The Dragon King

How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

Director: Dean DuBlois

Voice Talent: Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, Cate Blanchett, F. Murray Abraham, Gerald Butler, Craig Ferguson, Jonah Hill, Kristin Wiig, Kit Harrington

Released: February 22, 2019

Viewed in theaters: February 27, 2019

My last line of my How To Train Your Dragon 2 review was "I'll see you in another couple years for How To Train Your Dragon 3!" and here we are. 

It's a good thing Toy Story has a fourth movie coming out or else I wouldn't know which animated trilogy would be my favorite animated trilogy. How could I choose between those two? But why couldn't Toy Story 4 come out a year earlier or a year later because now it's going to win the Oscar for Best Animated Movie and Toy Story 3 already won that Oscar over How To Train Your Dragon (and they were both wonderful movies, so I'm not complaining or anything!). I just want one of the HTTYD movies to win an Oscar for Best Animated Movies because they are all so good! I thought the second movie DID win said Oscar, but while it was nominated, it lost to Big Hero Six. 

You guys, the How To Train Your Dragon movies are so good! Seriously, if you've never seen them, I HIGHLY recommend you check them out. Also, I'm being quite serious about that because I will be spoiling some things from the first and second movies in my review as I rewatched both of them in preparation for the final movie. These movies are put out by DreamWorks which seem to have more bad movies than good, but even these movies could rival something from Pixar. (Apparently not Toy Story, though! But if I had to choose between the Toy Story movies and the HTTYD movies, I would just curl up in a ball and start crying because there's no way I could choose between them!) 

The animation is gorgeous, the score is amazing, the actors they got to voice the characters are great, the story is touching and has a lot of depth (all three make me CRY hardcore!), but there's also touches of humor (not all the humor works all the time, but when these movies are funny, they'll get you laughing), oh, yeah and the dragons are super awesome! Plus I just love the simple story of a boy bonding with an animal, so I feel this movie appeals to pet owners who also share a special bond with their own animal.

Spoilers ahoy for all three movies! Go watch these movies if you've never seen them! 

Mother of Dragons

We are told that the third movie takes place only a year after the events of the second movie. I thought it would have been a lot longer since there's a five year gap between the first and second movies (only four in real life, though!) This means that Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is 21 because we learned in the second movie he is 20. (Whoo hoo! I can do math!) While watching the first movie (for the third time), I was wondering how old Toothless, the Night Fury that Hiccup befriends, is. We are told this in the second movie (only my second time watching it since I saw it in theaters) by Valka (Cate Banchett), Hiccup's mother, that Toothless is the same age as Hiccup. She appears to be reading his scale lines or something. Now I'm assuming that Toothless hasn't literally been on Earth for twenty years, but rather that's in dragon year. I don't know the life expectancy of a dragon (does anyone?), but I'm assuming you count your pet dragon's age in dragon years much like a dog or cat owner uses dog/cat years to determine their pets' age. I'm just going to assume Toothless is three or four and that equals twenty in human years. Yes, I have put way too much thought into this.

Toothless and Cloudjumper

I remember watching the first movie for the first time way back in 2010 and thinking how much Toothless reminded me of a cat. He has very feline qualities. He also reminds me of a bat with his wings, especially when he's flying. (Or when he's hanging upside down!) While watching the movies again, I noticed that a lot of the dragons remind me of at least some kind of animal. Obviously you have ones that take on lizard or snake-like qualities, but there are other animals I noticed in the design of the dragons. Valka's dragon, Cloudjumper (my second favorite dragon after Toothless....absolutely adorable, yet very fierce!), was like a cross between an owl and a bulldog; the large "alpha" dragons in the second movie reminded me of walruses with their tusks; the dragon-killing dragons that belonged to the bad guy in the newest movie reminded me of scorpions.

We learn the reason that Night Furies are so rare is that Grimmel (F. Murray Abraham), our movie's bad guy, has killed most of them almost into extinction. He has plans to kill as many dragons as he can, especially any remaining Night Furies. You may think it's ironic for someone who hates dragons so much to have his own dragons (he has about four), but much like in the second movie with Drago, they have been trained to serve him and will do whatever he wants. 

