Year:  2011
Genre:  Comic book, Action
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  Chris Evans, Tommy Lee Jones, Hayley Atwell, Hugo Weaving, Dominic Cooper, Toby Jones, Stanley Tucci 
Cameo:  Samuel L. Jackson
Director:  Joe Johnston
Run time:  124 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     One good thing I can say about Captain America is that they sure got the name of the movie right.  Captain America sure is a captain.  And he SURE is American!  Real Americans, you see, are patriotic to the point of lunacy.  So is Steve Rogers, who is a short little 90 pound athsmatic weakling deemed unfit for military service. 

     But Steve won’t take no for an answer, and does everything in his power, like a good little American, to trick his way into the army so he can go overseas and be (almost certainly) killed by the Germans in World War II.  He is SO patriotic, and wants SO BADLY to fight for his country, that it never occurs to him that if he DID get to go over there to fight, he would surely be more of a hindrance than a help.

     Like all good Americans, Steve Rogers never backs down from a fight, even when four huge guys are beating him to death.  All good Americans must be…really stupid?  Then, he gets some kind of crazy scientific experimental procedure done (thanks military!), and now he’s no longer a little weakling.  Now, he’s a jacked up muscular huge guy. 

     Like all good Americans, he realizes that being huge is far more important than being smart.  And he chooses a brightly painted red white and blue shield to carry, so no one can forget that he’s American.  This makes a little bit of sense, because the shield is this really cool brand new matal material that stops bullets and…well, I guess that’s it.  It stops bullets.  But it stops them Better Than Anything Ever In The World.

     Like Linus and his security blanket, Steve Rogers (now Captain America) carries the shield everywhere he goes.  Which once again, makes sense – he’s doing a USO tour to lift the spirits of the troops…or something?  No one including the Captain seems to understand exactly what he’s doing at these silly shows.   Of course, though, the Captain is upset about the dog-and-pony show, because he’s Just Not Helping His Country with his new big muscles.

     So of course he goes on a singlehanded raid behind enemy lines to break his army buddies out of a nazi POW camp.  He’s going to be really stealthy, so he wears the same clothes as the Germans and hides behind tanks and trucks and then runs very fast so he won’t be spotted.  Except that you can spot him from SPACE, because he’s still carrying this stupid, gaudy, red white and blue shield!

     I realize that in this review, I’m criticizing the character of Captain America more so than the movie itself.  And my feeling that Captain America is a really stupid superhero creates the feeling, in me, that his movie is a really stupid movie.  And I guess this is the way you decide whether YOU like it.  Captain America is a cartoon character that runs fast, lifts heavy stuff and does some very, very stupid things that just happen to work out because he’s the hero of the movie.  If that sounds like something you might like then, by all means, rent this one on DVD, out October 25th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

     One last thing – the big question here is of course this – do you have to watch this film before watching The Avengers when it goes all blockbuster next summer?  Frankly, I don’t know.  I doubt it.  There are some vague tie-ins – Dominic Cooper plays Howard Stark, the father of Robert Downey’s Tony Stark in the Iron Man series.  Samuel L. Jackson makes the same brief cameo at the end that he does in all the others – Iron Man, Thor, etc.  And that’s about it.  Captain America is a muscular super-soldier, he’s American to the point of silliness, and he has a really strong shield.  Now you can skip this and wait for The Avengers, next year.

Year:  2011
Genre:  Comic book, Action
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgard, Kat Dennings, Ray Stevenson, Idris Elba, Colm Feore, Clark Gregg, Rene Russo
Cameo:  Samuel L. Jackson
Director:  Kenneth Branagh
Run time:  115 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Thor has as much going for it as it has working against it.  The cast is truly amazing – Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Stellan Skarsgard, Kat Dennings, Colm Feore, Rene Russo – tons of my favourites.  But without exception, every talented actor in the movie is given nothing to do.  The star, Chris Hemsworth, seems to be better at flexing than he is at acting, but then that’s really all he is asked to do.

     Thor, you see, is the god with whom we are all familiar – Norse, muscular, long blond hair and blue eyes, hammer.  He lives in Asgard with his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins), his brother/step-brother/something else Loki, and his small clique of friends.  The realm of Asgard was once menaced by some creatures who appear to be half-monster, half-popsicle.  They proved very easy to smash, being frozen and all, and Odin smashed enough of them to achieve peace.

