echozdog

I couldn't put my finger on it. I liked the story, the characters and the idea. It's like there was a bunch of great pieces but how they were put together seemed clumsy. There was a scene where the mom grabs a ukulele and sings that was awkward at best. But I liked the movie. I especially liked the character Henry. Jaeden Lieberher does an excellent job portraying this kid. It's what holds the movie together. Naomoi Watts played the mom great except the bit about the mom being addicted to video games while the kid traded stocks was a bit extreme. Either one in one family would be OK but both the kid be so adult and the mom being so childish seemed hard to take. Anyway I'd still recommend seeing it. Just go with it and you'll like it.

SPOILER ALERT

First I am a hard person to fool. The Village. Figured it out. Many others. The Sixth Sense and Fight club got me and that's why I love them. I love to be taken down a path and then realize everything wasn't as it seems.

When the fireman lit the cigarette I realized it was 1980. But I still didn't get that those three would be raised together until the nursery with the knit onesies. I'm good at this stuff and the acting and characters blew me away that I wasn't looking for it.

Best Pilot ever. IMHO.

Then I thought. Well they can't do that every episode because if you are looking for twists you find them. If I was told there was a twist at the end, I would have figured it out (everyone's birthday on the same day, etc). But the fact one was black and the other two were twins threw me. PLUS the fact one was "Ryan Gosling" body and the other was overweight threw me that they were twins. Both played on stereotypes which I Loved they made us look into ourselves a little.

So where does the show go from here? It has a great premise. Dual time lines. You can do a lot with that. Have stories play out with flashbacks to tell a larger story (ala Lost). The casting was nailed with exceptional talent. I was interested in every character. They even nailed it by casting Simon and Simon vet Gerald McRaney. He was the glue that MADE that story line click. He speech on the chair was Emmy worthy. I hope he is a regular cast member and explore his wife's death and the death of his one child.

I'm hooked for at least season one. No need for twists. The dual time lines and great characters is enough for me. They can bounce all around in the 80s when the "triplets" are 4 or 10 or 15. triple time lines or more. Milo and Mandy can be made to look older and cast kids to play the parts at different ages. So much room to explore. I predict a good 4-7 year run.

How can this movie have a 3.x rating? It's intense. Meris is a woman that is really in love with her husband. She moves with him to his home town. His friends are mean to her and really rude. The town is full of uptight a**holes. Meris is in love with Mitch and we see her tortured by this life. All is not lost until see meets Trudy. Trudy shows her the light and Meris starts to kick ass. Eyeliner, attitude, living life! Sure she makes mistakes, but survives to find something special just down the road. I love redemption movies. The characters are great and so real. Why is this a 3.x?? This makes no sense!!!! A+++! More people need to see this awesome flick.

It's not often I walk out on movies. I had a free screening pass to see this movie. I waited in line and got cut off at the door as the room was full. So they let us screen "Limitless". So we go see Limitless and thought it was an OK movie, but disappointed in not see BLS. So time flies and I see on Netflix streaming there it is. So I sit down in bed and start watching. The first sign of trouble was the image that this was a Syfy channel production. OK a made for TV movie that they decided to put in the theaters. Let's give it a shot. Well the acting from the get go was bad...really bad. Bad dialog poorly given by bad 4 tier actors. OK, let's see the aliens attack and enjoy the eye candy. The special effects seemed like some 80s crap. No eye candy, no plot, no dialog, no characters, no nothing. Biggest waste of 30 minutes of my life (that's as much as I could have taken). Had I paid money for this I would have asked for my money back. I gave it 2. A one I reserved for stuff like Plan 9 or kids home movies. This was a notch better.

The kids & I were trying kill some time while Mom had a baking party at the house so we went to this with zero expectations. I was very pleasantly surprised. Nicolas Cage does a great job at the sorcerer who is looking for the "Prime Merlinian". He is the sorcerer who will inherit Merlin's powers. Our hero (David) is of course that person. The fun is in Cage's ability to be annoyed with the kid and like him at the same time. The CGI is enough to enhance the story but not overwhelm it. All four of my kids (ages 4-11) liked it. Some parts might be a little scary but not too bad (a dragon clomping around is all). Fun family flick.

