Andy Gapin

The Kindle Fire, Amazon’s entry into the tablet world. To date, the “tablet world” has been more of an “iPad world,” it’s been utter domination. Tablets are the new netbook, they’re hot and every company wants a piece of the action, but the problem is, people aren’t buying tables, they’re buying iPads (on the large scale). I’m not here to talk about the reasons for that, but there are many. The Kindle Fire has now come along with hopes of changing that, at least to a degree. Amazon, who has already had a lot of success in the eReader market, thinks that with an almost impulse-buy price of $200, they can undercut the iPad and gain traction where others have been stuck in the mud.

Introducing the Kindle Fire as I just have implies that it competes with the iPad, but I would say with some level of confidence that I don’t think it does. And that’s an odd thing because the Kindle Fire does compete with other Android tablets who, in turn, do compete with the iPad. Apple’s iPad represents an end-to-end ecosystem. You buy your hardware from Apple and then Apple continues to be your one-stop shop for music, movies, books, games, magazines, and apps (they are not the only source for music, movies, books, or magazines, but they want to be and they have the ecosystem to pull it off). This is an experience very different from Android tablets where you buy the hardware from one company and get your content from a smattering of other vendors. And this is where the Kindle Fire comes in and bests other Android tablets in a way that only Amazon can pull off right now. It provides the same kind of end-to-end ecosystem that users can get from Apple. This and a $200 price tag are what will make the Amazon Kindle Fire the first truly successful Android tablet (unless you want to include the Nook Color as a true Android tablet).

So yes, on that front, it seems like the Kindle Fire is an iPad competitor, but the difference comes from company philosophy. Amazon is a retailer. They sell you the Kindle Fire very cheaply because they don’t see it as their product, they see it as a conduit through which they can sell you the content and items they already love to sell you. Apple, on the other hand, is a hardware company, they use software and content as selling points to get their hardware into your hands. These different approaches are what really set the two devices apart.

If you keep up with technology at all or read any tech blogs or sites, you already know this and have read it over and over again. But if that’s not you, then this may be the kind of thing you don’t think about. In terms of what I’m going to go on to say, I’m not sure how much it matters, but it is something that’s been in the back of my mind for the past week and a half and it creeps to the foreground almost every time I pick up the Fire.

What good is a Kindle Fire for an iPad user?

Before I go into the device further, frequent readers of this blog may wonder why I would want a Kindle Fire if I have an iPad already. It may appear that I’m an Apple fanboy, as they say. I have an iPad, iPhone, and MacBook Pro. I love these devices and right now, for my money, Apple delivers what I want from a device that I’m going to rely on day in and day out. However, I’m not an Apple fanboy, I’m just an all-around gadget-nerd. As such, I’ve been feeling, for a long time, like it’s ridiculous that there hasn’t been anything Android in my home. I’ve been keeping my eyes on Craigslist for a while, looking for something that was just right to pick up. That something had to be cheap enough that I could justify spending the money since it would be nothing more than a toy for me. The Kindle Fire has been the first good (and not generations old) Android product that has come along with a price tag reasonable enough to justify its purchase.

Additionally, my wife and I share our iPad, but usually I just hog it. She is the one that really wanted it in the first place and I justified our purchase of it by figuring we’d use it enough between the two of us. I never thought that I’d use it for a couple hours a day myself. A second iPad seems like overkill for us, but the Kindle Fire is, again, cheap enough that it makes for a nice complement to our iPad. I can use the Kindle Fire when my wife wants to read on the iPad or bring it into the kitchen with her to read recipes from.

*Note: This thing was a bitch to photograph because of its glossiness, otherwise I would have taken a lot more photos of both the hardware and software. I had to choose between just posting this with what I had or waiting until next weekend when I’d be able to photograph with natural light.

Hardware

For the most part, I like the hardware. It looks like a BlackBerry Playbook and is uninspired in design, but it’s simple all black exterior is aesthetically pleasing. The Kindle Fire feels solid, but isn’t heavy. The weight is nice for holding in one hand and your arm doesn’t tire out as quickly as it does with the iPad.

