The Croods

The Croods starring the voices of Nic Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, and Catherine Keener.

I will tell you this, since Pixar started making cartoon movies the bar has been set very high with anyone else trying to attempt to make kid movies.  Dreamworks and Blue Sky are two of the companies that have taken the standard Pixar has set and ran away with it producing some of the best movies, not just cartoon movies, but movies in general on a consistent basis: Megamind, Despicable Me 1 & 2, Shrek (don't really like the sequels to this movie but the first one still stands a genre setter), Ice Age movies, Rio, Hoton Hears a Who, Madagascar, and Epic.  They produce sequels that actually expand on the story line without rehashing the same old, same old just to cash in, but don't get me wrong, they do cash in.  Only this time around instead of the normal Hollywood formula of just churning out a sequel without any real thought to the characters or storyline, these studios actually seem to care about the characters and storyline.  Not that The Croods is a sequel but the care that is given to the characters and storyline is clearly on display here.

The storyline is a universal theme of overcoming fear, discovery of the unknown, and ultimately a journey type of quest - going from point A to point B.  First off, I don't normally like these journey type of quests because they become bogged down in the surroundings and epic-ness of everything else that actual characters and characters development get forgotten in the visuals.  Not so with The Croods, characters and dialogue are the primary focus of this movie, so much so that the journey from point A to point B becomes secondary to the film.  These are just some interesting characters and watching them change as the story line progresses is one of the fun aspects of the movies.  This movie also proves the fact that a simple storyline doesn't matter if the characters inhabiting that storyline are interesting, they can carry it where ever the story goes.  No matter how insane or crazy the storyline gets, it won't matter because the characters will be there to guide the storyline, and if they are interesting enough, they will carry it with ease.  The characters in The Croods are good, I won't say they truly amazing but they are strong enough to carry this movie and make it interesting.

The interaction between these characters is a delight to watch.  Hollywood could learn so much from cartoons now-a-days about interaction, character development, and real dialogue that helps with what I've just mentioned instead of just being filler material or plot material that really adds nothing to the story.  I also like the fact that as the characters learn things that would change their lives.  They actually change because of what they've learned, instead of just acting the same way they had before the knowledge came to them.  This type of progression is a delight to watch as it shows so much more intelligence and sophistication then is churned out by Hollywood.  Plus it treats the audience as smart instead of catering to the dumbness that Hollywood thinks the audience is.  

This is also one of the few family films to come out that actually has a whole family.  They don't treat each other as subhuman but their interaction rings with a truthfulness that helps connect them with the audience.  The mother and father have a loving relationship and, without going further into that, this movie actually has a mother and father something Hollywood seems to have forgotten exists.  But the main focus of the movie is on the oldest daughter, Eep, whose teenage changing, wanting to spread her wings, and desire to question things fully matches the movies changes to perfection, without being too preachy or in your face.  I know this theme has been over done but it's a universal theme, one that's easily connected with audiences, but it's the characters of this movie that really help everything to flow so that the theme feels new and fresh. 

Now I won't say the visuals aren't spectacular because they are, but they are the side note to the characters and storyline.  This is one of the few journey movies where the settings and set pieces are epic in nature but yet don't feel forced or so over-the-top that they become lost in their own indulgence.  They blend in with the storyline flawlessly.  I liked how the visuals of the movie went from brown and dark colors of the first act into the bright colors of the second and third act which really opened up the movie not just from a metaphorical standpoint but from a stand point that helped to mirror Eeps changing as well, as I mentioned above. 

This is a great film to watch with the kids and own in your movie collection.  

Oblivion

Oblivion directed by Joseph Kosinski starring Tom Cruise, Andrea Riseborough, Olga Kurylenko, and Morgan Freeman.

Visually this movie is pretty amazing and that alone was worth watching it, but from a story line standpoint this movie suffers from being sterile.  In fact even the beauty of this movie has a sterile-ness to it that makes it somewhat off putting. 

