There once were six seasons of Lost

"The End" was a task Herculean

Discussions could go on for eons

For those craving answers

I'd ask would you rather

Been told it was midichlorians?

There once was a Hood they called Robin

This version of Robin is gritty

And missing the repartee witty

But altho it's grimmer

The movie's a winner

And all of the issues are nitty

Despite a problematic pre-production, this new Robin Hood turned out pretty good. What originally was conceived as "Nottingham" with the twist of the legendary Sheriff as hero has, after several rewrites and delays, been refocused on Robin, but as a Gladiator-esque prequel that sets up the Sherwood Forest saga. And before you think Jar Jar Binks, don't worry – while it definitely diverges from the original story, this decidedly darker take still treats the legend with respect.

Russel Crowe's take on the Hood is fairly understated: he's not the wisecracking animated fox of the Disney movie, but does imbue the role with some wry humor. He's not a dashing swashbuckler in the style of Errol Flynn, but does build a slow-burn romance with Marian (Cate Blanchett, who's reimagined as more of a warrior than cut from the classic Maid mold). And his accent is certainly more consistent than Kevin Costner's.

Prolly the best thing about this prequel is that it's not simply arranging the building blocks of the well-told legend. Yes, all the pieces get put in place: Robin redistributes wealth from the rich to the poor, meets the Merry Men (well, as merry as they get in the Middle Ages), fires off a few arrows, etc. But there's an actual adventure here, chronicling Robin's rise from an archer in the ranks of Richard the Lionheart's army slogging their way home from the Crusades to a defender of the people under the corrupt thumb of British rule.

It's not the fast-paced franchise starter that's typical of the summer, but despite a few meandering moments, Ridley Scott's look at the Robin Hood legend is worth a watch. Nothing spectacular, but solidly entertaining.

There once was a Man made of Iron

Though Iron Man is known for soaring

The second one's notably boring

Too bad that this sequel

The first film can't equal

You would be forgiven for snoring.

Despite starring a second-tier superhero, the first Iron Man movie succeeded thanks to a terrific turn by Robert Downey, Jr. plus a generally upbeat tone and snappy sense of style. The sequel, while featuring the same star and director, has none of the energy that made the first one so fun. Apparently story problems plagued the production, with the script not being set before shooting and many of the plots being worked out along the way. It shows – the movie is a muddled mess of uninteresting side stories that does little more than serve as a teaser for the upcoming Avengers films.

SPOILERS AHEAD, I suppose, altho I'm not sure how much that warning matters as so little actually happens.

While the series' creators did a terrific job in realizing the Tony Stark/Iron Man character, in two full films they've yet to create a villain worth watching. Mickey Rourke wanders around as "Whiplash," an inventor competitor that tries to exact revenge for Tony Stark's father wronging his father mostly by mumbling threats through an incomprehensible accent and typing instructions to robots with his ruddy dinosaur fingers. His partner in crime is Justin Hammer, whose evil scheme is the imaginative idea of making slightly different versions of Iron Man suit, just with more guns. Much of this action takes place at the "Stark Expo," a World's Fair of sorts that Tony Stark has apparently built at his own expense in order to make military product introductions to cheering throngs of fans. For a calendar year.

Recast and miscast, respectively, are Don Cheadle and Scarlett Johansson as frenemy James Rhodes who becomes the silver version of Iron Man known as War Machine and as Natasha Romanov who reveals herself to be the worldy superspy Black Widow. Cheadle's not awful, but plays no real role other than to strap on a suit in order to fight Stark when he's drunk. In what purports to be the film's climax, War Machine's weapons get hacked into and he attempts to shoot Iron Man, but the fact that he can warn Stark about every threat diminishes any potential tension more than a little bit. Johansson, while she can certainly fill out a black catsuit, isn't right for the role, as her apple-cheeked sexiness doesn't exactly scream "exotic Eastern European assassin."

