There is nothing redeeming about this movie, which I unwittingly slogged through out of curiosity and shear boredom.  Terrible story, boring action, hammy acting, etc.  For sure there was a good movie to be made, but director Stephen Summers didn’t do it.  Really, if you have to watch this movie, watch it for Joe Gordon-Levitt’s delicious turn as Cobra Commander/The Doctor.

This film has so many possible situations that could happen at any moment, the surprise is that we still exist. Sadly, Mr. Kubrick does not. Neither does Mr. Sellers who turned in three of his finest performances in this film. If you walked into this movie without knowing the background, you would not know him in any of his roles.

The quick synopsis of the film is that a loony general, Sterling Hayden in his best role, third down from having control of “the button” has made a move that is irreversible, even by the milquetoast president who should be in charge but is more concerned with being polite to the drunken Russian Premier. General “Jack Ripper” is concerned about the Russkies taking our “precious bodily fluids” in a most uncomfortable scene that comes together at the close of the film. Another loony general, superbly played by the late George C. Scott, seems to be the only sane person in this crew – and this is just after he put his sexcapades on hold for his country. Scarily, he reminds me of Glenn Beck in more ways than one. He makes some kind of sense but you still know he is nuts.

The film was released during the early days of the LBJ reign and before we had gotten to the point of blaming the innocent men and women in uniform for the sins of this country’s fathers. In other words, the men in uniforms below generals come off as just following orders – even if they are dispensing destruction, they are still heroic. It is an amazing piece of filmmaking when a director can make you feel a bond between nameless men in a tough situation. Slim Pickens and James Earl Jones in key roles leave more of an impression than you would expect.

The Dr. Strangelove of the title is probably the most minor role in the film but one that is at once funny and scary. I recommend this film to everyone who has a sense of sarcasm but not to those who feel the “America wrong or right” sentiment that seems pretty tired right now. In the honor of full disclosure, the final scene will stay with you for the rest of your life.

Director: Stanley Kubrick Released 1964
Starring: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, James Earl Jones, Slim Pickens, Sterling Hayden
Museum of Modern Art, NYC film Series

And it isn’t pretty, especially for a movie which is heading towards an opening weekend gross of ~ $60M.

“G. I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” is a 118-minute animated film with sequences involving the faces and other body parts of human beings. It is sure to be enjoyed by those whose movie appreciation is defined by the ability to discern that moving pictures and sound are being employed to depict violence. Nevertheless, it is better than “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”

Movie Web got their hands on three clips from Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, which debuted at Cannes and opens stateside August 21. 

Slashfilm has compiled some early buzz from the film, based upon Tweets and reviews, after it premiered at Cannes. 

Here are a few examples of what people are saying:

Total Film’s Jonathan Dean : “Much of Basterds felt flat, with a schizophrenic spaghetti western style that blasts Ennio Morricone at the start and then David Bowie later on.” … “Enjoyable? Sure. But for 2 hours and 40 minutes it’s a big ask to keep brattishness exhilarating.” … “well worth watching and admirably ambitious and single-minded,” … “Inglourious Basterds will split viewers.”

empiremagazine: Glorious Basterds, as it turns out… very, very good, subverting expectations at every corner. Should make Michael Fassbender a star – C It’s utterly unpredictable. When it looks like going one way, it twists the other, & the ending… so audacious it provokes giddy laughter. Christoph Waltz, as Jew Hunter Hans Landa, is a revelation. Shoo-in for Best Supporting Nom. Looks like evil Rob Brydon too. All performances are uniformly grand.

Sounds like it’s a good flick, but nothing special, as exemplified by these two remarks:

gkilday Basterds turns out it’s the grindhouse version of “Valkyrie”

TVCalling: Bottom line of Basterds: entertaining but nothing ground-breaking

So Paramount pulled a fast one last night in Austin, Texas and instead of showing Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the Alamo Drafthouse treated the audience to JJ Abrams’s Trek reboot in its entirety. 

All in all, it seems as if most people felt this was a solid, breezy summer tentpole movie.  Exactly what you want, but unfortunately nothing more. 

Neil Miller at Film School Rejects: “Some of the smartest work [Orci and Kurtzman have] done. They get these characters and when you combine that with the visual style that J.J. Abrams has brought to the franchise, it makes for a dangerously accessible and exciting film.” … “This is a big, fast-paced, sleek version of Star Trek that is unlike anything we’ve seen before — a new brand of space film that stretches what we thought possible in the realm of visual effects, and I don’t think that’s going to bother anyone.” … “J.J. Abrams, with the help of a few incredibly talented people, has created a very accessible, fun Star Trek film that is perfect for a new generation of sci-fi fans.  Sure, it plays to the fan base a little bit, but its real strength is in the fact that it is delivered with a ton of energy, it presents a story that is easily grasped by fans and newbies alike and is a big, kick-ass ride.”

