Superhero Movies on Steroids Series: Movie #74

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)

Plot: An alien being with great power dubbed the ‘Silver Surfer’ (Laurence Fishburne, voice) sets out to destroy Earth.  It’s up to the Fantastic Four to stop him as they learn there’s a greater force controlling the Surfer’s actions known as Galactus.  Dr. Doom (Julian McMahon) also returns as he strives to understand the source of Surfer’s power.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is a hell of a lot better than the previous movie, I can tell you that.  It’s definitely more entertaining, with a lot more action.  Clearly this movie had a bigger budget.  It’s all over the screen.  The characters are given more personality with a lot more camaraderie.  Reed Richards is more of a leader.  There’s a great moment where he stands up to this dick head military general as he defends his entire team.  Johnny Storm is even a fleshed out character in this one.  I can’t say the same for the other two members of the Fantastic Four.  Jessica Alba’s performance is even worse.  And I’m sorry, but I just really hate the Thing.  He’s so goofy and ridiculous.  If he didn’t have that dumb voice, maybe I could get on board with him a little more.  I get the point that the character wants to blend in with normal society, but does he have to wear the sports jerseys, baseball jackets, and drink lattes.  It just looks silly.  He also has the worst lines such as ‘Surf’s up metal head’ when knocking around the Surfer.  In fact, this would be a pretty good movie if they just limited the camp.  It’s not horrible, but it’s pretty bad.  They over do it with the E! Hollywood tabloid crap on covering Reed and Sue’s wedding.  There are way too many jokey moments in the action scenes, which is a huge pet peeve of mine in superhero movies.  We get stuff like the Thing getting knocked into a wall as he crushes the stretchy Mr. Fantastic and then proceeds to say ‘my bad.’  Come on!  I’m fine with having humor in these films, but when we get to the serious action moments, it’s time to cut that crap out.  And I also think Dr. Doom is a pretty lame villain.  He’s campy as hell and I never took him as a serious threat.  He’s a joke.  There are plenty of annoying things going on with this film, but the best part about it by far is Silver Surfer.  Everything going on with him is interesting and I think he blends in great with the environment, kind of like the T-1000 in Terminator 2.  Laurence Fishburne also adds a lot with the voice.  Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer has its problems, but it’s head and shoulders above the original.

Rating: 6 out of 10 (‘meh’)

Category Rankings (Spoilers Throughout):

Best Performance: Chris Evans as Johnny Storm/Human Torch
-Very charismatic, funny, but there’s actually character development going on.  He’s truly the heart of the story, and Evans does a good job of carrying it.  There’s a nice moment between him and Sue before her wedding.

Worst Performance: Jessica Alba as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman
-She’s bad in the first movie, but you were able to ignore it.  In this one, it’s a complete train wreck.  She couldn’t deliver one line without making me cringe.  I think I mentioned this in the first review, but when she tries to create force fields, her entire body and face transitions into a pose that can only be described as laughable.

Best Line: “I’d hate to wake up one morning and find out she was killed in a rock slide.” –Johnny to the Thing on Thing’s relationship ‘predicament’
-That’s a pretty hysterical line.

Worst Line: “My bad.” –Thing
-Yea, I mentioned this earlier, but ‘my bad?’  Come on.  Do we really need to recycle bad jokes from the mid 90’s?  Ugh.

Best Fight:
-When Human Torch absorbs all the Fantastic Four powers, he engages in a solid fight with Dr. Doom on the surf board.  I love the flaming fist which kind of reminded me of the Green Lantern fist from the recent Green Lantern movie.

WTF Moment:
-I thought Stan Lee’s cameo in Spider-man 3 was bad?  Wow.  I detest and loathe this moment.  Stan Lee goes up to the usher for Reed and Sue’s wedding and says he’s on the guest list as ‘Stan Lee.’  Come on!  It’s moments like this where I can’t take the rest of the film seriously.  I hate the little ‘wink’ to the audience.  Hey, it’s Stan Lee, the creator of Fantastic Four, and he just referred to himself in the Fantastic Four movie!!  WOW!  How clever!  Give me a break.  I have no problem with Stan Lee making cameos in Marvel movies, but does it have to be these self indulgent moments?  WTF.

Best Scene:
-It’s in the forest where Silver Surfer is flying around knocking missiles away left and right.  He absorbs one of them in his board which was awesome.  I also like when they initiate that pulse which knocks him off his board.  It looked really solid visually as Silver Surfer just gets owned.

Worst Scene:
-It’s the final wedding scene.  It’s just camp galore here.  Uh-oh,Veniceis sinking.  Gee, we better just cut to the end.  Oh wait, Sue has to throw the bouquet though, let’s not forget.  Oh what fun we’re having asVenice sinks.  And let’s all fly away in our jet waving happily as we make the Fantastic Four symbol in the sky.  It’s just a little much.

Funniest Moment:
-It’s actually a line from Reed as he vows to Sue he won’t postpone the wedding again.  ‘And I’m not gonna let anything get in the way of that.  Not even the mysterious transformation of matter at the subatomic level.’  Sue actually has a mildly amusing response, but it doesn’t come off that way because Jessica Alba can’t deliver it with any humor whatsoever.  ‘That’s the most romantic thing you ever said to me.’

Bad Ass Moment:
-I don’t care much for Dr. Doom, but when he steals the Surfer’s board and barrels out of the military facility…that was a good one.