The story line is just a normal retread of a bunch of sci-fi stories, even the "big" twist I figured out about a half an hour into the movie (not that the trailer really helped with that).  Even with a retold story the movie could have been good with some decent characters to guide the story towards its end.  Sadly the characters in this movie are as sterile and dead as the world around them.  They are so boring and devoid of life that I didn't care about them, what they did, or anything about them through the whole movie.  It seems dialogue and characterization has become a thing of the past when it comes to Hollywood movies, which is something I've been harping on for a long time now.  Even the movie Gravity had a simple story line that's been retold a thousand times but it was made fresh with the approach taken by the director, even then they dared to give the main character some actual character and wanted the audience to care about her.  Even George Clooney's character, for his brief appearance, had more character than the all the characters in this movie.

Anyone going to see this movie, who knows about movies, shouldn't be surprised with the lifeless beauty of the movie considering the director Joseph Kosinski's last directed movie was Tron: Legacy.  That movie was even more lifeless than Oblivion but yet had the same kind of visual eye candy as this movie did.  The end result is no matter how much a turd is covered in gold or polished to look pretty - it's still a piece of poop, no matter what it looks like on the outside.

Iron Man 3

Iron Man 3 written and directed by Shane Black, starring Robert Downey, Jr, Gweneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, and Ben Kingsley.

Now this was an odd movie to watch.  It was equally frustrating and entertaining at the same time but no where near the mess that was Star Trek Into Darkness.  There was so much in this movie that that had me rolling my eyes, but yet it was highly enjoyable also, in a Michael Bay sort of way.  I will say this though, over the years movies seem to have adopted a Michael Bay template for everything that happens in them.  Even as movies seem to be going the Bay route they are no where as entertaining as a Bay movie, because only Bay can do Bay. 

Movies don't seem to do much anymore but be about action scene after action scene and a few filler moments that serve no purpose but to drive the plot forward where logic, and all sane reason, have been chucked out of the window in favor of CGI and explosions.  Even after saying all of this the only reason this movie is saved from the muck of story line it has is Robert Downey, Jr.  Who single handedly saves this movie with his performance, much like he did with Iron Man 2 and pretty much the first Iron Man movie.  But this movie is still no where near as good as Iron Man, which only suffered from a poor act 3 but is infinitely better than Iron Man 2.

I don't know why everyone thinks that total all out destruction is the only way to go with superhero movies now-a-days because character can go so much farther into making the story line and movie better.  I mean it gives the viewer something to hold on to and cheer for if character is sought after versus explosions and CGI overkill.  Sadly, this just seems not to be the case for the state of movies with the way consumers are spending money on these overblown spectacles, these kinds of movies are going to continue to be churned out from the Hollywood cookie cutter factory.  Yet in the end they end up being a non-spectacle in the long run despite all the spectacle on screen.

What do I mean when I say these spectacle movies have become non-spectacle movies?  I mean their longevity has no no shelf life but for immediate gratification.  These are movies that will only be talked about in the present they were released in.  Then from here on out they fall completely off the radar from any conversation and only become mentioned in a conversation when in comparison with the other movies connected to them.  The conversation will ultimately go something like this where Iron Man 2 and 3 will get mentioned then the first Iron Man movie will get talked about more than the sequels, "Iron Man 3 was good, but not as good as Iron Man, which was way better than Iron Man 3, which was better Iron Man 2.  But still the first Iron Man was the best of the series as the plot and..." To full understand what I'm talking about compare Nolan's Batman trilogy, the Toy Story trilogy, or for that matter even the original Star Wars trilogy to see how sequels enhance a story line.  Because those movies, when you talk about them, fold in and out on themselves so well that no one of them is better than the other as they all support themselves through character and story lines not getting lost in the spectacle thus ending up a non-spectacle.

