Gotham:Selina Kyle

Well after watching the second episode of Gotham all I have to say is Holy Shit. This is seriously one of the best shows out there. I wasn't sure how this show was going to play out after the initial crime of killing the Wayne's. I didn't know if they were going to spend the rest of the season looking for the real killer, or if this was going to be a case of the week kind of show. After the second episode I am glad to report that it is both. Like many shows that involve the police it has an over arching story, but it also seems to have a new case every episode. This week it was who is kidnapping homeless children, and it introduced us to the future Catwoman Selina Kyle. In the pilot Selina didn't say anything, but in this episode we got to see her talk, and interact with Gordon, and even scratch out a bad guys eyes, and boy did she do a hell of a job with that. 

As far as the over arching story goes I'm not sure if there is one or four. The main one I think is the killing of the Wayne's. I get the feeling that this will drive the entire season, if not the entire series. I know that it is the most important thing in creating Batman, but I don't think they need to focus on it entirely. The second over arching story would be the crime family. This is the struggle that Fish Mooney is having with Carmine Falcone. I'm sure we will see her come to power at some point, or she might just die seeing as how she is a made up character for the show. The third story is the one that features Bruce Wayne. This was a small part of the episode, but I get the feeling that it will continue to grow throughout the season/show. I am a little surprised that they are keeping Bruce in the show. They can do what they want, but I think that we don't really need to see his upbringing. I love Batman, but I think that a prequel show shouldn't really focus on him. I don't really wanna watch the Smallville version of Batman's origin. The final possibility for an over arching story is whatever the Penguin is up to. After last weeks fake shooting of the Penguin we see him walking (waddling) around on the road, hitchhiking. He soon finds himself renting an abandoned trailer. It will be interesting to see how he develops as a character this season, because from what I read this season will focus on him rising to power. 

I am even more excited about this show after watching the coming this season trailer about five minutes before writing this post. I'm not entirely sure when it aired, but it looks AWESOME. I was especially excited to see that Victor Zsasz. He has always been one of my favorite small time Batman villains, and when I first heard about this show I thought they can't do it without incorporating him in some way. It will be interesting to see how many scars he has in this point of is career. Well on that note I can't wait to watch again next week. Please comment on what you think about Gotham so far. Tell me whether you like it or hate it. Are you excited for what is to come or do you want this show to be canceled early on. 

Agents of Shield Season 2 Episode 1

Well since the new TV season is upon us the next month or so will be writing about the premiers of several shows. Due to the fact that I don't have cable many of my reviews will be written a day late. So today I watched the first episode of the second season of Marvels Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (MAS), and I am here to say that this is looks like it is going to be a very promising season. I'm going to start by saying that like many people I didn't think last season picked up until after Captain America Winter Soldier Came out.

From this point on there will be *****MAJOR***** spoilers. Which shouldn't matter because if you don't know some of this information you have no business reading this review. 

