On this trip, I watched 3 movies, "Super 8" which I've reviewed before, and really liked the 2nd time, "Green Lantern" and "Transformers: Dark of the Moon". Neither was a standout movie, but neither was terrible either.
"Green Lantern": Ryan Reynolds stars as Hal Jordan, who becomes the Green Lantern after he is chosen by his ring. Apparently when another Green Lantern dies, the ring chooses the next Green Lantern. Jordan is a test pilot and a sort of afraid of commitment "ladies man". When chosen to be the Green Lantern of Earth's sector of space, Jordan is intrigued, but in the end he has to decide if he's ready to be responsible and do the right things in his life."Green Lantern" is not a bad movie, but it's just not great either. I found it sorta disjointed in terms of the plot. One other problem I have with this movie, and with movies like "Iron Man" is that my kids can't watch them. Like Tony Stark, Hal Jordan is portrayed as a "play boy" and acts inappropriately in some situations. Why can't more super hero movies be like "Thor" and "Captain America" where I really have no qualms with letting a 10 year old kid watch them?
I really like the Green Lantern as a hero, so I had high hopes for this movie. Sadly, it fell short. This one gets a 3 star rating.
"Transformers: Dark of the Moon": The third, and hopefully final, installment of the Transformers movie franchise takes yet another plot turn in the series to introduce more robots to us. Much like the cartoon, every time a new robot is needed, another plot twist happens, whether it makes sense or not, to introduce that robot. This time we meet Sentinel Prime (voiced by Leonard Nimoy). Sentinel is Optimus' predecessor as leader of the Autobots, but he's gone rogue and made a deal with Megatron (voiced by Hugo Weaving...Hugo's a busy dude). Aided by their favorite human, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), Optimus and the Autobots have to stop the Deceptecons from enslaving the entire human race.
Despite some really good robot fights, "Dark of the Moon" falls short of the original "Transformers" movie, much like "Revenge of the Fallen". The attempts at comic relief by Sam's parents and Agent Simmons (John Turturro) mostly fail and just end up annoying. Nearly as annoying is the subplot of Sam trying to find a job and "matter again". In addition to all that, the plot is weak, very weak. But, cool robot fights have to count for something. Thus, this movie gets 3 stars as well.
Oh, and listen for Sentinel Prime repeating the famous words spoken by Kirk and Spok near the end of "Wrath of Khan"..."The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
