REVIEW: Iron Man 3

Posted on May 18, 2013 by Uncle Critic

Iron Man 3Iron Man 3 the movie that everyone has seen and no one can agree on. It seems people are all over the place on this one, they like it, they hate it, they’re indifferent on it, and it’s kind of hard to gauge it if you’re thinking about seeing it. Shane Black is directing this one, all the familiar faces are back in their normal roles and this time we’ve got Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin. A big complaint I’ve been hearing about this one is Tony Stark spends way too much time outside of the suit, and that is a totally valid argument. I think there’s about fifteen minutes of ‘Iron Man’ in this movie. But it’s not a ruiner, Robert Downey Jr. is a great actor and he carries this without any iron suited help. Basically Tony got drunk and blew someone off way back when, now that person has turned into a villain and is out for revenge. They’re attacking Tony at his home and have bigger super villain type plans they’re also trying to get through. There’s really not a ton to say about this movie, if you’ve seen the other two you kind of know what you’re getting into and if you liked the other movies you should go see this one. If you haven’t seen an Iron Man yet, it’s not the best idea to start with the third in this trilogy, go see the other two first, they’re much better films. That being said I did enjoy this movie, it was pretty good, worth going to see for sure if you liked the pervious Iron Man movies, just don’t be expecting this to be the best of the three.

Get Iron Man 3 from Amazon HERE

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REVIEW: Dredd 3D

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Uncle Critic

It’s been seventeen years since we’ve seen Judge Dredd on the big screen and it looked to be a push in terms of the two movies. On the positive side we don’t have the comic relief of Rob Schneider, though on the negative side we don’t have Sylvester Stallone, both are rated R and have a pretty good amount of violence. Turns out my pre-movie thoughts matched up pretty well with my post movie thoughts. What you get out of Dredd 3D is exactly what you expect. Lots of violence, tons of gun fire, some good old action fun with none of the shortcomings of the first movie. While I do miss the Stallone-ness of not having Sly in the movie Karl Urban did do a very good job, much better than I expected. The only other characters of note were rounded out pretty well as well. Olivia Thirlby took the role of Judge Anderson and Lena Headey was on the villain side of things as Ma-Ma. Dredd takes the rookie Anderson out to see if she can cut the mustard of being a Judge, after responding to a flag of three homicides things quickly escalate once they find the prime suspect. Ma-Ma locks down the block tower and calls for the Judge’s heads something that I couldn’t help but have flashback to The Raid with. Sadly there isn’t all the asskicking of The Raid but there is plenty of other things to keep you having fun, people being throw two hundred stories and an exploding head to name a few. My only real complaint about this movie was the use of 3D. I’m not a 3D hater, I know many of people that are but I actually like it. However I do recognize the difference between good use of 3D and poor use of 3D, this movie was definitely the later. 3D is in the fucking title and we get this second rate bullshit, I will give them credit for not using any of the eye rolling stuff shooting right out of the screen at you that is a sure sign of bad 3D but they just didn’t use it to the full advantage as far as making the film look better. This could have been a 2D movie with no consequences; hell it most likely would have been even more enjoyable that way, too bad it doesn’t appear that that’s going to be a choice for this release. All in all it was a pretty fun movie that I’d say go see for sure if you like action flicks. I can’t really say much as far as the movie being true to the comic because if I’m honest the Judge Dredd comics could never really hold my interest for very long.

Get Dredd from Amazon HERE

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REVIEW: The Amazing Spider-Man

