Terminal Reviews: Darkness 2

Gray Reviews "From Dust"

Game of Thrones - Book 5 Review!

"For the Watch..."

Captain America Review!

Best Marvel movie ever? 

Harry Potter 7.5 Review!

It all ends...

Gray Reviews Infamous 2!

(**NOTE: This was originally posted on my other blog on the San Antonio Current Website on June 17th, 2011. I am re-posting it here to connect it to my other personal work from the past and future. If you haven’t read it yet, hope you enjoy.)

Clint Reviews Horrible Bosses!

"I am gonna bend her over and show her the 50 states"

Gray Reviews Ocarina of Time 3D!

The term “remake” is one of both business and pleasure, all but certifying financial gain while simultaneously treading a tight rope between enhancement and sacrilege. Once a game has reached a decade or more in age, modern day opinion seems to agree the title is up for a round two of sorts: shine the paint, replace the engine, fine tune the coding, etc etc etc… But when a game has reached a degree of accolade–some lofty level of worship most developers dream their game one day reaching–it seems as if it also becomes taboo for anyone to even utter the ‘r’ word in regards to these olympian feats of video games. Among the myriad of arguments for and against remaking old games, one of the largest proponents of remaking occurred in my very home. My younger brother, now 16, was only 3 when the Ocarina of Time first debuted. Without the full set of nerd motor skills required to beat Ocarina, he neither finished nor remembered ever playing it. He was soon to become part of the new generation of gamers; not unlike how much of youth today enjoy the new Star Wars trilogy more than the original, they are a culture who have a different rubric for modern entertainment. Upon finishing Ocarina on my 3DS, I finally convinced him to play through it, all the time assuring him it was better than Twilight Princess (the only other Zelda game he had ever completed). It took him just 3 days to complete it–without doing all of the side stories nor collecting all of the heart pieces, of course–and after he was done he doled out the dubious grade of “it was alright. It wasn’t like Assassin’s Creed 2 or anything…”

I’m sorry….come again?

Transformers 3 Review!

I had the privilege of going to the aintitcool premier of the third Transformers movie last night; it was a pretty neat experience to actually see blogging/geek idol, Harry Knowles, and hear his funny intro to the movie. Basically, he said that he hated the previous two movies, that there was still stupid shit in the third one but that the last hour of the movie had crazy jaw-dropping 3D action that would win everyone over.
 
Having now seen the film the way it was meant to be seen, it's pretty easy to say that Transformers: Dark of the Moon is far and away, the best of the three movies; yet, to say that T:DM is a good movie is like giving it a commendation for not being as horribly retarded as Revenge of the Fallen.

X-men: First Class Review

Consider me pleasantly surprised.

Prior to the release of X-men: First Class , every preview image Fox studios released of this film filled me with nothing but dread. This film had a quick turnaround from production to release, and we as an audience had be burned once before when Fox had tried that same strategy with the much maligned third X-men movie, which proved to be nothing more than an exercise of whoring out the characters for a studio payday.

The saving grace for First Class  in my mind was the hiring of Mathew Vaughn (Kick-Ass) as the director; I was mystified, yet curious, because Vaughn was the first director who was attached to the third X-men movie before he dropped out the film after balking at Fox's demands to churn out that third movie in 9 months (and we all know how that turned out under the appalling direction of Brett Ratner). Even still, I went into the screening of First Class  with low expectations, especially after it became widely known that the film was not a reboot but a true prequel to the existing movie canon that had become muddled and embarrassingly derivative due to the poor quality of Wolverine  and X-men 3.

I present to you the definition of jumping the shark:

After seeing First Class , I can honestly say that I have seen the best X-men movie ever realized. I still find it hard to believe myself, as the ground this film covers and the background this film gives the X-men franchise actually makes the rest of the films better (don't worry X3, you are only fractionally better).

