Super Troopers (R)

This movie is amazing. Its crude but amazing. I loved this movie from the moment I watched it. Absolutely amazing.

What makes it so amazing, they have cop fighting about a "liter of cola" instead of a medium or large. Eating bars of soap. Good cop/bad cop things. Just over the top amazingness. There are all kinds of gags here and there, its just wonderful.

The plot? A bunch of Vermont cops are losing their jobs and they go undercover to figure out whats up. Its a gang of dirty cops vs. a group of dumb cops. If you haven't seen it and like crude (think South Park) style humor, you'll love this movie!

Surrogates (PG-13)

Surrogates is one of those movies that when I saw the trailer I thought "this looks interesting". It was. It was a decent movie. Thankfully to its credit it is only 90 minutes long, which suits the movie well.

The premise of the movie is that everyone uses a surrogate robot to interact in the world. The people who control them stay at home isolated and control the robots remotely. Stuff goes down and Bruce Willis' character has to go out as himself without a robot.

The premise was good enough, but the execution and storyline just didn't really carry me throughout the film. It starts off strong, but then kinda struggles to get through the second and third acts of the movie. Don't get me wrong, there is a "twist" ending, that you'll see from a mile away, but the ending is well done and might be worth the 90 minute wait just to watch how its done.

Oceans 13 (PG-13)

Last night we watched Oceans 13. Very good movie, very enjoyable. For those that have followed this storyline, there was the original remake for Oceans 11, then the terrible follow up of 12. This one luckily leaves the crap from 12 behind and goes back to the good storyline of the first movie.

In the story a new character played by Al Pacino screws over Reuben (Elliot Gould) out of his land and money. In doing so Reuben becomes sick and bed ridden. The team of Clooney and Pitt get the gang back together to get even with Pacino's character, even involving the former target of their crimes.

What made this movie enjoyable was its quick wit, good storyline, and good characters. I mean, by this time, we all know the characters, and we know what to expect from them. However, the movie is still able to give you new information about these old characters, enough to get you re-engaged in the storyline. There is plenty of twists and setups just as you would expect as well. I'd definitely recommend this movie to anyone looking for a good 2 hours of good film to watch.

Wall-E (G)

This past weekend Jenn and I took our nephews to see Wall-E. I had been waiting to go see it, hoping that they hadn't seen it yet. I mean, if you're going to go see a new Pixar movie, shouldn't it be with kids!?

So we went, and it was a very good, fun, enjoyable movie. The premise is that of a little robot, named Wall-E, who is working through Earth's trash while its inhabitants are out in space waiting for the place to get cleaned up. We find out during the movie, that this process has been going on for 700 years!

Many reviews that read about this movie talked about the lack of dialog in the beginning of the movie. From my perspective, yes, there is a lack of human to human dialog at the beginning, but in no way does it detract from the movie. In some ways it even adds. Its neat to see some ways of non-verbal communication and see the ways you can communicate information without typical words.

The movie itself is quite amusing with the typical good story that Pixar is now renowned for coming up with. One of my favorite parts, I'll list two here, are such: first, when Wall-E boots up, he boots up with the Mac OS boot sound, very funny to me. Second, when you see the people in space, there is a comment that there may be some slight bone loss due to prolonged space flight, and then it shows a graph of the people who went from fit, to extremely unfit, again, very funny.

Overall this movie was great. Great for kids. Great for adults. So get out there and see it!

Little Miss Sunshine (R)

So I figure after the last two posts where I didn't really care for the movie, I would do better to post about a movie that I did enjoy. Little Miss Sunshine is one of those movies that when it came out, people were quietly talking about, but nobody in the mass media was talking about it at all.

I feel like I heard very little about this movie, but it had this underground buzz about it, which made me tape it and want to watch it. I was certainly very pleasantly surprised by the movie. In the few previews I did see, its seemed as is the preview makers were trying their best to capitalize off of the presence and screen power of Steve Carell. While he's in the movie, he's certainly not the only thing worth watching.

The story in brief is that a little girl gets to participate in the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant, and the trip that her family makes to get her there. Of course, there are bumps along the way, and other such hardships. But eventually she makes it to the show, and does her own unique performance (that she's been practicing with grandpa).

For me, what really made this movie so enjoyable was the dialog, and the character development. The movie was easy going, but at the same time was able to convey the realism of life, in that just because you want to do something, to get there can be very difficult and hard sometimes. Carell is wonderful in the movie, but I think the real star is the little girl Abigail Breslin who is basically the lead. She is wonderful and very lovable in a quirky girl kinda way.

My final recommendation - definitely worth watching. At this point you'll probably have to rent it, but if you wait another 6-12 months it will probably be on cable!

28 Weeks Later (R)

This movie was much better than its predecessor. The things that made it better are actually pretty simple, better action and more/better dialog.

This movie is set 4 months after the outbreak of a zombie creating pandemic across England (maybe farther reaching, but its hard to determine based on the two movies). The U.S. military has stepped in and his helped to rebuild a community in London. People are checked for infection prior to being allowed in and then remain to repopulate. However, just as you'd expect, someone gets through, makes one dude get infected, and then BAM! plague all over again!

This movie had some really good action/gory blood zombie eating scenes which for me made the movie much better than the previous movie. In one shot that I thought was really cool, there is a man driving a helicopter attempting to pick up the few non-infected people running for their lives, and to stave them off while the others run, he uses the helicopter blades to chop up the zombies as they continuously run into it. Awesome scene!

As for movie quality, its not the greatest. But its certainly better than 28 Weeks Later. If you're into zombie flicks or gory movies, then its work checking out, otherwise I wouldn't bother. I watched both this and 28 Weeks Later upon the recommendation of my co-workers. I'd say that unless you're in a similar situation, just stay away.

28 Days Later (R)

Awful. This movie stunk. Boring, uninteresting movie. Thats the best way I could describe this movie.

Why was it so bad? For those that don't know the story, basically a dude wakes up in a hospital 28 days after a pandemic has broken out in England. There really isn't anyone left, and so he sets out from the hospital. Along the way he finds two people who take him in and help him. Then those three become two (one dies) and they move on to find a dad and daughter hold up in building. Once together, they move on to a compound of military people keeping out the infected. I'll stop the story there, as to not ruin it.

What made it so bad is that it was slow. There wasn't much dialog, and when there was dialog I just didn't care for it. My co-workers slam me because I don't hate on "I Am Legend" even though its basically the same movie, with even less dialog. However you can look for that review later. To sum up this junk fest, its a zombie movie, but horribly boring and slow. It is somewhat artsy if you're into that kind of thing. I will say however that the sequel "28 Weeks Later" was much better, and you can read that review in the near future.

My final recommendation - don't watch this movie!