Home Alone 5: Alone in the Dark? NO NO NO NO NO!

Facepalm.

Words cannot describe how upset I am with this movie.  But in an attempt to give these feelings words, here goes nothing...

WHY, Fox, why?!?!

Set to be a TV movie, this film is an attempt to strike what Home Alone 4 didn't: a deal for a TV spin-off series.  But before we get into the technical nitty-gritty, let's talk about why this is so wrong, and look back at the previous films.

Home Alone

What's great about this movie:

An original plot. Great characters. Great actors. And let's not forget "Angels with Filthy Souls". Home Alone had it all.

Despite being made a year before I was born, as a kid I LOVED this movie. We all did.  And I still do today.  While there are a bunch of movies I liked as a kid that have dropped a few pegs on my list (some falling many, many pegs), there are a few that have stayed where they were on my all-time awesome list, this being one of them.  Watching an 8-year-old transform his house into a giant trap for burglars was is amazing.  (Sometimes I wonder how a current 30-year-old Kevin McCallister would set up his house in the event of zombies...)  And watching Harry and Marv fall into his traps is always entertaining. Yes, somethings are a little over-the-top and would do more damage than shown, (I don't recommend taking a blow-torch to the top of your head)

Actually a boy, dressed as a girl. John Hughes felt too bad, otherwise.

If there is one movie that gets me in the Christmas spirit, it is this one.  And it has so many quotes to be taken from it, that my house sounds like the McCallister's around the holidays.  Trust me, if anyone makes a mistake doing something, someone somewhere says "Look what ya did, ya little jerk!"  Even with being deemed "a Christmas movie", I could watch this on any day, simply because it is THAT AWESOME! 



Fun Fact: Home Alone was nominated for 2 Oscars in music, for Best Original Song and Best Score.  Which is understandable considering John Williams was behind it. 

What's bad about this movie:

The fact that I can quote basically the entire thing.  Other than that there's not much wrong with it.

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

What's good about this movie:

A great new chapter with the same great characters and actors.  And, yes, Angels with Filthier Souls.

This was a great addition to the franchise.  With a nice change in venue to New York City, we are once again brought to see what a Christmas is like with our favorite McCallister.  Through in Tim Curry and a young Rob Schneider, and keep the cast from the original, and you have set your self up for success.

What's bad about this movie:

Once again, there are a few many unrealistic traps.  But they are easy to overlook and still enjoy the movie. 

Home Alone 3

What's good about this movie:

Let's not forget Alex's hot, older sister...

Okay, here is where the franchise began to take a downward turn.  While it can't compare to the first two, I still do, however, enjoy this as a guilty pleasure.  Rather than simply offering a new actor, we are given an entirely new kid: there's nothing worse than replacing the main actor in a movie for the same character.  We get two more villains for twice the amount of chaos, plus a nice, squawking bird to add a little bit of humor.  And here's where we begin our dip into 'dislike'.  

What's bad about this movie:

Home Alone 3 gives us our most unrealistic events stunts yet, not to mention a plot based around A MISSILE CHIP IN AN RC CAR!  Also, HA3 dips out of the Christmas time frame.  And while we now have four bad guys (well, three bad guys and one bad girl), they are definitely weaker than Harry and Marv.  Also, there is Dorris, Alex's beady-eyed mouse... what happened to the main character wielding dangerous animals, like Buzz's tarantula?  This movie fell and rolled a little ways from the Home Alone tree...

Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House

What's good about the movie:

The return of Christmas, the McCallister family and Marv!... wait a minute...

What's bad about this movie:

Yes, they returned characters from the original two films, but in doing so they made a few more changes. For the worst, I might add. They replaced Culkin with a no-namer, made Kevin McCallister's character younger, replaced Harry with Marv's girlfriend, replaced  Daniel Stern with French Stewart as Marv, and made Kevin's mom and dad get in a divorce, characters who are played by different actors as well.  This made-for-TV movie was dripping with disappointment to the point I wouldn't and won't touch it.  Take a look at the trailer yourself...

Bad. Just bad.

Which brings us to Home Alone 5...

So far Home Alone 5 looks like it will be a different character, rather than favorite, Kevin McCallister.  Fox is trying to get a few extra bucks out of the series and possibly get the TV show they couldn't get with Home Alone 4.  And in bringing this back, they are doing it for all the wrong reasons.  Yes, ultimately companies make movies for money and the possibility of more money.  Meanwhile, they should be putting out movies that people want to see. 

