Fallen Indeed

I'm bummed right out...

Do you ever just get that ridiculous, insane, can't help but wanna scream excitement about a movie about to be released? Me too! I get that excitement too! Seriously I d-... oh, you don't actually get it? Well I do.

And I had that excitement for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Not because I LOVED the first one or anything, in fact, besides the great action I thought the first Transformers was kinda weak. But Revenge looked great! It looked like it was going to be non-stop action, and like a ton of new awesome characters were gonna be introduced... man, I couldn't help but get that ridiculous, insance, can't help but wanna scream excitement over this flick.

Holy Shit did that ever fade fast!

I seriously, don't know where to begin other than at the beginning, in which the first 15 minutes of this flick introduce a plethora of new characters who are subsequently NEVER used again! Arcee, from the cartoon showed up, and she has like two lines! And there are three of her! Three! And then Sideswipe, probably the coolest character I'd seen yet, had ONE action scene! In the first 15 minutes! He gets one line, one action scene, and one glance, and then he's gone!

!

But of course, what better new characters to keep around then the annoying, comic but not funny relief that were the Autobot Twins, the Mexican coward of a roommate who gets tazered twice, and the hot college chick who is actually a Decepticon who tries to kill Shia LaBeouf with her tongue! Garbagio.

There was great action, really great action, but so much in this movie made no sense at all. For instance, when the Decepticons would fly in from space and land literally right next to someone, the person wouldn't even notice, and they didn't always make craters like the rest of them did. That makes no sense at all. One even lands on a frigate, and doesn't even dent the boat. There were all of these new characters like I mentioned who would suddenly just disappear, and sometimes there would be characters in massive action sequences and then they would just suddenly disappear too! No explanation, just not in the movie anymore! This happens with the Stupid Twins, the retarded roommate, and the Constructicon, who by the way, should have been awesome, but dies after getting shot once!

All your favorites from the first movie aren't used nearly as much as the posters and ad campaigns make it seem, and even Bumblebee was cut from a lot of this flick! Bumblebee? He's like the cornerstone of Transformers next to Optimus Prime!
Speaking of Optimus, did I mention his anti-climactic final battle where he defeats all three of the main villains, i.e. The Fallen, Megatron and Starscream in like 2 minutes and barely even gets hurt! So stupid, they built these three up so much and then brought them down so easily and quickly! GAH!

To top it all off, it ends with this thing of Cybertronic ghosts appearing to save both Shia's life and Optimus' life, and it comes out of the blue, is so stupid... like seriously, what were they thinking? They actually had a lot of really awesome story opportunities, but then they wouldn't pursue them and instead would focus on something really important like whether or not Sam should say I love you to his girlfriend, which it takes literally dying to do. Waste of time, just like the rest of this movie.

Literally the only thing worth watching was the CGI and the action that went along with it, and I still shiver when Optimus talks, but then they don't even give him a proper closing speech like he deserves! Instead he gets two sentences! You can't end a Transformers movie like that!

It finishes, as you can probably now assume, with no explanation of anything. The first movie closed itself off pretty nicely, this movie, no explanation of anyt event whatsoever. It just ends. And remember those funny little clips in between the credits? Those are back, but they're stupid as anything I've ever seen in cinema. What a terrible movie.

I give this movie 1.5/6, earning its 1.5 only for the action and CGI. Thanks you SO much Michael Bay, for ruining yet another potential-worthy flick.

A Fanboy's Dream

Ok, Wow! I cannot tell you how long I've been eagerly awaiting the release of this movie, which is a polite a way of saying I cannot tell you how long I've been crying like a baby waiting for the release of this movie throwing little girl tantrums everytime it said it was coming and then didn't. But, drumroll please... are you drumming?... are you using your hands or did you go find some pens or chopsticks or something?... who cares, cuz Fanboys is here!

This movie does what every boy or girl or man or woman or hermaphrodite who loved Star Wars always wanted to do; make a comedy about Star Wars about people who love Star Wars while lovingly making fun of Star Wars.

Star Wars.

Fanboys was not only hysterical, it paid an incredible homage to Star Wars and the rest of geekdom, taking only real hits at things that deserve it, like: Michael Bay, Trekkies, and Jar-Jar Binks.

The Wars references were amazing and plentiful, the jokes timely and hilarious, and the film was well made. Hilarious acting with a ton of awesome cameos including Princess Leia and Lando Calrissian themselves, this movie was a dream come true for the little Han Solo living inside of me. It even finishes off with a really touching ending that breaks your heart yet doesn't break with the feel of the movie.

I seriously cannot say enough about this flick, so I'm going to keep this short and say "see it." If you appreciate Star Wars or your just a movie geek or you just like movies, or you just want to sit down and look at a lighted screen, make it a Fanboys lighted screen.

Fanboys gets 6/6 from me. Here's what The Brew's view.

"So that's what death tastes like": a review of Terminator Salvation

Scepticism was abounding when I first heard that they were making a sequel to James Cameron’s Terminator series, especially when I learned that Schwarzenegger wasn’t returning. mean, it really just seemed pointless to make one of these flicks without him. And McG as director? The music video/O.C. guy? Come on... But then I saw the trailer, and my mind was totally flipped.



Batman as John Connor?! It looked amazing am I wrong? Plus a kick-ass title like Terminator Salvation... shoot, this movie had guaranteed gold oozing out of it like hot magma poured over a T-800 model. But like 300, Spider-Man 3 and Watchmen before it, too much hype can leave a dude disappointed.

