I had wanted to see Human Centipede since I figured out the preview/trailer wasn’t a joke. Seriously, the drawing by the doctor as to what he’s trying to create is 1st-grade-art-class level stuff. Doctor sews three people together – there’s the plot. Alright, there’s a little more to it…
Two girls are touring Europe by themselves. They meet a bartender who has invited them to a party. The girls get lost on the way and end up at this crazy doctor’s house. The doctor drugs them and when they wake up, they’re restrained and about to be used in an experiment. See, the good doctor here is the world’s foremost expert in separating Siamese twins. Now that he’s retired, he wants to CREATE, rather than separate. He has already done one successful such experiment on his three pet rottweilers. Now, he wants to make a HUMAN centipede.
The doctor captures another tourist and through a series of events, which are explained in detail by the doctor in some sort of creepy medical lesson, the two girls and guy are surgically attached. When I say surgically attached, I mean lengthwise. Their intestinal track is now one long stitched-together tube. Here, I’ll be more clear: ass to mouth, then ass to mouth again.
Just let that sink in for a second.
Now let it sink in what happens after the front person eats a meal.
The final scene is something that sticks with you a bit. Nothing gruesome or horrific – just more empathetically saddening. You know what I’m talking about: like when your face is attached to some guy’s butt and the person behind you is stuck to your butt, and … wait… let’s hope that whole thing doesn’t happen. You’ll think (maybe out loud), “Wow. I hope that doesn’t happen to me.”
The movie is well-acted and well shot, especially the music, lighting, and filters used in the scenes. The doctor was casted PERFECTLY and his part is carried out flawlessly. The guy is amazing at this role. The movie does have some suspenseful parts where one of the girls briefly escapes and then again when the centipede disappears for a short while. But all in all, it really isn’t that “scary”. Yes, it is gross and very detailed about how the attachment is performed. But this film isn’t going to give you nightmares, it isn’t going to make you hear things around corners that aren’t there, and it isn’t going to make you have to turn on all the lights in your house. The gross factor is something you can get over pretty easily in the movie. Basically, it’s a horrific concept and my compliments go out to the person who thought of this movie. However, it didn’t engage me very well nor put the slightest bit of fear in my head. Bummer.
I’m unsure how they’re going to make a sequel to this one called The Human Centipede (Full Sequence), but word on the street is that it’s going to happen. With more people sewn together. Ass to mouth. And yes, I’ll probably see it.
Note: My nephew – in med school – says this concept is completely impossible. To which I argued the packaging of the DVD states “100% Medically Accurate!!!” Boxes don’t lie. My nephew just shook his head.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
The Pope's Toilet
It is 1988, and there is small village in Uruguay that the Pope is coming to visit – a once in a lifetime event. The whole village is trying to figure out a way to capitalize on his visit – literally capitalize since they’re setting up food and craft booths to sell things to the tourists. One man figures with all the food being sold, clearly people will be in need of a toilet shortly after. Genius.
Beto is a smuggler of goods across the Brazil-Uruguay border. He rides a bike loaded with various food staples to supply to local merchants. It doesn’t pay all that well and periodically, the bike smugglers get shut down by the local customs guy or the military at the outpost at the border. Beto wants to get rich quick and this Papal visit is going to be huge for the area. People are expecting 40,000 to 200,000 visitors to hear the Pope’s speech and all of them will be buying things.
People mortgage their houses and get loans from the bank for investing in chorizo and everyone is trying to make it big on this momentous occasion. Beto gets some help from his friends to build the toilet on his property, and finagles some money out of his wife for the materials. The money was supposed to go their daughter for schooling, but Beto is sure he will make it all back and have plenty of money left over for tuition.
The film starts pretty slow, but once it gets rolling, you become endeared to Beto and his group of friends. You honestly hope he succeed with his plans, and you hope all his friends and neighbors also succeed when the Pope comes. The movie is well acted and at times is pretty funny. There are some tense scenes, but all in all, it’s an enjoyable movie. Slow and depressing, but still enjoyable.
Beto is a smuggler of goods across the Brazil-Uruguay border. He rides a bike loaded with various food staples to supply to local merchants. It doesn’t pay all that well and periodically, the bike smugglers get shut down by the local customs guy or the military at the outpost at the border. Beto wants to get rich quick and this Papal visit is going to be huge for the area. People are expecting 40,000 to 200,000 visitors to hear the Pope’s speech and all of them will be buying things.
People mortgage their houses and get loans from the bank for investing in chorizo and everyone is trying to make it big on this momentous occasion. Beto gets some help from his friends to build the toilet on his property, and finagles some money out of his wife for the materials. The money was supposed to go their daughter for schooling, but Beto is sure he will make it all back and have plenty of money left over for tuition.
The film starts pretty slow, but once it gets rolling, you become endeared to Beto and his group of friends. You honestly hope he succeed with his plans, and you hope all his friends and neighbors also succeed when the Pope comes. The movie is well acted and at times is pretty funny. There are some tense scenes, but all in all, it’s an enjoyable movie. Slow and depressing, but still enjoyable.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Love and Other Drugs
I knew this movie was a depressing chick flick, but I was still game to see it. Here’s why – I’m a sucker for Jake Gyllenhaal (and his wack job sister Maggie), and my grandmother has Parkinson’s (which is what the movie is about). (Plus it was my lady’s birthday, so I does what I’m told…) It’s a decent film, with a pretty standard love story plot.
Jamie (Gyllenhaal) comes from a rich family, his little brother (who is a moron – a hilarious moron) sells a company he’s come up with, for a few million and is still incompetent and ends up living on his big brother’s floor. Jamie had dropped out of med school because he was bored. The guy sleeps with anything with a pulse and decides he can use this skill to sell pharmaceuticals. It’s a high paying job and his medical background serves him very well (as does laying pipe all around the Ohio River Valley).
He meets Maggie (played by Anne Hathaway) who has early onset Parkinson’s. Maggie is drowning her problems by sleeping with random guys and not actually being intimate with any of them (I hope to Balzak my grandmother hasn’t done this – I will now bleach my eyes…). They agree to sleep together and not get serious.
This works fine for about a week and then Jamie starts showing up and doing boyfriendy things. She fights it with all she’s got and eventually caves. They become exclusive RIGHT as Viagra is launched on the market and he’s got to sell it. He chooses Maggie over demonstrating first-hand the effects of Viagra. Jamie now gets to see Maggie at her worst, like when her drugs wear off and she’s a wreck.
Maggie goes to an Un-Conference for Parkinson’s and hears a bunch of (what I assume are) Parkinson’s patients cracking wise about their disease and how they keep on living no matter what. This opens Maggie’s eyes immediately after Jamie gets some grim advice from a spouse of a Parkinson’s patient. Jamie tries to fix the problem with Maggie, but Maggie just wants to live her life. They split up.
The movie isn’t uplifting at all, but it does have some funny moments. And for those of you who like to see Anne Hathaway nekid, you see it a LOT in this movie. A LOT. The acting is quite good and doesn’t get slap stick-y or ridiculous for the most part, though there are a couple of really bad “pretty woman”-type scenes. It’s pretty believable, but the scenes are a little disjunct. And just a bit dreary even though you always know what’s coming in this film. That being said, (promiscuous grandmothers aside) it’s a decent film. More for the ladies, but I’ve now got some awesome opening lines if my girlfriend decides to leave me after making comments about Maggie Gyllenhaal – thank you Jake. (Note, the previews don’t really tell what this movie is about. It is more seedy and dark than the happy-go-lucky feel the previews suggest.)
