Robin Hood

3 1/2 out of 5 Stars



Robin Hood is the third action epic from director Ridley and like all his films of this nature they are set in a historical time period. This time around he tackles a legendary character in a different story. This is not the tale of the legend but rather the tale of how the man became the legend. Robin Longstride has been on the crusades with the king Richard Lionheart. On he way home a knight in the army is ambushed and murdered. This man is Sir Robert Loxley. Robin returns to the man's village and takes on his name. Robin soon becomes the man who sets action against the new king and is therefore by the end considered an outlaw.

Like all Ridley Scott films, they are always visually striking. This film is no different. It's a visually striking dramatic action epic. Most people will go into this film expecting the light hearted Robin Hood films of before but by doing so will have set themselves up for disappointment. It is quite clear from all the advertising this is NOT that film. It is a fresh take on a different period of the life of Robin Hood.

The casting is also different, with Russell Crowe as an older Robin Hood than we are used to and Cate Blanchett as an older Maid Marion. But they pull it off. The band of merry men also helps to pull in a slight amount of humor to take the tone down so the entire film is not too serious. Robin Hood is a big film and full of action though not quite as good as Gladiator. But it's not a film to expect much humor from. It's a very serious film. It's also a film that most likely will see another director's cut, much like Kingdom of Heaven, because of some of the sudden jumps in time in the theatrical release that don't flow just right. Overall, though, it's a worthwhile film to see.

Iron Man 2

3 out of 5 Stars




In 2008 we were brought Iron Man, one of the great superhero films of the decade. Now in 2010 the saga continues in Iron Man 2, picking up precisely where the first film left off, with Tony Stark having made known to the public that he is Iron Man. Now the government is after the Iron Man suits and Tony Stark is being hunted by a Russian vigilante who wants revenge for the crimes committed against his family for when Tony's father was in power. Scarlett Johansson, Don Cheadle, and Samuel L. Jackson co-star in this big budget superhero action flick.

The first Iron Man was pretty much the embodiment of what a 12 year old boy would want in a superhero film. There was fun humor and good action and thankfully there was also a good story. It was fun and it moved along. Sure the final battle was a little lame but it still worked. Iron Man 2 doesn't pull through on this account. The humor is good and the action is mediocre but in the middle of the film the pace dies. The film could pretty much be split into three sections; humor with slight action, drama and dialogue, lots of action that ends quickly. I enjoyed the humor and enjoyed most of the action but the action scenes were far too short and Johannson stole the screen when it came to action scenes.

That being said, Iron Man 2 is still an enjoyable film. It's a summer blockbuster and still far superior to summer films such as Transformers 2. Robert Downey Jr. basically embodies Tony Stark just like Nathan Fillion embodied Cpt. Malcolm Reynolds in Firefly. There are also more Iron Man suits which is fun. The only problem is it doesn't feel like we got another Iron Man film, it feels more like a Justice League prequel. Overall, the plot is weak, the action mediocre, the humor good, and the acting well done. But next time, write a better story.

Nightmare On Elm Street

3 1/2 out of 5 Stars



In 1984 Wes Craven brought us the original nightmare in Johnny Depp's first major film role about a child murderer named Freddy Krueger who kills people in their dreams and when they do they die in reality ... and of course the parents of the tortured teens years before hunted him down and burned him alive. Now in 2010 Samuel Bayer directs a much more visually intense remake that takes Wes Craven's idea to new levels and adds in more back story to Freddy. The result is a visually striking recreation of the original hailed slasher film.

This remake is definitely still a slasher and very much so in the vain of modern day films of the genre. But at the same time there is a story behind the villain, no matter how disturbing it may be, and as much as I enjoyed the original there really was no story. For the time the original nightmare holds up and if I would have seen it when I was a kid I was have been scared too. But when I watch it now I feel less like being frightened and more inclined to try and reason with Freddy. The acting in the original is often mediocre to awful and Krueger feels more like a clown than a sinister killer. The only aspect of the original that would make it more frightening is the slightly more mysterious aspect to this character.

But in the remake we are given more story. We know where Freddy came from and what he did by the end. Why the characters are being hunted down makes sense. The supernatural aspect of the dreams begin to make sense to what happens to them in reality. The acting is also a heck of a lot better than the original and Jackie Earle Haley definitely pulls off Freddy quite well. They took Freddy and turned off any sense of him being a clown, still kept his dark wit and molded Freddy back into a cold and sadistic killer. The only real big flaw (other than explaining how Freddy got his claw hand) was not following the lead character of Nancy closely enough at the beginning of the film. But for the most part the new nightmare is the old nightmare with some slight tweaks. The deaths are just about the same and the basic plot is followed to so closely it's almost like when Zack Snyder makes a film based on a graphic novel. Some people may not enjoy the back story, but I personally was grateful to actually have a story.