There’s a lot to like about TMNT, but maybe not all the right things. First and foremost those of us who are in our early 20’s and grew up with the original cartoon and spent endless quarters in the arcades hammering on the old Konami cabinet will find a lot to like about the new film as seeing the mutant turtles on the big screen again is enough to satisfy.

For newcomers to the series, TMNT offers an ample introduction to the turtles, their master, and their fallen foe, The Shredder, who is reduced to nothing more than a two line explanation. In fact, that’s the reason many fans of the franchise will be disappointed with this 2007 update, many of the elements we remember have been taken out and a new, cliché-riddled storyline has been put in place concerning monsters from another dimension and an immortal business man with unknown intentions.

While a majority of the film focuses on the turtles and the fallout from the Shredder’s death (being a sequel to the live action films of the early 1990’s) one can consider this a reintroduction to the characters and a way to get them back on the big screen and set up sequels, this update is lacking in many things we would have expected to see. After abolishing Krang and the Technodrome from the live action films and putting a laughable third installment out, the fans of the franchise can only hope that Mirage and the film’s license holders come back to the comics, and even the recent cartoon series which provides a reasonable update to the characters as well.

With that said, TMNT is an enjoyable way to spent 87 minutes at the theater if you aren’t expecting brilliant storytelling and an endless supply of jokes. Few and far between does the humor resonate with the audience and, as mentioned before, the story could have been a little more relevant to long time fans of the series that would have killed to see a Shredder vs. Splinter match up on the big screen again.

What TMNT does very well is animation and the designers at IMAGI should be commended in as many ways possible for bringing the unique style they have devised to the big screen with the flair and technical prowess the studio has. One particular action scene has Raphael and Leonardo squaring off on the rooftop in the rain. As the camera moves around and eventually ends up peering up from the ground, the real beauty of the movie is shown.

For being as anticipated as it was TMNT does disappoint in some respects, but when you look at it as the first part of a new silver-screen legacy for the mutated turtles you can see where the creators were going and how they might be able to really turn on the nostalgia with some very ambiguous lines towards the end of the film. Could the Shredder or Krang be back the next time around? If they want to keep the fans enticed in this rebirth, they had better plan on it.

Jackass: Number Two lives up to everything we would expect after the first time and a successful TV show. The sequel is bigger and certainly pushes the limits of what we might consider good taste, but its all for a laugh, so, in the end, it works.

Like the original film, Number Two is book ended by some scripted sequences: a running of the bulls and a musical number with plenty of bodily injury thrown in for good measure. Between those we are treated to some of the most cringe inducing stunts even printed on celluloid. So many of the bits hit that it becomes almost impossible to hear the dialog spoken before and after jokes because the theater is uproariously applauding or laughing too loud. Not that this is a bad thing.

Truth be told, Number Two, much like the first time, is best seen with a large group of friends in a packed theater. Half of the experience is the atmosphere created by hundreds of jackass fans all sharing sympathy pains or laughing hysterically at the jokes. Even the dreaded “Junior High Explosion” that seems to ruin the movie-going experience week after week is kept in check (partly because of the film’s R-rating and because being noisy is part of the game).

Johnny Knoxville and the guys have upped the ante on themselves with the second installment in the series with some very creative pranks and some harking back to the old school roots of the series. Standouts include the Terrorist Cab Ride near the end of the film where one of the crew is dressed up to look Middle Eastern and asks to go to the airport spouting anti-American propaganda. Little does he know that the cabbie is, in fact, director Jay Chandrasekhar. Chandrasekhar stops the cab in a parking lot and pulls a gun causing laughter abounds from those in on the joke and chilling fear from those not.

Old school send-ups include fun with shopping carts, mini-bikes, and various other objects attached to what appear to be oxygen tanks and let loose off of a ramp into a lake. Every skit in the film seems to click even the most disgusting ones like director/producer Spike Jonze walking around in make up pretending to be an elderly woman whose robe keeps on opening up.

Jackass: Number Two successfully continues the long-concluded MTV franchise on the big screen. The film represents some of the grossest moments you’ll ever see in a film, but it also provides some of the biggest laughs of the year. It certainly won’t win any awards, but its definitely a film to see, providing you liked the series and can stand to see grown men vomiting uncontrollably.

The Da Vinci Code is by no means an instant classic of a novel, but it is an engaging thriller filled with twists, turns, and enough whodunits to really make you think and turn the page over and over again. After all, that’s what makes a really good book. But what makes a really good movie or better yet, a really good book to movie translation?

