Guardians Of The Galaxy

Yikes!  What an awesome soundtrack and the action is pretty good, too.  I can’t wait for this to come out on disc to watch it over and over again.  Yep, I thought it was that good.  My movie obsession is not with the heroes of this film, but with the pseudo ultimate villain, Ronan, played by Lee Pace.  That man is a tall, good looking drink of water in my book.  He just is.  Now, let’s get back to the film and the “Guardians”.  We have a kid who grows into a space bandit with a huge bounty on his head, a green badass lady assassin, a tattooed hulk bent on revenge, a genetically modified raccoon, and Groot, the living breathing vegetarian Marvel Comics version of a Wookie that utters the following sentence throughout the film:  “I am Groot”.   Although you can’t see them, Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel are sort of the Han Solo and Chewbacca characters, Chris Pratt is the Luke Skywalker stand-in, Zoe Saldana is not exactly a Princess Leia substitute – but she is the “girl” and more like a female version of Thor-lite, and Dave Batista, as Drax the Destroyer, is the only main character that doesn’t conjure up Star Wars references to me.  I saw some things that made me think of a couple of Sly Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi films and definitely felt the presence of the Star Trek force without blatant plagiarism from any and all of the present or past films.  It was bloody good fun movie.  Rating:  I am Groot (translation – 4 stars)

How To Train Your Dragon 2

We return to Berk, land of the Scottish Vikings and dragons.  Toothless, Hiccup, Astrid, and the rag-tag dragon riders are back.  This time the story shifts to the more mature Hiccup (he’s 20 now), he’s a community organizer per se and the assumed future leader of the pack.  The visuals are amazing and the story gives us a look at how friendship, love, and trust can change even the most hopeless situation.  We’re introduced to some new characters, notably, Cate Blanchett and Djimon Hounsou.  I can’t really give you much more information than that this is a sequel worthy of being made and that I would like to see it as a double-feature outdoor movie.  A word of advice…kids under five may not be able to sit through this and there are parts that are frightening to the younger children, so use your best sense when deciding to pack everyone up and take them to the movies.  Rating:  3.75 stars and a gummy grin