The Incredible Hulk

I was one of like, two people who actually liked Ang Lee's The Hulk, and while it was a little lacking as an action film, as a study of father/son strife, and the perils of suppressed anger, it was quite good, aided by the performances of Eric Bana and Jennifer Connolly.

Well, consider Louis Letterier's film a semi-sequel/remake. Or the film version of a retcon (comic book term: Retroactive Continuity, or awkwardly changing the history of a character to avoid internal contradiction). While the first movie is not denied, several events are rewritten or take on different significance in this movie. And the cast is different. Sam Elliot, Eric Bana and Jennifer Connolly are replaced by William Hurt, Edward Norton and Liv Tyler respectively.

So what happens in the movie? Well, Bruce Banner is now in Brazil, working in a soda factory by day, and by night trying to find a cure for his condition. Unfortunately, the US military is still looking for him, and through a somewhat unlikely chain of events, they figure out exactly where he is. So they dispatch a team of Special Ops guys led by British soldier of fortune Neil Blonsky (Tim Roth), to bring him in. Of course, they wind up making him mad, and the operation doesn't go so great. This aggravates the aggressive Blonsky who finally agrees to submit to a series of experiments to make him more like Banner. And the movie unfolds from there.


So what does the movie do well? For starters, the action scenes are fantastic. Much like Marvel's other major offering of 2008, Iron Man, the movie makers look at what they're working with (essentially two big monsters), and design the action scenes appropriately. Stuff gets smashed. Stuff gets thrown. And CGI monsters beat the crap out of each other. It's actually pretty darned entertaining.

What doesn't it do so hot? Well, it doesn't even pretend to be as interested in character as the first movie. As far as plot goes, it's pretty simple, and the characters, while decent, don't really have as much depth as Ang Lee gave them. For starters, Edward Norton's whole "Don't make me angry" spiel is a lot less convincing in this movie because he doesn't really seem to have anything to be angry about. In the first Hulk movie, we knew why Banner was mad, and his Hulk tendencies were understandable. In this one, he just seems to be a guy who is all too willing to fly off the handle for no apparent reason.

But really, this one is a fun superhero movie. It doesn't really transcend the genre, like Nolan's Batman movies, and it isn't a shining example in its genre, but it's a solid entry. A good superhero flick and I recommend it to anyone who likes them or likes action movies.

3/5

10, 000 B.C.

You know, you'd think any movie with a cover like that couldn't be bad. And you'd kinda be wrong. 10,000 B.C. is undoubtedly one of the most goofy and moronic movies I've seen in a long time. And not goofy and moronic like old Uncle Ted who's been weird ever since he ate that two-week old pot pie. Goofy and moronic like that ancient dog next door who probably needs to be put down, but no one really wants to be the guy who says it.*

The plot involves a dude with an unpronounceable caveman name (Steven Strait) who loves a girl with another unpronounceable caveman name (Camille Belle). Why he loves her is kind of beyond me, as her main skill seems to be staring off blankly into the middle distance. Anyway, she's attached to some sort of prophecy about death and destruction, while he's connected to some sort of prophecy about heroism. It kind of sets the stage for wacky hijinks.

After a completely unconvincing mammoth hunt which borrows a hell of a lot from Peter Jackson's awe-inspiring King Kong remake, slavers in rudimentary armor and riding horses show up and nab all of the dude's clan, including ol' Middle Distance. He pops a gasket and takes off with two or three caveman redshirts (red loincloths?) across the snowy mountains to fricking. Get. Her. Back. Grr. Smash.

Now this middle part isn't too bad because they bust out the CGI prehistoric animals, which is honestly why I bought the DVDs. Yeah, I'm a nerdy little kid at heart. I saw that Smilodon on the cover and thought, this movie must be cool. Alas. I always fall for slick packaging. Anyway, despite a confoundingly fast transition from the snow-capped peaks to the steaming jungle (as in, the mountains basically stop at jungle's edge), the movie gets points for being probably the only flick in the world to use the Terror Bird as a monster. They also do throw in the Smilodon for a few bonus points, but only for about two minutes, and then it's on to the movie's main climax which involves assembling an army of Africa's different nations (leaving us to wonder where exactly the very caucasian Dude is from in the world), and attacking the bad guys: the Ancient Egyptians.

