Pacific Rim

When Pacific Rim came out it developed a bit of a reputation as being the "thinking man's" Transformers- a big-budget movie full of giant fighting robots, but with actual good writing and acting to go with it, and fewer dumb jokes. I mostly agree with the sentiment- Pacific Rim delivers some stunning and huge CGI fights, and surrounds the whole thing with a story that's at least much, much better than the first Transformers movie (I never bothered with later installments). Still though, that's a low bar to clear and I admit many of the characters were painted in pretty broad strokes- the retired veteran called in for one last job, the over-protective father figure, the dueling scientists- one is a zany American, the other a stuffy Brit. There were plenty of scenes in Pacific Rim where I got a bit bored and just wanted the action to start back up, and like I said before, when the robots start fighting aliens it's just as good as it should be. So while I'm not as big a fan of Pacific Rim as some, I think it's well worth a watch when you're looking for a big action movie that won't insult your intelligence.