First and foremost, credit has to be given to James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as young Charles Xavier (Prof. X) and Erik Lehnsherr (Magneto), respectively. Their interaction throughout the film grounds the characters, and adds some much needed emotional weight to their conflict. There is a reason a coin plays so vital a role in this film, as Xavier and Lehnsherr are two sides of that same coin; yet, remain in their hearts as brothers, always.

Fassbender plays Magneto as a Jewish avenging angel, a weapon whose powers are activated in his childhood by rage after his parents are taken and killed during the Holocaust, and he is left to experimentation by a Nazi scientist (Kevin Bacon). As an adult, Erik globetrots the world hunting and assassinating former Nazis like a badass James Bond with super-powers (albeit with little blood - thanks PG-13!).  There is a scene that is one of the best in the X-men franchise, and it hearkens back to Fassbender's work in Inglourious Basterds as a covert British agent who tries to pass off as a German soldier in a bar before all hells breaks loose. The arc Erik's character takes in this film is the most important to the series, as it sets up the antagonistic element for the X-men teams to come; simply, they nailed who Magneto is completely.

Das Magneto ich bin kill yo ass!

McAvoy's Xavier is a silver spoon, wise beyond his years erudite who is a catalyst for bringing out the best in every mutant he encounters. His powers allow him to instantly see the sum of a man or woman, and then guide them on a path of accepting themselves and achieving their full potential. Some of his best moments are when he is playing the professor we all know he becomes, as he tries to train each of the young mutants on his team to focus their powers.

The story is extremely tight, as the events of the Cold War as the backdrop rapidly unfold; it seems like every two minutes the film zips back and forth between Russia and the U.S.. Some of the problems I had foreseen about some characters existing anachronistically in the timeline (especially if they are keeping the current canon) are deftly answered, and almost every major question about the X-men's origin is wrapped up; by the end of the film, the characters are in a place where they can really be unleashed if there are to be any sequels,  with the final action scene that pits mutant vs. mutant as a damn good preview of what we can expect.

Some of my biggest qualms about the film (which are relatively minor in relation to what it's able to achieve) deal with the handling of some supporting-cast mutants. Beast was cool, but you never get to seem him truly acrobatically nuts. The antagonistic Hell Fire crew is also bland (with the exception of Nightcrawler's progenitor, Azazel, and Emma Frost's boobies), with "Riptide" coming off as a complete joke. Basically, not many of the mutants save Xavier, Magneto, and Mystique are fleshed out, which is not a bad thing for the context of this film, but could be for sequels. Hopefully future films will add more depth to the rest of the characters while keeping to the small-team structure rather than diluting them with a bunch of faceless newbs. Hell, if there are to be new mutants, please don't have an eye-rollingly cheesy scene devoted to how each character gets a "code-name" like they had in this film.

Ritpide is one soul patch away from Apollo Ono...

The best that can be said is that this film has me excited about seeing X-men on screen again. I hated what the films had become, but Mathew Vaughn really got the franchise back on track; X-men: First Class  is a surprisingly great film which also happens to be one of the best super hero films ever. It's the humanity of these mutants the lifts it above it's predecessors.

****1/2

Thor Review

Of all the Marvel characters that needed an introduction to the existing movie canon before the assembling of the legendary Avengers, Thor is by far the easiest to get wrong. I mean, his shoehorning into the comic world was already a stretch, as one has to do a mental leap to accept the conceit that Thor is in an alien from a different plane of existence, and all of the metaphysical flim-flam that goes along with that.

Get your inhalers ready kids, there is some 'splainen to do.

What flim-flam you say? Well imagine that the expanding universe is actually a cosmic tree, with new branches shooting off every billions of light years to form different planes, or "realms" of existence. Thor exists in one of the oldest planes, Asgard, in a time and space far removed from the small and newer plane of existence that Earth resides in. Thor's people, the beings that exist in the Utopian-like Asgard, are so technologically and physically advanced that they can actually cross over into other realms and space using a big worm hole gun that can connect these beings to anything in the universe.