The 7″ size makes for a completely different physical experience than the 9.7″ iPad. Holding the Kindle Fire feels more like holding a big phone, you can wrap your hand around it. Sometimes, this is really nice and kind of preferred to the larger iPad. Over the last week and a half, I’ve found myself reaching for the Kindle Fire for looking things up while watching TV. It seems well suited to being used as a secondary point of focus while you’re doing something else. In other words, the 7″ size makes it much less of an immersive experience than a 10″ table can offer. Sometimes this is good, sometimes it’s not what you want.

The quality of the Kindle Fire display was surprisingly good to me. It’s decently bright and sharp enough that you shouldn’t have any problems. The colors and viewing angles are good enough that I didn’t take special notice to either one. The only knock against it is its crazy level of glossiness. You can get some serious glare coming off the screen. Plus, it’s a big fingerprint magnet.

Unfortunately, there is no physical volume control, but volume is just a single tap away so it’s tolerable.

While the hardware and design are mostly a positive, there is one insanely stupid aspect to the Kindle Fire. The power button is on the bottom of the device, right where you’ll often have a finger while you’re holding it. Or right where the weight of the device is going to fall when you’re resting it on your chest while laying in bed. I knew this going in, but I had no idea how annoying this would turn out to be. Even after a week and a half, I still find myself hitting this by accident all the time. Sometimes, my finger even holds the button down long enough that I get prompted with the device shut-down dialog. For apps that rotate a full 180°, I turn the device so the button is on the top, but not all apps rotate like that. This was such a stupid design decision that it almost feels as though the person responsible for it should be fighting to keep their job at Amazon.

Software

There are two things worth noting right off the bat before I go on about the software. One, the latest update that Amazon pushed out to fix the big complaints came down automatically for me on the first day and seems to do a decent job of fixing the complaints others have had. The second thing of note, is that I rooted my Kindle Fire two days after opening it. I installed the Android Market and GO Launcher EX. With that being said, my software experience is a little different than most would have, but I bought the Kindle Fire with every intention of rooting it and, when it becomes available in a stable form, installing CyanogenMod on it.

As is very plain to see, Amazon has heavily skinned Android on the Kindle Fire. In fact, they’ve actually completely forked Android, from what I understand. The Amazon skin creates an experience that ties you right into Amazon’s ecosystem. You’ve got all your media front and center and purchasing new content from Amazon is right there. It’s so easy to buy new content that you can almost accidentally do it.

The Amazon skin looks decent enough, but if you want to do anything more than reading or some casual browsing, you may be left wanting more from it.

Amazon’s app store has a decent selection of apps, but I quickly found that many of the apps I immediately wanted to install weren’t there. The Kindle Fire allows sideloading of apps, but I find the process to be a pain in the ass. However, once I rooted the Fire and installed the Android Market, most of the apps I wanted were there and ready to go for me. Unfortunately though, I found some of the apps I wanted were incompatible and could not be installed through the Android Market. Annoyingly, many of them were apps that should be able to run on the Kindle Fire (i.e. they aren’t apps that require hardware the Fire doesn’t have). This was annoying. To this day, I still can’t get the Facebook app to run without crashing at login. Being a primarily iOS user, this whole experience seemed bonkers to me.

The apps themselves are mostly lacking in feel to me. There are many good apps, but it seems that for every app I’ve installed on the Kindle Fire, a better alternative exists for iOS. It may be that I need to spend more time with the Android Market to figure out how to better find the apps I need, but in reality, the big issue seems to be…

The overwhelming majority of Android apps for the Kindle Fire just feel like over-sized smartphone apps. Mainly, that’s because they are just smartphone apps since the Kindle Fire runs off Android 2.3 instead of 3.x or 4.0. This feels like a major problem to me, but again, I come at this with an iOS perspective. The extra physical size over a phone feels wasted without tablet-class apps. On the iPad, developers tailor their apps to make use of the extra screen real estate and it makes the experience substantially better. It’s more engaging and more productive. iPad apps have multiple panes and feel natural to use, these apps just blow everything up as if I’m a senior citizen with crappy eyesight. This is something you will want to keep in mind if you are thinking about a Kindle Fire, you won’t get tablet apps, you’ll get glorified smartphone apps. If that’s not okay with you, you’ll want to look elsewhere, either a Honeycomb/Ice Cream Sandwich Android tablet or the iPad.