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Uncle Critic

In advance I’m going to say here I’ll try to keep my comparisons to the pervious Spider-Man movies to a minimum…however it’s going to happen. So let’s get one out of the way right off the bat, The Amazing Spider-Man’s biggest problem is that Spider-Man was made in 2002. I really liked this movie, but I felt pretty bored watching it. There was a ‘oh hum seen it before’ feeling throughout most of it, if Spider-Man hadn’t been made ten years ago I’d have probably loved this one. The problem with rebooting a movie so soon after a series is made is its just rehashed things that are still fresh in your head, do we really need another origin story again? The answer is a strong no. Most of your people going to watch these movies know what’s up, there’s no need to go through it all again. Now let’s get negative for a bit, the things I didn’t like about this. There was no “With great power comes great responsibility” line, this might seem trivial to a lot of people, but it’s pretty fucking iconic. There was no J. Jonah Jameson; this seems silly that he wasn’t even in there for a second, of course as far as I’m concerned you’d have to cast J.K. Simmons again, because he is Jameson. And lastly Peter Parker is REALLY bad at keeping his secret identity. People complained about this in the last series but I think Spider-Man runs around without his mask way more in this movie than the previous three combined, not to mention he tells Gwen Stacy the first chance he gets, it’s pretty ridiculous. On the plus side there was a lot of good. Andrew Garfield seemed way more ‘Spider-Man’ than Tobey Maguire, their Peter Parkers are pretty even though. The spider suit in this one I actually liked better, it wasn’t as close to the comic as the previous but it didn’t have that annoying silver webbing standing out as before. There were some changes to the origin but nothing really that I couldn’t look past (though the whole Gwen knows thing was really annoying). As far as the cast goes, as I said before Andrew Garfield is pretty comparable to Tobey Maguire. Rhys Ifans did a great Connors, though I did like Dylan Baker as well in that role, I’d call that even. The look of the Lizard was pretty bad. Denis Leary did a great Captain Stacy, Martin Sheen was a great Uncle Ben and Chris Zylka was a near perfect Flash Thompson. Sally Field was a decent Aunt May but I liked Rosemary Harris way better. And finally we come to Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy. Emma Stone is Gwen Stacy, she’s picture fucking perfect in this role, in fact I’d say her filling the role of Gwen Stacy is the best thing about the entire movie, it’s as good as a match up as J.K. Simmons and J. Jonah Jameson. So I guess in closing here, decent flick, I’d even say really good, but kind of old news at this point. There were things I liked about it and things that annoyed me (a lot of each I held off on other wise I’d be writing all week) but good effort. I wish they’d have just continued from the point where Parker had powers instead of starting from the beginning again but what are you gonna do? If you’re a Spider-Man super fan you’re going to see this regardless of what you’re told, if you’re not a Spider-Man superfan I say check this out if you get a chance but it’s no must see movie for you if you’ve already seen the Sam Raimi one.

Get The Amazing Spider-Man from Amazon HERE

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REVIEW: The Avengers

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Uncle Critic

Let me start this thing off on the wrong foot, I’ve never been a big fan of The Avengers comics, or any of the ‘super teams’ in general. However I’m a man that has to watch every comic movie, and of the recent batch of Marvel movies they’ve been doing pretty good. I didn’t have high hopes for this but I figured there was a chance this could be really good. Joss Whedon was the writer and director for this, he’s also the guy that wrote and directed a bunch of stuff that nerds like, none of which I’ve been into or seen do it doesn’t mean much to me personally. I guess I’d say he did a decent job with this, nothing mind blowing, but serviceable. The movie is The Avengers so I guess the best way to do this is just to break it down, person by person. Clark Gregg was pretty enjoyable in this, even though his role was pretty small; mostly he delivered some needed subtle comedy into the movie. Gwyneth Paltrow was here as Pepper Potts, for some reason I’ve had a lot of questions about how she was in this one, really though it was a non factor. I think she was in the movie for a total of five minutes. A nice surprise, at least for me, was Cobie Smulders (most people will recognize her as Robin from How I Met Your Mother) in the movie, she was just a SHIELD agent but she had a pretty decent role. I thought she was great; it was nice to see her in something else for a change. For our villain in the film we had Tom Hiddleston filling the shoes of Loki, he did a great job, if there were any short comings in the movie it wasn’t from the bad guy side. I thought he was great with the right amounts of serious bad ass, and maybe slight 80′s and comic book cheese. Before I get to the main team of the movie there’s one more I think I have to call out, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. I assume most people loved him as Fury, personally I wasn’t feeling it. I haven’t really been a fan of the Ultimate Universe version of Nick Fury in general, since they were going for that it seems Sam did a great job for what they were going for, but for me this version of Nick Fury is kind of bland. I much prefer him as the grizzled veteran than the slimy spy you can’t really trust. Now onto the core team. Robert Downey Jr. did a great job as Tony Stark/Iron Man once again, I never cared for the Iron Man comics but loved both movies and Robert Downey Jr. is a big part of that. He’s also a big part of everything that was right with this movie, pretty much every moment he’s on screen is a good one. Chris Evans was once again Steve Rogers/Captain America, much like Iron Man I never liked the Captain America comics however I’m a giant fan of the movie, it’s my favorite of the new batch of Marvel movies, however he doesn’t work quite as well in The Avengers. It’s no fault of Chris’, he does the roll well, he’s even got a joke or two, but if anything this movie showed why I don’t really like Captain America. He’s pretty pointless next to some of these guys, he’s the goodie do what you’re told, line up; maybe throw an order or two around soldier. All in all he’s a pretty thin character, he doesn’t add a whole lot to the movie, and I also really hated the costume change they did for the Captain. Mark Ruffalo played Bruce Banner/The Hulk in this movie. The third person to play the Hulk in just as many movies. This was probably the one I was most worried about, I’ve always liked the Hulk, hated the first movie, and really liked the second one. I like Mark Ruffalo, but he had big shoes to fill because Edward Norton did a great job last time. That being said, I thought Mark Ruffalo was the best Bruce Banner/Hulk to date. Not only that but there’s no question that he was the best part of this entire movie, if there is a reason to go see The Avengers, it’s The Hulk. Chris Hemsworth was back as Thor, this was no better or worse than the Thor movie, take that as you’d like to. For me this means he delivered a pretty solid performance but there wasn’t anything really impressive here. Jeremy Renner played Hawkeye, I was actually kind of in high spirits for this one, Hawkeye is pretty much a poor man’s Green Arrow, and for the most part doesn’t do a whole lot, however I like Jeremy Renner a lot. Unfortunately even Jeremy couldn’t make Hawkeys badass; he’s about as yawnable as he is on the comic pages here. Finally there was Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow; everything with her was pretty incredible. I can generally take or leave Black Widow but Scarlett played this more than perfectly, not to mention she filled out that suit pretty well. Overall the movie was alright, it wasn’t amazing by any means, however it didn’t suck either, the movie had some good gags and some decent action. There’s no question that Black Widow, Iron Man and The Hulk carry this movie, chances are coming out of it you’ll be talking about The Hulk and nothing else, because that’s really about all there is to talk about. If you’re a super Marvel or comic fan I’d say to go see this, though you probably will be planning to do so anyway, however I’d say don’t get your hopes up too high. And with every Marvel movie, stick around after the credits, even though the movie is pretty average, there’s something to make you smile for the future at the end.

