MOVIE REVIEW: The Dark Knight Rises (PG-13)

I just came back from watching The Dark Knight Rises, it was a good movie; however it was not a good Batman movie. Also after the realistic Begins and Knight, I was ready for yet another realistic Batman film. I felt a little disappointed as I left the theater, it felt as if someone had told Christopher Nolan that he was making a comic book movie and he had decided to make it a bit more light-hearted than the others.

Christian Bale was great as Batman as usual, but as Bruce Wayne, it seemed as if he was getting tired of the role. Angelina Jolie as Catwoman was wonderful, however they didn’t really use her character that well, and compared to the other Catwomen, she didn’t have the same pizaz as Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns.
Tom Hardy as Bane, on the other hand was not as good, I could hardly understand what he was saying. Part of it was because of the mask and part of it was because of the heavy Russian accent that he had. Then there’s Joseph Gordon-Levitt as John Blake, I know he’s a great actor but with some of the lines that he had to say felt very wooden.

The action was very well-done but there wasn’t really that much fighting till the last act, most of the time, Bane would just crush someone’s face or twist their head around 180 degrees. The final fight scene between Bane and Batman was awesome; however it felt like it ended way too soon.
Also, I have to mention the new armor/costume for Batman. It looked horrible compared to the other suits; the suit from The Dark Knight was all black and actually looked like an actually crime-fighting suit. This time, it is much lighter in color, looking very blue and the cowl looked like it was too small for Christian Bale’s face.

One of the things that I like about Nolan’s Batman movies was that the police were corrupt, however in this film, you were actually cheering on the police a few times. There was one scene where the police start chasing Batman and I was expecting more scenes like that in the movie, but it was only that one scene.
The reason I say that it’s a good movie but not a good Batman movie is because Batman’s hardly in it. Halfway through it, I almost forgot that it was a Batman film and not about Blake in a city taken over by terrorists. Also it felt like they were trying to wrap up too much stuff up and were no longer focused on the story.

My verdict? It was a good movie, but if you’re expecting another amazing movie like The Dark Knight, you’re probably going to be very disappointed. There were quite a lot of problems that I had with the movie, and left the movie with quite a few plot holes that will never get filled.

As much as I’d love to give it a higher score, I give it a 4/10.

SITE NEWS: Hiatus Explanation

I know I haven't posted a review about anything since my Avengers review, and for that I am terribly sorry. I loved writing reviews, but when I started writing the review for The Avengers, I felt something that I never felt before writing a review.

Not even half-way through the review, I became tired of writing it and it started to feel like it was a job. Since I'm not being paid for writing on here, it feeling like a job was not a good thing for me to feel. I started writing these reviews for something fun to do to pass the time, after they began getting tiring to write reviews, I started wondering whether I should shut down the site.

But then, I started writing some more reviews in a different format and started enjoying writing these again. So I'm not closing this down, but the new reviews that are coming out are not going to be written the same as my old ones.

Thanks for reading this and get ready for some reviews!

MOVIE REVIEW: The Avengers (PG-13)

STORY:
Loki is back and he's creating more havoc on Earth, forcing Nick Fury to create the Avengers to combat the threat.

POSITIVE ELEMENTS:
The heroes are very heroic, risking their lives to protect the civilians of Earth. Tony Stark/Iron Man, the most selfish of the bunch never shies from putting his metal-clad self in danger. Black Widow tries to free Hawkeye from Loki's brainwashing and Thor trying to make his brother stop the warmongering.

SPIRITUAL ELEMENTS:
Loki and Thor are both mentioned as gods throughout the movie, but as we learned from Thor, they not actually gods, they are just aliens from another dimension. At one point, Cap tells the Black Widow that "There's only one God, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that."

SEXUAL CONTENT:
Black Widow and other women are dressed in tight, sometimes low-cut clothing. After the Hulk turns back into Banner, we see him sitting in a debris field, naked. (We see him from the waist up).

VIOLENT CONTENT:
We see people get punched, kicked, thrown, bashed, smashed, clunked, clinked, pounded, kneed, stabbed, shot (with arrows, bullets and ray guns) and vaporized. When we're introduced to Black Widow, she's tied to a chair for the purpose of being interrogated by a Russian general and his goons. A man slaps her across the face, and the general walks toward a table filled with instruments of torture. He says she'll need to deliver a message to someone, then he picks up a pair of pliers and says, "You may have to write it down," suggesting he plans to pull out her tongue. Black Widow promptly turns the tables, beating up and knocking out the majority of her interrogators (mostly while still tied to her chair).

When the Black Widow is questioning Loki, he says that he'll make someone that the Black Widow loves to kill her "slowly, intimately, in every way you fear, then he'll wake up just long enough to see his good work. Then when he screams, I'll split his skull."