Jamie (Gyllenhaal) comes from a rich family, his little brother (who is a moron – a hilarious moron) sells a company he’s come up with, for a few million and is still incompetent and ends up living on his big brother’s floor. Jamie had dropped out of med school because he was bored. The guy sleeps with anything with a pulse and decides he can use this skill to sell pharmaceuticals. It’s a high paying job and his medical background serves him very well (as does laying pipe all around the Ohio River Valley).
He meets Maggie (played by Anne Hathaway) who has early onset Parkinson’s. Maggie is drowning her problems by sleeping with random guys and not actually being intimate with any of them (I hope to Balzak my grandmother hasn’t done this – I will now bleach my eyes…). They agree to sleep together and not get serious.
This works fine for about a week and then Jamie starts showing up and doing boyfriendy things. She fights it with all she’s got and eventually caves. They become exclusive RIGHT as Viagra is launched on the market and he’s got to sell it. He chooses Maggie over demonstrating first-hand the effects of Viagra. Jamie now gets to see Maggie at her worst, like when her drugs wear off and she’s a wreck.
Maggie goes to an Un-Conference for Parkinson’s and hears a bunch of (what I assume are) Parkinson’s patients cracking wise about their disease and how they keep on living no matter what. This opens Maggie’s eyes immediately after Jamie gets some grim advice from a spouse of a Parkinson’s patient. Jamie tries to fix the problem with Maggie, but Maggie just wants to live her life. They split up.
The movie isn’t uplifting at all, but it does have some funny moments. And for those of you who like to see Anne Hathaway nekid, you see it a LOT in this movie. A LOT. The acting is quite good and doesn’t get slap stick-y or ridiculous for the most part, though there are a couple of really bad “pretty woman”-type scenes. It’s pretty believable, but the scenes are a little disjunct. And just a bit dreary even though you always know what’s coming in this film. That being said, (promiscuous grandmothers aside) it’s a decent film. More for the ladies, but I’ve now got some awesome opening lines if my girlfriend decides to leave me after making comments about Maggie Gyllenhaal – thank you Jake. (Note, the previews don’t really tell what this movie is about. It is more seedy and dark than the happy-go-lucky feel the previews suggest.)
Monday, October 25, 2010
Nun of That
Nun of That is a pretty awful shoot ‘em up movie involving a vigilante group of nuns actually working for the Vatican and fighting crime – they’re called the Order of the Black Habit. All of the nuns are named after the seven deadly sins. That’s about as interesting as the film gets.
The movie starts out in a pasta bar/strip club where there’s a nun dancing. The dancing nun starts killing the Italians and then ends up dying at the hands of one of the mob bosses. Luckily the Vatican is tracking her with a TRS-80, so they know she’s been killed and can send out a replacement. Cut to nun lesbian shower scene. Then cut to a nun, Sister Kelly Wrath, who has a bad temper and has been kicked out of her convent and sent to the hood. She is then recruited (by Jesus) to fight for these assassin nuns after these Italian mobsters gun her down in an alley. Moses and Gandhi give her some fighting skills in a completely asinine musical song and dance scene in heaven.
We see the nuns go to a ridiculous dive bar called Bar Nun (get it?) and sadly there’s a nun band playing behind a chicken wire fence that gives a nod to the Blues Brothers. The nuns are fighting an Italian mob family who has been running the town and not in a good way. None of the Italian guys are actually Italian, but all are wearing these tacky sports jackets, smoke-darkened sun glasses, and have ridiculously fake accents. The Italians seem to be everywhere and the vigilante nuns are going to put a stop to them. Cut to another lesbian nun scene.
The Italians eventually capture Sister Wrath and hold her hostage. There’s a Jewish guy working for the Italian family and he has Star of David throwing stars. Hilarious. He brings up these sort of demons named Eli and Levi and they know… wait for it… Jew-jitsu. Then they fight to Hava Nagila – really stupid. The Jewish guy wants first crack at Sister Wrath, but the other nuns are on the lookout for their fallen partner. And of course Lloyd Kaufman is playing the Pope, as any terrible movie should have. Absolutely the worst ending to a movie ever. I’m not even sure what it means.
I can’t begin to explain how bad this movie is. I’ve tried here, but this doesn’t do it justice. Don’t bother with this film. I thought it would be good for a laugh and it isn’t at all. It sounds like it could be a hilarious concept but it falls flat. It doesn’t help that there are soooo many terrible puns using the word “nun” that it’s painful. The terrible special effects don’t make it any less painful.
The movie starts out in a pasta bar/strip club where there’s a nun dancing. The dancing nun starts killing the Italians and then ends up dying at the hands of one of the mob bosses. Luckily the Vatican is tracking her with a TRS-80, so they know she’s been killed and can send out a replacement. Cut to nun lesbian shower scene. Then cut to a nun, Sister Kelly Wrath, who has a bad temper and has been kicked out of her convent and sent to the hood. She is then recruited (by Jesus) to fight for these assassin nuns after these Italian mobsters gun her down in an alley. Moses and Gandhi give her some fighting skills in a completely asinine musical song and dance scene in heaven.
We see the nuns go to a ridiculous dive bar called Bar Nun (get it?) and sadly there’s a nun band playing behind a chicken wire fence that gives a nod to the Blues Brothers. The nuns are fighting an Italian mob family who has been running the town and not in a good way. None of the Italian guys are actually Italian, but all are wearing these tacky sports jackets, smoke-darkened sun glasses, and have ridiculously fake accents. The Italians seem to be everywhere and the vigilante nuns are going to put a stop to them. Cut to another lesbian nun scene.
The Italians eventually capture Sister Wrath and hold her hostage. There’s a Jewish guy working for the Italian family and he has Star of David throwing stars. Hilarious. He brings up these sort of demons named Eli and Levi and they know… wait for it… Jew-jitsu. Then they fight to Hava Nagila – really stupid. The Jewish guy wants first crack at Sister Wrath, but the other nuns are on the lookout for their fallen partner. And of course Lloyd Kaufman is playing the Pope, as any terrible movie should have. Absolutely the worst ending to a movie ever. I’m not even sure what it means.
I can’t begin to explain how bad this movie is. I’ve tried here, but this doesn’t do it justice. Don’t bother with this film. I thought it would be good for a laugh and it isn’t at all. It sounds like it could be a hilarious concept but it falls flat. It doesn’t help that there are soooo many terrible puns using the word “nun” that it’s painful. The terrible special effects don’t make it any less painful.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Shaolin vs. Evil Dead
For those of you not well-versed in traditional kung-fu movies, vampires are white-faced and hop around with their arms out. This movie explains that a monk walking in front of the vampires rings a bell to intentionally make them hop and keep their arms out. This is done so they keep a safe distance from the zombie in front of them and by hopping, they keep out of trouble. I didn’t say it made sense, I just said it got explained.
