Circle Tme Review: Grown Ups

Have you ever had to spend an uncomfortable weekend reuniting with people you never even wanted to see again in the first place? Yeah, Grown Ups is kinda like that.

Sure they are all grown up and have their own families now, but Adam Sandler and company are far from "grown up". Sandler has made a name for himself as Hollywood's manchild, appearing again and again as grown men who are very immature. Sure it was funny in the beginning, and every once in a while he manages to rekindle his old spark, but when he keeps headlining in crap like this, with all his money and talent, it's hard to take him seriously.

What's even more disappointing is the lack of humor. With the comedic talent of Kevin James, David Spade, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, and Sandler, this movie should be funny, or at least that's what they try selling it as. There is almost nothing here worth a chuckle let alone your time and money and when this motley crew is laughing, it's always at some gross joke made at somebody's expense.

Let me just save you the time and sum this movie up in one word: lazy. There is so much comedic potential here and Sandler spoils it with his same old grotesque gags.

Save your money and skip it.

In Memory of Leslie Nielsen

Yeah, I know that I am a day behind everybody and by now I am sure you all have heard the terrible news. Leslie Nielsen passed away yesterday due to complications of Pneumonia. He was 84 years young.

Leslie Nielsen will probably be remembered best for his roles as Dr. Rumack in Airplane! and Detective Frank Drebin in and the Naked Gun films. Nielsen is famous for taking his seemingly serious roles and playing them in such a way that became iconic, comedic gold. He had a way of taking a completely terrible movie and making it funny and entertaining (such as Superhero Movie).

Leslie Nielsen also appeared in movies such as Creep Show, the original Prom Night with Jamie Lee Curtis, and brought his comedic genius to films such as Dracula: Dead and Loving It, and the last two 'Scary Movies'.

Leslie Nielsen, you will be missed.

Review: Tangled

Well, if this is it and Disney really is closing the book on musicals and fairy tales, then they definitely did not save their best for last.

Now I don't mean to be so harsh on the newest edition to the Disney-Princess family, but this all seems oddly familiar. Some guy just happens across a beautiful, young lady, they have to fend from an evil, non-blood related mother, they fall in love, and then live happily ever after. I'm sorry, but is the Disney-Princess formula ever anything different? Disney has done this over and over for the past 70 years and yes, in the beginning we like them, maybe even loved them, but by the time Disney got to Tangled, their 50th animated movie, things just became too predictable.

And following the Disney tradition, everybody sings in this movie. Disney trashed the original script for this movie, started over, and even brought back Alan Menken (fammed Disney song writer) to pen the music. Sadly, it sounds like Menken got lazy here because outside of the first tune, the songs lacks enthusiasm and entertainment. 

Also following Disney tradition, the 3D here was pretty bad. Everytime I bring up 3D, I talk about How to Train Your Dragon and the depth the 3D added to that movie, well no depth was added to this film. In fact, there were parts where the 3D actually hurt my eyes and everything became blurry during a couple of scenes.

Outside of its flaws, Tangled is still enjoyable, if only a little bit. So if you've got nothing to do this holiday wekend and you want to keep the kids entertained, this movie will do the job. I just can't promise that you will also be entertained.

Rent it.

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I

Harry Potter is the boy who lived... through seven books and eight, count em, eight movies. If you ask me, he proabably should have lived through one less film.

Yeah, I know, you Potterheads are probably thinking, "But Jordan, they needed to split this book into two movies so that they could fit everything in." Maybe so, but even while I was walking out of the theater I heard even the most loyal of Potter fans say "They didn't need to add this or that in." Can you imagine that: six movies and the Potterheards are disappointed because they didn't add enough in and now they're upset because there's too much? Maybe I was wrong about Detroit Lions fans being the hardest to please. But I agree. This movie was a little too long and I definitely felt it (or maybe it was just the fact that it was 2:30 a.m. by the time I walked out).

Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy most aspects of this film. I liked the way the film was put together. All the cuts are precise and all the camerawork is beautiful. However, I think the preformances are the best thing about this film. We have grown up watching these young actors develop and settle into their roles and we have come to appreciate their skill more and more with each enstallment. Emma Watson, especially, gives a standout preformance in this movie.
 
Sadly, however, I felt as if though this part one suffered from what most intervening films suffer from in trilogies; it spent most of its time building us up for the next part that it drops its sense of story and leaves us with a lot of action and a lot of humor. Unfortunately, most of the humor gets dropped by the second half. At some points of this film I got a sense of "Okay, so where are we and what are we doing here?" that really lost me. Also,  There was no explanation of what the horcrux was or what significance it had to Voldemort and I could have done without the cheesy, romantic triangle subplot. Sure it had to come at some point, but it was not done well.
 
Sure all the Potterheads will enjoy this movie, that goes without saying, but I, however, think that DH1 is  a pothole in a road leading to a very successful climax for this franchise.
 
I say rent it, even though you will probably skip right over that and just pre-order the blu-ray, you Potterhead.

Review: Secretariat

That's right, it's time to saddle up for yet another race horse movie. Don't worry, this one doesn't star Tobey Maguire.

