Movie Binge

During my time away from the kids, I watched some movies (or finished them).  I'll give a few quick impressions.

John Carter
This was actually a good movie.  I'll agree with most of what I read, that the title and ads for the game did nothing to sell it to audiences.  It's one of those "the movie is so interesting that I want to read the books now" movies.  I liked the story, the characters and the action.  It's definitely a "nerd fantasy", since the main character goes to another planet where he learns to belong, gets super powers (because of the lower gravity) and gets to bed a princess.  It was very enjoyable, but a bit longer than I thought it would be.  As mentioned before, I haven't read the books, so I don't know how faithful it is to the source material.  I recommend seeing it if you can.

Hobo with a Shotgun
The reason I wanted to see this is because someone called Megatron from Transformers: Dark of the Moon "Hobo with a Shotgun".  This movie is pretty cheesy and very bloody.  I actually kind of enjoyed it, but I wouldn't say it was good.  It's almost worth watching for the concept alone, and I really liked the look and idea of a pair of villains called "The Plague".  I couldn't remember any really good (terrible), cheesy (quotable) lines, which movies like this usually need.

Fist of the North Star
I will admit that I thought the first half was pretty decent.  It appeared to follow the source material, which surprised me.  It didn't follow it 100%, but definitely more than I thought they would.  The second half wasn't as good (around "Vader Time" haha), and was more "hollywood" to me.  In the second half, Kenshiro just did martial arts and wasn't really exploding fools or anything that would make you know it was Fist of the North Star.  It wasn't terrible, but not good either.  If you are a fan of FotNS, I would recommend seeing this, even if for the cheese factor.

Amazing Spiderman
I was very worried about this movie, since the "first" one was great.  The second was even better.  The third sucked really hard, and was pretty much an offense to humankind.  When I heard they were rebooting the series, I had lots of doubts.  Those proved to be unfounded, as The Amazing Spiderman is a really good movie.  Unlike my friend Marcus Shadow, I don't think it was better than Avengers in any way, shape or form, but it is still worth watching.  It was a very well done movie, and the acting was top notch.  It was a bit longer than I would have liked, but it pretty much filled the time with important stuff to the plot and character development.  I know I'm late to the part on this one, but I recommend seeing this movie.  I will admit that I'm not 100% sure who the shadow figure is in the stinger, though.