Quint at AICN : “I like the world (or maybe universe is a better term considering the material) that Abrams and his team has created here. I like the cast he assembled, I like the way this new universe turns some old Trek landmarks on their heads, while keeping true to what’s really important to each character.” … “Without exception, I think the first 45 minutes of the movie is rock solid. The second act has a few problems, the biggest of which seemed to be a sequence of check-listing, making sure all the characters we know and love are on the bridge and the way they introduce Nimoy is a great hero moment”

Rodney Perkins at Twitch: “Abrams’ film is a very entertaining and reverential take on the Star Trek mythos. The acting and casting are spot on. The story mixes old and new elements of the Star Trek universe. The effects are breathtaking. Some people will inevitably nitpick this film but J.J. Abrams’ new work is as good as (and arguably better) than most of the Star Trek movies that preceded it.”

Because it’s difficult to take anyone’s opinion on this movie seriously if they have a vested interest in it’s success. 

Which means, anyone who grew up reading comic books, wants to see more comic book movies made, who is apart of geek culture, or worships at the alter of Alan Moore, will have their opinion skewered. 

But Ebert?  He professes he’s never even read the book.  After seeing it twice, it’s still a 4/4 movie for him. 

Inside many superhero stories is a Greek tragedy in hiding. There is the godlike hero, and he is flawed. In early days his weaknesses were simplistic, like Superman’s vulnerability to Kryptonite. Then Spider-Man was created as an insecure teenager, and comic books began to peer deeper. Now comes the “Watchmen,” with their origins as 1940s goofballs, their development into modern costumed vigilantes, and the laws against them as public nuisances. They are human. Although they have extraordinary physical powers, they aren’t superheroes in the usual sense. Then everything changes for Jon Osterman, remade after a nuclear accident as Dr. Manhattan. He isn’t as human as Batman, but that can be excused because he isn’t human at all.

He is the most metaphysically intriguing character in modern superhero movies. He not only lives in a quantum universe, but is aware that he does, and reflects about it. He says, “This world’s smartest man means no more to me than does its smartest termite.” He lives outside time and space. He explains that he doesn’t see the past and the future, but he does see his own past and his own future. He can apparently go anywhere in the universe, and take any shape. He can be many places at the same time, his attention fully focused in each of those places. He sees the big picture, and it is so vast that it’s hard for him to be concerned about the fate of the earth.I wonder how many audience members will know much about quantum mechanics. Some will interpret it simply in terms of Dr. Manhattan’s powers. It’s one of those story devices like the warp drive in “Star Trek.” Dr. Manhattan, however, views it in a much more complex way, from the inside, and apparently in terms consistent with current science. So let’s ask what we understand about quantum mechanics. We’ll start with me. I understand nothing.

I’m still skeptical, but the light is slightly brighter.

I know a lot of people want to know about Watchmen, so I’ll just cut to the chase right away: It’s the best movie inspired by a graphic novel that I’ve ever seen. It could have gone wrong in a thousand different places, and it didn’t. I’ve wanted to see this movie for twenty years, and it was entirely worth the wait. Hear me now, my fellow geeks: you have nothing to worry about. Watchmen is fucking awesome.

Now, the entire story…

You probably want a few more details than that.  We will try not to spoil it, but it sounds like Zack Snyder has delivered the real deal Holyfield on this one.

Now, listen, I know that we live in a world where we’ve endured Ang Lee’s The Hulk, Spiderman 3, both Fantastic Four movies, and Indiana Jones Gets Raped Repeatedly While We Are Forced To Watch In Horror, so I think it would be really strange if we weren’t worried and apprehensive about something that already means so much to us, but I hope this will calm your nerves until the movie is released: Watchmen is faithful to the book. It respects the book. I swear by the beard of Zeus, it feels like the book. Yes, there are some cuts, but they serve the release and don’t disrupt or betray the narrative at all. Yes, they made a change to something that’s a pretty big deal in the book, but it doesn’t matter; what they did instead accomplishes exactly the same thing, and it does it perfectly. There is some of the Zack Snyder signature slow motion, and though it’s a little heavy in the very first scene (which worried me) it isn’t overdone throughout the movie at all, and I found it to be pretty cool and entertaining.

Two Lovers, writes New York Magazine critic David Ansen, is actually worth watching simply for Phoenix’s portrayal of Leonard, a suicidally depressed Jewish man who moves back in with his parents.  