The island of Berk has become overcrowded with dragons (of all shapes and sizes - everything between itty-bitty and massively huge) as Hiccup and his mother and friends (which include his girlfriend, Astrid (America Ferrera)) have rescued captured dragons and bring them back. Hiccup knows that they need a better place to live, not to mention that Grimmel knows about them and he decides the only safe thing to do is to move everyone and every dragon somewhere else. We see Stoick (RIP Stoick :::sniff:::: seriously, was that not one of the saddest moments in animation movie history?) appear in flashbacks (voiced by Gerald Butler) when Hiccup was younger and he tells his son about a Hidden World where dragons live and how he wants to find this place and seal the door so humans and dragons don't have to co-exist. Of course, we know now that humans and dragons can live together peacefully. There is a cute moment when young Hiccup asks about Night Furies and then adds, "They're scary!" Oh, if only you knew, young Hiccup! 

I suppose the good thing about having dragons when you move somewhere, is that they can carry all the heavy stuff...which is exactly what they do. A lot of the much bigger dragons are carrying Viking ships and heavy bundles of things. They see a sparse island and Hiccup decides they should make camp there. 

Grimmel decides to lure Toothless by using the captured Light Fury he has to entice him. A Light Fury looks exactly like a Night Fury, only it's white instead of black. We get some pretty cute scenes between Toothless and the Light Fury (who never gets a name, but I guess that makes sense since she isn't anyone's pet) doing their mating dance. The romance between these two dragons has to be the cutest romance between an animated non-human pair since Wall-E and Eve from WALL-E. When the Light Fury flies away, Toothless is upset because he can't follow her because, if you remember from the first movie, a part of his tail fin (the horizontal stabilizer if you will) was torn off when Hiccup shot him down) and he can only fly when he has a full tail. So Hiccup creates a new one for him and he is able to fly off and find his female counterpart who takes him to the Hidden World. Meanwhile, he's been gone for awhile and Hiccup is starting to get worried as he thought Toothless would be back by now. Astrid points out to him that he gave Toothless his freedom. Hiccup thinks that his dragon might be in trouble so he and Astrid hop on Astrid's dragon, Stormfly, to find him. All the dragons must be able to find the Hidden World because Stormfly seems to know exactly where to go. As expected, the Hidden (Dragon) World is gorgeous with this extra-worldly light and is full of dragons (I even saw Drago's alpha dragon from the second movie who loses its tusk, but it's hard to miss that thing as it's so massive!) and Hiccup and Astrid see that Toothless and his new girlfriend have become the Dragon King and Queen of the Hidden World.

Crouching Dragon, Hidden Dragon

Since many of these dragons are wild and not been domesticated, when they spot the two humans, they start to attack them. They are rescued by Toothless who flies them back to the island where they've set up camp. Meanwhile, Ruffnut (the other young female who isn't Astrid) has been captured and held by Grimmel and we get one of the funniest scenes in the movie where she is going on and on and won't shut up. She is voiced by Kristin Wiig and you know they just set up the scene for her and let her ad-lib. If I hadn't known Kristin Wiig voiced this character since the first movie, I would have no idea that was her because she makes her voice sound gruff. It is a very funny scene because she is just going on and on (she doesn't seem to realize that she could easily be killed at any moment!) and you think Grimmel is going to make her dragon chow, but then she lets slip where her people have landed and Grimmel uses this to his advantage and lets her go so he can follow her. The Light Fury has also followed Toothless back to the island and she is captured by Grimmel which results in Toothless being captured when he goes to her aid. Look, we can all blame the incompetent Ruffnut for unknowingly leading Grimmel to their camp, but if Hiccup had never gone looking for Toothless in the Hidden World, then Toothless would have never flown him back and his Queen wouldn't have followed, and she wouldn't have gotten captured, etc., etc. Hiccup knows this because he guiltily points it out to Astrid. I love the callback to the first movie when Astrid asks Hiccup, "What are you going to do about it?"