I've got to honestly say I'm getting tired of endless explosions, one over-the-top set piece after the next over-the-top set piece, wildly diverting plot lines, and character shifts for no other reason than, well, hell why not.  I'm getting really...to borrow a phrase from a wildly over-the-top action series and to crank the irony up to 11 by doing it...tired of this shit.  It's funny too because the only thing that saves this movie from the insanity of itself is Robert Downey.  He makes Tony Stark an interesting character, so much so, that I actually want to see how things turn out in his life and this is nothing based on how the character is written, but is purely based on how Downey plays him  For this he is worth every dollar on that paycheck.  Downey keeps the insanity some what masked by just playing the character as he plays the character.  This goes back to what I was saying above, focus on character and people will care about what happens.  This movie and story line chooses to focus on spectacle, but Downey makes Stark interesting enough to overlap most of the spectacle.  I can only imagine how this  movie would have turned out if the story had focused on Stark and his character.  I think it would have been a much better movie and the over all trilogy would have turned out somewhere in the vein of Nolan's Batman trilogy, who did focus on character and you see how those movies turned out. 

Gravity

Gravity directed by Alfonso Curan starring Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, the voice of Ed Harris, and space and earth in all of their vastness, isolation, beauty, and savagery.

I'll get this out the way first: this is the best film I've seen this year and one of the best films I've seen in a long time.  It is a total film experience unlike anything I've ever had in a movie theater before.  I'm not saying is the best film I've seen in the theater, but the experience of watching Gravity in the theater - in 3D IMAX - is unlike anything I've ever experienced in the theater before and I doubt I will experience again.  This is coming from a person who not only hates the 3D format but absolutely despises it with a passion boarding on obsession.  I absolutely loathe the format for what it has done to movies because Hollywood thinks that just adding 3D to a movie makes it a more immersed experience.  When instead Hollywood has been using it as a gimmick to just milk money from people without the format doing anything to the story line, movie itself, or the overall experience.   But not so with Gravity.  This movie proves the use of 3D, if done right and only if done right, can it be used to add something to the storyline and movie itself.  If you do go see this movie, go see it in 3D IMAX, if you don't you'll be doing yourself a serious disservice on missing one of the most sensory enhanced movie experiences to come around in a long time.  Gravity - if watched in 3D IMAX - is a total visual immersion into a world created on the screen.  I know that sounds like hyperbole and I know all the reviews for this movie delve into this same subject, but for one of the few times - everything said about this movie is 100% accurate. 

Now that I have that out of the way.

This movie also proves that a storyline doesn't have to be overly complex to work.  But just  make some genuine, simple characters that people care about and what happens next won't matter because those characters will guide the audience to the end of the movie.  I won't say these characters are fully three dimensional, but they more than serve their purpose for the movie.  A lot of what happens to the main character Ryan Stone is cliched but it doesn't matter because everything blends together just like the long tracking shots Curan uses throughout the movies to help make the world extremely believable.  After watching loads of summer blockbuster movies (Iron Man 3, Oblivion, and Star Trek Into Darkness) all of which had story lines that were a mesh of all kinds of things as they seemed to favor explosions, destruction, and all out action for any resemblance of plot, story line, or character.  It was refreshing to watch a movie where I could tell the character actually mattered to the director and writer of the movie.

Even after saying all of this though the main star of Gravity is Curan himself.  He's fashioned such a movie unlike any movie I've seen in a long time, at least since Stanley Kubrick passed away.  Over the years since I've been watching movies, I've come to one conclusion, the director is the main reason a movie is as good or bad as it is.  This statement goes back years into the vault of movie history and has been proved time and time again: a director is the blacksmith of the movie.  He/she is the one forging what is going to be on screen.  Some of the best directors directing right now are David Fincher, Michael Mann, Christopher Nolan, Alfonso Curan, and Steve McQeen.  I'm not going to write about all of them but will just say check out their movies and you will see what I mean.  But Curan being on this list is no accident.  He's made some of the most visually inspiring movies as well as crafting interesting story lines and characters to populate those stories.  This movie needs to be seen just on the directing alone.  His camera placement and angles used, along with his use of the long tracking shot need to be seen are well worth the price of the ticket. 

Bottom line go see this movie in 3D IMAX.

The Stand

The Stand by Stephen King.

I can't say I've read a lot of Stephen King books - after all his output can match about three or four authors combined - but I've read enough of his books to know how he writes and that his editors over the years have let him get away with way too many words and pages.  It appears they are afraid of something about him (which is kind of fitting considering the kinds of books he writes) and seem to just edit spelling and sentence structure, nothing more.  All of that being said, this is by far the best book King has ever written and, I seriously doubt, he will ever top this book.  If for some reason he does write a better book than this one, then that will be some sort of a miracle for sure.  This is justifiable long and all the better for it.