“Although Paltrow is radiant (and she nails the character’s ditzy sense of entitlement), it’s Phoenix’s movie. He is, once again, stupendous, and stupendous in a way he has never been before: His face is a graceless blob, his eyes searching for something, someone to define him. “ 

If this is his last acting role for a bit, then it sounds like a good way for his career to be remembered by. 

“The picture hits little poetic notes that resonate with truly on the conditions of longing and loss; a shot of Paltrow approaching Phoenix from a shadowed alley way; the look that Leonard’s mother (Isabella Rossellini) gives her son as she bids him a farewell he didn’t know she was expecting; the sight of a leather glove almost getting drawn out to sea by the Coney Island tide,” writes Glen Kenny. ”Turning away from the crime-steeped mileus of his previous features, Gray aims for a kind of deliberately ache-filled romanticism that no other filmmaker I can think of is particularly interested in today.” 

With Phoenix’s antics growing stranger by the week, some are saying the wrong Phoenix brother died.  But the real shame of it all, would be another talented actor from the same family pissing it all away.

Sure, it’s overlong and slightly boring, but it looks pretty.  David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the first time Fincher truly disappointed me. 

A week after taking in the flick, there’s two sticking points I can’t get over. 

The first is that Brad Pitt’s Benjamin Button is essentially a blank slate.  He meanders through his life, but he never does anything.  I suspect the creative talent involved wanted to say something about dealing with life’s regrets.  That is, most people always ruminate over the things they should’ve done or could’ve done or wished had turned out differently. 

Given that Ben Button physically ages in reverse, but mentally ages like a normal human by the time he is physically at his peak, 18-25, he would mentally have the wisdom of a 65 year old and thus, be able to do things differently as a young pup.  But this doesn’t happen. Rather, Button gets Alzheimer’s and twaddles his way to an inglorious death. 

This also brings up my second complaint.  When we first see Ben Button he is born as an old man baby.  Mentally he is an infant and that develops like any human.  However, physically he is born the size of a baby but old.  Theoretically, as he ages in reverse (old to young) his body would develop physiologically like a normal human (small to big).  Since humans don’t develop small –> full size –> small again, there is no reason that Benjamin Button would turn back into a baby at the conclusion of the movie. 

It stands then, that at the end of his life he would be a six-foot man baby.  He would develop baby chunk and lose his hair, poop himself, have a reddish complexion, etc. but his body would still be man-sized. 

And this is the biggest problem with the movie.  I can suspend disbelief about a baby being born with an old body and aging in reverse, but what I can’t get behind are filmmakers that didn’t do the necessary homework. 

Also?  Imagine Brad Pitt as a six-foot man baby, wrapped in swaddled cloth.  It’s a humorous image.   

Still, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the worst kind of “serious” movie.  It tricks you into thinking this is an important work, saying something “important” about the human condition.  Except, it doesn’t. 

It’s a movie best summed up by Brad Pitt’s narration: “I was born under curious circumstance.  You see I was born an old man.”  And then I lived my boring life, doing little to affect the outcome of my life and then I died.  They could have told this story in about half the time.

Words can’t even begin to describe the agony in store for you by watching this movie.  At 103 minutes long, it’s 103 minutes too long.  The problem begins with the tone.  There’s a good movie in here, but director John Moore couldn’t decide between a gritty cop drama and a psuedo-Sin City-esque escapist entertainment.  If he choose one over the other, this might have been watchable.

Also?  It’s possible playing the videogames might have aided in my enjoyment of this film.

But it’s a wrenching movie that sticks to your soul, long after the credits have ended.  There aren’t many movies that do that, let alone ones in 2008.  It’s a suburban Kafka tale, about a marriage in crisis.  It begins with Frank and Alice open to the possibilities of love and adventure but that moment is brief; it isn’t long before they are arguing at each other for silly reasons.

Revolutionary Road essentially begins in the middle of a petty squabble and slowly dissolves into an existential battle for the soul of a marriage.  It isn’t pretty.

Mick LaSalle of the San Fran Chronicle outlines the reasons why the movie was his top choice of the year in a succinct and direct manner.  Every point he makes is spot on.  This is a fully realized masterpiece, a movie that begs to be watched in monochrome. 

1. Marriage, ’50s style: The movie, which stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, dissects a marriage, an examination that leads in two distinct and significant directions. The movie captures the timeless torment of the unhappy marriage, in the way the spouses know each other’s weak spots and go for the jugular, and in the way arguments can veer out of control from the simplest of beginnings.

