So how long does one have to go between posts before a blog should just be retired as a failure?  This blog has to be coming close to that limit.

Here are some quick movie reviews of my holiday movie experience.  I wanted to watch Alvin & the Chipmunks Squeakquel but the wife was resistant.

AVATAR

We watched it in 3D and it was the best 3D I’ve ever seen.  It didn’t throw a lot of gimmicks at you and instead used the 3D effectively to bring the CG worlds to life.  It added a lot of depth and life to a world which may have otherwise looked too unreal.

It’s a far better blend of live-action/CG than anyone else has managed; yes even Jar Jar Binks.  The story was pretty derivative, but done in a clever enough way that you won’t mind until you look at the movie in retrospect.  I’ve read predictions of it receiving an Oscar Nomination, but it only deserves it for technical achievement in my opinion.

Verdict: B Tilt: A-

SHERLOCK HOLMES

This movie is an odd beast.  It’s not quite sure what kind of movie it is, and if it weren’t for the saving graces of Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law that flaw may have been this movie’s downfall.

The story is good, and though many feared that Holmes would become more superhero than super sleuth, there is nothing to fear.  The movie does a good job of painting Holmes as the genius that he is.  His character as portrayed in this film feels very Jack Sparrowesque.  Holmes is eccentric and almost crazy, but at the same time capable of solving crimes.

If Holmes hadn’t been around long before the two, I’d say this movie can best be described as a cross between Monk and Pirates of the Caribbean.  Strange, but true.

The bromance between Watson and Holmes is superb, and I don’t think I’ve ever liked Jude Law this much in a role.  The real takeaway from this film is the many movies yet to come. Let’s hope they leave Rachel McAdams out next time.

Verdict: B Tilt: A

If you would have told me back in May that I would be sitting in August reviewing one of the best movies of the summer I would have told you that you were crazy.  The beginning of summer 2009 had the goods, but the end of the summer was destined for suckitude.

GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra was merely a way to sell action figures stuck haphazardly in the middle of August.  It wasn’t supposed to be good.  It was supposed to be mediocre at best.

The trailers all but confirmed GI Joe’s inevitable failure.  The colorful characters of our past were crammed into ‘acceleration’ suits and made to look like poorly done CGI monkeys.  There was absolutely no redeeming qualities about the trailers.

The only hint of greatness that ever came out of the Joe movie were the early stills of the characters.  At least they got actors that looked the part…

But I’m here to tell you that GI Joe is easily the second best action flick of the summer, and (unless you love Potter) the second best movie overall.  GI Joe puts Wolverine and Transformers to shame.  Something tells me Hasbro is ok with that.

What GI Joe understands is that its entire premise is a little bit silly.  Though audiences may be inclined to believe in elite agencies protecting the world, when you start talking about Cobra Commanders and lasers then it gets a little hokey.

But hokey works for this movie.  It knows what it is and its intention is to keep you engaged too fully to think about the silliness.  It takes James Bond and crosses it with [the original] Transformers and gives the audience a little something special.

Perhaps what Joe has going for it more than anything else is an extremely charismatic cast.  Though none of them are likely to win Oscars (for this or any other performance), they are a ragtag bunch of heroes that you can get behind.

Channing Tatum is awesome as Duke, and provides the audience’s perspective taking in this elite organization with super hard core members and silent ninja commandos.  With help from Marlon Wayans as Ripcord, the audience is able to marvel at Joe headquarters with our protagonists.

(As an aside, I generally despise any of the Wayans brothers, but Marlon delivers a straight-edged comedic role without getting too ridiculous in this movie.  He’s suprisingly likable.)

Near the beginning of the movie a fight scene erupts (they rarely stop throughout the film), and Snake Eyes jumps out of a plane to exact justice on a number of Cobra bad guys.  That’s the moment that Joe gets its legs and after that it never stops running.  There is just too much cool to go around.

I was impressed with how well the movie manages to give every character enough time to make them feel meaningful.  Though not all get a well-developed backstory, every character feels like they belong and should be rooted for (or reviled).

