Blades of Glory

Directed by: Josh Gordon and Will Speck

Starring: Will Ferrell, Jon Heder, Will Arnett, Amy Poehler, Jenna Fischer, William Fichtner, Craig T. Nelson

Running Time: 1h 37min

Like "Sex on Ice"! Well, hilarious, wet your pants and get tears in your eyes sex on ice. Will Ferrell continues his amazing run of ridiculously funny send ups of eras and cultures that deserve to be skewered through the improv mastery of he and his friends.

Figure skating, though filled with talented athletes, is quite silly to behold, second only to other Olympic sports skeleton and speed skating. And that's for the costumes alone. Watching Blades of Glory would be funny as a silent film, just to give you an indication of how brilliant the wardrobe department is for this film. In fact, i found myself watching it out of the corner of my eye while watching two other films that i paid for at the drive in, and laughing each time i glanced at the screen. i went to see it a day later.

The good news is that it's even funnier with sound. Ferrell and Heder work well together, giving us just enough familiarity (a little Ron Burgandy and Napolean Dynamite line delivery) but creating an oddly believable partnership as two former Men's figure skating champions who get banned from competition, only to return as a pairs entry due to a rules technicality/loophole.

The film wastes no time producing decent belly laughs, by introducing the two characters in Olympic TV coverage fashion, using 2 minute bios with hilarious voice over narration, and equally funny still photos and flashback video. By playing it close to the actual competition and sport, the film gets even funnier once the leads are able to improv their way to joke after joke after joke within a serious sports movie cliche premise.

The physical comedy is blended nicely with one-liners and sight gags, and the supporting players keep the humour coming when Ferrell and Heder aren't on screen. The only setback is when a reoccuring stalker character takes the screen, as the inital joke wasn't that funny, and turning it into a running gag makes it even less funny. At least it lets the viewer take a breather and wipe their eyes dry.

i was impressed at how the film approached the concept or premise without opting for the easy, Brokeback Mountain gag, or nasty homophobic comment. Instead, the brotherly love becomes a center piece of the storyline, allowing the comedy to rotate around it. There are a lot of similarities between how this film and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story and Ferrell's other films balanced their romance and drama, which makes the comedy much more relevant and funny.

Molded in the same manner as Anchorman and Talladega Nights, though not as consistently funny as those two films, Blades of Glory is instantly quotable and gives the audience those moments of hilarity that make you laugh out loud to yourself even when you recall them three days later. i can't wait to purchase the DVD so i can watch the pair's first competition skate over and over to "Capture the Dream!". i know i will never look at figure skating the same way again.

Grade: A-

300

Directed by: Zack Snyder

Starring: Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Dominic West, Vincent Regan, Rodrigo Santoro

Running Time: 1h 57min

A stunning visual epic, each frame could be frozen and passed off for a Renaissance original. Strategically told, with minimal dialogue and maximum style, the machismo is palpable and terrifyingly enjoyable. Definitely a film that could be watched solely as a series of still photographs, the art direction is that incredible. Reminiscent of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, in its stripped down set design and otherworldly backdrop, this is a remarkable feast of eye candy. Full review to come.

TMNT

Directed by: Kevin Munroe
Staring: Chris Evans, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Kevin Smith, Patrick Stewart, Laurence Fishburne, Ziyi Zhang
Running Time: 1h 27min

Extremely fast paced, wonderfully animated return to the comic book roots of this odd group of martial arts super mutants. Kids will love the pace, adults not so much; yet adults will appreciate the artistry probably more so than the kids. Not a bad return to the franchise and if they continue to make animated films this good looking, i'd be afraid if i were an actor, because the craft could become obsolete. Full review to come.

Grade: B

Dukes of Hazzard:the Beginning

Directed By: Some guy I don't know
Starring: Some guy I don't know
Another guy I don't know
Some hot girl I would like to know
Uncle Jesse: Willie Nelson
Running time: 95 Minutes

A prequel to the 2005 film takes us back to how the two Duke boys met and the trouble they got into in Hazzard county. While the original film had an up and coming core of actors, Johnny Knoxville, Sean William Scott and a great performance by Jessica Simpson (if you turn the sound off) the new cast has nothing to offer. Why this TV franchise was granted a second chance in film is beyond me. Often I have wondered how the General Lee came to be, how Roscoe got his badge and how the Daisy Duke shorts were invented and now I know. I really don't need to get into what the story is or what happens, it may seem like I am lazy on this review but really I am bitter at having wasted 95 minutes of my sweet life.

If you are a fan of the show you may appreciate the origins mentioned above, but even then there are a lot of inconsistencies most glaringly the rampant use of cell phones. Never mind that they were decades from being invented but where in Hazzard county would the tower be? Maybe that can be the basis for the next Dukes movie: Boss Hogg takes over the cell towers so that the local residents can't text each other about when the next moonshine convention is. (as stupid as it sounds there actually was a moonshine convention in this movie). If you grew up watching the Dukes of Hazzard as I did it had a cool factor for its time but try watching an episode now. As hard as it is to believe it lasted 7 seasons!! Think of it this way everyone can name the car but very few people can name even one of the actors, catch my drift...BRING ON THE KNIGHT RIDER MOVIE!!!