Grimmel warns Toothless to keep the other dragons from attacking him or else he will kill the Light Fury, so instead the other dragons follow willingly without any threat leaving the Vikings without their dragons. Of course the humans find a way to save the dragons and Hiccup saves the Light Fury, who in turns saves Toothless, then saves Hiccup from falling to his death. It's a sweet moment because before then, the Light Fury, who has never been around humans, had always been apprehensive around Hiccup, breathing fire in his vicinity whenever he was  around.

So around this time, we're near the end of the movie and I have't cried...yet. Well, that's about to change! Get out the Kleenex because the tears are about to start flowing. Now this wasn't a huge surprise that I cried as I bawled during the first and second movie, so I knew this moment was going to be inevitable. Hiccup realizes that Toothless and all the other dragons belong in the Hidden World where they will be safe from humans who are trying to hunt them, not to mention that Toothless has found his soul mate and needs to be with her. I cried so much when they say their goodbyes and we also see the other Vikings saying goodbye to their dragons. If you think about it, Hiccup and Toothless were only together for six years which isn't that long at all!

The very last five minutes of the movie take place a few years later and Hiccup and Astrid are married and have two small children. This is when we see Hiccup with his beard which they show in some of the promo posters so I was wondering when we were going to see that. The family is on a boat and they come across Toothless, the Light Fury, and three absolutely adorable baby dragons! I think I literally "aw!"-ed. Hiccup is reunited with his friend and he introduces his children where we get a great callback from the first movie when Hiccup puts up his palm towards Toothless while looking away and Toothless nuzzles him. We get that scene again, only this time it's Hiccup's children who are putting their palms towards the dragon while looking away. It's a very sweet ending and I'm having to take a handkerchief out of my purse to wipe the cascade of tears flowing from my eyes.

I love these movies so much! I just have to make sure I have Kleenex nearby when I watch them! 

P.S. The Book Was Better

P. S. I Love You

Director: Richard LaGravenese

Cast: Hilary Swank, Gerald Butler, Kathy Bates, Harry Connick Jr., Lisa Kudrow, Gina Gershon, Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Released: December 21, 2007

Viewed in theaters: December 23, 2007

This is a perfect example of a perfectly acceptable book being turned into a crap movie. I saw this movie in the theater because I had read the book two years prior and had enjoyed it. It is the first book by Cecelia Ahern who wrote it when she was only twenty-one years old. She is the daughter of Bertie Ahern, a former Prime Minister of Ireland, so I have no doubt that helped her launch her writing career! I've read many of her books and many of them very whimsical. For the most part, I have really liked getting lost in her novels. They're just mindless fun. 

The only book of hers I really don't like is If You Could See Me Now which is about a 30-year-old woman's childhood invisible friend coming to life and only she and her young nephew can see him and she doesn't know he's invisible to everyone else. I was thinking there was going to be some kind of Fight Club-esque twist where this was all in the woman's mind, but nope, the invisible friend was actually real and worked with other invisible friends. (Cut me a break...this was only the second Cecelia Ahern book I had read so I didn't know how whimsical she could get!) And she falls in love with her invisible friend, so ick! Totally creeped me out! 

The Gift is Ahern's take on A Christmas Carol as it is set around the holiday season and one of the few times where her main character is male. He is a rich businessman and he meets a homeless man outside the building where he works and offers him a job. This one has an interesting twist that lets the busy working man spend more time with his family thanks to the homeless man. 

Then you have There's No Place Like Here which is about a 30-year-old woman (you will soon notice that all of Ahern's protagonists are all 30 or thereabouts) who is obsessed with finding missing things and works with people who want to be reunited with long lost loved ones. This was the fourth Ahern book I had read so by this time I was used to her whimsical and quirky story lines. She ends up in a location aptly named Here (I am not joking!) and it's where all the missing people go. If this had been my first Ahern book I had read, I would have thought this was a weird purgatory where all the people who have been adducted and killed gathered. But no, that would be much too dark for Ahern's writing. The whole thing was just weird. Interesting, but weird. 

