Superman: Unbound - At WonderCon, a couple of the friends we went with wanted to see a screening of this new animated Superman flick. It's based on a story by Geoff Johns that seemed to basically be re-telling the origin of Brainiac. It was pretty decent and had some funny lines, especially from Lois Lane, but the way Brainiac was defeated was a little too... Signs-esque for me. I've certainly seen worse animated films and I never read the source story, so I thought it was alright.
Lego Batman: The Movie Dc Superheroes Unite - Another one watched at Wonder-Con. i think I would have liked this a lot better had I not already seen almost all of it while playing the video game. As it was, it was cute enough and had a couple funny Joker bits, but it's clearly geared more towards kids than me.
The Five Year Engagement - Much like the engagement period the title refers to, this movie was way too damn long. Over two hours long, and it drags in parts. Other than that, though, it was fine. Relatively funny, Emily Blunt is cute, Chris Pratt was pretty great and there were a lot of cool cameos. It was a pretty enjoyable film that gets dragged down in the middle. Could have used some more editing.
Alfie - In my continuing quest to watch everything Michael Caine has ever done, Alfie was showing on Turner Classics. I actually had to think twice about watching it because I remember seeing the trailers for the Jude Law remake and thinking it looked horrible, but I stuck to my vow, watched it and ended up being really glad I did. It's basically about this womanizer who goes through life not caring what his actions do to the the women he loves and then leaves and then some stuff happens and he realizes the error of his ways. Simple enough.
I really liked that Caine breaks the 4th wall, though, and talks to the audience. It was funny and, even when being a total bastard, he's charming as hell. I bet he could have talked me out of my pants. There's a scene towards the end, one of the ones in which he begins to realize the error of his ways, that was extremely well done and very affecting. I liked the movie a lot.
Batman Beyond: Return Of The Joker - Watched this one at the urging of my comic shop guy. I was a really big fan of Batman The Animated Series when it first came out, and I still enjoy watching re-runs of it on Hub sometimes, but I never really watched Batman Beyond. So we borrowed this and watched it and I think it's probably the best animated comic book film I've seen to date. Not too surprising given some of the names shown during the credits, like Pail Dini and Bruce Timm (who did the original Batman TAS) and voice work by Mark Hamill, Kevin Conroy, Angie Harman, Dean Stockwell, etc.
It was a lot darker and more violent than I'd expected. I read that for it's initial release, it was censored quite a bit. I actually thought the "twist" was fairly clever, too. Good movie.
Blood And Bone - I tried watching this once before on TV, but it was an edited version, so I got through about 10 minutes of it before I shut it off. Those first 10 minutes took place in a prison bathroom where a bunch of big dudes, including Kimbo Slice, were trying to shank Michael Jai White and he was kicking their asses. The fighting was cool, but I couldn't deal with all the bleeping. So I was glad to see it pop up unedited on one of the movie channels.
The plot is pretty simple, but the action is the star here, and it performs pretty well. Michael Jai White isn't quite as charismatic as someone like Bruce Lee, and this movie is VERY Bruce Lee, but he holds his own. A surprisingly solid supporting cast including Julian Sands, Eamonn Walker and a cameo by Gina Carano help, too. It's a little silly overall, but it knows it's silly and doesn't try to hide it or overplay it. I liked it quite a bit.
Safe House - Put simply, this is a bland, predictable action flick that is elevated only by the performances of the two leads. I give props to Ryan Reynolds for doing a good job with the drama, and not a wisecrack in sight. Denzel is... Denzel. It's the kind of movie where you know exactly how it's going to end about 15 minutes into it, and with lesser performances, I would have just turned it off. I'm going to call it solidly average, which is probably being generous, but I do enjoy watching Denzel work.