Predators

The fearsome warrior creatures in dreads have come a long way. From picking off Arnold Schwarzenegger's elite military team in a Central American jungle to fighting acid-spewing Aliens to fighting the Predalien hybrid thing. And now their lust for the hunt, so insatiable, forces them to assemble a team of the Earth's seven most dangerous humans...and Topher Grace. These people are literally dropped onto a game preserve planet from teh sky. There is no real explanation for that, but then-this isn't a movie for explanations.

Trailer Tuesday

The two trailers today are for Devil and Due Date.  Oooh alliteration. I like it!

Suggestion Box #18: Inception

Suggestion Box #17: The Last Airbender

Toy Story 3

Over the last decade and a half, Pixar has established itself as the most reliable name brand in Hollywood. Every two years or so, Pixar puts out an animated feature that rivals just about any other movie put out that year. In 1995, the original Toy Story set the benchmark for a studio that would go on to produce some of the most acclaimed and highest grossing animated films of all time. In fact, Toy Story 2 is still one of the few movies to hit 100% on Rotten Tomatoes tomatometer. So when they put out a movie, it's pretty safe to walk into it with high expectations. I walked into Toy Story 3 with absolutely sky-high expectations, and I have to say that I was still blown away. The final installment in the trilogy is better than a second sequel has any business being. For me, it's easily the most impacting of three, and may actually be the most complete entry.

Trailer Tuesday...erm, I mean Wednesday

 I know these are late, but hey, I spent yesterday getting 15 stitches in my leg. Give a girl a break. Also, enjoy!

Suggestion Box #16: Red Dead Redemption

The Last Airbender

Going into The Last Airbender, I wasn't expecting an exact reenactment of the nearly perfect animated television show. Adaptations from one medium to another can be tricky. Where a television show has months to develop a story and character relations, a movie only has two to three hours. Really, all I expect from an adaptation is the same basic story and the same spirit as the source material. With Avatar: The Last Airbender, that should have been more than doable. It should have been paint by numbers easy. Yet M. Night Shyamalan managed to fail. Sure, the movie has the same basic story, but the spirit of the original is completely missing. After watching the movie, I wondered if Shyamalan had ever even watched the show before making this movie or if someone had just told him about it over drinks.

The A-Team

I feel that before I start talking about Joe Carnahan's re-make of the 1980's TV series The A-Team, I state that I'm not opposed to fun action movies that don't make a whole lot of sense. I enjoyed Carnahan's Smokin' Aces from a few years ago even, and that's a movie that was universally panned. Earlier this year, I very much enjoyed The Losers despite the movie's warts. So with that understanding in mind, I have to be honest. I hated The A-Team. Not because the movie was terrible on its own. It certainly wasn't as bad as Clash of the Titans or Robin Hood were. I hated it because of what it represented, and the ways in which it failed. I hated it because, in a year that's been littered with movies that are thinly veiled cash grabs using name recognition to bring in moviegoers, this might have been the most blatant. I hated it because it's yet another shaky-cam movie when it would've been a much more effective movie without it. Most of all though, I hated it because somewhere in this smoldering pile of celluloid, there was a damn entertaining movie.