I actually almost forgot to even mention the Silk Browser which is designed to offload the heavily lifting of web browsing onto Amazon’s servers. Ideally, this should help pages load faster. In practice, I found page loads to be painfully slow. I’m going to leave it at that.

Performance

For the most part, I’ve found that the Kindle Fire is slightly snappier than I expected. Scrolling isn’t smooth, but it keeps up with your finger and touch response is usually good. That doesn’t come without some caveats though. Zooming in the browser works, but is very jerky and jarring. I’ve also found that clicking URLs, more of than not, takes many taps before doing anything. This goes for all links, even results from a Google search or those from apps other than the browser. I don’t find this same issue when tapping buttons or other elements on the screen. What exacerbates this is that Android and its apps often provide no immediate acknowledgement of your actions. If your action is registered and quickly carried out (in say, less than .5 seconds) , you don’t really notice that much, but when the system takes longer to process what it needs to, you’re left there wondering if your tap was recognized or if the system is just taking a while to work on it. When this happens once in a while, it’s not that big of a deal, but constantly having to guess if my taps are being recognize can be maddening. Some simple indication that your interaction was registered would go a long way.

Overall, the Kindle Fire feels like a car that has plenty of horsepower, but is being slowed down by not having enough air in the tires. If the software cared more about the user experience, the Kindle Fire could be a significantly better device.

Battery life is fine. I can’t say I’ve done any scientific tests, but I’ve only had to charge it three times since I’ve gotten it. It’s not quite as good as the iPad 2, but you won’t have to worry about taking it with you for a weekend trip while leaving your charger at home.

Wrap up

As a whole, the Kindle Fire isn’t a bad gadget, especially for $200. In some ways, the device feels like a low-end product, but for the most part, the Kindle Fire feels like a steal at $200.

The Kindle Fire isn’t an iPad-killer or anything of the sort. As I mentioned in the beginning, it doesn’t really feel like it competes with the iPad. Even though I made many comparisons to the iPad throughout this review, it was mostly to drive home the point that this isn’t iPad competition.

What it comes down to is this, if you want an eReader that you can check email on and occasionally browse the web here and there or read some tweets, this is a must-buy. If you are sure that you only want to consume content, the Kindle Fire is worth a serious look. However, if you at all think you might want to use a tablet to get work done or even use it as your primary browsing/tweeting/Facebooking device, the Kindle Fire is not the right purchase for you. The end result would be a $200 purchase that talks you into a future $500 purchase of a 10″ tablet. If you have been telling yourself that you really “want an iPad,” don’t cheap out and get a Kindle Fire.

I’m happy with my Kindle Fire, but only because I have an iPad 2 for the big boy stuff.

As a runner that lives far enough north that night comes before getting home from work in the Winter, I’ve been left with a decision to make multiple times a week. Do I go to the gym and run on the treadmill, meanwhile hating my life, or do I run in the dark outside. Running outside in the dark is not only dangerous because of cars, but also because you can’t always see where you’re putting your foot down. Because of lighting around where I live, or lack-thereof, the only route I can really do at night is a two-mile loop near my house. If I want to run more than two miles, I have to do laps. For four or even six miles, it’s tolerable, but for eight, ten, or more, it’s unbearable for me. And before I go any further, I will mention that there is always the third option of waking up before work and running in the morning, but I’ve failed at actually getting myself out of bed so many times now that I don’t even try anymore.

My wife had suggested getting headlamps last year, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Unfortunately, this year, we’ve got too much training to do to ignore the problem. I spent some time trying to pick out the right headlamp for me, but the idea never seemed right to me. I can’t imagine running with something on my head like that and I couldn’t find one online that didn’t have almost as many negative reviews as it did positive ones. While much of the negativity for the better overall rated headlamps seemed to be somewhat subjective and a matter of preference for the reviewer, I couldn’t help feeling that I would run into the same issues.

Enter Knuckle Lights!

Knuckle Lights take the idea of a headlamp and run with it (pun intended), while trying to improve on the idea. Instead of having a single light on your head, they move the light to your hands. One in each hand. Knuckle Lights are specifically designed for runners, whereas most headlamps are more general purpose or more geared toward hiking.