A Master and his two young underlings are parading a group of undead through the city. They stop for food where the master whips out this magical viewfinder to see that everyone is a zombie in the restaurant. The trio ends up getting attacked at the restaurant and for some reason, the master never thinks to ring the bell (that would have been my first reaction, honestly). Considerable fight ensues in the faux restaurant and just when it looks like they’re about to die, a pair of zombie hunters show up (from the same school as the Master vampire-walker) and help them out. Unfortunately, one of the two underlings gets a spirit shoved down his throat and is now secretly possessed. Meanwhile, the older underling makes eyes at one of the zombie hunters that shows up to help.
They master and his vampires get back to the mortuary and get the vampires all buried and the trio go about their business the next day. The zombie hunters turn out to be not the nicest people in the world, and the oldest underling is torn because he really likes the lady zombie hunter. The zombie hunters raise a demon for the villagers and then defeat it in a show of power. Various battles ensue.
Then, out of nowhere, the movie ends. I thought the DVD had frozen up, but it was actually the end of the movie. It gets worse, people. During the final credits, there’s a split screen: cast and crew on one side, action clips from the film on the other side. I would normally be fine with that, except for the fact that none of the clips they were rolling were actually IN the film. And what’s worse, is I couldn’t tell if they were scenes that had been cut out of this one, or came from a prequel that I didn’t know about or are scenes from Part 2, if that exists. They looked like there were the same people, but fighting various CGI monsters and blowing things up - none of which I saw. Super weird.
Despite the abrupt ending, this film was really well done. The CGI could use some help, but the fighting was good and the acting was pretty good. Watching with the subtitles and the English audio is always hilarious, so I think the story was good as well – if it actually had an ending. It isn’t an amazing film or anything, but as far as martial arts films shot in modern times to look like traditional kung-fu, it’s pretty good.
A Master and his two young underlings are parading a group of undead through the city. They stop for food where the master whips out this magical viewfinder to see that everyone is a zombie in the restaurant. The trio ends up getting attacked at the restaurant and for some reason, the master never thinks to ring the bell (that would have been my first reaction, honestly). Considerable fight ensues in the faux restaurant and just when it looks like they’re about to die, a pair of zombie hunters show up (from the same school as the Master vampire-walker) and help them out. Unfortunately, one of the two underlings gets a spirit shoved down his throat and is now secretly possessed. Meanwhile, the older underling makes eyes at one of the zombie hunters that shows up to help.
They master and his vampires get back to the mortuary and get the vampires all buried and the trio go about their business the next day. The zombie hunters turn out to be not the nicest people in the world, and the oldest underling is torn because he really likes the lady zombie hunter. The zombie hunters raise a demon for the villagers and then defeat it in a show of power. Various battles ensue.
Then, out of nowhere, the movie ends. I thought the DVD had frozen up, but it was actually the end of the movie. It gets worse, people. During the final credits, there’s a split screen: cast and crew on one side, action clips from the film on the other side. I would normally be fine with that, except for the fact that none of the clips they were rolling were actually IN the film. And what’s worse, is I couldn’t tell if they were scenes that had been cut out of this one, or came from a prequel that I didn’t know about or are scenes from Part 2, if that exists. They looked like there were the same people, but fighting various CGI monsters and blowing things up - none of which I saw. Super weird.
Despite the abrupt ending, this film was really well done. The CGI could use some help, but the fighting was good and the acting was pretty good. Watching with the subtitles and the English audio is always hilarious, so I think the story was good as well – if it actually had an ending. It isn’t an amazing film or anything, but as far as martial arts films shot in modern times to look like traditional kung-fu, it’s pretty good.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole
Before you mock (especially since I just reviewed Machete), I will defend myself by saying my girlfriend and I took her little sister to see this film. And frankly, I rather enjoyed it, so suck it. Now picture this amalgamation, if you will: Combine The Secret of Nimh, but with owls instead of rats, and then throw in 300 (the Spartan movie without shirts in it). Legend of the Guardians is the 300 of owl movies.
I don’t know if this film is based on a book of some sort (I’m guessing yes, since any title with an apostrophe and an unpronounceable name generally indicates this), nor do I know who the director or the producer or even what studio produced this. I also don’t care to look it up.
Moving on…
Legend of the Guardians is about two brother owls. They are just learning to fly. They think they know everything at this age (you know how young owls are…), so when their parents head out to hunt for food for the night, the two brothers try out their skills. They drop out of their tree to the forest floor, which is a bad place for owls. They are attacked by something resembling a wolverine (not Hugh Jackman), but then rescued by these large British-accented owls. Maybe rescued isn’t the right word, since the large owls take them captive and bring them to a secret lair. The lair is where an evil owl is brainwashing the new recruits into pickers and soldiers. The pickers have the sole purpose of picking away at owl pellets to find flecks of metal for some evil machine. (This is the learning portion of the movie: Owls hack up hard bits of bone and fur and other indigestible things kind of like a hairball, called pellets.) The soldiers are trained in fighting and given armor to facilitate this fighting. They are trying to be rulers of the owl kingdom by using this magnetic metal machine to control the good owls. (They also use bats as henchmen to do their evil dirtywork.)
One brother escapes and one brother decides he’s going to be a solider. The brother who escapes finds a way to get to the Guardians – sort of a mythical legendary owl race who are super good and fight evil. The guardians listen to the escapee brother and then go check things out at the lair. Epic battle ensues.
This movie is in 3D, which for me, means I’m motion sick in less than ten minutes. I’m glad I didn’t see this in the IMAX theater or I might possibly have died. There are a LOT of flying scenes in this film. The animation is really quite good and impressive. I like to pay attention to the background in many scenes to see if the renderers left anything out, which they didn’t. Some scenes are quite beautiful and nice. And then… there are the fight scenes. You’d probably not think owls would make a good subject for fight scenes. But add in shiny metal armor, slow motion, and spraying owl blood, you’ll get a pretty sweet result. I was pretty impressed by this.
All around us were little kids ooohing and aahhhhing, and it was really cute. The kids were literally on the edge of their seats at times and were really quite engaged in the film. This film has enough action to keep their attention, enough frights to make kids scream, and enough feel-good stuff to make sure they aren’t terrified during scary parts.
I don’t know that I’d recommend this to everyone, but if your kids or nieces or nephews want to see it, you won’t be disappointed. It’s worth watching, especially with the 3D aspect.
I don’t know if this film is based on a book of some sort (I’m guessing yes, since any title with an apostrophe and an unpronounceable name generally indicates this), nor do I know who the director or the producer or even what studio produced this. I also don’t care to look it up.
Moving on…
Legend of the Guardians is about two brother owls. They are just learning to fly. They think they know everything at this age (you know how young owls are…), so when their parents head out to hunt for food for the night, the two brothers try out their skills. They drop out of their tree to the forest floor, which is a bad place for owls. They are attacked by something resembling a wolverine (not Hugh Jackman), but then rescued by these large British-accented owls. Maybe rescued isn’t the right word, since the large owls take them captive and bring them to a secret lair. The lair is where an evil owl is brainwashing the new recruits into pickers and soldiers. The pickers have the sole purpose of picking away at owl pellets to find flecks of metal for some evil machine. (This is the learning portion of the movie: Owls hack up hard bits of bone and fur and other indigestible things kind of like a hairball, called pellets.) The soldiers are trained in fighting and given armor to facilitate this fighting. They are trying to be rulers of the owl kingdom by using this magnetic metal machine to control the good owls. (They also use bats as henchmen to do their evil dirtywork.)
