Malin
The great Disney movies have memorable songs, interesting characters, engaging sidekicks, strong villains, crisp dialogue, and beautiful art, and by that standard, Tangled is a pretty great Disney movie.

Rikoshi
While not quite “Pixar Good,” Tangled is still a very charming and entertaining animated film, with some very fun characters and good performances, though the songs unfortunately fall a bit flat by Disney standards.

Jakebe
Great movie, if only because it makes you want to call your mother and thank her for not being a completely insane, manipulative asshole.

Tube
Despite the 3D format, this sweet and sincere story is the first Disney movie in well over a decade to really feel like one of the timeless classics I remember from my childhood: tight storytelling, a great villain, and songs that won’t leave my head days later.

Lovejoy
It’s got all the charm and humor you’d expect from a major Disney animated feature, plus it’s got a horse that acts like a dog, so hey, there’s that too.

Director David Yates has taken the Harry Potter franchise a long way from the Sorceror’s Stone. In the opening moments you get just a small taste of what’s ultimately the darkest two and a half hours yet — the Dursleys nervously moving out of their home at 4 Privet Drive because it’s “not safe,” Hermione erasing all traces of her existence with her muggle parents, and the torture and death of one of Hogwarts’ teachers. All this before the credits. What the hell is going on here? It doesn’t feel like all that long ago we were first looking at Diagon Alley.

Most of the old familiar places are nowhere to be found, however. Harry is whisked from Privet Drive to the Weasley Burrow, and the trip proves a lot more difficult than it should be for everyone involved. Death Eaters ruin everything. Another Death Eater attack disrupts a wedding there, and just like that Harry, Hermione and Ron are all but cut off from the wizarding world, their circle of reliable friends shrinking constantly as Voldemort solidifies his stranglehold on their society.

The story is exceptionally tense. The three young wizards are forced out into the world to find and destroy Voldemort’s remaining horcruxes, but they have no clue how to do that. In the book, the first half is bogged down with Harry and company wandering around, discovering clues and backstory by sheer luck most of the time.

Yates and writer Steve Kloves deserve credit for being able to take the first half of the story and inject it with all the fear, hopelessness and confusion that Rowling wanted while conjuring a narrative momentum that the novel lacked. Yates has proven to be an exceptional director for the latter half of the franchise because he’s able to get to the heart of Rowling’s intentions far more capably than she was able to do in the novel. Remember the Ministry of Magic throwdown in Order of the Phoenix? Yates was able to take the worst-written action sequence in all seven novels and make it one of the best scenes in all eight films. That, my friends, is talent not to be overlooked.

It helps that Radcliffe, Watson and Grint have turned into such capable actors. We’ve watched the cast and crew grow to meet the story’s demands, and by this point they’ve nailed everything they’ve been asked to do. Daniel needs to wear a bra so he can play Fleur Delacour pretending to be Harry Potter? Done. Need Radcliffe and Watson to kiss passionately for Ron’s jealous fever-dream, even though it’s (by all accounts) like making sweet love to your sister? No problem. There are a few other difficult sequences that Yates manages to pull off simply by giving enough of a damn about telling a good story, making sure the feel is exactly right. He gets his three young leads to jump right in with him, and the results are quite impressive.

Not quite everything lands, though. The movie is perhaps a little too long, and Ron’s jealousy of Harry and Hermione comes on a little too quickly even though you’re given all the pieces you need to explain it. And even though pains are taken to bring meaningful emotional beats on-screen, there’s still far too much that happens away from the camera. There’s a lot of death and tragedy that don’t have as much weight as they should. Even still, when tragedy is focused on, it’s really effective. I’m not ashamed to admit I teared up in a spot or two.

By the end of this first part, Harry and company have found their way at least. They know what the Deathly Hallows are and why Voldemort is looking for them, they’ve discovered how to destroy the horcruxes, and they’re slowly enabling themselves to put up a defense against Voldemort. The weakest part of the story has already been told. If the craftmanship behind it can make it this good, I can only imagine how kick-ass part two is going to be.

The show follows Mordecai and Rigby, a couple of talking animal best friends, who work as oddjobbers on an estate owned by a talking aristocratic lollipop, and maintained by a surly gumball machine, a yeti, and a ghost that gives high fives.

Did I mention it’s wacky?

Mordecai proves that all blue jays are assholes (including our own staff writer, Corvi). Rigby proves all raccoons are crazy dumbasses. But despite both of them promoting stereotypes I just made up, they manage to be lovable in that way that you think the stoner kids in high school were funny in 15 minute intervals only once a week.

The show pushes boundaries that I haven’t seen animated shows do since the ’90s. I hesitate to say mature, since jokes about another character’s balls are certainly not, but there’s definitely a reason it’s on right before Adult Swim.