     Now, as Odin is preparing to hand the crown of the kingdom to his eldest son Thor, these popsicle-beasts suddenly return to be smashed easily once more.  Thor, showing just how young and headstrong he is, rushes out to the Kingdom Of The Popsicle Monsters to wreak havoc and vengeance upon them.  He and his clique are almost killed in the battle, until they are saved by Odin and brought back safely to Asgard.

     Now, Odin knows that his son is too headstrong and, frankly, stupid to become king.  One would hope a wise old man would have realized this before he was mere seconds away from crowning the idiot – but some parents are just blind when it comes to their kids’ deficiencies.

     Thor is cast out of Asgard for having started a war which will lead to much bloodshed.  He ends up on Earth, of course, because otherwise how could there be a movie?  Once there, he meets a bunch of scientists – Portman, Skarsgard and Dennings.  Skarsgard and Dennings are there to sit on chairs while the action plays out, Portman is there to look pretty and eventually fall in love with Thor for no apparent reason.  This works, because he falls for her also for no apparent reason.  They’re the perfect couple!  Beautiful but vapid!

     The rest of the movie consist mainly of Thor searching for his hammer, a government agency hiding his hammer, and Thor beating up government agents in search of his hammer.  There’s a whole lot of flexing and fighting and Thor establishing his ass-kicking bona fides.  Then, of course, the big threat to humanity appears, Thor kicks its ass, and the stage is set for the big super-movie that will partner Thor with Captain America, Iron Man and the Hulk.

     I can’t wait for that super-movie.  Captain America was awful.  Thor is passable at best.  Iron Man was great, and The Hulk was pretty good, but the longer we wait for the big everyone-together movie, the more likely it is we’ll have to suffer through Iron Man 3 or something equally horrible.  Like maybe Thor 2.  Ugh.

Year:  2010
Genre:  Comic book, Action
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Don Cheadle, Mickey Rourke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jon Favreau, Sam Rockwell, Samuel L. Jackson, Clark Gregg, Gary Shandling, Paul Bettany
Cameos:  Christianne Amanpour, Bill O’Reilly, Stan Lee
Eye candy:  Paltrow, Johansson, Leslie Bibb, Kate Mara
Director:  Jon Favreau
Run time:  126 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Iron Man 2 works best when Robert Downey Jr. is NOT on screen.  When Iron Man is the worst character in your Iron Man movie, you have a problem.  In the first film, Tony Stark was fantastic – a sort of flawed superhero, a Van Wilder type who could get away with sleeping with every hot babe and ignoring bigwigs and officials on the strength of his charm alone.  Yes, he did bad things, but he was just a charming rogue and was therefore easily forgiven.

     In Iron Man 2, Tony Stark is now a jerk.  He’s Paris Hilton in a metal suit, a fame whore whose most carefree antics are still obnoxious and mean-spirited.  He’s also a drunk and a lout and is meanest to those closest to him.  I get the idea – he’s supposed to have become a boorish douche who has let fame go to his head, and he’s supposed to be worried because he’s dying.  And that gives him a chance at redemption in the final act.  That way, the movie has somewhere to GO, you see.

     The thing is, I disliked Tony Stark so much during the film that by the final act, I no longer cared about whether he found redemption.  Or whether he lived.  The cartoonish bad guys (Sam Rockwell and Mickey Rourke) are no better drawn than Stark in this second installment, but I still found myself rooting for them to put Iron Man out of my misery.  Flaws or not, I shouldn’t be rooting against the star of a comic book movie.

     That being said, there are lots of reasons to like the film.  It’s visually amazing, once again.  The only format in which to see an Iron Man movie is HD, so I highly recommend the Blu-Ray version out today from Paramount Home Entertainment.  Scarlett Johansson is sensational, and lovely, and totally kick-ass, and badly underused as a new minor character who will likely go on to become a much bigger one in some later sequel.  One that I really hope is more like the first one than like this one.

Sin City (**********10/10)

Year:  2005
Genre:  Crime, Comic book
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, Powers Boothe, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Hartnett, Michael Clarke Duncan, Rutger Hauer, Michael Madsen, Nick Stahl, Elijah Wood, Jessica Alba, Devon Aoki, Alexis Bledel, Brittany Murphy, Rosario Dawson, Carla Gugino, Jaime King
Eye candy:  Alba, Aoki, Bledel, Murphy, Dawson, Gugino, King
Directors:  Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller
Run time:  126 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     In 2005, one of the best movies of the year was Sin City.  An all-star cast of babes and tough guys, a new filming style and a crazy multi-story plot made the film a revelation then, and it’s still impressive and brilliant now.  Clearly Sin City is the stronger film on this two-film bargain DVD released February 23rd by Alliance Films.

