I have to admit, going in to see Cars 2 today had me nervous. After all, I wasn’t all that fond of Cars from the word go. This much Larry The Cable Guy in one place had me downright quaking. “Git ‘er done” is on my list of most annoying catch phrases of all time, locked in a tie for first with Carlos Mencia and his condescending chalkboard screech “Dee DEE dee!”. But then I remembered, this was a Pixar movie, and Pixar has yet to do a bad movie. Would Cars 2 be the first?

Cars 2 takes us back to Radiator Springs, where the Lightning McQueen racing empire is shaping up nicely. Lightning’s just taken his fourth Piston Cup, and is looking for a little down time following a great season. But that’s not to be as soon enough, oil magnate Miles Axelrod has introduced a new sustainable superfuel, and to prove its value, he’s launched a worldwide Grand Prix race on three countries’ soil in a bid to show off what it can do. But when a shadowy organization starts using the superfuel to take out the racers, it’s going to be up to…of all cars, Mater…to step in and save the world from a conspiracy that goes a lot farther than anyone might expect.

There’s a lot more Mater in this one than in the previous, and Lightning McQueen is actually almost of secondary importance here. This may be strange, no mistake there, but it’s also decidedly interesting. This complete yokel is going to save the world? It’s like an Ernest movie, mixed with a James Bond thriller and set entirely on a giant Hot Wheels track.

There are also a huge number of shoutouts and “Hey-it’s-that-guy” effects going on in here. Watch for Bruce Campbell to show up in yet another voiceover, as well as Sig Hansen from Deadliest Catch, and a nod to Ratatouille, among others. And of course, you’ll get extra value by way of a Toy Story short, which is pretty funny in its own right.

Frankly, I was afraid that this one wasn’t going to come off–a sequel to one of the worst Pixar movies yet?–but I definitely enjoyed this one more than the previous. There’s a lot of action here, good laughs…it’s a fun summer movie. Don’t look for this to be really involved, or even make sense in a lot of parts (What is a crab boat doing in a movie where everyone consumes gas and oil?), but still, it’s a very fun title.

The Screenhead Ten Scale joins the contrarians on this one and gives Cars 2 an eight out of ten for being an exciting, fun ride that’s well worth the Pixar name. It’s no Up, no Toy Story Pick A Number, but it’s a fine addition in its own right.

It’s a big week for sequels, folks, so today we’re going to take a run at Kung Fu Panda 2, which is going to be one of two that hit today. Is this one going to be as good as the original?  That’s the question no doubt on everyone’s mind and the question we’re going to answer today.

Kung Fu Panda 2 takes us back to the Valley of Peace, though with one critical distinction: Po, the noodle shop worker, is now Master Po, the Dragon Warrior, who protects the valley along with the Furious Five, pretty much as he’s always dreamed he one day would. But when a new villain with an ultimate weapon emerges, a weapon so powerful that it could destroy kung fu itself. So how does a kung fu master like Po fight back against a weapon that can destroy kung fu? Well…do you expect any less from Master Po?

Indeed, Kung Fu Panda 2 has one great strength going for it: the fact that, here, you can see Jack Black play something other than a tubby loser with a guitar. No, here, he’s a tubby loser who happens to be a panda. And that, along with plenty else, makes this one pretty well worth watching. Here, Black is working with that which got him typecast early on and doing something relatively unique with it. Admittedly, not much, but still; when it comes to Jack Black movies, you take what you can get.

This particular installment depends a lot more on action than it does on comedy. The first one was largely the opposite–even Po’s training sequences had plenty of laughs in them as the inept panda managed to become a kung fu legend. But now that he actually is, a lot of the laughs are gone and replaced with action, which is a bit awkward here. A movie focused on the clumsy panda now suddenly a master who’s still a bit clumsy isn’t really that funny. At least, not as funny as it was.

Still though, there’s plenty going on here, and there’s enough action for most anyone, even done in the grand Chinese action movie style, which is a serious plus.

If you came here for the funny, you’ll be fairly disappointed. But action buffs–especially those fond of action in the Chinese style–will be much, much better suited here.

