Oh and she isn’t even slightly ugly and does pushups covered with jelly preservatives and sweat, which is pretty sweet. I still don’t think she smiled once in the whole movie but, didn’t bother me.

So the movie I saw is “Prometheus,” but the truth is, it reminds me sooooo much of these shows I remember about aliens with freaky-deaky black banana heads, sharp teeth, slime skin and acid blood. First there was one about just one of these black, creepy-as-bleep death machines (with a robot modeled after the original Bilbo Baggins) and then there was a sequel with dozens of nasty aliens and their way-clingy babies.

So I remember those movies. Somebody out there in reader land thought I was, like, 15-years-old.

I wish!

Then people wouldn’t be telling me to get a job all the time.

The first one I only saw at home in full on 2.0 stereo when my parents didn’t pay attention at the video stores (the stores were like Redbox but you could actually walk inside them.) The second one I saw in the theater. I have this really fresh memory of trying not to pee my pants (I really, really had to go but couldn’t leave) and accidentally crushing this girl’s hand a little. It wasn’t like, broken or anything serious. She eventually married some other dude. (Sorry chic, I hope you read this and have the same fond memory. Show this to all the girls you know who are married in case it was her.)

Anyway, this new movie is a lot like a mash up of both of those. A bunch of scientists go to space to look for some muscled albino giants who vandalized a bunch of caves on earth but who are total lightweights and can’t hold even a cup full of alien moonshine. This Queen is with them and she is an ice queen now, with a lowercase Q, but like I said, she is unhappy middle management – which is really unhappy.

This time though, all the people with the queen are excellent actors, including the business savvy drug dealer from the best show in the history of shows, “The Wire.” Respect to him too for getting out of Baltimore and becoming a space ship captain. Especially good was this robot made to look just like Magneto when he was young, but not when he was older and looked like Gandalf. His name is David and he rules the movie with his very own kind of special robot-crazy. He is spiffy, watched “Lawrence of Arabia” and you want to play basketball and ride bikes with him but also sometimes he is a creeper and you want to run away at top speed.
But he could catch you.
Easy.
Anytime he wanted.

But weird that in the future they will make robots look like people associated with “Lord of the Rings” movies. Kinda gives me an idea of what kind of robot to make that looks like Aragorn – you know – just for the women.

So this space ship flies away for a couple of years. Now, if you haven’t guessed, I am not a scientist. Also I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn last night or any night; I think for they money I can do better. But the closest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri, which is more than four light years away and these scientist weirdoes say out loud (or maybe it was creepy David) they have been sleeping for two years plus some months, days, hours and minutes, but they probably can’t travel faster than light speed, so were they awake for a long time and then only went to sleep later? Or how did they get there so fast? More like 22 years. I mean they still ride four wheelers when they get there so, light speed? Notice to you silly screenwriters, use Google when you make stuff up because we will catch you.

It made me feel weird to type that.

So anywho, if you have watched a commercial for this flick, you already know they have the coolest mapping equipment ever seen with these glowing red globes and then they discover some mighty peculiar black buildings on this distant-but-not-that-distant moon and you also already know, really everybody knows, that things go, well, uh, bad.

At this point I should tell you: Don’t bring the kids, but you probably already knew that. The other thing I should tell you is, as my granny used to say, “make a poo poo before you go.” Those of you who demand dignity in a writing thing about a movie: Plan ahead and vacate your bowels at home. Look, I am not going to pretend that this scary movie is going to make you poop your pants. It isn’t, unless you already poop your pants and then, no offense to you, we all have problems. But when things start to go bad, you are going to sit in your movie chair, and clench up. Really tight. You are going to squirm in your seat, your heart is going to race, you are going to sweat a little and it might be hours and hours before you can “go” again, so take care of it at home. (And don’t hold hands — see above.)

The hilarious thing about this is, when it starts, the all-knowing audience can see it coming but wholly cow, it will freak you anyway. The tentacle people (if you don’t know who I mean, be very glad) are going to build a monumental statue to the glory of this one part. Might even worship it. I hope real aliens never get any ideas from this flick and I hope real aliens don’t have bodies that look so much like human private parts. But this crazy audience watched this scene as horrified as I can remember seeing in a theater in decades (cuse I am not 15) and when it was over, they clapped.