Who are building pyramids.

In 10,000 B.C.

With mammoths.

Actually, I can totally let historical accuracy slide. Really. I'm not too much of a stickler for that, but unfortunately, the movie does too much wrong. For starters, the dialogue is incredibly clunky. It would be nice to ignore that and enjoy the spectacle, but the dialogue is just so bad that trying to skim over it is like trying to sprint through concertina wire. Further, much is made of Dude's status as humanity's first hero. To which I say, dear God, save us now. Aside from discovering, completely out of the blue, starlight navigation, Dude spends much of the movie wracked with indecision, getting trapped, or just being afraid. He becomes a little heroic toward the end, but for a story that's supposed to be so epic (and starts to feel a little - or a lot - like a rip-off of John Milius's Conan the Barbarian), Steven Strait just can't sell it. And without him as a good linchpin, the whole movie feels light, almost like a made for TV special.

In the end, there's spectacle to be had with 10,000 B.C., it's just not really enough to make you ignore the badness. So while I'm not giving this movie a 1, because it at least kept me entertained, I also can't rate it higher than:

2/5

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

There are two distinct subgenre movies out there which frequently go hand in hand and both of which I have a fondness for. In the first, you have the immature guy who wanders around doing amusing things until about the hour mark when he has some sort of epiphany (albeit usually an entertaining epiphany - as opposed to a screaming in the rain epiphany), and then tries to grow up and restore his life to normalcy. About a Boy and High Fidelity are two movies that fit into this genre that I have a lot of affection for.

In the other genre, sadsack guys who have experienced some sort of trauma encounter impossibly cute and spunky women who would never, ever in real life fall for guys like them, and through a series of wacky misadventures find true love, happiness, etc. Two examples of this kind of movie would be Garden State and Chungking Express (and while I am somewhat ambivalent toward Garden State, I'm going to go ahead and say anyone who hasn't seen Chungking Express yet is a turd and needs to watch it ASAP).

Anyway, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a conglomeration of both those movie types, produced by rising comedy superstar Judd Apatow, who has singlehandedly produced probably the funniest movies of the last couple years. It follows the life of Peter Bretter (Jason Segel), a sloppy musician who composes the soundtrack for the hit TV show Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime (a hilarious spoof of CSI), and also dates its female star, Sarah Marshall (the criminally adorable Kristin Bell), who is also, as is made obvious from the opening look at Peter's apartment, the central feature of his life. Unfortunately for him, she dumps him in the movie's opening, and after a short, ill-advised sex tour of the bar scene, Peter goes to Hawaii so he can...are you ready for it...forget Sarah Marshall.

Unfortunately, Sarah has also come to Hawaii with her new boyfriend, rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand), a hilariously mellow, worldly guy who sings songs about tolerance and loving one another. This turns out to be a bit of a disaster for Peter, who tries to deal with this situation, as well as a broad cast of entertaining supporting characters, such as the cute customer service girl (Mila Kunis), the always-stoned surf instructor (Paul Rudd), an irritating waiter who worships Snow (Superbad's Jonah Hill) and Dwayne the Bartender (Davon McDonald), who can name 100 different types of fish.

Like the other movies to come out under the Apatow brand, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is frequently hilarious, always just a little raunchier than good taste demands, and ultimately a good-hearted little film. It gets a little shorter on laughs toward the end, but it's still as funny as I've come to expect from Apatow's productions. The cast is universally solid, with the supporting players especially turning in excellent performances. Among the main players, Jason Segel turns in a genuinely likable performance as the good-natured slob who's trying to put his life together again, while Kristin Bell is good as the alternately angry and manipulative TV star, and Mila Kunis is quite appealing as the spunky customer service rep who would never in a million years fall for our star, but does anyway. Of course, honestly, I think the show is stolen just a little bit by Russell Brand's arrogant jerk rock star, who turns out some of the movie's funniest lines.

In the end, I recommend Forgetting Sarah Marshall as a highly entertaining comedy that gets a little less funny toward the end, but remains so good-natured that you can't really care.

