I dunno, something amazing, I guess…

Don’t get excited, Steve is posting his review on The Incredible Hulk shortly. It’s just that for all Avengers-type films (can’t wait for Iron Man!), Steve gets a little bit OCD about his review. He wants it to be just right. So regardless of the fact that we watched it, and he has started several reviews of it, I guess his current draft is not good enough for the big green guy yet. So I’m skipping ahead and reviewing the movie we watched the other night, The Incredibles.

Let’s not kid ourselves here. Everything that Pixar creates is cinematic gold, and The Incredibles really is no different. Every time a new Pixar movie is created, I have a new favorite movie until the next one is released. (Although, for eight years running, I admit to being a little bit more than obsessed with Finding Nemo, with no replacement–not even another Pixar–in sight.) Anyway, despite all that… The Incredibles is good.

So The Incredibles follows the story of a superhero (Mr. Incredible) who is forced to suppress his “super” identity, and he settles down with another super and they are raising three super kids. He’s coerced into taking a job from a kid who was once his biggest fan but now has unfortunately turned into a super villain set on destroying the world. When Mr. Incredible finds out who his boss/arch nemesis is, and finds out that he’s evil, he realizes he’s got some problems on his hands. His superwife and superkids come to his rescue and it is really supergreat.

I like everything about this movie. For one thing, Pixar’s animation is so flawless I nearly forget that it’s animated. Seriously. I’m an idiot. But I really do. And the whole time I’m watching this movie, I’m thinking, “Who is playing the role of Mr. Incredible? I know that face. What else is he in?!” And then I remember that it’s computer generated and my dreams are dashed. (By the way, the face looks kind of familiar because he looks kinda like my brother. Sup Brett.)

I also like the basic setup of it. I don’t know what you would call that. But it starts out with documentary style interviews with some of the superheroes when they were still allowed to be super, which I think is just neat. They also did this great movie that was a huge success (well, I don’t know how huge or successful it was, but it gets an A+ from us!) and they didn’t have to stuff it chock full of big names. Another thing I like was that animated or not, every character is just so gosh darn believable. You know, if you can believe that superheroes exist among us and are just being forced to suppress their superhero awesomeness. Which I definitely can.

Sea monkey has my money.

Finding Nemo

Alright. I realize that we haven’t done any updates on here for a while now. Life as newly weds is a little crazy.

I like this movie even though it is intended for children. The artistry is magnetic. You feel drawn to watch it. The brilliant colors and great story line make it hard to turn away.

So here’s how it goes down. A Clown fish named Marlin loses his wife and all but one of his children because of that freaking food chain thing. Fast forward to now and his son, Nemo, is a little tike with a gimpy fin and Marlin is an over-protective  father. Kid gets captured by a scuba diver and the plot begins. Marlin, who is afraid of basically everything, loses all his inhibitions and immediately gives chase on the boat that the divers left in.

In his travels he sees all sorts of things and animals in which he never would have been in contact with other wise. He finds a friend named Dory, who is voiced by the hilarious Ellen Degeneres, and they search high and low for Nemo.

While his Father is in search of the little guy, Nemo is in the scuba diver’s fish tank which he has in the dentist’s office where he works. Nemo meets the other fish in the tank and makes friends with all of them almost instantly. These fish have no desire to be in the tank, which is to be expected. They’ve been trying to escape for a very long time. They use Nemo to try to obtain the goal and he almost dies.

Dad meets a surf bum Sea Turtle. They find each other, the end.  There is more to it than that but you should watch it to find out.

I give this movie 2 thumbs and a heart warming experience up. It’s a gooder and you all should watch it.

Tune in next time for our next movie which I can’t remember what is. Have a good whatever time of day it is when you read this world.

Punch me Guido! Punch me in the face!

I love Cars. I remember babysitting for a friend once and her just-barely-a-toddler son kept yelling, “Ka-CHOW!” every two seconds. I hadn’t seen the movie yet so I thought the baby might be… special. He toddled over to me with this movie in his hands. We watched it together. And then I realized that my friend’s baby wasn’t… special. He was just learning to talk from animated movies! Relief.

I think even more than watching this movie with a small impressionable child, I enjoyed watching this with Stephen, who is a car addict and kept identifying all the cars. During the whole movie it was, “Oh, Chick Hicks, he’s a Monte Carlo. Lightning McQueen is a Corvette. The King is…” (I can’t remember what he said the King was. Fiancee fail.) I nearly reminded him that none of the cars are anything because they’re animated, but I’m a good person and I love the Bear, so I sat quietly.

I think this movie is especially genius on Pixar’s part. That’s saying something, because I pretty much idolize everything that Pixar has done. Ever. Ever. (My favorite movie, possibly of all time, is Toy Story.) I am always impressed with all the details that Pixar pays such close attention to and think Monsters, Inc. should probably be declared, officially, as the eighth wonder of the world for doing such a good job with all of that fur. The detail in Cars was of a different sort.

You don’t have to pay a lot of attention to see that all of the characters in that movie are cars. The bugs are VW bugs. The NASCAR-obsessed hicks are trailers. I don’t know why, but I think that’s superbly clever. Also, when Sally and Lightning are driving together through the desert, Stephen pointed out that all the natural rock formations shown in the background are in the form of carburetors, transmissions, car engines, or the front or back ends of cars. Totally genius.

It made me think of the type of personality my own car would have. My first car was Rachmaninoff, and he was a green Subaru Legacy that I loved more than anything in the whole world. When he was traded in, I didn’t know if I was ever going to love again. I really was absolutely devastated. It was depressing how I reacted watching him being driven away.

Now I have my silver Mazda 3 Hatchback and his name is Baby Sebastian. I am not exaggerating, sadly enough, when I say that Baby Sebastian is my BFF. And watching Cars last night filled me with great longing to be out behind Bash’s wheel cruising O-Town. Sigh.

I love this movie. I love Pixar. But please go and watch this movie when you get a minute. I never got to say goodbye to Rachmaninoff. So tell your car you love them because you never know when you’ll lose that opportunity.