I decided to give these a try, they seemed to be the best option for my wife and I so I bought us each a pair ($40 each). I was impressed by the free shipping which got them to us in two days (via USPS, nonetheless). When the lights showed up earlier today, I opened up the box and found that not only did we get the lights, but they also threw in two stickers, two reflector strips, and two red flashing clip-on reflector light dealies. Not bad.

Since I was scheduled for a run today anyway, I grabbed them and ran right out the door to give them a try. I purposely ran past my normal nighttime loop and down a dark road that I would normally never run down at night. I quickly found that while the Knuckle Lights didn’t provide massive amounts of light, they certainly provided enough light for comfort. The lights provided me with about ten feet of good visibility in front of me. Not a lot, but enough that you can run safely. From the perspective of an oncoming car, I’m sure they could see me quite a ways away, as well.

If you take a second to head over to their site, you’ll see that the makers of Knuckle Lights mention the wide beams over and over to try to convince you that the motion of your hands won’t cause the light to be all over the place. I have to admit, this was a small concern of mine, but they were right, you don’t see the light bouncing all over. You can see the movement of the lights in your peripheral vision, but that’s it. In front of you, the light appears steady and unmoving as long as you have both lights turned on. Completely distraction-free.

Something I didn’t think about beforehand, but I quickly realized while using the Knuckle Lights was that having two separate lights that could move independently of not only each other, but also your eyes and head is extremely useful. You don’t have to move your whole head to light in a slightly different direction. As I was running by cross-streets, I started pointing one light down the street so that any cars coming down could see me easily. I kept the other light forward so I could still see where I was going. I also found it useful sometimes to point one light down as I was running over sections of sidewalk that were in extra bad shape. This allowed me to place each step strategically to not trip while also allowing me to keep an eye on what was coming up.

The biggest issue I have with running in the dark is with the headlights of oncoming cars blinding me. Knuckle Lights can’t stop that, but I found that the effect was greatly reduced. I could look down and away from the light, but still give myself at least a little light to be able to see where I was going.

My biggest concern with the Knuckle Lights before buying them was having to have them in my hands, but in reality, I didn’t find that to be an issue for a single second. The lights are very light and they strap onto your fingers in such a way that you barely even notice them. Once you put them on, you don’t have to actually hold them, they just stay there. They’ll work over gloves or mittens as well.

All in all, I think Knuckle Lights are well worth the $40. They’re not going to light up the entire road in front of you or impress you with their brightness, but they will give you enough light to not only allow you to run at night, but also make you feel comfortable with running in the dark. They’ll also make you very visible to cars, which is important. They’re easy to use and aren’t annoying. I can’t compare them to using a headlamp because I’ve never used one before, but I have no doubt that these are a much better option.

Just like I said I probably would, I went ahead and bought an iPhone 4S on day one. However, it did cost me quite a bit more than the $100 that I figured it would cost since I decided to go all out and get the 64GB model. That much storage can’t even come laughably close to storing all of my music, but it can store enough that I can ditch the iPod and stream the what doesn’t fit via AudioGalaxy. The music I listen to regularly will fit and everything else will stay easily accessible. It’ll be good enough and to be able to go from three gadgets to one was a pretty good proposition for me.

I’m not going to go into a full review of the iPhone 4S since I did a full iPhone 4 review last year and this is mostly a spec bump, but after a few days with the device, I thought I’d post my thoughts.

The phone still looks the same (though I went with white this time around), but that doesn’t change the fact that there is still nothing else on the market that can touch it as far as design and build quality goes. That’s actually kind of crazy when you think about it considering that this design has been in the wild for 16 months. That being said, the phone still has two slabs of glass making up most of the surface so it remains as breakable as ever.

While there was a lot of disappointment in the iPhone 4S’s announcement, after using this thing for a few days, it seems that much of that disappointment is missing the point. The iPhone 4S is mostly just a spec bump, but its bump is just enough to finally put it over the top. Where the iPhone 4 was very good, the iPhone 4S is great.

The iPhone 4S finally reaches a point where the device and the software melt away and you’re just left with content and things you want to do. Nothing stands in your way now.

Most of the time, the added speed of the A5 processor isn’t a night and day difference, but sometimes it is. Apps open significantly faster and while the iPhone 4 was snappy and definitely no slouch, the iPhone 4S makes moving around in apps a much improved experience. There is no lag, even in places where I could always count on my iPhone 4 to hang up for a second or so. Everything is much smoother and snappier in a tangible way.

