Review: Paul

Paul is a love letter to Spielberg and Lucas of the 70’s and 80’s with more references than you can shake a stick at in what is basically a giant geek road comedy that will work for film nerds and regular folk alike.

Greg Mottola takes Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s script (they also star) and almost perfectly captures the tone and film they are going for.  So much so that I don’t know how much better it could have been done if Frost and Pegg’s bud Edgar Wright had done it; that is high praise for Mottola.  The film follows a pair of Brit’s, Graeme and Clive, who come to comic-con before setting off on a great American UFO road trip in their RV.  When they witness a crash on the road, the pair goes to check it out only to discover an alien, Paul, who is on the run from authorities.  Graeme, Clive passed out, reluctantly agrees to hit the road with Paul and the trio head off to try and get Paul back to his people.

[Read more...]

Comic-Con International 2010 – My Experience in Nerd Heaven

A couple of weeks ago I excitedly told my aunt that I was going to Comic Con in a week, with a big ol’ smile on my face.  I didn’t really expect her to be jealous, but I was overly excited.  Then she asked if it was a gathering of comics or something.  As in comedians.  I then proceeded to try and explain that it was this really cool event that happens each year that has been taken over by Hollywood in the past decade or so.  Basically it has everything a nerd would desire to see, including comics, writers, artists, video games, tv shows, and movies.  I told her about the panels I was planning on sitting in on and some of the people that were scheduled to attend.  I was adamant about making her see how awesome it was, but she just didn’t get it.  Color me deflated.  Oh well, I guess Comic Con is just for certain people…

Like this girl:

[Read more...]

Rental Review – Year One

Year One takes a trip back to prehistoric times for its inspiration, but unfortunately no one remembered to pack the comedy.

Going off of survival of the fittest standards, Zed and Oh would have been bred out of the species a long time ago.  In a nutshell, they are lazy outcasts who are unskilled at both aspects of their hunter/gatherer way of life and cannot get the girls they want to “lay with.”  When the tribe has had enough of them following Zed’s light snack from the tree of knowledge, he is exiled from the tribe, with Oh choosing to accompany him because two people are just so much funnier than one.  Eventually they cross the distant mountain range from their home, discovering that it isn’t actually the end of the world and that there is a lot they were not aware of (insert random highlights from the bible and history books here). [Read more...]

Queue Review: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

The newest animated tale from Sony Pictures Animation is an entertaining and fun adaptation of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs that successfully appeals to all audiences but doesn’t do anything particularly special to launch itself into the upper echelon of animated works, especially this year.
Our story follows Flint Lockwood a loner scientist who has spent his whole life inventing little odds and ends to try and better his life and the worlds. His latest project turns water into any food you can imagine and is built with the hope that it will help his little island town have a variety of food options as they are left with nothing to eat but sardines as their economy struggles after the Sardine company that gave them purpose has shut down. When Flint unleashes the invention onto the world it shoots itself into the atmosphere and begins to cause a weather phenomenon where it rains whatever food Flint transmits to the machine. Giving him a brief bout of popularity the situation soon becomes dire as the fate of his town becomes at stake. [Read more...]

Review: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

The third film in the trilogy is superior to the awful second, but doesn’t have the heart and all around quality of the first film in the series; and it utilizes the use of 3-D fairly well in a couple of key action scenes.
Diego, Manny, and Sid are all living together in there own unique little herd among some of the other animals in the valley that are still hanging around after the last films inconsequential flood. Manny and Ellie, his mastodon companion, are now expecting and Diego is beginning to feel a little out of place with Manny settling down and the feeling that he is loosing his edge as a saber toothed tiger. Sid in the meanwhile discovers a set of eggs in a cave under an ice sheet the he accidentally broke throw. Sid’s desire to be a parent after seeing Manny’s happiness encourages him to hatch the eggs and it turns out that he has himself a set of three dinosaurs. Diego decides to head off on his own and leave the pack just before Sid’s newest children’s real mother shows up in the valley to take back her babies and in the process takes Sid back as well from where she came from. Manny, Ellie, Diego and company all decide to head after him into the cave and discover that there is a dinosaur jungle underneath the ice and valley they have been living on for years. Their adventure leads them into the path of Buck, a rouge weasel, and he promises to lead them along the path and help them avoid the threats that are inherent to the land. [Read more...]