This ability to cross over into other realms beget a whole Norse mythology at one point; some Vikings around 900AD had the misfortune of being caught on an interstellar battleground between the Asgardian  and the Frost Giants,  a different race of beings from another realms called Ylaksaiujsejeim  (or some shit like that), as the Norse homeland was used like a frozen paintball course between these two races. You see, Christianity had it wrong all this time. It was actually Vikings that had the right answer - well, except for all the raping and pillaging. OoooooDin! *uses inhaler*

So scientifically: who are what are gods but beings with technology beyond our mortal comprehension? See Mom and Dad, those philosophy classes at that private institution DID pay off.

I AM the Philosoraptor

OK, so given everything I have told you - try to imagine how insane a movie like that would be, and how difficult it would be to execute. Well, Marvel Studios tried - and knocked it out of the park.

I'm still blown away myself. All of the early snippets from this film hinted at the non-stop goofiness of Thor becoming a mortal after falling to Earth, some of it being eye-rollingly bad. I can now say that those same deflating scenes, taken in context, have the complete opposite effect.

Perhaps only a Shakespearean actor  of Kenneth Branagh's renown could have pulled something like Thor  off as a director. The bulk of the film plays out in Asgard, where beings act like they are in a cheesy Shakespearean time warp themselves, with all the pomp of a Royal Theater production of Macbeth (though I'll take Anthony Hopkins as Odin any day). Hell even some of the character arcs are deliberate and predictable, as its nothing someone didn't have to sit through in high school English studying Greek tragedies about how emotionally crippled some of the gods on Olympus were. There is enough campyness at the beginning ( I am looking at you, young Thor) that it's almost impossible not to roll your eyes at these "people."

Oedipus is the one where he stabs his eye out after watching his own colonoscopy, right?

Once Thor falls to Earth, though, that's where Kenneth Branagh's brilliance really kicks in. As someone who had spent a bulk of their life imitating Shakespearean characters, it probably wasn't hard for him to imagine how ridiculous it would be for any of those characters to exist in our modern world, much less a Princely God of Thunder. The people of "Earthrealm" are played completely straight. Natalie Portman (listen I am not complaining, but is she in every  movie?) and her "team" of scientists, as well as the SHIELD team that was shoehorned in for Avengers purposes, act like any other sensible people would when confronted with a Shakespearean-spewing, Viking-looking dude : like he is insane.

I didn't think it was possible, but I enjoyed the "fish out of water" Earth-realm story way more than I thought I would, with most of the kudos going to the casting of Chris Hemsworth as Thor; Hemsworth is pretty damn note perfect, and the range he gives Thor really has me anticipating his future interactions with other superheroes.  The humor of Thor's exile to Earth and his growth as a mortal is really what grounds this movie in the same physical and emotional "reality" as other Avengers, which had to be this film's ultimate goal for the sake of both the Thor  franchise, and the Avengers .

Yet, the scientific and metaphysical ideas presented in this film also serves to expand the scope of the Marvel film universe to the point at which we can accept the forthcoming Avengers  vs. alien invasion story.  Once again, credit has to go to Branagh for effectively and seamlessly laying so much interstellar groundwork, not just for Thor, but for the Marvel film universe as whole.

Thor is by no means perfect. There is so much going on, so many different tracks running through this film, that some aspects suffer. The love story between Natalie Portman's "Jane" and Thor feels about as rushed as Padme and Anakin Skywalker, but at least with 1000% more chemistry. Thor is on Earth for what amounts to an extended weekend, but I guess those rock hard abs could seal the deal with Natalie Portman in that amount of time.

Fact: Natalie Portman is no bigger than Thor's left bicep

Also, the action was a little up and down and times. I didn't see it in 3D, but some scenes in Asgard and in other realms that aren't Earth came off as super cartoonish, Clash of the Titans-like in its diminishing quality; the film was not natively shot in 3D, so I would not shell out the extra money to see it - it won't change anything but your pocket book. Also, the characters and performances more than make up for a weak and predictable story.