Let’s start at the beginning: this movie is obvious. They literally give you the twist in the first 5 minutes of the movie! Now I’m no professional filmmaker, but come on... there had to be a better way to introduce that Sam Worthington’s character was going to be a Terminator, did they really have to give it away right off the bat? And its predictability doesn’t end there folks, no, they also have to go for the whole John Connor (i.e. J.C. i.e. Jesus Christ) sacrificing himself deal with cross motifs saturating the entire film. Don’t get me wrong, I love religious symbolism but don’t shove it in my face. Basically, the flick has weak story telling, with a side of robot love story that makes for good action but boring ideas.

But speaking of the action, it’s amazing. High intensity and unstoppable machinery has made for good movie watching since the 80’s when Kyle Reese first traveled back in time to protect Sarah Connor in the first Terminator, and need we even mention T2? Only one of the greatest action movies ever made to this day?... The action in this movie matched its predecessors in my opinion.

The acting was great with the exception of Sam Worthington who apparently had no idea what accent his character was supposed to have. But Christian Bale, Bryce Dallas Howard and Helena Bonham Carter knocked it out of the park, and Anton Yelchin (the dude from Star Trek) was awesome. This guy could have Shia LaBeouf’s career without the drunkenness and car accidents no problem if he keeps making the right film choices. Bonham Carter did an especially good job near the end when Skynet disguises itself as her character, it was a chilling scene.

Despite the fact that all of the Terminator’s in this movie looked great (especially Worthington’s Terminator look and the motorcycle-bots), there were way too many scenes where the CGI looked like they’d just run out of time to make it look as good as today’s standards allow. And remember how I said that the Governator didn’t show up for Episode 4? Not so! Only once you see him you really wish he didn’t make an appearance because he’s completely CGI’d, and even though they try to make him look like the T1’s T-800 model, you just know the whole time that he isn’t actually there because he looks like a video game character. I was thanking God when they melted his skin off, but then begging God to make it stop when the really fake looking magma poured all over Arnie’s metallic skeleton because it looked terrible too. I’m sorry McG, but I saw Star Trek and Transformers and there’s no excuse for CGI that looks like it was made 5 years ago. With the way a lot of this movie looked, the rest of it should have been equal if not better, and it let me down.

Danny Elfman did the great score with returning Terminator theme, and Shane Hurlbut , a crappy movie regular, actually did some amazing camera work, with a helicopter scene near the beginning of the film that certainly deserves a second look as it Connor running into a helicopter, taking off, flying, getting shot down, crashing and escaping. Really cool.

So essentially, this movie is in the middle, with really friggin’ strong qualities and really friggin’ weak qualities. It moved too quickly, both in its story pace (the flick’s shorter than 2 hours and could have used more development) and in production so that I, as the viewer, might actually have believed that Arnold lived up to his promise when he said, “I’ll be back.” At least John Connor said it.

Terminator Salvation finishes with 2.5/6 from me. Here's what The Weekly Re-Brew had to say.

Angels & Demons - 4/6

After seeing Ron Howard's take on The Da Vinci Code, I can't say that I was too pumped to hear that he was also directing the sequel. Frankly I don't think I can name a single Howard flick other than Far and Away that I actually love. But as a movie buff, I had to see it... and frankly, I wasn't too disappointed.

Basically, Tom Hanks returns as Robert Langdon, the man who discovered that Christ actually did sleep with Mary Magdalene and produce an heir to the throne of God, so the Catholic church isn't too stoked on him. But, when there's a terrorist threat against the entirety of the Vatican by what they assume is the secret organization known as the Illuminati, the men in red call on ol' Langdon to save the day.

For conspiracy nuts or anyone interested in religious history, this movie is for you. However it starts with this long drawn out process of a scientific experiment involving something called anti-matter which apparently some scientists believe is what caused the creation of the world. They call it the God Particle. If you're confused don't worry, I still am. This, plus the next 15 minutes or so of the movie were way too drawn out and confusing and I took points off the film for that.

The acting performances around the board were great. I love Tom Hanks, Stellan Skarsgard can do no wrong, and Ewan McGregor is Obi-Wan Kenobi! Obi actually has this incredible scene where he pleads with the Catholic cardinals to bend the rules and shows how science AND the church have wronged each other. The force was strong with him in this flick.

The pace of the movie was strange for a thriller as it was a race against time but with the way they edited in the music (a great score by Hans Zimmer), it seemed to jump from really intense to really slow to really stupid. Points off for that as well, although it definitely earned its musical points.

The cinematography was decent, although I think Salvatore Totino had a pretty easy time since it takes place almost entirely in Rome, and is it even possible to make Rome look ugly? Totino has chops though, maybe it's just time for him to break away from Ron Howard and try working with a new director that isn't Brett Ratner (Totino shot Changing Lanes, the Affleck/L. Jackson masterpiece).

All in all, it's an alright movie. It's not great by any means, but it's entertaining and if you love conspiracies and religion like I do, you'll probably like it.

As I used to do with The Weekly Re-Brew, I'm going to rate the movies I watch with beer bottles. I give Angels & Demons 4 out of 6 bottles, docked for its random music placements, its choppy editing and the fact that the first half hour of this movie is as boring as all get out.

Here's what The Brew had to say about the flick here.