#7 – Shrek

A few too many poo jokes and pop-culture references for me to put it very high on the list, but this really is a fun movie.

#6 – Prince of Egypt

This animated rendition of the story of Moses is really quite epic in its scope.  It’s a big story with big emotions, but still retains a lot of humanity in the core emotions of the lead characters.  The songs are pretty catchy too, and a lot of the voice work is stellar.

#5 – Land Before Time

This movie made me cry when I was younger.  That is all.

#4 – Iron Giant

This is a surprisingly touching movie, but what makes it work is the underplayed, natural way the story and events unfold and the way the relationships feel.  The relationships unfold in a very real, natural way, which is often difficult to achieve.  Plus, as a young boy, the idea of having a pet 100-foot tall robot is just awesome.

#3 – Secret of Nimh

Probably Don Bluth’s best movie, I didn’t like this one very much when I was younger (I preferred movies with masculine wise-cracking male leads) but I found a new appreciation when I was older.  The film has a lot of depth to the characters and what is happening, but it never gets over the top or preachy about it.  Many of the issues and morals that are grappled with are underplayed or not discussed, but an insightful viewer can easily understand the greater meaning behind it all.  Definitely worth your time.

#2 – How To Train Your Dragon

I didn’t expect much from this movie when I first heard about it.  I knew Dreamworks was capable of making solid movies (Shrek and the like) but in the initial trailers, I thought it looked just ok.  But then it got great reviews.  And more and more people I knew recommended it.  I finally decided to check it out.  It blew me away.  The characters are all very well constructed, the subject matter is compelling, the movie knows the proper way to use 3D, and the music is just amazing.  And while I won’t spoil it, I think that the ending to this film was probably one of the best I’ve ever seen in a “kids” movie.  Seriously, watch this movie.

#1 – Everything Pixar has ever made

Once and for all, PIXAR IS NOT DISNEY.  Pixar was an independent animation studio that had exactly nothing to do with Disney until 2006.  Some of their animators got their start at Disney before working for Pixar, but most animators worked for Disney at some point.  In 2006 Disney bought Pixar, but the powers and minds that be at Pixar still retain creative control over the movies they make.

For Attebiz Movie Reviews, I’m the J-Man.

The boy trains the horse and the horse almost literally becomes the boy’s best friend.  No one believes that a small horse like Joey can pull the till, but the boy has faith and trudges on to till the entire field is completed.  It was a very emotional moment in the movie.  After the field is finished the worthless drunk father sells the horse to the war department.  The next hour of the film is the audience following the horse as it goes from owner to owner, German and English sides, and even to a young German girl.

The film is most certainly a Steven Speilberg directed film as many of you might know.  If you didn’t know well you need to read more.  He has a sense of making movies epic, but emotionally drawing at the same time.   I think it fits well into this movie.  It seems almost designed to make you cry.  Although I didn’t, because I’m a man and that comes with a sense of pride, my wife cried quite a bit during the movie as I know yours will too.  It’s understandable though, the scenes were very intense.

Well for those of you worried about this animal movie.  The horse does not die.  Thank goodness.  Again this movie was pretty intense and I wouldn’t recommend that you take your children to it just because a horse is in it.  There is a decently brutal scene where Joey gets tagled in barg wire.  Was it hard to watch, yes, but moments in which you cry make you stronger I believe.

The cast wasn’t remarkable but it wasn’t bad.  Acceptable is a good word.  There are some well known British actors like Jeremy Irvine and Harry Potter’s David Thewlis.

I loved this music, but it was a little much in the first hour.

This movie gets a 89%.  For Attebiz movie reviews this is Nathan Atteberry

Disney has a new movie coming out called John Carter

Well lets see here. I found the visual effects amazing on this movie.  The entire film was beautiful.  The night sky of Paris could make the least romantic of us feel like buying our lady some flowers.  Not to say that this movie is a chick flick, it just personifies the magic of Paris and the romance that comes with it.

I thought the film was likable and easy to fall in love with.  Was it the best film of the year?  No.  I thought it was worth the movie theater prices and perhaps a rental in the future.   The film reminded me a lot of Autumn Rush, the feeling of good rushing through your body afterwards.   Watching a boy loose his father (sorry spoiler) to going to a family that loves him dearly is a nice turn of events.

