.

I find the whole idea of extending The Hobbit into a trilogy to be a mistake. Every book adaptation cleaves the narrative to make a tight movie and PJ puts this book in the rack to stretch it out to get another 2 1/2 hours that isn’t actually there? The character Tauriel was made for the movie, so everything she does wouldn’t be missed. It’s all padding. I’m saying that about a character I actually liked too! But that’s only because she’s played by Evangeline Lilly, who I have a goofy crush on so my opinion on her roles are completely biased (I’m the same way about her in Lost. People hated her character after awhile, but I never minded about whatever nonsense they had her do). The love triangle they made for her story arc was just weird and annoying in the end. For example, the Elves capture the Dwarves, lock them up and Tauriel strikes up a conversation with one of them. The two bond a little bit and she later says to another elf that she thinks he’s pretty cool and the elf responds, “Yeah? He’s still ugly! Elves rule!” What? He’s literally a shorter version of you! You are all humanoid beings that basically only have different expected life spans. Apparently everyone on Middle Earth is a champion level hater. It’s a really weird thing that stuck out to me, but I had to think about something while this flick oozed to its slam cut to black and credit roll.

This might be a good example of just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. That said, I do want to see the third movie to see the conclusion, but I’m in no hurry to see Desolation again any time soon.

Once a franchise on the decline until Fast 4 bounced back in 2009 and Fast 5 blew the doors off the box office in 2011, Fast and Furious 6 tries to keep the runaway train rolling at top speed. While a good entry into the series, it doesn’t reach the bar set by 5.

At the end of the 5th movie, the Dominic and Brian crew pulled off a huge heist that toppled a criminal ring in Rio and made the Robin Hoods in custom cars filthy rich. While they have the money, they don’t have the freedom as they are all wanted criminals. CIA agent Luke Hobbes returns with someone else to chase this time. Shaw is stealing equipment to make a scary military grade weapon/device and he must be stopped. Knowing Shaw’s skills, the only people he can think of to stop him is Dom & Brian. Hobbes offers them all full pardons and a link to their past that was long thought dead in return for their help.

So that starts the globe trotting, pulse pounding and wheel spinning race to save the world. While the series has always taken the laws of physics and ideas of plausibility with a grain of salt, Furious 6 pretty much throws it all to the wind to make some of the most over the top action scenes ever put on film. People walk away from horrific car crashes with barely a scratch, harrowing rescues defy logic and reasoning.

It’s all done in the name of fun. You just need to check your brain at the start and let the good times roll. Goofy, heroic dialog and speeches that are sure to make you groan. Car chases and fights that unfold more like a cartoon than real life scenario. An airplane runway that seemingly stretches across continents it’s so big. When you get to the 6th entry of driving cars around really fast, you really need to think outside the box to keep from showing the exact same action sequence.

The 5th movie felt more fresh and new than this one did. It had a lot of great ideas and some amazing action scenes that while over the top, felt more grounded. Also, the resurrection of a dead character made this movie feel like it was stretching a lot more to justify it’s existence.

Fast & Furious 6 keeps the good times coming at a break neck pace, just don’t look for anything serious to happen for these 2 hours of your life.

Jack Reacher is another solid entry into Tom Cruise’s action movie catalog. Part sniper, part military, part spy movie, Jack Reacher checks all the boxes for go to action movie requirements. Car chases, foot chases, gun and fist fights. A dash of mystery and investigation glues it all together.

The movie opens with a man named Charlie milling his own bullets. Not a good sign. We then see him set up shop in a parking garage and then shoot and kill 5 people, seemingly at random. On the surface it’s a cut and dry case. He runs to try and get away, the police quickly catch him and plenty of evidence is gathered that pins him as the sniper. After he’s beaten to near death while in police custody, he has one request. Find Jack Reacher.