Cartoon Network has finally realized that less is more, and the 15 minute episodes of Regular Show and Adventure Time just strengthen both series. It’s a small taste of the humor that keeps me craving more, instead of drowning me in the show by having multi-hour marathons every week (see: every other show on Cartoon Network).

Regular Show finds the right balance of crazy, off the wall humor, without being totally random or full of non sequiturs. Also the raccoon knows how to hambone!

It was shockingly easy for Lovejoy to convince his entire staff to go see the new Cats & Dogs film. Convincing them all to do a full review for the film proved to be much harder. However, he did manage to squeeze a single sentence out of each of them. Think of this as your furry version of Rotten Tomatoes.

Malin
One of the few sequels to exceed the expectations set by the original.

Tube
If you’re crazy about calendars with photos of dogs and cats dressed up like little people, then boy have I got the movie for you!

Rikoshi
Make no mistakes: it’s bad—lame humor, awful writing, a beyond-contrived premise, and a voice cast of celebrities clearly dialing it in for a paycheck between “real” projects—but to be fair, it’s not the worst movie Chris O’Donnell has ever been in.

Lovejoy
I wanted to hate on this movie, but the fact is that the kid behind me laughed his ass off the entire time, so any complaints I have about the piss-poor plot seem null and void.

Rolo
If your expectations are low, and you’ve had a bottle of wine, and you’re a huge fan of German Shepherd Dogs, this movie is guaranteed to slightly exceed your expectations!

Jakebe
If you want to see Bette Midler with fewer wrinkles or Nick Nolte with a better haircut, then this is the movie for you; otherwise, it’s a pretty boring talking-animal movie — and it pains me to say that.

Actually, it was.

Though Predators still felt like a “mixed bag” movie to me.  It did some things right, a lot of things just okay, but thankfully, it never really went in the wrong direction at any point in time.  And this is coming from a guy who was an Aliens and Predator fanatic when he was younger.

If anything, I should’ve been heavily critical after the debacle that was Alien vs Predator: Requiem.  Now I’ll admit, I didn’t have my hopes up walking into the theater Saturday night, but I was still pleasantly surprised and left feeling satisfied after I watched this movie.

First off, thank you, Robert Rodriguez, for finally putting some solid, decent actors on screen when it comes to one of these movies.  It isn’t the ’80s or the ’90s anymore, people.  The Predators (Aliens, it doesn’t really matter at this point) can not carry these movies by themselves.  They need a convincing human factor, which Adrien Brody, Laurence Fishburne, and even that one dude from the upcoming Machete movie provide (come on, if Rodriquez produced it, you shouldn’t be surprised that one of his go to guys ends up being cast for a supporting role).  This definitely helped the movie along, which means we weren’t sitting around for twenty minutes saying, “I wish the Predators would hurry up and get on screen already.”

Another thing that impressed me was the cinematography.

Wait—what?

Yes, cinematography.  Bear with me on this one, because the movie was actually quite beautiful.  The director did a fantastic job choosing the locations, and he was able to make our world look convincingly alien without much effort.  I found myself many times just admiring the scenery while the plot developed and the human characters interacted.  Now insert a nice “jump straight to the action” opening, some cool, fresh ideas that added to the Predator mythology (alien hunting dogs for the win), and a Predator versus Predator fight sequence all helped to make for a pleasant movie experience when I was expecting another train wreck.

But then there’s the plot.  It didn’t add anything new, and most of the time, it felt like the first Predator movie just set on an alien planet.  In fact, the whole movie sort of came across like a homage to the original film.  There was a guy toting a mini gun, some obvious dialogue references, and even the “watch as each human gets picked off one by one” scenario which played out during the entire movie.  Then there’s Topher Grace, who just did not work for this film.  He was the odd ball of the group, and he never fit in convincingly with the rest of the cast.  Add in the ho hum, set up for a possible sequel ending, and you have a movie that just never quite clicked on all cylinders.

Was I happy I saw it?  Yes.  Was it a great movie?  No.

Predators was average, but it’s still something a fan of both the Aliens and the Predator movies should definitely go see.  It was entertaining, and at least Twentieth Century Fox took the time (and the money) to finally get one of these storied franchises headed back in the right direction.

Lovejoy
I’m really starting to like Jay Baruchel. He’s quickly becoming the new Michael Cera, and I think we can all agree that we need some more adorable geeks to dilute the overpowering force of George-Michael Bluth. And it’s Baruchel’s awkward charm that makes films like The Sorcerer’s Apprentice more enjoyable.

