The Screaming Viking

I caught this movie on opening weekend in Bottineau.  I was pretty impressed that the small bottineau theater got this show the week it opened.  I went to the theater the week before t3 opened to see the hangover 2.  I noticed they upped their admission by 2 bucks.  That was kind of a bummer, but I’d pay a little more if that meant they got the big movies opening weekend.  If they show the movies on a delay like they have been, I wouldn’t be a fan of paying more.

Since I saw it in the smaller theater I’m not sure if I got the same quality of experience that another person (not watching imax or some mega screen) would have gotten.  I thought it looked pretty good and the sound was pretty good so I don’t have any complaints in that department.  The action sequences were pretty decently done.  They were big and expansive.  If you are going expecting to see robots beat the hell out of each other..by all means this is the show for you.  If you are expecting some kind of “plausible” story or any type of acting…avoid this flick.

People have said this is the best transformers of the series, and that might be true.  It was certainly better than the 2nd one but I’m not sure if it was better than the 1st or not.  The chic (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) is IMO a bit hotter than Megan Fox, but her acting is right there with her in the crapper.  For whatever reason, I thought her performance felt more “genuine” if that can be said about anyone in this flick.  Where fox had an “omg I’m hot, look at me” air to her I thought Rosie had more of a smirk on her face about it…”yeah, I’m hot…” with a wink and a smile.

I wonder if the people in this movie can actually act.  If they were given a solid script would they be able to put out a performance that I’d like to see?  As it stands, the people are in this movie just for comic relief.  How does a 6 foot person deal with a 60 foot robot shooting energy weapons whom is also as agile as any of our athletes…oh and they are fast as a vehicle….  It just doesn’t work well.  By the 3rd episode we should have been in space or something…seeing an all out robot war with very little involvement from the people.  Maybe something about the robots leaving the planet, some people coming with to explore or something and blamo we see why fragile little bags of water can’t hang with intelligent hunks of metal.

The plot of this moive?  Well, um…it had something to do with sentinel prime being the last great hope for peace, his ship being shot…crashing in to the moon with a “super weapon”.   The space race of the 60′s was all a front to get to the moon and see what this thing is…then we never go back because we think we might have an idea of what it is?  I don’t get it.  Now the autobots are pissed cause they know the humans have kept this from them.  They use their ship to get to the moon, wake up sentinel, bring back 5 rods plus the controller…then a human realizes there should be 100′s of them.  The humans find out where they have gone, and tell the robots.  Autobots are betrayed by sentinel, and the decepticons plan to use these rods for a space bridge to bring cyberton to earth so the humans can work as slaves to rebuild it.  Humans are working with the decepticons…battle..\the autobots are told to leave the planet…which they do in one of ours/their shuttles, it’s blown out of the sky…and we have 40min of movie left.  battle…good guys end, optimus soliloquy…end.

Now, that plot sucks…I give that to you, but one of the large over all problems IMO is there is no solid story arc from 1 to 3.  They are not connected in any way.  Each one acts as completely separate episodes with very little knowledge the former existed.  In 1, yeah megatron is pissed and they fight…O.K. I get that…but in 2 the decepticons try to suck all the energy out of the sun…then in 3 they want to use them as slaves to rebuild cybertron.  Had they killed the sun, who would be their slaves to rebuild the planet?  Seems to me they should have enslaved the race first, rebuilt their home, then blown up the planet.  They don’t even try to explain the space bridge, “it violates the laws of your physics” is what the humans are told…well, if “our laws” of physics are violated, then they aren’t really laws and we are clearly wrong.  How can these things be so damn advanced and still suck at conquering earth?  I don’t get it.

Normally I get irritated at movies like this because the concept had so much more potential…with this one though, they are pretty much stuck where they are at.  Story would just get in the way of their eye candy.  I wasn’t all that in to this flick, but when sentinel (voiced by lenord nimoy) busted out a “good of the many…” line, I was done.

Horrible movie, don’t even rent it.

I caught Thor this past Sunday and it was alright.  I’m not sure I was in the right mindset to see the flick, but it just didn’t feel like a solid movie to me.  The only scene that paid off on what I expected out of this movie was when Thor, Loki, Sif, and the warriors three were battling the ice giants.  That fight scene really delivered on the type of action I expected out of this flick.  After that point, everything else was sort of “blah”.  For the most part I expected the middle of the movie to be a little dry.  Mainly because it’s a setup flick and it has to spend some time developing the characters.  For a drama movie or something like that this time spent on character development would be welcome (see my posts about the Game of Thrones series for how much I like good character development), but in the comic book genre of flicks…I don’t go to see the characters develop.  I’m there to hear the campy one liners and see the amazing action from the drawings come to life.

For a “professional” review of Thor, check out screen rant’s writeup.

In essence, the story was about Thor being powerful and arrogant, odin needing to knock him down a few notches…and Thor finding…well, I don’t want to say “humility” but I suppose the connection would be “humanity”.  Basically, he met a hot chic he wanted to hook up with.  For me, the switch between arrogant and humanity happened too quickly.  It was like someone flipped a switch..he was acting one way then suddenly acting another.  He didn’t gradually find out what it’s like to care for other people.  But, what depth do you expect from a comic book flick?