So what did I think of this movie?  I loved it.  Then again, I did grow up with the Muppets, so the nostalgia factor was through the roof for me.  And in many ways, I think that anybody’s enjoyment of this move will be directly tied to their history with the Muppets.

For instance, if you really liked the Muppets, you will love this movie.

If you were indifferent to the Muppets, but like musicals, you will find this movie enjoyable.

If you are pretty much anybody else, wait for it on Netflix, if at all.

The humor of this film is very much in line with what the Muppets have always been, while still feeling fresh and new in a few different ways.  The cameos were all perfect, including one extremely unexpected cameo during the best musical number in the movie.  The dialogue is sharp and witty, and I found myself laughing throughout.  The story was extremely relevant, and the humor works on several levels.  The musical numbers were a joy as well.

If I had to find a flaw, the fourth wall jokes started to wear a bit thin by the third act, but luckily the movie wasn’t trying to rely too heavily on them.

But even that wasn’t too bad.

Ultimately, I loved this movie to death, and I highly recommend it.

94 out of 100.

For Attebiz Movie Reviews, I’m the J-Man.

So next year, The Avengers is coming out in theaters, as directed by nerd-Jesus Joss Whedon.  Something occurred to me as I was watching the new trailer for the movie:  somebody is going to die.  Not like extras and civilians, one of the main characters is going to bite the dust.  They have to.

Why do I say that?

Joss Whedon’s history, that’s why.  Good ol’ Joss has a way of crafting amazing, loveable characters who are 3-dimensional and that you really care about, and then killing them.  Prime examples:  Serenity and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog.

In Serenity, the pilot of the ship is Wash, who is easily one of the funniest characters in the show.  He has several great moments, and is a ton of fun.  But in Serenity, he unceremoniously perishes.  You also have Shepherd Book, who is a pastor.  In addition to being a very interesting character, he serves as a moral compass for the Captain, without being overly pushy.  He’s the voice of reason in the midst of chaos, and even gets some of the best lines in the show.  And by the end of the movie, he’s pushing up the daisies.

And then we have Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog, a fun 45 minute movie that Joss Whedon wrote and directed with a few friends during the writer’s strike back in ’08.  He gives the lead a love interest named Penny who is a fun, loveable caring person, who you really grow to love as the movie progresses.  And guess what?  SHE. $%#*ING. DIES.

So it should go without saying that one of the main six characters in the Avengers is going to kick the bucket.  Let’s evaluate everybody’s chances.

 Tony Stark/Ironman

Chances of survival: 100%

Explanation:  Without Ironman, the Avengers would never have been greenlit.  Hell, before Captain America and Thor this year, the only successful films that preceded The Avengers was Ironman 1 and 2.  He’s the face of the franchise, and there’s no way they’re killing that off.

 Steve Rogers/Captain America

Chances of survival: 90%

Explanation:  I really don’t think that they’ll kill off somebody as iconic as Captain America, but he’s just a bit more likely to buy the farm than Ironman.

Thor/Thor

Chances of survival: 90%

Explanation: Same as above, but also because they already have Thor 2 greenlit.

 Bruce Banner/Jolly Green Giant/Hulk

Chances of survival: 70%

Explanation: While they probably won’t try to make more Hulk movies (the studio lost money on both), his character is popular enough that they would probably want to keep him around.

Scarlett Johansen as Black Widow

Chances of survival: 50%

Explanation: She only had a small role in Ironman 2, but it looks like she’s going to get a lot more screen time in The Avengers.  Given that she doesn’t have a film franchise, her chances of survival are diminished, but I really don’t think that Joss Whedon has the brass ones to kill off the only chick in a movie that is otherwise quite the sausage-fest.

 Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye

Chances of survival: 10%

Explanation: He looks like he’s going to be amazingly bad ass, but he doesn’t have any standalone films and somebody’s gotta shuffle loose this mortal coil.

So yeah, I formally placed a $5 bet with Attebiz the other day that somebody will run up the curtain and join the choir invisible.  He’s doubting me.  We’ll see how this goes.

I certainly laughed during this film, I wouldn’t recommend not watching it, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to do so.  Watch it on a movie night with your family, it will be worth the laugh.

I take that back, this movie is not a family movie, watch it on a date night with your wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/person friend.  All the single guys will appreciate Jennifer Aniston wearing only a lab coat and panties.  I’m not sure what is worse, the innuendo or the fact that the movie is based on justified murder.