The Da Vinci Code as a movie is a passable affair that brings some of the book’s mystery to the big screen and manages to successfully interpret Dan Brown’s novel into something more visual and easier to grasp on to. The novel has a great advantage over the movie simply because there’s much more time and real estate devoted to the characters that a two and a half hour movie cannot afford unless your name is Peter Jackson and the book contains elves and talking trees.

With all the controversy surrounding the book’s basic plot line, Sony couldn’t have paid for any better advertising and weekend box office returns certainly show this, but even with the free marketing, an all star cast headed by Tom Hanks, and an Oscar winning director The Da Vinci Code still feels somewhat odd when viewing it. Repeat viewings may solve this uncanny feeling, but after the initial run through, you can’t help but wonder why the movie feels so empty in the end.

Most adaptations that I’ve previously seen, whether it be comic book or novel, have one thing in common, I read the book before seeing the film, and in those cases everything seemed to work out well as the visual style of your imagination was filled in by the director’s interpretation. The Da Vinci Code is different in the way the movie makes you feel when viewing it. I read the book a full year before seeing the movie, so the material was still pretty fresh in there, but you can’t help but feel as though reading the book may dumb down the movie because you know all the plot points and the sense of thrill you usually experience from movies in this genre is severely crippled.

The cast, for the most part, does a great job of bringing the characters to life and infusing them with faces, mannerisms, and personalities that may only be hinted at in the book. For examples, Inspector Fache (Jean Reno) comes off more likable and competent in the movie than in the book whereas Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) seems to be an unmistakable genius in the movie but struggled a bit more with conclusions in the book. Silas (Paul Bettany) is as menacing as you would expect and the graphic scenes of him “atoning” for his sins are sure to make you flinch. Director Ron Howard’s vision of the book is uncompromised and the camera angles and cinematography matched up well with what I expected.

A lot has been said about the ‘preposterous’ nature of the movie’s central storyline, that Jesus married and a bloodline exists today, but the story’s validity in the real world shouldn’t weight down the movie, and it doesn’t, except for the few who can’t understand the meaning of the word “fiction.” Whether you believe in the book’s claims or not, The Da Vinci Code brings up an intriguing, fictionalized story for you to follow along with.

Fans of the book and thrillers will find something to like, just not everything, as the story does seem plodding towards the middle only because the movie has to end after 150 minutes whereas the book has no set number of pages. While sure to be a success around the world, Code is by no means award winning cinema and fits in perfectly well with the other summer movies which don’t immediately require us to challenge our brains, only bring money for popcorn, butter it up, and try to enjoy the ride.

V for Vendetta is the first great movie of 2006, hands down. Nothing that has been released in the last three and a half months stacks up to the canvas painted by this immersive film which, on the surface, is a hardcore action film, but underneath is a beautiful picture with excellent characters and sharp dialog.

Although the film seemed destined for failure after a delayed release schedule and the lawsuit of graphic novel creator Alan Moore requesting his name be removed from all mention of the film. When a comic book’s co-creator wants out on a project, you can only expect it was a far departure from the source material. This isn’t the case, however, with Vendetta, and even if it does stray too far away, it still stacks up as a great film.

The story centers around a terrorist named V (Hugo Weaving) who has been planning his revenge for the better part of two decades in a totalitarian ruled England which now has a high chancellor in a Hitler like role claiming he is protecting the people after a biological attack kills hundreds of thousands of people. V begins his crusade against this oppressive government when he stumbles upon Evey (Natalie Portman), a young girl working at England’s only TV network. Through the course of the film the plot thickens but the message remains the same, a vendetta needs to be settled.

There’s been some questioning if the film, which is at a political point in today’s world, and its glorification of a terrorist is really something that needs to be released in a world under the thumb of terrorists (or so we are lead to believe). Does the film glorify its main character, who happens to be a terrorist? Yes, but it also shows the consequences of his actions, and it makes ample points as to why he seeks revenge, which boils much deeper than religious intolerance.

After actor James Purefoy left the project after it had begun, director James McTeigue (assistant director on The Matrix trilogy) turned to Hugo Weaving, and he couldn’t have made a better choice. Weaving, even though we never see his face, is perfect for the role with his identifiable voice providing a creepiness with total confidence, especially in his opening monologue after bringing Evey to his underground home.

Portman also shines as Evey Hammond, a seemingly innocent young girl who is tortured (part of the head shaving we’ve heard so much about) and taught more about herself than she could have known. As we learn more and more of her back story you begin to feel the emotion she exhibits during these torturous scenes.

