Movie News for the Week of July 5, 2011

1. After taking a break from acting to obtain his college degree, Haley Joel Osment will return to the big screen in a Frankenstein-like movie. The movie, entitled Wake the Dead, will bring the story of Frankenstein to the modern world. This will be the first of many upcoming Frankenstein movies.

2. Will Smith is attempting to bring Hurricane Katrina to the big screen in American Can and wants Denzel Washington to play the lead role. Smith was originally supposed to star in his own production, but now he wants Washington.

3. I new idea called Movie Pass was recently introduced at a San Francisco movie theater and has many people talking. For only $50 a month, you can go to the theater as many times as you desire. This sounded amazing when I first heard it, and everyone was talking about it last week. Unfortunately, AMC frowned at the idea, which really hurts its chances of succeeding nationwide. Let's just continue to hope and pray that something comes through because I believe this is a great idea.

4. The second Thor movie has been given a release date for summer 2013. Marvel movies seem to be going nowhere, considering Iron Man 3 is also due out summer 2013.

5. The creator of Sex and the City has revealed one of her desired choices for the rumored prequel. Selena Gomez is now one of the front runners to play Charlotte, if the prequel becomes a reality. Another name that has been tossed around is Blake Lively.

6. Christopher Nolan is set to produce a secret supernatural thriller. Keith Gordon, known mostly for directing TV shows such as House and Dexter, will direct the film, based an an unknown novel. Details are certainly few and far between, due to Nolan's secretive nature.

A Little Something for the Potter Fans:
If Harry Potter were made into South Park character.

Green Lantern

Expectations:
As a person who doesn't care for comic books, it is difficult for me to predict whether a super hero movie will be good or not. Green Lantern is an intriguing character to me; so when I heard they were making a Green Lantern movie, I got excited about it. When they announced that Ryan Reynolds would play the main green dude, I became even more excited. But when I saw the trailer for the film, my expectations took a nose dive right back down to Thor territory. Most everything that I had heard about the movie over the past few weeks was negative, but I still had to check it out for myself.

Plot:
From the very beginning, Green Lantern lacked having much of a plot at all. There was so much focus put on explaining the origin of the ring and so forth that very little time was spent on the villains and the conflict between good and evil. I checked my phone an hour into the movie and, at that time, still felt as if I was being introduced to the characters. Sometimes that is not bad, but then it was like boom and the movie was over. I believe the movie should have been a little longer. They also had some very random additions to the plot, such as meeting Hal Jordan's family and the creation of a new fancy airplane. The movie just did not flow well AT ALL.

Characters:
Regardless of the results of the film as a whole, Ryan Reynolds was a good Green Lantern. Certainly not an award winning performance, but that is not what you expect with Reynolds. This may not have been a successful production, but Reynolds can only work with what he has. The best character was Hector Hammond, a weirdo school teacher turned villain played by Peter Sarsgaard. In my unprofessional opinion Sarsgaard is quite possibly the scariest dude in Hollywood, which makes playing a scary villain rather easy for him. But still, hats off to him for being himself. The worst character was Blake Lively. Maybe it is just me, but she is supposed to play a bad girl. In Green Lantern she plays someone who has it all together and it just does not fit. Most of the other characters were computerized, so I see no need to mention them.

Conclusion:
I did not expect much from the Green Lantern, and I got just what I expected. The only thing that I was impressed with was the special effects. Many people criticized the film for having too many effects, but I thought you kind of got what you paid for. Beyond that, most everything just sucked. I give Green Lantern 1.76 out 5 stars. Before I completely ruin your impression of this movie, let me say that if they make a sequel, I will go watch. There was so much time spent explaining what was happening that the story suffered greatly, but I do believe that they could create a good storyline and have a sequel that is better than the first. Let's start praying for that... right now.