The data speeds are supposed to be faster on the iPhone 4S (for AT&T at least), but in a few rounds of Speed Test, there was no change. However, in practice, data seems to come down insanely faster. Much of it is probably due to the A5 processing things faster, but websites load tons faster (and Javascript executes much quicker). Twitter pulls the latest tweets down almost instantly. Facebook too. Every app, really. The content you’re trying to get to is put up on the screen almost as fast as you ask for it. Considering that LTE is not on board, this is impressive. Impressive enough that not having LTE (which any sane person shouldn’t have expected from Apple this year anyway) doesn’t feel like a problem right now.

All of this added speed means iOS now keeps up with you. You’re no longer waiting for it, it’s waiting for you. Simply put, where iPhone 4 was close, but the iPhone 4S is there.

The iPhone 4 camera was still the best camera you could get on a phone up until just recently. Hell, some probably still consider it to be the best. But it was just barely not enough to justify ditching a point-and-shoot altogether. More than half the time, yes, it was enough, but I always kept my point-and-shoot near the door. The iPhone 4S changes that. It is sharper, has better dynamic range, better color, more pixels, and significantly better low-light performance. My DSLR won’t see any decrease in usage, but my point-and-shoot is going in the desk drawer upstairs and may never come out again. The photos and videos that iPhone 4S can take are stunning. Unless you need a superzoom, you won’t need a point-and-shoot while you have an iPhone 4S in your pocket.

I’ve posted some very quick sample shots at the bottom of the post. These were taken quickly without any attention paid to composition, but they should give you an idea of what the camera is capable of. None of them have been processed in any way except to reduce their size.

Siri has been the most talked about feature of the iPhone 4S since it was announced and for good reason. Before using it or seeing a demo, it’s easy to dismiss it as another voice control feature that you’ll never use. I almost did myself. But when you actually use this, you realize it’s so much more. This is the start of the future. This is the point where we’ll look back and pinpoint as the beginning of being able to truly have conversations with your technology and have it do things for you.

If you’ve been on the internet at all since Friday, you’ve probably already seen much of the fun people have been having with Siri. I’ve had a lot of fun testing her out and seeing how she’ll respond to things. She’s fun, but I’m not going to add another post on the internet about how if you keep bugging her about the meaning of life, she’ll say “42, are you happy now?” She’s full of countless snark and provides a lot of fun. She has an attitude and that’s important. She responds almost like a person would and that makes it feel real. It makes it feel like she’s a real person and that she can truly understand you. It’s unlike anything else you’ve ever used because it’s unlike anything else that has ever existed. This is the real thing.

That attitude is coupled with the fact that she can hold a conversation. She is smart enough to understand what you say even if you say it differently. She gets context. I can say “remind me to email John Smith about the concert this weekend when I get home” and she will create a reminder that will go off as soon as I get to my house. The reminder will say “Email John Smith about the concert this weekend” because she understands that that was what I wanted the reminder to say. I can say “tell my wife that I’ll be late” and she’ll text my wife telling her that I’m going to be late. “Take me to the mall” gets me the same thing as if I say “I need directions to the mall.” She just gets it.

You can tell her to do things the way you would tell a real person. And that’s why she works. That’s why Siri will actually get used. Because she can understand you so well, she can actually do things faster than you can on your own. It’s not a gimmick. You probably won’t use her too much in public, but thanks to the ability to have her automatically kick on when you put your phone up to your ear, you might actually use her while walking down the street or in the store. It’ll look just like you’re having a conversation with someone on the phone.

I’ve noticed that because she has to send everything to Apple’s servers, sometimes she takes a few seconds to respond, but it’s generally not bad. Everything going to Apple’s servers is a good thing though. Apple says she’ll learn from you and from the user base as a whole. With Apple knowing how people are using it, they can adapt it even more to the real world. This is the beginning, but she will get so much better. It won’t be long before you can say “how are the Eagles doing” and she’ll give you the score of the game.

Is Siri enough to justify buying an iPhone 4S if you already have an iPhone 4? I don’t know, that’s tough, maybe not. But if you’re on the fence already, she should push you over.

