Virtue Is Knowledge . com

What a mess.  I guess they need something to make The A-Team look good when it comes out. Some special ops guys get double crossed by CIA super spook guy and they want to clear their names. Very original. They each have a special talent too. And there is an angry vixen who may be a good bitch or a bad bitch, we’ll just have to wait and see. It’s supposed to be another comic book type action story. There are some explosions and fights and gun play and all the usual action movie filler, but there is no continuity here. The editing is appalling. There are endless slow motion group walks `a la Reservoir Dogs which tells me the director and editor didn’t know what they wanted. Jason Patric is almost ok as the villain, but even he can’t bring it off. The witty banter isn’t witty and the funny character quirks aren’t funny. They left some loose ends to set up a sequel, which is painful to contemplate. Don’t be a loser. Skip this movie.

This looked like it could be a really bad movie or pretty good. Thankfully, it was a fun and quirky film. This is the anti-hero hero story. What does it take to be a not so super hero? A dorky costume to start. The pent up angst, alienation, and naive world view of youth helps too. Aaron Johnson is our nebbish hero to be. He plays it straight and you might even believe someone would be foolish enough to try to do what he does. The movie plays teenagers more realistically than some recent movies. They are rude, crude and inconsiderate just like the ones you see at the mall on a Friday evening. There are the typical outsider scenes of school and the requisite bullies to set the stage for us. What makes this movie work is Chloe Grace Moretz as Hit Girl and her father (Big Daddy) Played by Nicolas Cage. The juxtaposition of this little girl doing very adult super hero stuff is great. She cusses like a sailor and is cute as a button. Cage is a bit over the top as her revenge and weapon obsessed father, not that there is anything wrong with that. Hoplophiles will love all the hardware displayed. There is plenty of cartoon like violence or rather comic book mayhem as this is taken from a comic series. If you like comic book action and a decent comic book story (a sequel is likely), then Kick Ass is worth seeing.

Tina Fey is cute, funny, and your girlfriend won’t be threatened by her. Steve Carell is cute, funny, and your boyfriend won’t be threatened by him. Let’s poke fun at suburban 30 somethings and the stereotypical relationship stuff. Put them in the big city and let the zaniness begin! Well it could be more zany and funnier, but then you might start offending someone and we need to appeal to as big a market as possible, after all this is the movie business. There is plenty of shtick to make you smile and you may chuckle a few times. No big laughs for me. The surrounding cast of characters are also cute (Mark Wahlberg is way too studly) and the SNL cast is well represented. This is a take no chances, stick to the formula movie and it is a solid middle of the road comedy you will forget about soon after you see it.

A government conspiracy to takeover another country and their oil fields? Sounds familiar. Evil bureaucrats and gullible reporters too? That’s original. And special operators who will kill anyone they are told to. Isn’t that special? So let us set aside the heavy handed political bias and see what’s left. There’s Matt Damon running around in full combat gear and Greg Kinnear being a government tool. They play their parts well. You want Matt to win and Greg to lose and I guess it works out that way. We see poor noble civilians making their own case for regime change. OK, I get it. There is some action and some suspense, but not enough to carry this film. Morons will see this as a historical docudrama I’m afraid. Watch a Frontline episode or any of dozens of documentaries about the Iraq war, or better yet read John Keegan’s book on it. You’ll be better informed.  Were there WMD’s? We didn’t find any did we? We can’t seem to find a birth certificate either. Does it mean one doesn’t exist? Maybe that’s the subject of another movie, but I kind of doubt it.

With Tim Burton directing Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Crispin Glover, Voices of Stephen Frye and Alan Rickman you’d think there’d be a spectacular spectacle of fantastic fantasy and there is, but I was looking for something more. The performances were very good. The set dressing and costuming were visually stunning as you’d expect from Burton. The story was interesting, but not inspiring. Maybe I wanted more logic puzzles and clever turns of phrase from the books. Burton had to do something fresh and adding the Jabberwock sub plot is a good idea. Still, while entertaining I had higher expectations. I saw the film twice, so I paid my dues. I first saw it in the regular 2D, then saw it again in 3D. There was little to recommend the 3D version and it was rather distracting. Later I found out that creating the 3D version was a post production effort and it wasn’t really made with 3D in mind. This was evident to me. Burton used a great deal of live action that could’ve/would’ve been easier to do with CG had it been planned for 3D. Oh, and Avril Lavigne’s theme song for the movie is excellent. The percussive elements are dramatic and very emotive and it is a great pop song. I downloaded it from Amazon’s music store (cheaper than iTunes had it) as soon as I got home from the movie. Alice was good, but I wonder how it could have been better.