All in all, these are pretty minor quibbles. I had absolutely no expectations going in, so I was pleasantly surprised at all Thor  managed to accomplish in its two hours. The fact that Marvel studios pulled off Thor  is minor miracle; I am now 100% confident that the forthcoming Joss Whedon directed Avengers movie could be the superhero opus - the biggest film of all time.

****

 

Mortal Kombat Review

It is probably fitting I release this two days after the American ninjas of Seal Team Six delivered a pretty epic fatality to Osama Bin Laden; considering the way that videogames such as the Call of Duty  have risen to become the fastest selling  franchises,  I would not be surprised if Seal Team 6 is in fact comprised of robots with assault rifles controlled by nerds with itchy trigger fingers thousands of miles away.

Can anyone explain how it took a few good men took 40 (ahem, more likely it was 15) minutes to wipe out a whole compound while suffering no casualties and it was not  a videogame?

As for Mortal Kombat , the franchise has finally caught up.

Ever since the rise back to relevance of the fighting genre thanks to Super Street Fighter 4  , I have been waiting for MK to do the same.  I lived through the first real "fighting-game" era in the arcades when Street Fighter 2  dominated the market. Along came Mortal Kombat, a fighting game that brought a whole new emphasis to the conclusions of fights rather than the actual mechanics. The buckets of gore and endearingly fun fatalities served as a point of escalation in the fighting genre for years to come. Since peaking with Mortal Kombat 2 ,  the franchise slowly became a mockery of itself, maintaining it's stale combat mechanics of jump/ sweep/ uppercut while introducing more types of fatalities: animalities, friendships, babealities etc.

Beware - it becomes evident how quickly the animators ran out of ideas after the first 10 seconds:

After several sequels and forays into 3D, MK  has followed in Street Fighter's footsteps and returned to its roots. Like SF4, that aptly titled Miortal Kombat  is 3D rendered reimagining of the entire MK lore, while moving the fighting plane back to 2D and adding several new mechanics.

The MK lore as we knew it was already pretty flimsy. Back in the day, stories were patched together as quickly as new iterations of the arcade game were churned out. The new MK takes the overall framework and characters of those previous iterations and pulls a Star Trek  by allowing a younger Raiden to see the future of the original series' canon and thus try and change the timeline in the new game to avert tragedy. If this at all seems confusing, I should probably throw up the disclaimer that that STORY DOESN'T MATTER.

Honestly, if you enjoyed this series growing up - hell if you got a kick out of the first movie - you will enjoy this game. Every character has been reimagined with stunning graphical detail with voice acting that is as campy as the story. After playing through the story mode, I finally figured out what makes this series so nostialgic and relevant.

Frankly, it's not the fatalities. I spent the first 15 minutes of the game going through each characters tier 1 fatalities in the training mode, and actually kind of freaked out that my excitement had already peaked. It wasn't till I actually spent time fighting that I got it: it's the characters.

Sub-Zero and Scorpion have always been the pinnacle of cool, and pretty much skewed my perception at a young age of what ninjas were capable of; hell my mom even made my brother and I matching Sub-Zero and Scoropion costumes that we wore multiple Halloweens in a row, just because those characters were so badass (I was Scorpion of course). Even though the fighting mechanics in those old games were terrible,  the series never took itself seriously enough to warrant a decent fighting engine. It was all about cool characters ripping peoples heads off, and I was fine with that at the age of 9.

At the age of 26, I needed something a little bit more. Thankfully, Mortal Kombat  has finally adopted a decent, Major League Gaming  level of fighting engine. Now, those same awesome characters you used to love actually do equally awesome combos and moves. Though the tuning is not as tight as SF4,  there is enough variation and arial leeway with moves to create an infinite string of combos with the right precision. Thankfully, most moves are extremely easy to pull off - at least with the D-Pad.