Andy and Larry Wachowski’s screenplay is nothing short of excellent and makes up for the lackluster Reloaded and Revolutions. After seeing the film, I did some research on the limited graphic novel series and found a great many things in common, but, again, not enough to keep Moore on board.

While not the best film ever released, V for Vendetta does make for an engaging time at the movies with a brisk pace, interesting characters, great action, and an ending that really grips you. Just seeing how this film builds up towards its climax is amazing and the money shots, promoted in the trailers, of certain buildings exploding shows that all the pieces came together in a cohesive piece of filmmaking that should live on as a genuine classic and another comic book successfully transferred to the big screen.

Chicken Little had a lot riding on it for Disney. After pushing back the planned fall 2005 release of Pixar’s Cars until summer 2006, the season’s only Disney released animated film was this CGI adventure. Unfortunately for the Mouse House, everyone is going to come away disappointed with this rather flat animated feature that fails to deliver the Pixar charm or the DreamWorks comedy. Chicken Little is a mostly harmless film that certainly won’t disappear due to Disney’s trademark over promotion of its films, but it won’t me remembered by many.

The title, in development for years, focuses on the old story of Chicken Little who cried out that the sky was falling. When it turned out to be nothing more than a hoax, the townspeople began to ignore the crazy little chicken’s claims until the one time he was right, and no one listened. The new Disney version mixes things up a bit by adding in space aliens in a War of the World‘s like farce that all boils down to a misunderstanding.

The trademark Disney notions of a dead mother, a misunderstood child, the odd-one out, and a cool character everyone can relate to are all present, but we’ve seen this story done a hundred times, and nearly half of them done better and with more life than this rehashed script. While the story comes up as short as the movie’s namesake character, the voice acting provided by an eclectic mix of stars gives the film its only life. Chicken Little is voiced by Zach Braff (Scrubs, Garden State) and his friends Abby Mallard (Joan Cusack), Runt of the Litter (Steve Zahn), and Fish out of Water (Dan Molina) all have enough life to make them somewhat memorable.

The big exception here is Fish out of Water, in this creation, a fish with a diver’s helmet filled with water on his head, Disney has once again outdone itself and created a truly memorable character and easily one of their most creative and funny creations in years. Even though the fish never speaks a single line, his actions and personality are the shinning moment in this otherwise dim film.

This isn’t to say there isn’t anything to like about Chicken Little, there’s some comedy, but no where near the level Shrek was able to achieve by putting the classic tales that Disney made a fortune on through the blender. There’s maybe one or two laugh out loud moments in the entire film, but overall, and after some of the hilarious moments The Incredibles and Monsters, Inc. Disney really needs to raise the bar.

The CGI animation is top-notch, really the only part of the film that goes above and beyond what we’ve seen before in animated films. With most of the character’s being animals it leaves the animators and software designers to create lots of fur which moves pretty damn realistically in the lush environment. Another aspect which has a true touch of style is the character design and the world itself. The characters are over proportion in many aspects with big bodies and little legs. Chicken Little is ridiculously small whereas Runt is huge in comparison. The designs for vehicles are also distorted in the very same way and look somewhat akin to Rocko’s Modern Life.

Try as you might, there just isn’t a lot to get excited about Chicken Little. If it were 1995 again and Toy Story had just come out, and the closest other CGI movie ever released was Tron, the film would be something special and would more than likely be a hit merely for its technical achievements. But, like Disney’s ill-fated technical show Dinosaur, Chicken Little earns the dubious stripes of being better than Howard the Duck but no where near the quality we’ve come to expect from studios like DreamWorks Animation and Steve Job-headed Pixar Animation Studios.

After the reviews and box office results, Disney would be wise to give in to Pixar’s demands. If anything, at least they know they will be getting their name out on award winning material instead of digging up shallowly written stories and trying to adapt them for the 21^st century.

We’ve waiting years and years for a movie based on the popular DOOM series to surface, and that its here, I almost wish we were still waiting. Like many of the video game-based movies before it, including Resident Evil and the atrocious works of Uwe Boll, DOOM disregards most of the classic points from the games in favor of some screenwriters “take” on what they would have done. Most of the time this practice results in a clichéd movie banking on the name of a popular game series in order to guarantee a built in audience and secure a profit on the moderately budgeted picture.

I won’t lie when I say I had high hopes for DOOM. After being stuck in development hell for what seems a better part of my short 22 year life the series has finally come to big screen with the basics intact, but not much else.