     Sin City is incredible in that it’s a stand-alone movie.  No other movie since then with a similar style has been any good.  The Spirit, I’m looking at you.  So it isn’t just the style that makes Sin City a classic.  And it isn’t just the giant cast of great tough-guy actors – Clive Owen, Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Michael Madsen et al, or the long line of stunning babes – Jessica Alba, Brittany Murphy (R.I.P.), Rosario Dawson, and the ridiculously hot, naked Carla Gugino.

     In fact, in watching this movie again, I think a good case could be made that Gugino, even though she has a relatively small amount of screen time, might be, in this movie, the hottest woman in any movie ever.  Hell, Sin City even made Alexis Blededl, the erstwhile cute little girl from Gilmore Girls, into one of the sultriest, sexiest women imaginable.

     The key to Sin City‘s brilliance, in my opinion, is the direction of Robert Rodriguez.  When I first saw the film I thought Frank Miller had a big hand in this as well.  Since then, however, I have seen The Spirit.  Now I believe that Miller made a fantastic graphic novel, but when it came to the direction on Sin City, Rodriguez was acting alone.  The pacing is magnificent, the black and white style is perfectly shot with the occasional splash of colour, and the balance between comedy, action, violence and potboiler tough-talk is perfect.  Sin City was, and remains, pretty close to perfect.

  The Crow (*******7/10)

Year:  1994
Genre:  Fantasy, Action
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  Brandon Lee, Ernie Hudson, Bai Ling, Jon Polito
Director:  Alex Proyas
Run time:  100 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     The Crow is the weaker of the two movies on this double feature.  But it’s a pretty good weak link.  A cult classic more for its stylishness than for its substance, The Crow became famous mostly because Brandon Lee died during the filming, and Brandon Lee was famous mostly because his father was named Bruce.  That being said, it’s a movie worth watching and revisiting.  It just isn’t the classic we seem to think it is.

     One of the problems with The Crow is Brandon Lee himself.  His back-from-the-dead rock star is a silly cliche to begin with, and he looks a little like a prototype for Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight.  But Lee plays Eric Draven very flat, and there is little about the Crow himself that is interesting.  More troubling, however, is the Big Bad Guy, who is never really explained.  Is he some kind of mystical super-villain who sleeps with his sister and eats the eyes of his enemies, or is he just a creepy lunatic who sleeps with his sister and eats the eyes of his enemies?  Either way he’s boring, so I don’t care.

     The best characters in the film are the cop who helps Draven and the little girl who used to be his ward.  But they are given little to do.  And the action scenes are disappointing.  So that leaves a straight-ahead revenge story with a mystical resurrection twist to entertain us.  And, thankfully, it does.  Cheesy 80s villains straight out of Death Wish are entertaining, as is the obligatory long-table council of mob bosses that seems to spring up in every movie from the 90s involving gangsters.

     There’s also something comical about Lee’s flatness in itself.  His Crow, boring as he may be, somehow works better because of his lack of charisma.  It’s…funnier that way.  Watching bad guys scurry and cower in fear every time he giggles makes me giggle too.  And the scene where he cleans up the little girl’s junkie mother is priceless.  What The Crow really has to offer is cheese, and it offers it up by the Cracker Barrelful.  It isn’t good.  At all.  But it’s tons of fun.

“It’s open season on all suckheads”

Blade (********8/10)

 Year:  1998
Genre:  Action, Comic book
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Stephen Dorff, Udo Kier, Donal Logue
Eye candy:  N’Bushe Wright, Traci Lords, Sanaa Lathan
Director:  Steve Norrington
Run time:  121 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films
Related reviews:  Blade trilogy

     The original Blade movie was terrific, a real breath of fresh air in the world of comic book movies.  Wesley Snipes was big, muscular, bad-ass and mean.  Kris Kristofferson was amazing as Whistler, Blade’s mentor.  And Stephen Dorff was terrific as the bad guy, a vampire who wanted to trigger the Blood Tide – an event that would, I think, turn everyone in the world into a vampire.  Or something.  The point is, this movie was awesome.  Sword fighting, guns, vampires disintegrating and great special effects, and Snipes as the most ass-kicking, toughest, meanest comic book character of all time.  There was even some good comedy – mostly provided by Donal Logue, who kept getting his arm chopped off.  And for the really cult comic book fans – some appearances by Traci Lords and Udo Kier.  Terrific!  The second Blade is still better, but I love the original too.