Disney brings us the impossible true story of Secretariat, the greatest race horse of all time who won the 1973 Triple Crown with record-breaking times. Now, I only bring up Disney because this is definitely a Disney movie; it's an upbeat, family movie, which takes away from the drama and when you add that on with the fact that everybody knows how this story ends, it takes away everything this movie could have been.

Along with that, Secretariat does tend to get stuck in the mud during a few scenes; not a lot goes on and it starts to feel too familiar, even cliché. Even throughout the movie things feel like they're missing, so when the end hits there doesn't feel to be much of a payoff.


Even with a Disney-backed production and a few missing elements, the preformances, along with fairly interesting camerawork, do make this movie worth seeing, though I don't advise you to run to the theater.


Rent it.Even so, this movie is still filled with great preformances. Diane Lane is great as Penny Chenery, the horse's owner. John Malkovich is hilarious in his role as Lucien Laurin, the French-Canadian trainer who never really trains. We get a lot of scenes with Malkovich cussing people out in French and it is some pretty entertaining stuff. Though, I am disappointed with the decision to cast Dylan Walsh as Penny's husband. 

Review: Skyline

Sure strange lights may be discending upon the city of Los Angeles, but what's stranger still is that people (including myself) are paying money to see this film. I mean, you can find cheesy alien thrillers on Syfy.

Okay, maybe it's not exactly as cheesy as something you would find on Syfy, but only the special effects save it from that. With a budget of $10 million and most of it being spent on special effects, these aliens do look pretty cool and why shouldn't they; directors Colin and Greg Strause have worked as special effects supervisors for all the special effects-heavy movies within the past two decades: Titanic, Terminator 3, The Day After Tomorrow, Constantine, Fantastic 4, X-Men: The Last Stand, 300, AVP:R, Jumper, The Incredible Hulk, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 2012, Avatar, The Book of Eli, Iron Man 2,the upcoming Gulliver's Travels, and many more?

However, special effects alone do not make a good movie (we learned this from Avatar). There is virtually no story here. As we would find with any Syfy flick, here we just have a group of partiers fending for their lives from some aliens (much like Cloverfield except not as good). Following one alien-thriller cliche after another, most of this movie feels like they just took scenes from Independence Day, District 9, and Cloverfield, edited them together and dubbed over the top (and they kill off the black man first for good measure).

 The acting was terrible. Nobody seemed interested in their roll and I am pretty sure that the casting call read something like this: "In need of anybody. We blew all our money on special effects, so as long as you can run around and scream, you're good."

There are so many things wrong with this film that I can't count them on my hands. Nothing works here and it's all been done before. In fact, the only part I wanted to see in this movie got cut out by the ending. This movie SUCKS and I do not reccommend it for anybody at any point in their lifetime.

Please, for the sake of your grandchildren, skip it!

A Tale of Two Sequels

It's true that both Kung Fu Panda and Cars are two of the most successful computer animated films to come out of a decade that was dominated by computer animation, and the two  juggernauts pioneering this relatively new industry are Dreamworks and Pixar.

With successful films like Antz, Shrek, Madagascar, Over the Hedge, the original Kung Fu Panda, and recent hits like How to Train Your Dragon, and Megamind, it's no question that Dreamworks Animation can produce good, quality films. So when Kung Fu Panda hit theaters, it was no shocker that it became a megahit, grossing $20.3 million its opening day and $60.2 million within its opening weekend alone. Kung Fu Panda went on to grossing over $631.7 million worldwide and became the highest grossing animated film of 2008, beating out Pixar's Wall-E financially.

Not only did Dreamworks' megahit bring home the bacon, but it also won over the hearts of minds of children and critics alike. Racking up an 88% on the Tomatometer, I think it's fair to say that most people really like this movie, but how will the sequel do?

Kung Fu Panda 2 is set for a release date of May 27, 2011. Will the sequel make more money like a good sequel is supposed to do? Will those people who didn't like the first movie not show up? Will that hurt the movie financially? And how will this sequel hold up against Pixar's next movie, also a sequel?

Pixar is well known for putting out one hit after the other, both financially and critically. Cars grossed over $60 million its opening weekend and went on to gross over $244 million worldwide, only making a profit of a little over $120 million. Nominated for two Academy Awards, including Best Animated Feature, Cars did not win a single one and even though it opened to mostly positive reviews, many critics agree that it doesn't live up to Pixar's best like Toy Story or Finding Nemo.

Cars has not been Pixar's most lucrative movie, so the fact that they are choosing to follow their most successful movie (Toy Story 3) up with is a sequel to it surprises me. However, I trust Pixar and I think this will be an interesting follow up.

Set for a release date of June 24th, 2011, can Cars 2 change the mind of all those negative Nancies? Will it become the highest grossing animated film of all time? Will it redeem the franchise and win the Oscar for Best Animated Picture?

Now this wouldn't be any fun if I didn't guesstimate which movie will do better. Hold on, let me think..... Hmmmmm...... No, no.......Maybe......No. Hold on, I'm still thinking... Okay. I have it now. I am assuming that Kung Fu Panda 2 will do better financially, but I predict that Cars 2 will do better critically. Why? Eh. It's just a hunch.