Sienna Miller as Baroness is a delight.  One of the more memorable characters from the cartoons, she really shines on screen as both an action hero and a female antagonist.  Though I don’t remember a lot about the original storylines, Baroness has a backstory with Duke here which makes the plot seem all the more relevant.

Without going into detail about the awesomeness of each character, special shout outs are in order for Christopher Eccleston as Destro, and Byung-hun Lee as Storm Shadow.  Both bring awesome depth to their well-known characters.  And the always riveting Ray Park does his usual awesome job bringing Snake Eyes to life.

The stupid ‘accelerator’ suits from the trailers aren’t nearly as stupid as they appeared.  In fact, their inclusion in the film opens up one of the most inventive car chase scenes that I’ve seen for some number of years.  This romp through Paris including Storm Shadow, Baroness, Snake Eyes, Duke, Ripcord, and Scarlett is a perfect example of how the script leaves no character behind.

Sure the movie is filled with ridiculous technobabble and impossible gear, but that’s what made the old GI Joe so much fun.  I actually had an action figure named ‘Croc Master’ complete with whip and pet crocodile.  GI Joe is not supposed to be grounded in modern day military reality.

If I were to give advice on what movie to expect going into the theaters I would say to expect something along the lines of the original Transformers movie.

Though this movie has a better developed cast of characters and less shaky cam, it is essentially the same mentality.  Pure action-packed adrenaline is the only way to turn a toyline into a real movie, and it looks like Hasbro has struck gold yet again.

Verdict: B- Tilt: A

Believe it or not, I’ve been anxiously awaiting this day. It has been a while since my last review of a Harry Potter movie, and that was a fun — if somewhat controversial — review to write.

I’m not a Harry Potter fan.  I have read only the first book, and I feel that most of the movies were horribly made.  They tend to be drawn out and full of fan service that interrupts the flow of the movie for no discernible reason.

This latest film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, is getting rave reviews.  It’s percentage on Rotten Tomatoes is a perfectly respectable 87%.  It was moved from a winter release date in 2008 to a the more prime real estate of July 2009.

It has to be good right?

I will say that Half-Blood Prince is better than its predecessor.   While the Order of the Phoenix was full of indecipherable character subtext and questionable plot advancement, Half-Blood Prince lives up to it’s name and gets it half right.

For the first time in over 12 hours of Potter on film, the three leads finally got their act together.  Rupert Grint, Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe really own their characters in this film and emerge as the protagonists that they always should have been.

I finally believe that Hermione loves Harry like a brother and Ron like a boytoy.  I finally believe that Ginny Weasley is a wizard wunderkind herself and that she has the hots for her older brother’s best friend.

It’s hard to believe that Harry has taken 6 years to come to grips with the fact that he’s awesome, but having him finally do so is a welcome relief.  Daniel Radcliffe has confidence this time which is something that ‘the chosen one’ should have had all along (or at least after the first couple of movies).

Half-Blood Prince is also funny.  Though there were some stupid site gags (like a cauldron blowing up in a student’s face; cliche much?), there were also some genuine laughs to be had.

Sure we find out that our leads are all about getting it on with as many students as possible, but hey — isn’t that what any teenager would do if they were sent to high school away from home?

But for all its humor, good acting, and character development, Half-Blood Prince falls down about halfway through the movie.  When we’re done welcoming back the cast and seeing where they are in their love lives, we have no choice but to return to the Voldemort story line to promptly fall asleep.

Seriously, I almost fell asleep.  How can they chase Voldemort for so long without action?  How can every movie involve the introduction of a new teacher with a secret that must be uncovered, none of which actually progress the goal of defeating Voldemort?

Also, what happened to Draco Malfoy?  He used to be a delightfully mischievous boy, but now he’s just weird looking with practically no lines and no guts.  Although Malfoy is worth being suspicious of, I never really believe that Harry has a good reason to do so and thus agree with those who think he’s off his rocker.

Having not read the books, I had no idea that there was a character death in this picture.  I don’t want to give it away, but I will say that after 6 movies I really should care a lot more than I did.  The fact that I was completely unmoved by the occurrence is not a good thing.