That about covers the big changes from that the iPhone 4S brings to the table. There are smaller ones like a better antenna design which seems to work as advertised, but I never had much of a problem with my iPhone 4 in most places. There’s also a new vibration motor which sounds like a silly thing to mention, but you can feel (and hear) the difference. This one is smoother and actually feels a little more luxurious. It’s an added thing that helps to make the device feel high-end.

The iPhone 4S isn’t perfect for what it is though. The battery life is noticeably worse than my iPhone 4. It’s not terrible, I can still get close to two days from a charge, but it is less. However, the battery life feels similar to what I was getting from my iPhone 4 after upgrading to iOS 5, so that may be part of it. I have the notifications set to display my email on the lockscreen so every email I receive turns on the display for a few seconds. That probably accounts for a large chunk of it. It also seems like the battery depletes faster when using Siri. Either way, the battery life is still good enough that it won’t be a problem. That’s the major complaint though, I still have some issues with iOS and I’m hoping that iOS 6 will fix much of them, but we’ll see. For now, the iPhone 4S doesn’t fix them, but Siri does actually make a few of them easier to live with. Any other hardware complaints would simply be highlighting choices that Apple made (e.g. not doing a larger screen), not design flaws.

As you’ll hear everywhere else, if you have an iPhone 3G or 3GS, upgrade now. Just do it. If you have an iPhone 4, it’s tough, but this device is good enough to reduce three gadgets you may already use down to one and the speed will save you a lot of time throughout the day. If those things mean something to you, upgrade. If not, hold out another year. If you aren’t currently an iPhone user and are thinking about becoming one, this is the phone to get. And if you don’t have a smartphone at all yet and are looking to get one, I’d recommend this over anything else. I’m not going to say iOS is better than Android, I think they are both great in their own ways, but if you don’t already have a smartphone at this point, you’re likely to fall into the camp of people who will enjoy iOS’s way of doing things more.

For me personally, I’m finding the iPhone 4S to be a worthy upgrade. I’m happy with my decision so far.

Horrible Bosses has a great cast. It’s that simple, it’s just a solid cast and everyone pulls their weight. I’m not a huge Jennifer Aniston fan (she’s alright), but she was pretty incredible in this movie. Between her, Charlie Day, and Kevin Spacey, I don’t know who was the best. Charlie Day’s character is pretty much a slightly smarter Charlie from It’s Always Sunny, but I was more than okay with that. His high-strung, yelling-because-he-doesn’t-know-how-better-to-communicate antics were perfect for the character.

While I’m lucky enough to not hate my bosses at my current job, Horrible Bosses hits on a pretty good premise for a flick that most people have fantasized about at some point in their lives. Killing your boss, who hasn’t thought about that in even the smallest way? I’m not calling anyone (myself included) homicidal, but you know what I mean. So that sort of makes the idea not entirely original, but they work with it. The jokes aren’t always the best and sometimes there are big gaps without anything awesome happening, but everything that does happen is at least delivered well by actors that I love. At the end of the day, that’s good enough for me.

Horrible Boses isn’t going to win any awards or blast you with a ton of creativity, but it’s got people you like in it and they’re doing what they do best.

Rating: B

Too much Cameron Diaz.

Not enough Jason Segel.

After saying that, there isn’t a lot left to say. Bad Teacher isn’t nearly as funny as it would have been if Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz at least shared the screen 50/50. Instead, we get Cameron Diaz as the single main character and Jason Segel with a much more minor role. Hell, Lucy Punch spent the second most amount of time on the screen after Diaz. I’m not complaining about that, I like her, but Jason Segel was completely underutilized. The fact is, Bad Teacher has more than enough talent at its disposal to make for a good movie, but wastes all its time on Cameron Diaz. This is so problematic, it’s not even funny.

Actors aside, Bad Teacher could have also benefited from having more likable characters. I’m pretty sure the only likable character was Jason Segel’s. Justin Timberlake’s and Lucy Punch’s characters are only marginally more likable than Cameron Diaz’s completely awful character. What’s worse, is that while Justin Timberlake and Lucy Punch play characters that are unlikable in a way that works positively for the film, Cameron Diaz’s character just plain sucked all around.

With unlikable characters and focus on the wrong actors, you’d at least hope for a solid script, but holding out for such a thing will just yield disappointment. The film had potential, but it went unfulfilled. There was weren’t jokes where there needed to be and most of the ones that were there fell flat.