Superhero Movies on Steroids Series: Movie #73

The Invincible Iron Man (2007, animated)

Plot: Tony Stark (Marc Worden) leads his company on an expedition to China to raise an ancient temple, unlocking a gang of super power elemental beings who desire to resurrect their master, the Mandarin (Fred Tatasciore).  Stark uses a series of specially designed suits becoming the hero Iron Man in order to combat these beings and stop Mandarin from returning to power.

There’s just nothing here.  The plot is slow as hell.  Everything is explained poorly.  Half the time, I didn’t even know what was going on.  There are these elemental ass holes that are looking for rings or whatever.  And there’s a random dragon at one point, I don’t know, who cares.  There’s a rift between Tony and his father which was okay.  The only character who was mildly intriguing was Li Mei as her and Tony share similar daddy issues, except Li Mei’s revolved around an ancient Chinese super natural being whereas Tony’s was about running a company, so kind of a difference there.  The animation was solid and the music was pretty good.  I really have nothing else to say on this one.  It’s completely forgettable. 

Rating: 5 out of 10 (Barely Passable Entertainment)

Category Rankings (Spoilers Throughout):

Best Performance: Gwendoline Yeo as Li Mei
-Along with Tony, her character kept my interest.  Yeo puts a lot of different emotions into the voice.  Yeo really shines at the end where she is totally distraught about having to resurrect Mandarin.

Worst Performance: Rodney Saulsberry as James ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes
-This guy was awful.  Aside from every line having an ‘Oh man’ or ‘man’ in it, his effort to convey any type of drama or anger was cringe worthy.

Best Line: “Shut up Boyer” –Howard Stark
-Not much to choose from, but this is Howard just laying into one of his company stooges at the end.  It was good delivery.

Worst Line: “Tony’s disappearance, painful as it is, may be the best thing for the company.” –Random lawyer to Howard
-Okay, I get the guy is a heartless lawyer, but he says this with such a nonchalant attitude.  It’s the guy’s son, and he is just like, ‘anyway, moving onto the company…’  Wow.  What an asshole.  Howard does retort with a ‘are you kidding me’ like response, but still.  I find it hard to believe anyone would say that to a parent while their son is completely missing.

Best Fight:
-There’s a pretty good fight between Iron Man and the elemental guys surrounded by all this lava.  The suit gives off this cool white electrical orb thing.  The animation really shined here.

WTF Moment:
-Maybe it’s because I’m too familiar with the live action movie that comes out a year after this, but Tony was already making the Iron Man suits even before he was captured?  So this Chinese organization called the Jade Dragon captures and nearly kills Tony, and he builds the suit to escape.  I thought that was the genesis of the suit.  I guess I’m just confused.

Best Scene:
-The fact that Tony’s suit can survive in deep lava is pretty cool.  Diving into the lava for the first time was a nice visual moment.

Worst Scene:
-When he builds the suit to escape the Jade Dragon, it was pretty anti-climactic.  He just lazily flies off.  And the flying looks like it’s in slow motion.  It was pretty lame.

Funniest Moment:
-Tony is a fugitive as SHIELD is guarding every inch of his office.  But Tony just casually walks by his secretary Pepper Potts and is just like ‘hey.’  Dude, aren’t you on the run?

Bad Ass Moment:
-Towards the end, the Rock elemental guy is creating soldiers.  Suddenly Iron Man just barrels into him from the sky.  That was awesome.

Superhero Movies on Steroids Series: Movie #72

Spider-man 3 (2007)

Plot: When a black symbiote from outer space bonds with Peter Parker’s (Tobey Maguire) Spider-man suit, it unlocks his darkness as he battles the new Green Goblin (James Franco) and the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) who’s accused of killing Ben Parker (Cliff Robertson) years ago.

*Another lengthier then normal piece and SPOILERS the whole way through.

I get the feeling half-way through this movie, director Sam Raimi couldn’t take Spider-man anymore and just started to lose his mind.  This isn’t quite as horrible as I remember, but it’s still pretty bad.  The first forty minutes are okay.  It’s sort of boring, really slow, and just kind of ‘meh.’  There was no effort to make one cohesive plot as it floats around the seas of mediocrity.  Also, the writing is really lazy.  This symbiote just randomly falls from the sky?  That’s how the movie starts?  Come on.  Creativity is certainly lacking all around in this movie.  Mary Jane gets kidnapped at the end once again.  How clever.  Also, do we really have to re-visit Uncle Ben’s death?  I’m not interested.  I like when sequels introduce new problems, not re-hash things from two movies ago.  Well, at least the ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ line was never spoken once throughout the whole movie.   

Tobey Maguire is a little more energetic as Peter Parker, but in the serious moments, he just flat out sucks.  When Mary Jane breaks down at their fancy dinner, Maguire just sits there with his eyes wide open not really doing anything.  It’s even worse when Harry dies at the end.  He just stares at him with a confused look and then suddenly lets out a laughable scream.  Look, I’ve never liked Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker/Spider-man.  To be honest, I think Topher Grace who plays Eddie Brock/Venom in this movie may have been a more interesting choice.

The one good storyline the film has going for it is Flint Marko who becomes a criminal because his daughter gets sick and he needs money for medicine.  Unfortunately,Thomas Haden Church brings absolutely nothing to this role.  I think he was asleep.  I will say the sand effects look damn good though, especially when he first rises as the Sandman.  I really didn’t need to see Spider-man dump sand out of his shoe though.

