Stealth

This was the dumbest, most confusing movie I’ve ever seen.  Or at least one of the worst.  The only reason this got such a high rating (of 1.5) is because of a few cool explosions.  It’s all a shame because the idea isn’t a bad one, but it was executed so poorly.  Three fighter pilots get paired up with a new aircraft which can think for itself and will hopefully replace humans one day.  Of course, something goes haywire and the aircraft takes on a mind of its own.

Please believe me when I say, the coolest parts of this movie were in the trailer.  There is no need to see this one for yourself.

The 40 Year Old Virgin

I thought this was going to be a stupid and immature guy flick.  Instead, this movie was hilarious and surprisingly heart warming!  Steve Carell stars as Andy, the 40 Year Old Virgin.  He works as a stock boy at a Best Buy sort of place, rides a bike instead of a car, has an apartment filled with action figures sealed in their original packaging and thinks the most exciting thing he’s done all weekend is making an egg salad sandwich.  It’s really no wonder he’s never gotten laid.  One day his coworkers are down a person for their poker game that night, so they reluctantly invite Andy and subsequently find out he’s a virgin.  From that point, his coworkers’ mission is getting Andy laid.  They do nothing more than guide him in the right direction, leading him to talk to women instead of shying away from them.  To their shock, he’s really pretty good at it!

Andy falls in love with a woman who works across from him as the owner of a “We Sell Your Stuff On eBay” store and starts dating her.  He’s nervous about telling her he’s a virgin and she’s just nervous to be in a relationship again, so they agree to no sex for 20 dates!  Everything goes very well for both of them, but you know there’s gotta be some conflict, otherwise it would just be a perfect movie.  (Personally I don’t see what would be wrong with that, but they tell me without conflict, the movie will flop.)

If you liked Office Space, chances are you’ll like this movie.  If you’ve been avoiding this one because it looked too stupid, give it a try!  It has more substance than you’d think!

March of the Penguins

An informative, beautiful and touching movie about Antarctica’s Emperor penguins’ mysterious breeding ritual.  It will warm your heart and make you cry.  In fact, I had a hard time stomaching some parts, not knowing when a cute moment would fade away and natural selection would rear its ugly, but necessary head.  Never fear, the sad parts are never very long.  If you have no interest in penguins, there’s little of interest for you here.  Otherwise, you need to see this one!

Bulletproof Monk

Basic premise: Every 60 years a new guardian must be chosen to protect a scroll with unlimited power.  This person is not ordinary and must be able to defend the scroll against any who seek it.  Chow Yun-Fat is a Tibetan Monk with the most recent shift of scroll protecting and he’s looking for his replacement.  He seems to think he’ll find it in New York City and indeed, Sean William-Scott’s character seems like a good candidate.

The story was a little tired, but the fight scenes weren’t all recycled from Crouching Tiger and both Sean and Chow know how to bring the funny.  This movie is probably not worth spending your hard earned cashed on unless you really like fight scenes.  But it’s definitely worth catching on HBO or TBS on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

The Dukes of Hazzard

Don’t kid yourself, this movie was about two things: Boobs and Car Chases.  I find both wildly entertaining, but somehow even combined together, they didn’t do much for me in this movie.  The stunt driving was phenomenal.  These are not the Dukes we grew to love in the 80s, however they’re quite probably more accurate versions of these fictional characters if they actually existed.  The film had its funny moments, most of which revolved around the insanely perverted and filthy mouthed Uncle Jessie, played by Willie Nelson.  Other laughs came from the constant poking fun of the TV show’s ridiculous plots.

All in all, I’d say go ahead and watch it, but don’t go out of your way to do so.

In America

Illegal Irish immigrants move to America to provide a better life for their two daughters after losing their only son.  I am not sure, but this seems very much like a true story.  Nothing particularly exciting happened and it was a lot about the daily struggle this family goes through.  They move into an apartment building filled with junkies and questionable characters. 

I’m not good at summarizing movies (in case you couldn’t tell) but this was a pretty good one.  It nearly had me in tears a few times.  The children were beautiful.  Definitely worth watching!

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

The movie was… okay.  They left out a lot.  In fact, the people who were screaming last year that the plot in Prisoner of Azkaban was excessively stripped should have held their breath until viewing this installment.  They left out the entire Rita Skeeter sub-plot, although they did show her nosing in on the students a few times and the actress seemed to have her personality down.  I think that was the most important detail to overlook.  This movie, much more so than the others, was almost unwatchable without having read the book first.  I don’t know how I feel about the director, but I do know I’d take Alfonso Cuarón back any day of the week.

I think what bugged me most was that it constantly cut from one five minute scene to the next.  There was no real dialog, no sense of close-knit friends.  I understand you can only do so much when you have to cram a book as large as this into a two and a half hour movie.  I understand this is why plots were left out.  Still, couldn’t they have done it Lord of the Rings style and filmed a long, 5 hour movie which was able to get in more of the plot, and then break them into two movies, showing them a couple months apart?  I guess that’s too much to ask.