PS I also liked that the hero held a door for a girl. I pointed that out to my boys who need to learn that.

OK It's not Citizen Kane or Henry the 8th. But this is one fantastic movie. I'm not a zombie movie lover. "dawn of the dead" hated it. "night of the living dead" snooze. This is not so much a zombie movie but more a Apocalypse movie. The movie starts with and is narrated by Jesse Eisenberg (Columbus...each character call each other by their destination). Jesse is the reason this movie works. It all revolves around him. He plays the virgin geek who learns how to survive by his set of rules. He meets up with three others. Woody Harrelson is the gun toting blood thirsty zombie killer. Emma stone and Abigail Breslen play con artist sisters. Together the chemistry is great. What makes this movie great is the chemistry between these four actors. The plot doesn't go where you expect it to go and blow it. Above all this is a great comedy. It's well timed, unexpected and funny as hell, but still has a heart. 10/10.

The trailer for this movie had me thinking "Lot's of CGI & no story" but the reverse is true. The CGI is there but not intrusive and I really liked the story. I know I like a movie when I care about the characters. I liked the brothers, I liked the female lead, I liked the dad. Jake G (too lazy to spell it) was way better as an action hero than I would have expected. He plays the orphan prince who has no throne aspirations down to a tee. The movie begins and end with his performance and he pulled it off swimmingly. The chemistry between Jake and female lead was well played and believable. The love between the brothers was critical to the story and I liked it. I took my two boys (11 and 8) and they loved it. I had to explain some the time travel stuff, but otherwise they followed along just fine.

I didn't go see this when it first came out because the trailer made it look like a poor mans cross between "The Mummy" and "Indiana Jones". This was better than the "The Mummy" (which I liked). It's no "Raiders of the lost ark", but it was worth the $2.50 I paid at the door.

I hope it made money and there is a sequel with the main actors all reprising. I'd take my boys when it's $7.50 (although I'm sure I'd be disappointed...rarely do sequels measure up).

9/10

OK I went into this one with low expectations. I've heard all the "not a bond movie" reviews and was expecting a bad Borne movie. Well there is some truth to that. The action scenes are straight from the Borne movies in that they are annoyingly hard to follow (and don't follow much in the way of being believable). I'm a firm believer that this style of action scenes does not come from the desire of the director to make a more engaging scene, but that they are easier to film in tiny 1/4 second slices and then edit the hell out of it. Shake the camera a lot so to cover up the mistakes. When they did this in the Borne movies and the public loved it we all have to suffer from the imitations.

As for the rest of the movie...it was great. I liked the introduction to the new SPECTRE (Quantum) and liked that aspect of the old Bond films. The villain was kind of crazy enough. I did like that his second (the guy with the little unusualness that all spy movies have) didn't wind up in usual fist fight with bond (this is not a spoiler).

I didn't like the bad guys and I liked the good guys. Action scenes could have been done better (probably budget cuts). Acting was standard.

8/10 Good cheap fun.

The mix of surreal and real is the key to what makes this movie great. You take your average teen flick about the geeks of a high school during last days of their senior year trying to get laid before they head off to college. Yes a tried and true formula. It probably gets a few laughs. But this movie adds the weird and surreal twists into plot that makes the jokes a 100 times funnier. I couldn't guess where the movie was going and I didn't see the jokes coming. I laughed out load (LOL for real) about 30 times. The real strength of the movie is the three main characters. They all have the best dialog and the actors deliver it better than I bet the writers could have hoped for. This movie is now in my top five of comedies. 10/10. I'm McLovin it.