When S.H.I.E.L.D got disbanded in the Cap movie I was very shocked I couldn't believe that HYDRA had infiltrated the best spy organization in the world. My first thought was how will this effect the show, and boy did it effect it in a positive way. MAS picked up so fast after that movie came out it would make your head spin. When it turned out that Grant Ward was a HYDRA agent I was in disbelief. I spent the remaining time of the season trying to convince myself that it wasn't true, and he must be working an angle. I'm glad that Marvel stuck to their guns, and kept him a bad guy though.
So when the new season started I had high hopes. I couldn't wait to see where this season was going to go, and I get the feeling it is going to focus a lot on Skye's parents. It starts out with a flash back to the 40's, and Agent Carter, this was more than likely so people are used to seeing her again before she gets a new show this winter. It then went into the introduction of new Shield members orchestrating the sale of some powerful object that you say earlier in the episode during the 40's flashback. As the episode progresses you learn that Director Coulson (if you don't know why he is director than shame on you, quit reading this review and go watch the first season of MAS) has been flying around trying to recruit new agents, but not on "the bus", but on regular planes. You see Fitz talking to Simmons, and you can tell that their is some lasting brain damage from the season finale last spring. This leads to the best surprise of the episode, but I will get into that in a minute. I liked that MAS decided to keep Ward around. I may not like him as a person, but he makes a damn good villain. It looks like he will be taking on a Hannibal Lector type role in this season by consulting with the team on Hydra's inner workings. Skye seems to be a full agent in the new season also. According to Ward she is being trained by  May. You don't get to see any of this in the first episode, but I think it will be an interesting aspect to look at in future episodes. There was the introduction of a new super powered villain in the episode too. I believe they said his name was Crash I could be wrong on that though. Anyway Crash has the ability to change his molecular structure when he is touching a certain object. For example at one point in the episode he touches a tire, and he makes his hand into the same materiel as the tire. I think that they need to bring Deathlocke back to deal with this new threat seeing as how nobody else is really a match for him. Now the best part of the entire episode was the twist ending. The whole episode you saw Fitz and Simmons interacting with each other, but it turns out that Simmons had actually left the team months ago. Fitz had been talking to himself the whole time. He apparently has more brain damage than we were lead to believe early on. I really can't wait to see where the show takes this angle. It really makes me wonder why Simmons left. To me it seems like a shitty thing to do as a friend but maybe she has a good reason. I am very excited to see how this season plays out.

Gotham: Pilot

What do you get when you take the most corrupt fictional city in existence, the most incorruptible fictional cop, an unethical alcoholic detective, and a young grieving boy? If you guessed the best new show on TV, you would be right. I am speaking of course about Gotham. I may be biased because I love Batman, and anything to do with Batman. I essentially watched the show with Batman goggles on, and in my mind, it could do no wrong. I have been waiting for this show since I first heard about it last year.
The premise for Gotham is pretty awesome; it follows a young Jim Gordon as he tries to clean up the streets of Gotham. Jim isn't alone in this quest, though. He is accompanied by his alcoholic partner Harvey Bullock. Part of the thing that really drew me to the show other than the universe that it takes place in, is the fact that it is going to introduce us to the Batman villains that we have grown to love, but before they were full blown super villains.
This is definitely the most anticipated show of the new television season. It was so anticipated that Netflix is going to pay two-million dollars an episode for the streaming rights. For that kind of money, you would expect the episodes to play the very next day, but they don't. Netflix is paying that much an episode for the future streaming rights. I hope this means that Fox will want to make a little extra money, and give the season an even longer order of episodes than they normally would. While it is almost a sure thing, the show hasn't even been picked up for a full season order. That is how much faith Netflix has in it.

From this point on you should be warned that there are spoilers in this review.


The first episode of Gotham was exactly what I thought it was going to be. It starts out with the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne. I know a lot of people think that this should have been later on in the season, and the Wayne's should have been supporting characters, but I think in the long run this will take us quicker to Batman. Bruce is supposed to see his parents die when he is a kid. If they waited any longer people would probably complain that Bruce was too old. If Bruce was any older when he saw his parents die, he probably would have become some emo cutter instead of the worlds greatest detective. I also think that trying to solve the case of who killed the Wayne's is a great case to start Gordon and Bullock on. What other great crime can you think of that needs to be solved in the Batman universe? Their deaths rock the whole city, and you need to establish Gordon as the great cop/detective that he is by "solving" this crime. Not to anyone's surprise, they don't solve this case in the first episode, even though they think they do. It seems most of the episode was spent introducing us to the many supporting characters in the show. While some may think that Gotham blew its entire load in the first episode, I think that it was just setting up a universe that people will come back and watch every week. I could be wrong, but I doubt that The Riddler will be in every episode, and even if he is, I doubt the episodes will focus on him. When I saw that he was a CSI person I was like: 'mind blown'. I never even realized that that would be the perfect profession for him. I do have to say that Bullock telling him to not talk in riddles was kind of a slap in the face. It was like the people who wrote the episode thought they needed to spoon feed the audience with who each person becomes in the future. This also shows later on when they introduce a young Poison Ivy. She is shown tending to plants every time we see her. She is shown in two different scenes, if I remember right, and somehow I doubt a little girl is going to just stand in the same place wearing the same clothes tending to a plant. I don't care who she grows up to be. It was also pretty irritating that her name isn't Pamela, but that is neither here nor there. It was also pretty pointless to keep calling Oswald Cobblepot 'penguin'. We all know that he grows up to be The Penguin, but I don't really see what they mean when they tell him he looks like a penguin. Is it because he wears a tuxedo everywhere, or because of his nose? The ending to the show didn't really make any sense to me. Why did Oswald kill that old man? Was it just to kill a man? Did he really want his sandwich, because he wasn't really in the water that long? Am I supposed to assume that he was starving? I just wish the show would have explained the motives for this killing.
I thought the casting of the two leads in this show was pretty awesome, too. The only person that I knew from the cast was Donal Logue. When I was a teenager I loved him in Grounded for Life, and I love him in this show. I have never seen Ben McKenzie in anything, but I think he was perfectly cast in this role. He looks very innocent, but can be a real hard ass when he needs to be. I can't wait to see some of the other actors that make appearances in this show.
 Other than those few complaints I talked about, I absolutely loved this show, and I can't wait towatch it every week. Please let me know in the comment section what you thought about the pilot episode.

