The Twilight Saga: New Moon

This is part two of the 4-book teen series about vampires. The film picks up where it left off after the first film – hot high school girl, Bella, is in love with attractive pale and creepy Edward, a vampire. Edward’s family are all vampires and live in the woods of the Pacific Northwestern United States because the sun doesn’t come out there. People are getting suspicious of Edward’s family not aging, so it’s time for them to move, and leave Bella behind. To kill time, Bella hangs with local beautiful Native American boy, Jacob. Bella likes Jacob, but not as much as he likes her. Jacob turns into a werewolf, whose job it is to protect people against vampires (more specifically, the vampires who are after Edward’s family and now Bella – even more specifically, extremely hot Victoria). The only time Bella can see Edward in her head is when she does something dangerous, so she’s gets all wreckless-angst-ridden teen and he pops up every once in a while to wag his finger not to do whatever she’s doing. Edward sees Bella jump off a cliff, but doesn’t realize it’s just for fun, so thinking she’s dead, he goes to the council of vampires and asks to kill himself. She has to run to Italy to stop it, with the help of Edwards smokin’ hot sister. Yes, you have to describe these people as hot/attractive because there are no ugly people in these films (especially the females).

Despite all my friends raging on about how these films teach bad morals to teen girls (like all films), and despite there being far too much awful CGI for my taste, and despite not being a teen girl nor a ghey hair dresser like the rest of the people in my group, and despite not having read the books, I went to see this film. It does have a couple really laughable scenes (and everyone laughed – not in a good way) in which there’s happy music playing and they’re running through the forest and also when Jacob would take his shirt off at every opportunity, and that Edward has terrible eye contact for some reason, and that they steal a Porsche in Italy even though they make Lamborghinis and Ferraris there.

The movie itself is fine, plotwise. I could care less if it’s teaching underage girls that dating older creepy guys is ok or that love is pain and the only kind of love that is acceptable. Whatever. But there are enough scenes where you yell “bullshit” that it’s leaning more towards NOT good than good. Unless you are a teen girl or a hairdresser with the ghey, I wouldn’t spend the money on this film. You’ll be either disappointed in the film or angry at yourself for killing the time.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

This is a Romanian film about a college girl and her friend who hire a guy to do an abortion on one of them. They rent a hotel room, but it’s the wrong one, there’s all kinds of security and the guy doing the abortion is not happy about it. He explains the procedure, and for payment, he sleeps with both girls – those are his terms since what he’s doing could send him to jail for a long time. The friend has to go meet her boyfriend’s family for his mom’s birthday party while the pregnant girl waits for the procedure to take effect. The friend fights with her boyfriend at the party because she’s stressed out about the whole procedure –somehow this is all his fault. Then she goes back to the hotel to check on her friend. The procedure went through without a hitch and the movie pretty much ends there. It’s a two hour movie yet nothing really happens. There’s neither tension nor resolution in this film. Romania needs to watch a couple Die Hard films or something to get an idea of what “plot” is (even if the plot is terrible… haha). This movie is boring, even for a foreign film. I was really surprised nothing more happened in this movie. There were parts in this film that *I* would have written in some action, but nope – point A to point B on lithium – no peaks, valleys, or twists.

Hank and Mike

This Canadian indie comedy opens with a guy in a pink bunny suit sitting on the couch watching scrambled porn on TV. Best opening ever. It’s Easter Sunday and Hank and Mike are Easter Bunnies. I don’t mean dressed as Easter Bunnies, I mean the ARE Easter Bunnies. They sneak into people’s houses and put eggs in people’s stuff on Easter .Seriously. There’s a big corporation that deals in Easter Bunnies and they’re trying to turn Easter into a tier-1 holiday like xmas and Hanukkah. It’s odd, but a hilarious concept for a movie. Apparently, Hank and Mike missed a house this year, so they get written up. Not just written up, they get full blown fired. They go out and get all sloppy drunk, bang some whores, and get rowdy. The two bunnies go to the unemployment office to get jobs, and they are forced to go through a bunch of hilarious temp jobs. The evil bunny has dreams about blowing up kids with bomb filled Easter eggs and the good bunny ends up on the streets. Then, they go on a mission to get their jobs back. It’s an odd little film, but it’s an interesting perspective. It might be just weird enough to be amusing. Not good, by any stretch, but weird.

Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day

I had really high hopes for this movie, despite the whole “sequel is never as good as the original" curse. I thought, same people, same sort of story line, what could go wrong? The answer? Everything.

