Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

Long a cultural icon of classic American craziness, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were popular enough a comic series and a cartoon series to warrant a live-action movie. The crazy thing is, it's only after 3 more movies, a couple more shows and comics, and even a crossover with the Power Rangers, did I finally see the first movie. (I blame my parents, they said it was too violent for me as a lad.)
In my opinion, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" is one of those rare films that blends story, heart, characters, comedy, ACTION (yes, in capslock), and special effects to extreme efficiency. Not only that, but it includes homages to prior incarnations that makes it that much more a well-blended, well-rounded film. The story is pretty simple and what most fans already know:

• Crime wave in New York city caused by mysterious ninjas.
• April O'Neal gets too close to the truth and almost gets offed if not for the 4 heroes in a half-shell.
• The backstory involves rat that knows ninjitsu finding 4 turtles in a green mutagenic goo that makes them more humanoid with time. They are, for some reason, named after great Renaissance artists...probably to associate these artists with martial artists?
• Mentor rat is kidnapped by evil ninjas, making the green boys live with April.
• The evil ninjas discover her home and pretty much give the turtles and their human companion a solid whuppin'. The heroes must retreat to the country and regain their faitingu supirito after spiritual soul searching.
• They face off against the leader of the evil ninjas, the Shredder...and are routinely thrashed. Mentor rat then faces the Darth-Vader-lookalike and...beats him in an anticlimactic scene.
• They slink away in the night to right wrongs, eat pizza and yell out (outdated by our standards) gnarly catchphrases.

Overall, great film with amazing story, likable characters with effects beyond compare (God rest your soul Jim Henson).

Raticate taught them to be ninja teens (He's a radical rat). Wartortle leads, Tirtouga does machines (that's a fact Jack!), Grotle is cool but rude (gimme a break), Torkoal is a party dude!

The Golden Compass

I am not particularly thrilled with "The Golden Compass." Aside from the rampant anti-Christian hype that most people seem to think oozes out of this movie's pores (there wasn't that much), it is a shoddy shoddy story. Every kid in that world is essentially Lord Voldemort and his snake, the adults are all nasty characters except for the ones of other ethnicities (like their versions of pirates, cowboys, and flying elf-witches) or species (ie, Gandalf/Magneto as the voice of the disgraced Polar Bear warrior prince.), the madness of saying that this is a parallel earth when really there's almost NOTHING similar between our reality and this one, and overall, it's just surprisingly dark for a kids' fantasy film. Worst of all is that they end on a cliffhanger because there was anticipated sequels that are probably never getting made. Not even an "and so the adventure continues" kind of thing; the main protagonist basically details a list of stuff that still needs to be done, but nope just sailing into the night and credits rolling. Only thing that makes me feel better about this flick was that it was just 2 bucks from Half-Price Books (and that supposedly the book trilogy is much better...y'all be the judge of that).

Seriously, some of the hype some majorly conservative Christian groups said was contained in this book is not nearly so sacrilegious... In fact, a lot of good Christian gals I know said the book series is fantastic and not at all evil.