Hugo

Hugo

Rating 3 out of 10

When I first saw the trailers for this movie I thought this was not for me.  Maybe a rental later, but not something I'd want to see.  Then I saw the great reviews and had a cold rainy day with nothing to do.  Thought I'd give it a chance.  Should have listened to my first thoughts.

This is a VERY slow moving movie that takes forever to get to the point.  I don't like movies where you have to wait more than an hour in before you find out what in the heck is going on.  This is like being trapped in a lecture on the early days of silent movies.  I know director Martin Scorsese has made some good movies in the past.  I just don't feel this is one of them.  The scenery was incredible.

The story is of a small boy who loses his father in early 1900's Paris.  He has only a sleazy uncle keeping him from going to the orphanage.  He lives in a clock tower in a busy train station.  He keeps the clocks running smoothly and takes food from the shops to get by.  There is a mean station officer who walks around with a doberman trying to catch him or any other orphan stealing.

His keepsake is a robot looking thing his father brought home from a museum. They worked on it together and he feels if he can get it working he will have a link to a father he misses greatly.  When he does get it working it ties him to a shop owner in the station.  The movie is two hours long and you are pushing ninety minutes in before you finally find out what the movie is about.

My fourteen year old HATED this movie.  Said it was the worst he has seen in years.  I'm not that strong against it, but did find it very dull.  If anyone see's this movie and likes it PLEASE email me.  I'd like to see if I'm missing something.  

The Muppets

The Muppets

Rating 7.5 out of 10

I have been a Muppet fan for a long time.  Back in my high school days (when dinosaurs roamed the earth) in rural Louisiana we got two tv stations on our barely color television.  NBC and NBC.  So pickin's were slim on what we wanted to watch that night.  The Muppets Show was a weekly treat.  Yes, I have Rainbow Connection on my iPod.  If you are not a Muppets fan you can take my review with a grain of salt.

The movie takes place (amazingly enough) in 2011.  The once famous Muppet Theater in Hollywood has fallen in disrepair and the Muppets have gone different directions.  An evil oil barren has plans to take over the theater and drill for oil (in downtown Hollywood?).  The Muppets have two weeks to raise $10 million to save the theater.

Yeah, I know plots are not big on Muppet movies.  It's the characters.  Kermit and the gang are back.  Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Fozzie Bear, Animal and the whole gang.  Is it strange that I found the blond singer in the Electric Mayhem band appealing?  Probably.

While Jason Segel and Amy Adams do a good job as the main humans in the film what is always the most entertaining in Muppets shows are the short cameos of well known stars.  We get plenty here.  From Jack Black to Emily Blunt to that lead singer guy in Foo Fighters and everyone in between.

If you ever enjoyed a Muppets Show you will like this movie.  I couldn't get the wife or fourteen year old son to go with me.  Their loss.  I had a great time.

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part I

Rating 7 out of 10

I started reading the Twilight books when my daughters and wife insisted.  I thought they were a little slow at times but fun.  Had enough fighting to keep my interest.  I thought the first movie was okay.  A little low budget looking.  Second movie was a little better and the third was better yet.  I would say Breaking Dawn Part 1 is the best of the bunch.

I don't guess you have to have seen the first three movies to enjoy Breaking Dawn.  It would definitely help though. In this movie the still human Bella is getting married to the girls favorite vampire, Edward.  As a man I think a tad more of the movie was spent on the wedding.  My daughter thought maybe not enough.  Bella and Ed go to a romantic Brazilian island for their honeymoon and do what people do on their honeymoon.

This produces a baby kicking around in Bella's belly.  Turns out while getting pregnant on your honeymoon is rarely a good thing when the daddy is a vampire it's a very bad thing.  The baby is killing the mom day by day.  To make it worse the local werewolves are upset with the vampires for breaking their treaty and feel all bloodsuckers must die.  Luckily the one werewolf that loves Bella is out to protect them.  Of course he had to take his shirt off and flex his pecs mostly every time on screen.

The wolf scenes and action is pretty good.  As I said maybe too much wedding but nothing this man couldn't handle.  I left the theater looking forward to Part II.

Puss in Boots

Puss in Boots

Rating 6.5 out of 10

I liked the first two Shrek movies alot.  I liked the way they mixed in plenty of adult humor so us big boys would enjoy it as much as kids.  I thought the addition of Puss the sword swinging cat was funny.  The trailers for Puss in Boots looked funny to me.

