March Of The Penguins

At first I was very hesitant about watching this movie. I mean, who wants to see an 80-minute movie about penguins when you've got contenders like "Wedding Crashers" and "Fantastic Four"? (For those who weren't sure, yes, I was being sarcastic).

But when I saw the trailer for it and found out Morgan Freeman was narrating it, I got all geeky about it!

This movie is amazing. Amidst the storytelling of these incredible Empire Penguins, I was constantly amazed at the cinematography. How they managed to shoot this film was beyond me.

I couldn't help but think how so much easier being a human parent is compared to what these penguins have to go through, the extreme conditions they are willing to face in order to breed and raise their little penguins.

This movie was heartwarming, enlightening and just so freakin' adorable! Kudos, National Geographic, you've done well!

The Fantastic Four

I wasn't at all surprised that this movie was a disappointment. It was way too hyped up for its own good. There was merchandise flying all over the place for several weeks prior to its release that you know they're trying to make up for it flopping in the box office.

First time I heard about this movie, I thought, "Oh! It'll be like X-Men only better because there'd only be four superheroes in the movie!"

Wrong wrong wrong! How could you go wrong with developing a story of four superheroes? I'll tell you. Bad writing for starters. They tried too hard to be funny, too hard to try to explain what happened that none of it made sense, and the character development could barely be called that. The action scenes and special effects were not exciting at all, the actors didn't mesh well, and it was 2 hours too long.

It's very hard for me to try to think of this movie by itself when it would be so much easier to say that it's nowhere near as good as X-Men and Spiderman. The Fantastic Four should hang their head in shame.

War of the Worlds

It was hard for me to write this review because I couldn't make up my mind whether I liked it or not. On the one hand, the special effects were great, the aliens were terrifying, the realism of it all was nerve-racking and for the first half of the movie, Tom Cruise was an asshole.

But on the other hand, my hometown was wasted but not Boston, Tom Cruise managed to redeem himself, the two kids in the movie were annoying, there were scenes that were unnecessary and the ending left everything to be desired!

I liked how you were sucked in from the moment the first series of weird events started to happen. It starts out like any normal day with people going about their daily routines, when out of nowhere a dark swirling cloud brings about a series of strange thunderbolts. Next thing you know, electrical devices and vehicles stop working altogether, the ground starts to shake, buildings start to crumble, and then the ground opens up to reveal a gigantic tri-pod machine that starts to vaporize everything in sight.

What works really well with this movie is how you feel sympathetic for the people in it. The story didn't center on leaders of the world or heroes or on even more than one set of characters. The story focused on Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise), who loads crates at a pier in SmallTown, New Jersey, and his broken family. On top of dealing with aliens trying to kill them, Ferrier has to deal with some issues with his estranged children as well.

You are further sucked in by how believable everyone's reactions are. Some in disbelief, some in shock but most in complete terror. I thought they did a great job of capturing humanity at its very worst. People were reduced to uncivilized, emotional creatures driven by fear and panic. But there were moments of heroism also, where people were trying to help each other out even at the risk of their own lives.

What I didn't like about the movie was, well, aside from Tom Cruise, was the little girl screaming and freaking out the whole time, the teenaged boy always trying to be rebellious, that scene in the basement that was copied from "Jurassic Park," (that scene felt like years of my life were sucked out of me), how Tom Cruise went from Mr. Immature-I-only-think-of-myself to all of a sudden the guy who could take down a tri-pod monster all by himself, and how the ending was anti-climactic.

Over all, though, I guess you can say I liked it well enough to recommend it to anyone who's got $10 to throw away.