One brother escapes and one brother decides he’s going to be a solider. The brother who escapes finds a way to get to the Guardians – sort of a mythical legendary owl race who are super good and fight evil. The guardians listen to the escapee brother and then go check things out at the lair. Epic battle ensues.
This movie is in 3D, which for me, means I’m motion sick in less than ten minutes. I’m glad I didn’t see this in the IMAX theater or I might possibly have died. There are a LOT of flying scenes in this film. The animation is really quite good and impressive. I like to pay attention to the background in many scenes to see if the renderers left anything out, which they didn’t. Some scenes are quite beautiful and nice. And then… there are the fight scenes. You’d probably not think owls would make a good subject for fight scenes. But add in shiny metal armor, slow motion, and spraying owl blood, you’ll get a pretty sweet result. I was pretty impressed by this.
All around us were little kids ooohing and aahhhhing, and it was really cute. The kids were literally on the edge of their seats at times and were really quite engaged in the film. This film has enough action to keep their attention, enough frights to make kids scream, and enough feel-good stuff to make sure they aren’t terrified during scary parts.
I don’t know that I’d recommend this to everyone, but if your kids or nieces or nephews want to see it, you won’t be disappointed. It’s worth watching, especially with the 3D aspect.
Machete
After the infuriating disappointment of The Expendables, I tried to scale back my anticipation of Machete. I saw the previews for both about the same time and thought these were going to be the two best films of 2010. The Expendables let me down in a serious way, but Machete did NOT. Thank you, Danny Trejo.
Here’s the plot, not that it even matters. Machete (Danny Trejo) is a Mexican federale who is able to use guns, but prefers machetes and chopping people’s body parts off. The bad guy (Steven Seagal)(who I’ll remind you is NOT Mexican) is in charge of all the criminal activity in Mexico, including controlling the federales. Seagal kills Machete’s wife and Machete heads to Texas to forget his past and find work. Someone hires him to kill a senator (played by Robert DeNiro), but as it turns out, Seagal is behind it all. The legend of Machete is known throughout the Mexican immigrant population and he eventually teams up with a female vigilante named She (played by Michelle Rodriguez). I’ll leave the plot at that, so I don’t ruin anything for you.
Keep in mind this film is shot like Grindhouse and From Dusk To Dawn. It’s gritty and intentionally cheesy and fun, but it’s also graphic. You’ll crack up, even though there is a guy on the screen chopping people down like foliage in the jungle.
Here are a couple of side notes that should convince you to go see this film. Cheech Marin plays Machete’s brother – a priest in Texas that totes some serious shotgun action. Jeff Fahey plays Deniro’s assistant, and is the one who accidentally hires Machete to kill the senator. Lindsay Lohan plays Fahey’s daughter – a meth-head tramp whom daddy has to cover for all the time. Jessica Alba plays an immigration officer who is still loyal to the immigrant cause that she fights against. Don Johnson is a vigilante border patrol guy who is buddy buddy with DeNiro, so he’s allowed to drive the fences and shoot immigrants. Great appearances by some well-known (I ALMOST said “good”) actors who clearly enjoy their roles in this amazing film.
The opening scene of this film sets the stage for what you’re going to see for the next hour or so: Danny Trejo chopping criminals with a machete while trying to save a girl. The girl turns out to be working for Seagal, but Machete finds out too late. There’s blood everywhere and slow motion chopping and splattering. Overall, I’d give the action in this film a super thumbs up, especially for creativity. Machete puts a bunch of blades on a weed whacker and does some killing. Then he puts a bunch of scalpels on a bedsheet and does some killing. Anything with a point on it can be used by Machete, including a corkscrew.
Then there are the ladies. There’s gratuitous and hilarious nudity in this film. What’s even more hilarious (and I heard some people don’t like) is when Machete is about to lay pipe, the music instantly switches to this 70’s porn funk – incredible, unbelievable, hilarious, and brilliant.
Yes, there are some really far fetched scenes that would never ever ever ever happen, but the fact that Robert Rodriguez pulls them off speaks volumes to both his cojones and his talent as a director. In fact, there are a couple of completely ridiculous CGI things in the film which are so outlandish I HAD to crack up instead of screaming “HORSE$H!T!!!!!” in the theater (like I usually do). Rodriguez isn’t trying to make you believe it’s real – he’s entertaining and taking the outlandish awesomeness to a new level. And he does it with a smile and a campy one liner from Danny Trejo. “Machete don’t text.”
The acting in this movie isn’t polished and flawless. I mean Steven Seagal, Don Johnson, and Cheech Marin are in this film. And SOME people have complained that the movie fizzles at the end. I don't really think it did, frankly. Seriously, a motor cycle with a giant machine gun on it isn't fizzling in my book (which no one has read).
I saw this movie with three ladies (I’m basically Machete, myself). Two LOVED it and one just didn’t get it. Yes, there’s blood, but it’s not scary monster gore. It’s done with an over-the-top flair and a wink. I know it’s still early, but I think this film is getting my vote for best film of 2010. I will see this one again in the theater and I will own it as soon as it is out on DVD. I hope I’m not hyping it up too much, but I really was amazed by this film.
Here’s the plot, not that it even matters. Machete (Danny Trejo) is a Mexican federale who is able to use guns, but prefers machetes and chopping people’s body parts off. The bad guy (Steven Seagal)(who I’ll remind you is NOT Mexican) is in charge of all the criminal activity in Mexico, including controlling the federales. Seagal kills Machete’s wife and Machete heads to Texas to forget his past and find work. Someone hires him to kill a senator (played by Robert DeNiro), but as it turns out, Seagal is behind it all. The legend of Machete is known throughout the Mexican immigrant population and he eventually teams up with a female vigilante named She (played by Michelle Rodriguez). I’ll leave the plot at that, so I don’t ruin anything for you.
Keep in mind this film is shot like Grindhouse and From Dusk To Dawn. It’s gritty and intentionally cheesy and fun, but it’s also graphic. You’ll crack up, even though there is a guy on the screen chopping people down like foliage in the jungle.
Here are a couple of side notes that should convince you to go see this film. Cheech Marin plays Machete’s brother – a priest in Texas that totes some serious shotgun action. Jeff Fahey plays Deniro’s assistant, and is the one who accidentally hires Machete to kill the senator. Lindsay Lohan plays Fahey’s daughter – a meth-head tramp whom daddy has to cover for all the time. Jessica Alba plays an immigration officer who is still loyal to the immigrant cause that she fights against. Don Johnson is a vigilante border patrol guy who is buddy buddy with DeNiro, so he’s allowed to drive the fences and shoot immigrants. Great appearances by some well-known (I ALMOST said “good”) actors who clearly enjoy their roles in this amazing film.
The opening scene of this film sets the stage for what you’re going to see for the next hour or so: Danny Trejo chopping criminals with a machete while trying to save a girl. The girl turns out to be working for Seagal, but Machete finds out too late. There’s blood everywhere and slow motion chopping and splattering. Overall, I’d give the action in this film a super thumbs up, especially for creativity. Machete puts a bunch of blades on a weed whacker and does some killing. Then he puts a bunch of scalpels on a bedsheet and does some killing. Anything with a point on it can be used by Machete, including a corkscrew.