In the middle of the freaking movie, they clapped. Dude ran to the top of the stairs and did a Rocky pose with both arms to the sky and the hipsters were glad to see it. People high-fived. One person rolled in the isle. Tears of joy were shed, hands were crushed, babies will be born in nine months — and lots and lots and lots of clenching up.

Then there is this medical part. Don’t let anybody tell you about it and don’t cover your eyes.

But lets pause for a moment and yell at the screenwriters again. Send them angry tweets with your mean, angry face photos. A bunch of scientists (really “smart” people) are YEARS away from earth and family and the beach and Del Taco, and they go to this screwy, empty moon world, and when they find a little air, they decide they should take off their helmets. Nobody nobody nobody nobody is going to take off their helmet ten minutes after arriving on a moon with underground castles and a landing strip. Nobody. Superman would leave his helmet on and if he didn’t Bat-Man would kick his teeth in because he wouldn’t want to risk being contaminated by stuff that is weird and undetectable because you know, it’s ON A NEW WORLD! Duh. Plus, they don’t pay attention to the little things that are science like, stuff crawling on the ground.

So I want to stop now because I don’t want to ruin anything — better to go in blind. And not to be a cinema or art geek (too late) but somebody better send H.R. Giger a love letter and bottles of drink and massage gift certificates and then go rub his feet in person for inspiring the design of this moon’s housing projects. Maybe they already did, because I didn’t get a press kit (yes studio publicist people, this is me giving you the hard stare) but that dude’s double-helix things are on the screen pretty much always and that gave lots of juice to the audience celebration. It is not only bad-to-the-bone but bad-to-the-creepy-exoskeleton. Can’t say enough really, so imagine about three more paragraphs of praise with extra smart sentences that leap off your computer screen and make you quote them on Twitter.

Your eyes will be having an organic-mechanical-nightmare-technology-furniture-party with balloons and dancers so if you dig that, go buy a ticket. If you don’t dig that, “Anne of Green Gables,” is probably on PBS, definitely on Netflix.

Remind your brain not to get too pissed though when some stuff, like I already said, comes and your mind screams that high-pitched sound they used three times in the movie commercial that haunts you.

In fact, I bet that is where they got that sound, from some focus-group audience brain. The awesomeness of most of the two hours makes the moments of hillbilly writing that I didn’t mention all of (sorry real hillbillies, you aren’t good at space stuff) so irritating.

Last thing, there are two endings. One sets up ideas for the next film and the ideas are so sweet and so adventurous and so pure sci-fi horror and so spacey and so promising that I was giving them the thumbs up from my chair. Hot.

Then they tack on a little postcard that isn’t awesome, like when your Aunt sends you a note from Preston, Idaho. My director’s cut would be 20 seconds shorter. In fact, just leave early. So, mostly I like the movie and I want to see more ice queen flicks, because, hey, we hardly knew you, and more pushups would be good. But, also to the movie sometimes: DUH! Still, fingers crossed for a sequel.

Note: Another post from our film reviewer Sand WitchKing.

Thor is pretty good in this film but he traded in his hammer for a big ax and he never uses his lightning powers. He can still outfight anybody except the super-creepy brother of the serial-killer-way-evil Queen who made the audience so uncomfortable they giggled sometimes. Strange thing is, Hawkeye is in this too, disguised as a prince or something or, come to think of it, maybe it was Legolas. But this guy had all the cinema arrow hero tricks stuff down cold. I mean, he has definitely studied archery movies hardcore. Plus he is way brave and way defiant of his cautious and always wrong dad who talks a lot but never does anything. And he, the son, is also really handsome. I like girls but I could tell, because all the handsome guys shaved, but only a day or two before the film got made.

Serial-Killer Queen takes over the kingdom because, mostly, she hates kings and then locks the little princess in a tower. The super insecure hot Queen isn’t all bad though because despite claiming that she has wiped out tons of kingdoms before this one, and has killed thousands (and she might be being modest on that one point) she gives Bella really spiffy clothes to have in the tower, especially with those Walt Disney, Snow White puffy shoulders, which also makes her brave in a way because Bella is the only person who could threaten her evil Queening and she doesn’t just kill her to begin with.

Not only that, she gives her these rock-star leather pants for underneath her Disney dress which is really handy in case she ever wanted to escape – oh and great running boots. Then one day a bird convinced her (Bella) to look out her window, because I guess if you are in a tower for ten years you never do that, and she finds a way to escape. I don’t want to ruin anything but that makes the Queen angrier than ever and she was hardly ever nice as it was.

