MONSTERS VS. ALIENS
Despite a wonderful voice cast I found myself actively disliking the vasrt majority of this movie. Truly unappealing character designs and animation, clunky dialogue, and what I felt was just inept direction all added up to a very dissatisfying experience. Some of the action sequences were really well-done, especially the battle against the giant robot that culminated on the Golden Gate Bridge, but they were rather sparse. I found myself continually distracted by the absolutely hideous and disconcerting character designs of the non-monster characters. The same studio released
Kung Fu Panda last year and that movie is better than this one by an order of magnitude.
ASTRO BOY
I saw this in a theater that was absolutely packed with parents and children which filled me with dread. I've been to plenty of movies where younger audiences like this completely ruined the experience for me. Luckily, this turned out to not be the case though I must say I feel that taking younger kids to the movies largely seems to be a huge waste of time given the cost of tickets, snacks, and the frequency with which these kids have to go to the bathroom. I found the movie to be a real delight if not an instant classic. I liked the character designs and voice acting all quite a bit, though many of the characters are rather bland, and some portions of the movie do drag. The real star of the movie is the action. Astro Boy himself is like a robot Superman and the action sequences are all on a gigantic scale and were very well-executed. It's no
Iron Giant, but I give
Astro Boy a thumbs up.
DRAG ME TO HELL
This is Sam Raimi's return to horror after a couple decades of dramas and the Spider-Man films, and if you remember his
Evil Dead films then
Drag Me To Hell will look very, very familiar. Obviously, the budget is much higher than what Raimi had to work with back in his early horror phase but all of his signature tricks are there, so many, in fact, that
Drag Me To Hell would have a 'been-there-done-that' feel if it weren't just so much fun. Raimi repeats a LOT of his gags from the
Evil Dead movies in this one (creaking structure of a home indicating that 'something is trying to break into our world', nasty horrid stuff being projected directly into the protagonist's face and mouth, etc.) but this time with updated and polished effects work. It's so similar that the film may as well have had the subtitle
Evil Dead 4. These similarities absolutely work for me, though, and I found the movie to be disgustingly delightful, particularly the extraordinarily disturbing evil old gypsy woman.
Drag Me To Hell was a real blast and I wholeheartedly recommend it to fans of the
Evil Dead series.
UP
What a surprisingly touching movie. The opening sequence I found to be incredibly poignant and moving. The rest of the movie is great fun, and I especially enjoyed the talking dogs, but it's that opening sequence that really adds the gravitas to the picture that really puts it head and shoulders above other animated features.