The ending, meanwhile, is something of a setup for the third one–at least, that’s what it looked like from the ground level; I haven’t actually heard of a Kung Fu Panda 3 set for release–so it’s a bit on the disappointing side, but still perfectly serviceable.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Kung Fu Panda 2 a solid eight out of ten. It’s long on the action, short on the funny, and a reasonably entertaining experience you can take the family to.

You’ve probably heard tires squeal before. You’ve maybe even seen YouTube footage of someone engaged in a burnout before, in which a car’s tires move faster than their ability to gain traction, thus causing a streak of rubber to be left behind on the road surfact. That’s exactly–to the inch–what watching Fast Five is like. It’s loud, it’s entertaining to those who watch it, and at its core, it’s phenomenally stupid.

Fast Five rejoins us with Dominick Toretto and his erstwhile family, sister Mia, in events taking place just after the fourth installment but before the third. If you’re confused, don’t worry–you absolutely don’t need to know any of this before you watch the movie. Dom’s just been sent up for twenty five to life for his various crimes, and is on his way, by bus, to prison. His family busts him out in rapid and spectacular fashion, and now they’re all off to sunny Rio de Janiero to find their fortune. They find it in the form of Herman Reyes, corrupt businessman who’s got a whole lot of cash stashed all over Rio. Now, Dom and his crew are hatching a complex plot to seize the money, but all the while, they’ve got Luke Hobbs and his agents hunting them, seeing as how they’re all wanted fugitives.

If you picture Ocean’s Eleven, but take out all the jokes and replace them with cars going really really fast, then you have a pretty good idea of what you’re in for with Fast Five. It watches like it was written by a not particularly bright fourteen year old who knew exactly what he wanted to see in a movie–cars going fast, guns going off, and attractive women going around half-naked–and set out to get every ohm and erg of it. Plot is really rather minimal, except for a decent plot twist at the end.

Fast Five is no one’s idea of a good movie, but it will be entertaining enough by virtue of its sheer bombast. There’s entirely too much going on here to not be entertaining. But it’s shoddily constructed, and downright idiotic. Easily twenty to forty minutes could have been trimmed off this and no one would have noticed. It’s garbage, but it’s loud and shiny garbage that will definitely keep people’s attention.

It’s like tires squealing in the night–anyone who watches will be entertained, but it’s such a waste of rubber that one wonders why they even bothered.

But if you came here looking for cars going fast and blowing up with alarming regularity while attractive women wander around in various states of undress, never really saying all that much but no less important for their lack of dialogue, and don’t mind a weak plotline and dialogue that’s more wooden than a scrap shack in Rio, well, you’ve got your movie right here.

Still though, the Screenhead Ten Scale hands Fast Five a not quite eponymous six out of ten. It’s entertaining enough, sure, and it knows it. There’s not much going on here plot-wise, but then, that’s not exactly what they were going for.

Now that the Governator has been relinguished of his duties, it’s time for Arnold Schwarzenegger to get back to what he’s good at: trying badly to act. Does he even change his facial expression throughout the entirety of Commando? While no one cared in 1985, Arnie seems a little obsolete these days. Which is why he is making two huge missteps.

The first is that Arnie is set to return as the iconic Terminator. He appeared in the first three movies, his likeness turned up in Terminator: Salvation, and now according to 24 Frames his agents are shopping around a package for a fifth film that would include the king of meatheads. Extending a franchise beyond its welcome is nothing new in Hollywood, but what’s even more depressing is that it’s not being handed to some new talent to revitalise the spent story. No, instead Justin Lin is attached as director. Yes, the man between the moronic The Fast and the Furious sequels 3-5, the fifth (written by a 5-year old, it seems) due out this week. It will without doubt make a lot of money, and sadly that qualifies a hack director to take on what was once a great duo of films. Let’s just say there’s not much hope for the Terminated and the Untardy.

His other project is to appear as a comic-book superhero known as the Governator, developed as a comic and animated series by Marvel maestro Stan Lee. When the subject of a jokes gets in on it, you know it’s not going to be funny. Nor is it clever to develop a nickname into an entire series. Maybe Arnie does belong in politics after all.

