How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)

I’m super behind on writing reviews mostly because I’m being mega lazy after tiring and long days at work.  But, I’m not slacking off.  I did try to entertain you all with food reviews and we all love to look at delicious food, right? Enough of the silliness…back to business.

I told you that I had wanted to go to a bundle of summer movies.  Two Sundays ago (I know I’m super late), my friend and I went off after dinner to go see How To Train Your Dragon 2.  I’m a HUGE fan of How to Train Your Dragon.  I mean, if I could have a room full of dragons especially Toothless, I’d do it.

Umm…okay, let me tuck away my crazy for a second and just go straight for the review 😉

Director: Dean DeBlois

Cast: Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, Gerard Butler, Cate Blanchett, Craig Ferguson, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Djimon Hounsou, Kit Harington

Its been five years since Berk has welcomed dragons into their lives as friends and companions.  Hiccup’s father, Stoick (Gerard Butler) is now trying to put on the Chief responsibilities on his shoulders much to his reluctance.  He doesn’t feel like he’s fit to take on the job when all he wants is to discover new places with Toothless. However, on one of their discoveries, they land on a iced island where they meet Eret (Kit Harington) who is a part of dragon catcher crew who helps complete the dragon army for the deadly Drago Bludvist. Drago is bad news and everyone will soon learn just how bad.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 is a pretty great sequel.  It doesn’t quite match up to the first one but its pretty damn close to it.  The animation is beautiful as before and the story carries on with lots of heart and even tugs at some heartstrings.  The voices are the same as before and still with lots of enthusiasm.  With the additional voices of Cate Blanchett, she never disappoints. Plus, this time around, with the dragons as part of the life in Berk, there are more dragons to see.

Its an adventurous journey for Hiccup and his group and a lot of  comedic moments as always.  The whole venturing into the new lands and discovering more plus bringing back Hiccup’s mom in the process gave it a more emotional aspect.  Cate Blanchett does a great job as Hiccup’s mom, Valka.  We understand a bit more of Hiccup in the process while this whole journey also helps him learn about himself. In the end, isn’t that really what Hiccup’s story in How to Train Your Dragon is about? On a simple level, its about finding a balance and peace between the dragons and Berk but the relationship of Toothless and Hiccup really bring a lot of heartwarming and heartbreaking moments.

Whats great about animations is that the villain is usually really well laid out for its audiences, young and old.  This one’s was Drago Bludvist, a crazy man trying to build a dragon army.  He has a secret weapon and he’s a tough guy to beat that even Stoick is a tad intimidated by him.  Drago is a great villain for this series. He’s not only dangerous to the Vikings but also the dragons.  There wasn’t one moment where I cheered for him.  I guess thats why he’s done so well, right?

In this sequel, the other characters from the first get a little bit more time also.  They haven’t quite developed much on the characters but they work great as the comic relief to make the more intense moments softer for the audience.  The addition of Kit Harrington as Eret and he sparks the flame of Ruffnut who makes for some pretty hilarious scenes and dialogue.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 is a great sequel that almost matches to the first.  Its beautifully animated for one.  Plus, the story never has any lingering dull moments with its excitement of discovery and surprises while also having an emotional ride as it tugs at our heartstrings to watch the familiar characters we’ve grown to love in the first one go through hardships.  Especially when Toothless and Hiccup’s relationship is put to the ultimate test.

Dreamworks has been putting out hit after hit with such surprising enjoyable animations.  It makes me hopeful for what they could possibly think up next 😉

What did you think of How To Train Your Dragon 2? Is it worthy sequel? Did you like the new characters? 

Kick-Ass (2010)

With so many other movie bloggers being hyped up for Kick Ass 2 coming out this year, I felt a bit left out that I hadn’t even seen the first one. I needed to know what the deal was and get in on the fun before it was too late 😉

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Cast: Aaron Johnson, Chloe Grace Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Nicholas Cage, Mark Strong, Lyndsey Fonseca, Michael Rispoli

Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is a normal student who does nothing special and is usually invisible to the girls at school. Being into comic books and superheroes, he wonders why no one has ever stepped up and tried to do what superheroes do and protect their society.  With this in mind, he orders a green jumpsuit from the Internet and trains himself (the best he can) and eventually tries to defend his society.  On his first attempt, he gets accidentally filmed and he becomes a hit under the alias of Kick-Ass.  When he urges a girl he is interested at school, Katie (Lyndsey Fonseca) to ask Kick Ass for help to get rid of an annoying ex, on that mission, he ends up meeting Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) and Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage) who requests for him to join them.  In the process, some mafia leader Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong) mistakes him to be part of a big scheme to derail their illegal activities and his son offers to disguise as another superhero called Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) to help with their plan.