Thor is off drinking beer or ale or something and the Queen picks him to lead her team into the swamp to find Bella. I think she knew he was Thor because she could have sent scores of men searching but sent him instead. I bet you can’t guess what happens next. During this part, keep your eyes open for cameos by the Black Riders, Easterlings and oh, they have a cave troll but he has on a mask of the monsters from “Pitch Black,” and his part is sweet. But really, the kids who designed the film, including the monsters, did awesome. I don’t want to get, like, super movie-nerdy, but the creature design and set design were mostly always kinda awesome. Really, they were more awesome than the rest of the film. I would have had them write some script too because it could have used some leftover awesome, but it wasn’t terrible or anything.

So, if you don’t want to know how the movie goes you should stop reading. Right now. Don’t blame me if haven’t ever watched the Disney cartoon or know the story or know how these movies work, but there were these dwarFs. They weren’t dwarVes like Gimli where they are a different race and culture and stuff, they were just kinda regular guys who used to live in a colony of dwarFs. Thing is they all looked like pretty famous British guys from a bunch of violent movies, most of them gangsters, but also funny and violent guys like Ed who killed zombies in that “Shaun is Dead,” zombie movie from way back like, ten years ago, which you can watch on Netflix sometimes.

They take Bella and Thor past a tree (that is super good at hiding not just people but whole regions) to a magical land where there are a bunch of magical creatures and I thought the design, again, was really cool, but parts of the movie were a fairy tale and parts of the movie were trying to be all gritty and realistic so I was like pointing at the movie yelling, “What are you movie? Are you a fairy tale with Narnia Creatures or are you Hill Street Blues? Make up your mind!” I was totally confused and the other kids in the theater were like, “Not cool, even at midnight,” so I used my inside voice after that.

But these dwarFs seemed like they were going to be really cool. I mean Swearengen, the guy who calls everybody #&*#@&% from Deadwood and uses lots of other swears, was there but I also wondered why Tyrion Lanister and other guys who are actually dwarFs weren’t there instead of dudes pretending to dwarFs. But it turns out they didn’t get much cool dialog anyway. I guess having one of them have mystical powers and one of them crush on Bella was good enough.

So after a while everybody recognized that Bella was this super vampire or something with magic blood. The insecure Queen kept asking her magic mirror if Bella was hotter than her and I think the mirror was trying to get her killed because he kept lying and telling her yes – and she obviously wasn’t – which made the Queen’s stress lines show up more and more. Also, the mirror had a weird dude under a golden blanket to talk for him — or else the serial killer was trippin’. I think it was just supposed to look cool.

So eventually Thor and Hawkeye and Swearengen and Ed and pretty much all the good guys ride from the good-guy castle to the bad-guy castle. Bella turns into Joan of Arc and secretly, all this time, she has been seriously skilled at sword fighting and horse riding. (And a reader reminded me she even has a shield with the White Tree of Gondor on it, which surprised me since I didn’t know French princess warriors had that kind of gear.) I mean, what else are you going to do in a castle prison for ten years right? Turns out the good-guy castle is just over the hill and across the beach from the bad Queen’s castle – and oh – they are both awesome! I don’t get why Bella went the long way to get there, but whatever. They also ride when the tide is coming in because Bella just can’t wait but it doesn’t matter that much because the bad guys who have this way-big army suck at arrows and flinging burning pitch and sword fighting. More stuff happens but I don’t want to ruin it.

So like I said, Thor was really good and I am not a big cheerleader of Bella but she wasn’t too bad either. But I don’t get why she is some big movie star. She was pretty good when she pretended to be Joan Jett but she seems a lot more like Joan Jett than a princess – know what I mean?

So, I don’t know that I would go pay money to see this movie. I guess Bella fans will love it but the Queen with all her extremely cool evil costumes was one of the best things so it was more like going to one of those gallery things where they display art and not very much like those stories where you get all emotional about stuff. The pictures were cool though. I sure hope that other movie this year with dwarVes is a lot more involving.

The Avengers movie plays to his strengths with its array of gods, monsters and playboys. Among the menagerie, he even manages to make an acceptable character out of Scarlet Johansson’s Black Widow, making her much more than the token hot woman in leather. With Whedon’s gift with female characters, perhaps this group could use a Wasp or a Scarlet Witch down the road. Or maybe a She-Hulk.