Flushed Away

Directed by: David Bowers and Sam Fell
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Bill Nighy, Andy Serkis
Running Time: 1h 30min

A lot of fun for children and adults alike. Cheeky British humour is a welcome change from typical American gimmicks. Nice voice performances and some wild animation, even if the rats don't look all that much like rats. Full review to come.

Rocky Balboa

Directed by: Sylvester Stallone
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Geraldine Hughes, Milo Ventimiglia, Burt Young, Antonio Tarver
Running Time: 102 Min

The 6th and final Rocky film, once again written, directed and starring Sylvester Stallone. This installment finds an aging Rocky reminiscing on the good old days and his son caught in his father's shadow. Feeling his life incomplete Rocky decides to re-enter the boxing ring and compete again after several years of inactivity. With the current undisputed champion (Antonio Tarver, Current Lightweight Champion) having no adequate competition and a computer simulation that gave Rocky the win, a match materializes.

Understandably Stallone realized that the Rocky legacy should not have ended with the humiliating Rocky V and created this as his final chapter. Really, I myself would not have lost any sleep wondering what ever happened to good ol' Rocky. With Stallone looking like a shadow of the original Rocky, (even from the Rocky V days) flashbacks to every Rocky movie (except Rocky V) and all of the "inspirational" speeches that he awkwardly delivers this movie was more of a melding of the original films. Ideally Stallone should have passed on making V and made this movie instead. With so many years in between and with so little new to say the movie is very, very uneccessary. It drags through the first half hour and he only enters the ring 3/4 of the way through the film. The fact that Stallone's own son Sage declined to reprise his role as Rocky's son should also speak volumes.

The whole premise is based/stolen from events that actually happened in sports history. First the computer simulation in the movie echos back to a similar Mohammed Ali/ Rocky Marciano sim (in 1969) which proclaimed Rocky the winner and left Ali to proclaim the computer was from Alabama. Second are the comebacks of several heavyweights after their primes including George Foreman and Evander Holyfield. Ironically it seems like Stallone is also past his prime and is looking back on the glory days where he could pull off the boxing sequences with some believablility. Even the training montage was painful to watch, the slow motion was slower than slow my DVD turned into VHS.

For fans of the series there is a lot of hope in this film but you may be better off watching the original movie as a closing on the career of this legendary made up boxer. The greatest underdog of our time came back for one last round but should have thrown in the towel years ago.

Grade: C-

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Directed by: Larry Charles
Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen, Ken Davitian, Pamela Anderson
Running Time: 1h 24min

Absolutely hilarious! High fives all around. Don't be a Vanilla Face and miss out on this one, yo. Reespeckt! Full review to come.

Shaun of the Dead

Directed by: Edgar Wright

Starring: Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield, Nick Frost, Lucy Davis

Running Time: 99 minutes

Two friends, a pub and a bunch of zombies. That basically sums up this entire film. From start to finish it is a classic zombie horror film with a lot of humor. Two loyal friends wake up one day to find that zombies have overrun their town. From there they set out to protect themselves, their loved ones and the place they love… the pub.

This film is ripe with homages to classic zombie horror films by such heavyweights as George A. Romero and Sam Raimi. Similar to how the shopping mall in Dawn of the Dead shows how modern conveniences have turned us into walking dead, Shaun’s morning routine stays the same both before and after the transformation of the town’s residents. With so many references to other films and tributes from lines of dialogue to shots taken directly from both horror and film classics you can tell that this was written as a labor of love by Pegg and Wright.

I enjoyed the blend of dry British humor and the end of the world storyline. The jokes worked because everything came together so smoothly and nothing seemed forced. I think that if I came across a zombie in my backyard I would probably have the same sort of reaction that Shaun had. The one-liners between friends always generated a laugh. The violence always had a tinge of comedy to it so that no matter how many organs spilled out I could barely suppress a laugh. Also the running gags such as “You’ve got red on you” give a good balance to the air of gravity that these characters find themselves in.

This cast of virtual unknowns does a great job of creating characters and relationships that make you care what is going to happen to them. With horror movies you know the death toll is going to be high but this film creates a cast of characters that you are sorry to see go. Simon Pegg, Nick Frost (and director Edgar Wright) starred on the British show Spaced together and you can see this chemistry between them immediately on-screen. That relationships carries a lot of the comedy and drama throughout the entire film and gives it the feel of a buddy picture where you kind of want the guy to get the girl but want him to keep his buddy around too. The one recognizable actor, Lucy Davis of the original Office series has a good comic turn as a friend of Shaun’s girlfriend.

An amusing, sometimes funny, sometimes gory but always entertaining zombie film Shaun of the Dead definitely aims for the head.

Grade: A

The Departed

Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Vera Farmiga, Anthony Anderson, Alec Baldwin
Running Time: 2h 31min

Awards are to make up for misses past, as this one is overrated (which in Scorsese terms, means just shy of a masterpiece). Excellent performances by all, with some nice tense scenes. Not one of his all time bests, but a solid film. Full review to come.