Michael Koby

Today April and I took Cloe to see Cars, the latest computer animation flick from Disney/Pixar.  Man, they just keep getting better with the computer animation on these movies.  Cars has the smoothest and cleanest computer animation to come from Pixar yet.

As the follow up to The Incredibles, Cars holds its own.  Clocking in at just under two hours in length, this is probably the longest childrens movie yet.  Cloe did manage to get a little restless towards the end but when the big race started her eyes were glued to the screen.  Though, in my opinion, this movie could have been about 20 minutes shorter than it was.  Certain scenes could have been cut shorter and still had been just as effective in the plot.  For example, one scene the main character goes for a “drive” with his love interest for a solid 15 minutes.  This little drive could have been cut to 7-8 minutes and been just as good.

Though overall as a kid movie the plot is relativly simple.  The hotshot main character learns that he, in the end, can’t do everything on his own and needs friends.  A simple message that children of all ages can get easily.  And while the plot may be simple the jokes that the adults are going to get are just as funny as ever.  My personal favorite little funny moment was the first time I heard McQueen’s agent (voiced by Jeremy Piven who plays Ari Gold on HBO’s Entourage), being an Entourage fan that made me smile.  As with any Pixar movie, you will want to check out the end credits, the jokes here are great.

The final word is, this movie is good, but in my opinion, does not come close to its predecessor, The Incredibles.

Since everyone has probably seen this movie by now I figure that I can review it. On Wednesday, June 28, April and I went and saw Superman Returns. And I have to say, I liked it.

The thing that struck me most about this movie was that they did not try to follow any present story from the comics or tv shows. Instead they came up with a slightly modern Superman story which made the movie a complete original. While it does focus on a post-Superman I timeline it was still great. And you do not have to see Superman I to understand what’s going on in this picture, which is a good thing since I can confess to having seen Superman I only one time in it’s entirety and I don’t remember it very well.

For those that haven’t seen the movie yet, I’ll but a break in now so as to not give anything away.

Spoiler’s after the jump.

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Last night, using Time Warner Cable’s “On Demand” system. April and I watch “Be Cool” starring John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Cedric the Entertainer, and several others. This movie is the sequal to “Get Shorty” in which a ex-loanshark Chili Palmer wants to leave the movie business he got into during “Get Shorty” and so finds himself trying to get into the music business. Along the way he deals with the Russian mob, high class rap mogals, and sleazy agencies.

The movie starts off baisc enough getting straight into the plot, even making fun of itself from the very beginning as well as throughout the rest of the film. The supporting cast really shines in this movie. If there was ever any doubt about The Rock’s act ability, all said doubt is removed after watching this movie. The Rock’s character, the homosexual bodyguard to Vince Vaughn’s mock-black music manager character, who has aspirations of being an actor is a character that’s hard to forget. And he plays it so well it’s almost frightening. Vince Vaughn plays his wanna-be-black character with surprising percision. He manages to be realistic without being over the top or annoying.

Everything about this movie is just about perfect, except that certain parts seem to drag out longer than they need to and the Chili character seems to still have a lot of his wise-guy act even though he’s been out of that enviroment for what’s probably years. But the movie is entertaining and will leave you feeling your two hours was well spent.

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Today, April and I took Cloe to see “Over the Hedge”, the latest computer animation film from Dreamworks. It’s a good kid movie with just enough to keep the older folks interested. Ben Folds (of Ben Folds Five and now just Ben Folds) did the score which is pretty cool including the re-written “Rockin’ the Suburbs” for the end credits. Overall opinion is if you have kids, take them to see it. If you don’t have kids you probably won’t go see this movie anyway.