Before I start complaining, I’ll give you the plot. Someone kills a priest in a catholic church and puts pennies over his dead eyes to indicate it’s the “Saints” (the brothers/father team of Irish guys who kill bad guys while reciting scripture). The killer is drawing the Saints out of hiding by framing them, which is successful. The FBI shows up and helps with the investigation, along with the same three crooked cops that helped the saints the first time around. Shoot up half a ton of bad Italian mobsters and you’ve got your plot – complete with an obvious set up for a third film in the series.

Do yourself a huge favor and skip this film, I can’t explain the depths of terrible acting, terrible script, terrible jokes, terrible CGI, terrible backgrounds, terrible sets, terrible music, terrible hand gestures, terrible wind machines, terrible flashbacks, terrible dialogue, terrible gun-vests, a terrible whorey lead FBI agent (Julie Benz) who has terrible shoes, a terrible walk, a terrible gun belt, and a terrible accent. The bad guy at the end, “The Roman”, was played by Peter Fonda with the worst Italian accent I’ve ever heard - on top of which, the scene is confusing and you don't know if the saints are killing bad guys or FBI agents (Hello, Clarity? You're busy right now? Ahh we don't need you for this scene. It's fine.). There’s a terrible dream sequence with David Della Rocco who comes back from the dead and spouts ridiculous lines that make no sense. Duffy tried to add in comedy that wasn’t needed, nor was appropriate, nor was funny! And why did the saints need a sidekick in this film? Cause he’s “loco”? It’s just asinine.

I would have yelled “bull shit” sooooo many times during this film if I were at home, but I wasn’t drunk in the theater unlike the person who stood up and egged Billy Connolly on whenever he would show up. I’m just as angry now after writing this review as I was after watching this film in the theater. Complete waste of time and now I’m embarrassed for having wanted to see it.

Frontier(s)

French film about people rioting during an election. This band of rowdies drops off one of their boys at the hospital because he’s been shot, then they head for the hills. Two of them stop in a small town and grab a hotel room. The boys get attacked and almost killed, chased, and their car falls a hundred feet into a mineshaft. Meanwhile their friends, a broken up couple, show up at the hotel and ask about them. The people at the first hotel take the friends to a second hotel where stuff gets really weird, including seeing one of their boys strung up by hooks in his feet and being bled. As it turns out, it’s one big creepy white supremacist family killing a LOT of people who stop in for a visit. Two of the people get chained up, while the other one gets trapped in a steam room and cooked until his skin peels off. It’s kind of crazy, but for what really should be an intense movie, it’s just kind of droll. The girl that escape from being chained up gets recaptured and forced to be a baby machine in the family. She gets her revenge though.

The screaming in this film doesn’t seem all that realistic, nor did the acting. I really think this movie had potential to have the whole Saw/Hostel intensity to it, but frankly I got bored. This is one to overlook if you come across it. Not only are there a severe lack of boobs for a French movie, but the whole thing seemed kind of pointless, especially with the movie ending with a radio station announcing a new president for France, which doesn’t mean anything to anyone since there’s carnage all over this farm in rural France.

Special

Michael Rapaport is a meter guy named Les who is participating in a pharmaceutical study that’s unexplained at the beginning of the film. He is keeping a journal so he can document the effects of this drug. He hangs out in a comic book shop during his breaks at work, even though he knows he’s too old to read comics.

Les thinks the pills are making him levitate, but the doctor who’s in charge of the study thinks Les is just losing his mind. The pills are supposed to suppress self-doubt, as we find out. But Les thinks it has unleashed powers he’s always had inside him: like reading minds, walking through walls, and levitation/flying. But what he really wants to do is fight crime. He begins absolutely laying people out in kwikie marts who he thinks are shoplifting. Hysterical. He struts around the city wearing a spray-painted leather jacket and pants with a logo on the back that says “special”. The logo is from the drug company t-shirt given to him for doing the trial. When he starts becoming a nuisance, the company execs try to bring him in quietly to avoid publicity. He’s freaking out bad at this point. He is still very convinced of his powers, so the drug company has to take him out. You generally feel awful for the guy. Nothing is going right for him, but clearly, in his head, everything is splendid with his new powers. Les is mentally challenged and you cheer him on, in a weird way, but you know he needs serious medical help.

Rapaport is really a good actor in this film. I usually like his stuff, so I’m biased, but, despite the fact he’s not going to win an Oscar for this film, he pulls it off quite well. Enjoyable film, but not a “fun” film by any stretch.