On behalf of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Screenhead is pleased to present an official giveaway of Sniper: Reloaded, which is available on DVD and Blu-ray.

Marine Sgt. Brandon Beckett, son of renowned sniper Thomas Beckett, must turn to his former protégé (Billy Zane) to track down and kill a mysterious sniper before he kills his next target.

While working with the UN Forces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Marine Sgt. Brandon Beckett (Chad Michael Collins), son of renowned sniper Thomas Beckett, receives orders to rescue a European farmer trapped in the middle of hostile rebel territory.

When he and his men arrive at the farm, a mysterious sniper ambushes them, wounding Beckett and killing everyone else. With the help of his father’s former protégé, sniper instructor Richard Miller (Zane), Beckett must learn to think like a sniper to track down the assassin before the sniper returns to finish the job.

To enter the giveaway for (1) Sniper: Reloaded DVD, post your name and we will pick the winner May 13, 2011.

Is it a great move to propel your career into the mainstream or is it a safe choice that could typecast you forever? This is the choice Jeremy Renner must make shortly. For according to Deadline, he has formally been offered the lead role in the fourth Jason Bourne film, The Bourne Legacy.

Renner shot into the limelight 2 years ago for his fearless performance as a bomb-defuser in the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker. Renner was nominated for his performance but lost out to Jeff Bridges. Renner was nominated again this year for his brief supporting role in The Town. And since then his career has exploded. He’s appearing in the odd revisitionist Brothers Grimm tale Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, as superhero Hawkeye in the 2012 star-studded blockbuster The Avengers (and he may even get his own movie as a result), and is also starring alongside Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 4, which is out this Christmas. The latter was the perfect testing ground for the role that is now being laid out before him.

But is the project worth taking? Rather than being a direct sequel (even though the book of the same title is), Matt Damon’s decision to back out as Jason Bourne led the film’s creative team to take a new approach and rework the story as a sort of spinoff. So despite the misleading title Renner will not be playing Jason Bourne, but instead an operative from a different covert spy organisation. Surely audiences will be confused if not annoyed by being misled, and the film risks becoming more of a Bourne wannabe (Taken, Unknown) than a Bourne film. Tony Gilroy (writer of the Bourne films and director of Michael Clayton and Duplicity) will direct.

I think we were all a little nervous about Scream 4, the sudden revival of a franchise that seemed to be long dead after ten years of inactivity. We’d seen this kind of thing before, and wasn’t hard to look askance at it. Thankfully, though, we’ll get a good solid dose of horror fun here today, and this may well prove to be the shot in the arm horror needed.

Scream 4, much like the three earlier Scream installments that we covered earlier in the week, takes us back to Woodsboro fully ten years after the events of Scream 3, in which we find that the iconic little town is still much as we left it, Stab is an iconic horror franchise that’s made it all the way up to part 8, Dewey is the sheriff, married to a bored Gale Weathers who’s desperate for a shot of the action, and Sidney has returned home to hawk her book about being a survivor instead of a victim, just in time for the anniversary of the original murders. And you know when Sidney’s coming back, she’s usually bringing Ghostface along with her. Now a whole new spate of killings is starting up, and they’re all more connected to Sidney than anyone expects.

First off, credit where credit is due. The first ten minutes are the greatest, scariest, shock-filled time I’ve had in a while at a horror movie. You have to see it for yourself, and for a franchise that’s already been doing openings right for the last three installments, that’s saying something.

The problem, though, is that this time the rest of the movie is so profoundly familiar that the thrills of the opener are somewhat weakened by comparison. We’ve been here before. Several times before, really. We already have an idea that there will be a twist or two somewhere, so when it shows up, the only real surprise is who’s responsible for it. In fact, I actually had a few possibilities ready to go, and when, ding ding ding, the one I had in mind hit it was just so gravely weakened. I still had to give them respect, though, as they did pull off a nice twist, but when you see it coming so much of the impact is just gone with it. And that’s a shame, really.