Even without the director’s guiding hand, Marvel Studios has delivered on the seemingly impossible. In a comic book, unrestrained by budgets, its easy to throw characters together and create an all-star team. But to take blockbuster franchise films and stir them all together where budgets and egos can get it the way, is something of a miracle. But Whedon takes the thrilling premise and delivers charm and dimensional characters with conflict and big battles. The talent seems to have bought in, doubtless helped by knowing the plan from the beginning, and the ultimate superhero teams comes alive.

But for a movie with such ambition and such success on many levels, it is mystifying that some of the details were completely overlooked. The opening sequence is of such B-movie quality that it takes several minutes to let go of it and feel assured that the film isn’t going to be a nightmare of cheese.

The alien-race villains are one-note-evil conspiring with Loki (Tom Hiddleston), god of mischief and brother to one of our heroes, Thor, (Chris Hemsworth) to invade earth. Why? Because he wants to and because he wants more power and because he gets a glowing staff and especially just because. The alien sound like they bought their voices at K-Mart in the villain department and their costumes are such generic Hollywood creatures that it is jarring against the rest of the film. (While I am picking on design, Captain America’s new outfit is also terrible — a disaster.)

There is the tall order of making characters like bow-and-arrow specialist Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Black Widow and even super soldier Captain America seem relevant next to characters seemingly out of their league such as Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man and Mark Ruffallo’s Hulk. This works to some degree but not without a sense that tasks were invented to keep some characters busy.

It also boggles the mind that top scientists can develop clean power and flying battleships but poor Steve Rodgers must constantly re-hang his punching bags because nobody can make him a chain that doesn’t break during workouts. This works nicely as a parallel for the film. Top minds put together a dynamic group of super-powered protagonists and then populate the battlefield with life-size cutouts waiting to be pushed over. How does this happen? And despite every effort, there just really isn’t any sense that anything the lower-tier fighters do is of any use at all in the final showdown, even against the cardboard.

The obligatory climactic conflict has problems as well but the theme is the same: The aliens aren’t a realized enough threat to feel like more than punching bags for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. The charm and character are enough to save the day for the film, but it’s a pity the day needed saving at all. (And, the trailer took too many of the best visuals.)

On the plus side, just like comic book Hulk stories, the character works best as a co-star or a guest and this Hulk movie, free from the burden of holding up the story as a mindless brute, is better than the previous titular ones. Edward Norton would have been a nice touch of continuity though.

All the best moments of the film are heroic character interactions and there is enough great stuff here that the weaknesses will be and should be overlooked by a lot of viewers. It still seems a miracle that a movie like this exists at all for a comic company that divided its menagerie among studios.

Some will point out that the alien aspect of the show was a set up for the reveal at the end of the initial cast credits and while the grin displayed there brought one to my face as well, it isn’t nearly enough of an excuse. Accidentally viewed in 3D, this is a conversion that negatively impacts the viewing experience by making it dingy and less vibrant. Be sure to view it without glasses if possible.

And, even the best special effects films can leave viewers feeling like they have been pick-pocketed by bright lights and huge databases of computers generating artificial pixels of men and monsters like most of the films with “Transformers,” somewhere in the title.

But this sequel to “Clash of the Titans,” (which may or may not form the strangest ever trilogy with “Remember The Titans,”) has its charms. Admittedly, it might be that nostalgia or sentiment crept up on this reviewer and pulled me into childhood memories of the 1981 “Clash” staring Laurence Olivier and Harry Hamlin. But, the 2010 film that also stars Sam Worthington as Perseus completely failed to do so.

The fun is better here as the Australian-sounding Perseus reluctantly returns with the help of a few unlikely friends, to save the world from a humanoid balrog-creature (Cronus) as tall as the earth’s biggest skyscraper. There is the usual quirky, funny sidekick, the expected love interest and the emotionally important child. The story here serves mainly as vehicle to get to the next action sequence but despite all that, it still manages to have its charms.

A strong trio of experienced actors helps as Liam Neeson (Zeus), Ralph Fiennes (Hades) and Bill Nighy (Hephaestus) chew up the less-than-stellar dialog with flair. There is plenty to criticize but doing so misses the point and illustrates the disconnect between critics and people paying $10 for a circus show. This film is all about seeing the ancient heroes of myth doing their thing on a grand (mostly) scale. It never aims high; it never makes a pretence of being anything other than borderline-silly fun. And, on that front it does succeed. The is a B-movie with a big-time budget and nearly all of it spent on action. If you don’t like them, stay away.