Get Marvel’s The Avengers from Amazon HERE

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REVIEW: Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

Posted on February 18, 2012 by Uncle Critic

First let me get the standard comic book/first movie stuff out of the way by saying I like the comic character of Ghost Rider but I’ve always through the comics weren’t that good. And with that knowledge I did like the first movie, I thought it was about as good as they could do given the source material. Fast forward five years and we get a sequel, which surprised me because most people seemed to have hated the first one. It turns out this new movie is pretty fucking awful. First let’s start with Nicolas Cage. A lot of people complained that he was too old the first time around, and that he’s not a good actor and all that. I think Nick Cage can be a really good actor when he wants to be, he can also be a dumb cheesy one when he wants to, and he really turns up the cheese in this, like way past the red. The age thing didn’t bother me the first time around but it’s been a few more years and a few more bad movies and it’s pretty apparent now that he is too old to be playing Johnny Blaze, its true and it really sticks out in this movie. The next big problem is the direction in the movie. I guess they decided they couldn’t make a good Ghost Rider movie so they may as well make an over the top cheesy one, or attempt to. A lot of the movie seems like it’s trying to be like the Crank movies, which makes sense because it’s the same director as those movies. I didn’t care for the Crank movies because I thought they were too over the top and cartoony, Ghost Rider seems to go for that but pulls it back too much so it’s like a poor imitation. It goes over the top to the point to fuck things up but not far enough to make the movie fun. Another problem is the basic story. There’s a child that’s the son of Satan that forces of evil are trying to get so the big guy can have a new body, his mother and a lot of people on the side of God are not too cool with this idea so they are trying to protect the child. It’s kind of ‘The Golden Child’ meets ‘Terminator 2′, which comes really close to turning into nap time for me. There seems to be no real redeemable qualities to the movie, I mean the effects of the rider look great and all but one affect can’t redeem an entire shitty movie. And while I’m on it there’s the scene where Johnny makes the deal with the devil that they keep flashing back to about five thousand times, and it’s not even the same way as in the first movie. This whole movie is just a giant waste of time for everyone involved, the film makers and the viewers. Another giant failure of a comic book movie.

Get Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance from Amazon HERE

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