Nerd Journal: With Friends Like These ...

Thor: The Dark World came out on Blu-ray yesterday, and when I got home from class, I found a copy of it waiting for me, courtesy of those evil enablers Count Chocula and La Parisienne.  I may or may not have played it 4 times in the last 48 hours while helplessly cursing Loki for being so wickedly splendid.  I'm not sure how it could possibly be any worse.

SHUT UP.

Movie Review: "Thor: The Dark World"

We're Up All Night To Get Loki.

"Thor: The Dark World"?  No, my darlings.  You know how you eat your boring vegetables just so that you can then have a decadently delicious dessert?  This movie is pretty much the same thing: we put up with a great many idiocies and narrative missteps just so that we can have Loki in the second half.  The title of this movie really should be "Please Tolerate A Lame Villain, a Muddled Premise, a Stupid Love Story, Meaningless Bit Characters, Idris Elba Wasted Again, and Stellan Skargård In Underpants So You Can Have Loki ... Eventually."  The flick is worth the price of admission for (and pretty much only for) the indispensable presence of Tom Hiddleston's irresistible, sinuously feline god of mischief now in his third appearance (after Thor (2011) and The Avengers (2012)).  OK, here's a more fitting poster:

Movie Review: "Thor"

Thunder from Down Under.

The 2011 summer movie season kicks off with color, action, spectacle, and humor as the buff, boisterous, blond Norse god of thunder with his trusty magic hammer Mjölnir storms onto movie screens all across America.  It's a hilariously humorous combination of Shakespearean credentials and comic book action, as Kenneth Branagh (yes, you read that right) directs and Sir Anthony Hopkins takes a supporting role in a tale of, among other things, brothers in competition and father-son conflict on a truly epic scale that still has enough personal human drama to catch your interest in the characters.  I had given "Thor" my stamp of approval briefly here, but I just promised the Cinema-Mad Sibling a real (if quick) review, so here goes.  Note: You don't really need to be familiar with either Norse mythology or the comic book in order to enjoy this colorful popcorn flick, so no worries.