danumber40 Reviews

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

A disappointing sequel to the exciting reboot

[4/10 · 18 September 2014]

I have to say that I didn't know what to expect with the first installment into this series reboot, but I very much enjoyed the first one. Andrew Garfield made a great Spider-Man and I loved it that his trademark quips were brought in. The new villain was cool.

This did not lead to my expectations at all.

The man's transformation into Electro was a little cliché and predictable, but everything based on the comics is predictable. I was okay with that.

Garfield's acting was spot-on, but Emma Stone was lame, for a lack of a better term. Her acting wasn't great and she had several cliché lines. Aunt May (Sally Field) and Peter Parker's lovely relationship that I very much adored in the original movies was not here. I think the original movies had one of the best family relationships I had ever seen (Aunt May and Peter Parker), and it just wasn't done well here. Harry Osborne (Dane Dehaan)looked like a creepy crackhead in high school that was starving himself. He didn't look like the calm but dangerous Harry I was familiar with. He was just really...weird. Finally, all Jamie Foxx did was make cliché (I frequently use this word) statements. His motives were a little whimsical as well, and his sudden changes in his views of Spider-Man were odd. I understood how he was feeling, but the swings were fast and extreme.

But bad acting can be overlooked with great fight scenes and explosions and the occasional funny joke, right? That's what helped me get through Transformers: Age of Extinction, which I was pleasantly surprised with. Anyways, the fight scenes were boring. They creators of the movie relied on airborne scenes and CGI effects, rather than cars crashing and blowing up and people being in danger. There were a lot of flashes of blue and pops of electricity. It was hard to tell what was going on. And when the Green Goblin (Harry) came in very, VERY late into the movie, the fight did not last a minute. No joke. "I'm gonna get you, Spider-Man!" "Oh yeah? I'm gonna punch you!" Then he punches him and knocks him out and the fight is over. In the original movie, Spider-Man and the Green Goblin were crashing through brick walls and throwing punches all over the place and tearing their suits and showing blood. The Goblin was even stabbed in the stomach without dying immediately. Here, it took one punch. Lame.

Gwen (Emma Stone) dies during the "battle" with the Goblin. It was a little surprising with its suddenness. Peter visits her tombstone several days of the year, and the camera shows the same angle over all the seasons. They were well-done scenes and emotional, one of the few good things of this movie.

In the final scenes of the movie, a criminal breaks out of jail and mans a robot that looks like a rhinoceros. Like we haven't seen that before. And he says something along the lines of "Spider-Man, I'm going to DESTROY yooooooouuuu!!!!!" The end. I'm guessing the next movie will feature a robot giraffe that can breathe fire.

There was one other really cool scene when a criminal is firing a machine gun or something at Spider-Man, but in slow motion, he's twisting away from each bullet. That was really cool.

Altogether, it was a very disappointing movie. It seems that half of the viewers liked it and half didn't, so you never know. You might enjoy it.

Swamp Shark (2011 TV Movie)

Swamp Shark, Swamp Fart

[3/10 · 30 August 2014]

This movie is rated R only for the brief instances of gore, I would assume, and maybe for the very brief nudity. There were several scenes with blood in the water, but you only saw one mangled corpse and one other man lose his head. It wasn't very scary. The jump scares weren't...jumpy. It was a boring movie.

I'm not going to go into detail with how bad the acting was, but it wasn't plain stupid, as one would expect. But it was far from good. I mean, at the very beginning, when the giant tank of the truck crashes into the swamp. releasing the shark, the sheriff drops a terrible one-liner. After the driver leaves, paying no attention to the deaths of the other two men, the sheriff dramatically takes off his glasses, and, looking into the distance, says, "What a lousy way to start the summer." Speaking of these men's deaths, the bodies disappear in the shots immediately after the kills.

There were several deaths. None were very bloody, except for the one when the shark chopped off a cop's head that was watching a girl strip with his binoculars. Pervert. He had it coming. The deaths of the boyfriend and girlfriend in the boat were not spectacular. Swim away, scream, and disappear underwater. Not a lot of blood. The girl's mutilated torso is discovered later, however. There were at least four other deaths, but none were shown. Only one had blood float to the surface of the water.

It qualified more as a PG-13 movie than a horror, except for the one scene with the girl's shredded torso, which probably gave it the R rating.

I'm not asking for more violence and blood. I'm saying it shouldn't really qualify for a horror. It's more of a thriller.

As a whole, it was pretty boring. I was waiting for the gore to spice things up, and it never came.

And they went ahead with killing off the black guys, because every horror does that.

Heaven Is for Real (2014)

Good message but two other "side-messages" are deceptively flawed

[6/10 · 2 August 2014]

This movie was not an in-your-face movie like other Christian ones tend to be. Plus the acting was good. You don't have many good actors in a Christian movie.

It was funny too. The scene Todd (Greg Kinnear) in the bathroom, passing kidney stones, and Jay (Thomas Haden Church), talking to him, was hilarious.

