I sort of liked the original 300. I say sort of because while I thought it was good when I saw it, looking back later, I couldn’t remember much about it. It all came back when I went and saw 300: Rise of an Empire, but unfortunately, I didn’t even leave the theater thinking this was a good one this time.

This movie really just felt like 300 on the high seas. Most of the battles take place ship-to-ship, but the style is all lifted straight from the original film. Perhaps the movie makers thought if the first movie did so well, why break the formula? While the first one seemed fresh at the time, this one just felt old. I was falling asleep in the theater during a battle scene, and if that can’t keep my attention, you can bet the “story” couldn’t either. It also felt very gimmicky. While I saw the movie in 2D, it was obviously made for 3D. There were a lot of scenes of blood spattering towards the viewer, and long sweeping sword strikes past the front of the screen. Personally, I enjoy 3D movies where you forget it is in 3D, where the makers immerse you in the film without beating you over the head with it.

In the end, this one is just for people that really loved the first one and hoped it was exactly 1 hour 42 minutes longer.

Saw Non-Stop last night, starring Liam Neeson. Though he is perhaps getting a little old to play the action hero, he is awfully good at it and Non-Stop is another successful stint for him.

Liam Neeson is an air marshal on a crowded, long Atlantic flight, when he receives a message that someone will be killed every 20 minutes. On the surface this just seems like another generic “good guy hunting down the bad guy before he kills a bunch of people” film, but there are some twists. Obviously it takes place in the sky on an airplane, which when you hear it seems gimmicky, but it works well. Also, the bad guy goes about his killings in unique ways. I don’t want to give anything anyway, but the movie does a great job of making you question every single passenger, as Liam himself has to. The trailers leading up to the movie suggested it could be one particular person, and I’m glad it ended up being someone else. I hate trailers that give away too much, and the ending was plenty surprising for me.

My friends joked that this was simply Taken 3, and it’s not (that film is going to be made next year!), but it does seem Liam has found a niche here with these kinds of roles. Though his action characters are a bit one dimensional, he has the voice and the mannerisms to make them very believable.

I was up for something different for this trip to the movies, and you can’t get much different than The Wind Rises. This is a Japanese animated film, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, who has been called the Walt Disney of Japan for his long and celebrated career in anime and manga there. Several of his films have made it to the states over the years, though this is the first time I’ve seen one on the big screen.

The Wind Rises is a biography (though I’m not sure how accurate) of Jiro Horikoshi, designer of Japanese fighter planes used in World War II. It starts with his youth and continues through until his final design is hashed out and finally successful, after numerous failed attempts. In the movie he is portrayed as an optimistic engineer. He knows his design will be used for war, but several times makes jokes that it would be a better plane without the guns. He is simply trying to build the best plane he can, at a time when Japanese technology is decades behind their competition in other countries.

I enjoyed the film thoroughly. The artistry is superb, rich colors and beautiful scenes permeate throughout. You never forget it is a Japanese animated film, as there are a couple characters that are a little over-the-top in that style, but it is beautifully written. The American voice cast includes plenty of big names too, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and John Krasinski in the leads, supported by Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci, and Mandy Patinkin to name a few. If you’d like to sit back and see a kind of movie us westerners won’t normally get to see, this is well worth an evening.

If you take Russell Crowe’s Gladiator and put it under the shadow of a volcano, you have Pompeii, and a not-as-good version at that. Basically if you take all of the characters, make them more one-dimensional, you have this new movie. It even lifts one character right off the original (an African mentor-turned-friend to our reluctant gladiator). Having said all that, it’s not a terrible movie, though parts of you certainly make you roll your eyes.

The main character is played by Kit Harington, otherwise known as Jon Snow from the Game of Thrones series. If you’ve seen that show, you know this guy’s acting chops consist mostly of pained, longing stares with that almost always far-away look in his eyes. The Joaquin Phoenix role in Gladiator is played here by Keifer Sutherland. As much as I liked 24, he’s no Joaquin, who I consider one of the finest actors today. What keeps this movie together though is the historic blowing of Mount Vesuvius. Though the CGI isn’t as good as some other high budget films, and doesn’t look quite as real as it should at times, it is very exciting, especially in the end when everything goes to hell.

Like a lot of action films, if you just take this film light heartedly, it is fun. Younger audiences that only care about explosions and death duels should really enjoy it (my 16 year old son loved it!).

Endless Love is exactly what you expect. It is sometimes corny, sometimes hokey, and overall a pretty cheesy romance most likely geared towards teenage and young adult women. Even so, it mixes this formula well and is a great date movie for any couple wanting to feel cheesy love in the air together.

The only thing I knew about this movie going in was the leading actor was in “I am Number Four” which was sort of a cool sci-fi film from a couple years ago. Apparently it is a remake of a film made in the early 80’s, which in turn is based from book written in the late 70’s. It’s a very typical story of a girl that falls for a boy from the other side of the tracks, but he has a good heart and brings everyone together. The movie is told fairly well, though it does seem to slow down and veer off course in the end. If it was 20 minutes shorter it would have been much better, but I can understand why they wrote it the way they did. If you and your significant other are up for a lovey-dovey flick, there are far worse things to see.