Then there are the ladies. There’s gratuitous and hilarious nudity in this film. What’s even more hilarious (and I heard some people don’t like) is when Machete is about to lay pipe, the music instantly switches to this 70’s porn funk – incredible, unbelievable, hilarious, and brilliant.
Yes, there are some really far fetched scenes that would never ever ever ever happen, but the fact that Robert Rodriguez pulls them off speaks volumes to both his cojones and his talent as a director. In fact, there are a couple of completely ridiculous CGI things in the film which are so outlandish I HAD to crack up instead of screaming “HORSE$H!T!!!!!” in the theater (like I usually do). Rodriguez isn’t trying to make you believe it’s real – he’s entertaining and taking the outlandish awesomeness to a new level. And he does it with a smile and a campy one liner from Danny Trejo. “Machete don’t text.”
The acting in this movie isn’t polished and flawless. I mean Steven Seagal, Don Johnson, and Cheech Marin are in this film. And SOME people have complained that the movie fizzles at the end. I don't really think it did, frankly. Seriously, a motor cycle with a giant machine gun on it isn't fizzling in my book (which no one has read).
I saw this movie with three ladies (I’m basically Machete, myself). Two LOVED it and one just didn’t get it. Yes, there’s blood, but it’s not scary monster gore. It’s done with an over-the-top flair and a wink. I know it’s still early, but I think this film is getting my vote for best film of 2010. I will see this one again in the theater and I will own it as soon as it is out on DVD. I hope I’m not hyping it up too much, but I really was amazed by this film.
Monday, August 23, 2010
The Expendables
When I first saw the trailer for The Expendables, I thought to myself, this film is going to be amazing and it also should have an American flag in every corner of the screen. There are tons of action heroes from the 1990s and 2000’s and they all have guns and are blowing everything in sight into small bits. What’s not to like about this film? Or so I thought.
Sylvester Stallone apparently called his buddies and begged them to be in what is sure to be the greatest gun- and explosion-fest ever known to man. He rounded up all kinds of names for this film: Jason Statham, Jet Li, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Randy Couture, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke, and Eric Roberts. (There are abundant rumors as to who was asked and who turned him down, but I won’t get into that tabloid crap.) Stallone then put guns or knives in their hands (except for Mickey Rourke) and set them loose on a movie set and told them, “Blow as many things up as possible. We’ll CGI the rest of it and piece it together”. (I might have made that up, but that’s what it seems like.)
Stallone is the leader of a mercenary group of fighters who get paid to do missions the government can’t be linked to. They are hired killers and don’t ask questions. The opening scene is the Expendables taking out pirates on some sort of ocean tanker without losing a single civilian. Then, Stallone and Statham are sent to break up some cartel in South America and Stallone falls in love with some guy named Sandra, played by Giselle Itie (mean, but she honestly isn’t pretty, especially for a romantic interest). Turns out, she’s the daughter of the dictator (or Heneral, in Spanish) (yes, I know how to spell it, dingleberries) who’s taken over the island and is running drugs and weapons. The Heneral is sadly only a puppet being controlled by Eric Roberts – a really bad guy who uses Stone Cold Steve Austin as his body guard.
Stallone and Statham barely escape but the girl won’t come with them. They end up blowing up the bad guys on a dock with a sea plane, some gasoline, and a flare gun. This is why people hate our country. Sandra won’t leave her home or father, even though she’s trying to thwart his power. They hang out with Mickey Rourke, a tattoo artist who shoudln’t try to act dramatically, for a while, who apparently hasn’t finished like 4 letters on Stallone’s tattoo. Really? Stallone can’t fight his love for Sandra, so he heads back to the island. He intends for it to be alone, but his buddies join him, except for Dolph Lundgren, who has turned traitor (it isn’t a plot spoiler if it’s amazingly obvious and not a surprise, am I right?).
Stallone and his boys blow up an incredible amount of stuff and kill all kinds of people. There’s a particularly intense and loud gun that blows people in half. That part is far-fetched, but chuckle-worthy. Blood is spraying, there’s fire and explosions everywhere, and corpses are piling up. This again, is why people hate America.
SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!
Rocky wins. Again.
Let me start by saying this movie made me angry. Legitimately furious. In fact, it ruined my night it was so terrible. I yelled (I mean LOUDLY yelled) “HORSESHIT!!!!!” or “COME ON!!!!” at last 25 times. People were outright laughing at the editing during conversations and at the awful CGI blood and crumbling buildings. I’d venture to guess the special effects crew from Megafault had a hand in this terrible piece of crap. I was so angry after this film, I was actually yelling at my friend. We left the theater and went the newly opened Toby Keith’s “I Love This Bar” Bar and I had to leave after less than 5 minutes because I was still livid and was having trouble keeping my mouth shut around douche bags wearing plaid shirts with snaps and drinking beer out of mason jars.
The dialogue between EVERY one of the characters was awful and contrived. None of it was believable. I’m not even sure they guy that played Heneral was Hispanic. And, I’ve seen Kindergarten drawings that were more realistic than the CGI in this film.
At one point, I was even hoping Jason Statham would take his shirt off or something so I could man-crush out a little bit, but no. He just kept reading a script that Stallone wrote for him in jr. high instead of acting. Terry Crews didn’t deliver a single line I believed and I’ve seen better acting on a Midwest car dealership commercial. Randy Couture shouldn’t speak, he should just fight – he’s REALLY good at fighting, even in this movie, he was good at fighting. But, please stop talking about your cauliflower ear. Dolph Lundgren should stick to playing Lurch on the Adams Family and Jet Li should stand up for himself and not let Stallone write racist parts for him. At least put some ridiculous martial arts in the film for him to be featured. Don’t make him whine and complain about working harder because he’s short. WTF!?!?! I’m getting angry all over again. Here, try this: take your blood pressure before this film. Then immediately following the film (don’t bother staying for the credits), take your blood pressure again and see if you can double it and add thirty to have metric blood pressure – I’ll bet you can.
Stallone should never write OR direct another film. Take his crayon away immediately. Sure, he can throw all the money he wants into being a producer, but leave the action and the CGI and the writing to the pros, my friend. This movie made ME hate America. This movie made me want to kill. Please don’t waste your time or money and allow Stallone to think you’d see another of his drain bamaged action films.
Thanks for ruining my night, Stallone...
Sylvester Stallone apparently called his buddies and begged them to be in what is sure to be the greatest gun- and explosion-fest ever known to man. He rounded up all kinds of names for this film: Jason Statham, Jet Li, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Randy Couture, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke, and Eric Roberts. (There are abundant rumors as to who was asked and who turned him down, but I won’t get into that tabloid crap.) Stallone then put guns or knives in their hands (except for Mickey Rourke) and set them loose on a movie set and told them, “Blow as many things up as possible. We’ll CGI the rest of it and piece it together”. (I might have made that up, but that’s what it seems like.)
Stallone is the leader of a mercenary group of fighters who get paid to do missions the government can’t be linked to. They are hired killers and don’t ask questions. The opening scene is the Expendables taking out pirates on some sort of ocean tanker without losing a single civilian. Then, Stallone and Statham are sent to break up some cartel in South America and Stallone falls in love with some guy named Sandra, played by Giselle Itie (mean, but she honestly isn’t pretty, especially for a romantic interest). Turns out, she’s the daughter of the dictator (or Heneral, in Spanish) (yes, I know how to spell it, dingleberries) who’s taken over the island and is running drugs and weapons. The Heneral is sadly only a puppet being controlled by Eric Roberts – a really bad guy who uses Stone Cold Steve Austin as his body guard.