Since the PS3 network has been down, I have been kind of dreading how some of my favorite characters will fair in online compitetion. The D-pad gives the player the precision and peace of mind to pull off any move, but really doesn't feel as ergonomic or fast as the analog stick. Unfortunately, as everyone knows, the analog can be damn near rage-inducing when trying to pull off some moves. I do not know if it was MK's design, but I find myself now instinctively switching back and forth between the D-pad and Analog stick, which can be quite cumbersome on the fly. I'll have to wait and see how important the online component will become to me, as that will determine if I take the extra step to go buy one of those damn arcade joysticks; hell, at least I can still use it for SF4 or Marvel Vs. Capcom .

The other big introduction to the series that has been a long time coming (every other popular fighting franchise has a varition of it) is the "X-Ray Power Bar."  Once filled, the character only needs to hold 2 buttons to execute a move that, if landed, is a cinematic exploration of how each character likes to shatter bones or smash internal organs. They are veritible game changers in combat, as some characters X-Ray moves can reduce an enemy's health bar by up to 40%. Yet, you can go another route with the bar, and use portions of it as you see fit to execute some enhanced super moves that do extra damage, or a one time combo-breaker. Definitely adds a much needed strategic aspect to every fight.

The final verdict: if you were at all a fan of Mortal Kombat at any point of your life, this game is the summation of it's greatest features, rendered beautifully with some much needed updated fighting mechanics. How it will hold up to the  test of time will probably be determined by how many friends you can convince to buy the game and duel online. In a world where there is no PlayStation Network, the single player was an enjoyable trip down memory lane.

****

Your Highness Review

You're making a fool of yourself. Handle your shit, Fabious, please.

It's strange, there is a part of me that thinks aspects of Your Highness  might be sublime; yet, the overall feeling upon leaving was that though it may be enjoyable in it's comforts, the film never truly pushes the comedic limits like it should have.

The bulk of the comedy comes from the often hilarious unscripted ad-lib of Danny McBride and the way his character interacts with those around him. McBride's character, Thadeous, is basically a more muted version of his "Kenny Powers" routine on East Bound and Down ; the crassness and vulgarity is still there in every single F-bomb, but the blind narcissism that makes McBride's "Kenny Powers" endearing is replaced by a slightly more whiny and self-conscious laden Thadeous.

Was that singing? Ugh, just keep wearing that dress...

Though some would say the biggest selling point of the film was the idea of Kenny Powers in a high-fantasy riff on movies like Kull the Conqueror  and Conan the Barbarian , a toned down and more nuanced McBride performance does not necessarily hurt the film. What truly hurts the film is that it actually takes itself too seriously in it's send up of those classic movies, spending too much time trying to make a passable fantasy movie AND comedy, thus undercutting the film in both respects. It's a film that not only causes some conflicting sentiment, but seems at its core conflicted with what it truly wants to be.

These mixed feelings present are a bit strange and hard to reconcile. It seems counter-intuitive that by trying to make a better and coherent movie, the comedy  has almost no room to grow outside its rigid plot points.

Sure, there are a few scenes that are played really loose, like when the Thadeous and his brother Fabious (James Franco, in a perpetually stoned performance) visit the bong/Seer, but there are never really any scenes of sheer lunacy and abandon (like the street fight scene in Anchorman ) that truly take this film to any new comedic heights. The engine that makes this comedy run is McBride's ad-lib, yet every other character is seemingly played straight with very little room to get weird or riff off of McBride that much. The story is pretty linear - following the quest's already mundanely prescribed plot points (find the magic sword by way of location X, so you can kill wizard Y), and not at all like the randomness you would expect (ala Harold and Kumar ) and crave in a typical stoner comedy.

That's not a special-effect, but it did have ONE

Every creature and set of effects are done like it would be in a big-budget fantasy movie, yet all these legit  trappings only seem to noticeably interrupt the comedy.  I don't need a big budget hydra that our heroes have to contend with, just give me more with the squire Courtney and the wizard Leezar. Leezar has some of the best lines of the movie, but the final confrontation just begs for verbal war with McBride's Thadeous that never materializes.