Puss is once again voiced by Antonio Banderas who is perfect for this feline.  His partner in crime is Kitty Soutpaws voiced by the always hot Salma Hayek and Humpty Dumpty voiced by Zach Galiflanakis.  The animation is first rate.

I would have seen this earlier but I had to find a small child to go with me so I didn't look like the creepy old guy in the cartoon theater by myself.  My beautiful two year old granddaughter Delilah to the rescue.  I believe it was her first movie ever and both parents and myself were uncertain how she would react.  Just in case I bought a medium popcorn and a bag of Reese's Pieces.  It was a huge success!

For me Puss in Boots is a cute kids movie.  For me though it lacked the humor and wit needed to keep my interest.  It does not have all the characters of the Shrek movies or even much of a plot line.  Puss and Humpty are buddies until Humpty decides to rip off the local town and frame Puss.  There is another plot where they are trying to steal Jacks magic beans to climb the beanstalk to steal the goose that lays golden eggs.  Get all that.

Doesn't matter.  It is cute enough and holds a two year olds attention.  The popcorn was good and I admit I ate more of the Reese's Pieces than Delilah did.

Steve Jobs- book

Steve Jobs

Rating 9 out of 10

In 1985 my little Lubbock, Texas roofing company went nuts when a huge hail storm wiped out 80% of the cities roofs.  I was getting 75-100 calls a day.  I needed some sort of computer to keep track of everything.  I had heard about these little Apple Iic computers and how easy they were to operate.  I had always been amazed by computers so I took the plunge.  I was nothing short of amazed at what this little thing would do.  It came with a Scribe printer that printed in COLOR!  Well, it did have colors.  You could print these (now) cheesy cards on the reel type paper and make the font one color and the graphic another.  At first people were impressed with my cheesy holiday cards.  Soon they figured out I was just being cheap!

I was hooked from the time I took the cool looking computer out of the box.  No internal hard drives.  Everything kept on the little 512k floppy disk!  Later I upgraded to the Apple IIgs that was even more amazing.  I paid $500 for a used 20 MEG external hard drive.  I was so excited my hands were shaking when I connected it to my computer!  I think I have owned just about every type of computer they have put out since that little Iic.  Been a fan and was always amazed.  I have been to MacWorld in San Francisco twice and was like a kid in a candy store.

Oh yeah, the book.  I tend to like biographies as a whole when I read (listen) books.  This was one I was looking forward to.  Jobs went to the author Walter Isaacson and asked him to do the book.  He told him to talk to whoever he wanted and Jobs would do nothing to censor the book before it was released.  This gives us an unvarnished look at Jobs warts and all.  We see that Jobs was a bit of a goof ball in his younger years.  Given up for adoption by his birth parents he never really gets over the abandonment feeling.  After high school he gets into dropping acid and spends a year in India studying the Zen religion.

The book outlines his being dumped by the Apple board and his successful return few years later.  With his many one on one interviews we learn some of the background on how the iPod, iPhone and iPads came to be.  He talks about how Bill Gates stole their idea for Windows.  He thinks Gates is a good guy who "got rich selling crap".

I think someone who knows little about Jobs and Apple's history would enjoy this book even more than I did.

Dolphins Tale

Dolphins Tale

Rating 6 out of 10

The Dolphins Tale is a nice movie based on a true story that you can feel good taking the whole family to and have that warm and fuzzy feeling when you leave the theater.  It has a nice cast and some pretty Florida background.

When a troubled young boy finds an injured beached dolphin he dives in the effort to save it.  When the dolphins tail has to be severed they turn to a prosthetics doctor to come up with an artificial limb.  There are side plots of a favorite cousin injured at war and the marine hospital running out of money.

No big surprises here.  Still a fun travel to get there.  The movie tugs on the heart strings a few times along the way.

This will be a good rental for everyone.

Immortals

Immortals

Rating 7 out of 10

I will start by saying the movie 300 is one of my all time favorite movies.  Knocked Braveheart out of my top spot. Immortals is made by the same guys that made 300 and is in the same general style.  Immortals is no 300 yet still a fun action movie to see if you are in the mood for some crunching bones and body parts being chopped.  The easy way to know if you'd like this movie or not is to watch the trailer.  If it looks cool to you then yes you'll most likely enjoy the movie.  If the action is a bit much then you may want to skip.