“Every time someone farts, a demon gets his wings”

Spawn (***3/10)

Year:  1997
Genre:  Comic book, Action
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Michael Jai White, John Leguizamo, Martin Sheen
Eye candy:  Theresa Randle, Melinda Clarke
Director:  Mark A.Z. Dippe
Run time:  97 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     If there is one thing that ruins Spawn (and make no mistake, this movie is RUINED), it’s John Leguizamo as the disgusting, irritating, obnoxious clown.  I THINK he’s supposed to be comic relief.  But there is nothing funny about him at any moment in this awful, awful movie.  If there are other factors ruining Spawn, there are a few to choose from.  A ludicrous plot, Martin Sheen’s illogical, nonsensical character, an unnecessary appearance by a cute young kid to add some heart to the film, and some silly special effects involving a cape that seems to billow and flap erratically for no good reason.  Other than that, Michael Jai White is pretty good, and most of the movie is visually impressive.  If only John Leguizamo and the kiddie stuff had been taken out.  This would be an AMAZING nine-minute movie.

“I trust only one person Jax, and you’re looking at her.”

Mortal Kombat (*****5/10)

Year:  1995
Genre:  Action, Video game
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Robin Shou, Linden Ashby, Christopher Lambert, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa
Eye candy:  Talisa Soto, Bridgette Wilson
Director:  Paul W.S. Anderson
Run time:  101 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Mortal Kombat verges on being a movie that is so-bad-it’s good.  Nothing but fights, most of them poorly done and poorly choreographed, and a plot that is less than threadbare.  Of course, it’s a battle for the fate of the world.  And for some reason there is a hot chick there (Bridgette Wilson, who has no idea how to fight), and a self-centred movie star (Linden Ashby, who is also a rather unconvincing fighter).  The bad guy makes absolutely sure that the hot chick and the movie star go to his martial arts tournament.  We never know why.  The good guy learns his lessons from his creepy and useless master (Christopher Lambert) just in time to defeat the bad guy…somehow…thanks to the lessons.  I think.  There is a poorly animated monster who also fights. 

     This was one of the first movies based on video games.  And despite being truly dreadful, Hollywood kept making more video game movies, for some reason.  In fact, this movie was successful enough to spawn (no pun intended) a sequel where only Robin Shou returned.  And Talisa Soto, which was nice.  Sonya Blade was now played by Sandra Hess, who was maybe a little hotter but no more convincing than Wilson.  Mortal Kombat was, cinematically, an utter failure.  But it was a pretty entertaining one for those of us who love the awful.

     Why these three movies were packaged together, I don’t know.  Two are comic book movies – but one (Mortal Kombat) is not.  Two involve giant black guys flexing, but one (Mortal Kombat) does not.  Two involve martial arts moves and fight scenes, but one (Spawn) does not.  Two of them were absolutely dreadful, but one (Blade) was not.  I guess there was enough crossover to merit this set.  But I would still go with the Blade Trilogy, if I had my druthers.  And I DO have my druthers.

“I want new ones.”
“What do you want them to say?”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“Wolverine.”

Year:  2009
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Ryan Reynolds, Lynn Collins, Taylor Kitsch, Dominic Monaghan, will.i.am
Eye candy:  Jackman, Reynolds, Schreiber…I’m not naive.  I get it.
Director:  Gavin Hood
Run time:  107 minutes

     There comes a time in the career of every really cool director where he gets asked to make something like Wolverine.  Sometimes that director puts his own stamp on it (remember Ang Lee’s Hulk?) which may or may not work.  Sometimes they do what they know people will love (Peter Jackson with Lord of the Rings, or Sam Raimi with Spider-Man).  And sometimes they go through the motions for a paycheque.  I am not accusing Gavin Hood of going through the motions here.  I think he was genuinely trying to make a decent movie out of a dreadful script, and he was trying to give the people what they wanted.

