The Avengers: Pure Awesome

No surprise here, but I loved The Avengers.  It's as close to perfection in storytelling, acting, and production as I have seen.  Pretty much this review is just to add to the exponentially growing pile of glowing, rabidly enthusiastic reviews already out there.  And to encourage anyone who is still hesitating, or wondering if it is worth the hype, to go see it!

The story revolves mostly around Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and the fight against the villain, Loki.  The main actors are superbly cast, and live up to all your expectations.  Robert Downey Jr gives Tony Stark a likeablilty to his basically "what a jerk!" character.  Chris Evans manages to make Captain America seem believable as a nice guy who kicks ass in blue spandex.  And naturally Chris Hemsworth is a god.  Period.

I never had a chance to read the comic books as a kid growing up, so I was introduced to the Marvel universe through the cartoon shows of the 80's, and then the awesome movies.  I have no preconceived notions about these characters beyond the movies, and The Avengers's storyline flows perfectly with those that came before it.

While not in the forefront of the story at all times, the other main characters of Black Widow, Hawkeye, and The Hulk hold their own well against the superpower of the other characters.  I've never been a fan of The Hulk before, in anything, but in The Avengers he becomes a character I finally understand, and like.  Mark Ruffalo plays Bruce Banner with a soft spoken demeanor that doesn't come across as wimpy or weepy.  He's deeply troubled, and terrified of the damage he can cause as his alter ego, but he still keeps his sense of humor.  Jeremy Renner is casually awesome as Hawkeye, a character I'd never heard of before the movie Thor, but am loving more and more.  Scarlett Johansson makes kicking ass and playing psychological wargames with Loki seem easy, even in that skin tight catsuit. 

Not to be ignored, Samuel L. Jackson plays Nick Fury with his usual "I'm Samuel L. F***ing Jackson" flair.  He's still no David Hasselhoff, but his version is so cool I can forgive. 

No superhero movie is complete without a super villain.  Loki is a great character, and superbly played by Tom Hiddleston.  He alternates between bat s**t crazy and charming with cool flair.  He does what a good villain should be able to do.  He makes you like him just as often as you want to just punch his face in.

One character I have to point out specifically is Agent Maria Hill, played by How I Met Your Mother's Cobie Smulders.  This is a small role, but an important one.  She stands alongside Nick Fury, and helps run the operation.  Her character is one that provides a counterpoint to the superheroes, and a little bit of needed commentary to keep the story flowing.  Cobie Smulders holds her own against Samuel L. Jackson, and doesn't fade into the background.  More importantly she doesn't overact.  She kicks ass just as well as Black Widow, and I hope to see her in any and all upcoming Avenger movies.

The Avengers has Joss Whedon's fingerprints all over it.  Only Joss Whedon could pull together a story with so many main characters and make it feel cohesive and seamless.  The running time of nearly two and a half hours simply flies by, where other movies could have felt like they were stretching it out unnecessarily.  Plus, Joss Whedon understands pacing.  With all of the action, drama, and intensity throughout, you get plenty of chances to catch your breath with well placed comedic moments.  Some are visual, some are one liners, but all are appropriate and well placed.  Thank you, Mr. Whedon, for showing yet again why Shakespeare's lessons in storytelling are so important.

I could go on and on about the awesomeness that is The Avengers, but what else beyond that is there to say?  This is a movie that takes comic book heroes and humanizes them, but still lets them kick major ass.  It's a solid story, with a great cast and worth every penny spent on special effects and CGI.  It's worth every penny to go see in the theater.  And when you do, make sure you stay all the way until the very end credits.  Don't leave in the middle!  You'll be sorry!

Pure Awesome-"Weird Al" Yankovic Album Announcement

The heavens have parted, and allowed the shining glory that is "Weird Al" brighten what could have been a mild mannered day without fits of giggles...

Oh, June 21st, why are you so far away?

Megashark Vs Crocosaurus: One glass of wine was not enough...

Warning: Movie not as awesome as DVD cover appears

Megashark Vs Crocosaurus is one of the lamest movies I've watched in a long while.  And for The Queen Of Cheese, that's saying something. 