Still though, as horror movies go, this will be a good one–not too heavy on the meta-preachy, not too thick with the nature of film and remakes and such (though frankly, I don’t think the remake has been around long enough to really merit a set of “rules”–the “rules” of horror film were made over years and dozens of titles. That’s a personal thing, though.), and with plenty of chases and surprises to keep most any regular horror fan happy.

True horror buffs, though, will likely be put off by the warmed-over nature of this trilogy turned full-on franchise. But still, for a movie that’s been around for four installments this is better than it really had any right to be.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, as such, gives Scream 4 an eight out of ten for doing a better job than anyone should have expected, and for putting on a great show with its first ten minutes that, frankly, was wildly original enough to merit the covering of a whole lot of sins.

I am such a Harry Potter fan. I started reading the Harry Potter books to my daughter before she could read. And now, she is reading them by herself and is at the end of Deathly Hallows.

With that said, I am so excited that Screenhead is participating in the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 giveaway. Guess what, we have two packages to give away!

After you enter the giveaway, you can even watch it NOW, On Demand, For Download or on Blu-ray combo pack. And you can also check out the Official Harry Potter Podcast.

The Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 Giveaway Prize Packs Include:

• iTunes download of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1
• T-shirt (adult size)
• Keychain
• iPhone sticker skin

Harry, Ron and Hermione set out on their perilous mission to track down and destroy the secret to Voldemort’s immortality and destruction – the Horcruxes. On their own and on the run, the three friends must now rely on one another more than ever…but Dark Forces in their midst threaten to tear them apart.

Meanwhile the wizarding world has become a dangerous place. The long-feared war has begun and the Dark Lord has seized control of the Ministry of Magic and even Hogwarts, terrorizing and arresting all who might oppose him. The Chosen One has become the hunted one as the Death Eaters search for Harry with orders to bring him to Voldemort…alive.

To enter the giveaway, post your name and we will pick the winner April 30,2011.

I don’t know if you got a chance to check out the exclusive live look at Rise of the Planet of the Apes on Wednesday. It was a pretty awesome interview that included behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the apes!

WETA Digital, the Academy Award winning visual effects team behind films like Avatar and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, hosted the livestream event on the official Facebook fan page for Avatar from their headquarters in Wellington, New Zealand. The 30-minute exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at their work on Apes, a reality-based cautionary tale that blends science fiction and science fact, was kind of esoteric. Actor Andy Serkis, who plays Caesar, keep the concept down to earth.

With that said, I bring you the first teaser trailer for the 20th Century Fox movie. My first take on the movie is that it’s very dark, almost horrific, and very different compared to the Avatar look. Avatar had more light and color.

But, this is the first teaser trailer and the next one might lighten up a bit. But, I doubt it because I know how the story ends. Which brings up the question: Are we interested enough in watching the arc of the story knowing that the apes do rise and conquer humans?

Screenhead has picked the two winners for Universal Studios Home Entertainment‘s Little Fockers.  Monte won the Blu-ray version and Brent Sims won the Standard DVD version.

Ben stiller and Robert De Niro are together again with a great cast of beloved characters in the #1 comedy blockbuster.  The comedy arrives on Blu-ray combo pack and DVD – featuring an alternate opening and ending – as well as on digital download and on-demand from Universal studios home entertainment.

It’s hard for me to imagine that the extended Focker-Byrnes family movies have been around for over a decade.  I remember seeing the first one; it had me in stitches, laughing so hard.  Now the latest chapter in this hilarious family saga turns an eye toward another of life’s milestones – raising kids.

The movie follows Greg Focker (Ben Stiller), who has finally begun to earn the respect of his ex-CIA father-in-law, Jack Byrnes (Academy Award winner Robert De Niro) but one important test still lies ahead: can Greg prove that he has what it takes to be the family’s next ‘Godfocker?’

The sequel to the comedy blockbusters Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers, Little Fockers reunites De Niro and Stiller with Oscar winners Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand, Blythe Danner, Teri Polo and Owen Wilson.  Jessica Alba, Laura Dern and Harvey Keitel also join the cast.

To enter the giveaway, post your name and we will pick the winners April 12, 2011.