3/5

When we left Earth

When we left Earth is the Discovery Channel's epic miniseries about space travel, featuring interviews with just about everyone who's ever even looked at a space shuttle and epic quantities of rare archival footage from NASA. It's also pretty damn excellent.

I've always had an interest in space travel, although my fascination stemmed for the most part from my love of science fiction, and thus mostly revolved around red dwarf stars, black holes, planetary rings and all those other crazy things out there in the blackness of space. But when I was younger my Dad took me to the theater to see Apollo 13 when it came out, and ever since I've had a passing interest in the space program, enough to read a few books on the topic and enough to make me pick this DVD up at the local PX when I saw it for sale.

There are six episodes in this miniseries. Episode 1 covers the Mercury program, Episode 2 is Gemini, while 3 and 4 are all about the Apollo rockets. 5 is about the space shuttle, and Episode 6 covers the ISS, the Hubble and the Columbia disaster.

Now right off the bat, I'll tell you what this DVD is not. It is not about the science of space travel or about what is out there in space. This is a very human tale about, as the opening narrator puts it in every show, "Our greatest adventure." Immediately, as the first episode plunges into the interviews with the surviving Mercury astronauts, interspersed with clips of them taking tests, joking amongst themselves, or even going over paperwork, you realize that this is going to be a narrative.

This turns out to be both the series' strong point, and its weak point. The first and third episodes of When we left Earth are jaw-droppingly fantastic, and it's probably worth buying the DVD set for them alone. You're on the edge of your seat when you see Alan Shepard take off from the launch pad, or when Gus Grissom splashes down in the ocean and starts sinking immediately, or when Neil Armstrong takes so freaking long to get off that ladder.

By the same token, there are moments in the other shows which also produce incredibly strong reactions in the viewer. The first Gemini space walk is both terrifying and awe-inspiring, and the story of Apollo 13, which I know very, very well, still keeps me biting my nails every time I hear it. In addition, the two space shuttle disasters are presented in the most heart-breaking manner possible, and you watch them, feeling a sinking feeling in your stomach, just waiting for the bad news to come. This is especially true of Columbia where we see video of the interior of the space shuttle coming in to land, and one of the astronauts laughing that she hasn't put on her gloves yet, only to transition a moment later to images of the shuttle breaking apart and falling through the air like a rain of shooting stars. You watch that, and for the first time perhaps, you really realize the full significance of all those bright little pieces falling through the air.

These images are something the miniseries does well. Everything, and I mean everything is shown. If there is footage of something, you see it. If the astronaut or technician is still alive, he's interviewed. There is so much content in this miniseries that they include a whole extra disc just of that material. And some of these images, like the view of Earth from the space shuttle, or the lunar lander's view of the moon's surface rushing toward it, are truly amazing and will stick in the memory for a long time.

Given this stellar content, I realize that the show's problems stem not from the discs, but from our nation's sluggish approach to space exploration. Episodes 1 and 3 are the most interesting because launching a man into space and then putting him on the moon were the high points of the whole affair. Everything else is interesting enough, but the ISS, or the shuttle, or the hubble, just don't feel as epic or revolutionary. I almost wish they'd included a little bit about the Mars rovers, just to give a little jolt at the very end of the miniseries, but at the same time, I realize that other than pictures, there's not too much involved in those projects that would be exciting to watch.

And in the end, perhaps that's what this documentary does best. It shows the dead end we've come to in space exploration, content to float in little rings around our own planet, while at the same time it fires the viewer up with the same sense of adventure that America felt in the days of the Mercury Project, making us wonder why we aren't going somewhere new.

As you can probably tell, I recommend watching this if you have even the slightest interest in the space program. Despite a little sag in places which stems more from subject matter than from presentation, When we left Earth dazzles and gives the viewer a whole new love for something that has become too stale in our national mindset.

4/5

First Post

So I've already blogged a little bit before, but numerous people complained that I spent too much time blogging about things I'd read or watched at the theater, etc, etc. unfortunately I'm the very worst type of geek, the type who finds absolutely everything interesting and spends excessive amounts of time telling people about it. Therefore, there was only one alternative. Create a second blog!

So for those of you who actually care what I think about the various books I read or the games I play, welcome to this side of my internet domain.