I don’t know how they’re going to do the next movie at all.  It’ll just be a series of 30 second clips going from one scene to the next.

The cinematography and special effects were amazing.  This bathtub scene (probably one of the longest in the whole film) provided much needed comic relief.  I was disappointed with how little Ron and Hermione were in this.  I think the twins may have been in it more than them, not that I’m complaining about their amount of screen time.

I guess overall I was just a little disappointed.  It was still worth seeing (even worth paying $25 for tickets and fees) but this is undoubtedly my least favorite of the movies so far.  Then again, the Goblet of Fire was my least favorite book as well.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

I guess I was expecting more from this movie.  I’ve never read the book and didn’t know a whole lot about the story.  It was very… teenage girlish.  Not that there’s anything bad about that, but it’s more appropriate for teenage girls than it is for adults.  I couldn’t identify with much of anything in the movie although it left me teary at times.  The best part was the beautiful views in Greece. 

Bewitched

This movie didn’t do so well in the theatres, but I thought it was pretty funny.  It isn’t so much a remake of the TV show Bewitched as it is a movie about a remake of the TV show Bewitched.  I think this may have confused the audience going into the movie, which may be why no one liked it.  Otherwise, it was cute, funny and fluffy.  It’s no more than I expected it to be.  If you have no interest in the TV show Bewitched, you’ll probably have no interest in this movie.

Next Stop Wonderland

I haven’t written a movie review in months despite having seen many.  My apologies, mostly to myself because I’m really, really anal about keeping track of things such as this.

This is a Miramax film with an independent sort of feel to it.  There also didn’t appear to be much point to it.  Two people’s lives intersect over and over again without them ever meeting.  It had a Sliding Doors / Sleepless in Seattle sort of feel to it.  It was funny and smart and definitely worth seeing if you have a Sunday afternoon to waste, but I completely understand why I’d never heard of this movie before.

Sahara

I’ve completely slacked on media reviews.  I’ve watched many movies and read a few books since I last updated, but I’m not going to try to rack my brain remembering what I haven’t posted.  Instead I’m just going to try to start over again keeping track of movies and books I’ve consumed.

I completely understand why this movie didn’t do so well in the box office.  There are two main storylines, one involves a boat which is theorized to have made its way from the coast of Virginia to Africa around the time of the civil war.  The other storyline is about a mysterious outbreak in Africa.

I kept waiting for the two storylines to intertwine or have something to do with one another, but it never happened.  And while we found out where the outbreak came from along with its severity, the boat storyline was somewhat abandoned.  Another mystery was revealed, but we never find out how or why the boat would have gone to Africa in the first place.  The disease storyline was a bit dull and the boat storyline turned out to be nothing.

Eh.  I think this movie had the potential to be something interesting, but too much must have been left on the cutting room floor to leave anything sensible remaining.

Constantine

I don’t have a lot to say about this one.  The movie was okay, the special effects were really great.  I didn’t really care for the story very much and thought it was a little old and boring.  I felt like I’d seen most of the movie before.  They did set it up for a sequel nicely, not that I’m interested in seeing one.

Hitch

This was an extremely cute movie with Will Smith and Kevin James, two actors I never thought I’d see together.  Will Smith’s character, Hitch, is a self proclaimed dating doctor and claims he only needs three dates to make a woman fall in love with you.  The catch is that he’ll only work with you if you truly love the woman.  While helping Kevin James’ character attract a high profile woman, Hitch finds a love interest of his own.

I thought more of the movie would be focused on how Hitch just can’t function when he’s on a date, but that’s not really the case since he’s fairly smooth through all the rough spots.  The ending seemed extremely rushed and a little unbelievable to me.  I was still hating Hitch’s love interest at a time when I shouldn’t.

I liked the first part of this movie quite a bit.  I would love if they did a sequel of some sort.

Miss Congeniality 2

This definitely wasn’t as good as the first one, which I absolutely adore, but it had its moments.  I’m disappointed that the DVD doesn’t have a commentary with Sandra Bullock and the director as the first one did.  (The commentary for Miss Congeniality is one of the best I’ve ever listened to - if you have the DVD, watch it with the commentary!) If the second one did have the commentary with Bullock and the director, I would have probably purchased the DVD.

Man on Fire

Mexico City is apparently a kidnapping capital of the world.  Parents need to take out kidnapping insurance and seem to need a bodyguard for their children in order to get it.  So this guy (names… they allude me) needs to renew his insurance, but can’t really afford a bodyguard.  He decides to hire a cheap ass bodyguard and plans to dump him after the insurance is renewed.  He gets Denzel Washington as Creasy, an alcoholic with a secret and sordid past.  Of course the child he’s hired to protect, Pita (Dakota Fanning) quickly warms his heart, gets him to stop drinking and start enjoying life.

This is all disrupted when Pita is kidnapped and we find out more about what Creasy did in his past than I cared to know.

I liked the first half of the movie - the happier parts with Dakota Fanning in them.  The rest of the movie just left me a little too disturbed.

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