Holy Moly! A Movie Post

Black Friday blows me away. I don't do the sales or the crowds. In fact, most years I vow not to leave the house. I think it comes from working in retail for so long. The months of November and December are black out months in retail, meaning you aren't supposed to make any time-off requests. Sometimes you luck out and get a manager who'll allow it, but you're either going to work Black Friday or Christmas Eve, or the day after Christmas. Or all three (usually my luck).

So I kind of relish my not having to do that anymore -- or at least for now. Who knows what the future will hold.

Today, however, with Mike out snowboarding all day I decided to head to the movies. I've been wanting to see The Road, but I figured I would wait for Mike to see it. So I headed out to see Ninja Assassin instead.

I'm not a huge martial arts/ninja fan, although I have seen most of the new films that have come out recently -- I'm a fan of Jason Statham even if I think he's a much better actor than his recent films illustrate. So you can imagine that I had some reservations about Ninja Assassin.

Perhaps that's why I enjoyed it so much! It was freaking great!

If you're considering seeing a movie this weekend, I highly suggest you check it out -- if you don't mind super gore, though. The blood in this movie is plentiful and the fight scenes are pretty excellent.

Like most ninja movies, it could definitely use more story development, but I have to say that I thought it did ok in this department. I've seen much, much worse. I found it interesting as well as visually stunning. And I do mean that. There is plenty for the eyes to feast on in this movie, not the least of which is the yummy Rain, starring as Raizo. Oh, man! Even if you're not a fan of these movies at all, you should check him out!

Yeah, I'm a dork. At least he's age-appropriate hotness unlike the New Moon boys.

I expected this to be a miss and I was pleasantly surprised that it was not. This is the latest release from Joel Silver's Dark Castle Entertainment, who was responsible for the atrocious RocknRolla (did I say that?). Course we could just as easily blame that mishap on Madonna (let's hope Guy Ritchie recovered for the upcoming Sherlock Holmes). Dark Castle also did the recent flop Whiteout, which I've not seen and so can't criticize. In their defense, they were responsible for Orphan this year, a movie that I rather enjoyed. So, you win some you lose some. (They have an upcoming film called The Apparition starring Ashley Greene -- Alice of the Twilight films -- in case you were interested).

As a horror fan, to see that the company that was dedicated to breathing new life into old William Castle films was now doing a ninja movie was a bit of a WTF?! moment. I also have to say that although the trailer adequately portrays the expected violence of the film, the movie itself was an unexpectedly entertaining movie that I think should be a win for Dark Castle, director James McTeigue, and star Rain. And yes, that is Naomie Harris, aka Selena of 28 Days Later, as Europol Agent Mika -- see, you didn't know there was a Europol story in there, did you?

For more Ninja Assassin related fun, here's a link to a CNN story with some video on both the star and the film. And if you did not see Rain on the Colbert Report (I didn't) then this should thoroughly entertain you. He's hotness in the film even if the Colbert clip is pretty dorky.

Go see it.