Stallone and Statham barely escape but the girl won’t come with them. They end up blowing up the bad guys on a dock with a sea plane, some gasoline, and a flare gun. This is why people hate our country. Sandra won’t leave her home or father, even though she’s trying to thwart his power. They hang out with Mickey Rourke, a tattoo artist who shoudln’t try to act dramatically, for a while, who apparently hasn’t finished like 4 letters on Stallone’s tattoo. Really? Stallone can’t fight his love for Sandra, so he heads back to the island. He intends for it to be alone, but his buddies join him, except for Dolph Lundgren, who has turned traitor (it isn’t a plot spoiler if it’s amazingly obvious and not a surprise, am I right?).
Stallone and his boys blow up an incredible amount of stuff and kill all kinds of people. There’s a particularly intense and loud gun that blows people in half. That part is far-fetched, but chuckle-worthy. Blood is spraying, there’s fire and explosions everywhere, and corpses are piling up. This again, is why people hate America.
SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!
Rocky wins. Again.
Let me start by saying this movie made me angry. Legitimately furious. In fact, it ruined my night it was so terrible. I yelled (I mean LOUDLY yelled) “HORSESHIT!!!!!” or “COME ON!!!!” at last 25 times. People were outright laughing at the editing during conversations and at the awful CGI blood and crumbling buildings. I’d venture to guess the special effects crew from Megafault had a hand in this terrible piece of crap. I was so angry after this film, I was actually yelling at my friend. We left the theater and went the newly opened Toby Keith’s “I Love This Bar” Bar and I had to leave after less than 5 minutes because I was still livid and was having trouble keeping my mouth shut around douche bags wearing plaid shirts with snaps and drinking beer out of mason jars.
The dialogue between EVERY one of the characters was awful and contrived. None of it was believable. I’m not even sure they guy that played Heneral was Hispanic. And, I’ve seen Kindergarten drawings that were more realistic than the CGI in this film.
At one point, I was even hoping Jason Statham would take his shirt off or something so I could man-crush out a little bit, but no. He just kept reading a script that Stallone wrote for him in jr. high instead of acting. Terry Crews didn’t deliver a single line I believed and I’ve seen better acting on a Midwest car dealership commercial. Randy Couture shouldn’t speak, he should just fight – he’s REALLY good at fighting, even in this movie, he was good at fighting. But, please stop talking about your cauliflower ear. Dolph Lundgren should stick to playing Lurch on the Adams Family and Jet Li should stand up for himself and not let Stallone write racist parts for him. At least put some ridiculous martial arts in the film for him to be featured. Don’t make him whine and complain about working harder because he’s short. WTF!?!?! I’m getting angry all over again. Here, try this: take your blood pressure before this film. Then immediately following the film (don’t bother staying for the credits), take your blood pressure again and see if you can double it and add thirty to have metric blood pressure – I’ll bet you can.
Stallone should never write OR direct another film. Take his crayon away immediately. Sure, he can throw all the money he wants into being a producer, but leave the action and the CGI and the writing to the pros, my friend. This movie made ME hate America. This movie made me want to kill. Please don’t waste your time or money and allow Stallone to think you’d see another of his drain bamaged action films.
Thanks for ruining my night, Stallone...
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Red Riding Hood
I generally have good luck with recommendations from Amazon.com regarding movies I should purchased because I also purchased some other random movie. The key word is generally. I don’t even remember why they recommended it, sadly. The film is about a 12-year old girl living in Rome. Her mother has abandoned her and left her with unlimited money in a bank account. The girl has done well taking care of herself, except for catching… the crazy.
Jenny has been using the money her mother left her to study various topics and to get to know Rome. She speaks a little Italian so she is functional on the streets, and she spends her days reading texts and classics so she can impress her tutor (who she’s in love with).
She’s got a dog – her only friend in the world. But it’s not really a dog. It’s an 8-foot tall dog/wolf/man named George. George goes out with her on the streets of Rome at night and they hand out justice when they see someone doing something bad. Seriously, she sees someone steal something? She has George cut off their hands. She sees someone break into a house, she follows them and has George gouge out their eyes and kill them. I told you she has the crazy.
Jenny’s grandmother from NYC shows up to take Jenny back to the US. Jenny isn’t having it. Jenny poisons her grandmother and eventually ties her up and mutilates her body so she can’t move. She also gives her peanut butter since her grandmother is deathly allergic. Jenny is a rotten little kid.
This is where you ask yourself “Why did they call this Red Riding Hood?” Well, dummies, it’s because she has red boots and has a wolf friend. She also tells her grandmother the story of Little Red Riding Hood to put her grandmother to sleep, but it’s from the wolf’s perspective. That’s the only connection. The rest of the film has nothing to do with the fairy tale.
The acting in the movie is some of the worst I’ve ever seen. I’m serious. It’s rushed and Jenny is nervous and mumbles her lines nervously. She’s also amazingly fake and contrived and not believable at all. The grandmother isn’t much better, nor are any of the minor characters which Jenny kills. The special effects are almost as bad as the acting. You can’t get shot in the head, hold your hand up to the fake wound, and make a sad face before you wiggle your body to the ground.
Don’t waste your time with this film. The scenery from Rome is nice and makes me really want to go back there again. But I’ll make sure to avoid any Americans wearing red galoshes.
Jenny has been using the money her mother left her to study various topics and to get to know Rome. She speaks a little Italian so she is functional on the streets, and she spends her days reading texts and classics so she can impress her tutor (who she’s in love with).
She’s got a dog – her only friend in the world. But it’s not really a dog. It’s an 8-foot tall dog/wolf/man named George. George goes out with her on the streets of Rome at night and they hand out justice when they see someone doing something bad. Seriously, she sees someone steal something? She has George cut off their hands. She sees someone break into a house, she follows them and has George gouge out their eyes and kill them. I told you she has the crazy.
Jenny’s grandmother from NYC shows up to take Jenny back to the US. Jenny isn’t having it. Jenny poisons her grandmother and eventually ties her up and mutilates her body so she can’t move. She also gives her peanut butter since her grandmother is deathly allergic. Jenny is a rotten little kid.
This is where you ask yourself “Why did they call this Red Riding Hood?” Well, dummies, it’s because she has red boots and has a wolf friend. She also tells her grandmother the story of Little Red Riding Hood to put her grandmother to sleep, but it’s from the wolf’s perspective. That’s the only connection. The rest of the film has nothing to do with the fairy tale.
The acting in the movie is some of the worst I’ve ever seen. I’m serious. It’s rushed and Jenny is nervous and mumbles her lines nervously. She’s also amazingly fake and contrived and not believable at all. The grandmother isn’t much better, nor are any of the minor characters which Jenny kills. The special effects are almost as bad as the acting. You can’t get shot in the head, hold your hand up to the fake wound, and make a sad face before you wiggle your body to the ground.
Don’t waste your time with this film. The scenery from Rome is nice and makes me really want to go back there again. But I’ll make sure to avoid any Americans wearing red galoshes.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Predators (2010)
Predators is the newest edition of the Predator saga. I know people keep complaining about these when they come out, but enough people are going to see them that they keep making more. So I’m assuming people want to see more explosions and guns and fire and aliens than we are led to believe. It will never be as good as the original (that goes without saying, but I said it anyway), but it ended up far better than I thought.
