Star Wars: The Clone Wars Animated Feature Film

The Blot was all excited to talk about Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the animated feature film debuting in theaters today, but then reviews of the movie started to trickle out from media outlets and around the web. Let’s just put it bluntly, everyone hates it! I can’t tell you how disappointing that news is, but at least it’ll save me from having to take a trip to my local theater and shell out who knows how much money.


I guess now I’ll just wait for the movie's DVD release or its replay on TNT before the start of the new Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated television series. I had some high hopes for this animated movie, but I should have learned by now that any movie associated with George Lucas in this day and age is going to be a disappointment (no matter how much money a movie grosses). It really sucks that his ideas and imagination can’t be translated into movie masterpieces like they once were in the 70’s and 80’s.

Get Smart Gets A Review

Last weekend, The Blot and my buddy Goetz went and checked out the latest television remake, the Steve Carell comedy Get Smart. I had some serious reservations considering Carell’s last two live action movies, Evan Almighty and Dan in Real Life, were complete bombs. Once again low expectations saved the day and the movie ended up not being all that bad. But, had I really expected anything from the movie I probably would have left the theater disappointed.


The main reason I wanted to see the film was because of Dwayne “Don’t call me The Rock” Johnson. Obviously The Artist Formerly Known as The Rock has more than a few underperforming movies under his belt as well, but I typically enjoy his roles regardless. Thankfully Johnson came through with a solid performance as Agent 23. But it was Masi Oka and Nate Torrence as techies Bruce and Lloyd who really stole the film. Their scenes were the most consistently funny part of the movie and were the best parts of an otherwise unmemorable movie.


Honestly though, I really can’t understand why the movie wasn’t funnier. On paper the cast was a strong comedic ensemble and surprise appearances by Bill Murray and Patrick Warburton were stellar. But in the end, the movie was just OK and the best line wasn’t even uttered by Carell or co-star Anne Hathaway. Instead it was by Alan Arkin’s The Chief before he was almost accidentally killed by Carell’s Maxwell Smart. Don’t worry, I won’t ruin the movie for those of you who still haven’t seen the film and still eventually plan to.


While I didn’t leave the theater disappointed, I definitely recommend waiting for the movie to come out on DVD. What’s really scary to me, is that if Get Smart was the best comedy to open last weekend, how horrible must The Love Guru be!?! I really expected more from the two most talked about comedies of the summer.

Oh yeah, be on the look out for Get Smart’s Bruce and Lloyd Out Of Control, the straight to DVD Get Smart sequel starring Oka and Torrence, in stores on July 1st. Bruce and Lloyd were such great characters that there’s a reasonable chance this movie is at least as good as, if not better, than Get Smart.

The Blot Reviews The Incredible Hulk

To be blunt, The Incredible Hulk was good, but unfortunately it just wasn’t that great. I had high expectations for the film, especially after 2003’s dreadful The Hulk, but the movie just came across as a high level B movie with big name actors. While the movie definitely delivered in many of the areas that Ang Lee’s version sorrowfully lacked, it didn’t reach the high level of greatness of so many other recent super hero movies like X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman Begins and Iron Man.


I think part of the problem is that these other super hero movies have continued to raise the bar higher and higher. While this is great for moviegoers, it also means that audiences’ expectations are so high that it’s impossible for average movies to compare. If this movie had come out when the original Hulk film did back in 2003 then people’s expectations would have been much lower and the film would have probably been seen in a more favorable light. I now have to take back what I said about the Punisher being the hardest super hero to translate to the big screen, because that title now falls squarely on the shoulders of the Hulk.


What’s even more surprising is that while everyone, critics and fans alike, have said that The Incredible Hulk is by far a much better movie than its predecessor, after 10 days in theaters it has actually done worse at the box office. The Incredible Hulk’s 10 day box office gross now stands at $96.5 million, while the critically panned The Hulk had “earned $100.6 million in the same time frame.” (link) Although the two figures are not that far apart, it is a perfect example of the damage a bad movie can do to a character’s legacy in the eyes of the American public.