There were just two side-messages that can really throw someone off. When Todd is at Margo's (Nancy Rawling) son's grave, Margo asks if he really believes her son, who died in the military, went to Heaven. Todd used the wrong rationale. He simply told her God loves her son. And that's the reason he went to Heaven. You don't go to Heaven because God loves you. You go because you're saved, by asking him to be your savior. He still loves you, but that's not the ticket to Heaven.

Secondly, at the end of the movie when Todd is giving his monologue to the audience at his church, he said "I've seen it (his son go to Heaven briefly), so I believe it." The Bible stresses that those who haven't seen and have believed are blessed. Jesus pointed that out when he was talking to Doubting Thomas. "Blessed are those have not seen, yet still believe (paraphrase)." Todd completely contradicted that part of the Bible.

For these two reason, the rating dropped from a high to a mediocre six. The messages were deceptive, misleading, and that's the last thing you want in Christianity.

Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

Pleasantly surprised but needs to slow down on cursing

[7/10 · 2 August 2014]

After reading many of the reviews before seeing the movie, I was feeling the sense of an unspectacular movie, and in some ways, it was.

Let's start with the bad.

It was a very long movie. There were long, drawn-out scenes between the actors than there were with the Transformers. However, they played major roles and the conversations and action kept me interested.

Speaking of the characters, there wasn't much development, which is to be expected in an action movie. But I grew on Cade (Mark Wahlberg) and Joshua (Stanley Tucci). Cade's daughter, Tessa (Nicola Peltz) cared for her father very much but came off as a constant whiner, always screaming for help. I don't mind girls with long legs, but they could at least not make them the weakest points.

As for the Transformers, only two were from the past movies (Optimus Prime and Bumblebee), although other Autobots, like Ratchet, were mentioned. Another Decepticon named Lockdown, from the animated series, I believe, was introduced. New characters included Hound, voiced by an annoying cusser John Goodman, and Drift and Crosshairs. Another thing about these characters: You never saw Hound and Drift transform. You only saw the vehicles they became. That annoyed me. Drift transformed visibly once, into a helicopter, but that was it. I wanted to know how he transformed into his sleek car.

Now, finally, let's point out the most hated thing, for me at least, about this movie: I was tired of all the cursing. Hound used the B-word several times, unnecessarily. And saying "kicking ass" over and over again isn't funny. It's simply annoying. The F-bomb was dropped twice, although one was humorously bleeped out. The other was clear and loud. Finally, the S-word was incessant. In fact, it was the first word used in the movie. Half the time, it seemed like an afterthought. "Hey, let's just make them curse here." Lot's of kids have the Transformers toys and want to see the movies, especially if they loved the series on TV. So to come to the theater and listen to all this cursing doesn't seem right.

Speaking of afterthoughts, the characters had a few instances where they pointed out the obvious. They drive into a cornfield to escape the CIA after their house was blown up. So Shane drives into the cornfield. Then he says, "I'm gonna try to lose them in this cornfield." Duh. The cursing was the part I didn't like. The rest of the bad before it that I listed is what I can tolerate.

Now for the good.

The humor was full of advanced Disney Channel jokes. But like any Disney Channel show, they eventually get a joke that's really funny. The movie had a few funny instances in it.

The action was bigger than the last movie, which was to be expected. But I thought I saw it all in the commercials. No, there were plenty more cargo ships literally being thrown around. I mean, when the big ship that stole Despicable Me 2's idea with the giant magnet was going after the special "seed," it actually felt realistic. It picked up anything metal and dropped it onto the characters, including the giant robot dinosaurs.

People complained about the confusing plot. I loved it. The way everything fell together and then broke and reattached kept me interested, along with the violent battles.

I thought it was a good idea to "modernize" the badbots. Instead of cool transformations, the company KSI created their own robots that kind of dissolved into the air and then reconnected to form the robot or vehicle. It was sort of like a way to introduce a new era to the Transformers, to create new plots. And that worked--Megatron-turned-Galvatron got away. Like he always seems to do.

I'm so happy the creators of the movie went away from cities like Chicago, New York, or San Francisco. Overused places. They went to Hong Kong instead.

The violent battles were prolonged, like in the movie Man of Steel, but it wasn't boring. There was variety, cool sounds, many characters, occasionally some dialogue, and lots of things that go boom. And some dinosaurs. You can't go wrong with robotic dinosaurs.

All in all, it's a movie that simply doesn't need unnecessary cursing. And it probably could've been shortened a little bit. But I think it's the best in the series.

Den kæmpestore bjørn (2011)

Cheap animation and no time taken to fix little things

[2/10 · 4 July 2014]

While on vacation, eleven-year-old Jonathan and his younger sister Sophie get lost in the deep woods. While Jonathan is looking for Sophie, she discovers a mountainous bear and befriends him. Jonathan thinks the bear kidnapped her and "hires" a hunter to take him down, but he soon realizes the bear is a friend and must stop the hunter. There's the environmentalist message for you.

This movie was made in 2011, but the graphic appear older. Movements are choppy and unrealistic. Not a lot of detail went into things, making them look rather smooth.

The animators seemed too lazy to properly move the characters' mouths. The mouths only jump around. Then the they simply threw the script in, so none of what they say matches the movements. Occasionally, their mouths wouldn't move at all.

