(MOVIE REVIEW) Captain America easily red, white and blew Harry Potter out of the #1 spot in its opening weekend

After the horrible movie that I had to sit through last week (see last weeks blog post ) I would have watched just about anything in an attempt to get the rancid taste of lazy “wand battles” out of my mouth. Potter disappointed so badly that I almost couldn’t stand to get my hopes up for the much anticipated Captain America: First Avenger. However, only minutes into Captain America, I had already seen more good footage than the entire time that I sat through the overhyped bloated waste that was Harry Potter. Captain America: The First Avenger proved to be a great origin story for one of my favorite comic book heroes.

When young Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) tries to enlist in the army, he fails….more than five times. He didn’t have what the Army was looking for. They needed a soldier with size, with strength and with speed. But what they overlooked was a soldier with heart. When Steve is selected to be part of the Super Soldier Program he gladly accepts. He walks in to the complex a short weakling, and emerges as the greatest soldier that the US Army has ever seen. After the complex is attacked, Rogers makes it his mission to bring down the Nazi plague that has ended so many lives. With a hand selected team on his side, Rogers decides to take the fight directly to the Nazi Party, and more specifically to The Red Skull (Hugo Weaving).  He may have entered the Army as Steve Rogers, but he leaves it as Captain America.

This movie is not your typical superhero film. It splits its workload between blockbuster superhero film, period film, and action-comedy. The movie works on so many levels. It doesn’t offer the amount of action that Transformers 3 did, but what it does offer is action of a higher quality. They don’t just slip a lot of fighting and explosions in for the sake of doing it. The action is only a necessity, while the heart of the story focuses on the inner strength of a man that only wants to “do his part”.

Worth the admission? Does Captain America Turtle Wax his shield? Not only do I think that this is a great movie, I think that it is the best superhero film of 2011. It refuses to be one dimensional. And with hilariously dry one-liners peppered throughout the film by Tommy Lee Jones, the movie brings in some much needed levity to some otherwise serious subject matter.

Make sure you check out the bonus footage after the credits and let me know what you thought .

(MOVIE REVIEW) Fans get a worthy origin story in X Men: First Class

Prequel. The word alone brings out horrible images of movies that managed to take healthy franchises and reduce them to a joke. Cruel Intentions 2, Hannibal Rising, and Star Wars: Episodes 1-3 are all equally horrifying examples of this. Closer to home for this franchise was the horrific X Men Origins: Wolverine. So, it was with great trepidation that I bought tickets for this movie over the weekend. I already had my reservations when I realized that Erik/Magneto has a completely different accent in this film than he does in the original films, but I pressed on. Thankfully I did, because what could have been a complete train wreck turned out to be a really nice addition to the franchise. 

The film follows the lives of young Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr as they begin to grow into the infamous character know as Professor X and Magneto. Charles was born into a life of luxury and learned to fit into the world and to work from the inside to help his fellow mutants. Erik first discovered his powers in a Nazi camp as he was being torn away from his mother. Once Nazi officers realized his power, they experimented on him. His torture came at the hands of Sebastian Shaw (Bacon).

 As we see them later in life, Charles (McAvoy) is attempting to work with the government while Erik (Fassbender) is on a mission to hunt down and kill Shaw and all of those responsible for his pain. When their separate quests intersect, they find that they need each other to complete the objectives at hand. They, with the help of the government, reach out to the mutant community and start recruiting young mutants to join their cause. When Shaw finds out about this, he brings his own team of mutants in to battle the newly formed group of heroes. The battle lines are drawn and lives are lost in the crossfire. Who will survive and who will be forever changed by the final conflict?

I actually liked this movie more than I thought I would. It’s fun to see the “first class” of this infamous superhero team and how they are molded into heroes. Also to be noted, McAvory and Fassbender turn in equally impressive performances. I was pleasantly surprised with their portrayals of these iconic characters. 

Worth the admission? Is The Beast blue? Of course I recommend it. Superhero films are a big part of this summer and I feel that this one held its own.

Note: There are two past/future characters that make cameos. Tell me what you thought of them.