The Time of My Life is about a, yep, you guessed it, 30-year-old woman who finds herself stuck in a rut with family problems, boyfriend problems, and job problems. She finds out that her Life wants to meet with her. Her Life is an actual person, a man, oddly enough. (You would think if your life was another person, it would at least be the same gender as you!) I didn't mind that her life was a person...in this universe it is normal, but it didn't make sense that her life had his own life too. Someone asked him if he was allowed to have a girlfriend and he said yes. How does that even work? Would that mean she would have a girlfriend as well as her new boyfriend? Luckily that doesn't happen but it is so weird. I think Ahern wanted to make him his own person but it got in that weird territory where a lot of things didn't make sense. I give her props for trying something new and it was a charming, original story. 

The Book of Tomorrow actually has a 17-year-old spoiled teen as the main character and she finds a book that tells her what's going to happen the next day and uses it to her advantage. From this she finds out her real dad, who she had thought had died in a fire, never died at all. That's all I really remember. 

Thanks for the Memories is really weird. It's about a woman who falls in love with the guy who donated blood to her after a terrible accident and because she has his blood, she's able to see his life...yeah, I know very weird! They fall in love but it takes forever for them to meet even though you know it's going to happen. 

So those are all the books of hers I have read. I would say that The Gift, The Time of My Life, and P.S. I Love You are my favorites. Despite being super weird, There's No Place Like Here was pretty interesting. The rest are either meh to non memorable, but If You Could See Me Now is the worst. There's also a handful I haven't read.

Ironically, P.S. I Love You is probably the most realistic of all of Ahern's novels (the ones I've read anyway). There are no people with magical abilities or invisible people or books that predict the future or made up places. It's just a straight-forward story about a married couple, Holly (Hilary Swank) and Gerry (Gerald Butler). He dies from a brain tumor and leaves behind messages for his widow, one for each month and encourages her to do things to stay strong. The book, like all of Ahern's novels, is set in Ireland, obviously as she is Irish herself. This was set in New York, so Swank does not have an Irish accent. I really hate it when a book that is set in a country that is not America is made into a movie and then the city is changed into a big American city. I guess I understand because probably it will sell more tickets. To me, the casting of Hilary Swank in this didn't work for me. I'm used to seeing her in these dramatic movies and this film, despite the fact that one of the main character dies, is a fairly light and frothy movie. I think someone like a Reese Witherspoon or Kate Hudson would have worked better (you know, if they had to absolutely keep it set in the U.S.). I defintely feel like this movie was only made for the people who had read the book because if you hadn't read the book, you would probably be going, what is going on? The first scene starts with Holly and Gerry arguing in this long drawn out scene that goes on forever (and by God, she is super annoying...I'm surprised he stayed married for her for ten years or however long they were together!) By the end, they have made up and are making out.

Then, in a new scene, we're at a funeral and it turns out it's Gerry's! What the huh! Of course I knew this was coming up because I had read the book. (Oh, I suppose you would know it you saw the previews...I don't think they keep it a huge secret that he dies, but still! His death comes out of nowhere!) Now I don't have the book....I lent it to someone and never got it back (insert angry emoji here) so I don't have it to see how things differ. I'll just have to look it up online like I do for all my other reviews!

I do remember in the book, Holly receives one message from her husband beyond the grave each month for one year. In the movie, it was more like one per season. They definitely cut out a lot of the letters he left for her.

Is it bad that all I could think of throughout this movie is that I bet their friends wished it had been Holly who had died instead of Gerry? He was obviously the more fun one, the life of the party while Holly was more uptight and needed to take a chill pill. Although, since Gerry is from Ireland (at least one character is from the country of origin!), that would mean Holly has known their friends the longest. They are much more fleshed out in the book, obviously, as is her family.

