Reviews by Matt

I see a lot of movies over the course of a year and many of them are trying way to hard to be good—see “The Soloist”—that it is nice to see a movie that doesn’t try to be more than it is. Stupid. Fun. Entertainment.

4) 9
Sometimes expectations can be a bad thing. When I first saw the trailer for “9,” I was interested. It seemed like it could have been good; the plot essentially boils down to sock puppets in a post-apocalyptic world. It was a cool idea. Then I saw the movie. Pointless. Completely and totally pointless.

In a world where Pixar runs the world of animation, the bar has been raised when it comes to this genre of movies. Story, characters and the animation itself al have to be nearly flawless to even compete with the Pixar monster. This did not even come close. The story went nowhere and did not make much sense even it the sci-fi world.

3) X-Men Origins: Wolverine
As long as I can remember, I have always been a fan of Wolverine. He was so cool when I was a kid. He had this tough, gruff and had the coolest power; regeneration. Add to that the unbreakable adamantium bones and claws and you have got a killer combination. While the first two “X-Men” movies did a great job of living up to the childhood memories, This movie kind of killed it. It was, as my review headline said, a de-clawed version of the character I loved as a kid.
What was worse was it took an amazing actor, Liev Schreiber, and made his act down to the material. I am sure he did what he could with what he has given, but it was not enough to make the movie enjoyable.

There was one bright spot. It was Taylor Kitsch as Gambit. I have been waiting for Gambit to make an appearance in the movies since the first movie and while it was not what I was hoping for, I saw a lot of potential.

2) Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
I am all for dumb action movies. “G.I. Joe” was a dumb action movie; “Transformers 2” not so much. Where “Joe” had redeeming qualities in its badness, this did not. The special effects were great, just like the first one, but other than that there was nothing to save this movie.
The plot was so disjointed and unintelligible that I was very confused through most of it. There were characters crammed into the movie for absolutely no reason. Then there were the raciest robots. Despite director Michael Bay’s best efforts to convince to the contrary, the two characters—Mud Flap and Skids—are clearly black stereotypes. So much so that I was offended by what I heard and saw on screen. They can't read, talk broken, slang riddled English, and one even has a gold tooth. The robots might have well been in black face. I don't know how it made it through the editing process without someone realizing how raciest these two robots were.

1) Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
I saw no worse movie this year than the third movie in the “Underworld” series. This movie took what was a 5-minute sequence in “Underworld” and made it into a 92-minute movie. There was nothing good in this movie and nothing that made it worth watching. I had hoped I would be at least entertained, something I can do with even the worst of the bad movies. I do not think there was a substance on Earth that I could have taken to make me enjoy this movie at all. I was just bored. If you have any desire to see this movie, I ask you, neigh, EMPLORE you to just watch “Underworld.” All you need to know about the plot of “Rise of the Lycans” is summarized and is better told in the original.

In the grand scheme of things, this movie has no reason to even exist. The target market already knew the story. Yes, in movies like “Titanic” the ending is already know—the boat will sink, but at least there was a new story to watch. In “Rise of the Lycans” every single plot point was given in a more precise manner year earlier.