This movie makes no subtleties about torture. Direct dialog spells out what they are try to say. "How many times have we got solid information using torture....once ...twice..". Obvious political commentary aside this is an engrossing movie. It revolves around a series of characters all interwoven. A father (Egyptian born but in the US for 20 since he was 14) is detained for contact with a known terrorist. His wife left waiting for him at the airport when he never shows. A CIA analyst who is promoted when his new boss is killed in an attack. An Egyptian head of police who carries out the torture for the CIA and his daughter who is in love and runs away. There is a clever use of chronology that comes to light near the end that pays off well and pulls all the story lines together. The acting is fantastic all around. Streep and Arkin have small but powerful parts. Jake is awesome in the role of a guy thrown into a world he can't handle. This movie deserved many more awards than it got, but not for the message it sends, but for the way the story is told and great acting.

10/10 I loved it.

Lot's of gritty violence though.

Don't get me wrong. I really liked this movie. It was intense, exciting, funny and down and dirty. It has it all. Great acting from Heath Ledger (of course he gets the best part to play, with the best lines). The rest of the characters are drone though (with the exception that Maggie Gyllenhaal. She gives some real depth to Rachel (one that Katie Holmes could only dream of doing). It fast paced, it has some really great scenes, great action and I was on the edge of my seat most of the way through. It reminded me a bit of the type of movie that "The Fugitive" was. The only flaws are how all the story lines are tied together, the obvious CGI on Two-face (this was very distracting), ending was a bit anti-climatic and it was a little predictable. I saw it at a half full matinée for $5 and felt I got my money's worth. 9/10 To have this rank at the best movie of all time on IMDb? HA! No I think not. The Godfather is better, but The Godfather isn't the best either. I can name 20 movies better than the both of these. But a ranking is subjective. This one will come down.

So I'm flicking through the pay channels last night and came across this movie just after the credits rolled. I see Collin Farrel and go hey "I like that actor I think I'll watch". I was immediately grabbed by the surreal dialog that goes on. This screen play was a work of genius. I don't know who Martin McDonagh is but I will be looking for what else he does and see it. I'm not sure how to say it but it has the right mix of drama and comedy that had me staying up until 1AM on the week day (and I have 4 kids). The cast was awesome. Colin Farrel plays the tortured soul of a hit man trying to come to terms with a hit gone bad and hating being in Bruges. Brendan Gleeson plays the other hit man who loves Bruges and wants to tour the town. The banter and dialog between the two of them and the town folks had me riveted and laughing for 2 hours. Then half way through Ralph Fiennes pops up in the movie. Ralph Fiennes! The twists and turns this movie makes blew me away. 9/10 (I only did the 9 because I guessed part of the ending 15 minutes before it happened)

I am Legend is entertaining but flawed. We all know the premise. He's the last immune person in New York to a deadly virus that kills 90% of the people and turns the 9% into hairless raving maniacs. Leaving the last 1% to be eaten by the 9%. He's military scientist that is working on cure for the virus that will return the people back to normal. Int he mean time he hunts deer with his German Shepard. The best parts are the tense moments where he has to stay in the light away from the crazies. The boring parts are when we get to see how he goes about his day. It just wasn't that interesting. The movie picks up after some bad things happen and then some good things. Just when it looks like it really might be getting good, we have an ending which I didn't care for. I felt it missed the mark. The crazies would have been better played by people rather than CGI characters. Oh well, it was OK for a DVD rental. 7/10

OK let me start out by saying this could have been a cool movie, IF it wasn't a recycled version of the "The Fugitive". OK it's the same supporting cast (playing the same roles), setting, director, production company but come on. But you know that's OK as long as this movie is as fun and exciting as "The Fugitive". Sorry.

The premise is a bunch of scientists create a way to turn water into Hydrogen and burn it (creating water again). Keanu Reeves plays the machinist (do you think we would have bought him playing a scientist..NOT). Rachel Weisz plays the hot Physicist (yeah, your average Physicist is hot...NOT). Morgan Freeman plays the controlling man behind the scenes. The story starts by the gang making the process work. Guess what happens next? Duh Some bad guys blow it up and frame Reeves and Weisz. So now they are on the run. The fact that the same cops from "The Fugitive" are chasing them annoyed me to no end. The reporter from "The Fugitive" asked the same questions. I'm surprised they didn't have them get chased down a St. Patrick's day parade.

