“movie mania” is a film blog by Nick Leach to be updated each Friday with new flicks for weekend movie-goers. Trust this guy’s opinion. He sees A LOT of movies.

Robin Hood – Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Max von Sydow and Mark Strong

Ridley Scott is telling yet another tale of Robin Hood.  This time though, it’s before he becomes Robin Hood. He is still Robin Longstride and is still in the good graces of the king.

The movie starts with Robin, played by Crowe, and King Richard The Lionheart coming back from his crusade.  Richard, played by Danny Huston, goes down to his troops one night and gets in the middle of a fight between Robin and Little John, Kevin Durand, and wants to know if his crusade was a good idea.  Robin tells him no and is put in the stockade, along with his 3 comrades.  During the morning battle, King Richard is shot with an arrow and dies and Robin and his friends escape with the help of a little boy.  They make it into the woods and manage to run into the king’s men who are carrying the crown back to London.  The kings men are ambushed by Godfrey, Mark Strong, who has turned on the crown and England and is now loyal to the French.  Robin ambushes Godfrey and his men and take back the crown and decide that this is their ticket back into London.

I don’t want to take too much away from this movie because…well it was just an okay movie for me.  Nothing too out of the ordinary, just okay, I guess you get use to the characters being told one way and someone comes in and tells it another way.  Like I said earlier, this story is told before Robin becomes an outlaw and for a short time he’s known as Loxley.  The big fight scene at the end felt like Ridley Scott ripped off Saving Private Ryan except with swords and bows and arrows.  If you check this out, i’d personally wait for the dollar theater or netflix/red box.  Nothing to write home about.

6 outta 10 wahoo’s

Greenberg – Ben Stiller and Greta Gerwig

This is Ben Stiller’s new movie where he plays Roger Greenberg, who was recently released from a mental hospital for having a nervous breakdown.  His brother Phillip and his wife Carol are letting him stay at their house while they are in Vietnam.  Funny thing is, Phillip has his assistant Florence, Gerwig, also watching the house and making sure that Roger is okay.  Before his breakdown, Roger was a successful musician who didn’t want to sign the big contract for his band to make it big because he thought it wasn’t good enough and is now blaming himself for the position he and his band mates are in.

To me this felt more like a Punch Drunk Love type of movie where Stiller is being more serious than what he usually is in his films.  Its a dark comedy so go into it knowing that, even though it probably wont make it to Topeka.  I caught this movie before Dazed and Confused in Lawrence at Liberty Hall.  The movie overall was as good as what I thought it would be.  I didn’t really like the ending, but didn’t know how they would have ended it any other way.  Ben Stiller does a pretty good job at trying to get back into the real world while still dealing with his breakdown.

6.5 outta 10 wahoo’s

[May 2010 | images courtesy beyondhollywood.com and focusfeatures.com]