Having a  discussion with my wife after the movie, she pointed out to me that perhaps my problem with the inconsistency of character development in the Harry Potter movies is not the fault of the filmmakers, but the situation.

Since many of these movies were filmed before the entire story had been unveiled, they didn’t know who would be important and who wouldn’t be.  They didn’t know that they should have cut out Longbottom entirely, and beefed up Ginny for future installments.

And that’s seriously a problem.  When Peter Jackson cut up Lord of the Rings, he was able to do so in an informed manner to capture the essence of the story for a film-going era.

They didn’t have that luxury with Harry Potter, and it has shown over the years.  I don’t know who to blame for that, but having not read the books it’s a pretty big ding on the films.

You Potter fans will love it.  I loved the first half.

It was coming in at a B- before Dumbledore and Harry went on a wizard adventure where they both forgot that they were wizards and that they didn’t need to do silly things like ride a boat across 50 yards of water.

Oh well.  At least I tried to like it.

Verdict: C Tilt: D+

Looking at photos of John Dillinger, he looked every bit as smug as he was.  He was a textbook definition of confidence, guts, and cajones.  There was nothing John Dillinger was afraid of, and this man without fear helped to inspire the FBI and define the word gangster.

It was a time when people didn’t have money and banks did.  He wasn’t so much a criminal as he was a folk hero.  Though he missed the ‘give to the poor’ part, people still got a big kick out of him robbing from the rich.

Catching such a man was not an easy task.  J. Edgar Hoover, then a younger man, was intent on changing the face of law enforcement.  He would be integral in founding the FBI and the whole concept of cross-state federal crime.  He was obsessed with bringing down criminals, and none more than public enemy #1 — John Dillinger.

Add to this a dogged FBI agent by the name of Melvin Purvis who was charged with bringing Dillinger down, and we have an intriguing story of cops and robbers in its truest sense.  After eventually bringing Dillinger down, Melvin Purvis ended up committing suicide many years later.  Such games are not for the weak.

With this sort of classic story filled with equal parts history and seeming fantasy, some of the best actors of our day, and a prime opening spot on the 4th of July, how could a filmmaker screw this up?

After seeing Public Enemies, that question can be answered.  Michael Mann seems to have gotten so caught up in his period costumes that he forgot what was at the center of the real story — characters.

Johnny Depp does as well as can be expected, but we never really get to know John Dillinger.  That could be excused if we instead got to know Melvin Purvis or J. Edgar Hoover, but those are also both untouchable, distant and hard to understand.

If not the characters, then at least the story of a depression era gangster as the last of a dying breed before the g-men came in and cleaned up America could have been utilized,  but even that is distant and difficult to connect with.

For all of John Dillinger’s charm, Mann seems unable to give us a consistent vantage point from which to view the goings on.  It is foolish to ignore the heart of your character when everyone knows how the movie is going to end.

Either Dillinger should have been played the martyr or the evil criminal, but instead we straddle the line between wanting to like him and knowing he doesn’t deserve to live.  He’s clearly more upstanding than many of his criminal counterparts, but that’s not saying much.

Purvis, who managed to accomplish what seemed to be impossible, could have been painted as a pinnacle of American ingenuity.  Crime-fighting was transforming.  It was a time when the FBI realized that they couldn’t fight crime with guns — they had to use their heads.

We do get brief mentions of how Purvis masterfully used forensics and tracking to catch his prey — something near revolutionary at the time — but it doesn’t get the attention it deserves.  Purvis finally caught up with John Dillinger not by outgunning him, but by outsmarting him.

Overall, I give this movie credit for inspiring me to read more about John Dillinger, Melvin Purvis, and the formation of the FBI.  I admire movies that can turn me into a history-reading nut for a few days.

But sadly, I probably would have gotten more out of an hour long documentary on the subject.  Johnny Depp and Christian Bale are underused and deserve the attention that their iconic characters deserve.

This movie wants to be so very good.  The set pieces are good, the movie takes you back to the 30s.  But for all the beauty, Mann just couldn’t manage to bring the movie into focus.

Verdict: C+ Tilt: B

Public Service Announcement: The man on the right is not Michael Bay.