I don't know what I was expecting when I started reading this book.  This being a Stephen King story, as you know, his stories are full of horror, supernatural, the macabre, extreme violence, and blood, lots of blood.  Don't get me wrong all of that stuff is in here, and in some instances very present in this book, but this is by far his most focused book with some great characters and never once does this story feel overwritten.  I even read the new unabridged "director's cut" version that had about 500 pages added and too be honest I wouldn't have minded a few more hundred page, so engaging was the story and characters.

This is by fast the best post apocalyptic story I've ever read as King tells a truly epic tale up there with Tolkien.  In fact I would consider this a horror version of Lord of the Rings, such is the massiveness of what King is doing with this post apocalyptic tale.  He engages in the timely cause of world building or in this case re-world building. I would put what he has done here on the same level as Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, Tolstoy's War and Peace, and Simmons Hyperion series, such is the massiveness of the world and the number of characters and themes on display.  Bur never once does the story get away from King or does he seem overwhelmed by the story he is  telling.  He is in complete control the whole time.

He does the one thing a writer is supposed to do when writing a story, any story, start by building the characters, make them interesting, make the reader care about them, and then he can go anywhere with them he wants to, because he has connected the reader to them.  Characters can move mountains, figuratively and literally, if the writer can make reader care about them.  King builds all sorts of characters from a broken down musician, a deaf drifter, an essentially red neck who totally goes against the normal cliche of a red neck, an old - old - woman who's a prophetess, a teenager who grows up and finds the fork in the road to evil or good, a woman who has to stand up on her own two feet for the first time, a retired political science teacher, an elementary teacher struggling with her own demons, and so on and so on.  He builds them and makes the reader care about them.

The one thing I didn't expect from this book was the focused plot of re-world building in a world where a virus has killed about 80-90% of the world population.  It is in this scenario that King's writing takes off to a completely different level of description and vividness than ever before.  His description of ravaged cities, miles of abandoned cars on highways and throughout cities, massive amounts of dead bodies littered everywhere, stores emptied of people, but full of all kinds of free products, are written with such energy and detail that this post apocalyptic world comes fully to life with each line read and each turn of the page.  King writes with a realism I don't normally find in these sorts of scenarios, where it seems over-the-top actions and scenes seem to rule.   King by passes all this and instead shifts the viewpoint to the realism, which only helps to draw the reader in as the characters travel on highways and roads anyone can find on map, and travel to towns, states, and places known to everyone.  By doing this he easily connects these literary characters to the reader and gives their journey and urgency not normally associated with these quest type of stories.  Even as I wrote that I realized that this book is essentially a quest story and I don't normally like quest stories, but this quest story is one of the best quest stories I've ever read, hands down.

The main reason this quest story is vividly engaging is King's ability to fully flesh out characters in a way that makes them emotionally intriguing as well as earn sympathy without gimmicks.  King gives his characters such detailed backgrounds and quirks that they come alive with little effort from each line read.  King has always had a talent for writing easily identifiable characters, but with this story even he excels himself in ways I don't think he even knew.  One of the bold moves he makes is letting a mute person be one of the main characters, normally a person with this sort of disability isn't found in main character status.  I also liked how these characters changed as the story moved on and the situation around them forced them to change or die in the life they lived before the plague.  The people in this story just seemed to be real and their responses to things happening around them had a ring of truth.  It is this sort of writing that I think connected with readers on some sort of psychological level, at least I know it did with me, and helped to make this story the classic and success it has become over the years.

This is a great book to get lost in,  One worth the time it takes to read.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Star Trek: Into Darkness directed by J. J. Abrams starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldna, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Peter Weller.

If I could summon up this movie in one word that word would be: Lazy.

This is one of the laziest screenplays and movies I've seen in a long time and is easily the worst of the Star Trek movies to be made.  Even while I was watching it I kept saying to myself, "Why was this movie even made? Because I've seen it done much better with the original Wrath of Khan."  I mean for the most part this movie is a remake, which in and of itself makes no sense considering what Abrams did with his first Trek movie.  Where he basically reset the Star Trek universe, which ultimately means the stories should have gone in wildly different directions, not remakes or re-treads but completely new adventures.  I just which Abrams' brain would have informed him of this. 