Amidst these subplots is Tony Stark's search for a new element to add to the periodic table and replace the power core that keeps his heart pumping. Watching the protagonist research technological upgrades via old videotapes and new virtual screens does not a thrillride make. It's really one of the dullest superhero movies in recent memory – aside from some fun lines from Downey, Jr and nods to other heroes (Nick Fury, Thor, Captain America, etc.) there's nothing of consequence here. Tony Stark gets sick and he's given the cure. His assistant Pepper Potts gets promoted to CEO and quits within a week. Bad robots appear and Iron Man shoots then. And so on. Aside from the murky idea of an arms race to make more Iron Man suits, there's nothing propelling the plot, no sense of danger that matters.

It's a real disappointment and wasted opportunity. Rather than capitalizing on a stunning debut, Iron Man 2 is about as exciting as ironing.

There once was an ops team called Losers

Altho this is based on a comic

It's more like an old-school action flick

With lots of explosions

And brain cell erosion

It's fun but also dumb as a brick.

Some stuff always gets lost when translating books (even the comic kind ;) to the big screen. The original Losers comic was not a sacrosanct masterpiece by any means, but the movie version is missing the book's edge. Losing the R-rated language to gain a PG-13 audience isn't a big deal, but shaving the interesting off a couple of characters hurts and switching between slo-mo and hypertime shots doesn't quite capture the comic's visual style. For a bit of comparison, here's the comic version of the poster:

The movie's credits are executed with similar artistic flair, and they serve as a final reminder of why the rest of the film feels a little ordinary. Perhaps it could've used some 300-style digital grading to give it some style, because mostly it comes off as the ode to 80s action movies that Cop Out tried to be. But the real loss is Zoe Saldana's character Aisha, sanitized from an unhinged force of nature killer to a sassy gunslinger with a penchant for Flashdance shirts.

So, taking off my "the comic was better" hat for a moment, is the flick any fun? Yeah – some.

It's a very simple tale of revenge – a Special Ops team gets blamed for a mission going wrong and consequently burned by the CIA. After a few months of everyone thinking they're dead, the Losers gear up and strike back at the main villain, a mysterious man named Max that wanted them out of the way. And that's basically it – there's some nonsense about "snukes," a mythical bomb that sucks everything in its path into a wormhole of sorts by way of questionable CGI, but it's an obviously shoehorned-in plot that exists purely to give the Losers a vaguely heroic image.

This is the kind of movie where instead of driving around an obstacle, a henchman drives his Ducati up a previously unseen ramp to leap over a plane. The kind of movie where the two main characters decide whether they can trust each other by brutally fighting and setting the room on fire before having sex. The kind of movie where a guy gets shot in both legs, makes many jokes about the fact that he can't stand up because he's been shot in both legs, then eventually stands up just fine on both legs... when he needs to shoot people. And so on.

So if you put your brain on the back burner, it's not half bad, but at best it's only half good.

There once was an Ass that got Kicked

There's plenty of fresh controversy
About this satirical movie
At the end of the day
The flick is ok
You're fine if you just wait for TV





Kick-Ass doesn't, totally. It certainly has moments, but they're kind of hit and miss. So in that vein, let's go bad news/good news.

First, the misses – mostly plotting and a bit of casting. To say the film's unfocused would be an understatement. It purports to be a deconstructionist superhero story, but doesn't really look at the psyche behind the kind of people with no powers who pick up the cape and cowl to fight crime. Whereas something like Watchmen really examines what those choices would do to people, Kick-Ass mostly uses that conceit as a flight of fancy.

Also, the plot is pretty messy. There's the story of an average high-schooler becoming fed up with the evil in the world, purchasing a wetsuit and becoming Kick-Ass, street-level superhero. Much is made of how this inspires people to join his cause, wear his t-shirts, create comics about him, etc... but the other superhero stars of the film turn out to be completely unrelated. Rather than being inspired by Kick-Ass's emergence, these highly polished vigilantes (Big Daddy as a mean spin on Batman and Hit Girl, the tween assassin) are mostly embarrassed by his actions. In a world where the main character wants nothing more than real-world superheroes, why had he never heard of these two?

Another miss is the antagonist – a Central Casting mobster and his cadre of generic wiseguys. The basic inspiration behind the movie is of regular joes becoming superheroes... wouldn't some of them take the supervillain route instead? Watching Generic Crime Boss become increasingly annoyed that his drug trade is being interrupted or some such thing is beyond forgettable.