I could go on and on, but I wasted enough time watching this pile of crap. In short the Editing is bad, the dialog will make your eyes roll, the Director must have phones this one in. I can't pity the people who saw this at the theater, because this HAD to be straight to DVD. I do pity not just the people that bought it, but also the people that paid money to rent and even the poor souls that received it as a present. That is one sure way to lose a friend.

I went to Inception based on word of mouth that it was a real head scratcher. One person quoted "If I told you the last 5 minutes of the movie it wouldn't be a spoiler" another "when the lights come up you'll be staring at the screen going 'what just happened'". So I went into this movie ready to watch everything. I wanted to be outguessed. I didn't want to know where it was going. I wanted a ride.

It turned out I liked this movie not for the reasons I went to it. I like many in the theater could guess the ending (at the very end there was laughter at my showing). This movie is great for the idea, the visuals (this movie could not have been made 15 years ago) and the acting.

First the idea: Entering people's dreams. What is a dream and what is reality? Going down layers and layers. the best part of the movie is trying to keep straight what is happening and when. The last 45 minutes of the movie I had to almost draw a diagram in my head to keep it straight. This movie it not for your Transformers or Twilight crowd. this is a thinkers movie.

The Visuals: The reality bending world of dreams was done so well that I didn't roll my eyes at the CGI. The CGI aided the story and didn't show off at all. Some time I knew in my head some stuff was CGI, but it was so well done that I thought they might not have used CGI for those parts. I knew they did, but you could not tell. Simply put you could go to this movie and not understand at all what happened and enjoy it for the mid bending visuals before your eyes.

The acting: Leonardo Dicaprio is getting better and better every movie he makes. Even though he is one of the most well known actors in the world I was thinking of him as "Cobb" they whole time. Tom cruise should just have all his characters called Tom. The supporting cast was top notch. All very well done.

The downside: I hope the ending was not supposed to be a surprise because the audience I was with all laughed at the very end. We all knew what the end was...but I guess that's what one reviewer meant by "I can tell you the last 5 minutes and it won't be a spoiler". It wasn't.

I gave this a 9 out of 10. Great movie. It's be a load of bull if it's not Best Picture. The only hit was I think the ending was supposed to be a surprise. It didn't matter that it wasn't.

Despicable Me tells the story of Gru a master villain who just hasn't made a major splash. Some other major villain just did a big job and now he sets his sights even higher. In order to accomplish this he needs something his arch-enemy has and find the only way to get it is to employ 3 little orphans who can get inside his lair by selling cookies.

The movie goes exactly where you think it will and some the jokes fall flat, but at its core is good feeling story of redemption and parental love. There is something for everyone in this. I took my wife and 4 kids (11,8,4 and 4) and everyone loved it. It's not perfect though. Some jokes just were not that funny to me (although a lot of people in the theatre were laughing at them). I also didn't see it in 3D and it looks like it would have been fun to watch in 3D. During the credits they add stuff just for the 3D that is over the top 3D. It looked like that would have been fun.

I recommend it at a 8/10. Kid friendly. Grown up entertaining. Heartwarming. Exciting. Not bad for $5 on a Thursday.

I tried and tried, but I just can't watch this anymore. I've watched BoB about 10 times and love it every time. I knew it was lighting in a bottle and recreating it in the Pacific wasn't going to work. My first worry was that the battles were all over the place on unknown islands. It was too hard to connect to the location. They don't allow us to connect to the soldiers. They didn't have a D-Day to kick it off like BoB. They didn't have a Winters character that rises from a 1st lieutenant to Major via the battlefield commission. They don't have the trek over land that you can follow. They don't have lesser characters that you even care about. It's just a mishmash. I can see in the post-production they went "Crap! This sucks! No one's going to follow this! Call Hanks and have him narrate stuff to tie it together. Maybe that will help!" Having to show maps where stuff is happening all the time and the battles go from here to there and everywhere. That and it really was hard to get behind the battles over some remote piece of land in the middle of ocean over say France. I'm sure the guys fighting the in Pacific felt like this too. Why the hell are we here? As opposed to the guys in Europe. This plan had failure written all over it from the beginning. They tried to make it a BoB version set in the Pacific and it just doesn't work. I don't know how you would do it, but some creative person somewhere may someday come up with a good way to show the battle in the battle in the Pacific in a compelling way.