The real problem with this film is when Spider-man puts on the black suit.  That’s when it goes from a mediocre movie to an ‘Uh-Oh’ movie.  The tone is all over the place.  There’s a dark scene where Spider-man almost kills Sandman in the sewers.  It’s a serious moment.  But then immediately after, we get a quick shot of Peter Parker playing with his hair to make it more Goth and Emo.  And then later on he fights Harry.  Comedic music plays on as the fight is infused with lame dialogue from both characters, but at the end, it decides to go dark.  It’s just inconsistent. 

There are also just some awkward and weird scenes that don’t make any sense.  Peter’s Landlord suddenly has a heart-to-heart talk with him.  Huh?  Harry’s Butler randomly comes out and tells him he loves him like a son and that he always knew what was going on with the Goblin stuff.  The Butler is in like two three second scenes before this!  Did we really need to see Harry and Mary Jane in a cooking dance montage where they dance around to ‘the twist?’  I’m fine with Stan Lee making quick cameos in all these Marvel movies, but he actually comes out and has dialogue in this one going ‘I guess one person can make a difference.’  I hate stuff like that!  This is why a lot of critics won’t take superhero movies seriously!  It’s contrived shit like this which completely takes you out of the movie.

But let’s be honest.  We’ve been avoiding it long enough.  We all know the moment Spider-man 3 goes from disappointing to crap.  Goth Peter Parker dances around like a clown.  I don’t know who came up with this idea, but they should never be allowed near a superhero movie again.  What’s so infuriating about all this is they really could have done some interesting and dark stuff with the symbiote influence, but instead they decide to go goofy and campy.  And then Sam Raimi wants you to take the movie seriously again after the jazz club scene.  Nope.  There’s no way!  This one concept completely discredits the entire movie.  This isn’t Darth Vader yelling ‘Noooooooooooooooooooooo!’ for six seconds.  This is two long extended dance scenes of Tobey Maguire humiliating himself.  I can’t express how much I detest the Emo Goth Peter Parker dancing scenes.  Once again, I repeat: This is why people refuse to take these movies seriously.  It’s when an irresponsible creative team does something like this.

This goofy tone also bleeds into the climax of the movie.  You get forced shots of Spider-man posing in front of the American flag which just looks silly.  You get an overdramatic news report during the last battle where the anchor clamors out, ‘Just when all hope seemed to be lost.’  There are kids going ‘Awesome!’ and ‘Wicked Cool!’  There’s J Jonah Jameson arguing with a little girl over a camera.  Come on!  This is the emotional end climax, yet the film is still cracking jokes!  Spider-man 2 walked a brilliant line between humor and seriousness, but this is just a disgrace.

I think I actually hate Spider-man 3 more so then when I started writing this review.  This came out in 2007.  There’s no excuse for the type of crap they pull.  Let’s put it this way.  Not even movies like Batman & Robin, Catwoman, and other horrendous superhero films had Jazz Club dance scenes where your protagonist is dancing on tables like an idiot.  Now certainly Spider-man 3 isn’t nearly as bad as those movies, but it just gives you an infuriating feeling because of all the talent and money this had behind it.  This could have been something special, but they ruin it with hundreds of little problems.

Rating: 4 out of 10 (Really Bad)

Category Rankings (Spoilers Throughout):

Best Performance: Topher Grace as Eddie Brock/Venom
-The Eddie Brock/Venom character is the one element I actually enjoy.  I thought he was developed pretty well.  What I like about Grace’s performance is that he’s funny, but also threatening when he turns into Venom.  Even though some of Venom’s lines are silly on paper, he found a way to bring a sinister vibe to all of them.

Worst Performance: James Franco as Harry Osborn/New Goblin
-Every scene he’s in, he’s got these big dumb goofy smiles, especially when he’s on screen with Mary Jane.  Unfortunately he was plagued with some of the worst dialogue.  Mary Jane sarcastically tells him to hit her on the head.  Harry taps it and then goes, ‘Bop.’  He also has to say stuff like ‘I wrote you a play in high school.’  Certainly a lot of this is the writing, but Franco makes it even worse.

Best Line: “Never wound what you can’t kill.” –Venom
-I don’t know.  There wasn’t much to choose from.  This line was pretty solid I guess.

Worst Line: “Love that giggle.” –Peter to Gwen as they enter the Jazz Club
-This is Peter Parker on the symbiote influence?  Instead of becoming a darker and scarier character, he spews out lines like this?

Best Fight:
-The opening fight between Peter Parker and the New Goblin was solid.  As much as I didn’t like Franco’s performance, he’s certainly better than the ridiculous abomination Willem Dafoe was when he played the original Goblin. 

WTF Moment:
-I’m sorry, but Flint Marko running into random physics sand testing arena is just lazy writing.  When you compare it to the other villain origins, it just seems stupid by comparison.

Best Scene:
-I thought the symbiote suit coming off of Peter Parker and then dripping down to Eddie Brock was done pretty well.  It’s the one important moment the film actually takes seriously.

Worst Scene:
-Obviously, it’s Peter Parker dancing at the Jazz club.  He’s jumping on pianos, tables, the whole works.  He bounces around like he’s the fricking Mask.  They should have just had a Cuban Pete dance number in the middle of the street.  Why not at this point?

Funniest Moment:
-Jameson has to take his pills, and Miss Brant keeps buzzing in on the desk until he gets the right pill.  Elizabeth Banks does a really good job in this scene.  I always found the stuff going on at the Daily Bugle to be my favorite scenes in all the Spider-man movies.  Why can’t they just be about that?

Bad Ass Moment:
-Spiderman defeating Venom was pretty cool.  He slams down all these metal pillars creating a cage like thing, and then just goes crazy with the sound causing the suit to peel off of Eddie Brock.