Holly's 30th (of course!) birthday is not long after Gerry's death and she's still mourning him when her mom (played by Kathy Bates) and friends come over to surprise her with a cake and presents. The cake comes with a recorded message from Gerry telling her she's going to be receiving messages from him and he doesn't want her trying to figure out how he's doing this (the real reason for this is they never explain how a dead man set this up months in advance. Yes, I realize he knew he was going to die, but obviously people were involved in this, but yet Holly's mom and friends are all shocked by this, so we never have any idea who was helping him as the movie never says. I can't remember if they reveal it in the book).

The first letter is fairly simple and just tells Holly to buy a lamp for the bedside table. I remember this from the book. Whoever was the last up had to turn off the overhead light and that person would usually stub their toe. How can you have a bedside table, but not a lamp? Gerry signed it, like he did with all his other letters, "P.S. I Love You". The next letter tells her to buy a new outfit so she can wear it when she sings a karaoke song and overcome her anxiety of that. We see a flashback where Jerry goaded Holly into singing and she does, but ends up breaking some bones when she trips into the wires of the karaoke machine. Then there's a letter where Gerry has planned a trip to Ireland for Holly and her two friends (played by Lisa Kudrow and Gina Gershon) and her friends find letters from Gerry at the little cottage they stay at. Holly meets a guy named William (William Dean Morgan) and it is so obvious she has a type because this guy is not only Irish, like Gerry was, but also looks similar to him with the same build and coloring. They end up sleeping together and Holly is SHOCKED and MORTIFIED when she finds out that William knew Gerry. Well, duh! Any idiot could have figured out that. One of the requests Gerry gave to them was to go to a pub and see the performers. William was one of them and he ended up singing a song that touched one of Holly's nerves. It was a song that Gerry would often sing to her, so obviously he had called up his friend William and asked him to sing it when Holly and her friends would be there. But the kicker is that William had no idea that the woman he had slept with was the same one he had played for a couple nights earlier - just how drunk was he to not remember that?

I don't remember William from the book, although obviously she didn't go on a trip to Ireland since she already lived there. However, I do remember the character of Daniel who is played by Harry Connick Jr. There is a small spark between them, but once they do kiss, the realize it's like kissing their brother/sister, so really, what was the point of that character?

One of Holly's last letters from Gerry is him telling her to get a new job. I think she's a real estate agent, but she hates it, so she decides she's going to design shoes! And she's a huge success! Uh huh. (And her dad wasn't even the President!) The movie ends with her finding closure with Gerry's death as he writes in his last letter that he wants her to find love again and it looks like she will...with his good friend and lookalike, William!

Ugh, I hated this movie! The only good thing about it was that it introduced me to the song "Love You Til The End" by The Pogues which I really like. Who knows if I would even still like the book if I ever read it again...though I'm sure it would still be better than the movie! 

DragonCon

How To Train Your Dragon 2

Director: Dean DeBlois

Voice talent: Jay Baruchel, Gerald Butler, Cate Blanchett, America Ferrera, Dijmon Hounsou, Craig Ferguson, Kristin Wiig, Jonah Hill

Released: June 13, 2014

Viewed in theaters: June 29, 2014

Spoilers ahoy!

Much like the first movie, I loved this one too, and much like the first movie, I cried during this one as well. Also, like the first one, I saw this one at nine in the evening to avoid young children talking or crying or kicking the back of my seat. Unlike the first one, I did not see this one in 3-D, but that's only because the theater I saw it at wasn't showing it in 3-D! Otherwise I would have as I kept seeing the obvious scenes that were meant for the 3-D viewers and how cool it would have been to be able to see it that way.

I probably should have seen the first movie before seeing this one, but I thought I didn't need to since I saw How To Train Your Dragon twice, but I sure couldn't remember how Hiccup lost his leg...or even that he did lose his leg!

The sequel takes place five years later (I thought they should have made it four years since it's been four years since the first movie!) and the village where our hero, Hiccup (voiced by Jay Barachel), lives has become littered with dragons now that everyone owns one. The town, once fearful of dragons, now has a dragon feeding-station, a large stable for the dragons to sleep, and a fire prevention device.