Even the first Trek movie directed by Abrams I liked, considering there were a lot of things in that movie I didn't like, but over all I liked the movie.  I enjoyed it and had a good time watching it.  I thought of the good things out weighed the bad things, but I should have known better. I should have known those bad things were going to be the template for everything else Abrams was going to do with the Trek universe. 

Now Abrams took all the things I didn't like about his first Trek movie and magnified them 100% in Into Darkness.  Abrams basically did what George Lucas and the Wachowski bros did with their films.  Lucas, when he redid his Star Wars films and then did the prequels and what the Wachowski bros did with the Matrix sequels.  They took everything that made the originals good and threw them out of the window as they then built all of their new movies on all the bad things of the sequels or prequels.  Everything I didn't like about his redo on the Star Wars films, Lucas magnified them 100% on the prequels.  Everything bad with Matrix Reloaded was expanded upon 100% in Matrix Revelations.  Apparently Abrams just took a page out of Lucas' playbook and ran with it and there's no indication that he's going to do anything else differently later on.  If he considers this movie good, than I just don't know what more can be said for any film he does from here on out, since he's set his bar so "high".

Abrams basically took, with this film, everything that made Star Trek, you know Star Trek, and threw them out the window and replaced them with typical Hollywood summer blockbuster tactics.  Gone is any form of character development, plot formation, and logic, which granted even Star Trek could stretch this a bit but at least it tried.  Instead what we have here is a Michael Bay type of Star Trek universe, which is something Gene Roddenberry never even conceived of when he created Star Trek.  Abrams seems more concerned with the appearance of character development, the appearance of friendship, the appearance of plot than the actual thing as he replaces these elements with explosion after explosion and action set piece after action set piece.  Hoping the audience is too dumb to realize what is going on.  This isn't so much a Star Trek movie as it is just an action movie with Star Trek labels placed all around it and names changed to match those in the Star Trek universe.  But just because the names, labels, and places match those in the Trek universe that does not make it a Trek movie.  This movie felt like the two new Die Hard movies (Live Free or Die Hard and A Good Day to Die Hard) which had absolutely no real connection with the Die Hard universe and actually seemed to forget everything that made Die Hard, Die Hard but had the labels and names right, so therefore it must be a Die Hard movie. 

Let me revisit the one word I have for this movie: lazy and I will show you what I'm talking about.  Abrams doesn't earn anything in this movie.  He just rides on the coat tails of what better people have already done, which basically is what Hollywood has been doing the last few decades with the constant remakes and reimagining of older movies.  They've become so lazy and Abrams is just the offspring of this lazy mentality.  He doesn't earn any relationship in this movie.  Follow my logic here: 

1. Suddenly Kirk and Spock are friends.  There is never any scene of them working anything out or any scene showing us how they became friends, instead is just expected of them to become friends.  Abrams is just abusing the knowledge and history of that relationship to be lazy, as it offers him an excuse to blow things up.  Since this a re-imagined Star Trek universe, how am I to know these two people are friends?  If these movies doesn't give me something to work with, something that shows how they became friends how am I to know what kind of friends they are, because even after the first movie I wouldn't call them friends.  The first movie gave more scenes that supported them to be enemies than friends.  Now all of sudden they're friends and Kirk is willing to risk a whole mission to break the Prime Directive to save Spock.  Where are the scenes that set the stage for this kind of friendship?  Since when does Spock cry?  I would have bought this scene if Abrams had earned it with some character development but instead he would rather blow things up, than earn them the hard way by actually showing character development.  It would have been really cool to have some actually scenes of friendship building with Spock, Kirk, and Bones (who has become only reduced to comic relief in this movie, which is a shame).  I would have liked seeing the actors Pine, Quinto, and Urban build those relationships, it would have been fun to watch actually act instead of just reacting to the explosions and action scenes around them.  Their relationship was such a focal point in Star Trek, even in Wrath of Khan their relationship scenes were the building blocks that made that movie work so well and the ending such a punch to the stomach.  I felt sorry Urban who seemed to be just around to quote his patent line, "Dammit, I'm a doctor not a [insert random noun here]," phrase, which he does a lot in this movie.