Jack is a hell of guy, Highly regarded in his military service, he disappears into the wind, only surfacing when he wants to be found. Smart, athletic, and a hell of a fighter, Jack Reacher is more super hero than human being (he is played by Tom Cruise after all). It’s up to Jack and Charlie’s attorney, Helen to figure out what really happened. And figure it out they do! Jack can seemingly connect the dots out of thin air and can take a punch without missing a step.

While everything seems to unfold very conveniently for Jack, it doesn’t ruin the movie. It’s a very Hollywood affair. It looks really good, it’s well paced and fun to watch. It doesn’t try to break any ground, but does it’s best to be a good movie. I can’t see this ever becoming a franchise or even standing out in Tom Cruise’s career, but it makes for a great rental.

It was a long wait for this one to come out! Anchorman 2 continues the absurdity of the Ron Burgundy world. It’s now 1980 and after Ron is shown the door in favor of his wife getting the huge promotion on the nightly prime time news desk, Ron flips out and gets the band back together when given the chance to start GNN, the first 24 hour news channel.

The truth of how terrible news media has become is sandwiched between the weirdest and wackiest set ups a human being could think of. Anchorman 2 is all over the place with it’s jokes. With so much crazy going on (Chicken of the Cave, fighting sharks, blindness, douchbaggery in general) it’s often the more subtle lines that got the biggest laughs. While the four are all back (Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner) and given their fair shake of laughs, Carrell’s Brick Tamland steals just about every scene he’s in. He totally commits to everything, something not everyone can do.

I do think that the movie is too long though. They made another news team fight scene that should have been cut. It goes on forever and was done much better in the first movie. A pointless retread that I’m sure Mike Myers wish he thought of.

Good times, a fun movie to see with a group of people.

15 years ago (!) Keanu Reeves did a movie called The Matrix. There he met and trained with Tiger Hu Chen and Yuen Woo-Ping for the fight choreography. Now Keanu has hooked up with these men to make his own martial arts movie, Man of Tai Chi. It turned out surprisingly well!

The plot doesn’t break any new ground for this genre, but it works and is told well. Chen is a student of Tai Chi and works as a delivery guy to make ends meet. He’s developed his own form of Tai Chi for combat that gets the attention of Donaka Mark, a wealthy business man that runs and underground fighting league. Donaka manipulates Chen behind his back to make him into a ruthless warrior out for blood, but when Chen figures it out, he fights to reclaim his honor and morality back.

With so many action pictures under his belt, Keanu has picked up an eye for filming fights and it shows. Tiger Hu is a hell of a talent and with chorography by Yuen Woo-Ping, there is some intense fights on show here. And there are a lotof them. While it is edited heavily, it’s easy enough to follow and not get lost in the shuffle (the fight with the strobe lights is a good idea, but I don’t think it showed well, my biggest complaint for the movie).

Keanu does his best to play the villain Donaka Mark with varying success. There’s a few times he gets really goofy, but he does portray a ruthless guy and a surprisingly daunting fighter at the age of 49. He might move like a golem, but his strikes pack a wallop.

A solid action flick, worth watching for when you are in the mood for some flying feet and fists.

Superman is a tough nut to crack. A being that is essentially invincible on Earth with amazing super powers is more god than human. It’s hard to root for a guy that seemingly has nothing to worry about. More than 70 years of comic books, 30 years of sporadic movies and a good 20 years of cartoons means there’s a ton of material on Superman. While a tough character to write for, there’s a lot to like about the ultimate boy scout. A true hero to humanity. Man of Steel is the most recent (and a reboot) of the Superman movie universe. After hearing a lot of mixed things about the movie, I’m happy to say that I loved it. It feels honest, grounded and true to the core of who Superman is supposed to be and represent.

Man of Steel is a very fitting title. The beginning of the movie starts with Superman’s birth and jumps around a bit from his adolescence and adult hood. I like how they handled his origin and arrival on Earth. While it’s something you’d think everyone would know by now, it’s interesting to watch and sets up General Zod perfectly for his role as the antagonist. The beginning shows us his luck of being raised by good people who show him the path to being good. And through his formative years, it seems like he can’t help but be good. He’s a natural defender.

