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!

One Fine Day

Obviously, on a day where I have nothing to do, movie watching is my little getaway. Sitting in my truck until my delivery for tomorrow, I broke out the laptop and started throwing movies in. Here is what I thought about One Fine Day.

THE GOOD: This was a real sweet movie! Michelle Pfeiffer is great as a single-working mother who, unfortunatly, puts her job ahead of her son. George Clooney is great as a newspaper writer who gets his daughter thrown into his lap as his ex-wife is off for her honeymoon. To watch these two come together and deal with their jobs and babysitting all in one day, while falling for each other, was real sweet. At the end of the movie, you end up rooting for these two to get together.

THE BAD: There's not a whole lot of bad I can add to this movie. For some people, when the movie ends, you want to know what happens to these two, but in my opinion, the movie is called One Fine Day, so tomorrow is left wide open.

THE VERDICT: Every now and then, Hollywood can take a concept, not spend a whole lot of money on it, and come out with a nice little movie. That's what One Fine Day was.

The Dark Knight

The dark knight returns in....The Dark Knight, and the movie killed it at the box office. Granted, everyone wanted to see Heath Ledger's performance, and they were in for a treat. His portrayal of The Joker was rivating. He mind The Joker a mindless killer, mixed in with Joker mannerisms. He was deserving of the Academy Award he won, although he wasn't alive to recieve it. As for Christian Bale, while I like his verison of Batman better than George Clooney, Val Kilmer, and even Michael Keation, he obviously isn't the main attraction in the movie. The Dark Knight is more about the villian in the movie, which worked for other superhero moves. After all, Gene Hackman got top billing over Christopher Reeve in Superman and it worked. The Dark Knight is a knockout, and it will be interesting to see how the third one plays out.

Live Free or Die Hard

Very rarely does a sequel out do the original. In the case of the Die Hard movies, the movies get bigger and better everytime. I was sitting in Canton, OH this weekend and going through my movie collection on the truck. I picked out this movie, and was blown away!

THE GOOD: Even though this movie is all about explosions and fighting, you have to hand it to the writers of this movie. Bruce Willis can throw out one-liners in this one and the laughter doesn't feel forced. The one thing that the Die Hard franchise has always done is made the villians cool. Plus, I liked how they incorporated computer hackers and the dangers of the internet as a form of terrorism.

THE BAD: Not that this was bad but I thought Justin Long's character ran his course with me after the first hour. I know that McClane had to carry him around for the whole movie, but I was ready for a terrorist to kill him off. Other than that, it's hard to find a bad thing about this movie.

THE VERDICT: In the last five years, we have seen Hollywood heavyweights from the 80's bring back their signature characters. We saw Stallone brought Rocky out of retirement and Rambo back into a war. We saw Harrison Ford, unsuccessfully in my opinion, bring back Indiana Jones. We even saw Arnold Schwarzenegger bring back the Terminator in an underrated sequel to the Terminator series. I think Live Free or Die Hard puts everyone to shame.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystral Skull

After 19 years, and countless times we heard Spielberg, Ford, and Lucas say that Indiana Jones IV was coming out, this is what we get. I thought George Lucas kinda lost his edge with the latest Star Wars movies, but after watching this movie, I question if he really had any kind of edge at all.

THE GOOD: I had to really watch this film close enough to find any GOOD in it. The action scenes were nice! The special effects were good. I was wondering how they were going to answer for Sean Connery and Denholm Elliot not being in the movie, and they answered it nicely by seting the story in the 50's, letting them pass on naturally. After that, there's not much else.

THE BAD: Where do I begin? Whoever wrote the dialogue for this movie should of been fired! The lines came out campy and forced! One of my biggest problems I had with National Treasure and the earlier Indiana Jones movies is that Indiana Jones is a big know-it-all. You would think that through all the things that we have seen him go through, you would think that he could afford to forget a few things. But no, he knows the story to every carving on a wall, different languages in diaries, and so on. I felt that bringing back Karen Allen as Indy's love interest from the first movie was a bit forced. Tying them together with Shia Labeoff of Transformers was a bit much. Then there's Harrison Ford! I am a hig Harrison Ford fan, but he is too old to be Indiana Jones. His punches were very telegraphed. His quick comebacks aren't so quick! I just didn't buy it anymore from him. It reminded my of Stallone in Rocky Balboa. During the fight scene, Stallone just looked too old!

THE VERDICT: I'm sure you've heard the old saying that sometimes you just can't go home! That's I felt during this movie. If you have an Indiana Jones craze one night, just remember the three other masterpieces he made in the 80's. Those would blow you away before this one would.