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The Incredible Hulk

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Incredible Hulk
  • IMDB: link

Movie comic book heroes beware there is a new monster in town and he’s a creature to reckon with. This summer blockbuster certainly follows up the Iron Man hit with no shame. The Incredible Hulk blows the previous failed attempt away and leaves the audience in astonishment with a strong leading man, Edward Norton.

The Incredible Hulk simply can’t fail as this summer’s blockbuster with such a powerful cast, impressive CGI and ball-busting action scenes. The Hulk is a force to beat this summer and is accompanied with such greats as Iron Man , The Dark Knight , Hellboy , Hancock and Wanted . What did we ever do to deserve such a summer of decadent viewing pleasures of action, violence, super heroes and happy endings?

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Indiana Jones and the Disappointing Adventure

/ / Movie Reviews, Theme Week
  • Title: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
  • IMDB: link

“What does God need with a starship?”

indiana-jones-and-the-kingdom-of-the-crystal-skull-posterThe film opens at the height of the Red Scare as Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) fights off Soviet agents, led by Cate Blanchett, who show up to steal a crystal skull from a secret government warehouse.  Indy’s failure to stop the theft brings up questions of his loyalty and he finds himself on forced sabbatical from the university.

Indy quickly finds a new outlet when a kid named Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf) asks Indy for help in retrieving another crystal skull found by one of Indy’s colleagues (John Hurt) to save his mother Marion (Karen Allen) from the Nazis.

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Iron Man

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Iron Man
  • IMDB: link

“I want to protect the people I put in harm’s way.”

The film follows the life-changing events of weapons manufacturer and wealthy industrialist Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.).  After performing a weapons demonstration in the Middle East Stark is captured by terrorists and forced to design new weapons for their use.  In a last-ditch effort to save his life, Stark creates a armored suit, powered by the small power source keeping him alive, to escape and make his way home.

On arriving back in the states Stark proceeds to shut down the weapons manufacturing part of Stark Industries (which is most of the company), to the displeasure of longtime friend and business parter Obadiah Stone (Jeff Bridges), and begins a new project – one which will eventually be tabbed by local media as Iron Man.

Directed by Jon Favreau, who also has a small role casting himself as Happy Hogan, the film mixes action, state of the art special effects, humor, and drama to give us one of the better comic book films ever made.  This is a fanboy’s wet dream come to life.

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The Forbidden Kingdom

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Forbidden Kingdom
  • IMDB: link

“I’ll kill you witch!”
“Not if I kill you first orphan bitch!”

forbidden-kingdom-poster

Based on one of the four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, Journey to the West, this new adaptation tells the story of a Jason (Michael Angarano) a young boy from Boston who finds himself thrust into a magical world and charged with returning the golden staff to the Monkey King (Jet Li) thus freeing him from his stone prison and freeing the land from the tyranny of the man who turned him into a statue, the Jade Warlord (Collin Chou).

Along the way to seek the wizard, um, I mean Warlord, Jason encounters companions who journey with him to help him on his quest including a drunken master (Jackie Chan), a beautiful girl hell-bent on revenge (Yifei Liu), and a monk (Jet Li).

Together this small band of rebels travels through forests and deserts across the yellow brick road to reach the fortress, take on the Jade Army, led by the Warlord’s assassin (Li Bing Bing), and defeat Cobra Kai, um, I mean release the Monkey King.

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Street Kings

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Street Kings
  • IMDB: link

“We can get these guys!”

street-kings-poster

Detective Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves) is a problem solver.  Part of a specially trained unit put together by his boss (Forest Whitaker), Tom is asked to do the dirty work which needs to be done.

Tom’s life gets complicated when a former member of the unit (Terry Crews) is killed while he is tailing him and looking for payback.  Tom instantly becomes part of an Internal Affairs investigation led by Hugh Lurie (without a cane), is forced to destroy evidence, and begins questioning his role as a cop as he searches for the killers who no one wants found.

This film, based on a story by James Elroy, has been passed around Hollywood for years before landing in the lap of director David Ayer.  What he gives us is an okay action flick which wants desperately to also be a stark drama, for which they cast Keanu Reeves.  Reeves does what he can with the material, but he isn’t able to elevate it to make it mean something more. At least it’s better than Ayer’s last attempt at a self-destructive cop on the edge (read that review).

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