When I turned on Kick-Ass, I had no idea what it would be like.  I hadn’t even seen the trailer.  Back in 2010, I was still just getting back into the groove of the existence of TV, forget about movies.  Honestly, it looks a bit corny and cheesy but at the same time, my main motivation was that Chloe Grace Moretz is awesome! If everything sucked, at least she would light up that screen.  Unexpectedly, it was bloody, funny and silly, and plenty of stylish fun.  It was somewhat of a weird combination from all the characters but it had a spark that really worked for it.  There was a lot of cross over with comic style visually here and there and the way they filmed it was really attractive.  I like this little flick a lot!

If you had to define loser, this Dave character would definitely be it.  Even the costume he chooses and the luck he has is ridiculous.  However, something about the sweet victory of a normal everyday person having the heart to become something more without no actual reason makes me want to cheer for him and connect.  Thats what Dave has going on for him, even when we see him dig his own grave over and over again in his personal life or as Kick-Ass.  Its fun to see his character development as it changes into making this into something more meaningful and he finds his actual courage and strength.

Hit Girl and Big Daddy played by Chloe Grace Moretz and Nicholas Cage respectively are father and daughter team and they are super kick ass.  Like not Dave Kick Ass because Big Daddy is right when he says that, he should be called Ass Kicked compared to them.  This team is phenomenal with a specific agenda that they know what they want to accomplish, well-planned and they are crazy great at everything.  Their story is actually pretty good and it defines the means of why they do what they are doing.  Its been a while I’ve seen Nicholas Cage teamed up with kids and there is a pretty good vibe between the characters.

What superhero movie is without their villain, right? Mark Strong plays the villain Mark D’Amico.  He’s somewhat of a brutal and emotionally unstable man to me.  He seems to try to contain himself and is immune to being harsh.  Red Mist is his son and he recognizes his son’s potential as he is chooses to become Red Mist to lure out Kick-Ass.  Frank D’Amico is a tough guy to beat, however, we all know Red Mist isn’t really that bad…he’s just being a son, right? Thats not a spoiler…I hope! (Its getting hard to stop myself from writing too much…)

Bottomline: I loved it! It was great to watch visually.  The characters were great and there was a good development with each one.  It was a bit predictable but the action and the fight scenes and the interaction between the characters was totally fantastic that I didn’t really feel like there was anything unenjoyable until I sat down and wrote this.  Just little issues though and definitely worth a viewing! Maybe like me, you’ll want to go see Kick Ass 2 when it comes out!! 🙂

Paranorman (2012)

I’ve been working hard on watching all those unseen movies..but I did end up getting this one at a decent price recently at Walmart.  This one had a lot of positive reviews last year and being made from the same company as one of my favorite animations, I had to check it out right away!

Director: Chris Butler & Sam Fell

Cast: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Tucker Albrizzi, Anna Kendrick, Casey Affleck, Leslie Mann, Jeff Garlin

Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee) lives in a little town called Blithe Hollow.  He is a bit of an outcast and everyone thinks his weird because he talks to empty space.  However, the real deal is that he can see and talk to ghosts.  Some ghosts stay around because they have unresolved business and he can talk to them and get along with them even better than with live people around him.  At home, his parents especially dad (Jeff Garlin) doesn’t believe these things and just wants him to normal and cut out all the pretending that grandma is still alive. At school, he gets bullied by  a guy called Alvin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse).  As much as he learns to ignore everyone and just be alone, a little chubby boy, Neil (Tucker Albrizzi), who also gets bullied wants to be his friend.  He gets approached by his uncle’s ghost to go look for a book to read the story in order to stop the witch from rising from the dead, however, he is too late. Along with his sister Courtney, Neil and his brother Mitch(Casey Affleck)and Alvin, Norman goes to find a way to stop the witch and the undead from destroying his town.  To do this, he has to figure out where the witch was buried and the get the whole story.

Paranorman is a stop motion comedy thriller animation with zombies and ghosts.  However, its not very scary.  Its done by the same company who put out Coraline.  Coraline is one of my absolute favorite animations.  It was creepy but fun to watch, mixed with a bit of humor.  I really looked forward to Paranorman for those exact reasons.  This one was pretty fun.  It was suitable for kids because the ghosts and the undead aren’t too scary looking but then it got the message around.  Maybe a few jumps here and there.  It was some fun witty humor matched with a pretty well-written story.  I loved it! Maybe not as much as Coraline, but this one is less tense, its much  more awesome family fun.

This whole animation was done very beautifully.  The visuals were outstanding from the backgrounds to the ghosts, the animated sceneries.  The characters were designed very well.  It focused on not only the adventure and mystery of saving the town from ghosts and zombies, but featured the family element of bond, understand, and support for each other, brings in hints of friendship and of course, the biggest issue was about bullying.

Norman was a pretty cool character.  I loved how he was stubborn about his own beliefs.  I may never have met any kid that can talk to ghosts but he has some believable aspects.  One of my favorite characters has to be Neil.  He was hilarious. He had some of the best dialogue that would just crack me up. The voices were done very well and it was just an extremely entertaining movie in general.

Wonderfully animated, funny characters, some ghosts and zombies with an evil witch, this movie had it all for me to pull it out at Halloween (or even before that) to watch again. I definitely recommend it 🙂