Movie: Wanted (R)
Released: June 27th, 2008
Runtime: 1 hr. 50 min.
Ticket Price: $5.00 Early Matinee
Refreshments: None
Starring: James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Terence Stamp, Thomas Kretschmann & Common
Director: Timur Bekmambetov

Rating: Worth a Matinee

Synopsis: A young man coasting through life in obscurity comes to find that he is one of a few with special abilities. He is told that his father, who left just after he was born, was one of the greatest assassins to ever live. A group calling themselves The Fraternity wants to recruit him to take revenge on the man that killed his father. He begins training to learn how to use his dormant abilities. The group lives by an unbreakable code that has been handed down for a thousand years. The young man starts to enjoy his new power, but comes to learn that the group he is working for might not be all that it is cracked up to be. He comes to the realization that only he can truly control his destiny.

Review: Wanted has all the action you can ask for from a big budget summer movie, it just could of used a better story. The movie is based on the Wanted graphic novel, which was written by Mark Millar with art by J.G. Jones. Yet, from what I understand, the extremely dark and amoral nature of the comic has been altered to reach a more mainstream audience.

While there’s not much story involved here, and what little there is, is actually kind of lame, the theme of the movie is a good one. You can and should choose your destiny. Don’t just muddle through life, get off you ass and do something. Stop wasting your talents and pursue something that you want to do. It just tells you that while bullets fly and things blowup.

James McAvoy (Atonement) plays Wesley Gibson, a nobody whose name doesn’t even register any results in Google. He works in a dead end job that he hates and has a best friend and girlfriend that are seeing each other behind his back. He knows all of this is happening, but just continues to coast through life in obscurity doing nothing about it. His transformation from office drone to badass assassin is quite a trip. The best scene is when he tells off his annoyingly bitchy boss and then cracks his best friend upside the head with his ergonomic keyboard and the keys spell “F**K YOU” as they go flying through the air.

Angelina Jolie (Mr. & Mrs. Smith) is the perfect person to play Fox, the female assassin that recruits Wesley into the Fraternity. You can’t imagine anyone else lying across the hood of a car and steering with her feet, while shooting at a guy following behind. She does really well with her one small scene of character development, as well. Other than that, Fox is all about exuding a wicked coolness, which Jolie pulls off very well.

Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch) directs and gives the movie a frantic pace. From the opening car chase to the closing gun battle, the movie barely stops to breathe. Yet, this and the special f/x is why you are going to see Wanted. It is something to behold on the big screen.

Unfortunately, Wanted falls into the ranks of 300, an almost great movie that spends the vast majority of its time creating cool special f/x fight scenes and battles and spending little on everything else. It’s worth a matinee, mainly because this type of movie should be seen at a theater, whether it has a story or not.

Movie: Get Smart (PG-13)
Released: June 20th, 2008
Runtime: 1 hr. 50 min.
Ticket Price: $5.00 Early Matinee
Refreshments: None
Starring: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin & Terence Stamp
Director: Peter Segal

Rating: Worth a Matinee

Synopsis: The super secret Control spy agency has been attacked and its agents identities compromised. So, the chief promotes a new agent, Maxwell Smart. He has wanted to get out in the field for years and recently passed his tests. He is paired with Agent 99, since she has recently had surgery to change her identity. It is up to the earnest Smart, Agent 86, and field-tested 99 to find who is behind the attack and put a stop to their dastardly plans.

Review: Get Smart is just a whole lot of fun. There are plenty of laughs from start to finish. Is it a cinematic masterpiece? No, but it is an entertaining action-packed funny movie. I laughed more at this than pretty every other comedy seen this year.

Steve Carell (The 40 Year Old Virgin, TV’s The Office) plays Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, and is great in the role. He isn’t doing a Don Adams impression from the original series, but has captured the essence of the character.

Anne Hathaway (The Devil Wears Prada, The Princess Diaries) plays Agent 99 and is excellent. She looks absolutely beautiful, but can kick some serious ass. She and Carell have great chemistry together. I usually don’t like the pairing of an older man and a younger woman, which is a Hollywood tradition, but really liked how they explained it away in the movie, by making Agent 99 older than she now looks after her surgery.

If you are a fan of the original series from the 1960s, then there will be plenty of references to make you happy. Including a cameo by Bernie Kopell, who played the KAOS villain Siegfried in the original. Terrence Stamp (The Limey) plays Siegfried in the movie with a comic flair.

Whether jumping out of planes, sneaking through sewer drains or almost getting hit by trains, there is plenty of action to go along with all the comedy. It is all done in a funny way, but really enjoyed the blending of the two.

Overall, Get Smart is worth taking in a matinee. You won’t be disappointed, at least the rest of the audience I saw it with all seemed to be enjoying themselves. There was even a smattering of applause when the credits started to roll.