Revamp

So I started this blog a few months back, and I haven't posted anything to it in months. I learned that it was rather expensive to go to movies all the time, and when I could make it to movies, I really didn't feel like writing about them after. So my new plan is to write about more than just movies. I tend to spend much of my time watching TV because it is much cheaper, and more fun to watch. Where a movie will end after two hours, a tv show will go on for years and may add up to several hundred hours. The best part is this TV season is promising to be one of the best ones that I have seen in a long time. I absolutely love comic books, and it seems like television is now being tailored for people like me. On top of the returning shows like Arrow,and Marvels Agents of Shield, and the Walking Dead, there are new shows such as Constantine, Gotham, The Flash, I Zombie. My new goal is to watch as many of these shows as I can, and put out a review as soon as I can. We will see how well this goes, but hopefully it will go better than my effort to review movies. So I hope you enjoy my revamped blog, and I hope you help contribute to the ratings this season. Have a nice day

A Million Ways to Die in the West Review

Let me start this by saying that I love everything Seth Macfarlane puts out. I've been watching "Family Guy" almost since the beginning, and I have seen every episode of "American Dad" at least four times. I love the way he tells jokes and makes obscure references to things people probably haven't heard of. I'll be the first to admit some of the things he does in his TV shows goes on for a bit too long, but none the less, I love them. The range of voices Macfarlane can do is awesome. The same man does Stan Smith, Peter Griffin, Roger, Stewie, Brian, and several other loved characters. I also loved his directorial debut movie "Ted". I have always been a big fan of Mark Wahlberg and seeing him interact with a depraved teddy bear was hilarious. This was yet another time that Macfarlane lent his voice to an awesome character. It is because of all these reasons that I regret to say that "A Million Ways to Die in the West" is not Macfarlane at his best. What I mean by that, is his acting. Most of the jokes in "A Million Ways to Die in the West" are amazing. On more than one occasions, I found myself laughing… uncontrollably laughing. There is a part in the movie that involves a hat and some explosive diarrhea that was way funnier than it should have been. Yet most of the scenes that I laughed at, Macfarlane wasn't the one saying or doing the joke. The rest of the cast for this movie is what made it so great. You could literally take Macfarlane out of the movie and put any other actor in the same role and it would have been just as funny. His character is just an average underdog who has been portrayed in just about every movie since the beginning of movies. Macfarlane was only in this movie to stroke his ego, and boy does he have a big ego! One of the biggest problems I have with Seth Macfarlane is that he puts himself into his movies just to get his personal opinions out there. If you look at Brian Griffin from Family Guy and Seth Macfarlane's own views you will notice they are very similar. That is because Macfarlane uses Brian to get people to know his own opinion. He did the same thing with this movie. There is a certain joke in the movie about Parkinson's disease and God that really didn't need to be there and you could tell that the only reason it was in the movie was because Macfarlane had something to say. He doesn't act when he is on screen during this whole movie. I got the impression that he was just getting in front of the camera and reading lines. He had a fantastic supporting cast, but most of the screen time is spent on him. You would be introduced to an awesome supporting character and think to yourself, "I want to see more of them", but then you would get 20 minutes of Macfarlane before you got to see them again. I'm not saying Macfarlane should stay away from TV and movies. I'm just saying that he should stick to directing and writing them, and using his voice talents in them. He doesn't need to be seen on screen.