At the same time – and this is important – the film is very specific about the marital pressures peculiar to the film’s era, the mid-1950s. For the man, it means a life sentence of unrewarding work. For the woman, it’s a cell door closing. For both, it’s a farewell to dreams.

Incidentally, the specificity with which director Sam Mendes conveys this era makes it baffling and irritating to hear people compare this film to AMC’s “Mad Men.” “Revolutionary Road” is about the 1950s, not the early ’60s, a big difference. Richard Yates, who wrote the novel “Revolutionary Road” in 1961, understood the difference; that’s why he set the book in 1955. It’s the difference between Eisenhower and Kennedy, between Tennessee Ernie Ford and Chubby Checker, and anybody who confuses the two isn’t giving this film the attention it demands and deserves.

2. Unforgettable shot: Speaking of the 1950s, I love the shot of the men getting off the train in the morning at Grand Central Station, a sea of hats and gray flannel cascading down the long stairway, on the way to some death-mill office job. Who would want to be a part of that?

3. Not your generic marriage: The script brilliantly conveys a particular personality dynamic almost guaranteed to make for a glorious courtship and a miserable marriage. Frank (DiCaprio) and April (Winslet) meet and are mutually captivated. His secret desire is to be a big shot. Her dream is to live a life that’s truly unique. When they talk about their life dreams, they sound as though they share the same ambition: Each wants to be distinctive.

In fact, his desire to be a big shot is the longing of the closet conformist, who craves the approval of society and the envy of his peers. And her desire to be unique is the longing of someone who has no need of society or peers. So they get married thinking they’re speaking the same language and then find themselves married and having no idea what the other is talking about.

4. A private scene between husband and wife: Frank and April visit their best friends and tell them the good news: They plan to sell the house and move to Paris at the end of summer! They’re going to throw off the bounds of conformity and live an adventurous life! Later that night, the friends (David Harbour and Kathryn Hahn), a married couple, alone in their bedroom, are utterly thrown. They are millimeters away from confronting their own frustration and life despair. But with an act of will, they force themselves to sink back into their delusion. It’s painful.

5. Sex and despair: I love the use of extra-marital sex in “Revolutionary Road.” As is so often the case in life, it’s the only creative outlet left to people who have given up hope. It’s an expression of deep despair.

6. Leo: This is a wonderful role for DiCaprio, in that it capitalizes on all that’s strong and weak about him: his winning smile, his glibness, his engaging personality and also his slightly superficial, lightweight aura. Winslet’s spirit seems many years older, which makes Frank seem no match for April’s expectations.

7. Kate: Winslet is astonishing in this film, giving the best performance by an English-speaking actress in 2008. It’s all there: April’s enormous dreams and crushing frustration. I love the subdued yet ever-alert way she looks at DiCaprio for signs that he might be the man she thought she was marrying. And I love the way he mostly wilts and sometimes preens under the scrutiny. This is the portrait of a brilliant woman shut in a trap.

8. A silent generation speaks: I’ve had women in their 80s tell me about life in the mid-1950s, how all the cultural markers – movies, TV, advertisements – told them they should be happy in domestic servitude, but they weren’t. So they thought they were the only ones and were crazy. “Revolutionary Road” is a movie about those women. You might think of it as a tribute to them.

9. Michael Shannon. He was Ashley Judd’s co-star in “Bug.” Here he plays a mentally ill man who says whatever he thinks, and everything he observes about Frank and April’s marriage is true. He has just a couple of scenes, but he dominates them, and the screenplay gives him the key line – that everyone admits to the emptiness of suburban life, but that “it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.”

10. Repeat viewings: Finally, this is a movie that can and should be seen more than once. Watch it one time through her eyes. Watch it again through his eyes. It works both ways. It works in every way. This is a great American film.

With the exception of The Beach and the final act of Sunshine he’s had hardly a misstep to his career, which began with his first feature film in 1995.� Even his lesser films Alien Love Triangle and Life Less Ordinary have a certain charm to them.� But it’s his major works like Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, and Millions which warrent his reputation.� He always manages to go against the conventional grain and breath new life into genre material.

His latest flick, Slumdog Millionaire, which was picked up by Fox Searchlight and Warner Brothers, debuted this weekend at the Telluride Film Festival and has gotten boffo reviews.� The movie took film journalists by surprise, but has left the greatest impression.� Most people were expecting the snippets of David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to knock their socks off, but that movie fizzled.� It seems like Danny Boyle’s movie is at the top of everyone’s list of favorite flicks from the festival.