DOOM very loosely centers on the story of DOOM 3 (PC/Xbox). In the game you are a lone marine transferred to the UAC (Union Aerospace Corporation) base on Mars where a gateway to Hell has been opened up and demons begin to run amok. The movie puts your character, John Grimm, into a squad of canon fodder transported to Mars where experiments with a long extinct race have resulted in “monsters” being created. Naturally they aren’t too happy with the human population and proceed to thin out their numbers.

There’s a lot to like about DOOM. The atmosphere of DOOM is accurately presented on screen with dark, dank corridors littered with steam and body parts. The monsters, created by Stan Winston Studios, look good, even if their departure from the source material is evident and we never get a really good look at them.

To appease fans of the series there’s a slight dose of series canon thrown in for good measure. The oft-talked about BFG (called the Bio Force Gun) is present, and the effects are well done. As mentioned before both UAC (as a Umbrella-like heartless corporation) and the series’ monsters are here, but the part that should be DOOM-flavored, the story, really missteps.

For one the absence of the demons from Hell storyline is very disappointing considering all three games (and expansion packs) in the video game series have made use of this. The scriptwriters seemed more inclined to make the story believable via mapping the human genome, but DOOM was never meant to be a science lesson. Early drafts of the script rumored that the movie wouldn’t even take place on Mars, and while this was corrected, there is still evidence of this by the marines having to use a wormhole like travel device to reach the red planet rather than a simple transport.

Series-based nitpicks aside; the movie still isn’t able to stand on its two feet very well, almost like a drunken prom date who shows signs of becoming coherent but simply drifts off into vomiting her Black Angus dinner up. Karl Urban does an adequate job of portraying a likeable protagonist who the audience can follow throughout the film, while the dialog is choppy and cheesy; he makes his way through it well. The Rock is some-what miscast as Sarge for the sheer fact that he doesn’t need to act like a Drill Sergeant to be taken seriously as a leader. This is the next action star in the making and we’re left to see him flounder around with poorly written “tough-guy” dialog. Overall the rest of the cast is only there for a few memorable death sequences and they aren’t given enough camera time to really mention.

Finally, the most talked about part of the film, the first person action sequence, came off better than I thought it would. The series was accurately represented via this cinematic gimmick and the sequence was especially fun to watch, and ended with many gamers have done before, shooting at themselves in a mirror reflection.

DOOM is a hit or miss film with an average storyline muddled by Hollywood and their tinkering with an established franchise with an established, and rabid, fan-base. While I’d like to say the film did everything I expected it to, I’d certainly be lying. DOOM did enough to warrant a sequel, and if it does, hopefully the person writing it will actually play the game.

I once heard an amazing quote that puts everything in perspective concerning the FOX network. To paraphrase it, “FOX develops amazing shows, sometimes the best in the business; they just don’t know how to handle them.” Never before has a quote shown so much enlightenment upon a single situation. Luckily, for all of us, those amazing shows also pique the interest of other companies, and in the case of Firefly, an ill-fated 2003 sci-fi romp, Universal saw the potential of the show, and gave creator Joss Whedon the pickup for a feature film.

Firefly, the precursor to Serenity, was, as described above, a sci-fi series nested comfortable in the “Friday Death Slot” that hasn’t seen a show escape since The X Files made the leap to Sunday’s. The show, focusing on an ensemble cast aboard the transport ship Serenity (Firefly-class) opened up the world of the future to the mind of Buffy and Angel creator Joss Whedon, who is known for taking chances in both his writing and direction of shows. I’m happy to say that Whedon successfully makes his feature film debut in what is, quite possibly, the best science fiction film in a decade or longer.

For the uninitiated Serenity focuses on the same ensemble crew from the television series still flying about, breaking the law, pillaging Alliance goods, and generally having a good time. The crew is composed of captain Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), his first mate Zoe (Gina Torres), her husband and pilot Wash (Alan Tudyk), engineer Kaylee (Jewel Staite), mercenary Jayne (Adam Baldwin) as well as fugitive passengers Simon (Sean Maher) and River (Summer Glau). The latter is the focus of the film’s story as her back story is analyzed a bit more than Whedon was able to in the TV show. For fans of the show the movie serves as both a proper series finale as well as a jumping point into a series of films.

One of Firefly‘s, and Buffy and Angel before it, greatest achievements was in the show’s writing. The film inherits this trait and builds upon it. Whedon seems incredibly comfortable crafting a bigger, more intricate episode of the show with an added budget for special effects and set design, both places Serenity excels beyond the competition. Similarly to Sci-Fi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica, Serenity is a piece of entertainment written around the characters, almost as though it was written for them instead of a viewing audience. Each one is fleshed out and entirely human in the way they act, behave, and react to the situations meeting them head on. This all comes into play fully as the film’s climax begins to really play with your emotional heartstrings as Whedon, once again, shows he is fearless when it comes to his characters and their mortality. While I won’t give anything away, prepare to be shocked.

