Forgetting Sarah Marshall - 2008

Comedy

Jason Segal, Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell

Available on DVD/Bluray

I'll admit that I hardly knew anything about this movie before I saw it except that it was another creation from Judd Apatow (The 40 year old virgin, Knocked up, Superbad, and Pineapple express). So I knew it had potential to be funny but probably not as funny as the other movies. It's about a guy named Peter (Jason Segel) a tv show music composer who gets dumped by his hot televison star girlfriend Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell). He decides the best way to get over her is to take a vacation to Hawaii. While checking into his hotel he ends up running into Sarah who is staying at that same hotel with her new boyfriend Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) a very sexually confident British rockstar. While staying at the hotel Peter ends up getting to know the front desk girl Rachel (Mila Kunis) very well. Wink! Wink! While his problems with love and relationships are fading Sarah's are increasing when she realizes that she made a mistake breaking up with Peter. I know the plot doesn't sound funny but when you have a supporting cast like Paul Rudd (Anchorman), Bill Hader (SNL), Jonah Hill (Superbad) Jack McBrayer (30 Rock), and even short cameos of Jason Bateman (Arrested Development), and William Baldwin...pure gold. Plus Kristen Bell(heroes) is dang hot and then there's Mila Kunis (That 70's show/Family Guy) who I have now seen in a new light. Sure she was the better looking of the girls on That 70's show, but lately only associating her voice to the face of Meg Griffin on Family Guy you tend to forget how smokin hot she is. You'll see.

Over all I would recommend seeing this movie and I found it funnier the second time around when I watched it with friends.

-McKay R.

B+

Space Chimps - 2008

Animated

Available on DVD/Bluray

Ok, what the hell?

I understand its not Pixar or Dreamworks, but come on... and also I'm pretty sure the production staff recorded the audio in the same place Weird Al recorded his first song, in a bathroom. I have a better idea. Lets get a bunch of real monkeys, put them in a cage and charge people to see them. That would be more entertaining. Anyway it had an ok story except it was too mingled with annoyingness. Its one redeeming quality was that they did play chimpanzees by the bare naked ladies at the end.

-Kip J.

D

Kung Fu Panda - 2008

Animation

Available on DVD/Bluray

Kung Fu Panda is one of the more pleasantly surprising movies I saw over the summer. Dreamworks Animation (who is responsible for Shrek) has given us a refreshing take on the kung fu genre, and the art of animation in general. A lot of animated films make the mistake of incorporating pop culture jokes into themselves, thereby dating them in a matter of five years or less, as the jokes become trite and turn the films into cheap novelties. Kung Fu Panda ignores these cop outs and chooses instead to focus on telling a compelling story that seems light and cheery on the outside, with an underlying dramatic tension beneath it. It also features some quite inventive ways of reinventing certain themes and ideas (like the standard hero training montage). The hero is a weeble wobble shaped panda named Po, who hopes to someday leave his mundane life of helping out his father (a goose, which plays into some funny jokes later on) with the family noodle business, and accomplishing more. Po's heroes are the Furious Five, a group of plush toy looking animals who are masters of their own respective styles of Kung Fu (Monkey does monkey style, Crane does crane style, etc.) Soon he is drawn in to the world of Kung Fu as he is apparently destined to become the Dragon Warrior, a foretold hero of his valley. The magic of the movie is in how it balances out comedy with heart and drama. It seems to have all the right flourishes in the right places, so it never becomes overly childish nor serious, which helps to serve both comedy and drama extremely well, without having either element feel entirely out of place. Jack Black is the voice of Po, and manages it quite well, shedding the bulk of his Jack Blackishness in allowing the character to be himself without forced jokes or quips. Dustin Hoffman also excels as Master Shifu, a small racoon looking guy with a huge voice. Shifu is the most conflicted character of the story, and along with Po learns alot about himself and how life isn't always quite what you expect. There are other great voice actors featured here as well, but the Furious Five who are portrayed by a miriad of celebrities, take a back seat as secondary characters, so you don't get to know them too well. Maybe they'll be more prominent in the sequel. Kung Fu Panda is visually amazing and the animation is brilliant. Expression and body language are done so well as to almost make you forget you're watching a cartoon. One last thing of note is the music of Hanz Zimmer, which actually takes itself rather seriously when the mood calls for it. He's always been a great composer, but his music lends alot of emotion and flourish to the movie. So check it out. Great for kids and quite enough to entertain this adult who has seen it multiple times.