The movie, based upon the book Q and A by Vikas Swarup, tells the story of Jamal Malik, an illiterate boy from the slums of Mumbai who makes it to the final question of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.� No one believes he could have answered any of the questions without cheating, but through the use of flashbacks we learn how Malik came to learn those trivia questions.� We also learn that he isn’t on the game show for the money, but rather to reconnect with the girl he loves from childhood.� She watches the show religiously.

Slashfilm was surprised he liked the movie as much as he did, writing: “The police arrest and torture the 18-year-old, hoping to uncover some kind of illegal motivation, but instead they get the heartwarming story of his life so far. And that�s why Danny Boyle�s Slumdog Millionaire is really clever. The film is not really about winning 10 or 20 million rupees on Millionaire, it�s a love story, told through flashbacks.”

I’ve been trying to find some bad reviews, but instead I get nothing but lines like this from Alex Billington at First Showing, “However, it’s still one of the most excitingly cultured mainstream films that’s all about life, love, and destiny.”

Or how Steven Zeitchik is comparing it favorably to Little Miss Sunshine and Juno, writing that he wouldn’t be surprised to find box office or Oscar success for the film.

The list goes on and on from Cinematical’s raving review to Variety’s Todd McCarthy writing, “Driven by fantastic energy and a torrent of vivid images of India old and new, �Slumdog Millionaire� is a blast. Danny Boyle�s film uses the dilemma of a poor teenager suspected of cheating on the local version of �Who Wants to Be a Millionaire�� to tell a story of social mobility that is positively Dickensian in its attention to detail and the extremes of poverty and wealth within a culture.”

It is both exciting to see that Danny Boyle may have truly hit one out of the park, one that may become embraced by more than just film freaks.� There is no trailer yet for the picture, but it’s scheduled for a November 28 release date.

Perhaps John Cusack should’ve kept only one Stephen King adaptation on his resume, unfortunately, he made this turd of a movie.� If you’ve never watched John Cusack go crazy in a hotel room for two hours, I suggest you keep it that way.

On the bright side there was one moment when Sam Jackson shows up in the hotel minibar and I thought, you know my refrigerator could use a mini-Sam Jackson to hand me groceries and make my lunch in the morning and just, you know, raise the awesomeness of my otherwise condiment-laiden ice box.

Perhaps Things We Lost in the Fire was one of 2007’s most underrated movies, and for good reason.� How the hell do you market an emotionally honest film about two adults trying to get their shit together?� Steady and mature adult dramas have all but disappeared from Hollywood, which is a shame.

Susanne Bier has crafted a gut wrenching flick that picks ups in the aftermath of a family’s tragic loss.� A widower (Halle Berry) invites her dead husband’s best friend (Benecio del Toro) to live with them allowing the family to cope with losing a husband/father and giving a junky the chance to get his life back on track.

It’s a simple story anchored in emotionally nuanced performances, perhaps the finest performances Berry and del Toro have ever given.� It is a crime that del Toro wasn’t nominated for Best Actor for his boffo performance as a man trying to find redemption after losing the only human who ever cared about him.� Watching him trying to hold on for a family he only vaguely knew and a women that despised him is a true gut-punch.

There is a moment towards the end of the film where Jerry is back at rehab, his ashen and sunken face staring into the camera from behind the blackened eyes of a 1,000 lives.� He’s recounting this dream of when he’s at peace and convincing himself to take things “one day at a time.”� And as he’s doing that, the rain is pouring down outside and Halley Berry finds a bouquet of roses with the note “Accept the Good.”

There are no easy endings in this life, just difficult choices that we are forced to make every single day.� Though Jerry (David Duchovney) is dead from the outset of the movie, his fingerprint is all over every character.� It is Jerry that permeates what everyone does, his goodness and generosity of spirit is the one thing that keeps his wife and best friend from falling into the abyss.

This film comes highly recommended, but you have to be emotionally up for it.� It’s not some Saturday afternoon trifle to be watched with half-attention.� It’s not the story you tell (for this is one that’s been told a million times before?) it’s how you tell the story that counts.� Bier succeeds largely on the backs of Halley Berry and Benecio del Toro.

Proving once and for all that self-absorbed members of the intelligensia don’t make for interesting movie subjects (see: The Squid and the Whale).� Here we get Dennis Quaid as a miserable college professor, who pretty much stays a miserable misanthrope, socially retarded widower, who doesn’t change or grow until the final credits dictates he has to.� Not even Ellen Page, as his also miserable too smart daughter yet quick witted!, or Thomas Hayden Church as the not smart hang loose adopted brother-in-law can save this movie.� Well, Page and Church try hard and their chemistry is the most interesting aspect of this misfire of a film.

