Disney Pixar's Up

I’ve actually managed to watch quite a few summer movies this year, and other than Star Trek, I haven’t mentioned any of them.  So this is a quick blow out review list of Wolverine, Fast and Furious, Up, The Hangover, and Drag Me To Hell.

I’ve still yet to see Terminator Salvation and Transformers 2 (both pure popcorn movies), and I really want to see Away We Go (although I doubt it will play in London), but so far I’m really impressed with the summer movie crop.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
The summer didn’t start off particularly great.  I didn’t have high hopes for this flick, super-hero movies tend to suffer the “we want to get as many characters in as possible” syndrome, and with about 286 different characters in this flick, I was a little bit worried.

However, that wasn’t what ultimately sank this flick.  The best parts of the movie were the backstory with Logan and Sabertooth, in particular the photo montages of them in every war since the Civil War.

The cameos by all of the other characters are kept mercifully short, although the only character who really interested me was Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, who was charismatic and cool as heck.  Unfortunately they pretty much destroy his character in the 2nd half of the film.

Wolverine had 8 different codas after the trailers, we were going to stay around for the end, but the Westmount theatre (which was closing that week for the final time) shut the movie down just as the credits started playing.  It was entertaining, but not good in any way.

B-

Fast and Furious
Dumb.  Dumb, dumb, dumb dumb.  This movie’s about fast cars, fast women, and the men who love both.  It was dumb popcorny goodness with some nice hits of bad acting from both Vin Diesel and Paul Walker.  Loved it.

C-

Up
What started out as my least anticipated Pixar movie since Cars (which I feel is Pixar’s weakest effort) turned out to be my favourite one yet.

This one’s got it all, action, adventure, comedy, a really good story, and an emotional undertone that totally caught me by surprise.

I didn’t think it was possible for Pixar to do one better than Wall-E, but they did it here.

A+

The Hangover
The trailers for this flick looked great, and I was pretty sure that this would be one of those movies where all of the good parts were in the trailer.  Nope, not even close.  This was one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in years, and captures that totally overwhelmed feeling you have when you first step foot in Vegas better than anything.  The archetypes of the characters pretty much fit my buddies to a T as well, and the Rain Man homage may be one of the funniest moments in a movie in years.

A+

Drag Me To Hell
So it turns out that I hate horror movies.  I spent most of this movie with my hoodie pulled over my head and jumping every 30 seconds (even though I knew that something scary was about to happen).  This was pretty standard Sam Rami fare, similar in tone and feel to Evil Dead with the main protagonist getting the holy hell beat out of her in total comic book style.  It was fun if predictable.

B+

Fanboys
This never made it to London (although I almost caught it in Toronto) and I had to wait until it came out on video.  For something that fanboys were so up in arms about being tweaked by the Weinstien company, it should have been better.  It wasn’t a bad movie at all, and it had some moments, but it didn’t reach its potential.

C-

That’s my movie fun so far, there’s quite a few movies left according to my list of Most Anticipated Movies of 2009.