Wedding Crashers

I remember going to see this in the movie theaters with my buddy, Bo. Everytime we saw a movie that featured two leading actors, Bo would turn to me and ask, "Okay, which one's you?" For this one, I chose to be Owen Wilson's character. At about the half point mark of the movie, Bo turned to me and said, "Come on, dude, switch with me!" Vince Vaughn's character went through hell in movie, which provided great comedy for me. Years later, out on the road with my mother, I put the movie on again so my mother could see it for the first time. The movie holds up, for sure.

The story of how two guys who do horrible things at weddings, to only later, try to play it straight, had me laughing throughout the entire movie. Owen Wilson's character, John, starts to see how sleazy he's been over time and starts questioning his morality. Vince Vaughn's character, Jeremy, lives and dies by the rules of wedding crashing and, in a small twist of fate, finds a girl who is more f'ed up than he is. Rachel McAdams plays Clara, the girl who John was orginally trying to trick into sleeping with him, to apparently falling in love with. The irony is that Clara starts falling for John, but is committed to someone else. The twist and turns of this movie kept me on the edge of my seat.

Biloxi Blues

As a kid, I remember sitting in the living room and watching Biloxi Blues with my parents. I remember liking it a lot back then, and I even used a few of the scenes in the movie in my theater arts class in high school. But that was 1991! Here in 2009, Biloxi Blues is not as great as I remembered it.

While Matthew Brodrick was the main figure in the movie, the main star of the film was Christopher Walken. The way he played Sgt. Toomey in the movie as a nice guy who can flip the switch at any time was great! I loved it when he'd pick on Brodrick's character, Eugene Jerome, just to ensure discipline in his troop. As for Brodrick's role, I see it more as a stage character, not a movie character. Granted this movie is a stage play, but you would think they can Hollywood it up a little. While the beginning of the movie helped set the movie the right direction, the movie changes right after Eugene and a the guy head to a whore house. The ending itself was a little anti-climatic as it ends how it started, with everyone on the train and Eugene's dialogue finishing up the movie.

Don't get me wrong, the movie is watchable, but it is wierd to love a movie when you're a kid and then later on watch it and go, "When is this going to end?"

Rocky IV

A couple of nights ago, I got to one of our terminals in Lebanon, TN, and inside the break room, the channel was on the Spike network. Getting ready to start was an 80's classic for me, Stallone's fourth installment of the Rocky series. Even though I have seen the movie a billion times and could probably quote all of the movie, I feel that I should give my crtique of the movie.

Story wise, the movie is pretty stellar! You have the obivious hero in Rocky, the low-key heavyweight champion. You have the villian, Ivan Drago, the massive Russian who is ready to try his hand in professional boxing. You have the best friend, Apollo Creed, who thinks that he can beat the unknown Russian, but as we all know, dies in the ring. The choregraphy in the boxing matches are great, even if every punch sounds like a shotgun blast. As far as dialogue, obviously Stallone didn't work all that hard what was being said. From Apollo's lame excuse to get back into the ring, to Rocky's lame speech after he defeated the Russian, you just want to shake your head and laugh. Unlike the other Rocky movies, Burt Young's character, Paulie, is a non-factor in this movie, which is a bad thing. Talia Shire's character, Adrian, is not the driving force for Rocky as she was in previous movies.

In the end, all that matters is that Rocky wins in the end and the fight makes up for a really bad script.

Hannah Montana the Movie

Before I give my review of this movie, let me first turn in my MAN CARD. For Cadence's 4th birthday, we decided to enter into the Blu Ray universe be getting her Hannah Montana the Movie. Honestly, not my first choice! I was hoping for Star Trek, Superman, or even Star Wars to kick it off. Instead, I get Hannah Montana. I suppose my saving grace is that we still don't own a Blu Ray player yet. When Melissa bought the movie, it came with a DVD version of the movie, which brings me to my review.

I was well aware of how campy the Disney show is, so I was expecting the same kind of campiness. To my surprise, the movie didn't go there, at least not enough to get me to roll my eyes and wish I had a gun to end it all. Sure there were a few moments where I would ask Melissa, "How can this happen?" For instance, while during a Mrs. Doubtfire moment, Miley is alternating between a governor's dinner and a date. During one of the switches, she returns after changing clothes and keeping the lobster bib on. Would that of been taken care of during her changing clothes? Another moment for me was when towards the end, Miley is on stage singing a song that she just wrote and was going to debut it in front of a live crowd. It was safe to assume that her band never heard of the song before, but apparently knew how it was going to go and performed it without any practice. Despite a few of the movie's inconsistencies, the storyline was pretty good. I enjoyed the fish out of water moments that Miley had going back to her grandmother's farm. As much as I can do without Billy Ray Cyrus, I thought his role was used enough to not completely hate him.

All in all, your kids will love the movie! I think it's safe to say that adults could tolerate the movie, even if they're sick of the Hannah Montana craze. The movie is safe, and so is the franchise.

Friday the 13th (2009)

With Rob Zombie making new Halloween movies and the fact that horror movies are becoming scarier, I was intrigued to see the newest, revamped verison of Friday the 13th. Let's just say, while I enjoyed the movie, I couldn't find one scary moment in the movie. I did like how they revamped Jason. In previous Jason movies, Jason would just be a mindless killer who just killed for no reason. In this one, Jason seemed to know what he was doing. As for the rest of the cast, you get the same old story. You can almost predict who was going to die first, and how they would die. All in all, the movie didn't suck, but in my opinion, it could of been better.

The Natural

After hearing that the Texas Rangers took two of three from the Boston Red Sox, I got in the baseball mood and wanted to catch an old baseball classic movie. I haven't seen The Natural in a real long time, so we rented it from Blockbuster and brought it home to watch. Seeing as how Dakota never saw the movie, she watched it with me.

Here's my take...

This is, in my opinion, the greatest baseball movie of all time. The story of a young boy with natural baseball talent, who struggles to get to the big leagues after 16 years. Robert Redford is great as Roy Hobbs, and middle aged rookie who knows that the clock is ticking on his baseball career. From every home run he hits to the struggles he went through to get to the final game, the story was captivating. For the baseball fans out there, this is the movie to check out.

Iron Man

I was sitting in the truck one night, bored out of my mind. As I was looking online, I came across a You Tube video of the upcoming Iron Man 2 movie, due out in 2010. That got me wanting to see the first Iron Man movie!

The Good: Marvel Comic movies are really on their game. Iron Man reminded me of how I felt after seeing the first Spiderman movie. The story was excellent, the acting was superb, and the action sequences were awesome. Robert Downey Jr. reminds us on how great of an actor he is. Jeff Bridges was great as the main villian in the movie, a role that I normally don't see him in. While I'm not a big fan of Gwyneth Paltrow, I thought her role in the movie was enough to not hate her. The funny thing is that after I saw the movie, I went to Wikipedia to learn about the origin of Iron Man. I liked how they took the origin of Iron Man and adapted it to our current situation in the Middle East.

The Bad: The only bad thing about this movie for me is that it wasn't long enough. They gave Superman Returns two and a half hours and it sucked! This movie could of added an extra 30 minutes and not dissappointed me.

The Verdict: Jon Favreau was on the Howard Stern show after Iron Man was released and Howard kept telling him to not make any other movies and just make Iron Man movies. Favreau has taken a forgotten comic figure and brought him to life that other comic book heroes haven't had. Iron Man is a keeper, and Iron Man 2 looks like it's going to rock!