Jonah Hex

Enlisted by a Union soldier (Will Arnett), scarred bounty hunter Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) scours the Wild West in pursuit of Turnbull (John Malkovich), a crazed voodoo master with a scheme to assemble a devastating weapon that will destroy the government and lift the Confederacy. Based on the cult DC Comics hero, this action Western co-stars Michael Shannon as strange circus impresario Doc Cross Williams and Megan Fox as the prostitute Lilah.

Matt
Rating: 5 out of 10

This movie had a lot of flash and little substance.

It’s an unusual comic book movie because it doesn’t include a super hero, similar to “Hellboy” — which I loved. You have to suspend reality whenever you watch a comic book movie. This time it’s a Confederate solider who turns in his men for bad deeds and they kill him and his family. He is badly beaten and turtured and some Native Americans find him and save him. Now, he’s half dead and can talk to the dead. OK, I can deal with that. In fact, this was one of the movies I was looking forward to most last summer.

However, instead of developing characters that would have interested me — like Malcovich’s bastard of a villain — we have to deal with a love interest in Fox that is wedged into the script. It slows things down, there’s too much going on, and the result are undeveloped characters that seems to be pieced together between big, sexy action sequences.

This could have been worse, but it could have been much better.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

The week Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) starts college, the Decepticons make trouble in Shanghai. A presidential envoy believes it’s because the Autobots are around and wants them gone. But the Decepticons need access to Sam’s mind to see some glyphs imprinted there that will lead them to a fragile object that, when inserted in an alien machine hidden in Egypt for centuries, will give them the power to blow out the sun. Sam, his girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox), and Sam’s parents are in danger. Optimus Prime and Bumblebee are Sam’s principal protectors, but an ancient race of Transformers are after Sam and Optimus.  Directed by Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor, Armageddon)

Matt
Rating: 4 out of 10

If I were 10 years old, I’d love this movie. But I’m not, and I’m not crazy about this movie.

Sure, a part of my boyhood self enjoys seeing Optimus Prime and Megatron duke it out, but it gets to points where it’s so bad it makes you slap your forehead with a cringe. There’s a scene where the Destructicons — a group of Transformers made of construction vehicles that form into a giant Transformer — are tearing apart a pyramid in Egypt. One of the characters is below the Destructicons and looks up at its scrotum — made of two wrecking balls clanging together with a church bell sound emitting through the desert.

There are slick action sequences, the only thing Bay seems to know how to do, and very little else. The plot is thin, confusing and ridiculous. But that’s the grown up in me talking. If you have kids ages 5-13, this movie is right in their wheelhouse. Unfortunately, these types of flicks have passed me by.