             

So who is this underrated supporting cast that I keep talking about? Before I get into the big names, I want to mention Christopher Hagen who played Macfarlane's dad in this movie. Every time that man spoke during the movie, I was left in stitches. There is even a scene where you don't see his character but you can hear him, and he delivers a line that I'm still laughing at as I write this. My absolute favorite character in this movie was Foy who was played by Neil Patrick Harris. I am biased toward NPH because I love everything he does. I want to go to New York City and watch him in "Hedwig and the Angry Inch", and I didn't even like that movie. I will go on record to say that Barney Stinson is the best TV character ever created. I will defend my answer of Foy being my favorite character though. It comes down to two things. The first thing is he has an awesome mustache that even gets a song. Second, is that he has the best scene in the entire movie. As a close second though, when it comes to favorite characters, is Sarah Silverman's Ruth. Ruth is a whore who works in the local saloon getting screwed all day by at least 10 men… 'and that's on a slow day'. What makes her an enjoyable character is that she has a boyfriend who she won't have sex with because they are waiting for marriage. She has some of the funniest lines in the entire movie especially after she is done meeting with a "gentlemen" caller. Ruth's boyfriend Edward is played by Giovanni Ribisi. I love Ribisi from many different things like the television show "Dads", "My Name is Earl", and "Ted". He is just a funny guy who is good at playing a nervous guy who doesn't really like to step out of his comfort zone. He is also good at playing a complete psychopath as can be seen in "Ted." This movie also had Liam Neeson, Charlize Theron, and Amanda Seyfried. They weren't as funny but their characters were still better than Macfarlane's.

            Before I give my final thoughts on this movie, I want to talk about something this movie did and so many other movies are doing. The trailers for movies are giving too much away. It completely ruins the surprise of something if you are expecting it to happen. Take this movie, for example. In the trailers you see Macfarlane open up a barn door and see Doc Brown from "Back to the Future" in the barn covering up the Delorean. Macfarlane asks what he's doing and he says 'a weather experiment'. This whole scene is about 10 seconds long, and it was in the trailer for the movie! When I went in, I expected to see more to it than that, but the 10 seconds that were in the trailer were literally all there was to the scene in the movie. For some stupid reason the people who made the trailer decided to ruin what could have been a really funny cameo. While I was watching that scene, I didn't have the reaction that was intended. Instead, I just watched it and was like "so that's were that fit into the movie." More and more trailers are ruining the movie by putting too much in them. Just the other day, I saw a trailer for the new "How to Train Your Dragon" movie and when it was over, I felt like I had just watched the entire movie. This trailer literally had a beginning, a middle, and an end-type of storyline. If the movie company who made that movie wanted to keep people guessing, they should have showed the masked dragon rider and not shown that it was the main character's mother. It feels like that is a major plot point they are giving away. Another culprit of this is the "Amazing Spiderman 2" which showed the villain Rhino in all of the trailers but his role in the movie was little more than a cameo. I can't be the only one who thinks this. Leave a comment and let me know if you agree. Now onto the final opinion of what I think of "A Million Ways to Die in the West."

            All in all, I love this movie. It may not seem that way because of the first part of the review, but I just wanted to point out the one main flaw that I saw. It is great to see a comedy western. I have never seen "Blazing Saddles" so I can't compare this movie to it. I would recommend "A Million Ways to Die in the West" to just about anyone. I give it a 9 out of 10 stars.

Godzilla Review

Let me start this review by saying that I don't know that much about Godzilla. I'm pretty sure the only Godzilla movie I have ever seen was the 1998 Matthew Broderick film. From what I know now, that movie sucks. I haven't seen it in years so I can't give my opinion on the matter. So I went into this movie only knowing what I have read about Godzilla. I know that sometimes he is the person that the military goes after and sometimes he saves humanity. This movie kinda had both. There were scenes were the military shot at Godzilla, and many scenes where he saves the day. I'm going to try and do this review with as few of spoilers as I can manage.