You’d never be able to tell that Whedon has never directed a big screen production before, as his skills from the small screen transfer to the silver one with incredibly finesse. The movement of the camera is especially awesome as the opening scene of the film is a continuous shot for a matter of minutes without an obvious cut. Many first time directors, with or without previous TV or music video experience, can easily be overwhelmed when put at the helm of a feature film, not Whedon.

While the director should receive a lot of the praise for this wonderful film, the cast isn’t without accommodation as well. Each and every actor has shown the ability to create a memorable character that melds perfectly with the rest of the cast. Whether it is Mal and Jayne playfully arguing or Inara (Morena Baccarin) and Mal fighting their feelings for each other, the dialog is crisp, witty, and full of life. Whedon’s script is the film’s strongest point and can easily be considered for Oscar nomination if the tool’s within the Academy would acknowledge something besides the usual art-house cinema.

Whether or not the masses are ready for a new franchise built upon a sly wit, great characters, and an imaginative take on the future is beyond me, but for those enjoying excellent, award-caliber cinema, Serenity is a no-brainer. Easily better than George Lucas’ prequel trilogy, more alive than the excellent Battlestar Galactica, and more real than reality TV, Serenity is the kind of film that really makes you think about the sci-fi genre in a different light as it breaks the mold we’ve grown so accustom to over the years.

The Dukes of Hazzard, a film version of the hit TV show, is what I like to call a completely harmless movie, or in Hitchhiker terms: mostly harmless. The film simply exists, for what reason is the question you ask yourself when exiting the theater. There just isn’t anything special to it besides a hilarious spoof involving a few campus police officers, and when your biggest draw is a Hemi-powered Charger and Jessica Simpson’s body, it’s a wonder why you just don’t pull out a car magazine.

Everything you would expect to be in a Dukes movie is here, Boss Hogg looking to make lots of money, Bo (Seann William Scott) and Luke (Johnny Knoxville) screaming “Yeee-haw” while tearing apart a classic 1969 orange Charger (aka The General Lee). In fact, you’ll find the most satisfaction when the General is being put to the test by the Dukes power sliding through a roundabout or jumping gullies. Everything else is just sort of anti-climatic.

The plot, or what passes for one, is just an excuse to put Bo and Luke into a series of situations with comedic outcomes. You can tell the screenwriters thought up the jokes they’d like to tell, then wrote around them. This isn’t to say the jokes don’t work, because they do, and some very, very well.

The highlight of the film is the General Lee being pulled over by two campus police officers in a golf cart. Those who have seen Super Troopers could see this coming a mile away, but it was still funny. While there was a better way they could have done it, what we got still put a smile in my face and a tear in my eye from laughing. The rest of the jokes are hit and miss, which seems odd with the heightened screen presence of Scott and Knoxville who have both managed to make us laugh over the years. I guess even funny actors can’t pull sub-par writing out of the toilet.

Jay Chandrasekhar’s direction isn’t to blame for the film, as rumors persist that he couldn’t construct the movie he wanted to, and we know Broken Lizard can make a funny film (if we’re willing to forget Club Dread). Still, what we get is a fundamentally generic film cinematically that only shows signs of glory when it pulls bits form the TV show (freeze-frame, narration).

Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville do an adequate job playing the numb-skull cousins Bo and Luke with their asset rich cousin Daisy (Jessica Simpson) who spends the entire film in short shorts and low-cut tops (no complaint here). Willie Nelson as Uncle Jessie is an inspired choice, but he doesn’t have a whole lot to do here, ditto to Pauline (Lynda Carter) who has all but three lines in the entire film. Burt Reynolds as Boss Hogg also delivers a great performance and makes a full white suit look good (in a purely hetero-kind-of-way).

What it all comes down to is the end credits are the best part of the film, bar-none. The blooper reel that shows various incarnations of the General Lee biting the big one and the actors blowing their lines provides the most laughs. The “who-cares” plot doesn’t provide the drive to really watch the film for anything else than Jessica’s ass and a hot orange car. If the powers that be at Warner Bros. decide to go for a sequel, they might want to invest in a screenwriter, or give us two hours of car-flying-fun. The Dukes of Hazzard may not be hazardous to your health, but you sure won’t feel good stepping out of the theater.