If Fox was smart, they would scrap this idea and bring back original cast for a new film, one that both parents and kids could enjoy. 

If Fox was dumb, well.... they'd keep on turning out bad Home Alone movies, further shaming a once great franchise.

The Dark Knight Rises: The Most Anticipated Summer Movie

July 20, 2012

This summer is shaping up to be one impressive season of movies, but with everything out there, The Dark Knight Rises easily takes the role of my "Most Anticipated Film".  While The Avengers has already taken the summer by storm, breaking records and setting the bar high, and Ridley Scott makes his return to sci-fi flicks in June's Prometheus, the Cape and Cowl get a little more attention, simply because there are more of an attachment factor to this film. Here's a rundown of why the new Batman installment gets my prestigious title.

1. My Favorite Superhero

Batman Beyond: a younger Batman, who also has dead parents

Growing up, two of my favorite cartoons involved superheros: Spider-Man and Batman: The Animated Series. Being in the early 90's, these are probably some of my earliest memories with comic book characters.  In the years that followed, these shows had re-runs and then branched out, with straight-to-VHS movies and spin-off series.  1997 gave us The New Batman Adventures, where Nightwing was introduced on TV.  1999 brought our generation Batman Beyond, the futuristic Gotham City under protection from an old Bruce Wayne and a new, younger Batman.  Recently, I have found 4 volumes of Batman: The Animated Series on DVD.  But it wasn't the cartoons alone that made Batman stand out over Spider-man: Batman had live-action movies to back him up.

Batsuits: Now featuring nipples.

Around the same time frame that I'd have my grubby hands snatching the remote to tune into to Batman on TV, my family bought the VHS that would help shape my Batman-loving future: Batman & Robin.  Now, before you start thinking, "Wait, wasn't that movie absolutely horrible?" hear me out.  (And for those who are saying, "Hey! That movie was so good, they should turn it into a musical!", it has already been done. )  Being that we owned it, I was able to watch Batman & Robin over and over again and every time I would get to the end of the movie, where they all run out in front of the Bat Signal, I would wish they made "Batman & Robin & Batgirl". (I was six years old when it came out. I didn't know about commas.) Yes, Bane was turned into something everyone hated.  Even my mom remembered him as "the big green guy who was a henchmen", something Bane should never be considered.  Mr. Freeze was... well, the two links above describe his part, and this movie, best.  Looking back, it deserves the 3.6/10 it received on IMDb.  But the fact was, it was a live-action superhero!  As a kid, I ate up all the cheesy fight scenes and the un-realistic ice weapons, and I LOVED the fact that Freeze's goons played hockey.  But more importantly, the movie franchise, despite progressively getting worse, brought Batman to life.  It would be 5 more years until we got Spider-Man on the big screen, and Sam Raimi did a great job with Peter Parker before the hiccup known as Spider-Man 3.  But eight years after the "wonderful" Batman & Robin came out, Christopher Nolan would change the way I saw the World's Greatest Detective.

2. Christopher Nolan

"I know if it was a dream or not."

While Batman Begins renewed my passion for the Caped Crusader, I had also discovered a brilliant man behind the piece of art.  After Batman Begins came out, The Prestige was released a year later and boasted the same director from the last Batman film.  Intrigued, I checked it out, and found it was exceptional.  In the 2 years that passed before we would get The Dark Knight, I found other movies he had made, in Memento and Insomnia.  After watching these movies, I discovered the man couldn't make a bad movie if he tried.  After The Dark Knight came out in 2008, which I saw twice in theaters, I knew that he was the best thing to come along to the Batman franchise since creator Bob Kane.  Rather than just making action movies, he was storytelling with the best of them.  More importantly, he was making my favorite superhero more realistic.  Well, as realistic as a story about a boy who has his parents killed and inherits a multi-million dollar company can be. Two years after he set box office records with TDK, he came out with Inception.   While it could just be some fanboy love for the director, all of his films listed other than Insomnia are featured on IMDb's list of Top 250 movies of all time, two making the Top 20.

3. My Day With Bane

Last August, I had plans to go to Cedar Point with some friends. One of my friends had found a link to a website that talked about being on the set of The Dark Knight Rises and being in the movie. As sketchy as the site looked, we signed up and got our passes to go out to Pittsburgh.  Upon arrival, we did, in fact, sign up to be in The Dark Knight Rises and not some shady scam.  The scene we were set to be in was a football scene.  The same football scene featuring Hines Ward and a bunch of guys blowing up in the trailer.  The whole experience was awesome as we got to scream and cheer on the Gotham City Rogues.  Of course, it is August and unbelievably hot out, and the scene is supposed to be set in the winter, so we will see how that turns out, but still it was awesome.  Later on, Bane came out for an appearance and even did some of the raffle drawings we had.  Here's a little behind the scenes from the day: 

Field prior to explosions...