             

The plot to this movie is pretty straight forward. There is a secret program that has been housing and experimenting on a giant egg sac they found. The egg sac hatches into some flying bug creature (not Mothra, I should add), and the government needs to stop it. This all leads to the revelation that Godzilla is out there and maybe he could help save the day. Intermingled through this whole plot is some stuff about a guy and his father and the same guy and his wife. Those scenes don't really matter when you go to a movie to see giant monsters fight, or a giant monster destroy a city. I have to say that I did kinda enjoy the scenes without the giant monsters, but I really just wanted to watch Godzilla do his thing. It was a bit of a letdown that it took about 45-50 minutes before Godzilla was actually on screen. You saw him briefly during the opening credits but that doesn't really count. 

             

The cast of this movie could have been switched with anyone around the same age as the actors in this movie and it wouldn't have been that big of a difference. I have to give Bryan Cranston credit for being in this movie. The way the trailers made it seem, you would think that he was the star of the movie. I would say his role is just above a cameo. I love Cranston's work on both Breaking Bad, and Malcolm in the Middle. I had my fingers crossed that the Lex Luthor rumors surrounding him were true, and was very heart broken that they weren't. He is a very talented actor and was great in what little of the movie he was in. Aaron Taylor-Johnson was the only other actor in this movie who I really liked, and I couldn't stand his name in the movie. The characters name was Ford, and I think that a couple of scientists would have come up with something a little less redneck sounding. I have been a fan of his since he did Kick-Ass, and he was the reason that I wanted to see the movie Savages, and it is just nice to see that he is becoming a bigger actor. I can't wait to see him in Avengers Age of Ultron. As far as this movie goes, though, I think that his character was just too "lucky". I usually hate when people say that the movie wouldn't have happened to a certain character if it weren't for a bunch of coincidences, but in this case it is true. Everywhere Ford goes, some kind of monster wrecks the place. He goes to Japan, and there is a monster wrecking stuff. He leaves Japan, and goes to Hawaii, and 'surprise, surprise' two monsters. He goes somewhere on the west coast next, and there is another monster. Finally he makes it back to his home in San Francisco, and all three monsters are there. On top of all this, after Hawaii, he is riding around with the military. I hate people who say "that is unrealistic" during a movie, but damn it: that is unrealistic! Sure Ford is a military person himself, but no squadron is going to just let somebody they don't know travel with them and be key parts of their mission. They would have told him to 'fuck off'. I think that Johnson did the best he could with what he was given. Now on to the worst part of the cast. Elizabeth Olsen was absolute shit in this movie. I have no idea how she got this job or any other acting job. Any scene that she was in was horrible. I didn't buy any of her emotions for a second. It's pretty bad when two CGI monsters are showing more emotion and love for each other than a real actress could, but it's true. There was absolutely no chemistry between her and her onscreen husband, Johnson. I am very concerned that she is in the next Avengers movie. I think that she should just go work for her sisters, and leave acting behind her. The CGI monster was more concerned with its young than Olsen expressed for her child in the movie. I have never seen her in anything else, so maybe this just wasn't the role for her. I just hope she doesn't ruin what should be the best movie of next summer.

            

I know it seems that I didn't like this movie, but I truly did. Godzilla looked like an updated version of what he used to. He had radioactive fire breath, and an amazing roar. I loved how the movie kept teasing you of a monster fight scene, and then cutting away. It really built up to the final fight between Godzilla and the bad monsters. I have to say this movie had the best "French kissing" scene I have seen in a long time. Overall I have to say that if you want to see Godzilla kick some major ass. this is definitely the movie for you. I give it a 7 out of 10.    

Neighbors Review

I went into this movie with high hopes, and boy was I not disappointed. Neighbors was even better than I could have imagined. It had an impressive cast that I will talk about in a minute. It had a pretty damn funny story, and kept me laughing until the very end. The people who made this movie took a concept (feuding neighbors) that has been used over and over again in sitcoms, and turned it into something that would make your grandma blush. 

