A Heaping Pile of 2012 Summer Movie Reviews (Including The Dark Knight Rises)

Brave

Finally, Pixar presents its first movie with a female protagonist.  Not only is the main character a young girl, but the theme also reflects the prime gender - it's about relationships between mothers and daughters.  Set in ancient Scotland, it follows the adventures of Princess Merida, a rebellious teenager who wield a bow like Robin Hood (or that Catnip chick from "The Hunger Games") and doesn't listen to anything her mother says.  Needless to say, she does something really brash and must go to great lengths to fix her mistake.  What that thing is, I will leave to you to discover.  The advertising campaign for the movie has been great at not giving away "the big twist", so I won't either.  I will only say that it does involve magic.

Pixar has created another winner here.  It may not quite be up to the level of their most well made movies (due to some behind the scenes shake ups and shenanigans), but it is a damn sight better than "Cars 2".  Speaking from a visual and audio standpoint, it's high quality stuff, with solid 3D work on top of that.  Merida is a great role model for young girls, too.  This is one princess who doesn't need an irrefutable prophecy, a manly suit of armor and a well-trained army at her back in order to kick some ass (take that, "Snow White and the Huntsman").  "Brave" is another great offering from Pixar and I recommend it.


Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Hmmm.  When Tim Burton (as a producer) and Seth Grahame-Smith (the screenwriter, based on his novel) are attached to a movie, I get scared.  Earlier this summer they brought us the unfocused mess "Dark Shadows".  Now this.  Thankfully, "Abraham Lincoln" is a better movie than "Shadows", yet suffers from a similar malady - it doesn't quite know what it wants to be.

The novel was a much more staid, straight-laced mash up of historical fiction and vampire-killing horrificness.  The movie, under the direction of Russian madman Timur Bekmambetov, adds a third genre to the mix - slam-bang comic book action craziness, creating a movie which never quite finds its own stride and feels incomplete.  Plus, I found the first half of the movie to be rather cliched as it indulges in the typical vampire hunter movie cliches.  When the setting of the movie shifts to Abe's presidential life, I started to enjoy it more, since Abe's priorities shift from mere revenge to securing freedom for all human beings (of America, at least).  Mary Elizabeth Winstead (a screen crush of mine) and Anthony Mackey (so good in "The Hurt Locker") become more prominent in the second half, too, adding to my enjoyment.  By the time the final shot of the movie arrived, I must admit that I was a little bit hooked.  Too bad it took so long to kick in.

I also have a problem with the look of the movie.  No doubt it was shot on digital, and the way it was photographed made many scenes look like they came from a cheap shot-on-video 80's soap opera.  Other scenes (mostly the ones with CGI) looked great.  And the action sequences (most of them aren't from the book) are very hit-and-miss, which is very unlike Timur.  Usually his action stuff is pretty reliable.

Ultimately, it's a flawed-but-okay movie.  It could have been so much more.


The Amazing Spider-Man

A needless reboot?  Why yes, of course!

There's absolutely no reason they couldn't have just made this a Part 4 and brought in an all-new cast and crew to freshen up the franchise.  Nevertheless, they remade it and the end result is - not bad.  But not particularly good, either.  There is no new ground broken in this movie, but it is a solid Spider-Man tale and a decent foundation for a new trilogy of Spider-Movies.

The biggest improvement is in the casting.  Andrew Garfield is an awesome actor and makes a great Peter Parker (although his version of the character wasn't nearly as nerdy and unpopular as the character was always meant to be) and Emma Stone is absolutely perfect as Gwen Stacy.  Add Martin Sheen, Denis Leary and Sally Field and you have a great cast.  The main villain, the Lizard, was handled all wrong.  Originally conceived as a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde type of character, where the scientist Curt Connors was a good man and his alter ego the Lizard was, well, a monster, the movie presents him (and actor Rhys Ifans plays him) as somewhat dubiously creepy from the beginning, reducing him to a boring one-note villain.

Director Mark Webb comes from a background of directing dramas and romcoms, which explains why the best scenes in the movie are the quiet dramatic ones between the actors.  The action scenes and special effects are all solidly done, even though they lack the energy and imagination of the ones in the Sam Raimi trilogy, and the 3D is solid but unspectacular.  The movie is also more serious and less fun in an obvious bid to replicate the tone of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy.  This, unfortunately, is a very anti-Spider-Man thing to do and only adds to the already heavy dose of deja vu offered up by this movie.