The film is a by the books adventure film that doesn’t break new ground on any front. Of course it’s also a mid-Summer, PG-rated Disney film starring Nicolas Cage, so expecting it to progress cinema is silly. It’s certainly more style than substance, but it’s fun, romantic, and exciting.

I’m not saying the film is great, because it isn’t, but as a casual Summer flick it’s pretty good. Baruchel as the Apprentice to Cage’s Sorcerer is funny and endearing. Alfred Molina is creepy. There are a ton of fun special effect sequences and fight scenes (even a dragon transformation for you weirdos).

I think for most people it could stand to be a rental, or a cable movie, but for something to watch while decompressing and escaping the Summer heat, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice isn’t bad.

Corvi
I’ll go on the record and say that The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a better film than Predators, but honestly not by much. And that’s the whole problem. This should be a much better film that isn’t just a predictable string of pretty special effects and one-liners.

There is way too much shit going on in the movie. Too many villains, too many fight scenes, too many unnecessary scenes. The homage to the original Fantasia piece is jammed in there awkwardly, and it grinds the story to a halt.

Maybe montages are considered passe in this day and age, but there’s a time to use them, and trying to convince an audience that Jay Baruchel is learning enough magic to defeat and evil 1000-year-old sorcerer is that time.

If the film had been trimmed down (take out the witch girl and the car chase) there would have been more time to develop the romance so that it wouldn’t come off so lame. By the way, this is the second film this year where Baruchel has scored a girl that is way out of his league.

If you’re like me and find it hard to regress your mind to that of a child so you can enjoy Summer Disney films, then you’ll likely be bored by The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

It’s hard to believe that a movie about a teenage girl trying to bone half the cast of Universal Studios’ Monsters could be pretentious, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t try! From the first lines of Bella reading Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice” to the numerous statements on morality, Eclipse manages to be preachy about a subject that is not an issue for 100% of the universe: fucking vampires.

The biggest problem with Eclipse as a film is, ironically, it’s faithfulness to the source material. Normally this would be a plus for a movie, but the fact is that Stephenie Meyer is an abysmal writer. Nobody in the town of Forks has cellphones since apparently both vampires and werewolves are telepathic, and that’s about half the population anyway.

Everything about this film is quite literally cocktease. There’s actually a “wait we can’t have sex yet” scene. And when all is said and done we’re at the exact same point as when the last movie ended. Bella chooses Edward, The Volturi are evil, and nobody actually seems happy about anything.

In the process of not doing much of anything, Bella gets to chatting with the other members of the Cullen family, and we get some backstories on the characters that were really just brooding scenery. Then we find out that Jackson Rathbone is a horrible actor and his character was so much better when he just stood around looking pained.

Can we all agree that Bella is a good for nothing bitch? What bothers me about these films more than anything else is how a dozen super beings go out of their way, risking their lives and going against their nature, to protect/win over some rabbit-toothed stutterer that has no personality whatsoever. I get that Edward was attracted to the fact that he couldn’t read her mind, but why didn’t he break it off when he found out that there is actually just nothing going on in that brain? And sure, Edward and Jacob want to marry her, but the families jump on board too? It’s a high school romance, and they already broke up once! Somebody sit these boys down and explain that infatuation is not love (or do vampires and werewolves not get infatuated? They just imprint on people, right?).

Now people are saying that Eclipse is the best of the Twilight films, and that is technically true. But to say it’s my favorite of the three is like getting to pick which medieval torture device will be used on me (it’s the iron maiden, for the record).

And honestly, the only reason this film stood out to me more than the others is because there are significantly more wolves in it. It’s a superficial and rather queer reason, but there it is.

The Last Airbender is a pointless movie. Who remakes a TV series into a film? Plenty of people have used film to extend the stories of canceled shows. And other people use movies to adapt written word to a visual medium. But Avatar: The Last Airbender is already a visual medium, with a finished story that doesn’t benefit from a white kid with leukemia and that Indian guy from The Daily Show.

The Last Airbender is the story of a boy named Aang, who is the fabled Avatar, a reincarnated entity that can control all four elements. He’s also the last of the Airbending Nomads, after the Fire Nation killed them all in an attempt to destroy him. So Aang, with the help of his new friends has to learn the other three elements and use them to bring peace to the world. The film attempts to take the entire first season of the TV show and compress it into an hour and a half. “But that sounds impossible!” you say? That’s because it is impossible. The result is an incomprehensible mess that plays like a bad YouTube montage of the story.

Actually montages would have really helped this stupid movie because at least then there would be some semblance of time passing. The editing in this film is so bad that the multiple weeks of journeying and training look like it happens in three days. One of the characters has to awkwardly jam in a line about “these past few weeks” otherwise you’d have no way of knowing.

Seriously, I’ve seen the fucking show and I had no idea what was going on.

