Surf's Up

"Surf's Up" is a good movie. Ashley and I went out to see this last night, and we both enjoyed it. I guess you could say it appeals to young and old alike. A while back I took all the kids to see "Happy Feet", we might as well have just rented "An Inconvinient Truth". For what was advertised to be a funny, dancing/singing penguin movie, it turned out to be a depressing "Free Willy" style indoctrination attempt. That being said, "Surf's Up" is a breath of fresh air. It wasn't as original or amazing as Pixar would have done, but then that's asking a lot. What the filmmakers undertook, the succeeded in. They made a movie about penguins surfing, and it was cool. They created a handful of interesting characters, with good voice acting. They showed us some surfing, and with some real good attention to detail, it was obvious that there was some professional surfer assistance in the production. Finally, it was a movie about the ocean, specifically waves. Now most of this can be accomplished by merely copying scenes from "Endless Summer" and other surfing movies, but I think these guys did more than that. Riding up the waves, getting up on top of the swell, seeing the beach down on a lower level. The filmmakers really tried to capture what it feels like to be out in the water waiting for the next perfect wave. As a side note, I really liked how they used Jeff Bridges, his character reminded me of a kid-friendly version of The Dude from "The Big Lebowski".

Fantastic 4 Part 2 and My Impression Of The Summer

I went to see "Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer" (I'll refer to it as "the movie" from here on out) with my friend Rob this past Friday. The movie wans't bad. I mean it never got so bad as to call it bad, but it never got good either. Afterwards, Rob and I discussed how weak the characters and writing were. I made the point that most comic book movies touch upon some very basic human relationships and struggles, but the primary focus is on special effects and action. In "the movie" there is going to be a wedding, but the end of the World is also at hand. How do superheros fight evil and destruction while keeping their personal lives in perspective? The points that are made about family and what is "normal" were all very good and uplifting. The idea of working together and communicating were positive, good messages. But everything was all packaged up and delivered in a way that probably would irritate a twelve year old. Maybe I wasn't the target audience for this film in the first place. Perhaps the only reason I went to see it was that there wasn't anything else to go see. What I'm saying is that it wasn't the movie's fault that I didn't like it, the blame is on me. If you're under the age of twelve go see this movie. If you're over the age of twelve, stay at home and find something productive to do with your time.

Alright, so here's this weeks gripe: Movies suck so far this Summer. I'm sure I didn't emphasise "suck" enough, maybe I should have underlined it and used all caps. Even better I could have done that thing where you use a whole bunch of s's to make the letter s , then a bunch of u's and so on. I just glanced at my blog, and I haven't given out a positive review since May 5th, when I wrote about "Amazing Grace" which I saw in the Dollar theater. Now this wouldn't be so bad if the rest of the Summer looked great, but I'm kinda hestitant. Next is "Die Hard 4", but with that kid from the Mac commercials, I just don't have faith in that one. After that it's "Ratatouille", which is the glimmer of hope for this Summer's movies. I must admit I think it looks great. Following that it's "Transformers" the Transformers themselves look sweet, but if I see more of Bernie Mac or that punk kid in the first hour of the movie than Transformers themselves, I'll be pissed (by the way, if you didn't sense this from what I just said, I'd put money on seeing more of either one of those characters than all the Transformers combined in the whole movie). I haven't read any of the Harry Potter books, but I get the feeling that we already have seen the best "Harry Potter" movie. "The Bourne Ultimatum" might be good, I really liked the first on, and upon a recent second viewing of the sequel, I liked that one too. So on August third there might be a good movie, and then it goes blank for a few more months. Maybe I need to find something else to do.

Ocean's 13 and Focus on the Family

Jess and I got to go see "Ocean's 13" on Friday night. She liked it a great deal, so if you want a really positive review, talk to her. I on the other hand liked it, and I think it does the series justice, but not so much. Ocean's 11 was a breath of fresh (cool) air. The scene where Brad Pitt and George Clooney walk out of the club and the young actors are mobbed by fans and nobody notices Pitt or Clooney, that was funny. The introduction of character and the intricate heist all were great fun to watch. Then came "Ocean's 12", with more offbeat humor, Catherine Zeta Jones and is that Julia Roberts or not? On top of all that, there was the villian, a Frenchman who was up to the challenge of 12 good guys and does a techno laser dance... Personally, I think I liked the second film even more than the first. That being said, the third movie is more like the first. There is good motivation, funny lines, suprises, and other stuff like that, but ultimately I found it to be just more of the same. My favorite scenes were actually with Casey Affleck having discussions with co-workers durring his part of the mission. It was so original, and so off the wall that I was cracking up before the visual pay-off. That was some good writing. If you liked "Ocean's 11" and saw "Ocean's 12", go see "Ocean's 13". If you don't, where will you be when they bring out "Ocean's 14"?

Alright, here's the deal; I kind of don't like harping on this but I just must... Focus on the Family should be writing movie reviews. We Christians should have someplace to go to get advice and critisism of current movies from similar perspectives. I went to see "Mr. Brooks" last week, and I decided not to write a review because although I thought it was a thought provoking movie, it's one of those movies best discussed on a personal level as opposed to on a public blog. Maybe I should approach movies like "Grindhouse" the same way, but I think I write enough disclaimers to cover myself. Anyways, after I saw "Mr. Brooks" I read the review over at Plugged-In just for kicks. Suprisingly the reviewer got the gist of the movie, although in a movie about a serial-killer, he seemed awful suprised that there was some violence. Here's why I'm writing about Focus on the Family; while I was looking around for the "Mr. Brooks" review I saw that they were going to review "Hostel Part II" on Friday night. I just checked out their review, and I must admit that I was left a little dumbfounded. I'm sure some of you question the appropriateness of my movie viewing, so I understand that we all create lines for ourselves, but what in the world is Focus on the Family doing sending one of their own to a theater to watch "Hostel Part II"? In most Christian establishments going to see that movie would most likely be grounds for dismissal. I bet at Focus they frown on any other employees seeing any rated R movies, let alone one like "Hostel" Then to top it off, the reviewer goes into the gory details of the movie, at least it wasn't a video review. Seriously, not only are there references to all the stuff you shouldn't see, but as he tells us what profanity was used he leaves little to imagination. Is it just me, or doesn't it make it almost worse when you see the three little stars or a blank space, I know I dwell on the word a little longer. Also, in a movie like "Hostel" does it really matter if the characters are drinking hard cider? If your only stumbling block is alcoholism, maybe there will be enough other stuff in "Hostel Part II" to distract you. The other thing I'd like to know is how they come up with thier f-word counts. Do they have like four reviewers, each with a click counter to tabulate profanity? Does the one who gets the least clicks have to write the review? If the guy who writes the review is keeping track of all the bad stuff too, I feel really sorry for him. Alright, that's out of my system, now I guess I should come up with some positive outlet for my fustration, maybe I'll write movie reviews or something.