In conclusion, some good, some bad, lots of unnecessary retreading.  It's better than Raimi's "Spider-Man 3", but inferior to "Spider-Man" and "Spider-Man 2".


Ted

I've never been a big fan of "Family Guy".  It's made me laugh a few times, but I've always found the show to be needlessly crass, random and unfocused, too reliant on pop-culture references and far too lacking in heart and soul.  But creator Seth MacFarlane knows what he's doing and is a very successful dude.

Now comes "Ted", written, produced and directed by MacFarlane, and while it shares some of the same shortcomings of "Family Guy" it has the one thing that show lacks - a powerful, central theme that will keep this movie relevant and applicable long after "Family Guy" becomes a footnote in television history.  It's about growing up and moving on, leaving childish things behind.  While it's a very simple theme, it's well-told (if a bit overt) and doesn't subtract from the laughs.  It centers on Mark Wahlberg and his friendship with a foul-mouthed, perverted living teddy bear named Ted.  As a child, he wished for Ted to come to life.  Now, as an adult, his over reliance on his old buddy is getting in the way of his relationship with girlfriend Mila Kunis, and things need to change.

The human actors are merely serviceable to the story, nothing more (except for Giovanni Ribisi's VERY creepy antagonist).  It's Ted who's the star.  Voiced by MacFarlane and brought to life (very well) via CGI, Ted is the most well-realized character in the movie.  The jokes are hit-or-miss, but mostly hit.  Someone really needs to tell MacFarlane that merely making an obscure pop-culture reference does not make it funny - unless you're stoned.  Case in point: Wahlberg and Kunis are having dinner together, reminiscing about the day they first met.  In Kunis's vision, we see how it really happened.  In Wahlberg's vision, he remembers it as an exact recreation of the disco scene from "Airplane".  And that's the joke.  It's exactly like the scene in "Airplane".  Congratulations, you're a mimic.  And he does this multiple times during the course of the movie.  Sure, it touches on the nostalgic region of my soul, but it's ultimately just lazy storytelling.

Yet despite the "Family Guy"-isms, "Ted" is a funny movie with a solid heart, and I recommend it.


Ice Age: Continental Drift

They should have called it "Ice Age: Audience Drifts - To Sleep", haw, haw, haw.

All kidding aside, it's. . . alright, it's still kind of a snoozer.  The biggest snoozer of the series for me is still the second installment, "Ice Age: The Meltdown".  I've tried to get through that movie twice without falling asleep and have yet to succeed.  Did I also mention that computer animated movies about talking animals are really starting to wear me down?

The kids should like this one.  Scrat, my favorite character in the series (who gets less funny each time I see him), accidentally triggers a continental shift which sends our intrepid menagerie of main characters on a grand and adventurous sea voyage, where they must battle oceanic beasties and nefarious pirates.  Peter "Game of Thrones" Dinklage, as the pirate captain, seems to be having fun with role; everyone else is just, well, there.  As is the rest of the movie.

The first "Ice Age" is a classic.  The second one is a snoozer.  The third one is fun, thanks to the inclusion of dinosaurs and some great action sequences.  This new one is also a snoozer, but still better than the second one.  See it only if your kids say you must.


The Dark Knight Rises

I'm not going to touch the shooting in Aurora, Illinois.  Not yet.  I'm just going to talk about the movie at the center of the tragedy, which has now been permanently stained thanks to some gun-toting orange-haired wacko.

It's an awesome end for the trilogy.  While I thought that this was the least best of the Christopher Nolan Batman movies (too much excess plot baggage, too quick of a wrap up - psychologically speaking, some redundant action scenes, not enough Batman), it's still a Grade-A movie.  I won't be spoiling any surprises (there are many), but I will say that Anne Hathaway completely bowled me over as Catwoman.  I guess I just wasn't expecting her to be able to pull it off.  Stupid me.

See this in IMAX while you can.  It's one of the best movies of the summer.  While I still preferred the other superhero epic "The Avengers" a little bit better, this is a very close second. 

The Gate. . . Nope, the Other One (2011)

And now I'd like to present my vote for best short film of 2011.  Made (amazingly) on a shoestring budget, here's Matt Westrup's freaky sci-fi cautionary tale, "The Gate". . .