What better way to spend a rainy Independence Day than by going to see the summer’s biggest blockbuster? Transformers sure was a big production. I enjoyed the movie, but truth be told, most of the robots looked like they were pulled from the scrap heap, rather than the pristine animated heroes of my youth. Except for Optimus Prime, of course. Naturally, they spent time making him look perfect, even if they decided to give him a mouth.

There was probably too much action here. The plot was good and there was more than a little humor to be had. I can’t say that I’m disappointed: this was a great movie, I just came in with very high expectations.

I watched A Sound Of Thunder, starring Edward Burns and based on a Ray Bradbury. Burns works for a time-travel adventure company called Time Safari, and one of the jumps goes horribly wrong.

First of all, this movie is very good. The effects are great, the acting is good, the plot is interesting and everything meshes well. I just have two issues with time-travel-based logic.

*SPOILER START*
1. It would seem impossible to go back into the same exact spot in time more than once. Wouldn’t you see the other people? I’m not entirely sure what happened in the “slingshot jump” that was different than the other jumps. I mean, they went to the same instant and the same spot. Did jumping forward erase that in some way?

2. The future would be changed from that particular moment on, not through waves. As seen in Back To The Future, the travelers would encounter an entirely different world and people with no knowledge of anything different. While the waves added some nice effect, they forced me to suspend the laws of nature even if I ignored the actual time travel.
*SPOILER END*

All told, this is a great movie and I highly recommend it.

Tom Cruise has made some good movies: Jerry Maguire and Top Gun, to name two. War of the Worlds is not one of them. The only redeeming quality of this movie is the stature of the enemy – the Tripods. The Tripods are imposing and very scary. But the rest of the movie isn’t so great. I definitely would have liked more discussion about who exactly was attacking and why, or at least speculation. I really didn’t feel like anything happened in this movie, and it’s hard to do that in a movie like this – Deep Impact, Day After Tomorrow and Armageddon all did it well. Tom Cruise is a great actor, but War of the Worlds is not a great movie.

Some movies exceed your expectations. Sky High, a movie about a high school for superheroes (and sidekicks), far exceeded my expectations. The adult actors, including Kurt Russell, Kelly Preston, and Lynda Carter, were more famous than their younger counterparts. Despite being created as a kiddie movie, Sky High is both intelligent and interesting. The lessons we learn are important, and the way in which the messages are delivered is both creative and humorous.

My favorite part is a character named Royal Pain, who is revealed to be… well, not who we thought it would be. I won’t spoil it here, but that’s perhaps one of the more intelligent plot twists I’ve ever seen. Everything makes sense about Royal Pain: the actions come from a previous life incident, and the method also fits right in with everything else we know.

Amidst it all are some great effects, and interesting premise. I was excited to see a movie about a high school for superheroes. Early on, the pupils were divided into Heroes and Sidekicks. That’s what you’d expect to see at such a school, right?

Despite the depth to which I could go on about this movie, it is very light-hearted and action packed. Kurt Russell and Kelly Preston had great chemistry as the parents of the main protagonist. Though hardly in groundbreaking roles, both were excellent.

Overall, this was a fantastic movie. I highly recommend it to just about everyone, from young comic-book fans to anyone who can appreciate an intelligent plot.

Ok, ok, you know the truth. I went to see this movie because Pearl Jam sings the title song, featured on the 2007 Pearl Jam Ten Club Annual Christmas single. And because Liv Tyler is hot. And because Adam Sandler is funny.

It was a great movie, but Sandler wasn’t funny at all (and, in my opinion, this wasn’t his best performance), and Ms. Tyler didn’t take too many opportunities to show off her hot self. Don Cheadle stole the show. In this movie, he was great. Absolutely great. He took a good movie and single-handedly brought it up to the next level. His acting had me fully engaged in a could-have-been-more-interesting story, and got me all that much more excited for Pearl Jam’s two minute appearance.

I’m glad I saw it, even if it didn’t live up to my (high) expectations.

