Green Hornet

The Green Hornet has about as much intellectual stimulation as the popcorn I ate while watching it, but like the popcorn, it is buttery, delicious, and fun.

Seth Rogen plays Britt Reid, your average playboy millionaire who decides to start fighting crime after his father accuses him of being a failure and dies. Seth Rogen approaches the part with his normal stoner/slacker style, and for the most part, it works out well for him. Together with Kato, his right hand man, mechanic, driver, bodyguard, and sidekick, who is also the only part of the crime fighting duo who can actually physically fight crime, he takes to the streets in a pimped-out Chrysler (yo dawg, I heard you like machine guns, so we put machine guns in your cars so you can kill while you drive), posing as a theatrical criminal in order to trick the underworld.

As funny as Seth Rogen is as the lazy and underachieving Britt Reid, that one trick pony only has so many performances left before audiences are going to get tired of rooting for the pudgy, Jewish, stoned underdog, but Green Hornet was a great first step away from the bong-boy and into a real action hero role. The few fight scenes he has, he literally kicks ass.

What was really surprising about Rogen in this picture was not his performance but just the fact that he was such a goddamn fucking workhorse. In addition to starring in it he co-wrote, co-produced, and even did some of the casting.

Jay Chou, who is apparently a huge pop star over in Taiwan, plays Kato, Britt Reid's right hand man, mechanic, driver, bodyguard, and sidekick, who is also the only part of the crime fighting duo who can actually physically fight crime. As Kato (the part formerly played by Bruce Lee), Jay takes the term "action star" and punches it straight in the balls and makes it his bitch. I hope to see more of him. He made a great straight man for Rogen's goofball antics.

The movie has lots of laughs, goes for gizzard when it comes to fight sequences, and the black Chrysler they drive around in, dubbed Black Beauty, just about made me jizz all over the already-sticky theater floor.

While it may not be the kind of flick that makes you think, it did prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I need a tiny Asian sidekick.

3.5 Stars.

Seeing Red

The CIA decide to off a couple of retired agents because they "know too much." The thing is, Frank Moses just doesn't feel like dying, so he proceeds to kick everyone's ass 'til he and his former co-workers can figure out what is going on and who wants them dead.

Bruce Willis (Die Hard, Die Hard 2, The Kid) is Frank Moses, and he does his normal brand of semi-quiet, witty face-punching like he has done in every action movie he has made, and it is still entertaining.

Mary-Louise Parker (Weeds) plays Sara, Frank's only friend, and is completely unaware of his past as a government gunslinger until people start trying to kill her. Mary plays the part well with humor and big, beautiful glassy eyes.

John Malkovich plays the insane Marvin Boggs. When has Malkovich ever not done a great job at being insane?

Morgan Freeman (Shawshank Redemption, Bruce Almighty) plays Joe, but his part felt a little undercooked, like a turkey that hasn't been in the oven long enough.

Helen Mirren (National Treasure 2, The Queen) plays Victoria and shoots an Uzi. That right there is worth the ticket price.

Rounding out the cast is Karl Urban as William Cooper, the CIA spook in charge of taking these old people to their graves. Maybe I am still nerd-ing out over his performance as McCoy in Star Trek but Karl Urban is freaking awesome.

This is also one of the few action movies, packed with explosions and gun fire, at which I saw people over the age of 60 attending and having just as good a time as me.

The script is hilarious, the action scenes are tight, and the soundtrack boosts the movie to another level.

4.5 stars

Let's go get pancakes.

Inception

Inception is about a band of thieves that slip into your mind while you dream and steal your secrets. At its core it is a heist movie... sort of. This time around, rather than being hired to steal a secret, they are to implant one.

I sat down in the theater and prepared to have my mind thoroughly fucked, but it never happened. The movie talks about mazes a lot, yet the plot is pretty simple. I was expecting a lot of fancy wonder, which there was some of, but not enough. In a movie about dreams, you expect to see stuff in dreams, like, I don't know, an elephant just chilling in the middle of the crosswalk. Last night, I had a dream about a ghost hopping across my ceiling and leaving cartoon style foot prints all over the place. Weird, I know, but it seemed logical at the time. The dreams in Inception are, for the most part, just like reality.

The directing, acting, and writing were all fine, neither outstanding nor terrible except for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who seems to always be awesome.

3.5 stars and some encouragement to wait until DVD