MovieComment

Ultimate Avengers

Posted by Player under Animation

I am not sure why it took Marvel this long to come out with a full featured animation film. The expansion of the DVD market has allowed many studios to skip theater releases entirely and market exclusively to the DVD market. Even FOX and ABC market their new television shows to the DVD market and have had great success with 24 and Alias. You would think that Marvel who holds the licences on such popular characters as The Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Ironman, and countless others would have already released an entire library of DVD releases, but alas we are just now getting Ultimate Avengers, and promises of Ultimate Avengers II and Ironman animation releases.

Ultimate Avengers takes the story told in the 2001 comic series release. Older comic readers may find it strange to see some changes in their favorite comic book hero storylines. The most apparant one is that Nick Fury of SHIELD is now a black man instead of white guy. Personally for me the David Banner character is so weak and unlikeable that I found it hard to watch Ultimate Avengers when he had any scenes.

The story line is a bit ridiculous, starting off with Captain America in WWII fighting some aliens that are friends of the Nazi regime. Somehow Captain America is frozen alive in ice for decades, and SHIELD rescues him. Once he wakes up, he finds that his old enemies, the aliens are back and SHIELD is putting together a team to help fight them. The team is made up quickly and lacks teamwork right away. Giant Man, Wasp, Ironman, Thor, and The Hulk make up the team, with Captain America as their leader.

The aliens reminded me of Roland Emerich’s Independence Day, in fact much of everything about the aliens reminds me of ID4. They are not even that important in the story either.

The last part of Ultimate Avengers has The Hulk fighting the Avengers, as they try to restrain him. This is the best part of the entire film both for kids and adults. There is something really cool about seeing The Hulk pick up Thor’s hammer and smack The Mighty Thor around.

The DVD features Dolby Digital 5.1 surround tracks in both English and Spanish languages. As usual the battle sequences are where the 5.1 surround sound really gets used. There are some extras thrown in, like previews and a short documentary, but nothing extraordinary.

R.O.D. - Read or Die

Posted by Player under Animation

This is our first Anime review for MovieComment, and I am no expert on it, so don’t expect much in the way of background on the genre. Anyway, Yomiko Readman, aka The Paper, is the main star of this unusual story, in which the world is being threaten with total destruction and secret agents recruit The Paper to stop the plot. However, The Paper is a geek with special powers that manipulate paper! I know it sounds strange, but they make it work somehow. Of course they throw in a hot looking spy girl named Nancy to make it more interesting. The film is really about Yomiko and Nancy and their relationship.

In between of course, both Yomiko and Nancy fight resurrected super bad guys who have magical powers and all sorts of cool fighting moves. Nancy has the power to pass through solid objects and the two complement each others powers throughout the story. The DVD breaks up the film into multiple episodes, with the middle episode being the best in which the two end up in India fighting a super villian that is almost godlike in powers.

By the end of the story, the film turns more into a regular spy film, where the agents have to save the world and destroy the rocket and all that. R.O.D. does have some weak character development, but almost every character introduced is interesting, and about the only thing I did not like about R.O.D. was having to speed read some of the English subtitles. For those of you who hate subtitles there is an English 5.1 soundtrack as well.

Hoodwinked

Posted by GardenHead under Animation

Is this one as good as The Incredibles? No. Is it as unfunny as Ice Age? No. So there you have it! This one isn’t really that bad, in fact it’s a rather enjoyable movie in the Shrek vein of story telling, where you have this synthisis of fairy tale stuff jumbled together around a plot. And while the plot in Hoodwinked is good, it just isn’t very funny. Neither is the animation up to snuff. The animation is just a smudge better than that of PS2 graphics, and studios like Pixar and Dreamworks have set the bar pretty high for slick and fast looking computer animation that Hoodwinked does not stand up to in comparison.

Having said all that this is a fun flick to take the kiddies to, or if you’re in college and dating a sorority chick english major, and can’t stand setting through yet another chick flick, go see this one!