The final battle sequences were quite disappointing.  By far the battle at the beginning with the ice giants blew away the bit of fighting at the end.  The initial battle really showcased Thor’s strength and all balls no quit attitude.  At the end, it seemed like you were to assume the fight was a formality on the way to his victory.

Chris Hemsworth played the character well, IMO he was very good at the arrogant part…it felt right like it fit the character but I think humility took him a little to quickly and because of that it never felt like it was natural.  The only place I’d seen Hemsworth before this was the few min scene at the beginning of star trek.  He really had to bulk up for the role of Thor.  From what I read, he put on more muscle than the studio expected and the suit didn’t fit him when he showed up for shooting.  There is a scene for the ladies with his shirt off, and he looks cut well, but not overly muscular.  I would be curious to know if any HGH or ‘roids were used during the process…but given his good definition I think he could have hit this body type with just diet and exercise over the course of a year.  Looking over his movie list, Red Dawn releases after Thor, then he is shooting The Avengers.  I wonder if he’s going to try to cut weight for Red Dawn, then have to put it back on to play Thor again.  I would expect something like that to be pretty hard on his body.  I am curious if the body type he has to keep up to keep playing Thor is going to take it’s toll on him physically and limit the roles he will be offered in the future.  We’re not talking about a guy like Arnold who made a career first as a body builder then brought that body to acting…this guy wasn’t a large guy who had to get large to play a role.  I’ll be curious to see how this plays out.

Overall if you’re a fan of the comic book genre this movie is worth seeing…if you are a passing fan, wait to watch it on blue ray.  I read a few places that said this was the best comic book movie to date…and IMO that is just flat wrong.  It’s not up to the caliber of spiderman 2, and I don’t think it’s even as good as the Incredible Hulk (not the ang lee hack fest…I’m talking about the one with Ed Norton).

We still have x-men first class and captain america coming out this year for comic book movies.  Initially I thought x-men would suck, but from the previews I’ve seen it looks quite interesting.  The jury is still out on cap.  I think I’ll wait to rent that one unless it’s a really boring weekend in botno when it hits the theater up here.

I caught the Source Code in Bottineau tonight.  It’s a decent flick, nothing over the top but not something you need the theater experience for either.  It’s a renter and worth an evening watch with the wife.  The movie was about a project that lets someone experience the last 8 min of a person’s life.  Basically you jumper cable the brains together and the user can read and interact with the shadow of memories from the dead person.  It sounds out there a bit, but it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility.  I’d put it in the semi-believable sci-fi category.  1/3 of the way through I picked up on the “kicker” part of the movie, which is quite predictable if you are thinking about the flick.  You won’t think about it if you are just watching the movie though.  There are subtle indicators but nothing that slaps you in the face.

I’m not going to go over a synopsis of the flick, if you want that here’s a link to screenrant‘s review and comments.  I’ll give my views on it but it will contain spoilers…so read at your own risk.

****Spoilers****

The capt (Jake Gyllenhaal, I can’t remember the character name) gets thrown back on to a train where everyone was killed by a bomb.  He’s got 8min to figure out who set the bomb so he can relay it to the army and they can stop another larger threatened attack on Chicago.  They send him back to experience these 8min over and over again.  Really 12 monkeysish…but not so tough to follow the first time through.  The premise is that he’s suppose to be limited by the original dude’s memories, but they quickly break out of that and go -really- sci-fi.  I thought it would have been a much better movie if they had actually stayed within the guy’s memories and worked out the problem…essentially stayed within the train car.  The huge hole in the whole thing is when they kept telling the guy he couldn’t affect the past/future but he somehow pulled out the license plate number of the van…which turned out to prevent the big bombing of the city.  That’s the huge hole…how does no one question how he was able to pull out this plate number?  It wasn’t part of the original person’s memories.  Everything else could have been written off as the two brains creating some large world out of fragments of memory…but that exact license number is just too far out there.

After that, he asks to be sent in to try and save all the people on the train and then have them turn off his life support (the capt is just a brain…shocker!).  The lady does this just to make him happy as kind of a one soldier to another favor.  The capt goes in, save the train…gets the bomber in a fairly believable scenario given what has already transpired and the previous knowledge he has.  As time expires, he get the entire train car laughing, kisses the girl…the 8min are up and the whole scene pauses…she disconnects life support.  This would have been a great place to roll credits…if they hadn’t done the whole license plate deal.  That problem had to be resolved…so obviously they turned to the time travel angle.

I didn’t like the ending.  It would have been much better if they had some something else with the “catch the criminal” part and left everything right in that cabin.  Once you add in time travel you go from a nice sci-fi drama to way out there sci-fi.  In the end though it was a pretty good story and worth a rental.

They “remodeled” the Bottineau theater over the winter and finally opened things up this past weekend.  I went in to check it out…I’m not entirely sure what they did…

Actually I know what they did and I think they completed all the work in the past week or so.  For what the building is, it’s fine…it’s just not some ultra modern thing.  The screen is O.K….but not as good as Minot or Fargo.  The sound isn’t all that good.  I wouldn’t recommend seeing a block buster in there when you expect some high quality visuals and amazing surround.  They charge 6 bucks to get in, which is a little more than a 2nd run theater but not as much as a first run.  They seem to get movies at a decent time, they are running source code for the late show this coming weekend, which is 3 weeks after release?

I don’t know if they will ever make much money, but hopefully they make enough to keep the place going.  It’s nice to have some place close to kill a few hours.