Isaac's Film Reviews

Out of all the movies releasing this summer,  Transformers: Dark of the Moon  was the one I was most uncertain about. Between the terrible critical reception of  Revenge of the Fallen , and no obvious plot points to explore in a third installment, I wasn’t sure whether  DOTM  would right the many wrongs of the first sequel and become the ultimate adaption of the franchise, or crash and burn and leave us audience wishing Bay had refrained from making  Transformers  a trilogy. The final result is somewhere in between. While not by any means terrible,  Moon  also doesn’t do much to mix up the now-aging  Transformers  formula of Decepticons come up with plan to destroy the world, Autobots fight with humans to stop them. So the question boils down to: is this threequel worth your time (a lengthy two hours thirty-seven minutes, to be exact) and hard-earned money? That depends on where you stand as far as the  Transformers  ser...

When Cars released back in 2006, Pixar was greeted with a then unheard of lukewarm (though not by any means bad) critical reception which didn’t harshly impact the huge amounts of money the film shoveled in worldwide. It did, however, show that even the most respected studio in cinema was vulnurable to a subpar effort now and then. The studio promptly followed up in 2007 with Ratatouille, which went on to claim the Best Animated Film Oscar and prove that Pixar was very far from done producing phenomenal CGI-films. Now here we are in 2011 with Cars 2 , the studio’s offering this year. It was a strange move by Pixar to choose to create a sequel to their least well received film, but no one questioned the almighty studio’s decision. This turns out to be unfortunate, as Cars 2 is not only unquestionably Pixar’s weakest effort to date, but also a disappointingly mediocre film from any perspective.  In a surprising move, Cars 2 switches its focus from ego-centric race car Lightni...

When a movie no one thought much of suddenly becomes a black horse and skyrockets to a total domestic gross of $275 million and becomes the third highest grossing R-rated movie of all time, the natural Hollywood reaction is to make a sequel. There’s nothing wrong with this notion. It actually happens all the time. We as paying consumers love to see characters we know and love on the big screen a second time. But when this movie is Todd Phillips’ oddball hit The Hangover, it presents the studio with a bit of a dilemma. How many comedy sequels of even moderate success have released over the last century? The answer is very few. A Hangover sequel was going to be no easy task if any sort of quality was to be maintained. Luckily, The Hangover Part II , though honestly (and shamelessly) derivative of its predecessor, is the rare exception to this rule. It’s crude, it’s dark, and it really doesn’t care what anyone thinks of it. It’s just about giving us, the audience, a good time, though it...

After the release and subsequent enormous success of 2002’s Spider-Man , Marvel Comics opened their floodgates to an enormous superhero vault just waiting to be adapted for the big screen. Successful adaptions of Blade, Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, Ghost Rider, Iron Man and Thor all opened within the span of the next nine years, with Captain America’s film debut just around the corner. It makes sense then that with the huge box office numbers and critical rave that greeted Batman’s last big screen outing, Marvel competitor DC Comics would do the same. Here we are with Green Lantern, the big-budget, big screen adaption of a DC serial that’s always played second in the DC universe to bigger heroes Batman and Superman. Director Martin Campbell signed onto the job, who’s had previous success in igniting a franchise with Casino Royale in 2006. Star Ryan Reynolds was cast in the coveted role of Hal Jordan, a move which pleased fans of the original comic greatly, and big stars Bla...

Almost thirty years ago, promising new director Steven Spielberg changed the way we looked at summer filmmaking with a little movie called E.T. It was truly the first of its kind, perfectly balancing emotional depth with big-budget production values to craft one of the most intelligent films of the century. Now, we have Super 8 , which obviously looks to recapture the essence of that legendary film by uniting the legendary Spielberg as a producer and director J.J. Abrams ( Star Trek ). Though this isn’t technically his movie, Super 8 feels much more like a Spielberg production than it does a product of Abrams’ directing. Although Super 8 is really a monster movie more than the uplifting tale of childhood innocence, it takes a few large and obvious queues from E.T. . This might sound like a criticism, but sharing traits with such a landmark film has its fair share of benefits, and in the end Super 8 ’s many strengths outweigh its handful of problems. It’s hard to outline the f...

Prequels are tough to get right. Filmmakers have to nail that perfect balance between interesting origins that tie into the rest of the series and a narrative that can support itself for those watching the film as an introduction to a franchise. Few sagas have pulled this off in recent years, which is why I was a bit unsure what the people over at Marvel were thinking when they announced a prequel to one of their most financially and critically successful sagas (let's try to forget 2009's  Origins: Wolverine )  . Although I’m aware that the series has one of the deepest backgrounds and some of the most spin-offs ever to grace a Marvel franchise, the X-Men movies have mostly centered around Hugh Jackman’s trademark performances as Wolverine, and I wasn’t sure whether fans of the film series would be willing to part with him and the entire cast of the other films just to get some background on the characters. However, I was wrong. Though First Class has a few hiccups, it...