Quarantine

An L.A. television journalist is doing a piece on firefighters. She interviews all the people at the station and gets some good footage. The station gets a call and she and her camera guy hop on the fire truck and head to the emergency. When they get to the emergency, it’s a crazy lady covered in blood. She attacks one of the firefighters and things start to go South REALLY quickly. There’s some threat of a biological or chemical agent, so the authorities quickly quarantine the building, with civilians, firefighters, and policemen inside. Yup, zombies. I’m still questioning the speed with which the police and CDC barricaded the building from the outside, but you’ll run into some reality stretching in most zombie films. Deal with it.

There’s an amazing scene where the camera guy kills a zombie with the camera. Brilliant. And since this is shot from a journalist cameraman’s perspective, most of the film is very motion-sickness-inducing. There’s lots of screaming, running, axe-chopping, weird frantic lighting, crying, blood splattering, rabid dogs and children, scary night-vision camera work, AWESOME jump scenes and really good special effects. And not to ruin the ending, but Rocky doesn’t win. I liked this film a lot more than I expected to. I heard there was some CGI in it, but it was well done enough not to anger me, in fact, I didn’t even notice there was any. If you like fast paced zombie flicks, this one is a keeper.

Careful

This film is like a narrated silent film (yes, I know this means it is NOT silent, but maybe more like an old-timey grainy German film) where the narrator warns people not to do anything adventurous or they will die. Don’t hold your baby while wearing a brooch or you could poke their eye out and will be forced to wear an eye patch – hilarious. Also, cut the vocal cords out of your farm animals if you live in the mountains so they can’t cause avalanches. During what I assume is the plot, one of the townspeople in the alpine village Tolzbad, Johann, proposes to a girl and his family celebrates by dancing to music, after they cover the windows with sheepskin to keep the volume down. That night, Johann has a crazy sex dream about his mother – weeeeeeird. And he keeps thinking about it – even weirder. To stop all this weird stuff he’s trying not to act out, Johann burns his own lips on a red-hot coal and then cuts his finger off. Then, he jumps off a mountain to his death. Johan’s brother gets the funeral director to sew back on the fingers to hide the fact that it was a suicide from their mother. Johann’s fiancé goes to work in the mines and his brother Grigorss hits on her. Johann’s mother then gets a marriage proposal from Grigorss’ boss, and a challenge of a duel is issued – complete with slapping of the face with gloves. Classy. However, I’ve never seen a duel where I don’t know what the objective is. It’s very off-putting. Grigorss ends up winning the duel and runs away with Johann’s fiancé to devise a plan to kill her father. Let’s see… Mother-on-son action, daughter-on-father action – what’s wrong with you, Canada?

The film was made in 1992, but shot in garish Technicolor as an old film – very crackly and grainy and with black and white printed words between scenes. The narrator’s warning is for the villagers to keep quiet, but the film is also apparently about repressing feelings, lust, and emotions. It’s very dreary, and unfortunately, a complete waste of my time. Great, now I’m feeling repressed, surly, cold, incestuous, and German. Way to wreck my evening. I’m going to need a shower.

Primer

This is an independent film about these four guys who hang out and invent some high tech gadget – they never explain what it really is. These guys are all friends, but they argue like crazy about who’s going to do what and who’s going to market this thing to whom. They sit in the garage and at the kitchen table and bicker about diagrams and prototypes. They buy parts from Walmart, and cut things off their cars and refrigerators. Two of the guys are kind of tweaking this project on their own without telling the other two. The two guys figure out a way to go back in time, in which they figure out which stocks to buy and get rich off of. They still don’t tell the other two guys. They end up making body doubles of themselves and things start to get bizarre. One guy ends up bleeding from his ear. They beat up ex-boyfriends. They kidnap each other. They both can’t write anymore – seriously, they write letters like a first grader. Apparently, things get weird when you create duplicates and triplicates of yourself – think about it, do both of your cell phones ring, or just the first one the signal finds – didn’t think about that before, did you?

The acting in the film is a little tense and rushed. People don’t actually argue as quickly and irrationally as these guys are doing. The sound doesn’t line up with the mouths and actions in this film, which is kind of amateur in my opinion. You could have at least gotten that right before going to market with this movie, right? And, word of advice from someone who has never made a movie: don’t film a scene in the middle of a loud fountain and expect to be able to hear ANYTHING at all besides water. There’s also a piano soundtrack playing between scenes that remind me of Sesame Street. With all of these flaws, this film was actually interesting to watch. Yes, it hearkens back the film Pi, in that it’s super convoluted, but enough of it makes sense, that you feel like any second it will resolve itself and everything will almost make complete sense. And of course, it doesn’t. I’m unsure whether I liked this film or not, but I’m leaning towards yes. When I go back in time myself, I’ll consider changing my mind, but in an odd way, it was well done (with some glitches).