I admire the film for what it aspires to be, but the effect it has is, ironically, half-baked . It's good for a steady stream of smiles and chuckles, but you would have a better laugh in an hour of East Bound  than you will at any point during this film, which is pretty disappointing.

**1/2

Netflix Rewind: Ong Bak 3 - Gimme Bak My Life

It's hard to describe to someone who has never seen Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior, how a tiny muay-thai fighter/stuntman named Tony Jaa could be the savior of martial arts cinema. Every martial arts movie the guy has been a part of has things in common:

This elephant makes me feel funny...

1. "Revered" Elephants in peril
2. Acting and comedy that borders on autism 
3. Storylines that are best described as "I am pretty sure a drunk hobo came up with this." 

Again, how could you convey to someone the importance of viewing any of Tony Jaa's films?  Don't forget #4:

4. TONY JAA DESTROYS PEOPLE'S WORLDS!

KILL THE PRIME MINISTER OF MALAYSIA - AHHHHH

The best part (and probably worst for ladies, so no girls aloud) is that Tony Jaa destroys people's worlds not only on film, but most definitely in real life as well. After careful review (which the film also supplies in multiple-shot recaps of badassary), I am certain that people are paid off the street to take a punch/kick/death in Tony Jaa movies.

Don't believe me, let's check the recap of Tony Jaa doing all his own stunts (punch the video's author in the face for the music):

Best of Tony Jaa (Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior and The Protector)

Ong Bak chase scene:

That lil' dude is crazy, yo!

So it was with much trepidation that I went into Ong Bak 3; why the hesitancy you ask? Well Ong Bak 3 is actually the second half of a bloated Ong Bak 2 (which is a 15th century prequel to Ong Bak *head explode*), a movie that became so out of control in it's scope and failed execution that it needed several loans to get it through production. How could a sequel, so audacious in it's follow-up to one of the best martial arts movies of all time, be such an unfettered and unfocused mess? Lets look at the studio credits shall we:

Writer:  Tony Jaa (wait he can barely speak...)

Director: Tony Jaa (you sure he isn't the fight coordinator?)

Producer: Tony Jaa (well he did have a lot of money)

Fight Coordinator: Tony Jaa (wait so he IS the freaking director?)

Jacky Chan was nicer...

So you have a guy that was an unknown quantity 7 or 8 years ago, who became a glorified stuntman, and you put him in charge of ALL facets (including money) of the biggest-budget Thai film of all time? Somewhere in south-east Asia, there must be a mass grave of talented film execs and writers who all seem to share the same hole in the skull from a Tony Jaa elbow.


You know, I could go on about how bad Ong Bak 3's story is, about how it makes Ong Bak 2 seem like paragon of character development. Still curious? Below is a synopsis, which I guess qualifies as spoilers, but really - we're all here for the action scenes aren't we?

In the year 1431 in Thailand, Tien (Tony Jaa) is held captive being beaten with wooden (staves). On the orders of Lord Rajasena (Sarunyu Wongkrajang), his elbows and knees are snapped. As Lord Rajasena sleeps, Tien's guerilla fighters attempt to free Tien, but Bhuti Sangkha (Dan Chupong) appears and kills them. Lord Rajasena offers to hire Bhuti, but he refuses and gives the offer to remove the curse which has been placed on Rajasena before leaving. Rajasena orders his men to kill Tien, but before this can be carried out, a man arrives with a pardon from the king, indicating that he will take Tien's corpse, much to Rajasena's ire. The messenger returns Tien's body to the Kana Khone villagers. After fending off the village from invaders who are after Tien's body, Master Bua (Nirutti Sirijanya) feels guilty over Tien's imprisonment and becomes a Buddhist monk. Pim (Primrata Det-Udom) revives Tien to life, but finds that Tien is still crippled from his beatings. Tien then embarks on a rehabilitation regimen with the help of Master Bua.