Superhero Movies on Steroids Series: Movie #71

Mosaic (2007, animated)

Plot: Still in High School, aspiring actress Maggie (Anna Paquin) is endowed with chameleon-like powers after an electrical storm, giving her the ability to shape shift and turn invisible.  Maggie teams up with the mysterious Mosaic (Kirby Morrow) who comes from a race of chameleon-humans as they try and take down Manikin (Ron Halder), a chameleon-human who wants to take over the human race and has also kidnapped Maggie’s father (Gary Chalk), a special agent investigating Manikin’s kind.

Boring exposition.  The plot takes forever to develop.  Some bad dialogue.  But otherwise, okay.  The animation is solid for the most part.  For an animated movie, there are actually some intense scenes.  Maggie has this nightmare after getting her powers where she’s running away in just her underwear as all these weirdos converge on her.  There’s also a shot where she’s bleeding from her head.  The character of Maggie carries the film well.  Anna Paquin takes some otherwise bad dialogue and makes it tolerable.  Maggie takes her love for acting a little too far though with lines like, ‘Cut and print.  That’s a wrap.’  She also lets out a classic ‘Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!’ at one point, so that was exciting.  Maggie and Mosaic travel to Europe and track down Manikin, but Maggie is just all excited about going toEurope for the first time.  Your dad has been kidnapped!  I know people love to travel abroad, but could we put things into perspective please…geez.  Other than Maggie, Mosaic is the only mildly interesting character.  He’s unintentionally funny here and there.  The worst part about this is the dialogue.  It’s so direct, like it was made for a 3 year old.  Maggie talks to herself, going into great detail and specifics about what her powers can do when the audience just saw her experimenting with them for five minutes.  It’s pretty obvious what she’s capable of just from seeing it on the screen.  We don’t need every little thing spoon fed into our brains.  The villain stinks, it’s a ho-hum story, but the film held my interest for the most part.

Rating: 6 out of 10 (‘meh’)

Category Rankings (Spoilers Throughout):

Best Performance: Anna Paquin as Maggie
-Paquin makes this a very likable character, even with some questionable dialogue.  She talks a lot in this film.  I hope in the recording sessions she drank plenty of Gatorade.  Maggie is constantly blabbering on.  She sounds like Alicia Silverstone at times which was weird.

Worst Performance: Ron Halder as Manikin
-He’s the villain, and he’s pretty bad.  It’s just a very generic bad guy with a whiney voice, not threatening at all.

Best Line: “My job is to find the person or people responsible for what happened to your father Miss Nelson.  Would you rather I do that, or fall to the floor in tears.” –Agent Newell’s response to Maggie’s claim she’s not acting sensitive enough
-Good line.  Wow, way to put the dramatic teenage girl in her place.

Worst Line: “Double Caramel Mocha Frap on me?” –Maggie to her friend Stephan
-What the hell kind of drink is that?  It sounds insane!

Best Fight:
-The first time Maggie and Manikin fight is pretty solid.  Maggie goes invisible, but Manikin keeps knocking over the brick and wall to create dust and ash, revealing her form.  Then he chucks a rock at her head.

WTF Moment:
-Did they really need to refer to the chameleon-humans as homo-chameleons…Wow, really?

Best Scene:
-Maggie revealing her powers to Mosaic.  It’s a pretty funny scene.  They just keep insulting each other, but Maggie definitely calls him out on knowing nothing about humans after Mosaic gives her a flabbergasted look when Maggie mentions Lord of the Rings.

Worst Scene:
-As Maggie discovers her powers, she climbs up a wall via Spiderman.  And yes, some kid walks by and says, ‘Looks like Spiderman.’  Did we really need to mention Spiderman?  Come on!

Funniest Moment:
-Maggie realizes acting is small potatoes when she has to save the world.  She questions whether she wants to continue it.  And then Mosaic actually compares actors to doctors, farmers, and police, claiming, ‘They feed and heal and protect their bodies, yes.  But it is acting that feeds their minds.  Gives them hope.  It takes them from what is and envelopes them in what might be.’  Haha.  If it was just the line itself, not comparing it to doctors, farmers, and police, then okay…but let’s calm down Mosaic, alright.

Bad Ass Moment:
-At the end when Manikin is trying to adapt his deceased wife’s abilities, Maggie shows up as the wife and completely distracts and bags Manikin.  This took me by surprise and was a pretty bad ass plan.

Superhero Movies on Steroids Series: Movie #70

Ghost Rider (2007)

Plot: When young daredevil Johnny Blaze (Matt Long/Nicolas Cage) makes a deal with a mysterious figure (Peter Fonda) so his father (Brett Cullen) can be cured of cancer, his soul is indebted to the devil.  He is cursed to become his night vigilante known as the legendary Ghost Rider who has to stop Blackheart (Wes Bentley), the Devil’s son, from unleashing Hell on Earth.

