Kick-Ass - ***

I think I like the new comic-book adaptation Kick-Ass a lot more when I'm not watching it. It's a movie that grows on you. I walked out of it feeling a little disappointed, and wrote down a list of complaints like, "I didn't like the kid in the lead role," "Feels low-rent," "Disjointed." But after a second viewing and a few weeks to ponder over the experience, I don't really feel too strongly about any one of those comments, and my list of praiseworthy details has maybe doubled since opening night.

While I can't say I loved the movie, the things that I loved about it are those which I recall most easily. Aaron Johnson, the kid in the lead role, really isn't that bad. I think it's just that he is upstaged by just about everyone else in the cast, most notably by Chloe Grace-Moretz as Hit-Girl, the eleven year-old sword-wielding assassin, and Mark Strong as the mob boss and ultimate target of the film's "real-life" superheroes. Strong gives what is probably my favorite performance of the year, with the perfect blend of menace and nonchalance, like when he leaves a brutal interrogation scene and tells his henchmen to kill the guy however they wish because he wants to catch a movie with his kid. In lesser hands it would come off as grim, but Strong somehow makes it laughable. And that's really when the film is at its best, when it can transform something that should be offensive into something entertaining. Hit-Girl and her father, Big Daddy (played superbly by Nicolas Cage), share a number of these scenes, making wholesome family fun out of asking for and receiving a butterfly knife for a birthday gift.

I think the problem I have while watching the film is that not all of it is handled with the grace that these scenes are, and so sometimes it felt like it was going from one extreme to another without giving me time to adjust. At times it goes from real danger to a happy-go-lucky action sequence in the blink of an eye, and that's where it feels disjointed; it shifts its momentum too quickly for everything to register. And that's where the difficulty in adaptation lies. It's easy to pull off a change in tone in a comic series, when there are natural breaks in the narrative and each issue can have its own feel, but a film is meant to be experienced as a whole, and so a story like this can maybe seem like a little too much. But I have to say that for all of it's flaws Kick-Ass still manages to be pretty awesome.

How to Train Your Dragon - ****

How to Train Your Dragon made me feel something movies so rarely do: elation. It's beautiful, funny, exciting, and has a Hell of a lot of heart. I went into it thinking that it was directed by the guys responsible for the Madagascar (ugh) films, so I already had a bias against it, but it won me over in about twenty minutes, after which I gave in and started loving it. It is actually directed by Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, the team behind Lilo and Stitch, and Sanders was also a writer on Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King, and his talent shows through wonderfully in this film. Though there isn't much of a story, the characters are pretty fantastic, and there is enough wit and intelligence to overcome what could be considered a formulaic narrative arc.

I saw this film in 3-D, a format which I am not very enthusiastic about. I'm one of those guys who, in advance, is already hating on all of the movies lining up to cash in on it (Fuck you Spider-Man 4), but Dragon kind of nails it. Maybe it's the fantastic flying sequences, which cover maybe twenty minutes, and are truly amazing, maybe it's the crisp animation, or maybe it's the fact that the great cinematographer Roger Deakins was a visual consultant that makes it work... I don't know what it is, but the 3-D is spectacular.

I should also mention that the voice-cast is superb, featuring a few guys from the Apatow family, like Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who are always pretty reliable in any shape or form. And then there is also Gerard Butler, who contributed to that negative bias when I walked into this, coming only a week after seeing The Bounty Hunter, but he pulls is it off brilliantly. He helps turn what could have been, and usually is, a boring character, the stubborn father who refuses to accept his son for who he is until the big finale where the son is the hero, into someone who seems real, given that you accept the reality of the film. His gruff, warrior voice in the beginning gradually fades to understanding tenderness by the end.

Though Dreamworks Animation normally produces bottom-of-the-barrel dreck and misery, like Shrek, Shark Tale, and Skrek the Turd, How to Train Your Dragon is nothing short of animation magic and, like some of the best Pixar films, it's enjoyable for viewers of all ages. After Kung Fu Panda and this, maybe I'll even give Shrek Forever Afturd a pass. Okay, probably not, but I couldn't give this film a higher recommendation. See it. Love it. See it again.