Super

Impressions before seeing it
At first glance it sounds like Super is ripping off Kick-Ass, but then I started hearing that this movie was even more twisted and violent than anything Hit Girl accomplished, and it interested me.

How was it?
Ultimately, I think Super is darker, grittier, and more honest (i.e. grounded) than Kick-Ass. Frank/The Crimson Bolt (Rainn Wilson) doesn't have any powers, of course, but he also has no special fighting skills and no fancy expensive weapons or equipment; just a big, heavy wrench (and, later, some guns and home-made pipe bombs). It's also apparent that he may have a bit of a screw loose, which one would probably have to have in order to attempt the things he does. Some of the things he attacks people for are not even crimes, they just bother him on a personal level. And when I say "attacks", I mean he bashes their skulls in with his wrench, so yes it is shockingly violent. Ellen Page as his sidekick Boltie is even crazier than he is, enjoying the brutal beatings and laughing maniacally at her victims. If you can't laugh at violence then this is definitely not the movie for you, because it goes to those places.

But that's what makes it so great. It's twisted, weird, violent, dark, and sad, but also engaging and funny, and somehow all of it works together to create an honest reality, because life sometimes is all of those things at once. This character is far from perfect - without the superhero thing, he's actually kind of a boring loser; at the beginning of the movie he states that he has only experienced two perfect moments in his life, and that makes his journey all the more marvelous. Super is, I suppose, not a superhero movie. It's about an ordinary guy working up the courage to do one extraordinary thing in order to give his life meaning. As crazy as he might be, that's inspiring. Also, Nathan Fillion plays a cheesy Christian superhero on TV. So much win.

Recommendation
You'll probably like it if you liked Kick-Ass, but at the same time they are two very different experiences so it won't feel like either one is ripping off the other if you watch both. A dark and crazy sense of humour also helps, but I think you can also enjoy this one for the drama; it has its touching moments, too.

Year One

Impressions before seeing it
I heard it was basically a bomb, but I like the cast and crew so I thought I'd give it the benefit of the doubt.

How was it?
I don't think Year One is terrible, I just think it's forgettable. Jack Black and Michael Cera had previously established themselves as capable comedic actors, but this movie just ended up being a star vehicle for their on-screen personae. We know too well that Black almost always plays the lazy, bumbling idiot and Cera almost always plays the awkward, cowardly loser, so basically Year One attempts to write itself by basing a lot of the humour on these typecasts, placing the characters in an era where having these qualities made it very hard to fit in and be successful. I did find some of it to be funny, because I personally don't mind seeing Black and Cera play the same characters all the time - they're good at it - but it may have been overkill to make them both leads in the same movie. Too much unoriginality at once. A shame, because it should have been better given that it was written by Harold Ramis and two former writers from The Office.

Recommendation
If you really like Black and Cera, then I suppose it might be worth watching once for a few laughs, but it's really not a movie that needs to be watched twice. The jokes are not hilariously everlasting and the story/adventure is not entirely exciting, so once again the most appropriate word for this movie is "forgettable."

Midnight in Paris

Impressions before seeing it
The poster with the van Gogh sky caught my eye, and then I discovered it was a time travel movie by Woody Allen. Sounds like an awesome combination to me!

How was it?
Like many (or all?) of Woody Allen's protagonists, Gil (Owen Wilson) has a certain dissatisfaction about him, like he's looking for happiness but doesn't know where to begin. Then on a trip to Paris with his fiancee, he discovers that every night at midnight a car comes down the street and inexplicably drives him into the 1920's, which is perfect for him because in earlier scenes he was seen expressing love for 1920's Paris. Over a few magical nights, he meets a number of world renowned authors and artists from that time, and an enchanting French woman (Marion Cotillard), and learns a lot of important lessons from them. But to be clear, it's more of a feel-good dramedy than a preachy melodrama.

I always enjoy time travel movies, and I think an American tourist going back in time in another country is a new angle. I don't know how historically accurate it was to have all of these famous artists in one place at the same time in the '20's, but it made Gil's trips more interesting and it was fun to see them played by recognizable actors. As an aspiring writer, Gil encounters literary legends like Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein with the same wide-eyed enthusiasm that we would if we saw a famous actor at the grocery store, and I think seeing the time period through his excitement helps modern audiences connect more easily to what may be lost on them. Also, the group Gil is traveling with in modern day is a little on the rich and pretentious side, making the earlier time period more appealing by comparison. As the movie goes on, they just seem to get increasingly insufferable, and his friends in the '20's more lively and human. It is this change of atmosphere and company that helps him decide what he wants his life to be.

