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THE INCREDIBLE HULK
Starring: Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth
Directed by: Louis Leterrier

I started this blog to write about books as well as movies, but the movies part of it fell off somewhere by the roadside. I've been watching a lot of movies, but I haven't really written much about them. So I thought I'd make movies a weekly feature.

The Incredible Hulk features Edward Norton as Bruce Banner, the brilliant scientist who, due to a laboratory accident, is pumped full of gamma radiation and transformed into a superhuman green monster, The Hulk. Hiding out in Brazil from the U.S Army, led by his girlfriend Betty Ross' (Liv Tyler) father, General Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt), Bruce tries to find a cure for his condition with the help of the mysterious Mr. Blue. But circumstances don't allow him to stay hidden for long, and he has to return home to fight the Army, the Abomination and above all, himself.

The Hulk series was rebooted with this movie after the Ang-Lee directed 2003 movie didn't do well. I may be the only one who says this, but I found the Eric Bana movie better than this one. The special effects of this movie are probably better and the movie moves at a faster pace due to the numerous action sequences. The Abomination was Godzilla-like, the final Hulk-Abomination confrontation a battle of monsters. But the 2003 movie was more human, more engaging. Bruce's dilemma to stay human or become monster drew me into the story. I love action movies, the more blowing up the merrier, but nowadays I look for story as much as I look for SFX.

I like Edward Norton as Hulk, he portrays the shy, tortured genius quite well, and it was nice watching him on screen after a really long time. His performance in the lab scene, when he transforms into the Hulk and back again, was really cool. But I didn't like Liv Tyler, I thought she was too simpering, more eye candy than anything else. However, the best was Tim Roth as the vengeful, super-soldier Emil Blonsky. A superhero movie is just as good as its villains are, and he was quite the menacing one. But, to me, the Hulk is more about fighting the inner villains more than the outer ones, a topic this movie deals with but doesn't explore quite as well as the first.


THE HANGOVER
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helm, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha
Directed by: Todd Phillips

Doug (Bartha) is getting married, and he and his friends Phil (Cooper), Alan (Galifianakis) and Stu (Helm) go to Vegas for the bachelor party. They wake up in the morning with no memory of the previous night, with a tiger in the bathroom, a baby in the closet, mayhem in the suite and Doug missing. Their search for Doug leads them to the police station, the chapel and Mike Tyson's villa, as they retrace their steps to bring back Doug in time for his wedding.

The movie has like lot of profanity and vulgar cracks, and partial nudity too, so be careful about what you are getting into. I felt grossed out at some of the scenes, especially the Chinese guy in the trunk of the Mercedes. But if you manage to overlook the crudeness, it is really a cool movie. The plot starts off with so many disconnected elements that, at first sight, you feel that any way the writers would wrap up the threads would seem a little silly at the end. But it wasn't. I enjoyed the bit about the tiger in the bathroom and how they return it; it was quite dextrously resolved. It's an action movie without the action;fast-paced and not a dull moment in sight.

The best part about this bromance is that none of the humour was forced. There were none of the corny one-liners which are supposed to make you laugh, but actually make you wince. A movie that seems like one of those generic bachelor-party-gone-wrong movies, but manages to bring something fresh to the table. The actors do a really great job of bringing out the craziness in the situation. Ed Helms was too cool, as the hen-pecked boyfriend who becomes braver and smarter as the movie progresses, ending up as the guy you cheer for. Definitely a movie to watch if you are a guy (and I'll be very surprised if you haven't watched it yet), and for women, well, now you know why guys don't tell you anything about their bachelor parties.