DVD Voice

For a nice evening of friendly family fun you can delve into the Tooth Fairy, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He’s playing a hockey star who is a “big thing” in the minor leagues, as he hits people so hard he knocks teeth out. But, he’s also a hurt man who has had his dreams crushed (through injury at the least) and feels its ok to stomp on the dreams of others — vividly shown in the beginning when he tells a little league hockey player to give up on dreams, they’ll only make him sad and dissapointed.

Because of this and other similar actions, he’s summoned to Fairy Land, ruled by Julie Andrews, where he is sentenced to be an actual tooth fairy for a couple of weeks. There’s plenty of lame jokes, and special effects as he goes about trying to live his life and do his new “job”.

The main message of this film isn’t about how he goes about doing his job and making sure newly toothless kids find a dollar bill under their pillow but instead how he learns to realize the importance of dreaming, how letting go of your dreams and visions and imagination isn’t a good thing to be realistic, but it kills a part of your spirit. Learning how to say “what if” is very important in life.

And it is truly important! You have to believe in yourself, realize that you are just as good as anyone else, that if you have a dream you should try for it. Go ahead, take the risk and believe and do. And above all, don’t give up hope on your own dreams and for goodness sake, don’t destroy other people’s dreams. It’s really sad here to look at some of these kids in this movie and see how hurt and damaged they are when they dreams and fantasies are destroyed. And you have to ask yourself, was there someone who did that for you, ruined your dreams? Or was there someone who believed in you and encouraged you to continue to have faith in yourself that you can do and accomplish?

Things learned from this movie:

1. If you buy black-market fairy products they don’t work right.
2. Becoming invisible is a cool way to play tricks on people.
3. Fairies can live through being flushed.
4. Tutus make mens butts look big.
5. Tooth Fairies now days do not give coins, they give dollars right under your pillow!

Rated PG. 101 minutes (1 hour 41 minutes). Some sports violence, but that’s about it. It is rated PG, by the way.

A great little film about the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003, Green Zone, with Matt Damon. Paul Greengrass is back with Matt Damon (both from the Jason Bourne series) for this tight little war, political drama. Great action and realism, the film shows some of the chaos that went on over there.

Not to give away too much of the plot, the story revolves around the search for WMD or Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. The teams are going to locations provided by top intelligence from an Iraqi source about where the WMD are, only there is never anything there. The source, named Magellan, is trusted and never question despite the string of bad information as the American troops blindly follow lead after lead. So why did such bad information get into the system?

Regardless, the film is well made, the war effects are great, the chaos is well represented. Its an enjoyable evening with a war movie for anyone who like this sort of film. Have at it!

Rated R. 115 minutes (1 hour 55 minutes). Profanity is used quite liberally. As a war film, there is a lot of violence.

This little movie Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief was surprisingly good! This is based on the book by Rick Riordan and was directed by Chris Columbus (Home Alone 2, and the first two Harry Potter movies – Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets). You have Logan Lerman playing the title role of Percy Jackson, who unknown to him he is a demi-god and the son of Poseidon played by Kevin McKidd. Someone, it seems has stolen Zues’s (Sean Bean of the Lord of the Rings) lightning bolt and everyone thinks Percy has it. The gods will have a war if it isn’t returned in two weeks and this war would mean the end of the world … and I reckon this is the 2012 thing the Mayans were predicting.

Anyway, Percy finds out he is a demi-god, his mother (Catherine Keener) is taken off to the underworld as a bargaining chip for the lightning bolt – actually a weapon and Zeus’s special power. So he sets off on a journey to get his mother and find the lightning bolt to return it to Zeus. Along the way little things like a three headed Hydra and Medusa (by the appealing Uma Thurman) her special effects snake head is cool!

Not to give anything away if you haven’t seen or read the books, but on the recommendation of a friend I watched this and was pleasantly surprised because I thought it was a kids movie. There was several good little jokes poked in there, some jokes slid in for the adults and the CGI is well-done. It is interesting that the young Percy and his fellow demi-gods all pretty much despise their god parent (no pun intended) even though they have been told how they can’t be around them – isn’t permitted. I mean, if I just found out I was adopted and my real dad had all these powers and I’d have a few of them too, well – cool!

Things you learn:

1. If you are a demi-god you can go onto the casino floor even though you are underage.
2. If you eat the lotus flowers no one cares if you have goat’s legs – in fact women love you for it.
3. The entrance to hades and the underworld is in Hollywood!
4. It doesn’t take long to drive from Nashville to Las Vegas.
5. Maserati’s are way cool!
6. Even demi-gods love to play games and video games.
7. Swords never go out of style!
8. Apple iPods make great Medusa hunting and killing tools.

Rated PG. 118 minutes (1 hour 58 minutes). Action violence. There is a lot of fighting and the teenagers are playing with real swords and trying to cut.

The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day is a sequel to the popular Boondock Saints. This one, however, doesn’t really cut it.

The action is ok, but the attempts at humor, which might be ok in a drunken group are just too over the top. It’s like your seeing mafia types and police and FBI detectives acted by the Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern – at once laughable for the inane comments they make referencing pop culture, and at the other part so damn stupid it makes you wonder how they ever got to those positions as police detectives or crime lords/underlings.