PROFANITY:
There are five or six uses each of "h‑‑‑" and "d‑‑n," and one or two each of "a‑‑," "p‑‑‑," "b‑‑ch" and "b‑‑tard."

OTHER NEGATIVE ELEMENTS:
Tony offers Loki a drink before pouring himself a glass of whiskey. Tony asks Bruce if he stays under control with the help of "a huge bag of weed."

CONCLUSION:
It is an excellent movie, I'd recommend it to anyone who loves superhero movies. At times, it does get a little grim, but the humor stops it from becoming too grim. I give it a 5 out of 5 stars.

MOVIE REVIEW: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (NR)

STORY:
Dr. Horrible is an aspiring villain trying to get into the Evil League of Evil (ELE) and tries to beat his nemesis Captain Hammer, while trying to get up the nerve to ask out Penny; a woman who washes her clothes at the same laundromat as him.

POSITIVE ELEMENTS:
Horrible does not want to kill anyone, although it's because he thinks it isn't very creative. Both Penny and Billy (Horrible's alter-ego) try to give each other good advice. (SPOILER) At the end, Horrible realizes that being a villain isn't all he thought it was.

SPIRITUAL ELEMENTS:
None

SEXUAL CONTENT:
Captain Hammer says that his name isn't because of his fists, it's because of his penis. Later he says that he and Penny had sex, but we don't see it.

VIOLENT CONTENT:
We see Hammer and Horrible fight, but it's shown in a cartoonish way. Hammer slams Horrible's head on the hood of a car several times while he talks to Penny. Horrible mentions that Hammer dislocated his shoulder last week and that he recently threw a car at his head.

PROFANITY:
Horrible says 'balls' once as a expletive, and he says 'damn' twice.

OTHER NEGATIVE ELEMENTS:
One of the characters; Moist says that all he can do is make people want to have a shower. Hammer is shown to be a jerk and insults the homeless at one point.

CONCLUSION:
I really enjoyed the movie, it doesn't take it seriously at all. I wish it wasn't only 45 minutes long, I feel like they could have made it a lot longer and the ending was very depressing. Nonetheless, it was a great movie filled with quite a lot of stars, I give it 5 out of 5 stars.

GAME REVIEW: don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story (NR)

Warning: This review has some spoilers about the game, so if you want you can get the game here for free.

STORY:
You play as a teacher named Rook who has just started working at a high school in 2027, but as Rook go along he ends up dealing with teenage drama more than anything school-related.

GAMEPLAY:
It doesn't really have any gameplay, most of the time is spent reading the text that the characters say and occasionally picking your answers.

POSITIVE ELEMENTS:
Charlotte tries to get people to treat Taylor nicer after Taylor apologizes for her bullying, and most of the school is very accepting of the gay couples in the game.

SPIRITUAL ELEMENTS:
Akira mentions and explains what a shinigami is, which is kind of the Japanese Grim Reaper.

SEXUAL CONTENT:
There are about two mentions of blowjobs, and some of the times when Rook is with Arianna (his girlfriend) the wording gets a little... descriptive. And there is a story that you're told about Akira's mother seeing Nolan naked and tells Akira; 'Omedetou' which means 'Congratulations'. There's also a picture of you and your girlfriend kissing.

VIOLENT CONTENT:
On the AmieChat (the game's version of Facebook), Isabella posts "Goodbye World" and then vanishes until she shows up at the end of the story and explains that she just "committed suicide socially". Taylor (who's the bully) threatens Akira about staying away from her boyfriend.

PROFANITY:
There are about 35 uses of f***, about 8 uses of sh**, about 7 uses of b**** and about 15 uses of the slur f**, but usually it's used in a loving way.

OTHER NEGATIVE ELEMENTS:
Rook's girlfriend in the game is 17 years old, meanwhile Rook is 40 or so.

CONCLUSION:
If you can get past the profanity in the game, I'd recommend. It's a really fun game, if short as you can be finished in about 2-3 hours. I give it a 5 out of 5 stars.

MOVIE REVIEW: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) (R)

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

WARNING: CONTAINS DISTURBING IMAGERY, VIOLENCE AND PROFANITY.

STORY:
A group of teenager have a sleep-over at their friend Tina while trying to calm her down after her nightmares, but what they don't know is that the monster from their nightmares are following them.

POSITIVE ELEMENTS:
Even though she's terrified of Freddy, Nancy tries to fight Freddy and stop him from killing people from inside their dreams. And the teens go on the trip to the cabin, to try to calm each other after all of them have pretty much the same nightmare.

