Review: Happy Feet

Went out to see the IMAX version of Happy Feet tonight. Cute movie with some great tunes.

Cartoon musical I guess you could call it. The animation was great (even better on IMAX) and the songs and dancing were terrific. Robin Williams’ characters were hilarious as were the crew of rock penguins. I think they kind of stole the show once you met them. Elijiah Wood, I don’t think I liked so much in this movie. He just didn’t seem penguin-y enough. There was even an environmental message squished in there, but it was more of a side plot and largely took back seat to the singing and dancing.

Skip the regular theater. Go see it on IMAX. It’s fantastic there.

4 stars out of 5.

Review: X-Men 3: The Last Stand

Went to see X-Men 3 last night. While my feelings were mixed, overall I enjoyed the movie. It was mostly non-stop action with plenty of CG effects. Those who are easily offended by deviations from the established canon will probably be better off skipping this movie because there are alot of them, and some of them are pretty major.

Lots of new characters that should be familliar to X-Men fans are introduced although not in any meaningful role. They appear more as cameos than anything else which left me wanting more. It was like the writers were trying to say to X-Men fans, “Look at these characters from the comic. See, we’ve actually read it, but what do we do with them?”

The Good

  • Finally get to see Storm kick some ass
  • Get to see Wolverine really kick some ass
  • Kitty Pride and Colossus have a more prominent role
  • The Danger Room
  • Beast

The Bad

  • Sometimes a little too much going on that distracts from the main plot
  • Warren Worthington/Angel
  • Magneto’s Brotherhood was more like a camp of brigands than anything else

Stick around for the end of the credits

3.5 stars out of 5.

More penguins!

Saw Madagascar over the weekend, and I gotta say, the penguins were my favourite. I wanted to see more of them. They should seriously get their own spin-off movie.

Definitely more of a kid’s movie than Incredibles or the Shreks. The movie had it’s moments and was definitely enjoyable. A little humour for the big kids as well. I thought it was worth seeing in the theater.

Thought the chimps were pretty funny too.

The Sith are here! The Sith are here!

Finally saw the last installment of Star Wars last night. It was definitely much cooler than the previous two (way way better than Phantom Menace). I think this prequel series could have been much better without Episode 1, starting the prequel trilogy with Attack of the Clones and with more development of Skywalker’s corruption to the dark side, expanding Revenge of the Sith into two movies. It just happened way to fast I think. I mean really, one minute he’s full of anguish over watching Siddious throwing Windu out the window, and the next minute he’s kneeling at Siddious’ feet pledging his loyalty. I suppose you could say that Siddious was taking advantage of Skywalker’s anguish and exerting some of his mind control powers and to me parts of that scene made me think this might have been happening. Still, Skywalker turning to the Dark Side needed a little more development and drama I think. And why didn’t the Jedi Council do more to intervene when Yoda saw Skywalker heading to the Dark Side? Granted if they had, that probably would have ruined the story. But for all the talk of Skywalker being the ‘Chosen One’, the Jedi Council didn’t really do much to prevent his slide to the Dark Side.

FX were very cool, and lots of good light saber action. Would have liked to see more wide shots and fewer closeups of Samuel Jackson in the Windu/Siddious battle
7/10 overall, and 10/10 compared to the previous two installments.

The Incredibles

Went to see The Incredibles last night. I think it’s probably one of the best and most adult oriented movies out of Pixar to date. Pixar’s other movies I think have all been targeted primarily towards kids, with a good dose of humour for us big kids too. The Incredibles to me feels like it’s targeted more towards an older audience, with plenty of humour for the big kids. There’s a good bit of superhero violence in the movie, so probably not the best movie for small kids.

As usual, the animation is excellent and I thought the movie was hilariously funny. I think if Frozone (voiced by Samuel L. Jackson) had played a bigger role in the film, he could have easily stolen a good part of the movie. One scene in particular will remind anyone who’s seen it of Pulp Fiction.

Definitely one to add to the DVD collection when it comes out.

I wasn’t as impressed with the short film, Boundin’ that came before the movie. The best one to me is still For The Birds.

Elastagirl’s quite the hottie in that stretchy red outfit.