Alan Rapp

Everything is Awesome

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The LEGO Movie
  • IMDB: link

The LEGO MovieWith a mix of stop-motion and CGI effects (some purposely cheesy enough to show you the string holding figures in frame) The LEGO Movie delivers an energetic and enjoyable story with a nice message for kids. A cynical person would note that the film is basically a 100-minute commercial to sell the various (mostly over-priced) specialized sets and figures that make up the LEGO franchise. However, the movie (for the most part) puts the story and characters first while also promoting the basic message of the building blocks that allow you to build anything you can imagine.

Beginning with an awkward opening scene involving a wizard (Morgan Freeman), the film’s villain Lord Business (Will Ferrell), and a prophecy about “The Special,” the movie gets off to a bit of a shaky start (although it does eventually backtrack to put the events into context). Jumping years in the future we’re introduced to our hero, unremarkable construction worker Emmet Brickowoski (Chris Pratt), who finds the mythical Piece of Resistance which can prevent Business’ plans of destruction.

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High Plains Drifter

/ / Home Video
  • Title: High Plains Drifter
  • IMDB: link

High Plains DrifterRecently released on Blu-ray, High Plains Drifter is one of my favorite Clint Eastwood films. Eastwood stars as the nameless Stranger who wanders into the lawless western mining town of Lago. After dispatching three outlaws with relative ease, the town decides to hire the Stranger to deal with three gunfighters (Geoffrey Lewis, Anthony James, Dan Vadis) on their way back to the town which allowed, and then jailed, the outlaws for killing the town’s sheriff.

The Stranger agrees, but decides to take payment for his services in unusual ways, including raping own of the women folk (Marianna Hill) who gets in his way, making the town jester (Billy Curtis) the new sheriff, and ordering the entire town to paint every building in Lago bright red.

Although High Plains Drifter isn’t exactly subtle, the allegory of vengeance works well as the audience, but not the towns folk, will soon guess who the Stranger is and what brought him to Lago.

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Psych – Cog Blocked

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Psych – Cog Blocked
  • wiki: link

“We just got smoked by a blind ninja.”

Psych - Cog Blocked

Dragged to a crime scene against his will, Gus (Dulé Hill) becomes obsessed with the apparent suicide of a man whose life eerily mirrors his own. Taking things personally, to an absurd amount, Gus bullies the pair onto the case convinced a man like Gus couldn’t have committed suicide. Humoring his best-friend, Shawn (James Roday) and Gus’ investigation lead them to a beautiful private investigator (Kali Hawk) with serious martial arts skills and a penchant for pretending to be blind, a shady Russian night club with a great buffet, and to the discovery of a complicated insurance scam that got their victim killed.

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Beware the Batman #4

/ / Comics

Beware the Batman #4Obviously set to be released after an episode of Beware of the Batman that never aired, Beware the Batman #4 features a two version of Man-Bat long after Batman‘s unseen first meeting with scientist Kirk Langstrom and includes Barbara Gordon working with Team Batman as Oracle.

Despite building on events and relationships that neither the show nor the comic have covered, the latest issue works well enough playing on a familiar storyline of Batman and Man-Bat working together to find someone else who has been exposed to the serum and transformed into a Man-Bat (in this case the young student Barbara had been tutoring).

With the show not returning to the air in January as scheduled I have a feeling these gaps in continuity could continue which may be why DC has decided to end the comic series after issue #6. As to the fate of the cartoon, given that neither DC nor Cartoon Network have discussed it in months, one has to wonder if it will meet a similar fate. Worth a look.

[DC, $2.99]

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The Monuments Men

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Monuments Men
  • IMDb: link

The Monuments Men

Originally planned for a Christmas release, The Monuments Men finally makes it into theaters this weekend. Directed and co-written by George Clooney, who also stars as George L. Stout, the film is a war-time picture highlighting an unusual group of heroes. Based on true accounts, The Monuments Men tells the story of Stout and other over-aged art experts and connoisseurs who were put together by Franklin D. Roosevelt to save priceless art being plundered and destroyed by the Nazis during WWII.

The group of Monuments Men includes Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, and Bob Balaban, along with Englishman Hugh Bonneville, and Frenchman Jean Dujardin. A little bit Ocean’s Eleven and a little bit old school war film, Clooney’s latest project begins with Stout stumping for the need for such and organization and recruiting old friends on what many in both Washington and on the battlefield see as nothing more than a fool’s errand. From basic training through searching abandoned German salt mines after the end of WWII, the film follows the fate of the unusual band of art experts and historians turned soldiers and the treasures they seek.

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