Word to the marketing staff – if a movie isn’t funny and doesn’t try to be, don’t sell this to me as some sort of Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, this year’s quirky indie comedy.

Drillbit ended up looking like the best of a sorry lot. I took the metaphorical mangy dog home with me and I’m happy to report that the movie is every bit as terrible as I was hoping. I pity laughed maybe two or three times throughout the movie and genuinely laughed a few times more.

Owen Wilson stars as Drillbit Taylor, a down on his luck homeless guy who was a former Army veteran. He gets hired by these three sad luck high school freshman who need him as a body guard. Of course Taylor tricks the high school into letting him become a substitute teacher so he can watch out for the kids and protect them from the school bully. He falls for one of the teachers and the unstable yet sexy English teacher of course falls for him.

The plot plays out exactly how you would expect it, like it was written with a great story idea but followed a screenplay 101 manual. The sad part is that the idea for the movie is great and it should have been funny, hysterical even. Unfortunately, the jokes just don’t connect, strange for a Judd Apatow comedy to be so off the mark, and instead of a funny comedy you are treated to a heartwarming Lifetime Original Movie.

I’m just disappointed that the movie wasn’t bad enough and didn’t star Melissa Joan Hart and Mark Paul Gosselaar.

There is no debating this.

The short’s obvious comparison point is the wacky Looney Tunes of yesteryear, where the clever animal manages to upstage the vial human after much back and forth. In Presto we have an elegant magician and his wascally wabbit attempting to outbid one another. The rabbit wants a carrot because he is hungry and the magician justs wants to finish his performance in one piece.

That’s it. That’s the entire premise and it works because the story telling has a clearly defined protagonist, antagonist and dramatic heave that drives the entire plot, with each act to secure the carrot upping the ante. A finger stuck in a mouse trap, an egg splattered face, then an electrocution, and finally a dangerous high wire showdown. There are other bits in between.

Suffice it to say, I enjoyed Presto a lot more than I did Wall-E, simply because this is one of the better screwball comedy bits that has come down the pipe in quite sometime. Pixar has truly outdone themselves on both accounts, just another example of them raising the bar and then clearing it with ease.

At some point they have to crash back to reality, right? Would you want to be the director or animator who delivers the turd? Talk about pressure.

Be that as it may, we can now turn our attention to promoting another movie.� Hellboy. I tried explaining the premise behind the franchise to a co-worker a few days ago (he also celebrated the recent SJC Second Amendment decision, there is no correlation to what I’m about to say, except that I thought you should know this.� Also, I’m going to get him to take me to a shooting range.� See, dreams do come true!) and he was just baffled by it.

I was like, so Satan’s child gets sucked through a dimensional portal to Earth by the Nazis during WW II, except he’s rescued by a benevolent American and raised like a human and he protects us from mystical� creatures.� He likes to drink and cuss and eat Snickers and he loves cats.� Basically, he’s like a petulant teenager, except he has horns and a huge right hand that may or may not one day bring about the apocalypse.

I wish I captured his facial expression.� Priceless.� But my guess is he’s now intrigued enough to go and see Hellboy II: The Golden Army when it opens July 11.

According to John Anderson of Variety, “In a previous life, del Toro might have been a maker of clocks — clocks inhabited by gargoyles instead of cuckoos, and which exploded on the hour. But there’s a precision to the visual ornateness of “Hellboy II” that exceeds even that of its predecessor. It’s certainly a more deliberately (and successfully) funny movie, thanks largely to the drily ironic Hellboy — Ron Perlman, who returns with the rest of the cast, and without whom an onscreen Hellboy would have been almost unthinkable.”

Anderson thinks that del Toro got a huge push from Universal, but if anything the studio hampered del Toro’s vision the first time around almost neutering the franchise from the onset.� Given a second chance, it is abundantly clear that del Toro’s chutzpah oozes out of every frame and second of film.� To call him a visionary director would be to short change just what an impressive run he has been on over his last four or five pictures.��

“But the reason the movie plays so well has nothing to do with the leading man’s paternal instincts; rather, it’s rooted in del Toro’s rococo instincts for the stylishly creepy and crawlingly macabre, his clockmaker’s preoccupation with detail, and a flair for combining state-of-the-art technology with his taste for the antique, the gothic, the Catholic. Not to disparage the f/x guys, but what’s onscreen in “Hellboy II” is all about the seismic eruptions in del Toro’s head. Comparing his work to most fantasy cinema is like comparing cave drawings to the Cathedral of Cologne.”

