- Wall-e

This was a really great comedy animation movie. Anyone should watch this for the pure pleasure of laughing while watching a silly robot get in love.

- The X-Files: I want to believe

It’s a decent movie but nothing great.

- The Dark Knigth

A great movie. It deserves it’s own post, which I’ll write some time.

Rocky movies are all about the same: Rocky is the underdog and he needs to prove something. Not to the world, but to himself. In the end, Rocky proves to himself (and even to the world) that he is able and everybody loves Rocky (sometimes even his opponents).

All the Rocky movies have two other things in common: great soundtrack and great training sequences.

I’ll leave the soundtracks for some other time, since this post is about the training sequences.

Let’s go movie by movie:

Rocky 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iPFK5T_G3U

Punching meat in the meat house. It probably does not get any more old school than this.

Rocky 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVdbuNpsryI

This is a great sequence. Rocky gets his motivation from a talk with Adrian, from where he goes to perform his old school routine of running, crunching, rope skipping, the works. And, in the end of the training sequence, he gets surrounded by the people in the street who follow him and cheer for him.

Rocky 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yERlhKvzpyk

In Rocky 3, Rocky gets to train with his former oponnent Apollo Creed. Apollo tries go give Rocky some of his style and technique, they do a lot of foot work and some swimming. Also new is the introducing of sand running.

Rocky 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AemCeiuI_k

This time Rocky was going to face Ivan Drago. The training sequence gives us both of their training methods: Rocky goes old school (as always), while Ivan Drago trains under the supervision of scientists with loads of high-tech equipment.

This is probably one of the best training sequences ever. Both guys are shown going trough different ways to reach the pain and the cut of the sequence is really nice, because almost we get a side by side comparison of their respective methods.

Rocky 5

I didn’t manage to find a youtube video of Rocky’s training in the fifth movie. I don’t actually remember if Rocky did train in this one anyway, since he was retired and was not going into a pro fight.

Rocky 6

The training sequence starts with Rocky’s trainer giving a very nice speech. It goes like this:

“To beat this guy, you need speed. You don’t have it.

And your knees can’t take the pouding, so hard running is out.

And you got artritis on your neck and you got calcium deposits on most of your joints, so sparring is out.

So what we’ll be calling on, is good old fashioned blunt force trauma. Horse power. Heavy duty, cast iron, pile driving punches that will have to hurt so much they’ll rattle his ancestors. Everytime you hit him with a shot, his gotta feel like he tried kissing the express train.

Yeah.

Let’s start building some hurting bombs.”

The speech is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4Xo7cVu3Ik

The training sequence is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoLVWvqEwzs

I always think that these training sequences are very wonderful and powerful pieces of cinema. The Rocky movie series may not be a top notch serious, but the training sequences are always great, and that alone makes the movies worth wile.

I did like Iron Man better, but then again Iron Man is a funnier movie, full of funny moments. The Incredible Hulk is more of a dark movie, since the Bruce Banner character is actually pissed at his “skills”, unlike Stark who has a blast on his “suit”. Also, unlike Stark, Banner is a loner and Ed Norton does a good work on that. Tim Roth was also good as the crazed out soldier.

F/X wise, the Hulk character actually looked very nice, specially the face.

One other nice thing is the whole cross over thing they are doing with these new Marvel movies. In Iron Man we got to see Nick Fury making it’s appearance, and in The Incredible Hulk we see references to Stark Industries, Nick Fury and also SHIELD, making it worthwhile to actually pay attention to the movie. And of course, yet another Stan Lee cameo.

The world around the Net is that there were some serious scene removals from the theatrical release of this movie, taking out some possibly relevant stuff. I’m looking forward to watch the longer cut on the DVD release.

Here are the movies which I’ve seen at the cinema so far this year:

John Rambo

I really liked to see John Rambo appear again. The character was very loose, which was a huge contrast with the other good Rambo flick (the first one, “Rambo – First Blood”). I was really looking forward for it and it did delivery. Way to go, Sly!

* Iron Man

A very funny and entertaining movie. I don’t know if it’s true to the character because I don’t read Iron Man comics, but, as far as entertainment movies go, this is a very good one.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

To me, all the Indy movies are the same. Great music, good action, and most of all.. the character.

I think this Indy does not fail (even if some scenes are stupid, ALL the Indies have stupid scenes) to deliver the “Indiana Jones experience”.

Other interesting movies for this year:

* Hulk

* Tropic Thunder

* Hancock

* Batman – The Dark Knigth

* Rigthgeous Kill

* Hellboy 2

So far my expectations have been met. If these (and other) movies keep the quality standard of the first three I’ve seen this year, this will indeed be a very good year for action / adventure cinema. At least for me it will.

Why Try Harder?