     And I think a lot of people wanted exactly this movie.  I know my wife did – what she wants to see is Hugh Jackman flexing.  And Ryan Reynolds flexing.  And some badass snarls and a brief love story and then explosions and chases and crazy fights and so forth.  And I suppose there are guys out there who, despite not having a crazy frothing desire to see Jackman’s muscles, will be content with any movie that involves this much action and snarling and badassery.

     I am almost ashamed to admit that I am not one of those people.  Flexing and snarling and high-flying fighting is all good.  I don’t mind seeing it in a movie.  After all, I’m a big fan of high-flying kung-fu movies and big-flexing movies like Predator.  But I like to have something else in the film.  Anything else, in fact.  The nice thing about the first X-Men movie was that it was full of character development.  I learned a lot about each of the characters as the movie went along, and Wolverine, especially, grew into something he wasn’t when the film began.

     In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Wolverine does not really undergo a heck of a lot of character development.  Oh, we get his back story.  Sort of.  As a young boy, he had an older brothers, and the ability to fire bone claws out of his hands.  He saw a man kill the guy he thought was his father, and he retailated by killing that man.  It turns out the guy he killed was actually his real father.  And then he and his brother fought in a bunch of wars, in a long montage set to music.  Eventually, his brother (Liev Schreiber) becomes a loose cannon maniac, killing all kinds of people indiscriminately by the time the Vietnam war rolls around.  He’s like one of those…maniacs…in Vietnam war movies…that end up becoming brain-eating zombies later in the same movie.

     For some reason the kids become adults (Schreiber and Jackman) quickly, then they are immortal and never age again.  They are recruited, out of the Vietnam war, to be a part of an elite military unit because of their special abilities.  They are not alone.  Other mutants, like will.i.am and Ryan Reynolds and Dominic Monaghan, are recruited as well.  They can disappear, or do crazy sword stuff, or control electronic equipment with their minds.  But the military operation, run by Col. Stryker (Danny Huston), starts doing some very questionable things, and murdering innocent people for minerals, and such like.   Wolverine (Logan (Hugh Jackman)) isn’t cool with that.  And he leaves.

     Then his brother Victor (Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber)) starts hunting down and killing the former members of the team.  And the movie is about 20 minutes in.  That is all the back story we get.  Wolverine was a kid once, and he killed his father for some reason, and then he fought in some wars and split with his brother and met the unscrupulous and evil Col. Stryker.  Then he took off, got a wife, fell in love, and saw her murdered by his even-more-evil brother.  So he goes on a quest for vengeance which involves allowing Col. Stryker to cover his skeleton with adamantium, some kind of super-metal.  Now he’s the baddest man alive, and he can go kill his brother. 

     What follows is a long, vaguely irritating series of flexing scenes and chase scenes and fruitless fight scenes and eventually the storming of the mutant base on Three Mile Island.  At the end of the film, we learn how Wolverine developed that amnesia that plagued him at the beginning of the first X-Men.  How Col. Styker knew that shooting him with an adamantium bullet in his brain would erase his memory, I have no idea.  I mean, his entire skeleton is adamantium.  It’s all through his body, including his brain stem and spinal cord.  Wouldn’t that have already erased his memory?  How does putting it in his brain accomplish that?  Oh, who cares.  This movie isn’t supposed to make perfect sense. 

     In fact, it isn’t supposed to do anything except provide eye candy for women and explosions for men.  And it certainly does both, in equal measure.  But I really didn’t learn much about Wolverine himself, what makes him tick and so forth.  I learned what makes him flex though - vengeance!  Vengeance also makes him snarl and makes him scowl and makes him fight.  And…that’s all I know.  Gavin Hood does a decent job making sure both these essential plot elements are fulfulled.  Muscles and action.  But he’s working with a poor script that seems to create long, slow to develop scenarios just to set up one badass moment or tough-guy line.

     Hood has done some seriously great work in the past.  His film Tsotsi, made in South Africa in 2005, is a wonderful movie that won the Best Foreign Film Oscar that year.  Hood next made a terrific movie called Rendition, which was not particularly well-loved by most critics…but I loved it.  Reese Witherspoon notwithstanding, I thought it was great.  And now he gets a chance to make his Spider-Man, or his Lord of the Rings, and he does OK.  Wolverine is OK.  But knowing what movies came before, I am positive that Hood is capable of something much, much better.