Here’s the plot: 8 people are dropped into a jungle in the middle of who-knows-where. These people gain consciousness in free fall from thousands of feet up and their parachutes open up at the last minute to almost slow their descent into the canopy. These people don’t know why they’re here or who each other are. They have some conversations and realize they’re all killers. A couple of military people (both official and non-official), a couple vigilante fighters (including Machete… I mean Danny Trejo), a Yakuza (and clearly ninja since all Asians are skilled at martial arts – racism), a convicted rapist, and Eric from That 70’s Show (playing Eric from That 70’s Show). Now they have to figure out why they are together and where they are.
They traipse across all kinds of wilderness – which frankly reminded me of the various scenery from Where the Wild Things Are – and eventually discover they’re not on Earth. A couple of planets and moons over a mountain range confirm that. Strangely, Eric, who is a doctor or some sort, knows all the names of the plants and which ones are poisonous. He must have studied a LOT in doctorin’ school.
They are attacked by these horned wild boar dog aliens and remain victorious. This is where they begin to realize they’re being hunted by something very bad. The dogs were called off by some sort of whistle/call and the group is left to think about their situation out loud like no one ever does. While running, they come across a handful of broken (and empty) cages which used to hold something nasty, including CGI cockroaches). They run across a fallen soldier who has booby trapped a HUGE perimeter and almost kill the small group. It’s here that the macho man leader (Adrien Brody) tell us the proper weight for a swinging log to knock over a person is exactly 5 times the size of the thing you’re trying to take out. Yes, tough guy, he weighed the predator and then weighed the tree trunk to determine which randomly available tree trunk he would use in the booby trap.
The group decides to go into the camp of the predators to determine what they were fighting against, which *I* think is a bad idea. There’s a predator chained to a pillar, being held captive in the camp, and they poke it with a stick. Brilliant. The predators not chained up attack and tough guy uses the group as bait to figure out what the creatures are. The predators then systematically kill off the group one by one, starting with Danny Trejo. I’m assuming this was the tradeoff so he could star in Machete! “OK guys, I’ll let you kill me first if I can be the master bloodsprayer in Machete. Deal!”
Insert an hour of explosions and fire and bullets here.
They run into Larry Fishburne in the woods. He gets what’s left of the group up into his little bachelor pad and gives them some back ground on the situation they’re in – this happens once a season, predators hunt humans, predators learn the human tricks and are slowly becoming invincible, blah blah blah, here’s some soup. Larry is a scavenger who dresses in the predator’s armor and is able to use their cloaking devices and weapons. He’s also bat-shit crazy and talks to imaginary people. Larry then tries to kill them for their supplies and weapons. The ensuing fire and battle draw the predators to the house and cue more explosions, fire, and bullets.
Insert awkward ninja sword fight in a grassy meadow.
Tough guy Brody has a plan to go back to the camp, unchain the captive predator, and somehow convince him to be friends and fly him back to earth in his spaceship. Really? He somehow manages to do this and the predator fires up the ship and sends him off. The once-captive predator then has to fight the head predator in a death match of swords and claws (and zero lasers, for some reason). And I also think it’s weird that the predators can’t see each other when they’re cloaked. They have like 15 different vision capabilities through the movie, yet they can’t see each other. Consequentially, for some reason, the predators can also see through the mud applied to humans as a heat cloaker, but it doesn’t register. *I* can see what clearly looks like a man shaped red spot, but the predator can’t. I don’t get it. The movie wraps up with a finale of fighting, explosions, bullets, and fire and then the directors leave the film open ended for a sequel.
This movie isn’t anywhere near as good as the original. I mean, how could it be without Arnold, Carl Weathers, and Jesse the Body? But what America wants is explosions, bullets, and fire, and Predators has a metric balls-ton of it. Seriously. My head hurt. I won’t go into how weird I thought the soundtrack (music-wise) was for this film, but I think the director had his iPod on shuffle during the editing. For example, final scene…and… cut to Little Richard… WTF? Anyway, the plot is very similar to the original once you break it down. In fact, it’s almost a remake. A bunch of people heavily loaded with guns are in a jungle trying to figure out what’s hunting them. They finally see the predator and figure out how to kill it. Except in this film, there are three predators to kill.
If you liked the original, you’ll probably like this film as well, just not as much. If you never saw the original or the other ones, you don’t be at any sort of disadvantage with previous story. There is only one reference to the original and it is explained enough to make sense in this film. It’s an OK film and the CGI was tolerable, except for the alien dogs – completely unacceptable, ridiculous, and fakey. (I will note that I found something that makes me want to kill much more than CGI – the preview for Step Up 3D shown before Predators…). Don’t go out of your way to see this film, but you won’t be disappointed if you like ‘splosions.
Here’s the plot: 8 people are dropped into a jungle in the middle of who-knows-where. These people gain consciousness in free fall from thousands of feet up and their parachutes open up at the last minute to almost slow their descent into the canopy. These people don’t know why they’re here or who each other are. They have some conversations and realize they’re all killers. A couple of military people (both official and non-official), a couple vigilante fighters (including Machete… I mean Danny Trejo), a Yakuza (and clearly ninja since all Asians are skilled at martial arts – racism), a convicted rapist, and Eric from That 70’s Show (playing Eric from That 70’s Show). Now they have to figure out why they are together and where they are.
They traipse across all kinds of wilderness – which frankly reminded me of the various scenery from Where the Wild Things Are – and eventually discover they’re not on Earth. A couple of planets and moons over a mountain range confirm that. Strangely, Eric, who is a doctor or some sort, knows all the names of the plants and which ones are poisonous. He must have studied a LOT in doctorin’ school.
They are attacked by these horned wild boar dog aliens and remain victorious. This is where they begin to realize they’re being hunted by something very bad. The dogs were called off by some sort of whistle/call and the group is left to think about their situation out loud like no one ever does. While running, they come across a handful of broken (and empty) cages which used to hold something nasty, including CGI cockroaches). They run across a fallen soldier who has booby trapped a HUGE perimeter and almost kill the small group. It’s here that the macho man leader (Adrien Brody) tell us the proper weight for a swinging log to knock over a person is exactly 5 times the size of the thing you’re trying to take out. Yes, tough guy, he weighed the predator and then weighed the tree trunk to determine which randomly available tree trunk he would use in the booby trap.
The group decides to go into the camp of the predators to determine what they were fighting against, which *I* think is a bad idea. There’s a predator chained to a pillar, being held captive in the camp, and they poke it with a stick. Brilliant. The predators not chained up attack and tough guy uses the group as bait to figure out what the creatures are. The predators then systematically kill off the group one by one, starting with Danny Trejo. I’m assuming this was the tradeoff so he could star in Machete! “OK guys, I’ll let you kill me first if I can be the master bloodsprayer in Machete. Deal!”
Insert an hour of explosions and fire and bullets here.
They run into Larry Fishburne in the woods. He gets what’s left of the group up into his little bachelor pad and gives them some back ground on the situation they’re in – this happens once a season, predators hunt humans, predators learn the human tricks and are slowly becoming invincible, blah blah blah, here’s some soup. Larry is a scavenger who dresses in the predator’s armor and is able to use their cloaking devices and weapons. He’s also bat-shit crazy and talks to imaginary people. Larry then tries to kill them for their supplies and weapons. The ensuing fire and battle draw the predators to the house and cue more explosions, fire, and bullets.