3/10 (a couple characters were OK, but not enough for my time)

I'm an old school trek fan. Reruns in the early 70s every day after school. I've seen'em all 100 times each. I loved the characters. JJ did a great job picking new people to fill these shoes (literally). Spock and Bones are played well like you would guess they were. Kirk's goofy mannerisms from the 60s are gone, but his recklessness remains (his strength). The plot's a little thin and contrived but effective in pulling together these characters. We all know no one dies of consequence (except the red shirt guys :)) since we know their future (or do we?). The plot has the smart move of allowing for the past to change. If this wasn't there then the outcome would be all too well known. The only things they could have left out were the silly Bones/Spock banter. That type of stuff could have waited for the next movie. Another thing would be the theft of the plot from Wrath of Khan. Twisted yes, but borrowed from on a lot of levels.

9/10. Kirk's rise from cadet to captain was lame and should have taken longer. The villain was not the best. I doubt I could have come up with something better. It was worth the $5 I paid.

First of all this is a KIDS movie and a really good one too. No fart jokes, no swearing under there breath and most of the jokes were aimed at the kids because IT'S A KIDS movie. I took my 8 and 5 year olds and they loved it. I laughed out load probably 5-6 times. The jokes aimed at the adults were very funny. I also liked movie because all our of my kids are adopted and the main story is of Lewis who is too much of a techo-wizard-geek to get adopted. The theme of the movie is family and who is your real family. That part (for me) really hit home (which is another reason I gave this a 10). The movie has it all: Time travel, spoofs Japanese kung fu movies, singing frogs, dastardly villain (that's stupid), flying ships, crazy relatives, a dinosaur, a kids who misses the catch in the baseball game, you name it has it.

The best part I thought was the slogan "Keep moving forward" used throughout the movie and how at the end we see where that comes from. Nice touch.

If you have kids. The are zero regrets in seeing it (except maybe trying to explain time travel to a 5 year old, my 8 year old got it). If you or someone you know was adopted, you love it. If none of the above then you'll still at laugh a lot and not regret seeing it.

10/10 Nice work Disney...

It must be unbearable to watch this movie without having read the book. There are pieces here and there that are in there without much explanation. If you read the book you know what it is, but you also know that half of those parts were left out only to confuse the viewer. It certainly looked like they had a movie that went on too long and did some bad cuts to get it in on time, only to make things too confusing. This is the 5th movie of 7 and the worst so far. I gave it a 7 because it is entertaining, but jumps around too much. It was like they had to hit a bunch of key points of the book with no flow. I also felt like they had to get stuff in for reference in the next two movies. What can you do. Too much book for the big screen and to many directors and editors crossing multiple movies. Too bad they didn't go the PeterJackson/LOTR route and let one crew do the whole thing. One vision, one story and consistency.

I never heard of Jim Braddock nor Max Baer which helps in the suspense of this movie. It's well played by Russell Crowe and Renée Zellweger as a couple that lost everything in the stock market crash. Jim is desperate to keep the family together as the sensible thing to do is send the kids off to relatives until they can get back on their feet. Jim makes a promise to his oldest son that he will not let that happen. Having kids myself I could really relate to the fear of your family living on the street. The movie does a really good job in showing how bad it was to be able to work and yet have no work. With no way to take care of your family you feel the helplessness of the people. The boxing in the movie is a means to an end. This isn't Rocky. This movie has a lot more heart. IMHO.