I have been a big fan of Seth Rogen since I saw him in Superbad, and even liked his try at being a superhero in The Green Hornet. I have never considered myself a fan of Zac Efron. When I looked at him, I just saw some douchebag kid from those really shitty High School Musical movies. I did see him in 17 Again, but I only watched that movie because Thomas Lennon was in it, and I will watch almost anything he is in. I have to say this movie completely changed my mind about Zac Efron. If he sticks to adult comedy movies, I think he can have a long future. The rest of the cast really worked quite well.

It was nice to see Dave Franco in another great movie, (who played the Vice President of the fraternity in Neighbors). I liked him in both this and 21 Jump Street. I wonder if he got the part because he is funny or because his older brother is good friends with Rogen. Either way, I liked him as the Frat guy who partied hard, but also knew all good parties come to an end someday. I don't think he could ever hold a movie together by himself, but I definitely think he can go far as a supporting character. Another great supporting character in this movie was Christopher Mintz-Plasse's character Scoonie. Christopher Mintz-Plasse has become one of my favorite young actors. He was great in Superbad as McLovin', and has been impressing me since. By far my favorite role he has played was The MotherFucker in Kick-Ass 2. I am a huge comic book fan, and I really love Kick-Ass so to see him bring that particular role to life was a real treat. 

As far as female roles in this movie go, I really liked Rose Byrne as Rogen's wife and the "momma bear" willing to do anything to keep her home safe for her baby. I didn't realize it at the time I was watching the movie, but she was Jackie Q in Get Him to the Greek. I did not like her character in that movie, but she more than made up for it in this one. The other female role that I really liked was Carla Gallo. I know her from many different things, but the two that stick out to me most are her roles as Daisy Wick in the TV show Bones, and the period blood girl in Superbad. She had one of my favorite scenes in Superbad. I about pissed my pants laughing at that scene. I never really liked her character in Bones. I found her very annoying. In this movie, she played a party girl who was just a bit too old to be partying, but she would never realize this. She also has one of my favorite lines in the movie when she is talking to her ex-husband and tells him they should have a baby to solve all their problems. 

Like I said before, the plot of Neighbors at its core was just a rehash of many plots about feuding neighbors. Only, this movie put a spin on it by making the neighbors a Frat house. The best part about this particular take on an old plot is that it takes a look at two different transition periods in people's lives. On the one hand, you have a group of college seniors who party all the time, but will soon be out of college, and into the real world where you can't party all the time. On the other hand, you have a couple who are new parents, and haven't really adjusted to their new roles in life. You can tell that both Seth Rogen's and Rose Byrne's characters just want to have a little fun in their lives instead of doing the same thing every night. This is evident from the first time they go to a frat party and get super drunk while their daughter is at home sleeping. I don't want to get into too many particulars about the plot so I'm just going to tell you one small thing that should be enough to make you go see this movie. There is a point during Neighbors when Zac Efron's penis goes into Seth Rogen's mouth. This is in my opinion one of the best scenes in any movie ever. I'm just kidding about that, but I'm not joking about the penis thing. That actually happens. 

Like most movies, this one was not perfect. The biggest flaw I saw was that throughout most of the movie, I found myself asking where the baby was. Rogen and Byrne's may have loved their daughter but they sure did leave her alone a lot. As young as the baby was, I would never leave her alone as long as they did. My other big complaint about this movie was that during one of the scenes, Rose Byrne's character kisses two other characters that aren't her husband. One of them makes sense and was supposed to be sexy. Rogen sees this particular kiss and you can tell by his face that he is turned on. I don't think he saw the other kiss because if he had I think there  would have been a big fight between him and his wife. My problem here is I think they missed a big opportunity to cause tension between the husband and wife. Other things that didn't make quite as much sense eventually caused tension, but this felt like a missed opportunity. 

All in all, I think that Neighbors was a great way to start off my summer movie viewing, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who needs a good laugh. I give it 8.5 out of 10.