A Good Weekend for Hollywood

So my brother and I did the double dip this weekend, seeing two movies in two days (celebrating the fact that I'm not working on Saturday for the first time in a LONG time) the movies we went to see were both decent flicks designed for totally polar opposite audiences, and they both hit the mark as far as entertainment goes.

Saturday's feature was Wanted, a loose comic book adaptation about a work-a-day cubicle drone who gets recruited into an elite order of assassins/weavers known as the Fraternity. Don't get your hopes up, kids, there is no Bluto in this frat. James McAvoy plays Wesley Gibson, the aforementioned drone, who suffers from stress attacks, taking prescription drugs to control them. They are about the only thing in his life that he controls. His harpy girlfriend is cheating on him with his best friend, his disgusting boss will only get off his back long enough to fetch another donut, and his apartment is a shit hole that people drop their trash in front of. One day, Wesley meets the enigmatic Fox, played by Angelina Jolie, who informs him that his father was one of the world's greatest assassins, and that he was killed yesterday by a man who is about to shoot at him from across the supermarket. Guns blazing, the two escape the market and get into an insane high speed chase, kicking off the transformation of Wesley from helpless tool to awe-inspiring weapon. The moment Wesley snaps and leaves his job is reminiscent of such great office exits like Office Space's Peter Gibbons and Joe Vs. The Volcano's Joe Banks. "Who is the man?" Wesley Gibson, that's who. Lies, car chases, gun battles, hot women and exploding rats; this flick has it all.

Sunday my brother suggested we check out WALL-E. I'm not one to drink the Pixar Kool Aid, but I was highly entertained by other Pixar entries like Monsters Inc and The Incredibles, so I gave it a shot. WALL-E was a piece of cinematic genius, as far as I'm concerned. The first 20 minutes of the movie paint such a perfect picture of a dystopian Earth abandoned by those who have destroyed it. WALL-E is the ultimate survivor, the sole remaining active robot tasked with cleaning up the trash ridden Earth. His treads are wearing out? He grabs the treads off another deactivated WALL-E unit. His eye gets smashed? He replaces it from his collection of spare parts. Along with his sidekick cockroach, he toils thanklessly at his given task. When EVE (a probe from humanity's space-borne descendants) lands on Earth in search of biological life, WALL-E welcomes her with open arms, eventually winning the heart of the all-business probe. When WALL-E shows the object of his affection a plant he has discovered, she seals it inside and deactivates, leaving a concerned WALL-E alone to try and take care of her inert form. When her ship returns to bring her back, WALL-E stows away, eventually finding the Axiom, the ship that took humanity to the stars 700 years ago to wait for their trash ridden planet to be cleaned for them. A good love story with a deep political message and a plethora of laugh out loud moments.

Summer is off to a great start. Iron Man, Hulk, Wanted, WALL-E, and I am eagerly anticipating Hancock and the Dark Knight.