I caught this on DVD last night. The rest of the family was asleep while I sat in living room, slowly moving from chair to chair to get closer to the TV. This movie grabbed me and pulled me in hard. It had everything that I like in a movie. It had suspense, characters (that I care about and ones I hate), unpredictable, twists and a great ending.

The movie basically is the story of two police officers coming out of the academy. One was sent there to be a spy for the mob (Damon), the other is recruited right away to be a mole in the mob for the cops DiCaprio). We watch as each reported to there boss's and tries to not get caught. Meanwhile a lot of people die around them (the departed).

The suspense in this movie was so high I couldn't stand it. I sit here at work the next day and I'm amazed at how much I'm still thinking about it. The reason the suspense is great is two fold. One you feel like these characters (all of them) are in danger, real danger. Two you don't know what's going to happen next. All this makes for a great ride.

I highly recommend this movie unless you don't like mob movies. This is very much a mob movie. 10/10

BTW DiCaprio got robbed for not getting an Oscar nomination. I really don't care for the guy, but he did a hell of a good job. Walberg deserved his nomination. Damon was good but played it a little too cold. Nicholson, Sheen and Baldwin were great stars willing to play their parts to the hilt as supporting actors. If Martin Scorsese had not gotten the Best Director then the Oscars would have lost ALL credibility.

Good Day!

I Tivo'ed this and watched it with the idea it was really bad. It was not that bad. In fact it was pretty good. Yes the CGI is eye candy. Yes Keanu delivers his bad attitude lines in cheesy form. Yes the plot is silly. But if you look past those set backs you'll find some chemistry between Keanu and Rachel. I liked them together and the whole "I'm in it for myself...except now that I met you I do selfless things, ala Han Solo" thing has been done to death, but it works. I liked Keanu's character, bad boy, dammed to hell, trying to buy his way into heaven by banishing demons back to hell. That's new. I enjoy CGI when it's well done and relevant (liek here). 7/10 Not bad at all.

Nothing original here, but the action is good (sometimes over the top). Someone wanted to remake Logan's run, tossing in some political discussion of clones and add a dash for the matrix and you have "The Island". The movie is not all bad. Ewan carries the action hero OK. You'll have to turn off your disbelief radar for 2 hours, while the plot (can't happen), action (no one would survive any of it) and romance (inevitable) takes place. Looking past a couple groaner moments, and a few characters looking at each other like things needed to go unsaid (lame), it wasn't all that bad. I really went with it let all that slide and going for a rating of 8, except one scene that the characters could not have survived, but not only did they did without a scratch. I dropped it to a 7 just for that scene. OK DVD rental. Glad I didn't pay for it (HBO free weekend TiVo :).

I say cliché only because they probably stuck to the truth (the book) as much as possible and Johnny Cash's life probably was a bit of a cliché. You can see they went to the "Ray" school of biographies (right down the brother dieing). Although I'll forgive that because it's true. Maybe having a sibling die when you are young turns you into a fabulous musician and really really rich when you got older. I'm glad no one told me that when my sister was a pain in the ass for 10 years :). I digress.

If you love music, you'll love this movie. I'm not a big Johnny Cash fan. I like his music, but have purchased no CDs/albums of his. But I like movies about musicians (especially talented ones). This one is well done. Probably the reason I gave it a 9/10 was the fact that Joaquin and Reese actually sing. Reese is really a good singer and I see why she got the Oscar. But Joaquin was robbed by Mr. Hoffman. Mr. Hoffman didn't have to sing nor learn to play the guitar. I felt I was watching Johnny Cash. I didn't feel I was watching Capote, but Hoffman doing a Capote imitation. Joaquin is fabulous in this movie. To make my point I'll reference one scene (no spoiler). He's playing a song at an audition that the other members of his band have never heard. When it gets to the part where a lead guitar is needed he turns to his lead guitar and gives a look of "dear god help me!!" that is priceless. That look alone made this movie for me.

9/10 Own it on DVD. Watch it again and again.