2. Spock and Uhura's relationship is one of the worst I've ever seen done for any movie and is so forced on the aduience that the more they talk about their relationship the more I want them to die.  Nothing in this relationship is earned at all and feels completely pushed on the audience because Abrams wanted some kind romance in the Trek universe and also wanted something that would shock the Trek fans.  Which is fine but it's still got to work, follow the logic on this one.  Uhura is some kind of language/communication expert, which means she studies not only languages but the culture of those languages as well.  So she is familiar with the concept of alien cultures, being you know alien, different than those found on earth, which again means that the people of those cultures have different ideas, traditions, and a different way of life. You know they're different than the people on earth.  Being a language/communication expert she would know this and have a good knowledge of cultures as being different.  Yet, she gets upset at Spock and bitches and nags at him for being logical in all situations, which is something that you know all Vulcans are because it's in their culture.  So she's getting mad at him for doing something that culturally everyone of his people do and she seems to want him to change from this.  As a language/communication expert that has alien culture in her background, you would think she would more excepting of this and that she would be the one to change her viewpoint.  I wanted to punch her so bad every time she opened her mouth and started nagging Spock about being logical because I was like, that's the relationship you chose to be in, shut up and deal with it.  To reiterate what I said in the paragraph above, there is absolutely no scenes of relationship building between Spock and Uhura.  Instead we get a few scenes of them kissing and hugging, which I guess is what Abrams calls scenes of building character because you know actually scenes of them talking about their relationship and working through issues is just too much.  Hearing Uhura nag Spock about being logical and having no emotion seems to cover this in Abrams' mind.

About the only thing I really liked about this film was the scenes with Peter Weller and Benedict Cumberbatch who both more than lived up their potential.  Even Bruce Greenwood continued to enlighten the movie.  These three people had more going for them than the whole cast combined and were actually somewhat better than the over all cast, who only hampered by a lazy script that had nothing really for them to work with.  I haven't even talked about Abrams' ripping off of Wrath of Khan's ending, which made no sense at all and was in no way earned and felt more like an after thought than anything else.  I am not looking forward to anymore of these movies.

World War Z

World War Z directed by Marc Forester, basically starring Brad Pitt and a bunch of zombies.

I was surprised at how well this movie worked and how much I ended up enjoying it.  It's not a great film but it's a highly entertaining film, or at least I thought so and was entertained throughout.

It's probably the first zombie film I've seen that's centered around a family and where family is the number one priority.  This theme or focus is never forgotten about and adds a lot to the character Brad Pitt plays.  The movie is all the better for this focus, as it gives Pitt's character plenty of motivation and never do his actions feel forced because they are driven by his desire to protect and provide for his family.  I'm not going to say his family is fully fleshed out as they seem more presented in the typical cliche ways but at least they tried, I will give them kudos for that.  I think if they had tried harder to flesh them out more I think Pitt's character would have been even more endeared to the audience and his journey seem all the immediate and necessary.   


The investigation he proceeds to go on to find out about the zombies is intriguing and the mysteries he finds out about the zombie epidemic fuels the overall story.  The movie doesn't pander to the audience in exposition or pointless narration but instead treats the audience as intelligent while it forces the audience to pay attention to the visuals.  Visually this movie explains things, not in a pretentious, low-budget, art house kind of way but in a story telling way where the visuals help to tell the story line. This has become a lost art in Hollywood.  Where they continue to treat the audience as stupid while they repeat and repeat and repeat plot points in pointless conversations that serve no other purpose than to drive the narration forward, with little or no character development sought only the next over-the-top action set piece.  I've not saying this movie doesn't have this sort of thing but it doesn't have them in the same sort of abundance that seem to dominate most Hollywood movies.  And the actions set pieces that are there don't feel forced but seem more in tune with the story in an organic sort of way instead of a cut and pasted sort of way.