A

Wall-E - 2008

Animated/ Rated G

On DVD/Bluray

Ron's Review

Pixar apparently is not short on story ideas, a rich pool of voice actors, or talented animators and technical wizards. All of this has never been more obvious than in their latest, Wall-E. As a hopeful future animator, I was able to pinpoint technical brilliance the whole way through, but it really doesn't require an artist's eye to appreciate that this is a gorgeous film. (Can it really be considered film? The debate continues) It may however take a few viewings to take it all in. Unfortunately, the first time I saw it I was trying to break in a trial pair of contact lenses, so most of what I saw at the theater were rapid moving bright and blurry images. Fortunately I've since been able to watch it on Bluray and have not been dissapointed. Pixar has not only mastered movement and digital complexity, but also the realm of solid story telling and character development. One could say they may have gone out on a limb by having the lead characters not speaking, even by not being human at all yet you can see how well planned and thought out the character development really was, through actions, little quirks, and brilliant methods of having robot emotion translate visually into cues that we humans can relate to. After all, Pixar has never had trouble getting it's audience to care about non human characters. It's not until after the first half of the movie that we are introduced to space faring humans and spoken dialogue. Some have criticized the second half as the weaker of the two for this reason, but I thought it segued pretty smoothly from the first half. To me it was pretty much two episodes of a larger story, the first half was quite interesting for sure, but would have become pretty tedious and boring without the second half to balance it out. Wall-E is a simple story in itself, made a tad more complex by the underlying secondary plot of re-establishing sustainable life on Earth. Seemingly a perfect blend of story and whimsy which appeals to kids (who will undoubtedly watch it multiple times) and adults for it's little nods to other films of the science fiction genre, as well as parodizing the state of humanity in modern times. Really words can't do it justice, so you'll just have to watch it on your own to see why the movie sticks with you (in case you've been living in a cave all last summer and have never seen it). The support cast of Wall-E, and perhaps even Wall-E himself may not be as memorable as Woody and friends or even the cast of the Incredibles - it has sacrificed cuddly characters for a more mature plot with slightly darker humor and themes than Pixar usually offers, but I can definitely appreciate it for pushing the envelope and daring to develop something more. Yet curiously it will fit in rather well with the rest of your Pixar library. Be sure to check it out, you won't regret it, even after you have to fast forward through about twenty or so Disney previews and propaganda.

Ron J.

A-



Kip's Review

Johnny 5 needed a bolt of lightning to get a personality, but Wall-e had plenty from the start. He has courage and drive when other supposed "alive" robots would say: "No Dissasemble!"

This movie was awesome. While other animations have also been awesomely awesome (Kung Fu Panda), this one has the best film-like animation sequences and is packed with heart. Disney/Pixar sure gets the cute robot movie award. Oh and who couldn't watch fat people puttering around in their personal hover seats all day.

Viewing Ideas: While viewing this Pic I recommend Twinkies and Tang.

-Kip J.

A-


Average Rating A-

Wanted - 2008

Minor Spoilers

On DVD/Bluray

Stars: James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie

Take Fight Club, mix in the Matrix, throw in a little bit of any John Woo film and you'll pretty much get the gist of Wanted. Wanted is a visual tour de force - just kidding, I'll try to avoid the cheese ball critic cliches. Nonetheless the film is visually intriguing and never dull, though it checks in reality at the door. The characters manage to shoot the wings off of flies, bend the trajectory of bullets, slow time, use rats as bombs, and leap fifty yards at a single bound. Oh, and there's that little thing where they receive their instructions from a weaving loom. No joke. A loom. So how could such a ridiculous concept merit a large budget and an audience? Well for starters, take it's actors. As if McAvoy and Jolie weren't enough to draw you in, Morgan Freeman is enough to scrounge up some hope that the film actually has some story meat on it's bones as well as some acting chops. McAvoy stars as a pathetic everyman. You and me. The people who cram into cubicles day by day, put up with ridiculous management and wish for more in their lives, as well as fantasizing about putting some coworkers and bosses in their respective places (Fight Club, anyone?). He is soon drawn into a different state of existence as the world's greatest assassins train him to be as one of their own, for reasons I won't discuss here. Complete with a training montage, he quickly realizes his inner potential and commences to run around the city a killin' with glee. The film has the usual action movie conventions - freakin' shakier than hell camera at times, quick cuts, extremely loud handguns - but also features some pretty spectacular shots and sequences that though unbelievable, manage to fit well into the context of the story and loose rules of physics this movie world presents. The movie truly has some interesting plot twists which genuinely surprised me, though a smarter viewer may be able to see them coming if they watch closely. All of these elements account for a pretty damn good action movie, though I wouldn't recommend it for the squeamish or lovers of small rodents. Jolie is more or less the same one dimensional tough girl that we've seen before in Tomb Raider and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, but serves well as extra eye candy to a film that's overblown with it. Freeman doesn't offer much that's different either, taking on the role of the sage old likable guy we've seen in The Dark Knight and Seven, though he does manage to be a bit more foul mouthed and funny at the right moments. McAvoy is great in the lead role. He's an admittedly squirming weiner at the beginning of the film, and a bit of a bad ass at the end. We've seen this formula many times before (the Matrix, Spider-Man) but his metamorphosis is entertaining and hilarious the whole way through. The phrase "I'm sorry" will to me never be the same. All in all, this will never approach "classic" territory in the action genre like Raiders of the Lost Ark or the first Matrix, simply because the movie never necessarily breaks new ground. That reasoning aside, the movie is creative and enjoyable enough (thanks largely in part to it's graphic novel creator Mark Millar) that repeated viewing won't diminish it for quite some time and earned it a place on my "one of the better surprise movies of the summer" list. As I'm kind of torn between the petty things I didn't like about the movie and the elements I really enjoyed, this one gets two grades. Hey, my blog, my rules -

Ron J.

B+/A-