Bad Teacher isn’t an entire loss, it does have a few moments, but only so much as to be worth streaming from Netflix. I wouldn’t bother even wasting a DVD rental on it.

Rating: C-

Super 8 may not be in any way at all related to Cloverfield as a project, but you’ll feel a very familiar vibe while sitting in the theater watching it. It’s a bit of a different style, but the creatures are very reminiscent of each other. Though, this make sense as J.J. Abrams produced Cloverfield and the same guy designed both monsters.

Super 8 opens with one of the most powerful opening shots I’ve seen in a movie. It’s simple and nothing is said, but those first few seconds really set a tone for the whole movie and convey so much more than any words could have. Beyond this, the movie keeps with a steady pace and focuses on a handful of nerdy kids making their own film to enter into a contest. Abrams does a great job of creating characters that we actually care about and in some ways remind us of ourselves 15-20 years ago, almost in a Goonies or Stand By Me kind of way. Almost. When shit goes down in their small town (rhyme not intentional), you feel a legitimate connection to the kids.

While much of the movie’s success relies on an element of surprise that was carefully curated, you won’t actually find much to be surprised about. For the most part, you won’t be disappointed about not being surprised, however.

Super 8 brings a return to a more innocent time where integrity matters in a way that will  remind you of the Spielberg-branded films of the 80s you grew up with. Super 8 is not the the perfect film, but it’s engaging, sucks the viewer right in, and has no lack of great acting carrying it through.  The bottom line is that this is a solid film and worth two hours of your time.

Rating: A

I’m going to make this a short review and not go into any depth…mainly because I just don’t feel like putting much effort into a post right now. Hey, at least I’m honest, right?

X-Men: First Class works. Well. X-Men is a series that has always had a lot of potential, a lot can be done with it. This movie shows the positive side of that very well. It’s just done right and stays accessible to non-comic book readers. There is a solid story line that gets us from point A to point B without a lot of extra fluff and we get a nice set up for a full trilogy of prequels that could lead right up to the start of the first X-Men movie. And most importantly, we get some nice character development. X-Men: First Class is energetic in all the right ways while still keeping a stronger focus on story and the connections between characters.

My fiancée who isn’t that into comic book movies and didn’t care to see this was surprised at how much she liked it. So yeah, check it out.

Rating: A-

If you follow Judd Apatow on Twitter, you were probably more excited for Bridesmaids to be released so that the retweets would stop rather than actually being excited to see it. That’s not to say that the film wasn’t presented in a way to make one want to see it, it’s just that…well, there were a lot of retweets.

Bridesmaids declares itself as a chick flick (for the record, I don’t mind a good chick flick. I went to see Confessions of a Shopaholic in the theater by myself), but it doesn’t take much to realize, even before you see it, that it breaks the mold a bit in an attempt to be a female-casted version of the Hangover. Sure, it’s a wedding movie, but it’s not really a wedding movie. We barely meet the groom and the wedding-related stuff is barely important, it serves more so as a conduit for a story about maturing childhood friendships, early mid-life crisis, and brides-to-be shitting in the middle of the street while wearing a wedding dress. Bridesmaids is, at times, a raunchy movie that reminds us that girls aren’t always prissy and proper…not that we all need such a reminder. Some of us were already well aware of this fact and don’t doubt the ability of women to be funny.

Kristen Wiig does what she does best with Bridesmaids which is good because she plays the only character that really gets much development. This sort of leaves her to carry most of the movie herself with only little bits of help from the rest of the cast. Luckily, she’s up to the task, for the most part. The biggest problem with the Bridesmaids is that it felt like it was a bit up and down. The film is mostly a series of lulls joined together by brief periods of hilarity. It felt as though Wiig and her writing partner Annie Mumolo had a bunch of ideas that would have been great for a series of SNL sketches, but then just tried to throw filler in between them. The funny parts are really funny, but there is a lot of fat that could have been cut away to produce something that was leaner and more consistently funny. Kristen Wiig is great at sketch comedy so she really makes these sections of the film work, but in between, I just felt myself waiting for the next sketch to hit.

Bridesmaids is worth seeing if you were already convinced that you wanted to see it. It’s worth the two hours of your time, but if you were on the fence before reading this because what you saw in the trailers wasn’t enough to completely sell you, you’re best waiting for a Netflix rental in a few months.