I really love Charlie Day, the role he plays in this movie isn’t that much different than who we plays in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  The characters worked really well together, I would like to see them together again in the future.  I think that combination is key to a movie’s chances in being big.  Especially in a comedy like this one.  Why did The Hangover do so well?  The entire picture, the actors worked together so well.  The Biggest Year, Hall Pass, are awful movies.  The combo wasn’t good at all.

A good combination is key, but the connecting story is also important.  This story was somewhat creative but it wasn’t executed that well.  I thought it was a little short, and some of the key story points could have been extended.  As you might have guessed from the trailer the three main leads feel it necessary to kill their bosses.  I thought they could have extended the idea of why they needed to kill their bosses.  They seemed to gloss over it a little too quick.  The movie had so many different chances to be a good film and it let me down.

I give this movie a 75 out of 100.  Worth a rent, Netflix it in a few months.

This is Nathan for Attebiz Movie Reviews

Immortals is a ’300′ like movie that features some newer names and ideas.  We have the battle between the immortals, the Gods and the Titans.   The movie was more about the humans though, the story for a peasant boy that watched his mother die and how he arose to become a God in the end of the movie.

One of the major reasons I wanted to watch this movie was because of the main actor, Henry Cavill, the new lead as Clark Kent in ‘Man of Steal’.  I really enjoyed his screen presence.  Interesting to see a British actor in the superman role, but he fit well in this movie.  He said his lines strongly, without arrogance that Russell Crowe has, but the beef that Gerald Butler has.

The rest of the roles were so so.  I don’t have anything to complain about them though, all done better than anything I could ever do.  I generally don’t like Mickey Rourke, he did a decent job though as the antagonist.  The female lead was stronger than most, played by the beautiful Freida Pinto.

The movie had amazing special effects.  Quite amazing actually.  I want to comment on this.  Many people believe that special effects don’t count when you review a movie.  I find this to be completely not true. I do though believe that the story needs to be strong, and the major focus behind the need for CGI.  I find it interesting that many movies include nudity, sometimes it just seems like it’s there to grab the teenager boys into the movie theater.   Imagine a musical without sets, the ‘Phantom of the Opera‘ without the chandelier falling down.  Watching a movie is an experience, if CGI adds to the experience, then so be it.  The CGI was gritty, like ’300′, but it had it’s own twist on certain fight moves.  I especially liked how the Gods and Titans fought, it added a lot to the experience and even the story for me.

The story was a little weak, I will admit that.  As much as I enjoyed this movie, the story could have been more epic.  The final battle between the humans was weak, and needed a little more attention.  I’m not really sure why they went to war.  Was it because of the the one faction’s mistreatment?  I’m not sure.

I’m going to rate this higher than most people because I walked out really enjoying the movie I just watched, but I want to be fair to the film and criticize the bad story.  This movie earns a 75% from Attebiz Movie Reviews.  This is Nathan Atteberry signing off.

One of the (few) difficult things about being a Hollywood actor is that if you ever find any measure of success, you will be typecast.  If you’re good at playing a particular character and it’s marketable, the corporate overlords at Hollywood will be damned if they’ll let you play anything else.  Whether it’s Bruce Willis playing a cop, Zooey Deschanel playing a quirky girl or Nicholas Cage playing somebody with bad hair, if it sells a ticket, it will get done to death.  And trying to break the typecast doesn’t usually pan out.  I mean, sometimes you’ll get something like when Jim Carrey played the male lead in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and really held his own.  But then it didn’t work out too well for Jim when he played the main character in The Number 23, which was a mind bogglingly atrocious film.

But every so often, you’ll get a movie where who an actor is outside of the film aids in the telling of the story.  It’s extremely rare, but there are a few of them out there.  At least enough for me to put together one measly blog.  Let’s have at it.

Matthew Broderick in Glory

Glory was a phenomenal movie, but Matthew Broderick didn’t have that much to do with how amazing it was.  That’s mostly thanks to the acting of Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman.  For those of you who don’t know, Glory is about the first all-black regiment to fight for the Union in the Civil War.  Denzel and Freeman both play their characters brilliantly, and the scene the night before the regiment goes into battle for the first time still moves me every time.