The Orphanage

This is a movie from Spain about a husband and wife who buy a house on the coast and are renovating it to turn it into a home for mentally and physically handicapped kids. The mom grew up in this house in the orphanage that was there years ago. It’s a scary horror film with a lot of scary jump scenes and pretty suspenseful atmosphere. Even with subtitles, it’s pretty creepy and frightening. The mom and dad throw sort of an open house to show families that they’re alright people, so there’s lots of kids (and downs syndrome kids) running around with masks. Their adopted son Simon has HIV and after a fight with his mom, he disappears during the party. His mom is sure Simon has been taken by his imaginary friends who are turning out to NOT be imaginary. The mom starts finding clues to a game that Simon played when they first moved into the house. She brings in a medium to see if her son has been killed and things start to get a little trippy in the house. Her husband can’t stay in the house and gives the wife two days alone in the house to figure out what she can. You think she’s going insane, but she’s not. It gets CRAZY up in thur. This is one of the better horror films I’ve seen in a long time. I heard a faint splash about it a while back, but not much more than that. I’m really surprised. It’s a very good and suspenseful movie, with minimal bloodshed. I’m guessing the subtitles scared the mainstream horror crowd away. This is probably one you’ll want to keep the lights on for, or you’ll be jumping at the next noise your house/apartment makes, and hoping some kid in a scarecrow mask doesn’t smash your fingers in the door.

RocknRolla

A film about London’s crime-driven underworld. Crime boss Lenny is working a real estate deal with a big-time Russian mobster. Lenny controls London and thinks he is untouchable, but the Russian proves him wrong. The Russian loans Lenny a painting for luck and Lenny’s step-son steals it, even though he’s supposed to be dead. Lenny sets all of his toadies on the case and they try to track it down. In the meantime, Stella is an underhanded but talented accountant and working the books for the Russian while skimming some of the Russian’s money to The Wild Bunch, a smaller crime ring. The deal is on the verge of breaking down, and there’s all kinds of knee-breaking, torture, double-crossing, and shooting. The Russian blows a gasket and sends in these two Russian killing machines to track down the money Stella has been skimming. A ton of people end up at Lenny’s warehouse at the end of the movie for a plot twisting show down. Sound confusing? It’s actually not, and it flows well.
The film has a lot of action in it, as well as a lot of campy British humor. The acting is quite believable and you actually find yourself rooting for bad guys, which you don’t always get to do (well, maybe you do in Guy Ritchie’s films). I read a review about this film that said it completely lacked the passion and purpose of Guy Ritchie’s previous film, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Having seen both, I would agree. It’s not that it’s dead pan, but LSA2SB is fun and exciting and hilarious, and RNR is more matter-of-fact. Maybe there’s too much plot twisting and things to follow in this one. It’s a good film, but it’s considerably slower than LSA2SB – just a warning.

In Bruges

This is a film which kind of gave some mixed signals during the previews. I knew it had Colin Farrell in it, so I just assumed it would be a movie for the ladies, like a romantic comedy or something. Some of my other friends thought it was pitched as a Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels kind of film. Both were wrong. The film is kind of a depressing shoot ‘em up film set in Brussels, Belgium. Two hitmen travel to Bruges to get their mind off a bad shooting they had some days earlier where Colin shot a kid accidentally. He’s all torn up about it and his friend is trying to get him to relax and enjoy the sights and culture. He doesn’t want anything to do with it. Colin finds a girl who is running drugs and guns for some street thugs, and they eventually get tied up with a dwarf who’s filming a movie in Bruges. Eventually Colin karate chops the dwarf in a hilarious scene. Really, the movie is worth it just for the ridiculousness of it all.

In the end of the film, the guy in charge of the hitmen comes after them because the partner won’t kill Colin. The boss goes up into the bell tower to shoot the partner and finds out Colin is down below in the plaza having a drink. The boss runs down the stairs, but the partner beats him down and warns Colin to run. And run he does. They get back to his hotel and there’s a hilarious stand off. It’s actually one of the most funny parts of the film. I thought the film was both depressing and a little campy at the same time. I didn’t feel for the characters and I don’t think Colin Farrell did that good of job acting in this one. I think the partner is the better actor in this film, honestly. I’d not recommend this one, but the scenery is very beautiful (having been to Bruges, it REALLY is fantastic). Don’t be confused about what this film is about though. It’s NOT a romantic comedy.