Recommendation
There is humour and charm to be found here, and if you have an affinity for historical figures of the creative variety then that's a nice bonus, too. I only knew of them from various art and English classes, but I'm glad I did because it added that extra layer of enjoyment. It's not a necessary prerequisite for liking Midnight in Paris, though, but being a Woody Allen fan may help somewhat. I know I had fun.

Your Highness

Impressions before seeing it
The trailer was awesome. A fantasy comedy with swearing and a good cast? Hells yeah!

How was it?
The most surprising part is that there weren't as many jokes as I expected. Or, rather, the majority of them were already shown in the trailer, making it look like more of a comedy than it is. I mean it is funny, but it's also a legitimate fantasy movie. On the blu-ray featurette, Zooey Deschanel aptly described it as "a dirty Princess Bride", which I think sums up the tone of the movie. If you removed Thadeous (McBride) from the movie, it pretty much would be a straight up fantasy. Most of the comedy comes from the premise that Thadeous is a lazy, cowardly, screw-up going on an adventure that requires the opposites of those qualities.

I remember Danny McBride saying that he and his buddies (i.e. the team behind Eastbound & Down) made this movie as a tribute to the fantasy movies they grew up watching. I don't know how much of Your Highness includes direct references, but it does have a scene that I hope is a nod to the great wagon chase scene in Willow, because it's fairly similar, and there is a labyrinth but that may or may not have anything to do with the movie Labyrinth. The sets and creatures and special effects all looked great, and as a fantasy nerd I loved taking it all in.
The American castmembers tried on some classy British accents and I think they were all decent enough not to take me out of the experience, and even though everyone except McBride was playing it straight, they had their funny moments too. Not enough Zooey Deschanel in the movie though, but that is a personal bias.

Recommendation
Ultimately, this movie was a flop at the box office and isn't very well liked, and if you look to it only for laughs then it can be disappointing (less so if you haven't seen the trailer or any clips). It took me about 20 or 30 minutes to really get into it, and then I started to enjoy it for the fantasy adventure that it is. And I do still love the idea of a fantasy movie with swearing. I hope to see more of that.

Childrens Hospital - Seasons One and Two

Childrens Hospital (no apostrophe, because although it is a hospital for children, it's also named after a man named Arthur Childrens) began as a short web series but moved to television on Adult Swim for season two and expanded its episode length from 5 minutes to 11. I'm glad they've released the first two seasons on the same DVD set, because it would have been kind of a rip-off to have a dinky little set of 5-minute episodes by itself.

Anyway, this show is, to put it simply, extremely silly and extremely fun. At various points it parodies all of the famous doctor shows plaguing our TV networks, using such devices as the female doctors doing voiceovers every episode that pretend to be whimsical by tossing out metaphors about life and love (Grey's Anatomy); investigating a patient's house to help diagnose their condition (House); a doctor who heals using only the power of laughter (Patch Adams); that same doctor getting his own spin-off series (Private Practice); and the doctors constantly sleeping with each other and exchanging lovers (general soap opera crap from all of them). The story continuity is somewhat loose between episodes (especially with the relationships, as I mentioned. Nobody is a solid couple.), and this is reflected by the "previously on..." gags at the start of every episode, which consist of mostly unseen footage and sometimes a little bit of actual recap. Even the first episode has one. All of these things create the wonderful, wacky atmosphere of this show, which never gets serious unless its part of a joke. Speaking of the jokes, your sense of humour needs to be a little dark and twisted to enjoy some of the laughs, and mine is so I loved every minute of it. I also have to credit this show's unique ability to break the fourth wall by installing a fifth one. A fictional back story has been created for the series, stating that it has been on the air for 16 seasons, and all of the actors on the show are played by fictional actor alter egos, some of whom have accents or don't even speak English. Part of Childrens Hospital's whole gimmick is that it knows it's a show, and that's part of the show, because medical dramas tend to be revered and when satirizing them I think some self commentary on its own status is a necessary element.

Best Episode: A tie between two of the more self-referential episodes from season two: "End of the Middle", executed like an episode of a news show that takes a fictional behind the scenes look at Childrens Hospital after the show is canceled (also fictional); and "The Sultan's Finger: Live", which pretends to be a live episode and is full of fake mishaps and actors "breaking character". Brilliant.

Cowboys & Aliens

Impressions before seeing it
I really liked how the trailer was set up: it started off looking like a plain old Western movie and then aliens attacked in a "Whoa, this is crazy" moment. I was interested, but a concept like that can either be really cool or really stupid.