Well the beginning sets the tone pretty early on.  The score is generic selection #7, there’s a confusing narration, and I started to check out three minutes in.  Matt Long is young Johnny Blaze, and he played the role like James Franco hosted the Oscars: Really confused and out of it.  He doesn’t spend that much time on screen; otherwise I would have picked him as Worst Performance.  There’s a scene where he tries to cry.  That was amusing.  There’s a romantic moment between Blaze and the young Roxanne played by Raquel Alessi, which is taken right out of the Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones handbook.  Now once Blaze becomes an adult and Nicolas Cage takes over the role, the movie is actually pretty decent.  I really like all the Blaze character quirks of him eating jelly beans and watching cartoons.  Blaze is actually kind of an intriguing character and Cage surprisingly plays it pretty straight.  He also has good chemistry with Donal Logue who plays Mack, Blaze’s manager and friend.  I wouldn’t mind just watching a movie about Johnny Blaze, but it’s when he turns into Ghost Rider where the movie goes off the rails and becomes completely uninteresting.  It also pisses me off that I can’t tell if the Ghost Rider flaming skull special effect is okay or looks silly.  When he first transforms, it’s pretty cool, but otherwise, I can’t decide if I like it.  Can’t someone just defeat this guy with a fire extinguisher or something?  The movie’s biggest crime is that it’s fricking boring.  It’s long as hell, it goes no where, and the villains suck.  Wes Bentley just plays a Goth as all these random demons float around him cackling.  They do a terrible job of explaining what Bentley’s character Blackheart is after.  It’s some stupid ancient contract or something, I don’t know.  Whatever.  Aside from Peter Fonda and Sam Elliot, the acting is pretty poor.  Nicolas Cage was solid in the first half, but then decides to do his Nicolas Cage-isms in the second half.  Despite a solid twenty minute stretch in the first half, this is boring, boring, boring and completely unnecessary.  Maybe pyrotechnics would like it, but that’s about it.

Rating: 4 out of 10 (Really Bad)

Category Rankings (Spoilers Throughout):

Best Performance: Peter Fonda as Mephistopheles
-I don’t know what the deal is with the name.  Isn’t this the devil?  Well, whatever he is, Fonda plays this pretty well.  He sets such an uncomfortable tone, especially with his voice.  This character was definitely the best part of the movie.

Worst Performance: Eva Mendes as Roxanne Simpson
-Ugh.

Best Line: “Oh…I’ll take your soul.” –Mephistopheles to a young Johnny Blaze’s question of what he needs to give in return for his father’s health
-The way Fonda delivered this line was priceless.  He adds to that uncomfortable tone as his eyes dart around the room looking for things in exchange for the father’s health.  You know he’s going to say ‘soul,’ but I love how the suspense is played up, finally culminating in this line.

Worst Line: “The devil, on account of I work for him.  That’s why I couldn’t make it to dinner.” –Johnny Blaze to Roxanne
-Just hearing this line is ridiculous.  It’s so casual.  ‘Yea, sorry I couldn’t make it dinner; I had to work late for Satan.  Sorry about that.’  This line epitomizes the stupidity of the film in a nutshell.

Best Fight:
-Just kind of a ‘meh’ fight between Ghost Rider and Blackheart at the end.  Blackheart throws him around for a while.  I guess Ghost Rider creates a cool gun at the end.  And I like when Ghost Rider bags him with his signature ‘make the other person feel their evil’ move. 

WTF Moment:
-When Sam Elliot’s character goes into Ghost Rider mode with Johnny Blaze, it’s really bad ass as they ride together to fight Blackheart.  There’s cool music going on, Blaze is on his flaming motorcycle while Sam Elliot is on his flaming horse.  But once they arrive, Sam Elliot is just like, ‘Yea, I can’t help you.  That’s it for me.  See ya!’  WTF!!!

Best Scene:
-It’s just a simple scene of Blaze and his manager/friend Mack talking at Blaze’s loft.  You get a good insight into Blaze’s character, and a good scene of camaraderie between Blaze and Mack.  It’s definitely Cage’s best scene in the movie.

Worst Scene:
-Blaze telling Roxanne about him being possessed by Ghost Rider is truly one of the all time terrible acting jobs by Eva Mendes.  She just has this tired look the entire time.  The guy is telling you about how he works for the devil!  She asks questions about it so nonchalantly!  Even if you don’t believe him, at least give off a reaction like the guy is crazy.  When Roxanne finally does call him out on this, she tells him in a calm conversational manner, never changing tone throughout the whole scene.  It’s truly a memorable acting job…but not in a good way.

Funniest Moment:
-As Roxanne waits for Blaze at dinner and continues to drink more, the waiter walks over and Roxanne asks him if she’s attractive.  The waiter just shrugs ‘eh.’  Hahaha.

Bad Ass Moment:
-The one cool thing Ghost Rider does with his fire whip is when he swirls it around to battle the wind demon and creates fire from the wind, which ultimately defeats him.

Superhero Movies on Steroids Series: Movie #69

Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo (2006, animated)

Plot: When a mysterious super powered Japanese warrior known as Saico-Tek (Keone Young) attacks the Teen Titans headquarters, the team travels to Japan and learns a legendary criminal known as Brushogun is after them (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa).

Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo is a solid funny little animated romp.  The plot takes forever to develop, and when it does, it’s pretty uninteresting.  I guess Brushogun’s back story is mildly interesting.  But this is more about the characters, and all the Teen Titans are very engaging.  It does feel like more of a comedy.  The animation is hysterical at times, especially when Robin reacts to Starfire kissing a total stranger in order to understand Japanese.  There’s plenty of action though.  The first ten seconds begins with a huge aerial battle.  There’s a lot of fighting in general.  It’s pretty bad ass that out of all these super-powered people, Robin is the one who seems to take enemies out almost instantaneously.  Beast Boy is pretty funny though.  He turns into a turtle at one point.  I also like the animation once they’re in Tokyo.  It’s very appealing to the eye.  Did we really need a whole Godzilla throw back scene though?  I like the characters, animation, and it’s pretty funny, but not much else going on.  Not bad.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10 (Slightly better than ‘meh’)

Category Rankings (Spoilers Throughout):

Best Performance: Hynden Walch as Starfire
-She was really funny.  I love this running gimmick of her always saying ‘the’ in front of everything.  Like, ‘I do not have the boy troubles.’