Rating: B

It turns out that many people aren’t a fan of zom-coms/zombedies/zombie comedies these days. Many think the sub-genre of the zombie sub-genre has gone too far. I disagree. I like to laugh and I like gore and I like zombies. When it comes the matter, sometimes I feel rather Plessy about it and sometimes I feel more Ferguson; that is, sometimes I like my gore and comedy integrated and sometimes I’m in a more “separate, but equal” mood. A well-done zombie comedy is a nice way to bring on the zombie-goodness while still providing laughs for both myself and my fiancée who isn’t big horror fan.

Aaah! Zombies does a great job of this and it brings an entirely unique idea to the table that I’ve never seen before…or even heard of. The flick takes on the perspective of the zombies instead of the still living. Some movies like I, Zombie have been based upon the premise of following the transformation into a zombie, but this is different. Except for about the first five to ten minutes of the movie, Aaah! Zombies is based wholly around a group of friends (and a random weirdo they pick up along the way) who have already become zombies. The transformation takes about thirty seconds.

At first, they don’t even know they are zombies, they are walking around and interacting with each other, but the reality is, they are in fact the undead and the rest of the world sees them as such. This is actually handled rather well. Most of the time, the movie is in color and we see our friends as looking like normal people and moving at a normal speed. Sure, they may sustain some injuries along the way that they can’t feel, but for the most part, they look normal to themselves and each other. However, many scenes flash us a black and white glimpse of what they really look like to others. They are slow-moving, decaying zombies complete with groans and the desire to eat flesh. Obviously, there is a bit of a discrepancy here–the undead are simply unable to move at the same pace as the living–and this is handled perfectly. To the undead, the rest of the world appears to be moving at a breakneck speed around them. People walk and talk super fast.

This is the kind of thing that could easily become a mess and not work at all, but it’s done right and the writing and comedic performances are done more than well enough to pull the whole thing off. It’s actually done so well, that you barely even know it’s a low-budget affair.

In an odd way, and for lack of a better way to describe it, the film is almost like a mash-up between Re-Animator and Clerks. It’s mostly just friends hanging out and being zombies, but it borrows some ideas from movies like Re-Animator that aren’t strict with their zombies. For example, the undead in Aaah! Zombies can function without their bodies and their limbs can be controlled even after being detached from the rest of the body. If you’re stickler for the rules of being undead, you may be somewhat peeved, but it’s all in good fun.

This is definitely worth checking out and with it currently being available on Netflix Instant Watch, you really have no excuse.

Rating: A-

Here’s the trailer:

Ah, the second Grindhouse faux-trailer-turned-full-feature. To put it bluntly, Hobo with a Shotgun is absolutely brutal. I’m not sure that I want to say this in any definitive way, but it may have been the most brutal movie I’ve ever seen…and that’s saying a lot.

Hobo with a Shotgun is exactly what it’s supposed to be, a hobo…with a shotgun. While Rutger Hauer does in fact “deliver justice one shell at a time” just as the tagline says, the brutality comes much less from him and more from the bad guys. I won’t spoil things too much, but one scene actually caused my fiancée to tell me she couldn’t watch it anymore. It was less a blood, guts, and gore thing, and entirely just a principle thing. Hobo with a Shotgun is not for the faint of heart.

Where the movie lacks a little is with the actual hobo-delivered-shotgun-shell-goodness, there could have been more of that as it mostly took up only a small portion of the film. Thankfully, this is made up for with violence like the scene mentioned above. Hobo with a Shotgun is light on the story, but there’s enough to get you by and more than enough great one liners like “I’m going to wash this blood off with your blood” and “because sometimes on the streets, a broom ain’t gonna cut it! That’s when ya gotta get a shotgun!” to make up for it.

Out of the two Grindhouse flicks and Machete, Hobo with a Shotgun is probably at the bottom of the list, but it is the smuttiest, the most sadistically violent, the campiest,  the brutalist, and the most nutso. That’s a a lot of superlatives, but these are all of the things that Hobo with a Shutgun was supposed to be and that’s why it works. Highly entertaining.

If this kind of quality can be kept while turning the Grindhouse trailers into actual films, I say keep ‘em coming.

Rating: A