Besides Hiccup and Toothless, his fiercely loyal dragon, we are re-introduced to some old familiar characters such as Stoic (voiced by Gerald Butler), Hiccup's father and the town's chief; Astrid (voiced by America Ferrera), Hiccup's girlfriend; Hiccup's ragtag team of misfit friends (voiced by many including Kristin Wiig and Jonah Hill); and Gobber (voiced by Craig Ferguson), the chief's right hand man. We are also introduced to some new characters, mainly the film's villain, Drago (voiced by Dijmon Hounsou) who wants to control all the dragons. I guess because his name is "Dragon" without the N, that gives him the right. I first heard his name as "Draco" and was thinking, "Harry Potter already did it!" And we are introduced to Valka (voiced by Cate Blanchett), Hiccup's mother who he thought was deceased all these years. She has a Scottish accent (by the way, I love that both Hiccup's parents have strong Scottish accents and he doesn't) and when I first heard her in the trailer, I was curious to see who voiced her.

We learn of her backstory where she has become a savior for dragons who have become hurt or neglected and need care. Everyone thinks she was killed by a dragon because the last time anyone saw her (when Hiccup was a baby), she was cornered by a dragon and carried off by it, but it never had any intentions of hurting her. Valka is reunited with her family (complete with a cute Scottish ditty she sings with her husband) and they're off to stop Drago from controlling all the dragons. There's a huge fight between his alpha, a humongous black dragon, and Valka's alpha, a humongous white dragon and Drago's dragon wins, thus making him in control of all the other dragons. This is yet another reason why I wished I had seen the first movie because I remember a huge dragon being in the movie, but don't recall if it was the same kind.

Toothless, under Drago's control, is ordered to kill Hiccup, but Stoic dives right in front of his son right before Toothless breathes fire, killing Hiccup's father. That was the scene I cried at (and several scenes after I was still crying!). It would be bad enough to have our main character lose his father, but have him die at the cost of his beloved friend is really a punch to the gut! Like Hiccup, I was even angry at Toothless for what he did, but Valka, being the voice of reason tells her son that it's not Toothless's fault; that he was tricked into doing it.

Now the town has no chief and no dragons, but Hiccup steps up to take his dad's place and defeat Drago and free the dragons from the hypnotized state they're all in. Not only does Hiccup become a hero, but so does Toothless, who fights through the mind control of the alpha and defeats the alpha, thus becoming the new alpha. Now Toothless doesn't kill the ex-alpha since he is a million times smaller, but the ex-alpha retreats into the water like a whimpering puppy.

The first movie came out the same year as Toy Story 3 (2010), so I knew it had no chance of winning the Best Animated Movie Oscar, but I hope it can win it next year for this movie because it's such a great movie and deserves to! I'll see you in another couple years for How To Train Your Dragon 3! 

White House Has Fallen

 White House Down
Director: Roland Emmerich
Cast: Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Richard Jenkins, Jason Clarke, Joey King, James Wood
Released: June 28, 2013

Olympus Has Fallen
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Cast: Gerald Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett,  Melissa Leo, Rick Yune, Dylan McDermott, Finley Jacobsen
Released: March 22, 2013

Remember in 1998 when both Armageddon and Deep Impact, both about asteroids destroying the earth, were released within months of each other? And wasn't there two movies about volcanoes erupting within the same year too? White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen are both about the White House being taken over by terrorists and one man (Channing Tatum for WHD and Gerald Butler for OHF) must stop them. Both movies came out earlier this year only separated by a few months. There are only two main differences that I can find in both movies. One is that OHF takes itself much more seriously than WHD. It has a very somber mood while WHD goes for the more blockbuster summer popcorn thrill ride. It even makes a meta joke when a guide is giving a tour of the White House and tells the group where they are standing is where the aliens blew up the White House in Independence Day. Apparently that line was not in the script, so good for Roland Emmerich for having a sense of humor to keep it in. (Just in case my mom is reading this, he directed Independence Day!) Also, the marketing! I saw trailers, commercials, and posters for WHD everywhere while I had no idea that OHF even existed until I saw it on DVD and heard somebody talk about it on a podcast when they were reviewing these two movies. I thought it was one of the straight to DVD releases!