Worst Performance: Keone Young as Commander Uehara Daizo
-He holds a lot of weight in the film, predictably becoming the villain.  There’s just nothing to this voice though.

Best Line: “Do not blame Robin for the wild chasing of the goose.” –Starfire
-This was Starfire at her best.  She completely ripped apart the cliché ‘wild goose chase’ line and made it seem original.  Well done.

Worst Line: “So I guess you’re not a wanted man anymore.” –Cyborg
                              “I wouldn’t say that.” –Robin as Starfire looks at him glowingly
-Haha, get it?  This isn’t that bad, but there wasn’t really much to choose from, and it was mildly annoying.

Best Fight:
-It’s the end with all the Titans battling the Brushogun ink creations.  It’s just solid use of powers and thoroughly entertaining.

WTF Moment:
-Why does Robin have a pet slug in his room?  It also looks kind of like a back pack.  What the hell is the deal with this thing?

Best Scene:
-Robin goes to jail for apparently killing Saico-Tek.  He thinks Saico-Tek wasn’t real, but sits in his cell contemplating his actions.  I don’t know, kind of deep for something called ‘Teen Titans.’  Not a bad little scene.

Worst Scene:
-Beast goes to karaoke and sings the Teen Titans theme song.  I don’t have a problem with him singing karaoke, but the actual theme song…that’s kind of lame.  I hate that the character recognizes he’s in a movie.

Funniest Moment:
-After the Titans headquarters is destroyed, Cyborg begins crying about his sofa being damaged.  That’s pretty funny.  It was really good delivery.

Bad Ass Moment:
-The Tokyo police use this awesome electrical cage to trap the Godzilla like monster.  It kind of looks like the Ghostbuster trap, but it can expand and contract.  That’s awesome.

Superhero Movies on Steroids Series: Movie #68

Zoom (2006)

Plot: Years ago, Captain Zoom (Tim Allen) was the head of a super team known as Team Zenith.  When his brother Concussion (Kevin Zegers) turns evil after over exposure to gamma radiation, he destroys the Zenith team, but was stopped by Zoom who lost his powers in the process.  Years later, Concussion is returning, and Zoom must reluctantly train a new group of heroes, a mix of kids and teenagers.

Zoom could have been okay, but it’s plagued by a lot of frustrating details.  The acting among the four kids is pretty weak.  They barely have any chemistry.  One of the heroes is a six year old girl named Cindy, and her voice gets really annoying as they over play the cute thing.  She even gets the nick name Princess.  Courtney Cox is also irritating as this scientist who is pretty much Zoom’s biggest Fangirl.  They also incorporate this stupid character trait of her falling all the time.  How clever.  While it’s not terrible, there are some bad juvenile shenanigans, especially when some of the kids are trying out to be on the new team Zenith.  We get a farting kid known as Gas Giant, and a booger kid who can create giant…boogers.  Tim Allen also burps at one point.  That was unnecessary.  Allen holds the film together for the most part though.  He’s a real dick which was fairly amusing.  Chevy Chase is sadly present too and carries the film along with Allen.  They humiliate him a lot though which was really hard to watch.  The back story of Zoom’s brother going evil was decent.  There are a lot of minor annoyances though that really got on my nerves.  The Zenith base is Area 52…Wow.  There’s a flying saucer moving around and the special effect is just atrocious.  I think it was done over the weekend in some guy’s basement.  But the absolute worst thing about this movie is the fact that they thought it would be cool to have Smash Mouth do most of the songs.  Smash Mouth!  This came out in 2006?!!  I’m sorry.  I just have a major problem with Smash Mouth.  I don’t know if it’s because that fricking All-Star song was played everyday in the 90’s, but that band just stinks!  Other than that, the movie is fine for kids, but it’s pretty forgettable.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10 (Passable Entertainment)

Category Rankings (Spoilers Throughout):

Best Performance: Chevy Chase as Dr. Grant
-He actually has a few solid Chevy Chase one-liner moments.  The sad thing is that they really feel they have to humiliate him because it’s a kid’s movie.  Poor guy.

Worst Performance: Michael Cassidy as Dylan West/Houdini
-He couldn’t act his way out of the first level in Super Mario Brothers.  The performance is just a lot of goofy smiles, unconvincing rebellious facial expressions, and a total lack of energy.  How fitting he plays someone whose power is turning invisible.

Best Line: “In my day we just had that British guy named Ben who threw sticks at us.” –Jack on his Zoom training days
-That’s pretty funny, and one of those well delivered lines Allen exceeds at when he’s in his rhythm.

Worst Line: “You and I are destiny.” –Dylan to Summer
-I think he got confused and thought he was in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.

Best Fight:
-The fight everyone has with Concussion at the end was pretty solid.  The use of the concussion shock waves was done pretty well.

WTF Moment:
-The kids are rescued by Dr. Holloway when it’s revealed she has a super power.  The kids don’t even react to this!  What the hell!  They’ve been with her the whole movie, and they can’t even muster a ‘whatever.’

Best Scene:
-The training scene where they are being pelted with paintballs was pretty good, and later when Cindy has to throw weights onto the bulls-eye target that was kind of like curling.