But fear suppresses him. His foster father Jonathan Kent repeatedly tells him that the world isn’t ready to see what he can do, so he needs to stay off the radar. It’s a real and scary struggle for Clark and rightfully so in a world where many people are wary of others just from skin color that’s a different shade from their own. For awhile, Clark thinks he’s just different from everyone. Abnormally stronger, faster and with heightened senses than everyone else. So the time comes where Pa Kent shows him the space ship they found him in. That would make anyone wonder who they are and what the hell happened to him. Why is he here?

That’s the core of Man of Steel. Who is he in this world? What would motivate an alien being to become his adopted planet’s protector? Why would he do it with the threat of an entire planet afraid of him? It’d be just as easy to go the other way, either take off or break bad. That other half shows up to Earth as General Zod, who believes Kryptonians are the master race and damn anything that he sees beneath him.

I really liked the set up of the over arcing story. Clark finding out where he comes from and who he really is. Lois Lanes introduction and coming into his life. General Zod threating the planet to get Clark to come out and into the open. The fear of a crazy powerful being that’s been hidden on earth for decades (loved the scene with Superman turning himself in to the feds and he’s got handcuffs on that might as well be made of air and the discussion he has with General Swanwick. The last talk they have at the end of the movie is great too). The action scenes completely deliver as well. Way better than anything in Superman Returns (2006). Kryptonians fighting is a lot of fun to watch, the possibilities and level of destruction are near infinite.

It’s a great looking movie too. Some great special effects work that can look rather cartoonish, but I think that’s unavoidable considering the power these beings are throwing around. The strength and force they exert is something you’d never be able to see normally, so seeing someone hop huge distances and whipped around like a rag can look bizarre. I didn’t mind it though as it’s really high quality work and it’s a Superman movie so if I didn’t see crazy action, I’d be upset. Speaking of crazy action, I read a lot of viewer dismay over the destruction in this movie. Pretty much all of Metropolis gets leveled and they wanted to see Superman save every single person in sight. While that’s admirable, it doesn’t work that way. Read any of the most popular Superman books and animated shows and things simply get obliterated. He does save everyone he can in the movie and ultimately saves the entire planet, so I really don’t understand the gruff the movie got from that standpoint. Yes he’s fast, but he can’t be in two places at once. This fight is the first time Clark went all out with his powers and he’s up against beings who are just as strong and are all about planetary genocide. Was Superman supposed to fly around and catch everything that fell for an hour? Who wants to see that? Superman also kills someone which threw up a bunch of arms in disgust, but I think it was done right (for the most part). Given what’s happening, he doesn’t have much choice and is directly defending innocent people from a monster. The only fault I see is that while Superman shows remorse, it’s fleeting. A couple of seconds and it looks like he’s over it and we’re off to the next scene. My hope is that they refer to it in the next movie. It’s a decision that Superman has to live with and grow from now. This is his first outing, so I expect this hero not to do everything right on the first try. He has to figure out all of his potential for good on his own, there is no one like him now.

Finally, I loved the direction and the soundtrack. I only question the one redundant scene near the middle of the movie where Jor-El is telling Clark about his home and General Zod. It covers the exact ground that the intro does. With an 2 hour and 20 minute runtime, cutting out one of those scene (I think the intro would be easiest to cut as the speech with the visual aids in the ship covers everything faster) would only benefit the movie. Henry Cavill is a fantastic Superman and I completely loved Michael Shannon as General Zod. Fantastic villainous performance (love Antje Traue as Faora-Ul too). Great work from Russell Crowe as Jor-El; Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as the Kent’s are great too.

While there are a ton of rumors going around about the sequel that concern me (it could turn into an oversaturated mess like Spider-Man 3), I hope Zack Snyder and company can knock it out of the park again.