I guess the odds of us ever seeing Tim Blake Nelson’s Dr. Samuel Stern transform fully into the villain The Leader on the big screen are now greatly diminished. Here’s hoping the Hulk gets one more movie to prove the character’s A-list comic book status is deserved. I guess either way we’ll be seeing more of the greened skinned giant (and maybe/maybe not Edward Norton) in 2011’s The Avengers.

A Sex and the City: The Movie Review

My girlfriend, Aly, might be one of Sex and the City’s biggest fans and can pretty much quote every episode by heart. So you can imagine the distress in our household when we realized our big trip to California was the same weekend as the movie’s opening weekend. Thankfully we both agreed a trip to Cali was worth delaying her first viewing of a film she’s been desperately waiting to see for years.


Well, earlier this week we finally went and saw the Sex and the City movie and caught up with the lives of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda. I know what you’re thinking, I’m the worst boyfriend ever for making her wait even longer than necessary to see it, but it really wasn’t all my fault. I’m not going to give a huge review of the movie, but I will say it was much, much better than I ever expected. Yes, watching it felt like just like watching a super sized episode of the television series, but in many ways I think that’s what they were aiming for. When a TV show is that popular why change what obviously already works?


I did think the movie took a direction that it didn’t need to in the hopes of adding life altering drama to the script, but if they hadn’t done that I’m not so sure what the over-all storyline would have focused on. You can’t revisit these women’s lives after all these years and not expect some changes, and you definitely can’t make a major motion picture without coming up with a major plot line to move the story along. The only thing I wish there had been more of was screen time for Willie Garson as Stanford Blatch and Mario Cantone as Anthony Marentino. Those guys continually stole the spotlight of every scene they were in.

The main reason I decided to write this post on Sex and the City: The Movie was to put all the Sex and the City haters’ minds at ease. For a guy who was never really a fan of HBO’s Sex and the City and only watched begrudgingly maybe two seasons of the show, the movie was actually pretty entertaining. The film did an excellent job in the first five minutes of recapping all six seasons of the television show and giving you everything you needed to know to enjoy the movie. Obviously the movie skews towards women, but if your wife/girlfriend/significant other plans on dragging you to see it, take solace in knowing it’s really not all that bad. In fact, if it didn’t kill me to say so, I’d actually say it was pretty good.

Iron Man Exceeds Expectations With $100.8 Million Opening Weekend

While I typically shy away from seeing a movie on opening weekend, I just couldn’t resist heading down to my local theater knowing Iron Man was playing twelve times a day. So Sunday morning Aly headed down to our local multiplex to see Robert Downey Jr. portray Tony Stark in one of the most accurate live action characterizations of a comic book character I have ever seen. I read Iron Man for years as a kid, but once I hit college I became disenfranchised with the character and for the most part stopped following him completely.


With that being said, Iron Man the movie was amazing. Usually I hate the first movie in a new comic book franchise because I can’t stand having to sit through the first half of a movie learning about how the hero gained his powers. Since I am a comic book reader and already know the back stories of these characters I am looking for action and to see how the movie interprets the characters I’ve known for years in comics onto the silver screen. In recent years the only first movie I’ve enjoyed was Batman Begins…until yesterday.

I found myself actually interested in watching billionaire Tony Stark create his first version of the Iron Man armor. Maybe there is some connection between Stark and Batman/Bruce Wayne in that they both had to find ways to turn themselves into heroes as opposed to Superman, Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four who had things happen to them which gave them these incredible powers.

Not only did I enjoy the first half of the movie but I actually liked the supporting cast, something I can’t say about most super hero movies. I take back any of the reservations I had about Jeff Bridges being the movie’s primary villain. His portrayal of Obadiah Stane was awesome and watching his transformation during the course of the movie into a true villain was remarkable. I couldn’t believe this was the same actor who played The Dude in The Big Lebowsky, but he pulled it off effortlessly and I never once viewed him as anything else but Stane.