Field after explosions...

Tom Hardy doing raffle drawings, decked out as Bane.

The man behind it all: Chris Nolan.

Two Villains: one of Bane's army and the lady sitting next to us.

And with less than two months until The Dark Knight Rises, I couldn't be more excited to see it.  This film is the fruition of years of watching and waiting for the ultimate Batman experience, and on July 20th, it's here. When you see the movie, because everyone needs to, be sure to look for the guy wearing a construction vest and helmet, cheering on the Rogues. 

While other movies this summer like The Avengers or The Bourne Legacy will satisfy people's desires for action movies, this is the movie that everyone needs to see.  Or better yet...

Not the movie we deserve, but the movie we need.

The Avengers Smashes Box Office Records

Ho-lee-crap!

Marvel's The Avengers has opened up the summer of blockbusters with a (HULK!) smash. The film brought in $207.4 million in its first weekend, beating out Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2's "amazing" $169.2 million for the lead.  Now, I know you have been asked before, "If everyone was jumping off bridges would you do it?" but this is one time where everyone is doing something and you absolutely need to join them.
 

If you are cinematically stupid, The Avengers have "grown up", starting with Jon Favreau's Iron Man in 2008.  Here is where we first got a hint that an Avengers movie was in the works, when a post-credit scene introduces us to Nick Fury, the director of S.H.I.E.L.D.  From here on out we had post-credit scenes, all giving us hints at future movies.  2008 also gave us a rebooted look at the green giant, The Incredible Hulk. Iron Man 2 followed this in 2010, and gave us a sneek-peek at 2011's Thor.  Finally, Captain America: The First Avenger gave us our final superhero and our first trailer for this years The Avengers.

The Avengers tells the story of Asgardian prince (once king), Loki, and his search for the tesseract and control of the earth.  Backed by an alien army, Loki has only one thing standing between him and world domination: the Avengers.  Brought together from all over, the Avengers must work together and overcome their problems to protect the earth.

Everything about this movie was great: the character development, the cinemetography, visual effects, and everything else you might want.  The fact that this movie had a five movie set-up allows us to jump right into the plot and not have to focus on understanding this world or characters, and add to what we already know as we move along. 

Mark Ruffalo

The character development was outstanding, as you would imagine with each Avenger showcasing their character in a previous film.  The humor was on-par for what was featured before, as well.  What was nice, though, was picking up where they left off (and thinking about where they will go from here).  Captain America was just brought into this unfamiliar world. Thor goes from thinking his brother is dead to finding him trying to take over Earth. The freshest aspect in character was Dr. Bruce Banner.  Edward Norton did a good job of making us like him, but Mark Ruffalo showed the awkward, geeky side I wanted to see in the character.

Looks just like Ruffalo, right?

And while there were som many visual effects to be impressed with, my favorite aspect of the Marvel movie was their work with the Hulk.  Previously in the Hulk and Incredible Hulk, the CGI characters were transformations from Dr. Banner, yet had no resemblance to them.  In this go round, Ruffalo did motion capture for the film, and they were able to nail down a monster that looked like it should.  Not to mention having THE BEST Hulk transformation to-date.


 Simply enough, this is a movie made for the big screen. Not just your normal theater, either. This movie calls out for the IMAX theater (trust me, I have seen the movie now in 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D). While I think the 3D is a cool aspect, the biggest benefit of IMAX is the sound.  Seeing explosions and Iron Man's pulsar blasts is cool, but hearing it with that much quality is amazing.

I can't wait to see where they take these characters in Iron Man 3 (2013), Thor 2 (2013) and Captain America 2 (2014), but I know whatever they do with them, I will be there to watch them in their individual movies, and when they re-assemble for the Avengers sequel that Disney just announced (If you are wondering, yes, there is an after credit scene. Two to be exact, both awesome).

Director Joss Whedon did a fantastic job with the reigns of the biggest comic book movie to date.  While it will be interesting to see how my love for Christopher Nolan and Batman play out later this summer (and Joss Whedon is wondering the same thing), The Avengers currently holds the box office opening weekend record and the title of "Tim's Favorite Superhero Movie".

The Avengers' grade?