     Alliance Films came out with the Blade trilogy on August 26th.  It’s a two-disc edition, with two of the movies on one disc and one on the other.  There are no terrific special features, it’s just a plain, bargain set of the three Blade films in a package that is conveniently the same size as every other DVD in your collection.  And if you don’t have these films already, this is one you should add to your collection.  Here’s why:

Blade (8/10): 

Year:  1998
Genre:  Action, Comic book
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Stephen Dorff, Udo Kier, Donal Logue
Eye candy:  N’Bushe Wright, Traci Lords, Sanaa Lathan
Director:  Steve Norrington
Run time:  121 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     The original Blade movie was terrific, a real breath of fresh air in the world of comic book movies.  Wesley Snipes was big, muscular, bad-ass and mean.  Kris Kristofferson was amazing as Whistler, Blade’s mentor.  And Stephen Dorff was terrific as the bad guy, a vampire who wanted to trigger the Blood Tide – an event that would, I think, turn everyone in the world into a vampire.  Or something.  The point is, this movie was awesome.  Sword fighting, guns, vampires disintegrating and great special effects, and Snipes as the most ass-kicking, toughest, meanest comic book character of all time.  There was even some good comedy – mostly provided by Donal Logue, who kept getting his arm chopped off.  And for the really cult comic book fans – some appearances by Traci Lords and Udo Kier.  Terrific!

Blade II (10/10): 

Year:  2002
Genre:  Action, Comic book
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Ron Perlman, Norman Reedus, Luke Goss, Thomas Kretschmann, Donnie Yen
Eye candy:  Leonor Varela, Sanaa Lathan
Director:  Guillermo Del Toro
Run time:  116 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     By far, the best of the series.  Directed by Guillermo Del Toro (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth), this film is as pulse-pounding and visually impressive as any comic book adaptation could aspire to be.  (Well, until 2008 when The Dark Knight came along.)  Snipes is now even more bad-ass, and he is given some awfully cool villains with which to work.  Luke Goss appears as Nomak, a new breed of vampire that preys on both humans AND vampires.  So now the vampires want a truce with Blade, because they are after the same enemy for once.  And Blade hooks up with the Blood Pack, a cheesily-named group of vampire bad-asses who have been training their whole lives to kill Blade, but now must work with him.  Ron Perlman, as the tough-guy leader of the Blood Pack, is amazing.  And even the secondary characters are cool actors – Norman Reedus as a stoner hippie helping Blade and Whistler, and Asian action movie legend Donnie Yen even shows up as a kung-fu fighting member of the Blood Pack.  And the vampire princess, played by Leonor Varela, is one of the hottest women ever in a movie.  Visually stunning, never-ending action, and some seriously bad-ass characters and actors made this movie not just a guilty pleasure, but the best in the trilogy.

Blade: Trinity (3/10): 

Year:  2004
Genre:  Action, Comic book
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Ryan Reynolds, Triple H, Patton Oswalt, Dominic Purcell, Callum Keith Rennie, John Michael Higgins, Eric Bogosian
Eye candy:  Jessica Biel, Parker Posey, Natasha Lyonne
Director:  David S. Goyer
Run time:  114 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     One of the biggest letdowns I have ever had at a movie.  Del Toro is gone as director, replaced by David S. Goyer.  Kristofferson is gone early in the film, replaced by Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel.  And I really like Ryan Reynolds – he even has some solid comedic scenes in this film.  But an action star?  Jessica Biel an action star?  I know she really wants to be, and she keeps trying and trying to be one, but she isn’t an action star.  Or a great actress.  She’s hot.  That’s about it.  I mean, stick to movies where you are hot.  Those, you can do.  Blade II had Ron Perlman and Donnie Yen.  Blade Trinity can only suffer by comparison.  But it isn’t just Reynolds and Biel that are the problem.  Snipes is the only genuine action star in the movie, but he is given just about nothing to do.  The script is dreadful, the concept just doesn’t work, and there are some really long, extended scenes that make absolutely no sense.  The other Blade films were genuinely dark, tough, gritty entries that could, on some level, be considered horror films.  This one is an absolute joke.  Not only that, Blade is now the co-star.  In his own film.  Because Biel and Reynolds are the real action stars.  Come on!  This one is total garbage.

      The two-disc Blade trilogy came out August 26th from Alliance Films.  Pick it up!  And ignore that third one.