This is a bad movie. No other way to say it. Bad story, bad dialogue, full of clichés, full of holes. It’s one thing to ask the audience to suspend belief a time or two in the interest of an action film, it’s quite another to ask them to follow along when nothing at all makes sense.

This is (I think) supposed to be a spy film, though even after seeing it, I’m not really sure the writer and director knew that. There is very little spying going on. And unlike some of the movies I’ve seen lately, such as I Frankenstein and Robocop, when the story failed, the action scenes could not carry this film. The one bright spot for me was the lead played by Kevin Costner, who, say what you like, still has the cool, debonair part down, even after all these years. But rather than stabilizing the film, it almost made it worse, as you are left wondering why he would he would waste his time with this farce. Granted, it has been awhile since he had the leading role, maybe he was finally offered one and jumped at the chance. I think he should have waited for something better. Pretty much anything would have been better.

I should have listened to my gut on this one. I didn’t especially have any desire to see this movie, but it was getting good reviews (currently 62/100 Metacritic, 77% Rotten Tomatoes) so I thought, what the hell. It ended up being exactly what I expected, and that’s not a good thing.

If you are a fan of Kevin Hart’s comedic style, this one is for you. Vulgar and crass, it gets you to laugh on shock value alone, but even that gets old 20-30 minutes in. This movie is basically 100 minutes of Kevin Hart standup, with an extremely generic romantic-comedy story carrying you through to the end. Boy meets girl, they fall in love, they go through a rough patch, they work it out in the end. I don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying that. The plot is so full of stereotypes and clichés that honestly it is hard to watch at times.

Kevin Hart is the man of the hour right now, having been in a run of box office hits. Even in his misses, he is often reviewed as the one shining moment, and even though I’m not a fan, I can appreciate his current run. I feel like if he wasn’t on such a high right now, this movie would not be getting the attention it is. But to each his own.

Winter’s Tale is getting panned by critics, currently at 31 on Metacritic and 15% on Rotten Tomatoes. Honestly I didn’t think it was a bad movie. It was ok for me; not great, but certainly not terrible.

It is yet another based-on-a-novel movie, which there seems to be a rash of lately. I think the book may be pretty good, the backdrop of the movie had some merit. It was a little weird at times, a little too far out there for a traditional romantic flick, but a neat idea anyway. A man falls in love with a woman so much that their love keeps him alive for over a hundred years, until his purpose in life is fulfilled. Some of it was pretty sappy obviously. I do think the story could have been done better. It was written for the screen (and directed by) Akiva Goldsman. He is the writer behind such great movies as I Am Legend and A Beautiful Mind, as well as I, Robot (well, I liked that last one anyway…), and he brings along Russell Crowe and Will Smith from those earlier successes to star in this movie. But he also wrote some terrible ones, including Batman & Robin and the Da Vinci Code movies. Winter’s Tale falls somewhere in the middle.

When even Spiderman and Superman can be completely rebooted within a handful of years of the previous release, you knew it was only a matter of time before some of the older 80’s flicks saw new time on the big screen. Robocop is the newest remake, and if you can ignore some of the pretty rough acting at times, it is a great action-packed “man” movie.

The original came out when I was a kid, and I thought it was awesome. I was a classic 80’s boy, I loved robots and police good guy vs bad guy films, so it was the best of both worlds! I wanted to see this new one from the first trailer I saw, and it didn’t disappoint. Some of the plot points don’t flesh out well, but the action is superb throughout. It features some roll-your-eyes dialogue at times (Samuel L Jackson’s extremist news program, though this is on purpose) and what I thought some really over-acting by Michael Keaton, who plays the original Ronny Cox role as the diabolical head bad dude with the master plan. But you see a movie like this for the gun fights, and here this movie excels.

Not giving anything away when I say the ending sets up for a sequel, which will probably only be greenlit if this one brings in the money the studio is hoping for. I for one hope it does, and that it comes off better than the original movie’s sequels which were pretty hard to watch for the most part. Definitely worth seeing this one on the big screen if you can make it.

I was due for a true clunker of a movie. I’ve seen a lot of good ones lately, and even the so-so ones were still enjoyable. So I knew a letdown was eminent.

Based on a true story, The Monuments Men tells the story of a group of men trying to recapture art stolen by Hitler Germany. This becomes more dire as the movie progresses, when a notice is given by Hitler himself to destroy all stores if the event of his death or Germany’s fall. I have a soft spot for the fine arts, so I really wanted to like this movie. While it does showcase some fine actors, it never became a good movie.

This movie never seems to find its footing, or even decide what kind of film it wants to be. It is supposed to be a comedy-drama, and tries to do both to the max. There are quirky, almost unbelievable moments and dialogue (complete with slapstick-ish music), followed by extremely serious and (supposed to be) heartfelt scenes. Because of this, it fell flat for me and rang false overall. The ending was pretty anticlimactic as well, and I left with the impression that George Clooney just called a bunch of friends and said, “Hey, lets make a movie next weekend, anyone have any ideas?” and Matt Damon surfed Wikipedia until he saw an article on this historic group. The only thing this movie did was draw attention to perhaps a lessor known side war going on in the greater scope of World War II, so at least it led me home to open up my computer and research a little.