For a children's movie, there's a decent bit of gore. Jonathan sticks his whole arm into the bear's tongue to remove a bullet, and adding to the gunky blood from the wound, Jonathan's arms a covered in blacking blood, as well as splattered across his face.

There was a rather unsettling scene where Sophie falls from the bear's head. It looked like a good five story drop, and she lands flat on her back. For the brief second we see her, she's not moving. I thought she was dead from the terrible thud, but when the hunter angrily grabs her, she's perfectly fine, unharmed. Oddly enough, she seemed to pull a muscle when the hunter lifted her arm up. Yet she wasn't hurt from the fall.

There was some unnecessary violence, I think, for a kids' movie. In a slightly disturbing scene, the hunter squeezes a small bird in his hands out of anger. Then he launches it at a tree. The poor thing was squashed and its eyes stayed open while his bird friends mourned over him. It might startle some viewers.

On top of all this, Jonathan cursed in the beginning of the movie. It's dotted with small things, like "darn" and "idiot." But an eleven-year-old is not supposed to drop the S-word.

A lot of obvious goofs: When Jonathan first meets the hunter, the hunter makes a bandage out of leaves and puts it on Jonathan's arm. In the very next shot, it's gone and never returns. The wound is also gone. The animators didn't take the time. For some reason, the bear, who is hundred of feet tall and long, is afraid of two small dogs. That makes no sense; a regular bear could attack the dogs.

Unexplainably, frogs create rain.

The hunter dies from collapsing rocks, and without music, it's quite sudden and, as I said before, probably unnecessary.

The whole movie has a dark, eerie feel. The sky is always cloudy, the forest is always covered by a foggy--literally and figuratively--veil. Not something cheerful. Did not enjoy it and don't recommend it.

The Amazing World of Gumball (2011–2019)

A variety of humor and characters to please all

[9/10 · 9 June 2014]

This show is hilarious in many ways. It's a children's show that somehow reaches older ages as well.

Characters are created in many ways, such as traditional animation, Claymation, stop-motion, CGI, pixilation, and even puppets. They're inspired from everyday thing, too. As an example, the burglar is a walking fingerprint. Then you have a variety of personalities, such as Mr. Small, the school counselor that's a hippy; Mrs. Simian, the ancient, ill-tempered monkey that is a teacher; a CGI tyrannosaurus rex named Tina; a peanut with antlers named Penny. The list is endless and new things are being discovered in every episode, whether they are costars or hidden in the background. Everything about the setting is lovable.

The family is quite cliché, however, but they manage to be cliché in a new way. Richard, the father, is a gluttonous, pink rabbit that does nothing but sleep, unless his wife Nicole says otherwise. Speaking of Nicole, the blue cat, she's a workaholic that will blow up on someone at any given moment. She's a freakishly amazing mother. Her ways of doing things for her kids is something that's not seen very often in the real world, so although she's fantastical, her views are good. Gumball, the protagonist, is always getting into trouble with his walking-fish-adopted-brother named Darwin(an ongoing mystery to the series: Where did Darwin come from?). Their troubles are usually accidental and good-natured. Think of the Apple Dumpling Gang. Darwin is the one that usually has moral views and wants to do what's right, whereas Gumball wants the same result but reaches it in a more troublesome way. He often talks Darwin into helping him achieve his goals. Finally, you have Anise, the youngest of the family and for some reason, the smartest. She has a scientific explanation for everything that her "dumb" brothers can't understand.

The show has a lot of slapstick humor. As an example, Gumball was calling someone, and the screen split into two to show the ends of the line. The camera zoomed in on the one Gumball was calling, but as it did this, his side of the screen got bigger and bigger until Gumball was crushed on his end, morphing his face into a goofy-looking thing.

But you have to listen to the dialogue, for jokes are hidden in almost every sentence, whether they be hilarious or simple tings that make you smile. Dialogue helped make this show as funny as it is.

The show ha made several references to other things as well. There was a scene where Gumball is fighting his brother, Darwin, but they've become pixelated and are jumping into the air with robotic moves. It was spoof off Mortal Kombat. Again, the dialogue related to it. One episode, called The Sweaters, brought new characters in, dressed like teenagers from the eighties. They sported big, colorful glasses, leg warmers, and sweaters. And their hair... Eighties-style music can be heard at the end.

The show is unbelievably cute at times as well as so funny that my parents have even laughed at it. One scene showed Gumball losing his clothes, and in place to cover the special spots, was that pixelated box that shifts and changes color with movement. It's not raunchy or anything. Nothing that should scar kids or offend parents. But sometimes scenes are cute wonderful and heart-touching.

It's rare that an awful moment has appeared in the show, but they have happened. However, any show can have those. This show easily outweighs the bad with all it's humor and goodness.

I think the shows Uncle Grandpa and Steven Universe have tried to embrace the hilarity that Gumball wields, but those shows are too weird to understand and the humor is minimal or uncreative. Gumball also doesn't feature creepiness like Adventure Time and Regular Show, although those are popular, for what I don't know. But I understand that some parents don't allow their young kids to watch those. Gumball is much milder and nicer, more pleasant, even in its ridiculousness.