Exactly what I was trying to say.� This prologue sets up the story for the movie and it’s totes awesome.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The movie is exactly what you�d expect it to be. If you go in wanting to criticize it you probably will. If you just want to have fun and enjoy two hours, maybe have a few laughs, then you�ll do that instead. As you could have probably guessed I went in with the latitude (that’s the portmanteau of “latter attitude”). It�s obviously not the most profound movie ever and it�s not even the funniest, but it�s a good time and well worth the matinee price I paid.

The ending was typical Hollywood and left me feeling all warm and fuzzy on the inside. Sometimes I like that though. Now that I think about it, the entire movie was oozing with Hollywood typicality. Boy meets girl, girl plays hard to get, but they end up together in the end, then you throw in some funny bits and action pieces and you�ve got yourself a big time Hollywood summer blockbuster. I�m sort of mocking it in that way, but I still liked it.

The best part was the casting. I knew Steve Carell would be the perfect Maxwell Smart. I can�t imagine any other current actor in that role. This is going to turn into me gushing over Steve Carell I can feel it happening already. Must fight the urge. He always plays the “endearing idiot that doesn�t know that he�s an idiot” so well. Two other small, but wonderful, performances were by Masi Oka and Nate Torrence, who play Bruce and Lloyd, two nerdy tech guys at CONTROL. On July 1st they�re releasing a spin-off DVD called Get Smart�s Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control, which follows what was going on with those characters while Maxwell and Agent 99 are off fighting the bad guys in Russia. It looks cheesy, but I�m sure I�ll watch it.

I’ll keep this succinct, since there have already been clever reviews and informative reviews and the movie as a whole is pretty review proof. In the sense that it is a well acted and crafted action/superhero/summer movie. The story moves briskly enough from set piece to set so you’re never really thinking about it because if you did you would ultimately walk away wishing you had just waited to rent it or download it.

Dr. Bruce Banner is on the run in Brazil and looking for a cure to his Hulk issue so that he can reunite with the lady he loves, Dr. Betty Ross. He’s doing everything from science to breathing exercises to control his anger, well, actually his heart rate. Seems this time around he Hulks out whenever his BPMs get above 200. Good thing the military isn’t trying to hunt him down! Oh wait. They are. So Banner has to run around. A lot. You can imagine what that does.

And so this goes for about two hours. Banner running and having PTSD from Hulking out, looking for a cure, trying to reconnect with Ross and fighting the military. Until a bigger threat happens when super-soldier Emil Blonsky hulks out into something called The Abomination and we have to have a Kaiju-style rumble on the streets of Harlem. So it’s lots of white people running around and destroying the famed black New York neighborhood. Yay!

Anyway, the performances are all top notch. You get the sense that there was a lot of footage left on the cutting room floor, you know the kind of footage that might have elevated this movie to something a bit higher. Made it a bit classier. You now things like character development or quiet character moments. As it stands, this version of the movie felt choppy at times. Plot threads were ditched and ignored all to keep the action moving.

As a character, the Hulk is pretty defensive and emo this time around. He doesn’t hulk out so much as reacts with rage. Maybe we’ll get a true rage bender in The Avengers, the kind where he just breaks shit and kills people and destroys buildings for the sake of it, but here he’s kind of mopey for an angry namby-pamby.

Okay, one more thing. The problem with The Incredible Hulk as a film property has a lot to do with the character of The Hulk. Sure, on the comics page or in cartoon form it’s not an issue to create something believable. But in film, it’s obvious that it’s nearly impossible to create a believable 12-foot muscular green monster. The character (and Abomination too) just looked too hokey at times, like we were watching a CGI monster.

The comparison here is in the difference between the believability of Ron Perleman’s Hellboy and the slight feeling of just rejecting the computerized Hulk. Hellboy is a giant red devil with shaved horns and yet whenever you watch him on screen he comes across as 100% real. It’s because of prosthetics and makeup that it’s possible. Unfortunately, you can’t create a 12-foot Hulk with makeup and prosthetics. Hopefully, CGI technology will advance to the point of believability when The Avengers movie begins filming, otherwise it might not matter how good that film is.

With all of the excitement and the tangible camaraderie hanging in the air, I admit I was jazzed to see the movie. However, when I left I felt dazed, confused, and a little pathetic about being a single woman in this world. And, correct me if I am wrong, but shouldn�t the SATC movie make me feel the opposite of that? Uplifted, confident, and secure in my womanhood? Yeah, I thought so too.

So, I had to think this through. There is a reason women love Samantha, Charlotte, Carrie, and Miranda. There is a reason this movie broke box office records. Looking back on the show, it�s pretty clear that the camaraderie shared among these women echoes that of females everywhere. Their relationships open floodgates of conversation regarding the power of female sex, promiscuity, anal sex, sex droughts, and well�you get the idea. Essentially, the show was an outlet for topics once considered taboo for women to talk or even think about.