Michael Douglas gets accused of something, but he’s innocent. Kiefer Sutherland, in an attempt to protect the President, kicks some major ass. I just saw Disclosure and an episode of 24, right? Wrong!

The Sentinel a great movie. That figures, because Sutherland is in his comfort zone as the ultimate good guy and Douglas has already played the role of protecting his own name. Clearly, it was intentional to pair these two up, but the result is great. The story moves quite quickly, and is interesting and provocative. It’s a simple movie, but good action and puts you inside the Presidential side of what happens on a show like 24. Fortunately, we can see Sutherland in this role any time we want.

I remember a couple years ago that Crash won a lot of awards, so I TiVo’d it a couple weeks ago. Tonight, I finally watched it. This movie lives up to the hype. There’s an all-star cast, including Ryan Phillippe, Brendan Fraser, Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon, Don Cheadle, and even Tony Danza. The acting, as you would expect is first-rate, and the story really makes you see several different perspectives. The good guys are often bad, and the bad guys are often good. The storyline is quite complicated, but it doesn’t really matter if you know the exact details of each character. There are a lot of loose ends that get tied up at unexpected moments. I am definitely glad I got to see this movie.

Almost. The Departed is almost the best movie I’ve seen in a long time. Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson were excellent, and even Leonardo DiCaprio was impressive. More importantly, the plot was terrific. Lots of double-crossing and you couldn’t quite tell who the bad guys were and who the good guys were, and the action really pulled you in.

Except

Except for the last ten minutes. Not only did the ending not fit in with the rest of the movie, but there was a perfectly reasonable ending that would have been the perfect capper.

***SPOILER***
When Leo and Damon meet on top of the roof, have their psychiatrist girlfriend come out and shoot both. She is the only one who knows the whole story; everyone else is dead. And clearly, they have both lied to her. Have her shoot both protagonists and walk away. The perfect ending to the perfect movie.
***SPOILER END***

But that’s not how it happened. This could have been among the greatest movies. It’s still great; as I said, the acting is great and story is even better. This was almost one of the best movies I have ever seen. Almost.

Still on the Templar kick after reading DaVinci Code, I am reading a book called The Last Templar and just watched Kingdom of Heaven, a 2005 Ridley Scott film starring Orlando Bloom. Bloom plays Balian, a medieval blacksmith-turned-Templar Knight who helps defend Jerusalem.

First and foremost, this was far from a Templar movie. Though the knights wore Templar gear, there was no discussion about the Templar secrets or even a connection with the Papacy. It was simply guys with crosses defending a city from foreigners who spoke with a different accent and carried a different flag. That fine – it’s enough of a plot for a good action movie.

Bloom was quite good in his role, but the plot moved far too slowly and lasted too long to really appreciate. There were too many secondary characters to figure out who each one was and what their purpose was. Liam Neeson (Qui-Gon from Star Wars Episode I) was good as Balian’s father. No one else stood out.

The movie did feature a dramatic battle scene at the end, really getting inside what war must have been like in the 12th century. The catapults built for the production were impressive, and the scenes trying to take down the city walls were quite realistic.

This was simply an action movie and could have been set in any era. If that’s your thing, you’ll probably enjoy Bloom’s performance a bit. But it won’t make you think nearly as much as it could have.

It’s rare for a Hollywood ending to happen in real life. The story of Francis Ouimet improbable victory in the 1913 U.S. Open golf tournament is all the more interesting because it actually happened. Ouimet, an amateur, won a playoff against British superstars Harry Vardon and Ted Ray.

An event that happened almost 100 years ago can be hard to depict in film: that’s the best quality of The Greatest Game Ever Played. Vardon and Ray seem unbeatable, and Ouimet seems like he probably was: the ultimate underdog. A quote in the movie called the matchup “A David against two Goliaths” and that seems pretty appropriate.

As you might expect in a movie like this, Ouimet held steady at every swing and came away with a hard-fought victory. It was the first amateur victory in the U.S. Open, and paved the way for golf to grow in America. The movie is great, but the story told is both true and timeless.