This is the intro piece to the most recent animated Transformers series, aptly named Transformers Animated. I’ve been wanting to watch this for a while, for several reasons. The toys seem to be incredibly faithful to the cartoon, as far as robot mode, vehicle mode, and transformation between. This is something that’s been lacking from TF series over the years. Also, they seem to be recycling lots of old characters, but doing it with both respect and skill. Not only that, but it’s set in a not-too-far-off Detroit, which makes me very happy. The Ambassador Bridge shows up in the background quite a bit.

While the animation quality and frame rate leave something to be desired, the characters are great, the old transformation sound is used, and the characters hole up in an abandoned warehouse and use it as HQ. Did somebody give me roofies and have me write a TF cartoon without my knowledge? Four stars.

Once again, I had conflicting feelings about watching a kids’ movie. But I’d heard so many good things about it that I couldn’t resist. Somebody’s reading my mind again when writing cartoon scripts. I felt ridiculously uplifted and happy when this movie ended. I can’t say too much about it that you haven’t seen in the commercials without ruining it, but even the extra animated short in the DVD was made of giggles. We now own a copy, and I’ll be watching this again in the future. Four stars.

City of Ember is a kids’ movie, first and foremost. It feels like it’s targeted at pre-teens, the age that needs to feel like they can outsmart the adults, like they can do anything, especially what the adults can’t.

The concept behind the story is what made me want to see it. Pseudo-steampunk, art-deco, salvation-of-humanity city tucked away from the rest of a destroyed world. Pretty sure there was a horror FPS video game that had a similar idea behind it, but I didn’t have a machine to run it at the time. Anyway, the acting by the kids was good, and the adults played their sterotypical establishment roles well. Three stars.

I’m not sure if Caprica is a better stand-alone science fiction movie in the BSG universe, or a pilot episode of another complex and we’re-not-going-to-sugarcoat-this BSG series. I want to know more about this virtual world, and how it exists without being networked, if it’s contained within each individual computer sheet, or what. I want to know more about the monotheistic movement, and how far back it’s been developing. I want to know more about the racial and political tensions between the Twelve Colonies. All in all, I want to know more, which makes it a good work of fiction. I cared about the characters, which makes it a great one. It didn’t have the dramatic tension that BSG does (did?), but that’s because the poop hasn’t hit the fan yet. Four stars.

Without the fifth movie, the fourth simply isn’t worth the time to watch it. At the end, I wanted my 88 minutes back. 90% setup, 10% depressing conclusion. There wasn’t even a climax in this movie. It’s like I turned on the vacuum while I was watching the movie… sucking was happening all the way through. The only thing that earned this movie its second star was the acting. There’s only so much you can do when you’re handed a bucket of poop labeled “Script”, and these guys did it.

This one is a sequel to the fourth movie. Neither of them really belong in the Prophecy franchise. Blessedly, this one was only 75 minutes of suckage. The dark angel Stark, played by the same dude that shows up in every horror movie EVAR, was easily defeated by paper. I was reminded of the aliens that were burned by water in Signs… just ridiculous. Once again, two stars due to mostly good acting. All in all, do yourself a favor and avoid these movies.

Take the Princess Bride, put it in a blender with Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail, drop in a couple of doses of your favorite hallucinogen, and you’ve got this movie. There’s quite a few cameos by Monty Python players, as well as (I think) some famous British actors from the 80’s. It was in ‘s queue, but she couldn’t finish watching it, due to pure strangeness. It amused the hell out of me, so I’m giving it three stars.

If you’re going to start the movie by having a nurse hit somebody with a car, and then follow up with an angel sex scene, do it up right. No, seriously. Neither the accident nor the scrumping are gratuitous. They’re integral to the plot, and that made me happy. The sequel keeps the same fast pace that the first had, complete with kicking angels out of hell, and discovering that humanity has paved over Eden (in California, of course) and turned it into an oil refinery. Mr. Walken gives another amazing performance as Gabriel. Creepy with class. Four stars.

“This is how legends are born.” Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s that time. It’s time for one of Aidan’s favorite movies! Nearly every morning, when he’s gotten up, when he’s done with his cereal, I hear him say, “Daddy, I watch Ghost Rider.” or “Daddy, Ghost Rider now please.” Though, to be accurate, it sounds more like “gho riyer”. I think that the mispronunciation might be an integral part of his cute beam design. Ah, but I digress. We’re talking about a comic book movie.

I generally like comic book movies. It should also be noted that I’ve never read the Ghost Rider comic, and never really had much inclination to. Dude with flaming head on a motorcycle. And? Anyway, every review I’d ever heard or read about this said that it was full of suck. I’d have to agree, when it comes to the villain named Blackheart. There is one scene in the entire movie in which the actor does not do his best to embody suck. Through and through. For those that have seen the movie, it’s the scene where Johnny Blaze has just fully become flaming skull head guy. He actually emotes and gestures and convinces me that he -is- the character in that one scene. He fails at every single other scene. And then there’s Nicholas Cage, who very nearly graduated from the Kevin Costner school of acting. Two stars.

I don’t usually expect the main character to get shot to death at the beginning of a movie. By a blind man. Who is carrying a bible. And yet, it worked perfectly for this movie. Christopher Walken, playing a now-human Gabriel, plays a more humble and learning angel than in the past. Hell couldn’t temper him, but humanity somehow has. The ending left a LOT to be desired. There was such a build up about the angel, whose name meant light, that stayed on Earth after the first war in heaven. The climax was weak, and the resolution seemed too easy. However, the epilogue scenes were amazing. Three stars.

I’d always thought that this compilation of animations had been released between the first Matrix movie and Reloaded. It turns out, according to IMDB, that it was released between Reloaded and Revolutions. That’s three releases in a single year, which was four years after the first movie. It’s safe to say that I now know where all of the good animation went that was missing in Reloaded. All of the skillful CGI was sucked out like a Ross Perot description of the economy, and shunted into the Animatrix.

I think again, like I did when I’d seen this for the first time, that this should have been essential viewing material when it comes to the Matrix storyline, not optional “add-on” animation. For all those that complained about a lack of depth in the second and third movies, these animations may have filled in the gaps. Like the chapter introductions in a fantasy novel, these shorts would have divided the second two movies up nicely. I rated this one five stars when I joined Netflix, and I’m going to have to continue that rating.