The show also explored feminist subject matter. Who can forget �A Woman�s Right to Shoes?� The episode where Carrie�s Manolo Blahnik�s are stolen from a friend�s baby shower, subsequently leading her to question whether spending $500 on shoes vs. children is really an acceptable style of life. Ultimately, to the delight of women-especially those making the decision that child rearing is not the life for them-Carrie registers at Manolo Blahnik for replacement shoes and gets them. Why should single women be showered with gifts when they get married or decide to have babies and those who choose alternative ways of life get nothing but inquiries as to what�s wrong with her? It�s a good sociological question, one of many the show addressed.

Finally, the show is just plain fun to watch. Each woman not only possesses a career of high desirability and stature, but they have amazing, quirky wardrobes to boot. It�s fun because it�s fantastical. I don�t know many groups of friends where everyone has that amazing of a career or a closet full of crazy-ass expensive clothes, but then again, I am not exactly in that income bracket. But, then again, most people aren�t, so the fantasy argument stands.

This level of frivolous admiration for material goods and gorgeous bodies on attractive, successful women definitely existed in the movie as well. Only it was taken to absurd extremes that made it more ridiculous than fun. The label whoring was as in my face as a Fergie video and it became borderline obnoxious. I was tempted to lambast the admittance of humans as consumer driven maniacs, and yet, I took some deep breaths and admired the fun clothes hanging on the gorgeous bodies of these women. I mean, watching pretty people is fun, period, and frankly, if I didn’t have that to fixate on, the movie would have been a total wash.

Where the movie went way off base wasn�t in its fashion-centric smorgasbord, but in its blatant disregard of previous claims to being a subversive, empowering show for women. I hesitate to drop spoilers in here, in case you’re one of the women who hasn’t seen the movie yet, but I think if I say *spoiler alert* then I am allowed. So, don�t say I didn�t warn you.

My main beef with the storylines:

1-Miranda being cheated on by Steve and her decision to take him back. Now, I am all for forgiveness and believe in circumstantial situations, but what about all the crap in between with Miranda being reduced to a pathetic, lonely character without her man by her side? And this is the same Miranda who in the show was arguably the most ballsy, independent character in the cast.

2-Carrie taking Big back. Again. After he ditched her at their wedding. WTF? I just could not get behind this. After 6 months of ignoring him, she lets him back in her life and every time they shared a scene together where Big was begging for her back I found myself silently chanting, �say no, just say no, be strong!� But, did she say no? No, she said yes, and it was lame.

I would think this show would tell me that life isn’t all fairy tales, that prince charming doesn’t always pull through in the end, that sometimes the hard choice is the right choice, that I don’t need a man to be fulfilled, etc, etc. But, I didn�t get any of that. And, I will say here that I am a pretty forgiving person, that if SATC never claimed to enter into a cutting-edge, knock your socks off, feminist dialogue, then maybe all this Hollywood mumbo-jumbo would be cute and awwww….a happy ending! But to the contrary, it has made those claims and consequently, the only thing this movie did was take the stock the television show had so successfully accrued and blow it on lame plot lines and sexist role play.

After waiting almost two decades, it’s hard to believe that what everybody went to go see was the best that Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg and Co. could do.� Truth be told, this one doesn’t even hold a candle to any of the previous three and makes Temple of Doom look that much better.� However, this is coming from a guy who thinks Temple of Doom is the second best and offers giddy pleasures in a way vastly different but equal to Raiders.

With that said, though, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull just comes off as a hack job.� There are bits that work (is there a better action director than Spielberg?) and silly bits that take you out of the movie (yeah I’m looking at you George of the Jungle sequence) and more insect scares (holy shit those giant ants frightened the hell out of me) and moments that left me crying like a little girl (those first two or three scenes with Marion Ravenwood).

But it’s hard to take the movie serious when Indy is actually surprised by shit, ya know?� This is a guy, who is not only immortal after drinking from the Holy Grail (which helps explain him surviving an atomic blast in a refrigerator!), but he’s seen more crazy shit in his lifetime that by the time this adventure rolls around I almost expect him to be utterly detached, blase to the point of being apathetic.

Regardless, it didn’t pervert my childhood (yeah I’m looking at you George Lucas) so it has that going for it.� And still, with all the crazy stuff Indy has been through, I’m drawing a line at aliens and spaceships.

Oh and Shia LaBeouf didn’t ruin the movie, so let’s not start calling him Jar Jar Binks.