This wasn’t my first choice (or ever my second or third for that matter) to see in the theater, but a buddy of mine I haven’t seen in a while wanted to go see this. Without a doubt, The Clone Wars would be very cool if we saw it on TV, however its not feature quality in both the writing or the production values.

The story has very clear spots where you can tell there’s supposed to be a commercial break or an new episode ends. They even introduced two more characters close to the end that really came out of nowhere. Again, that wouldn’t have been a problem if those two characters, one a familiar face and the other is Jabba the Hutt’s gay uncle (I shit you not), if this was an episode on TV, but as it’s presented here its very awkward.

Who would have guessed that the best love story of the year would feature robots instead of humans? I sure wouldn’t have, yet it’s not that I doubted Pixar could pull it off, I just wasn’t really sure what WallE was about. It wasn’t until recently that we found out WallE was about a robot trying to find his companion, but I never expected it to be a full blown love story.

WallE starts out simple enough, with the robot going about his normal routine of cleaning up what is essentially a post apocalyptic earth. The first 20 or so minutes doesn’t feature a lick of dialogue, yet the audience can’t help but fall in love with WallE almost immediately. I could easily have watched an entire movie of WallE just going about his normal day because Pixar has made it that interesting. WallE’s opening moments captivate the audience in much the same way that Tom Hanks does during Cast Away. You simply can’t take your eyes off of him.

After nearly twenty years, another installment of the Indiana Jones series has been released into theaters. I have very vivid memories of seeing ads in the newspaper for Raiders of the Lost Ark and begging my Dad to take us. For some reason I just knew it was going to be awesome. Today, the ending of Raiders looks almost silly with clearly wax sculpture faces melting away under a dash of mystical light that would eventually cause Belloq’s head to explode, but back in the early 80’s to a seven year old it was scary as hell. Less than a decade later, I would eventually see two other installments which further cemented my love of The Man In The Hat.

Needless to say, I had high expectations from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Last night, I went to the theater to see what Spielberg and crew came up with. I went into the theater last night pumped-up and excited, and I left feeling the same exact way. I seriously left like a kid on Christmas Eve. Despite it’s sci-fi under pinning, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull fits happily into the series and does not disappoint. This review is spoilerific, so if you haven’t seen it yet…well, you’ve been warned.

I came home from work today and after eating dinner ran a few races in Mario Kart Wii. I’m finally on the 150cc circuit, and it’s proving to be worthy of the Mario Kart title as it seems every time I play it now I become enraged by an onslaught of Red and Blue Shells at the finish line. I found little solace online either as for some reason or other every one there was destroying me, too.

In an effort to keep myself from throwing my Wii Remote out of the window, I popped Chicken Little into the ol’ PS3 for some Blu-Ray goodness. It’s been sitting on my shelf at least since last September, but I always forget I have it there. It had a decent idea at its core, but it somehow got off track in multiple parts throughout the movie. I feel like the committee that was running Disney Feature Animation at the time was too busy trying to cram in as many pop-culture references as possible, and I’m sorry but the pig character has to go. I don’t even remember his name, but I do know that he was Chicken Little’s equivalent of Jar-Jar Binks. Every word out of his mouth made me cringe.

Last night I was finally able to catch a showing of Persepolis at the Angelika Film Center in NYC. It’s an animated film based on an autobiographical short series of black and white comic books by Marjane Satrapi. The film faithfully retains Satrapi’s graphical style and charm, and to put it mildly it was awesome.

Persepolis follows Marjane as she grows up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. She bares witness to the crumbling of her society as radical Islam slowly takes hold of its people and begins to turn women into objects. At a young age, her parents send her abroad to that she may study in safety as Iran’s war with Iraq intensifies during the early 80’s. In Europe, she is confronted with racial prejudice and fear because of her Iranian upbringing. She eventually makes her return to Iran where life has not gotten any easier.