Why don't we compare how similar they are? In the first time in Cinematic Sara history, I created this nifty table from my iMac's Pages:

White House Down		Olympus Has Fallen
POTUS: James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx) Even though Foxx isn’t as young as I thought he was, I could never believe him as the President of the United States. He was just never authoritative to me in a way, say, someone like Denzel Washington would be able to pull off. The First Lady is in Paris when the chaos happens.		POTUS: Ben Asher (Aaron Eckhart) Asher is a widower with a young son. His wife died in a car accident a year prior when their car slid into an icy bridge and she plummeted to her death. There was only time to save Asher.
The hero: John Cale (Channing Tatum) First of all, I could watch Channing Tatum in anything. He is very nice to look at! Cale is a bodyguard assigned to the Speaker of the House of Representatives. He gets involved with helping Sawyer when he is in the White House on a tour with his daughter when the mayhem begins.		The hero: Mike Banning (Gerald Bulter) Banning used to be head of the security team for the POTUS, but he was pulled from the team because he was the one who saved the POTUS and couldn’t save the FLOTUS so it brings back bad memories for the President. When Banning sees something is wrong at the White House, he goes into Jack Bauer mode.
The (main) bad guy: Emil (Jason Clark, the guy from Zero Dark Thirty). With the help from the inside, he leads his men inside and they start taking hostages. The bad guys sneak into the WH acting like janitors.		The (main) bad guy: North Korean terrorist, Kang (Rick Yune) who is posing as the South Korean’s Prime Minister’s assistant. That way he is invited into the White House when Asher has a meeting with the PM. After the WH is surrounded by Kang’s men and the security guys have all been taken out, Kang takes the POTUS and others (including the Secretary of Defense (Melissa Leo)). Kang wants Asher to pull troops from his country where there’s a civil war going on and he wants the codes for the missiles he plans to launch and the only people who know them are the POUTS and two other officials in the room.
Inside Man: Martin Walker, retired head of the Presidential Detail (James Wood) He is the one who is behind the overthrow of the White House because his son was killed in war and he wants revenge. He also wants codes that will launch a missile.		Inside Man: ex-Secret Service agent-turned-traitor Dave Forbes (Dylan McDermott). I don’t remember why he was working with the North Koreans, but Banning doesn’t know his old pal is one of the bad guys until Forbes says Kang’sname and Banning asks him how he knew his name. He tells Forbes to be on the good side for once and radios Kang to tell him he has Banning captured and after he does that, Banning kills him. Dude, pick a side and stay with it!
The veteran: Speaker of the House, Eli Ralpheson (Richard Jenkins). He is the one Cale works for and he is also behind the whole plot as well. He is promised if he goes along with it, he will be the next POTUS because they launch a missile at Air Force One which has the VP in it. (What’s this an epihour of 24?) But what he and Walker failed to realize is that they didn’t succeed at killing the President and their plans are thwarted.		The veteran: Speaker of the House, Allan Trumball (Morgan Freeman). See, even the veteran actors are playing the same roles! Unlike Ralpheson, Trumball is a good guy and has to take over as POTUS for five minutes when it is feared that Asher is dead.
The kid: Emily (Joey King) Cale’s daughter who has an unusual fascination with politics for a girl her age. Her flag waving skills helps save her dad and POTUS at the end of the day (don’t ask). She has a YouTube channel and takes videos of the terrorists as she’s hiding. She is captured and brought into a room with the other hostages, but not before she uploads the videos to her channel and they go viral and soon it’s all over the news. The journalists say her name and post her picture. Now I  shouldn’t compare this ridiculous event to a real, horrifying one, but I remember when Columbine happened live (as this was happening live too), students would call news channels from inside the school to tell them what’s going on, but the journalists would be very careful to say DO NOT TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE so they wouldn’t be found and shot in case there were any TVs on. Why are these journalists saying her name and posting picture of her when her hostages could be watching it on TV? That was just stupid and that would never happen.		The kid: Connor (Finley Jacobsen) He has nothing to do except be saved. After he is safe, Banning continues on with getting the POTUS and defeating Kang. This category is the only one where there’s a major difference between the two movies. It’s the only one where the characters are played by opposite genders. And while Connor is barely in the movie, Emily plays a very big role in hers.
The (main) female: Carol Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhall). She works as an assistant for the POTUS and is not in the White House when it’s taken over. She’s working on the outside to help Cale and Sawyer escape.		The (main) female: Director of the Secret Service, Lynne Jacobs (Angela Basset). She fully and completely trusts Banning with her life and with the life of the President. She knows if anybody is going to save Asher, it’s going to be Banning! She’s also on the outside helping Banning.