I liked it.  My boys loved it.  This Immortals has nothing to do with the immortals in 300.  It is a movie based on Greek Mythology.  The Immortals here are the Greek gods as they watch over the humans. The brutal King Hyperion (played very well by Mickey Rourke) goes looking for a magic Bow of Epirus to become invincible and overthrow the Gods and be master of the universe.  He is a very bad guy.  Kills everyone in his path including the mother of our hero, Theseus.  Bad move there King.  Theseus is play by the hunky Henry Cavill.  Cavill was in the HBO series Tudors and is pegged to be the next Man of Steel in next summers Superman.  There is an Oracle that can see the future the King is after to tell him where the magic bow is.  She is played by the always lovely Freida Pinto.

This is not a movie you go to for an intricate plot or crazy twist at the end.  You got for the action and on that front Immortals delivers just fine.  I am a manly man that enjoys this type of movie (Yes, the Muppets are coming back next week!!!) and on that level I recommend it.  Be warned it has plenty of graphic violence.

In Time

In Time

Rating 4 out of 10

There are times you have to give a movie an E for Effort, but not necessarily an A for the final product.  That is the case with In Time.  The concept is in the future or maybe some other planet (they never really say) everyone has some sort of digital readout on their left arm.  On your 25th birthday the readout starts a countdown.  When it hits zero so do you.  You can buy/earn extra minutes by working jobs for the MAN.    The good part is how you look at twenty five is how you look for the rest of your life.  I'd hate to think I'd be stuck with my bushy head haircut for eternity, but thats another story.  The crazy thing about this system is people can steal your minutes just by holding their arm against yours.  Anything you want from food to rent to a bus ride costs minutes off your arm.

The "rich" are basically stealing the minutes from the poor so they can live forever and the poor die young.  When a rich guy tired of living shows up in the slums where our hero Will lives (Justin Timberlake) ready to end it all he gives away his more than hundred years of minutes.  The timekeepers think Will killed the rich guy for his time.  Off to the races we go.  Soon he hooks up with the MAN's daughter (Amanda Seyfried) and they are on a Bonnie and Clyde mission robbing the Time Banks and giving the minutes to the poor.

I think this could have been a decent movie.  The story just seems like it was a few drafts away from being better.  I don't think Mr Timberlake has the chops yet to carry a movie like this.  I usually like Amanda Seyfried alot.  Here she looked goofy in her bob wig and acted more confused than anything else.  The movie could have used a bigger budget.  It looks like a low budget campy movie.

If you are a big Justin Timberlake fan I would suggest waiting to rent it.

Tower Heist

Tower Heist

Rating 5 out of 10

I had high hopes for this movie.  Was in the mood for a good laugh or two.  This movie has some funny parts.  The problem for me is almost all of them are in the circle of previews pushing the movie.  It is a fun movie for a simple night out but not one you'll remember six months from now.

Tower Heist has an incredible cast.  Starting with Alan Alda playing the bad guy.  He plays a Wall Street con artist who bilks million$ from clients including the whole retirement fund of the Central Park Condo building he lived in.  That building is run by Josh (Ben Stiller) and his band of likable employees.  Several of the ruined employees decide to break into his heavily guarded top floor condo and steal their money back.  Eddie Murphy plays Slide the small time criminal Josh enlists to help.

This movie is on the goofy side.  If you can suspend logic for a couple hours you'll have a good time.  I thought it was okay.  I guess I set the bar too high going in.  I was hoping for better.

The Thing

The Thing

Rating 5 out of 10

I saw the original movie back in the 80s.  Actually that movie was a remake of another The Thing back in the 60s.  I liked the 80s version with Kurt Russell.  This Thing is actually a prequel.

In the frozen arctic an expedition has found a frozen alien and they bring in lovely Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) as a paleontologist to figure out what it really is.  Problem is when it is thawed from the ice it comes back to life and bad things happen. To make things worse they are in the middle of nowhere and of course that big snow storm is coming in to ground helicopters and communications are down.

The movie builds suspense and makes you care about the stars even if you can't remember what other movies that have been in.  Action is pretty good.  This will make a good rental at some point in the near future.