Worst Scene:
-Dr. Grant, the Chevy Chase character, is in this experimental green house thing where the kids lock him in.  They basically push all types of buttons to fuck with him, like rain, lightning, and a skunk.  It’s a completely useless scene that just embarrasses poor Chevy Chase.  Even the kids who were pushing all the buttons were laughing, but they had this look like, ‘Yea, we shouldn’t be doing this to a comedy legend.’

Funniest Moment:
-There’s a kid who’s trying out to be on the new Team Zenith who can just blink really fast.  Everyone is like, ‘Why the hell is this person even here?’  But Chevy Chase’s reaction is ‘I am a little cooler.’  That line made me laugh as it’s delivered in a way only Chase can do.

Bad Ass Moment:
-Zoom gets his powers back at the end, and creates a pretty cool vortex to trap Concussion.

Movie Review – Super 8

Plot: Set in 1979, a group of kids witness a horrific train accident while trying to film a movie.  The military arrives to cover up what was inside the train as bizarre events start occurring all over town because of it.  The Deputy (Kyle Chandler) tries to figure out what’s going on while his son Joe (Joel Courtney) and his friends were the ones who witnessed the crash but can’t discuss it.

The marketing campaign for Super 8 is far more interesting than the movie itself.  This isn’t a bad movie.  It’s okay.  I really don’t want the pretentious and mysterious trailers to affect my review, but I can’t help but think director J.J. Abrams and producer Steven Spielberg pulled a carnival con-job on all of us with this thing.  And I barely had expectations for this movie, but still left disappointed.

The first 20 minutes are great.  We get a nice introduction to all these kids with a wide range of personalities.  It’s funny, it’s entertaining, and all the kid actors do a bang up job, especially the main guy Joe, played by Joel Courtney.  He carries the movie at a very young age.  He and Elle Fanning have good chemistry together, and that is easily the biggest relationship in the film.  I like that I can appreciate the characters rather than the gimmick that comes into the movie later on.

The train crash is also an incredible sequence.  It’s just complete chaos and looks really thrilling on screen.  It’s a perfectly directed scene by Abrams.  The mystery element begins to come into play after the crash, and that’s where the movie starts to plummet faster than an ACME anvil.

I respect Abrams for trying to keep most of the film a secret.  In a world where movies get 5 trailers and 25 clips before they are even released, it’s refreshing to not predict the entire film a month before it opens.  It’s what I appreciated about Inception.  But here’s the problem.  Once I’m actually in the movie theater watching the movie, can you please start to tell me what it’s about?  Anything at all?  Abrams literally keeps everything a mystery until the last 10 to 15 minutes, and by that point, I just didn’t care anymore.  The movie trots along for over 90 minutes, and I was losing interest by the second.  Nothing happens but random attacks with random clues that tell you nothing.  Why do I care!  Now at least there’s good characters to keep me interested, but it’s not enough.  It all wears thin.  You have to give the audience some kind of cohesive hint of what this all means.  You can’t meander for over 90 minutes!

What really pisses me off is that some of the clues have no relation to what happens at the end.  Nothing!  What the hell?  It’s just random bull shit.  And let me just get this out of the way.  The big mystery of what this all is sucks.  It’s horrendous.  If I had to describe it in one word, it would be ‘yawn.’  It’s not that I’m pissed about the end result.  It’s that, combined with how everything was presented and put together.  It’s so average and run of the mill, but the director desperately wants you to believe it’s important. 

And the action later on is no where near as interesting as the train crash at the beginning.  There’s a point towards the end where the kids are running through a warzone and it just looks silly.  Not only that, but the movie was a lot funnier in the first half, whereas later it becomes a bunch of lame pot jokes.

The kid actors did a good job, but the adults brought nothing to the table.  I was really disappointed with Kyle Chandler’s performance as the Deputy.  One of the big sub-plots revolves around the death of Joe’s mom, and how he and his dad have never been close, but are now forced too.  The story was effective for the most part, but Chandler gives a pretty average performance.

I’m curious to see how audiences will respond to this.  When I saw it, I felt an aura of disappointment as everyone walked out with a nonchalant attitude and not really saying anything.  If you’re the type of person who’s coming into this thinking the Holy Grail or Chewbacca on steroids is inside that train, in other words, you’re there strictly for the mystery, I would stay away.  You will be extremely disappointed.  I just came into this like any other movie.  I would have had the same reaction even if there weren’t all these annoying commercials of ‘Ooooooooooo, what is this all about?  You better come see it to find out!’  The characters are okay, but they can’t sustain the entire film.  The plot is a total joke and refuses to tell you anything mildly interesting or important until the last ten minutes, but by then, I couldn’t care less.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10 (Passable Entertainment)

Superhero Movies on Steroids Series: Movie #67

Ultimate Avengers 2 (2006, animated)

Plot: Herr Kleiser (James K. Ward), a powerful shape shifter who posed as a Nazi and old enemy of Captain America (Justin Gross) is long believed to be dead, but resurfaces in a small African village and kills their king (Dave Fennoy).  The prince (Jeffrey D. Sams) takes the mantle of the Black Panther and asks the Avengers for help as Kleiser searches for a powerful energy source hidden in the village that could spell doom for the world.