Re-Cycle

This is a Japanese horror/suspense film about a writer who normally writes love stories, but decides to write a book about supernatural ghosts and such. While she’s working on it, she begins to see monsters and figures in the corners of her house and there are weird long strands of hair left when she sees the figure. It’s pretty suspenseful like a lot of Japanese horror films are. It will give you the heeby-jeebees if you watch it without the lights on. There’s a lot of jump scenes where things fly out of nowhere when you least expect them. It’s got zombies and mass suicides and flying ghosts chasing people. It’s like the ghosts are trying to help the author feel terror so she can write about it. A small child gets the author to follow her into this bizarre world where all kinds of weird stuff looks like it’s been cast aside and forgotten. All of the stuff is leftover toys, thoughts, ideas, and unfulfilled promises the author has experienced over her lifetime. There are zombies in her thoughts I guess, because they’re after her and trying not to let her get to “The Transit” – the only way out of this dimension. There is some pretty corny CGI in this film, but there is also some really good CGI in it. It’s pretty intense most of the time. And in typical Japanese horror film style, I enjoyed the movie up until the end, where I asked myself, “what the hell just happened?!” I think people who like suspense will like this film. It’s not the typical gore and blood spraying you sometimes see with Japanese horror films, but it does keep the adrenaline flowing.

Monster Camp

This is a documentary about people who LARP (Live Action Role Playing). These are people who don’t find Dungeons & Dragons engaging enough and feel the need to go into the woods, act out scenarios, and fight each other with padded swords until they knock each others' glasses off. Sounds cool, right? If it does, then quit reading here, because I’m about to go off.

These socially crippled (it goes soooo far beyond inept) people live in a fantasy world most of the time and can only associate with other socially crippled people when those people are pretending they’re moronic character portrayed by wearing homemade costumes hobbled together using paperclips, felt, and fake ears. They glue ridiculous eyebrows and noses onto their faces and paint their faces with grease paint to make other attempts to hide their identities in case a person with self-esteem finds them in the woods and begins mocking them openly. These poor attempts at costumes are made even more hilarious by 95% of them wearing giant glasses from the 80’s, and wearing sneakers. These people meet in the woods in various locations, are given character profiles to act out, and are set loose with magic packets filled with birdseed, and potions to supposedly heal/kill/disease/change weather, etc. They hit each other with foam-wrapped swords and yell out “5-magic” and “3-sleep” and other stupid things which mean nothing unless you’ve memorized the 250-page rule book they have created.

Many of the characters normally live in their parent’s basements and their families are interviewed, which makes the participants even more pathetic. One kid brings his nerd father, who frankly, I’m amazed is married. One nerd father brings his mildly attractive underage daughter to the LARP weekends and in real life, pays her an allowance in bullshit fake silver, golf, and copper (I would seriously be pissed about that). Another nerd (who loves to ride his ten speed wearing spandex bike shorts and a leather jacket) brings a girl to the weekend – maybe he can sense they share a common socially-moronic bond or something – and some of the other characters indicates he’s a bit of a player/ladies man – which I ASSURE you, he is NOT. These LARP people make trekkies seem suave and sophisticated and full of dignity.

I yelled at the screen sooooo much during this film. At one point, I felt like Ogre from “revenge of the Nerds” since I was screaming “NERDS!” at the television. My friend Coach and I like to play a little game called “Who Would You Let Live” in which, given the opportunity to throw a grenade into a crowd of people, you get to choose 5 people you would rescue before the grenade went off. All of these LARP people would die - and not in their fantasy world either. Seriously, this movie pissed me off to an infinite degree. Get off your World of Warcraft game, take a shower, go have a conversation with someone of the opposite sex while actually looking them in the eye, and get a job. Welcome to reality, you stupid bastards.

The Signal

This is a zombie-ish film that is kind of a combination of 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead and maybe a little bit of Pulse. There are parts of this film that I cracked up about and other parts that were pretty suspenseful and twisted. I’m still not sure what I thought I saw was really what happened, but I think that’s the whole point of the film. Mia is cheating on her husband with random guy and goes home to find people killing each other in the hallway because there’s some broadcast signal going through the televisions and radios urging people to kill. It messes with their brains so they think normally, but things get mixed up in their heads. Mia runs away and crashes her car and the boyfriend (not her husband) goes after her. There’s lots of brutal head smashing in this film and all sorts of bloody weirdness. It’s not quite as campy as some zombie films, but it’s not quite as terrifying either. Consider it a beginner zombie film. There’s only two parts of the film where I called “bullshit”. In the beginning of the film, Mia sees people brutally murdered in her apartment building, yet grabs her headphones, puts them on and walks out of the apartment building like nothing’s wrong. Then at the end of the film, the boyfriend hears her headphones from like a quarter mile away. If you can get over those two ridiculous things, you’ll find a decent film. Not amazing, but good enough to hold your attention for an hour and a half.