This week's highlight: The Chronicles of Narnia - Prince Caspian!

Sigh... I'm still reeling from the major disappointment that was Indiana Jones 4. What's even sadder is that it wouldn't take much for Prince Caspian to be better than that flick. It may have magic cupboard portals and talking animals, but at least that was clearly set up in the first movie to be the kind of world it belonged to. The "fridge" and "Tarzan" segments in Crystal Skull is FAR beyond and beneath the Indy universe, voodoo dolls be damned! Sigh, at least we've still got Batman: The Dark Knight...

Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Alas, the dreaded review nobody wants to read about... the Big Movie Freak's negative review of the latest Indiana Jones flick.

"...As the saying goes, the whole should be greater than the sum of its parts. Unfortunately, as a whole, Crystal Skull feels like a tired, by-the-numbers Hollywood blockbuster that is closer to the Van Helsing camp than anything in Spielberg’s oeuvre. Spielberg has fashioned a movie that has more in common with his imitators of late than even his last two (and very recent) blockbuster outings; smothered in a thick, fake, plastic-ky layer of CGI, and plagued with an unusual lack of quality control and enthusiasm in telling its story..."

Read my full review here.

A precursor of things to come, part II

Will2k reviews Iron Man!

"Iron Man is a movie that I did not have much idea about because I never really followed any of its comic or cartoons. However, I was expecting some metal vs. metal bashing and smashing, and I wasn't disappointed! The best part about it: I’m pretty sure it's better than Transformers! The movie is nothing short of amazing. Detailed, superbly designed, marvelous engineering and very creative technology... impressive stuff! If this movie had been released when I was young, I would have bought the suit from the supermarket and a few of the 6-inch figurines!"

Read Will2k's review here! (minor spoilers)

This week's highlight: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull!

Iron Man may have been sweet, but this is the summer movie that fans, the nostalgic, and movie aficionados have been waiting for. Enthusiasts love to laud Raiders of the Lost Ark as a cinematic gem, but intentional or not, the men behind Indiana Jones (among them George Lucas and Steven Spielberg) were actually only trying to put together an entertainment piece that homages 1930s adventure movies. Some people are already complaining about the lack of sophistication in Crystal Skull's storyline. But really, what were they actually expecting from the third sequel to a movie where a guy gets famously chased by a giant freakin' boulder?