Movie: The Incredible Hulk (PG-13)
Released: June 13th, 2008
Runtime: 1 hr. 54 min.
Ticket Price: $5.00 Early Matinee
Refreshments: None
Starring: Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, Tim Blake Nelson & William Hurt
Director: Louis Leterrier

Rating: Worth a Matinee

Synopsis: A scientist who has been poisoned with gamma radiation while testing his theory on himself now lives in seclusion and separated from his former life and the woman he loves. He is being tracked by a military general that was in charge of a secret government program to create super soldiers. He wants what is inside, what makes this scrawny scientist turn in to a beastly hulk. This leads to confrontations between he and the military. A soldier that has been supped up by another serum gets turned into another beastly abomination. This leads to one final confrontation in the streets of New York City.

Review: The Hulk is big, mean, loud and green, but his movie wasn’t all that incredible. It is a fun time at the theater, but if you were hoping for another Iron Man, you will be a bit disappointed.

The Incredible Hulk drops you into the story long after the accident that created the creature inside Bruce Banner, played by Edward Norton (The Illusionist), that comes out when he gets hungry…err, angry. I was hoping for a movie that is a reboot of this story on film, would tell the story from the beginning. Not in bits and flashes through the opening credits. This is what I liked about Batman Begins, Iron Man and Spider-Man and what I think was missing from this. You don’t get a chance to get to know the hero of the story, before they become the superhero of the story.

There are some good bits of humor, like the purple stretchy pants, the way Stan Lee’s (Incredible Hulk creator) cameo is worked into the story, Lou Ferrigno’s (Incredible Hulk) cameo and the hungry bit that was alluded to above. It was also nice to see Bill Bixby (Incredible Hulk), show up in a clip from The Courtship of Eddie’s Father as Bruce changes the channels on his TV.

The good thing about this incarnation of The Incredible Hulk is that the special f/x make it seem more realistic, not as fake looking as The Hulk animation was. It allows you to suspend your disbelief much easier and enjoy the movie. Much of what you see on screen was computer generated and it is done extremely well.

There are lots of great actors in The Incredible Hulk, but they don’t really get to do much. You don’t get a lot of character development. You get your typical bad guys, but Tim Roth (Dark Water), as the soldier in charge of capturing the Hulk and William Hurt (Vantage Point), as General Thunderbolt Ross, don’t really do a whole lot. The standout is Liv Tyler (The Strangers), as Betty Ross. Many of her best scenes are with the Hulk, which means she is acting without being able to see who she is acting with. Yet, those scenes are some of the best of the movie.

Overall, it is worth checking out a matinee, cause you should definitely go see it on the big screen. And, you don’t need to wait until after the credits to leave, since Tony Stark shows up right before the credits roll. Although, it might have been more effective had they played it after the credits, as they did with the Nick Fury scene in Iron Man. It was a good scene that hints at the future of the Marvel movie universe. Yet, what it really did was remind me how much better Iron Man was than the movie I just saw.

Movie: You Don’t Mess with the Zohan (PG-13)
Released: June 6th, 2008
Runtime: 1 hr. 53 min.
Ticket Price: $5.00 Early Matinee
Refreshments: None
Starring: Adam Sandler, John Turturro, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Nick Swardson & Lainie Kazan
Director: Dennis Dugan

Rating: It Might Be on TV One Day

Synopsis: A legendary Israeli commando is tired of all the fighting in his country and decides to fake his own death and head to New York to start a new life, as a hairstylist. He becomes a big hit with the ladies, because of his sexy cuts, but it also gets him noticed by enemy Arabs. So, he has to use his training to stay alive and continue cutting hair.

Review: If you are looking for a quiet place to spend a couple of hours, then You Don’t Mess with the Zohan might just be the movie for you. You’ll get almost two hours of rarely amusing shtick, so you won’t be bothered by any boisterous laughter from your fellow moviegoers.

Saying this movie is over the top would be being generous. This is so over the top that you can’t see the top. That is not always a bad thing, if you can bring the laughs. But, unless you think using hummus for everything from toothpaste to hair gel to fire retardant and a whole myriad of other uses or getting busy with a bunch of 60 to 80 year old women over and over and over again is funny, then Zohan doesn’t bring any.

You may get the occasional smile inducing moment, but they are so few and far between. It wasn’t 10 minutes in that I was wishing I had gone to see Kung Fu Panda this week instead, because that has to be better and funnier than this.

The only redeeming factor of this whole debacle is the amazingly beautiful Emmanuelle Chriqui (On the Line, TV’s Entourage). Very much like Jessica Alba in Good Luck Chuck or Jessica Biel in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. Both were terribly unfunny movies, where the leading ladies seemed to be slumming it for some unknown reason. Unfortunately, this looks to be the case, yet again, for Alba in the upcoming The Love Guru and for Chriqui here.

You Don’t Mess with the Zohan is great advice, because it’s really bad and not in a good way. If Strange Wilderness hadn’t been watched earlier this year, then this would have been the worst comedy of the year so far. As it stands now, it is number two on that list.