It’s hard to say which is worse: the writing or the acting. They crash against each other, building in power until it’s a perfect storm of shitty movie. Exposition is forced and unnatural, all of the humor falls flat, and the serious moments end up unintentionally funny. People in the theater actually laughed during a scene where someone sacrifices their life to save the kingdom. Every actor is completely wrong for the film. Dev Patel screams and broods a lot. And Aasif Mandvi is supposed to be believable as a god-killing warlord? Even the extras are so mismatched that they stick out like sore thumbs. It literally looks like they hired the background warriors from the attendees at Comic-Con. The only redeeming factor about the casting is that amazingly, M Night Shyamalan didn’t force himself into the movie.

It’s also very apparent that the 3D was tacked on last minute, as nearly ever special effect shot of fireballs and water jets is directed away from the camera.

You want to know the worst part of this stupid movie? It’s the fact that if it does well, there will be two more of them to suffer through.

Rikoshi
Toy Story 3 tries to do something pretty brave: it attempts to age in real time, with as much time passing in-universe since the previous film as has passed in real life. Something similar was tried with the Harry Potter books, but while that mostly resulted in the books getting overlong and less well edited, with Toy Story 3, it actually succeeds. The result: a movie that’s good for kids, yet which is also very enjoyable for adults (whether they brought kids to see it or not).

All around, the voice performances are up to snuff. Newcomer Ned Beatty does a good job as a sympathetic-yet-not antagonist, and Timothy Dalton is particularly hilarious in his bit role as a stuffed hedgehog thespian (in lederhosen). On the whole, the humor is pretty fresh, and the movie only very sparingly looks to its previous installments to make its gags.

The core themes of the movie are actually very existential, focusing mainly on finding a purpose in life after one has lost it. While that sounds like something out of some pretentious literary novel, here it’s presented in the simplest and most relatable of terms: what good is a toy if nobody plays with it? This bleeds over into sub-themes, such as what it means to be loved, and how to let go of the past, but the movie is never a bleak and joyless look at these things—it remains a fun and active not-just-kid’s movie, but an intelligent one, one with depth.

There’s a real sense of closure to the trilogy, here, and the ending is legitimately heartfelt. My only honest complaint was with the 3D; after the (excellent) “Day & Night” short, I never noticed the 3D at all during the movie itself.

Lovejoy
I wasn’t really excited about Toy Story 3 prior to its release, but I trust Pixar enough to see the film without question, and my loyalty paid off.

It sounds super cheesy, but it’s nice to see old friends again. The first Toy Story came out when I was 10 years old, and was a large part of my childhood, so I have some major nostalgia for it. So it’s really cool to see the third film treated so well, and given the proper sendoff it deserves.

The writing is an amazingly well balanced mix. It’s part family comedy, part prison escape adventure, and part emotional journey about moving on. But in addition to that, Toy Story 3 is well balanced as a film that stands alone, and as a final chapter in a fantastic trilogy.

In the past Pixar has felt a little in your face with the emotions (in particular Wall-E and Up), but everything comes off as heartfelt and genuine here. These aren’t just Andy’s toys, they’re the writer’s toys, the director’s toys, our toys.

On top of everything I really enjoyed the new additions to the cast. Emily Hahn as the triceratops Bonnie and Michael Keaton as the way-past-metrosexual Ken doll give the film a much more modern and hilarious vibe.

Marmaduke

Directed by: Tom Dey
Written by: Tim Rasmussen and Vince Di Meglio
Poster designed by: The Cimarron Group

Malin: The Marmaduke poster is to cinema what the Spinal Tap Smell the Glove original cover was to music, without the benefit of being intended to be ironically funny.






Furry Vengeance

Directed by: Roger Kumble
Written by: Michael Carnes and Josh Gilbert
Poster designed by: BLT & Associates

Lovejoy: The Furry Vengeance poster invokes the memory of classic slapstick heist comedies, with the pain of seeing a sickly, disgusting animal that needs to be put out of its misery. Also all the animals around the aforementioned Brendan Fraser are ugly looking too.

Shrek Forever After

Directed by: Mike Mitchell
Written by: Josh Klausner and Darren Lemke
Poster designed by: BLT & Associates

Corvi: When did this movie get changed to Shrek: The Final Chapter 3D? I only recognize one character on this poster. Who the fuck are these people?

The Karate Kid

Directed by: Harald Zwart
Written by: Christopher Murphey
Poster designed by: Vox and Associates

Jakebe: I just can’t buy the idea of a black kid getting the snot beaten out of him and learning Kung Fu to get revenge. If this had been made twenty years ago, Jaden Smith would have just shot them.

Join us next week, when we review that documentary about those babies by going to Wal-Mart and listening to actual babies cry.