Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

When I first heard that this was being made made into a full fledged movie, I expected it to be awful. When I saw it in theaters, nothing much had changed. I didn't think anyone could turn a 32 page children's book into a good movie. I was very surprised by how good the movie was.

It's a quirky, lighthearted, coming of age children's movie and everything worked. oh and it has a monkey who beats the crap out of giant deranged gummy bears, what else could you ask for?

It starts off with your stereotypical nerdy character, Flint Lockwood, who lives in the mostly boring town of Swallow Falls, where everyone eats sardines. He dreams of being known for his crazy inventions. One day during a town meeting, his latest invention that turns water into food is rocketed into the sky. Before you know it, it's raining any food you can think of. The town's mayor decides to use this to his advantage and turns the town now known as ChewandSwallow, into a tourist attraction. This draws the attention of the media and they send a news reporter named Sam Sparks who falls in love with Flint.

The animation is very lively, especially in i-max 3D. This is one of the better 3D films I've seen in awhile. The "things popping out at you" gimmick is not overly abused, but when it is used (which I won't give away)..it's fantastic. The animation may not be as good as Pixar films but for what it set out to do, it succeeds.

For a children's movie, the humor was quite good. Actually, I lied..it's amazing. I've never laughed this hard before. All of the jokes have been done before but the way they're setup in Cloudy makes them original. I'll give away one. The monkey starts throwing poop at people during a chocolate ice cream snowball fight.

The voice acting is top notch. Bill Hader of SNL/Superbad voices Flint. Anna Faris, most well known for the Scary Movie series, plays Sam. They both do an amazing job, but I think the real standout performances comes from Mr. T and Bruce Campbell who play the over-protective town cop and greedy mayor (respectively). There are other minor peformances, and they're all good as well. James Caan plays Flint's dad, Neil Patrick Harris plays Steve the Monkey, and Benjamin Bratt has the greatest minor performance ever, which I won't give away.

The music was also surprisingly good. The main theme is a very loud brass based heroic fanfare and feels like it parodies the genre. It's extremely over the top, and this where its charm comes from.

This is beginning to sound like a rant, so I'll close this up. This is the perfect movie for any occasion whether it's a friendly get together or a family movie night, everyone will have a good time .

Paranormal Activity.(possible spoilers)

It's hard to review this movie, because part of the experience comes from not knowing anything about it. If I do have to do a spoiler, it will be marked. You have been warned

This movie does so many things right. The atmosphere is incredible, the characters are believable and the scares are simple but effective. All this was done on a mere $15,000 budget. It goes to show that you don't need an insanely high budget to be effective.

I'll start with the story and characters. The story is nothing new, but it works for the movie. Katie and Micah (both played by newcomers Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat. See the resemblance?) are a newly "engaged to be engaged" couple that movie into a nice suburban house. All goes well until creepy things start happening. This brings me to the characters. They are both very believable and relateable. Micah decides it would be fun to tape all of this "paranormal activity" and solve this mystery on his own. Katie is scared because we soon learn that these things have been happening to her off and on her whole life and this prevents people from using the typical "Get out of the house!" excuse.

This movie's greatest strength is the atmosphere. It follows a simple pattern; during the daytime we delve into a little drama. Katie wants Micah to stop taping and egging on whatever is causing this and Micah disagrees. Then during the night, shit happens.

This basic formula goes on through the better part of the movie when it pulls a 360 and *SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS* the paranormal activities start happening during the day. All bets are off at this point. *END SPOILERS*The real atmosphere comes during the night. During these sequences, there is no music and the only thing we ever here are the typical nighttime sounds and the camera humming.

Also during these night scenes, the movie destroys your comfort zones. As a kid, your parents probably said something along the lines of "oh don't worry, if you're in your bed and covered up with blankets, the monsters won't be able to get you." This movie takes that idea, steam rolls it, burns it, and pisses on the ashes. The buildup is incredible too, which I won't spoil at all.

My only real complaint about the movie is the ending. It just felt way too Hollywood for me.

There's not much else I can say about this movie without spoiling the experience. So go see it, you won't regret it.

Little Intro.

I figured doing a short introduction would be a good way to get used to blogging(I'm an old geezer when it comes to this...except not really).

I intend to use this blog to do traditional/formal movie and game reviews. I'll continue to do "informal" short reviews on my twitter page: http://twitter.com/CynicalFilmGuy

I hope to get a review of Paranormal Activity up soon.