Timothy Callahan

Captain America, I salute you!

One of the key elements to any good Super Hero movie is this, does the movie hold true to the character? One of the issues I had with the Fantastic Four movies was that they didn't seem to hold true to the comic renditions of the Fantastic Four. There were some elements but for the most part what you saw on the big screen was only a shadow of what was in the comic. One of the things that made the first two Spider-man movies a success was the Spider-manness of the movies. I also think that's what made the third movie a bit of a letdown, it didn't feel like a Spider-man comic through most of its running time. In fact, the times it felt like a Spider-man comic were the best moments in the movie to me. Sandman's transformation, Spider-man and Sandman's first fight, and when Peter Finally got rid of the costume, those felt like Spider-man moments and I enjoyed them. Dancing Peter Parker? Emo Parker? Peter hitting MJ, even by accident, the final fight? Those didn't feel genuine, they didn't feel like Spider-man and I think people picked up on that.

This all brings me to Captain America. They could not have put a more perfect Captain America movie on the screen, not now, not ever. This felt like a Captain America movie, this felt as if they took all the World War 2 Captain America stories, studied then, then placed them on the big screen. Captain America has always been a better character when they focused on his World War 2 days, he was a superhero born in the 40's when it was okay to publish comic books with the main superhero punching Hitler on the jaw and when they place him in the era it's a perfect fit. When I first heard they were making a Captain America movie I thought to myself, "I hope they set it in the second world war" cause that's where we need to be to be introduced to this man. When I found out that's what they were doing I was sold on the movie and looked forward to seeing it.

Personally I think they should set all Captain America movies in the Second World war, I understand they can't cause of the Avengers movie but how cool would that have been?

If I had one complaint about the movie, and this really did kind of bother me, was the it didn't really have a plot. It seemed to be just a series of scenes strung together to get more action, which isn't a bad thing for a superhero movie, but I wanted a little more depth. We had events, things that happened, but the plot was pretty much "go to this location and destroy this base, fight this cool bad guy, talk about it later, rinse and repeat." The acts were really easy to see: Act one: Steve gets his powers. Act two: Steve learns how to be Captain America by going on tour. Act Three: Steve Rogers becomes Captain America, war hero, selfless defender of the American Way. As a writer this structure bothered me, but not enough not to love the movie.

As for everything else I loved it. Chris Pine, an actor I thought was great in Fantastic Four and his cameo in Scott Pilgrim VS the World, was pitch perfect as Steve Rogers.

The Red Skull, Hugo Weaving, perfect, just how I pictured him.

Action was perfect as well. Loved the shield effect, especially the sound it made when being thrown.

I'm looking forward to the Avengers movie, and the trailer at the end of Captain America made me want to see it even more. I can only hope it feels like and Avengers movie cause if it does it'll be one of the best Super Hero movies of all time.

Transformers 3: Dark of the moon or, they blew up Chicago real good

Let's just get one thing out of the way. I enjoyed this movie a whole lot more than I enjoyed the last one, but not as much as I enjoyed the first and I think I liked the first one more because of the novelty of the whole thing than it was a really good movie. In the long run I think this is the movie that will stand the test of multiple viewings.

If I were to sit down with Michael Bay to ask him one question I think it would be, "do you hate Chicago?" cause that city got beat up real bad in the last hour or so. Seriously, was Roget Ebert's reviews of your movies so bad you decided to destroy the city he lives in? I visited Chicago, I liked Chicago, and to see it trashed the way it was, seeing places I had visited was just brutal to watch. Seeing is citizens vaporized like that was harsh. Seeing both Autobot and Decepitcons trashing buildings without a care, well, what can I say, next time I visit the city I'll place a wreath next to the building that fell over in honor of all those fake people who lost their lives.

I'm having a really hard time coming up with an opinion on this movie, mostly because if you see it excepting something other than large robots fight each other and destroy a city you won't get it. All the same stuff from the other two movies are in this one (minus the racist robot siblings, thank goodness.) Will Sam's parents embarrass him? Check! Will Sam's girlfriend get in trouble and he'll need to rescue her? Check! Will Megatron be a total wuss? Check! Actually, that last one angers me more than the racists robots. In the cartoon Megatron was the man, he was a bad ass who could go toe to toe with all the Autobots save Prime and come out on top. In the first movie he's beaten by Sam! In the second he bows down to another Decepticon, in this one he's a brain damaged robot who follows orders from yet another bad guy! I mean, whatever happened to the Decepticon who, when Unicon tells him he was summoned his reply is, "No one summons Megatron!" Heck, even Starscream had a better badass moment that Megatron and that's just sad! As you can tell, Megatron is my favorite, followed by Starscream.

Okay, so, might as well just go with the highlights then in nice, handy dandy list:

Things I liked:

The best scene in the entire movie was the paratroopers flying through Chicago. The shot was simply amazing and what made it even more amazing was that it wasn't a special effect, it looked like they just but winged suits on a bunch of guys and dropped them from a plane and filmed them flying over Chicago. Sure, I knew some of the shots were effects but I'd say about 80% of the sequence was really happening as it was being filmed and that really made it amazing.

Really, the last hour or so when the battle of Chicago started was really cool. The pacing felt just right and some of the stuff that happened was fun. From the tilting skycrapper, to the fighting in the streets, to the scenes of Decepticons hanging from buildings waiting to go into action, it all felt right and it felt like an epic Transformers movie.

Laserbeak, what a great addition to the franchise. Loved him in the movie, I'm just wondering where Soundwave was.

Rosie Huntington-Whiteley: Nuff said!

Things I didn't like:

Most of the humor sucked as normal. The parents, not funny. The small robots, well except for one line, not funny.

All the Star Trek nods because Lenord Nemoy was one of the voices. I thought the first one was fun, when they were watching the Star Trek Episode when Spock goes nuts. The second one, not sure if it was a nod or not but it felt like one, the third one was kind of "wha?" But, okay, the forth one was pretty good I thought. I think that was the only one we needed cause it was funny and it made everyone who got the joke laugh so, instead of four how about just one really good one next time, huh?

Except for a few robots most of the Autobots and Decepticons were hard to keep track of, when are they going to fix that?

Megatron being a wuss, see above.

Transformers 3 really does deliver on what you'd expect. I sometimes find it amazing as I watch Transformers repeats on Hub that the silly cartoon I loved as a kid is now a movie franchise making billions of dollars world wide.