Review: Adventureland

Greg Mottola’s follow up to Superbad shares little in common with that previous film, which isn’t a bad thing as this is an honest and sometimes sweet coming of age tale for a fresh college grad.
James has a plan. As his graduation present his parents are supposed to help fund his trip to Europe with friends, where he can finally lose his virginity, and then he will move to New York to attend an Ivy League school for graduate degree and everything will be peachy. Well upon graduation he discovers that his dad has been demoted and his parents can no longer float him along any more and that he must get a summer job. The only place that will hire him is the local dead end amusement park, Adventureland. James is stuck working the game booths for the course of the summer in which he meets a number of interesting individual, the most interesting being a cute fellow twenty something named Em. James and Em click and they begin hanging out quite a bit and eventually fall into a sort of pseudo relationship of sorts. Meanwhile, James bonds with Joel, a dorky fellow games worker and Connell the parks repair man who is also a fairly successful musician on the side, or so they say. As the summer goes on, we get to see the ups and downs of James and Em, James struggles with his affinity to fall in love, the comings and goings of the park, and the challenge of fighting his urge to get laid over his faithfulness to a relationship. [Read more...]

Review:Tropic Thunder

Ben Stiller returns to the director’s chair to direct this satirical farce on and gets pretty great results out of it.
The film opens with a number of faux trailers and commercials for the stars in the film and they are pretty funny, but I won’t spoil those here; but they aren’t quite as good as Grindhouse. We then open on the filming of a major battle scene before focusing on a touching moment between a dying “Foley” and “Sgt. Osiris”. Unfortunately, Tugg Speedman, the actor portraying Foley can’t cry on cue and they miss a big “one time” shot where they napalm the tree line behind all of the drama happening on screen. Cut to Access Hollywood who gives us a background on the film, it is based on a memoir of a man, the real Foley (Nick Nolte), who returned from a top secret suicide mission during the Vietnam War, it stars action superstar Tugg Speedman, comedy mega star Jeff Portnoy, and method award winner Kurt Lazarus. The film is way over budget, is being sloppily handled by a first time director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan), and is being over produced by the studio’s mega psychotic producer. [Read more...]

Review: Pineapple Express

Seth Rogen and James Franco star in a stoner/buddy/action/comedy that is usually fairly humorous, but drags at the end and maybe over stayed its welcome a bit too long.
Dale (Seth Rogen) is a process server, handing out subpoenas all day while intermittently getting high between stop to stop. Saul (James Franco) is Dale’s dealer of two months who spends his day watching two TV’s and getting high himself. After a recent stop to Saul’s, in which he and Dale had a bit of a bonding experience over his exclusive rights to the very good Pineapple Express weed, Dale is about to serve Ted Jones (Gary Cole) when he witness him murder and Asian man with the assistance of female cop Carol (Rosie Perez). Dale attempts to flee the scene, making a scene himself ramming into the cars around him, tossing his joint out the window and rushing to Saul’s for help. Jones finds the joint and is able to detect that it is Pineapple Express, hence sending his goons to Saul’s to figure out what just happened and to shut up who ever saw him. The odd couple gets bent out of shape on paranoia and flees into the woods as the try and figure out how they can track them with their ridiculous philosophies. [Read more...]

Review: Superbad

The most recent Apatow produced comedy continues the run of pretty good comedies by the fore mentioned comedy mastermind. Superbad revolves around the story of two seniors Evan and Seth who find the opportunity to possibly get laid at the last big high school party they will ever get to go to. Outcasts of the high school party scene, Seth and Evan are still no strangers to the cruder aspects of being a high school guy, drinking, porn, and pining over girls are all everyday traits for these two, who are sometimes joined by Fogell (or to later be known as McLovin). [Read more...]