One of the best things I liked about this movie was "the real world" perspective the story took to a zombie invasion that wipes out about 80-90% of the world population and how the world would possibly respond to this sort of epidemic.  This is done with an intelligence not seen in most Hollywood movies.  Even the military people in this movie are handled with intelligence and not the typical tyrannical, out to rule the world type of military that Hollywood seems to think the military is.  Not in this movie, they are highly trained and highly deadly and when they are on screen Pitt's character is pushed to the background and he doesn't even attempt to be an action hero, which is how it would be if he were in that sort of situation.  The movie holds true to his character as some sort of highly trained investigator for the UN.  This UN part is probably my only big thing I don't like about the movie.  The movie portrays, easily, one of the most corrupt and inept organizations on the earth as intelligent, caring, and not greedy, which is completely opposite of what they really are.  But all that aside I didn't really care because the over all mystery of the zombies and Pitt's character pushed a lot of this to the side as I was carried away with the story. 

Red Riding Hood

Red Riding Hood directed by Catherine Hardwicke starring Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Lukas Haas, Billy Burke, Shiloh Fernandez, Max Irons, and Virginia Madsen.

Where to begin with this movie?

Trying to cash in the Twilight crowd?  Check, well let me redo that check, that's really a big CHECK.  First this movie gets the woman who directed Twilight to direct this movie.  Then it gets an actor, Billy Burke, who played Bella's dad in Twilight to play the dad of the main female lead in this movie.  Who seems to be pissed that he's wondered into the same kind of movie as Twilight was, only I think, as the movie goes on that releases he's actually happy that his daughter in this movie isn't as annoying as Bella was in Twilight.  Then there's another actor, Max Irons, who goes on to be in the movie Host based on a book written by Stephenie Myer. I don't  know if this last one actually counts but I just thought it was such a funny coincidence to not mention it.  Then the daughter of the editor of this movie, has a friend whose dog was in one of Twilight.  The costume designer has an uncle, whose son-in-law was a friend of a person who ran a restaurant that an actress, who waited tables there, was the third person seen in this one scene of one of the Twilight movies.  I am just shocked at to what lengths a movie studio will go to, to recreate another movie.  Now, to be fair I haven't actually seen any of the Twilight movies, so I'm basing all this hear-say and conjecture.  But, Red Riding Hood has an overall story of a girl torn in love between two male leads, which, to be fair considering I haven't seen Twilight, sounds a little bit like the story of Twilight: a girl torn in love between a two male leads - a vampire or werewolf.  I'm just saying they do sound eerily familiar.

If you haven't picked up on this already, I didn't really like this movie.  There was just so much not to like about it, but in the end I did find it amusing because there was just so much unintentional humor happening throughout the movie that it became an unintentional comedy.  Gary Oldman plays, essentially the bad guy, since the movie can't go around showing the werewolf terrorizing the town all the time.  So, the screen writer, in his infinite wisdom, decided the the best thing to do was write in the most cliched witch hunter that would storm into town and basically tell every town person they or the person next to them could be the werewolf.  Thus instant tension is born and thus was born Gary Oldman's character.  I just love villains who are only hardcore villains when they need to be, and then they go back to being just an insane, regular villain when needed to be. A good example of this from Oldman's character.  There's this person who stops one of Gary Oldman's troops from firing a crossbow.  What does Oldman do?  He kills the person.  Then a few moments later one of the main leads kick the crap out of a bunch of Olman's troops.  What does Olman do about this?  Essentially nothing, he just has the person thrown in jail.  That's real evil.  The logic just doesn't make any sense, but it did give me quite a chuckle.

Then Jess brought up a visual thing about this movie that I just couldn't stopping laughing at it every time it happened on screen.  One of the main male lead's has a hair style straight out of our time period, while every other male in the picture has a hair style to more or less fit that time frame.  So, every time the stylized-hair male came on screen I started laughing because it made no sense why his hair was that way.  I thank my wife for pointing that out because it did make the movie more enjoyable to watch, in a strangely perverted way.  

There were just little things like this that made movie way more fun to watch than I thought it was going to be, but it wasn't for the normal reasons that movie's creators made it.