How was it?
The last time Western was mashed up with sci-fi, we got Firefly, though that was quite a different experience so there's no need to make this a post comparing the two. Maybe the way to say it is that Firefly is more sci-fi than Western, and Cowboys & Aliens is more Western than sci-fi, and we'll leave it at that.

The reason I say it's more Western than sci-fi is because I came to the conclusion mid-viewing that this movie basically is a Western with the cowboys fighting aliens instead of Indians. It's a simple substitution, so I would hesitate to even call it sci-fi at all if not for aliens and space ships being regarded as sci-fi subject matter. I was constantly spotting common Western elements, like the violent, arrogant drunk causing trouble in town, and the enemy kidnapping loved ones so that a band of cowboys has to track them and rescue the victims, and the film's overall mindless simplicity for the sake of pure entertainment. Well, maybe it was a little more complicated than the average John Wayne movie, but not by too much. The cast was enjoyable - notably Harrison Ford as the type of grouch he's known for playing, and Paul Dano as the arrogant yet spineless prick he's not known for playing - and the action sequences were fun. There wasn't a lot of time spent on these 1800's cowboys marveling at the strange technology and creatures, which probably would have gotten in the way of the story's progress, but I liked that they never actually used the word "alien", not being familiar with science fiction in that period, instead referring to them as demons because they're Christians and it's the type of thing they would think. Almost surprising, though, to think that before this movie no one has really thought of fantasizing history and having aliens attack other time periods. It always occurs in present day. They could have just as easily done Knights & Aliens, though I suppose Westerns are more of a blockbuster genre than medieval period epics, and if it were medieval then people might mistake it for a sci-fi/fantasy mash-up, which would be less of a stark genre contrast.

I do have to say that, except for the concept itself, Cowboys & Aliens felt a little contrived. It felt like they borrowed a lot and did what was typical rather than what was unexpected. Olivia Wilde's character was the spike in the punch bowl, adding something different and unpredictable as far as her back story goes, but that spike almost ruined the party for me. I think it added an extra element that needlessly complicated things and slightly derailed the focus from the cowboys and the aliens. But hey, Daniel Craig's crazy alien bracelet was cool.

Recommendation
If you just go in thinking of it as a mindless action movie, you'll probably have fun. Just don't expect it to be groundbreaking or mindblowing. I liked it for what it was, but was slightly disappointed for what it could have been.

Wonderfalls - The Complete Series

This show was probably doomed from the start, as it both aired on FOX and was created by Bryan Fuller, who has by now achieved a hat trick in creating original TV series that are canceled too soon (Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, and Pushing Daisies). The other two, not being on FOX, at least lasted two seasons. Only four episodes of Wonderfalls were aired (a full season was produced), so being the lesser known of the three I'll explain what it is.

The series follows Jaye Tyler, a Niagara Falls gift shop employee who begins to worry for her sanity when animal figurines and other novelties with faces on them begin talking to her. They tell her to do things to set off chains of events that ultimately end up helping others, which is all fine and dandy except Jaye is a misanthrope and doesn't like helping people. However, she gets forced into it anyway because if she ignores them then bad things start to happen as punishment. The animals' instructions are often vague, so Jaye tends to misinterpret them at first, but by the end of every episode she realizes the message and completes her mission.

Caroline Dhavernas, who plays Jaye, is a very expressive actress here, sometimes taking it near cartoonish levels, but the show is part comedy and given the fantastic nature as well, that style of acting was appropriate. She made the character fascinating and fun, and carried the series well. Somehow I really got on board with the show's romantic storyline between Jaye and a bartender named Eric (played by Tyron Leitso, who is kind of a poor man's Matthew Fox). I think Eric might have been a little bland in another show, but I ended up liking him for his chemistry with Jaye. Maybe it was because he was as intrigued by her quirkiness as I was. Or maybe seeing someone like Jaye actually care deeply for him when she usually hates most people is what heightened the appeal of their relationship. Either way, I rooted for them to get together, only to be intermittently punched in the heart between moments of warmth. Also of note was Jaye's sister Sharon, 35 (inside joke from the show).

This show was an awful lot of fun to watch, and it's unfortunate that it didn't last longer, but I'm not overly upset; the ending wrapped everything up so that it felt like a series finale instead of a season finale. Wonderfalls as a one season series is fine as is, though that's no excuse for FOX to have pulled the old "let's move the show to a different night and then not promote the new night so we can cancel it" trick.

Best episode: "Lying Pig" was effectively heartbreaking, and "Cocktail Bunny" and "Caged Bird" contained some good tension and action sequences. I think I'll go with "Caged Bird", the series finale in which a wanted criminal locks down the gift shop and takes Jaye hostage along with her sister and co-workers.