The Avengers are back, and this time slightly more entertaining.  I think because the Avengers are already established, we are able to jump into these characters a bit quicker whereas half the previous film was them coming together.  The story does kind of suck though.  Really…aliens again?  Can’t they fight a cool villain?  And the plot is really clunky.  There’s some shit going on with a random meteor that’s connected to this underground thing in Africa, I don’t know, who cares.  I’m interested in the actual characters, and they do deliver.  They develop a strong bond between Captain America and Iron Man which was nice to see.  Poor Bruce Banner though.  Everyone is a dick to him after what happened last time.  He has to spend his days in a glass room watching re-runs of him flipping out as the Hulk.  Everything with Thor is bad ass, and we see a lot more of him this time around.  I can’t help but notice he’s such a more powerful force then everyone else.  He even gets his own music.  The animation looks pretty slick all around, especially when Thor opens up a portal to Asgard so he can argue with his dad.  The sound effects are great too, especially when the aliens are firing their guns.  This is a well paced animated feature that I enjoyed quite a bit.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10 (Very Good) 

Category Rankings (Spoilers Throughout):

Best Performance: Dave Boat as Thor
-His voice is so distinctive and…thunderous.  Fine, that was a bad pun.  But Boat is able to be funny with it, but also command great seriousness.

Worst Performance: Nolan North as Hank Pym/Giant Man
-He comes off as more annoying then in the last one.  And he’s just not as funny.  Oh well.

Best Line: “The real danger is not upon the ground, but in the Northern Sky.” –Thor
-This is what I’m talking about with Dave Boat’s Thor voice.  It’s a funny line, but at the same time conveys a convincing and serious threat.

Worst Line: “Nothing like flying first class” –Giant Man shrunken down and sitting in Iron Man’s gun barrel.
-This is the climax of the film.  Do we really need terrible jokes at this point in the movie?

Best Fight:
-This is kind of an unorthodox choice, but Thor has a back and forth with this giant blue laser he continuously has to keep hitting.  It reminded me of the Gannondorf fight in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time where Link has to keep hitting that blue ball of energy.

WTF Moment:
-So they keep showing Bruce Banner losing control of the Hulk over and over again.  It’s non-stop.  Wouldn’t this make him…angry?

Best Scene:
-Captain America and Iron Man have a nice little chat about dying with honor or fighting for one’s own glory.  It clearly illustrates who the characters are and comes up again in the film for an important plot point.

Worst Scene:
-The Villagers fight back against these huge hulking aliens, and their regular run of the mill arrows hurt them significantly.  Why are these things such a big threat again?  How do the Avengers not annihilate them with ease?

Funniest Moment:
-Giant Man has one great line after Nick Fury demotes CaptainAmerica’s status as leader.  ‘Demoted…I guess that makes him Private America, huh?’  Haha.

Bad Ass Moment:
-It’s a simple one, but Thor just ripping through these aliens with his hammer and lightning is pretty darn satisfying.

Superhero Movies on Steroids Series: Movie #66

Lightspeed (2006)

Plot: After a top government agent (Jason Connery) is exposed to a heightened amount of radiation, he is endowed with super speed.  He works secretly outside his own unit to take down Python (Daniel Goddard), a terrorist bent on revenge against the government and whose body has taken on snake-like features and attributes resulting from a lab accident years ago.

This is just a waste of time TV movie.  There’s nothing here to like, but nothing I care enough about to really complain.  It’s hard to follow at times because I cared so little.  They can’t even handle an average action scene.  There’s way too much close-up and shaky cam for my liking.  And I don’t know if there was something wrong with my TV, but it goes to these weird blurry slow-mo action modes that are pretty lame.  The speed effects can’t even rival those in Smallville.  The music is terrible.  The acting is terrible.  The villain is kind of cool, and his snake body looks half-way decent on camera.  Other than that, my brain pretty much deleted everything about this movie when it ended.

Rating: 4 out of 10 (Really Bad)

Category Rankings (Spoilers Throughout):

Best Performance: Daniel Goddard as Python/Edward Bartlett
-The only mildly entertaining aspect to this movie.  His voice was pretty creepy, and the snake body actually looked okay.  His acting gets pretty bad towards the end of the movie though when he completely loses it.

Worst Performance: Nicole Eggert as Beth Baker
-She’s either over delivering, under delivering, and sometimes even going crazy monotone.

Best Line: “I didn’t want him to understand, I just wanted him to die.” –Python after killing the Senator
-It’s a solid villain line, and he says it really quickly, which basically matches up with how quickly he killed him.

Worst Line: “Lightspeed…my lightspeed.” -Beth as her and Daniel have a picnic
-The line is bad enough, but this is basically why Nicole Eggert got the Worst Performance.  She giggles this line out in the worst way.

Best Fight:
-The only option is this ho-hum fist fight between Lightspeed and Python.  Lightspeed doesn’t even use his speed.  What the hell!  And Goddard’s acting as Python is terrible here as well. 

WTF Moment:
-This could be some of the laziest writing of all time.  Lee Majors plays Tanner, the head of Lightspeed’s government unit.  It’s pretty clear he’s going to turn out to be a villain, but this is his motivation: He just felt like having fun and killing a few hundred people.  That’s his motivation?  Wow.

Best Scene:
-Python slams Lightspeed up against the wall and forces him to make the classic hero choice: His love, or hundreds of people.

Worst Scene:
-An exciting and intense montage of…physical therapy?

Funniest Moment:
-Daniel goes to a sporting good store to get an aerodynamic suit for his super speed.  The clerk is clearly playing it as a stoner stereotype.  When Daniel asks for higher shoes, the clerk responds, ‘You can never get too high.’  Haha.

Bad Ass Moment:
-One moment that was pretty sweet is when Lightspeed turns sideways, spins in between two goons, and forces them to shoot each other.