Rajasena visits Bhuti at his temple to remove his curse, but Bhuti reveals his true motive of usurping Rajasena and becoming the new king. After a battle, Bhuti decapitates Rajasena, but his severed head curses Bhuti. After meditating, Tien returns to his village to find it in ruins, and the surviving villagers kidnapped and enslaved by Bhuti. Bhuti uses his magic to summon an eclipse. When Pim (Primrata Det-Udom) reveals herself as Tien's companion, she is taken to Bhuti's palace, where she is killed. Tien witnesses this killing from a statue and fights his way through the guards before confronting Bhuti, who launches a spear at Tien's chest. As he falls to his knees, defeated, he remembers Bua's words, and finds himself again atop the statue. Overcoming Bhuti's illusion, lightning strikes and Bhuti's eclipse magic is dispelled. Bhuti attempts to escape but is confronted by Tien. Bhuti attempts again to throw a spear at Tien, who catches and throws it aside. He then attacks Bhuti, impaling him on an elephant tusk. Tien and Pim return to the village, where they pray before the statue of Ong Bak.

I DON'T CARE ABOUT BUDDHA - FIGHT DAMMIT!

The words do not do what actually appears on screen justice. The "rehabilitation regimen" the wiki alludes to is actually a 5 minute dance scene where he re-breaks his bones and sets them to the Asian equivalent of Enya music. All of this bullshit when the only thing people want to see are bone-crunching Tony Jaa fight scenes.

Screw it, here are the two best fight scenes - now just give me 90 minutes of my life back.

Opening Fight Scene

Final Fight

Fight Scenes: ****
Movie: *

Source Code Review

 What would you do, if you knew you only had a minute to live?

Dare I say, it's almost impossible to be original in sci-fi these days. Computers have birthed the golden age of movies that are actually capable of fully realizing the genre (I am looking at you Dune); yet, in the interest of studios pick-pocketing each others ideas and corporate greed, we get a lot of half-baked vampire and werewolf movies (along with the implied "Furry" deviance of werewolves loving ON vampires), with the occasional big-budget space-exploring gem. Thinking back, the last time I really had a well-rounded sci-fi experience was probably Serenity, yet even that was piggy-backed off a known quantity in it's T.V. counterpart, Firefly.

So, I'll be honest, the quality of Source Code kind of took me by surprise, and it's actually a breath of fresh air. Hell it's a damn success even with Joe Geronimo as the lead actor.

To give anything but the basic premise would really do this movie an injustice, as most of the fun is amount of disorientation and anxiety the audience and the main character have  figuring out what exactly is going on. I am glad the studio hasn't conceded too much of the plot to the ad-campaign, but I fear for the movies box-office as it's flown relatively under the radar (believe me, it doesn't deserve to get trounced by Hop)

It's like all these things, except with more explosions and less Bill Murray being an asshole.

The story: a soldier is sent back in time to help avert a bombing. Suffice to say, it's a helluva lot more complicated than that, but any information you have prior to seeing the movie takes away from it's effectiveness, as you could already start to piece the plot together. The film is part Quantum Leap, part Groundhog Day, and part Assassins Creed (a videogame?) in terms of the science.

This guy can act? NOWAI!

 I never thought I would say it, but I was really blown away by Jake Gyllenhall's performance in Source Code. His range through this movie is quite a thing to see, and it can be doubly cool when you realize that his character is actually just an extension of the audience, as we are reacting to the same amount of information as his Cpl. Colter Stevens;  Gyllenhall effortlessly evokes and mirrors all our own natural progression of emotions as he and the audience fly deeper down the rabbit hole of the source code. I would say that he has great chemistry with Michelle Monaghan, but that's a foregone conclusion, as he seemingly "shtups"  every actress he works with. So yes, they had "chemistry."

This is one of those movies, however, where the ending is supremely predictable; but you know what - it's not a bad thing;  you root for the ending, and the final trip down in the source code is beautiful and a little heady in it's implications. Let's just say, there is infinite room for sequels. Please Joe Geronimo, more of this, and less of THIS.

****
- Clint