Asylum Productions recycles the surprisingly enjoyable Megashark Vs Giant Octopus storyline, but brings in a giant, prehistoric crocodile instead.  I'm all for recycling ideas and churning out B-movies, even C and D movies.  But this ended up being an endurance test to sit through the entire thing.  That's why I finally cracked open my 1999 bottle of Castillo Del Corzo red wine and had a tall glass while I vowed I would make it to the end of this "movie".

What makes this bad, and not in a good way?  Absolutely no love given to the script.  It's a mish mash of plot holes, random associations, and completely wooden characters that give you nothing to grab onto.  The weak attempts at humor just make it more pathetic.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm glad they at least tried to put some funny in there, but with a story that discombobulated it just falls flat.

Add to that an ensemble of actors who seem like they could have done so much better than this "movie'.  We have Sarah Lieving as the hard nosed military type person first sent to recruit Jaleel White as the lone survivor of the Megashark's attack on a Navy ship, and then Gary Stretch as the less than savory guy who takes advantage of natives to make a buck, and somehow has enough manpower and connections to capture and transport a gigantic Crocosaurus across the ocean.  We even get a surprising amount of screen time for poor bastard Robert Picardo, who I loved way back when he was on China Beach, and am vaguely aware of from Stargate SG1 and Stargate Atlantis. Jaleel White survived child star fame, only to be in something this bad?  Gary Stretch has an impressive resume, but this role definitely leaves a black hole in it.  Sarah Lieving has a lot of roles under her belt, too.  I've seen her in a few, including Beast Of Bray Road, and I know she has more talent than this role showcases.

There's a lot of chemistry amongst the cast, despite the distracted, lackluster script.  I suspect a lot of the issues with Megashark Vs Crocosaurus are due to brutal editing to fit a certain time constraint.  With the way the scenes jump around with very little connectivity, the way characters are thrust together with casual mentions that they know each other and have prior conflict, and giant plot craters, the actors can only deliver their lines and hang on until the bitter end.  There could have been genuine camaraderie among the characters, but any scene that could have made you care is probably on the cutting room floor.

This is soooo much better than the sequel!Let's talk about the special effects.  Maybe it was the tall glass of wine, but the graphics weren't that bad, all things considered.  But then again, all things considered, the CGI didn't have high standards to live up to.  There's plenty of recycled CGI of the Megashark, and some good looking CGI of the Crocosaurus.  There's more footage of the creatures than there were in MegaShark Vs Giant Octopus, but Asylum saved some bucks by showing lots of shadows in the water instead of actual creatures.  At least a little love was there in the details, even though the details were still as sparse as ever for an Asylum Production.

Megashark Vs Crocosaurus had no plot, managed to waste a lot of actor's talents, and an hour and a half of my time.  This one is so bad I won't even buy the DVD if I see it on sale for $5-like I did with a squeal of delight when I spotted Megashark Vs Giant Octopus for that price a few months ago.  The poor clerk in Fred Meyer's may never be the same.

Ferocious Planet: Nibbles more than it bites...

Run! Bad career moves are right behind you!After suffering through Your Highness and it's total lack of funny, when I sat down to watch Ferocious Planet the next day my expectations for anything to ever be good again were way, way down there.  That's probably why I found enjoyment in this hollow ripoff of Savage Planet (which didn't have much to inspire with itself), or any other B-movie offerings that came before it.

This wasn't horrible.  The graphics on the monsters were pretty good.  Not as good as the DVD cover would have you believe, but that's typical.  I can forgive less than stellar CGI when there are other elements that keep my interest.

There are a lot of characters to keep track of, at least in the beginning.  Naturally they start getting picked off one by one, so we get down to a core group for the majority of the movie pretty fast.  John Rhys Davies barely makes it to the first commercial break, but that's just as well.  He's better than a movie like this and it makes me wonder if he takes these roles because he thinks they'll be fun, or if he's just that tired.

What really won me over was the well placed humor through the whole movie.  Finally a newer movie that gets it!  Fine, give me melodrama, give me action, even some blood and gore.  But make sure you break it up with some humor.