SPIRITUAL ELEMENTS:
nothing

SEXUAL CONTENT:
Nancy is having a bubble bath, covered up with bubbles so you can't see anything, but Freddy's hand comes up between her legs and pulls her down into the drain. And after Freddy kills Nancy's boyfriend, he calls her and says; "I'm your boyfriend now, Nancy!" and his tongue pops out of the receiver and she throws the phone on the ground and stomps on it. During the trip, Tina and her boyfriend Rod sleep together, and you can hear moaning coming from the room over, but you don't see anything.

VIOLENT CONTENT:
After Tina and Rod finish sleeping together, they're lying together when scratches start happening on Tina's body as she is dragged across the wall and ceiling. In one of her dreams, Nancy sees a figure wrapping Rod's jail cell bedsheets around his neck. And they rush over to stop the figure, but when they finally get there; they're too late and find Rod hung. Nancy has another dream where Freddy slashes her arm, and she wakes up with slashes on her arm bleeding.

We find out that Freddy was originally a child murderer, until Nancy's mother and a group of other parents go and set him on fire. Glen is lying on his bed when his Freddy pulls him down into his bed and launches him out as a gory mass of blood. A dead girl drenched in her own gore and wrapped in a clear plastic body bag shows up in Nancy's dreams. Nancy sets Freddy on fire, but then witness him Krueger smothering Nancy's mother with his flaming body, and disappearing to leave her corpse to sink into the bed.

PROFANITY:
There's about 5-6 uses of f--k, a half-dozen uses of s--t, as well as "b‑‑-h" and "b‑‑---d.

OTHER NEGATIVE ELEMENTS:
Nancy's mother is shown as always smoking cigarettes, and at one point drinking so much that she turns up as drunk. Nancy and her boyfriend have a sleep-over at Tina's without asking for their parent's permission.

CONCLUSION:
This is a very dark movie with loads of stabbings, gore and creepy things going on. But if you love classic horror movies, then you will definitely enjoy this movie. I give it a 2 out of 5 stars.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Muppets (PG)

STORY:
The biggest Muppet fan; Walter, his brother Gary and his girlfriend Mary, go the Muppet Studios and they find out about a diabolical plan. And they convince Kermit decides to get the gang together for one more show.

POSITIVE ELEMENTS:
With the old Muppet Studios in danger, Kermit (encouraged by Walter) decides to try to get the gang back together for one last show—a telethon to raise the money to save the place. But all the other Muppets are all over the world, but since they're a big family and they care about each other. In the end, we're told it doesn't really matter that much whether the old building survives: It's about the people—or rather, the Muppets—and the fact that the crisis brought them back together.

And both brothers, Walter and Gary care deeply about the other, and they've been practically inseparable since birth. Clearly; though, Gary can't be with Walter forever, and both realize that have their own lives to live.

SPIRITUAL ELEMENTS:
When Walter first sets eyes on Kermit, the diminutive frog is bathed in a halo-like light bolstered by what sounds like an angelic chorus. Turns out though, the "angels" are merely a busload of choir members practicing.

SEXUAL CONTENT:
Miss Piggy (of course) gives a shower of kisses to Kermit, and when she sees him for the first time in a while, she flings herself on top of him and both crash on the floor. And there a couple of dancers that show up a few times; with pretty short dresses on.

VIOLENT CONTENT:
There is quite a bit of slapstick in the movie, but none of it is up there with the wackiness from The Muppet Show.

Walter pleads with Gary to throw him over a fence, Gary finally agrees and folds Walter's legs up to make him more aerodynamic. (The folds are accompanied by breaking sounds.) He then hurls him straight into the electrified fence, leaving poor Walter to spark for several moments before falling to the ground a little charred.

One of the Muppets start a huge fight during a self-control class. A celebrity has his head shrunk. A large bear is slightly injured several times in a fencing match. A car runs into an electrical pole. Kermit gets slammed into a door. A head hits a desk. A face hits a TV. Muppets fall down. A man falls off a building (but survives, apparently unhurt) and is smacked in the gut with a bowling ball. Piggy lays down a karate chop on a rival. Gonzo literally blows up his toilet business. A refrigerator full of moldy (talking) food is destroyed.

PROFANITY:
One Muppet (a bad version of Fozzy) says; "What the wocka?!" A group of chickens sing Cee Lo Green's F**k You, but it's sung in gibberish chickenese, so you can't understand it. We hear a use of both "heck" and "butt" as well as a couple misuses of god's name.

OTHER NEGATIVE ELEMENTS:
The Muppets kidnap a celebrity, and at one point Fozzie wears "fart shoes". Characters are invited to sit on toilets during one of Gonzo's business meetings. The Muppets knock on a celebritie's door, and he yells; "I don't have my balls on!" The balls on his motion capture suit that is.

CONCLUSION:
I'm a little biased to review this movie; since I grew up with The Muppet Show. But if you can look past the more odd moments in the film; and if you love the old Muppet movies, you will definitely enjoy this movie. I give it a 5 out of 5 stars.