Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Review by Bob Ignizio

Starting life as a small press comic book in 1984, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles became a huge phenomenon as an animated kid's show that debuted in 1987. There were a few live action films made in the early nineties alongside the cartoon, and countless merchandising tie-ins were sold before Turtlemania eventually burned out around 1996. Now that those kids who made the show such a success are old enough for nostalgia and to have kids of their own, it's time for a reboot.

Transformers: Age of Extinction

Review by Ric Nimrod with an introduction by Bob Ignizio

I went to see TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION this past Friday at the drive-in with the intention of reviewing it. It was not to be. The film beat me down. After two hours of mind numbing noise, hackneyed cliches, and general stupidity, I had enough. There was still 45 minutes of this crap left to go, and I just couldn't take it any more. And with that decision, I lost all right to give a full review with a star rating and everything. I figure it was worth it.

Thankfully, my friend Ric Nimrod (not his real name, obviously), guitarist/vocalist for Akron area rock band The Giggitys, had more stamina than I did. He recognizes the movie for the crap that it is, too, but was somehow able to get enough enjoyment out of watching it with his 5 year old son to make it through to the end. Although he describes the film as “unreviewable”, I think he does a pretty good job of conveying what the experience was like (at least as far as I got with it) and pointing out the reasons why, although it's crap, some people still like it. So here's Ric's review, taken from his facebook post with his permission:

Pain and Gain

Review by Bob Ignizio

PAIN & GAIN tells the more or less true story of how a group of bodybuilders in Miami, Florida who decided to embark on a kidnapping and extortion spree in the mid 1990s. Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) is arguably the brains of the group, a guy who feels he's owed a bigger slice of the American Dream and isn't above breaking the law to get it.

Inspired to become a “doer” by “Johnny Wu” (an obvious stand-in for infomercial king Tom Vu), Daniel comes up with a get rich quick scheme: He'll kidnap Jewish/Colubian deli magnate Victor Kershaw (Tony Shaloub), one of his clients at the Sun Gym, and get him to sign over everything he's got. To aid in his plot, Daniel drafts fellow bodybuilders Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie), who works part time at a taco stand and has “performance” issues due to his steroid use, and Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson), an ex-con, ex-cocaine addict turned born-again-Christian who somehow manages to rationalize his crimes as being okay with the Lord.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Review by Pete Roche

Pyromaniac director Michael Bay is now three entries deep in the movie franchise based on the Hasbro toy line, and his explosive M.O. hasn’t changed a bit. 

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON finds the noble Autobots racing the dastardly Decepticons for possession of a technology that would allow teleportation of Cybertron itself into Earth’s atmosphere.  Megatron (Hugo  Weaving) and his villainous vehicles plan to enslave humanity to rebuild their dying home world—but not if Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) can help it.  Sadly, Megatron is given short shrift again, playing second fiddle to other decidedly cooler baddies like Shockwave (whose mechanical DUNE worm literally chews up scenery by the city block) and murderous pterodactyl Laserbeak.