There are fearsome creatures, fun sequences, believable effects, beefcake, and best of all, characters out of “Bulfinch’s Mythology,” running around fighting each other and things on the big screen. I found myself enjoying the ride despite expecting not to and having little patience for other films with similar goals like the recent “John Carter.”

The film is available in 3D and reports indicate it is a much better at this than its predecessor, but I viewed it in good, old-fashioned 2D and didn’t mind one bit.

The Dwarf Lords who rule the all-volunteer, not-for-profit TheOneRing.net from a secret underground cave complex, thought readers might find some value in reviews of other fantasy or related films. Look for film release summaries and reviews from Senior Staff Writer Larry D. Curtis (MrCere@TheOneRing.net) each Friday.

The film, brought to the big screen from Suzanne Collins’ first of a series of novels, is absolutely critic proof. It has a dedicated, devoted audience of readers who are nearly automatic ticket buyers and they are destined to love the film, and those that will come after, which are already poised to make serious cake. They will also champion the movie and see it many times over. Legions will enter theaters wrapped in tribute tees already knowing, before the film plays, it will be the “best film ever.” (Some of this might sound familiar to Middle-earth movie audiences!)

But is it any good?

The books and the film are less-than-obvious young adult subject matter. In a post-apocalyptic future, the government demands tribute from each of 12 districts to serve as a symbol of its continued power over citizens. Tributes are paid in the currency of children, a male and female from each district, to fight in a to-the-death arena battle.

Katniss Everdeen — a reluctant and brave volunteer for the games — played by the low-key Jennifer Lawrence, shines and never lets viewers realize she is acting. She brings the vulnerable toughness she masterfully displayed in Winter’s Bone, yet makes Katniss a completely new character. She is, without a doubt, the best thing here among a lot of good stuff. Performances are rich across the board, particularly Stanley Tucci (like always) as the scene-stealing, effervescent analyst and talk show host of the games, Caesar Flickerman.

But the whole film rests on Lawrence and she shoulders the load and entirely holds up the material. Her absence would have deflated some of the effectiveness here and left it a much less-quality film (closer to the level of the teen angst film trilogy it often gets compared to and definitely eclipses.) Without her, some dialog or even scenes could have played much less authentically and could have strayed off the path and into cheese. Director and screenwriter Gary Ross (Collins also is credited) translates the material more than adapts it, which will no doubt please ardent book fans, but prevents anything organically creative from happening in the writing and direction of the film. The safe choice works though. The cast of characters remains intact which is great for adoring fans, but it also means viewers get too little time to get to know everybody else in the story who isn’t Katniss.

It feels like some of the performances were left sitting in a digital file (instead of the old cutting room floor) and a longer home theater version of the film is an interesting and inevitable reality, especially considering the economic explosion of the film’s opening weekend. A few editing choices were jarring, leaving some dialog or cuts feeling as if important elements are missing – and I would bet money they are.

The large, unexplored cast means, because of time constraints, children dying in the area are only faces to viewers, not people. We are unable to feel the loss of characters we never knew. Oh and — if you aren’t familiar with the story — children do die.

If the film’s premise of kids killing kids for sport (and political purposes) isn’t disturbing enough, know too: there is violence. Usually the film looks away and displays blood rather than fatal, gaping wounds but we see open, dead eyes and weapons swinging, even if we don’t always see where they land. One death by insect is easily the hardest to watch.

Despite not being a perfect movie, it is absolutely entertaining, contains genuine emotional content, a compelling story, more-than-solid performances and a dynamic lead actress who makes all the flaws only minor quibbles. Book lovers will recognize what they love and probably will not ache too much over characters getting short-changed because they can easily fill in the blanks. With a tall order to strike a balance of pleasing fans and telling a story to new viewers, it is a notable achievement and there may yet be a better version of it for home viewing.

The Dwarf Lords who rule the all-volunteer, not-for-profit TheOneRing.net from a secret underground cave complex, thought readers might find some value in a review of “The Hunger Games,” because of a crossover audience that likes books and films. Look for film release summaries and reviews from Senior Staff Writer Larry D. Curtis (MrCere@TheOneRing.net) each Friday.