It's not even over the top humor.  It's surprisingly subtle things all throughout.  One liners here and there, looks exchanged between the characters, and just simple dialogue between them, as well.  It makes you feel a little more at home in this parallel dimension they got themselves thrown into, and  makes the threadbare script just a minor annoyance.

Most notable of the cast besides John Rhys Davies is poor bastard Joe Flannigan, of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis fame.  He's also so much better than a role like this, but he plays it with charm, so you can't help but root for him to survive  until the end (and what will surely be an even more pallid sequel).  He's the main reason this movie had some warmth, depth, and humor.  I look forward to seeing him in what will surely relaunch his career, Spore.  Sadly for Mr. Flannigan, it looks like a movie right up my alley, so I'm not  holding my breath for a sudden jolt in his fame after it airs.

Overall, Ferocious Planet had a lot more going for it than many movies of its ilk.  It had a decent cast, halfway decent writing, well placed humor, and pretty cool looking beasties.  It was certainly a better way to spend an afternoon than the last movie I paid good money to see.

Your Highness: Why Weren't Thou Funny?

Click to enlargeAll of the previews for Your Highness looked so promising.  Normally with a comedy that turns out this flat and unfunny, the previews give you fair warning you're about to waste a good $10 on a movie ticket.  You'll normally get the same preview over and over, because there just isn't enough material to work with.  In the case of Your Highness, there were several different previews, each one very funny.

On top of it, you can typically be forewarned of a lame comedy by the running time.  Usually a throwaway movie is barely making it to ninety minutes (including credits).  Your Highness has a running time of 1:42.  Promising!

Reality can crush the soul.   The clever editing for the previews was not there in the movie.  I suspect much of it ended up on the cutting room floor, yet still would have done little to save this bland tale of adventure laced with penis jokes, weak attempts at humor about molestation, and desperate uses of the F-bomb to make us laugh.  Because anytime you hear "fuck" in a genteel British accent, it's funny, right?

Danny McBride (Pineapple Express ) is credited as one of the main writers.  If this is his idea of funny, he needs to go back and sit down at the feet of masters.  He needs to watch Monty Python's Quest For The Holy Grail, Mel Brook's History Of The World Part I and Robin Hood: Men In Tights, read Shakespeare, and listen to anything George Carlin.  You can tell he was going for anachronistic humor, and the shock value of vulgar humor in a normally polite backdrop.  He forgot that humor still needs a framework to be hung from.  In a movie format it needs a good storyline and characters we can connect with.  Otherwise we just have people saying "fuck" without any context to make it actually funny.

Just like drama needs to break up the pace with some humor to give the audience a chance to breathe, comedy needs to respect it's counterpart.  Every time we got close to understanding these characters better, connecting with them on a personal level by learning about their understandably tragic pasts, the script suddenly shies away and  goes for a crude remark. There were scenes with Natalie Portman's character, Isabel, where she explains how she became a vengeful (and kickass) knight, but the chance to get to know her is yanked away by the writer's obvious terror of any serious moment somehow making this less of a comedy.

The acting is superb, which makes this all the more painful of a disappointment.  James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Daschenal, even Danny McBride, all give wonderful performances with the steaming pile of boring they were given. The special effects are very cool, and part of what made me want to see this on the big screen.  The lush landscapes are gorgeous, giving it that epic feel.  Everything is in place to make this an instant classic.  It's the writing that kills this.

There are too many story lines going on at once, but that I can forgive.  Many movies do that, but still at least let you get to know the characters so you feel sympathetic to their plight.  Even the promising, but less than it could have been Krod Mandoon And The Flaming Sword Of Fire series understood this.  The lead character was likable, and even though the humor was often vulgar, it was well placed, and not the crux of the whole venture.  Your Highness' Thadeous, played by Danny McBride, is very difficult to like at the outset.  I suspect mostly due to editing towards the end, you don't see this character develop into anyone you wouldn't enjoy seeing hung by dwarves, which makes the ending even harder to swallow.

Overall, this was more soul-crushingly disappointing than anything else.  The movie didn't suck.  It didn't blow.  It just sort of laid there and thought of England.