Review: Green Lantern

Green Lantern is quite the mess at times, but the fantasy elements of the film, along with the, mostly, stellar special effects and 3D, make for a film worth checking out if interested.

This is an origin story for the DC Comics property and all of the classic tropes will be found here.  A talented, young, and attractive Hal Jordan is a top notch fighter pilot with a couple demons to battle and lessons to be learned.  When the greatest Green Lantern, Abin Sur, is attacked by the Green Lantern Corps long thought lost enemy, Parallax, Sur rushes to Earth to let his ring select its replacement.  The ring selects Jordan and he is thrust into a battle to protect the Universe, a battle between Will and Fear, with Earth possibly being threatened by Parallax next.

The film is not without its problems, and while I enjoyed watching it, I could easily rip it apart in more than a couple areas.  First, the score is horrible.  The music sounds like it was a reject score from an 80′s fantasy movie with bad guitar and all.  The mixing of the score feels really hidden as well, never coming to the forefront and hiding away like it should.  The scores from Thor and X-Men helped elevate their material, whereas Lantern’s noticeably distracted me from the film.  In other words, never underestimate the effect the score can have on a picture.

[Read more...]

Now Playing Review – Green Lantern

As a character the Green Lantern doesn’t have as large of a fan base as the big names like Batman, Superman, and Spider-man.  Heck, a lot of people who don’t proudly call themselves nerdy aren’t even aware of him.  Luckily for the more obscure superheroes, the film swell for the genre is bringing more attention to the lesser known.  Too bad first impressions are everything in this business.

Similar to what feels like at least a fourth of films today, Green Lantern opens in space, presenting just how large of a world this version of the universe is, with an ample mythology in tow.  Think on the scale of Star Wars or Mass Effect, if not larger.  Long story short, we are not alone and Earth is far from the only inhabited planet in the galaxy, unbeknownst to humanity.  What better than a world devouring evildoer to fill the population in on this little fact?  Good thing there is a group of intergalactic crime-fighters created long ago to counterbalance this evil.  Known as the Green Lantern Corps, these protectors use the harnessed power of will to create anything that their mind can envision. [Read more...]

Review: Knight and Day

Knight and Day finds Tom Cruise in a familiar role, super spy, but to keep things fresh he adds the always fun Cameron Diaz to a solid and funny script that while cheats a few too many time provides a great character for Cruise too embody and for us to enjoy.

Things open in an Omaha (?) airport where both Roy (Cruise) and June (Diaz) are both trying to catch a plane to Boston and they not so coincidentally keep pumping into each other.  After June is kept off Roy’s and her flight for being over booked, she is allowed on after a phone call from the government who is tracking Roy’s movements.  Here is the catch, the plane is more or less empty and Roy seems very on edge with his few fellow passengers.  After some shenanigans on the plane and beyond, Roy and June end up avoiding the authorities as Roy whips them around the world in the hopes of saving a top secret mission.

[Read more...]

Review: An Education

An Education is one of those little treasures of a film that sneaks up on you in not only the quality of the overall film but by the incredible turn by its star Carey Mulligan.
Jenny is a seventeen year old school girl in 1960’s England and is set on getting into Oxford for seemingly everyone around her. Bright, pretty, and cultured well beyond her age, Jenny seems to have a pretty good head on her shoulders even if she thinks all the work she goes through is a bit much. Enter David, a late twenties/thirty something man who spots Jenny on the corner in the rain and offers her cello a ride as he is fond of music and would hate to see it ruined and wouldn’t dare expect Jenny to accept a ride with a stranger. She eventually hops in and the two hit it off quite well which leads to David and Jenny both looking for this relationship to go somewhere further. Jenny’s parents are loving and demanding and are a bit taken aback by the prospects of David, but before they barely realize it he smooth talks his way on to Jenny’s arm and into the night for a show with his friends. The two’s relationship grows and progress with the utmost respect to Jenny’s wishes and an unlikely romance begins to bud as Jenny begins to doubt her seemingly chosen path to attend Oxford. [Read more...]

Review: Year of the Dog

Mike White adds director to his repertoire with this kind of heavy comedy that walks a fine line of being light hearted and fun, but is ultimately a very sad and tragic story. After having fairly good success with his writing career, White steps behind the camera for his latest script, and the results are a mixed bag. Everything is very static with the camera and is just kind of boring, and I am not one to point out a lazy camera, but I really noticed it, and 2/3 of the movie is just straight on shots with nothing fancy, which is fine, but his frames were just so uninteresting it was moderately distracting at time. [Read more...]