The McManus Brothers are in Ireland and they hear of a killing of a priest inside a church in Boston. Before the police are finished removing the body from the church even, they have heard about it (because someone is making it look like they did it) and are stowed away on a freighter bound for America. They meet up with Mexican named Romeo on the boat and he decides he’s coming with them because he can hook them up in Boston when they get there. Not trying to give away the story but their father will end up needing to appear from Ireland as well and how he knew about what was going down, well, we’ll never know.

The movie is highly quotable, if you’ll take time to remember some of the lines. As Murphy would say, “Let’s do some gratuitous violence.”

Rated R. 118 minutes (1 hour 58 minutes). Profanity. Violence. Nudity is a few views of naked men’s butts. There are some tempting cleavage shots and almost down blouse on Julie Benz, but sadly…

Tonight I watched Appleseed. This is the 2004 version of the film, which is apparently another version (1988) of this comic book based movie.

I must say! The animation and computer graphics in here are eye-popping! At times I felt like I was watching the The Matrix it was that well done. It is about a post World War III world where a single city has developed into a Utopia of half-human population and half mechanized bioroids (biotic androids I think). There is animosity between the humans and the bioroids, but for the most part it is peaceful. Until “things” start to happen and parties begin to try to manipulate the giant computer the controls their society.

The bioroids have an artificial limit on life, they cannot reproduce naturally, they must be built and they also must get treatments every so often to extend their life – miss that and they’ll die very soon afterwards. This is spelled out quite plainly and you just know that one of the main characters will succumb or fall into peril because of this. A couple of other plot points are explicitly described to you beforehand. Enough so that you can almost take notes and wait for something along those lines to happen.

The main protagonist is quite cute and deadly both at the same time, as she does flips and turns in slow motion fighting sequences with her short shorts or skirt. And of course when given the opportunity cleavage is showcased (they don’t go out of their way to do so, however).

This was a fun little action animation adventure. I enjoyed it and it far exceeded my low expectations before the evening began.

Rated R. 105 minutes (1 hour 45 minutes) Cartoon violence.

As promised, tonight I took the time to watch the sequel to Ong-Bak, Ong-Bak 2: The Beginning. I really enjoyed Ong-Bak last night and was expecting more of the same. I got it. Wow… as much martial arts as you could handle.

But, somehow it didn’t feel as satisfying as the first one. The first one was really out of nowhere, I wasn’t expecting it to be as hard hitting and good. This one, probably was on par, but just didn’t quite ring that same bell!

Since it’s called “The Beginning,” that should tip you off that it happens before Ong-Bak. Tien, Tony Jaa (who also directed), is the son of a nobleman who is orphaned and taken in by the King of the Outlaws. He is trained in all sorts of fighting styles and weaponry. Later in life he seeks revenge. He seems rather intent on killing everyone, and the last 30 minutes of the film is basically a big fight.

I’m not saying the action is good, it is, it’s just that I believe I enjoy a good martial arts movie, but I don’t truly appreciate the intricacies of it enough. Or maybe it’s that I shouldn’t do martial arts two nights in a row?

Oh, the DVD has trailers for John Woo’s Red Cliff and The Warlords. Both look good and I think I’ll have to try them sometime soon. And there was some video of Ong-Bak 3, which from the little bits looked like it may be more interesting, to me, that this one.

Rated R. 115 minutes (1 hour 55 minutes). Violence. Let me repeat that, Violence.

Today is Ground Hog’s Day. Well, actually it was yesterday, but I was having a little difficulty getting my blog to cooperate, so I’m posting this one a day late. Great start, huh?

My first thought was to see Ground Hog Day, but I’m going to pass. I am very interested in another movie with Bill Murray that comes out this week, Zombieland! And hopefully (fingers crossed!) Netflix will send that one pronto!

Since Ong-Bak 2 is coming out this week, I decided to see them both. So for starters we hit the ground with Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior. Honestly, I knew nothing about this movie. I heard it was supposedly pretty good and an action-martial arts type film.

I was lucky, it was both sub-titled and voice-overed. I listened to it in English, I didn’t feel like reading.

Basically, Tony Jaa, Ting, lives in a tiny village. They are about to celebrate a sacred holiday that is only celebrated once every 24 years when a man named “Don” comes to the village and when he leaves steals the head of On-Bak, a Buddha like statue. One villager must go after and retrieve the head. Ting volunteers.

Country boy in the big city type movie follows. The gangs think they are too tough for him but learn otherwise, there are fights, street chases, car (or tiny taxis) chases, bar fights, and yet more fights. Some of the characters bring in a fair amount of humor and at times it felt like I was watching an anime!

Overall — very good! I really enjoyed this mindless martial-arts. Great stunts and I swear someone had to of gotten hurt filming this! At least it looked that way. If you enjoy a good action movie and want to see some stunts that rival Jackie Chan and Jet Li, then you should enjoy this one as well. And later this week I’ll see how the sequel stacks up!

2003 Rated R. 101 minutes (1 hour 41 minutes). Lots of action violence and blood. Drug use.