 

Learning to Fly

How To Train Your Dragon

Directors: Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders

Voice Talent: Jay Baruchel, Gerald Butler, America Ferrera, Craig Ferguson

Released: 3/26/10

Viewed in theaters: 3/31/10

*Small spoilers in review!*

When it comes to Pixar vs. DreamWorks, I am always on Team Pixar, but this is easily DreamWork's best work in years. I thought the trailers for it looked really cute and that made me want to see it, but what actually got me motivated to go to the theaters was the 98% fresh rating it received on Rotten Tomatoes. I went to a screening at nine in the evening so I could avoid all the little kiddies kicking my seat or crying. Because I saw it so late and because I saw it in 3-D, I had to shell out a bit more money, but that was okay. It was definitely worth it. (Although, honestly, the movie would have been just as great in 2-D.)

The plot is simple: Hiccup is a scrawny young viking lad who only wants to please his father by killing a dragon which is a sort of a rite of passage in the town where they live. He builds a contraption to take down a rare breed of dragon (I can't remember the name) NIGHT FURY! that nobody has ever taken down and is deemed to be very dangerous. He does manage to capture it, but he can't bring himself to kill it. While Hiccup is taking dragon-slaying classes with the other kids in the village, he's also slowing building a bond with the black dragon who he dubs Toothless and learns that dragons are just like pets (in fact Toothless's facial features reminded me of a cat's) who like to be scratched and petted and are playful. Toothless was so adorable too.

There's a reason why dragons are misunderstood, but I don't want to give anything away, but let's just say it involves one giant ass dragon! I mean, this thing was so massive, I have no idea how it could even fly!

The flying scenes were pretty incredible, but they would have been really amazing on an IMAX screen! This was my second 3-D movie (the first, of course, was Avatar) and while the 3-D was cool, I'm not really a huge fan of it. Honestly, I think the 3-D phenomenon is just a phase and it will pass in a few years. At least I hope so. I was more impressed with the actual animation than I was with the 3-D aspect of it: the ocean and the fur on the Vikings' vests looked like real water and fur.

I knew I would cry while watching this film and I did. Actually, I cried more than I thought I would. I cried when (spoiler alert!) Hiccup's dad saves Toothless and tells Hiccup that he's proud to call him his son when just in a previous scene he was ashamed of him. Yeah, that got the waterworks going. Thank goodness the lobby of the movie theater was empty when I left because it's always embarrassing when my eyes are red from crying (especially from watching a cartoon!).

How To Train Your Dragon has a great chance of being nominated for a Best Animated Picture Oscar next year, but I'm pretty sure Toy Story 3 has that one locked up. I saw the trailer for that and I can't wait to see it. (I also got a little teary-eyed during it; yes, I am very sensitive!) Giving Oscars to animated films started in 2002 and here's how I would rank the nine movies that have won Oscars:

1. Up

2. Finding Nemo

3. Wall-E

4. Ratatouille

5. The Incredibles

6. Spirited Away

7. Shrek

8. Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit

9. Happy Feet

I love 1-4, I like 5-7, I barely remember 8, and I hated 9. If I were to incorporate HTTYD, it would be #3 or 4 on that list. You don't have to be a kid to enjoy this movie!