Caught the last 45 minutes of this on cable last night. It’s literally been ages since I’ve seen this train wreck, and watching it again now proves that it’s even worse than I thought. The original film, while having its fair share of cheese, is still a worthwhile movie to check out. The creators of the franchise had absolute control over the original movie and I think it showed. In part 2 it’s pretty obvious that the suits got a hold of this franchise and decided to make an extremely manufactured film. The entire Vanilla Ice segment is painful to watch. It really is the first Jump the Shark moment in Turtle history. The Turtles themselves not only look terrible (how can the costumes actually downgrade with the sequel? And to think they get worse looking in part 3) but don’t say or do anything worthwhile through the duration of the movie.

Donatello in particular looks like Kiddy Kong, with this big stupid jaw, and at one point he’s upset because he finds out that the turtles were created by mistake. He then boo hoos to Master Splinter saying he thought maybe they were a little more special than he originally believed. Donetello would never question science, and he would understand completely that they’re a genetic mutation that was nothing more than a freak accident. I could see Mikey bitching about this since he’s the dumbest turtle of the group, but regardless, what the hell is the big let down? Freak accident or not, they are special because how many fucking turtles are walking around kicking ass? Four. So he better shut his flipping pie hole about being special. What a worthless plot point in a worthless movie.

Cloverfield had a lot to prove to the public today. It needed to prove that it was what it claimed it was. It needed to prove that the monster was worth waiting for. It needed to prove that it could make monster movies cool again. It needed to prove that it was worth the hype. After just getting in from seeing the film, I can say that Cloverfield was indeed worth all the buzz.

The most important thing about this movie is that it knows what it is. With a brief run time that falls under 90 minutes, it’s clear that the movie knows it isn’t much more than a monster flick. We begin the movie with a party for a dude named Rob who apparently just got a sweet gig over in Japan (a nod to Godzilla obviously). At this point, the camera is being operated by Rob’s best friend named Hud, whom is likely named after HUD, or Head-Up Display. There couldn’t be a more fitting name, as the whole movie is basically shown from his point of view. Occasionally the camera will switch hands, but it remains with Hud for the duration of the film. Once we get a bit of back story on some of the characters, there’s a loud thud, and the shit hits the fan from there on out.

Today Phil and I caught an afternoon showing of Ratatouille. I’ve been highly anticipating this film from the folks over at Pixar for some time, however I was trying not to get too worked up over it. I didn’t want to set my bar too high. Instead, I wanted to go into it with a fresh eye and see it for what it is and not for what I imagined it to be.

I’m very happy to say that Brad Bird and the excellent team of artists and animators at Pixar have more than delivered.

Spiderman 2 will arguably go down as the greatest comic book movie ever made. That said, how could Spiderman 3 possibly live up to or be on par with the bar that was set? With all the mixed reactions from reviewers and colleagues alike, and what seemed like way too many characters and sub plots, I didn’t go into the movie nearly as pumped as I was a few days ago. However, I came out of the theater just as excited as when I saw the sequel.

Without ruining much, Spiderman 3 begins with Peter Parker much more jolly than he has ever been in his life. Not only is he now in a relationship with the girl of his dreams, but he has also come to accept being Spiderman. In fact, being Spiderman has actually started to go to his head a little. Mary Jane on the other hand, can’t quite seem to deal with Peter’s new found confidence, and also has a set of her own problems.

If you read our Ninja Turtle feature from a few days ago, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of the Turtles and was pumped up to see TMNT no matter how it turned out. I managed to squeeze in a viewing during what was a rather busy day, and the good news is that TMNT is the follow up to the original movie that we have all been waiting for over the last 17 years.

Similar to how Bryan Singer handled Superman Returns as not only a follow up to the original Superman movies but also a reboot of the franchise, TMNT follows the same path. The events from the first three movies have all taken place (you can spot some evidence of all three movies with a keen eye) making this the fourth film in the saga. The movie begins with a quick history of the Turtles and who they are and how they have defeated the Shredder. Fast forward to present day, and we come to find out the things aren’t going so well for the brothers four. Leonardo has been sent away by Splinter, but has taken longer than expect to return home. Michelangelo has gone the route of the Ghostbusters after they were put “out of business,” Donatello’s genius has been reduced to being tech support for computer users, and Raphael has decided to take up the cape and cowl. That said, the premise of the entire movie is to reunite the Turtles as a team, and as a family.