Sucker Punch, Scott Pilgrim, Beastly, Star Trek, Skyline

It's that time again, time for my report on the movies we watched this past weekend.  It must seem like we really don't do much, but that isn't the case really.  We just tend to watch a movie or two on weekend nights and this week was no different with another five movies to review.  I won't waste a lot of time getting into them though, so here we go.
The first movie we watched was "Scott Pilgrim versus the World".  It took a while to get into it, and not because it was boring or difficult to follow (ok, the way they jumped around it was a bit difficult at first), but rather because I felt like I needed to be on drugs to understand it.  In addition to the jumping around, the addition of video game type graphics and the visuals of the movie themselves seemed to have come straight from the mind of someone on a good trip.  However as the movie went on and I got used to this it turned out that they had found a unique way to tell an all too familiar story about a boy falling in love with a girl and having to deal with her past while dealing with his present as well.

There were a number of moments that had me laughing aloud, though not so much because of good humor but because of some horribly out of place and unusual visual or effect.  I'll give two examples of this.  First during one of the "battles" where he had to take on two of her ex'es in a battle of bands, the "twins" had dragons coming out of their speakers flowing towards them and breathing on them.  When they recovered and battled back, their music formed this huge gorilla that battled the dragons until they defeated the twins.  In the other example I don't really remember what had just happened but a little digital head with "1 Up" below it popped onto the screen accompanied by an appropriate video game sound.  He reached up and grabbed his level up and continued on.

The entire movie was like this, and while not a great movie it told an old story in a new and unique way and I truly enjoyed it and had fun with it because it never took itself seriously and just provided opportunities to laugh at the movie and the way it was done.  As I said, not a great movie but genuinely entertaining.

The next movie we watched was "Beastly".  Not much to say about this one as it was a standard 'good looking guy gets cursed with ugliness until he learns his lesson' story.  Overall I still enjoyed it though.  The characters were decent, the story was ok though questionable at times (the "beast" saves "beauty's" dad only to blackmail him into her moving in with him after the dad had killed a drug dealer in self defense ... speaking of which nothing ever came of that part of the story or the pictures he took with his camera phone either), and it flowed fairly well.  Not a bad movie really and I enjoyed it, though it isn't one to rush out to see either.

Up next is one that the wife had no interest in and I really didn't know what to expect either, "Sucker Punch."  It turned out that my expectations about the story were pretty close.  I had figured that after the girl was put into the asylum she and the others would try to escape and the fantastical parts of the trailers would be mental representations of that.  Turns out I was right about that, but what I hadn't guessed is that the girls were being used for "entertaining" people such as the mayor by dance and favors, and that the images were what the main character was thinking while she danced to distract others as they grabbed what they needed to escape.  In the end the main character had to give up herself to allow the only other survivor to escape.

I thought the movie was pretty good, a bit odd sure, but pretty good none-the-less.  The "fantastical" scenes were really fun and enjoyable, the characters were ok though not really all that developed, and the story flowed fairly well and was entertaining.  Visually the movie had some great scenes, mostly in the dream sequences, and things like the dragons, the steamwork nazis, the samurai giants ... they were all fun to watch.  Overall I would recommend anyone who likes the sci-fi genre or the fantastical watch it at some point, though if you're one that likes your movies more based in "reality" perhaps you'll want to skip it.

Next up is one that I'll admit I was a little distracted during as a friend I hadn't seen in a long time was over and there was a lot of chatter catching up and the like while it was going on.  That movie was "Skyline".  The movie was about aliens that came to earth and started abducting people for what we later found out was their brains as they used them to power their creations or creatures.  Overall there wasn't a lot about this one that was great or spectacular, though the creatures were fairly new and interesting. 

In the end the main survivors are taken and while the pregnant female is taken to another area to presumably have the baby removed, the guy who had been subjected to their "lights" on two other occasions only to be saved has his brain put into a creature but unlike everyone else, he retains his own thoughts (perhaps because of the exposure to the lights before, it really never said) and goes about saving her while in the ship ... and that was where it ended.  Perhaps they want to do a follow up because it left off where many movies hoping for future shows do, with plenty of questions left and with an ending that left the characters hanging in a spot of uncertainty.

Overall it wasn't bad, but it wasn't special either.  Perhaps I should watch it again without distractions before giving a proper review but I think I got most of it and feel safe saying that it is worth an afternoon if you like this kind of movie and want to see it but don't rush out to get it either.

We'll finish up these reviews with a movie that takes me back to days when I was much younger ... "Star Trek".  I used to watch the television series regularly, and watched the Next Generation after, and have seen most of the movies but hadn't seen this one yet.  I have to admit that I really enjoyed it.

Seeing all these characters that I watched when I was growing up as their younger selves was pretty entertaining and they did a good job with the characters.  Having the real Spock show up was pretty neat too, and the time travel wasn't out of place for the movie.  I also really loved all the cliche type moments that occurred throughout, such as the "guy in red" going on the mission ends up dead, and Bones stating he is a doctor, not a fill-in-the-blank, and Scotty "stating he's givin' 'er all she's got."  There were also moments in the movie that have been referred to through the series such as the Kobayashi Maru, which the movie brought in and played upon.

In my opinion the movie was very well done and great fun for old Trek fans such as myself.  I believe I have heard that they are thinking of a sequel to this one and I hope they do.  The only real complaint I had is that they destroyed Vulcan, and I am pretty certain in Trek history the planet Vulcan was never destroyed.