Though he has been posing as him for many years, recent evidence suggests that Michael Bay is really a 13-year-old boy who has hired the man on the right as his frontman.

Either that, or the guy on the right is Michael Bay and said man is really a 13-year-old boy who got a little frisky with a Zoltar machine on the Jersey shore.  Either way, that man is a 13-year-old boy.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  I have a feeling that this may end up being a rant about Michael Bay, so I’m going to sum up the movie first to save some time.

Megan Fox is hot.  The Beef is charismatic.  Josh Duhamel is dreamy.  Transforming robots are cool.  Michael Bay is dumb.

Seriously; that should go on the cover of the DVD.  I hereby issue permission to Hasbro to use that blurb on any of their future Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen marketing materials.

The problem with this movie is that there should be no problem with this movie.  It has all of the ingredients of perfection — it should be the pinnacle of modern day big-budget action movie-making.

It has a male lead who is funny, lovable, and charismatic.  It has a female lead with a face who could launch far more than a 1000 ships.  It has transforming robots brought to life by some of the best CG the world has ever seen.

It is relevant to today’s interests with 80s freaks now making the money and technology being the center of our lives.  It has explosions, exotic locales, and the potential to be really funny.

But the problem is that it is helmed by a 13-year-old boy who still thinks that dogs humping is the funniest thing on earth.  I’m really quite surprised we didn’t see a few kicks to the groin, because that’s always good for a laugh as well.

Seriously, is there no one in Michael Bay’s editing room that has the cajones to stand up and say, “Um, Mr. Bay, don’t you think 3 dog-humping scenes it taking it a little too far?”

I can only assume that someone associated with the film has the good sense to voice that opinion, and then I can only imagine that through tears of laughter Mr. Bay dismissed the critique because he is Michael Bay and I’m pretty sure he has decided that he is God.

I’m going to give Orci and Kurtzman the benefit of the doubt, and assume that Michael Bay desecrated what was probably a reasonably serviceable script given the subject matter.  And I’m going to give Steven Spielberg the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was somehow out of contact with civilization when this film was being edited.

Lest you think that I’m just anti-dog-humping, I want to make it clear that it is not specifically the dog-humping that is the problem.  It is that an otherwise awesome movie is burdened by the non-funny site gags and gross humor, some of which borders on obscene and/or rascist.

I have defended Michael Bay in the past, and I think his body of work clearly has flashes of brilliance.  Even this movie has a few of those moments.  But overall, the movie feels like that instead of movie by comittee (which I may have preferred in this case), it is a movie brought to you by one man who is wildly out of touch with reality.

It makes a great GM commercial, and an even better PSA for the US Military, and after seeing Megan Fox stay hot through numerous desert explosions I’m sure they can sell her make-up by the ton.

The movie is cool.  It really is.  The robots are slick.  Optimus Prime still has that chilling authority, and Starscream and Megatron are more interesting this time around.

Omitted from the first one, it is inspired to see Soundwave re-imagined as a satellite, even able to shoot little animal transformers to earth.  It is the Soundwave for today’s technology, and I’m glad they didn’t try to fit a walkman into the film.

Some reviewers have complained about the robots being too plentiful to differentiate from each other, but I had no such problem.  I could keep the robots straight, but I was disappointed to see some of them receive so little screen time (Ratchet, Arcee) and others receive far too much (the Twins; and by too much I mean any screen time at all).

Ratchet was especially perplexing because I think they literally forgot him until about halfway through the movie.  Ironhide was given a fair amount of attention, but Ratchet would just show up from time to time, and he was often absent in shots that you would expect him to be in.

This franchise isn’t dead, but this wasn’t a step forward.  The next movie needs to get back to the characters.  We need to learn more about the Transformers that matter and less about the ones that don’t.  Also, John Turturro needs to be let go.  Sorry man, you’re not funny.

I’m really conflicted about this movie because there are a lot of great things about it, but it is ruined by Michael Bay’s immaturity and lack of editing.  I hope that Spielberg cracks the whip and reigns Bay in for the next outing or else this giant robot franchise is going to end up at the bottom of the Laurentian Abyss.

Verdict: D- Tilt: C+