But enough about them, what point am I getting at here?  Matthew Broderick plays the Colonel (I think that was his title) in charge of the regiment.  It was extremely hard to take him seriously in this movie.  Seriously, you have two of the premier black actors in Hollywood delivering Oscar worthy performances, and you put Ferris freaking Bueller in charge of their regiment? Really?  But then I thought about it.  In Glory, Broderick’s character is 25, and some talk is made of how young he was to be in charge of a regiment already.  Combine that with the fact that many of the black men in the regiment didn’t want to be led by some rich white kid who looks like he’s not old enough for the mustache he’s trying to wear.  So most of the characters in the movie would have a difficult time taking him seriously as their commander, just like I was having a difficult time taking him seriously.

That breakthrough helped me create that much more of an emotional connection with an already brilliant film.

Dane Cook in Mr. Brooks

Mr. Brooks is a rather well crafted and hopelessly underrated character study of an upstanding family man who has a dark streak of being a serial killer.  He does it to get a rush, literally just for the “thrill” of it.  But he doesn’t enjoy it.  He just can’t stop.  In my ever so humble but definitely right opinion, this is Kevin Costner’s best movie.  As much as I like several of his other flicks (Untouchables was great and Field of Dreams is a classic), I’ve always had to admit that Costner is not a very good actor.  BUT, against all odds, he nails it with this movie.  He underplays the character brilliantly, and there were several scenes that required him to have a very oddly particular mood or expression, and he handles it deftly.  So who else stars in this flick?  William Hurt, who’s career is in its twilight but is still a phenomenal actor, and Demi Moore, who is one of the more talented leading ladies in the business today (even if her movie selection is always the best).  So we’ve got Costner, Hurt, Moore and who else?

Dane Cook.  As in the screeching comedian.  Que?

Oddly enough, he was PERFECT for this movie.  Why?  Without going into too much detail to avoid spoilers, Dane Cook looked like he was in over his head working with such great actors, which is in many ways a reflects of what happens in the movie.  The circumstances that Cook’s character get into, he is completely out of his depth.  I won’t say much more other than that you should really watch this movie.  It has some pretty aggressive nudity and some very violent deaths, so just be aware of that.

Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro in Heat

As Mr. Goodkat said in the beginning of Lucky Number Slevin, “There was a time.”  There was a time when these two men could do no wrong.  Pacino and DeNiro were acting powerhouses, from The Godfather movies to Taxi Driver to Scarface to Raging Bull, these two hit it out of the park with every single movie they did.  But they never shared any screen time.  Even though they were both in Godfather Part II, they never shared any screen time.

Then came Heat.  In my opinion, the best heist movie ever.  It turned the heist movie formula on its head, starting the movie with the heist and then showing the repercussions, what happened after.  What did the characters do with their money, how did the police investigation go, loyalties are tested and we get to see cop Pacino try to track down DeNiro.  Watching the battle of wits play out without the characters interacting just added to the tension of an already amazing film.  And then, at the end, (without giving too much away) there is one scene they share.  It’s executed perfectly for the characters, for the situation and for finally seeing these two masters of the craft share the screen just for a scene.

And then Righteous Kill was made, which was mostly an awkward reminder of how great they used to be and how far they have fallen.

Oh well.

And by the way, go to Family Video and rent these three movies.  Now.

For Attebiz Movie Reviews, I’m the J-Man.

So what did I think of it?

Enjoyable.

First, the good.  Tower Heist is a funny  movie.  There are some really great one-liners in this movie.  I found myself laughing out loud several times.  Eddie Murphy returns to form very well in this movie, and his character provided some of the biggest laughs.  And ultimately, with a comedy, it doesn’t really matter what the acting, cinematography, writing or storytelling does.  If it can make you laugh, that’s all that matters.

That being said, the third act I found myself getting a bit antsy.  Toward the end of the film, there were several scenes in a row that were painfully predictable.  As in, within the first 5 seconds of any given scene, you knew EXACTLY what was going to happen for the next 3-4 minutes.  Granted, I wasn’t expecting terribly much dramatic tension in this movie, but it got to be a bit tiresome.  And it wasn’t just me, the group I was in, we took turns calling out what was going to happen in each scene right when it started.

That being said, I left the theater having enjoyed myself.  Will it ever make it to my DVD collection?  Probably not.  But for a fun distraction for two hours, it’s not too shabby.  Check it out.

67 out of 100

For Attebiz Movie Reviews, I’m the J-Man.