With reports that Iron Man made $100.8 million over the weekend, it seems like Marvel has another hit franchise on their hands. According to an article on USAToday.com, Iron Man’s opening weekend box office is “the ninth-highest debut of all time and second-largest for a movie that wasn’t a sequel.” (link) Iron Man’s “tally far exceeded expectations of an opening in the $70 million to $80 million range for the three-day period beginning Friday.” (link) It’s interesting to note that “of Marvel’s dozen PG-13 movies, which include the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises, 11 have opened at No. 1 (Elektra being the exception) and taken in an average of $200 million domestically and $400 million world wide.” (link) The USAToday.com Iron Man article is pretty interesting, especially the way it compares Marvel’s blockbuster success to Pixar’s history of successful feature films, and I definitely recommend taking a few minutes to read it here.

Iron Man’s huge opening weekend is exciting news because it means at least two sequels are sure be coming over the next few years. Jon Favreau did a great job directing the movie and I’m interested in seeing his ideas for future sequels, which hopefully will include Terrence Howard’s Jim “Rhodey” Rhodes donning the War Machine armor. If you haven’t seen Iron Man yet I wouldn’t wait around for this one to come out on DVD, it’s the kind of entertaining fun action movie that needs to be seen on the big screen.

No Country For Old Men Leaves The Blot With Mixed Emotions

Sorry to have been M.I.A. the past few days, but The Blot was in Dallas for Thanksgiving with no internet access since Thursday. Trust me, it is as scary as it sounds...but now we're back on track and it's time for The Blot Says' first movie review:

The Blot was pretty excited to see the new Coen Brothers’ movie No Country For Old Men ever since seeing the trailer for it a few months ago. I love Joel and Ethan Coen (Barton Fink, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers) and have intently followed their careers ever since seeing The Big Lebowski. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy Fargo and haven’t seen Raising Arizona a million times, but come on, you just can’t top The Dude.

Don’t worry, I won’t give away any spoilers or plot points in this post except to say that the description of the movie’s story line on IMDB is pretty accurate, “Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon some dead bodies, a stash of heroin and more than $2 million in cash near the Rio Grande.” (Link) The movie is based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy and the story is as riveting as it is bloody. Like all Coen Brothers’ movies the dialogue is the best part and the casting of the movie was spot on. Javier Bardem (Before Night Falls) is the star of the movie for his portrayal of the psychotic Anton Chigurh. His transformation into the relentless Chigurh is amazing and terrifying all at once. He reminds me of Jack Nicholson’s Joker in the original Batman…a character so off kilter you never know what he is going to do next.

The biggest surprise of the movie to me was Josh Brolin (The Goonies, In The Valley Of Ellah) as Llewelyn Moss. While I can’t claim to have seen all of his work, his role as the hunter who stumbles upon a drug deal gone bad was amazing and possibly the greatest role of his career. I’d be shocked if he wasn’t on many critics’ Best Of Lists come awards season. The movie is really portrayed through Llewelyn’s eyes and gives the movie its greatest suspense. Unfortunately the star of the movie, Tommy Lee Jones, isn’t on screen near enough but does a very good job tying all of the different subplots together and fleshing out the story of violence raging through this small Texas community.


All in all the movie was great except for the last 5 minutes where the movie, in my opinion, kind of flames out. When the credits hit the sold out movie theater gasped but not in a good way. Most of the movie patrons were shocked that the movie had ended. Even after all of the different story lines finally converged, the audience seemed to want more. And then nothing happened. I felt like I was watching the last episode of The Sopranos all over again. The big resolution that everyone was hoping for or expected never happened and I think that left the audience unfulfilled. If you’re worried about the ending ruining the movie going experience then I recommend waiting for it to come out on DVD, but if you enjoy the Joel and Ethan Coen’s dialogue and filmmaking as much as I do then I definitely recommend checking out No Country For Old Men. Just be prepared for lots of blood, which I definitely wasn’t.