“Wait… this is a cartoon?”

I feel like this was a reaction a lot of people had the other night as a small theatre full of us sat down to watch Green Lantern: Emerald Knights (GL: EK). No, this is not the Ryan Reynolds live action Summer Blockbuster, it is a collection of shorts as narrated by Nathan Fillion (Edmonton born and raised). Fillion plays Hal Jordan (the character Ryan Reynolds will also be portraying) as he teaches a new Green Lantern about the beginnings of the Green Lantern Corps.

Lost yet? I’m sure a couple people at the theatre were too. Emerald Knights gives the viewer some backstory into the events about to unfold in it’s live-action counterpart. The difference between the two being that GL:EK serves as both a prequel AND a sequel. Furthermore, it is animated and shows a lot of the stories that couldn’t fit into the live action film.

There exists great voice acting talent in the film. As mentioned above, Nathan Fillion plays Hal Jordan and does an excellent job of narrating the separate stories. Elisabeth Moss seems like she is having fun playing the new recruit, and does a great job providing a gateway to the tales of the Green Lantern’s past. The tough as nails Sinestro is voiced by Jason Isaacs, who is best known for his evil role in the Harry Potter Franchise.

This film is definitely worth the rent if you’re jonesing to go see the live-action adaptation. But if you haven’t read the comics or aren’t familiar with the Green Lantern lore, you may want to wait until after seeing Ryan Reynolds in his CGI jump suit.

Renter beware and Geeks geek-out.

3.5/5

Jay Runham is a movie reviewer, hourly tweeter, and lover of Nonja Turtles. More from him at J-Run.ca/Blog and @MondoJay.

(Let’s see those confetti cannons, people, because we’ve hit 300 posts. This here is 301, and isn’t it fitting that it’s our friend @MondoJay’s review of “Gamer”, the new film starring Mr. 300 himself, Gerard Butler – opening this weekend (times and locations here). Jay won the preview passes we were giving away earlier this week and has been gracious enough to let us know how the movie was.)

By @MondoJay

Sex, explosions and video games do not a good movie make. Gamer, at its core, has an interesting story that tries to bring the video games of today into the future, with the Gladiator style fighting of the past. But unfortunately, something (or someone) got in the way of that story.

And what a weird story it was. I don’t really like getting into plot summaries, but honestly, if you’ve seen Death Race (which is about on par with this movie), or the famous Gladiator (which is 10x better then this film), you’ve basically seen this story. Man goes to jail, leaving family behind, has to fight his way out, violence ensues. There’s nothing new about the story, except that it happens to take place in a very interesting future of human controlling human for fun and sport. The writers/directors tried too hard to cram all sorts of information about the future society and almost forgot about their reused plot. Then, there are times where they keep banging you over the head with the plot devices, effectively insulting the audience. I’m not sure what the directors/writers were thinking.

Ah, speaking of directors/writers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, what a pair those two are. If you are unaware, these two guys are the brilliant (I write this sarcastically) minds behind Crank and Crank: High Voltage. I’ve personally only seen Crank, and I actually enjoyed that film for what it was worth (and it was worth a quick laugh),Gamer however felt to me as though there could have been more to it then just a quick laugh. It’s hard to say there was something lost in translation because Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor wrote AND directed the film. So what happened guys?

The cast was there, a pretty strong performance from Gerard Butler, and a really nice a creepy performance from Dexter‘s own Michael C. Hall. The visual effects were there, as the film looks pretty good. The concept was there too. Really, I think they just missed the mark on this one. It had potential and it was wasted. Too bad.

2/5