And speaking of casting, more misses: Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Superbad's McLovin') stays well within his wheelhouse – mealymouthed awkwardness with a touch of whiny profanity. If that's your thing, enjoy, but I think we're seeing the edge of his clearly limited range. And Nicolas Cage delivers all his lines with a halting cadence reminiscent of a fairly creepy science teacher, robbing every scene of any emotional impact.

But there are a couple hits in the cast, too – Aaron Johnson is relaxed and natural as the titular hero. He doesn't over- or under-play his face-in-the-crowd character, making him pretty approachable and his actions almost believable. But the breakout star is Chloe Grace Moretz as Hit Girl. Child actors are generally tiresome at best, but Moretz is remarkably natural and appealing. Her role could've been a film-killing embarrassment, but thanks to her it's a highlight.

That said, Hit Girl's the epicenter of the movie's controversy. Oddly, what seems to be upsetting people more than giving an 11-year old mass-murder the hero treatment is the fact that she drops the "C-word" at one point. That's completely backward, but I do have to say that there is something a bit queasy watching her perform bullet-riddled ballets. Or getting punched in the face by a grown man 'til she's weary and bloody. I'm not generally one for hand-wringing about the perils of copycat media and such, but the fact that her weapons and methods are all (relatively) realistic and obtainable means I would prolly pass on selling Hit Girl Halloween costumes at Toys 'r Us.

But it's a common contradiction inherent in the film – is this a comment on the oversexualization and hyperviolent treatment of women in the media or just a check-your-head-balls-to-the-wall-fantasy-action flick? Overall, the movie feels a little have your cake and smash it over someone's head, too. That said, there's an underlying spirit to it that sort of makes it work. The movie's kind of a mishmosh, but at heart the idea of everyday people unwilling to let the world slide into evil is appealing enough to make you root for even the most sociopathic of superheroes. Well, except for Nic Cage.

So if the trailer looked like your ultimate fanboy fantasy, the movie'll generally fulfill it. If you're purely looking for Hong Kong action acrobatics, you'll be somewhat underwhelmed, save for a few moments that are undeniably kinetically cool. It's not grand enough in scale to insist on a big-screen viewing, and may actually play better at home where it's freed from the expectations of an event movie. It may not completely kick ass, but you won't feel like you got your ass kicked, either.

There once was a Clash of the Titans

I had pretty low expectations

For this battle of Heaven's creations

The editing's shaky

Some CGI's fakey

But worthy of recommendations.

Clash of the Titans is perfect fodder for a remake – a film people remember fairly fondly, but really isn't particularly good. The modern version isn't a timeless classic, but a well-crafted update to an ancient tale.

Sam Worthington inherits Harry Hamlin's sandals as Perseus, the demigod son of Zeus on a quest to avenge the death of his family and assert humanity's place in the face of the gods. Mostly this involves fighting a bunch of CGI monsters – scorpions, snakes, and scenery chewers like Liam Neeson and Ralph "Call Me Rafe" Finnes. Looming over everything (under, really) is The Kraken, a sea creature created by the deities as the final option to keep their human subjects in line.

Gone are the stop-motion-Harryhausen-animation and R2D2 ripoff Bubo the mechanical owl, replaced by CGI and a somewhat snide cameo that would've been comparable to Jar Jar Binks tripping over an Ewokskin rug. The effects are a little inconsistent, as some strive for a similar stop-motion feel while others are hyper-edited to the point of being obscured. And the flick feels a bit like it's stuck on fast-forward – in addition to some slightly rushed action sequences, a few of the films revelation's pop up with little to no setup.

But look, it works. Clash is a fitting start to the summer season in that it's a great light blockbuster. Michael Bays of the world take note – one can put out a piece of popcorn entertainment that isn't a complete insult to your intelligence. As Perseus and Co. marched on, I found myself more involved than expected. Worthington's an appealing onscreen presence, and the supporting cast of (admittedly stock) characters are worth watching as well. It's a swords and sandals Saturday serial from people who seem to have had a genuinely good time making the movie, and that spirit carries over to the viewer. Enjoy – I did.