Insert awkward ninja sword fight in a grassy meadow.
Tough guy Brody has a plan to go back to the camp, unchain the captive predator, and somehow convince him to be friends and fly him back to earth in his spaceship. Really? He somehow manages to do this and the predator fires up the ship and sends him off. The once-captive predator then has to fight the head predator in a death match of swords and claws (and zero lasers, for some reason). And I also think it’s weird that the predators can’t see each other when they’re cloaked. They have like 15 different vision capabilities through the movie, yet they can’t see each other. Consequentially, for some reason, the predators can also see through the mud applied to humans as a heat cloaker, but it doesn’t register. *I* can see what clearly looks like a man shaped red spot, but the predator can’t. I don’t get it. The movie wraps up with a finale of fighting, explosions, bullets, and fire and then the directors leave the film open ended for a sequel.
This movie isn’t anywhere near as good as the original. I mean, how could it be without Arnold, Carl Weathers, and Jesse the Body? But what America wants is explosions, bullets, and fire, and Predators has a metric balls-ton of it. Seriously. My head hurt. I won’t go into how weird I thought the soundtrack (music-wise) was for this film, but I think the director had his iPod on shuffle during the editing. For example, final scene…and… cut to Little Richard… WTF? Anyway, the plot is very similar to the original once you break it down. In fact, it’s almost a remake. A bunch of people heavily loaded with guns are in a jungle trying to figure out what’s hunting them. They finally see the predator and figure out how to kill it. Except in this film, there are three predators to kill.
If you liked the original, you’ll probably like this film as well, just not as much. If you never saw the original or the other ones, you don’t be at any sort of disadvantage with previous story. There is only one reference to the original and it is explained enough to make sense in this film. It’s an OK film and the CGI was tolerable, except for the alien dogs – completely unacceptable, ridiculous, and fakey. (I will note that I found something that makes me want to kill much more than CGI – the preview for Step Up 3D shown before Predators…). Don’t go out of your way to see this film, but you won’t be disappointed if you like ‘splosions.
Dora-Heita
Dora-Heita is a traditional Japanese film about a new magistrate (basically a mayor) in a small town. The magistrate has begun to spread rumors about himself in order to make people think he’s lecherous and mean and nasty. He’s only done this to make his life easier since the people aren’t likely to accept him with open arms anyway. He’s been appointed to do some major clean-up in a seedy part of town. The other magistrates aren’t a fan of cleaning it up since it’s bringing in money (mainly illegally).
The new magistrate infiltrates the seedy area by dressing as a woman and then befriends some of the locals after he unmasks and buys them a barrel of sake. He gets in good with the low-brow people. This is all part of his plan, which unfolds throughout the movie. He goes to each of the three bosses in the seedy part of town and plays to their strengths.
The magistrate goes to the boss in charge of whoring and scores with a bunch of his ladies and they drink together and seal some deal to be brothers. He then goes to the boss in charge of gambling and bring s a boatload of cash. They also seal some sort of deal. The third boss is doing everything in his power not to be duped. Meanwhile, the village council has to meet because the Magistrate is strictly forbidden to enter the seedy part of town. They are trying to vote him out since he’s making trouble for all of the sneaky deals they have been running for years. They’ve all taken “unwanted” bribes and it’s clear their bosses know about it – which is why he appointed Dora-Heita as magistrate.
Dora-Heita’s wife has come to retrieve him and she’s a REAL tenacious woman. Causing trouble throughout town trying to retrieve him. Eventually, the third boss invite Dora-Heita to a banquet at his house. Clearly, it’s a trap, but he goes regardless. I won’t spoil the ending, but there’s a super sweet fight at the boss’ palace.
The movie is pretty solidly put together. Well acted and well fought. There is lots of action and lots of sword fighting. This film is one of the better samurai films I’ve seen. Traditional with a hint of modern film making. It’s got a couple of interesting plot twists without being hokey, so it wraps up nicely. It’s a good samurai film.
The new magistrate infiltrates the seedy area by dressing as a woman and then befriends some of the locals after he unmasks and buys them a barrel of sake. He gets in good with the low-brow people. This is all part of his plan, which unfolds throughout the movie. He goes to each of the three bosses in the seedy part of town and plays to their strengths.
The magistrate goes to the boss in charge of whoring and scores with a bunch of his ladies and they drink together and seal some deal to be brothers. He then goes to the boss in charge of gambling and bring s a boatload of cash. They also seal some sort of deal. The third boss is doing everything in his power not to be duped. Meanwhile, the village council has to meet because the Magistrate is strictly forbidden to enter the seedy part of town. They are trying to vote him out since he’s making trouble for all of the sneaky deals they have been running for years. They’ve all taken “unwanted” bribes and it’s clear their bosses know about it – which is why he appointed Dora-Heita as magistrate.
Dora-Heita’s wife has come to retrieve him and she’s a REAL tenacious woman. Causing trouble throughout town trying to retrieve him. Eventually, the third boss invite Dora-Heita to a banquet at his house. Clearly, it’s a trap, but he goes regardless. I won’t spoil the ending, but there’s a super sweet fight at the boss’ palace.
The movie is pretty solidly put together. Well acted and well fought. There is lots of action and lots of sword fighting. This film is one of the better samurai films I’ve seen. Traditional with a hint of modern film making. It’s got a couple of interesting plot twists without being hokey, so it wraps up nicely. It’s a good samurai film.
Smash Cut
Smash Cut starts with an old timey intro (meaning with an old man talking) giving viewers a warning about what they’re about to see. The film starts in a movie theater where people are watching a bad movie about a clown killing people – called Terror Toy. Everyone complains, yells, and leaves, but there is a guy standing near the exit with sad clown face painting. Cut to a strip club. This is how every movie should start.
The clown is sitting in the strip club crying in his beer and talking with his friend or agent or cameraman. Apparently, the sad clown is the director of Terror Toy and knows people hate his movie. The clown sleeps with a dancer and he kills her when he crashes his car driving her home. Then he saves her body and ends up using her body to make the special effects in his movie more believable. The director goes to the office of the critique that wrote the most recent bad review and kills her.. with a movie scene clacker with teeth. The director goes on a killing rampage to put people (or at least their body parts) into his films.
Meanwhile, the sister of the dancer he killed first begins searching for her sister. The sister is a television reporter and talks her boss at the television station into hiring the city’s best private investigator to help find her sister. The PI snoops around and gets a little too close to the director. The director starts to plot how he’s going to kill the PI. The sister shows up to audition for the director’s newest film and ends up holding her sister’s decapitated head in her hands while reciting Shakespeare. Creepy. The director continues to kill random people to harvest their body parts for placement in films. Eventually he kills enough people that people catch on, including the PI hired to bring him down.
This film is pretty terrible and not really worth watching. I totally fell for the hype and the write up of this one. It’s got bad dialogue, costumes, fight scenes, and plot. It’s probably one of the worst endings eve done in a film, and I don’t think you’ll fill a bit of suspense or drama in this film at all. It actually makes me want to watch Puppet Master, knowing it will seem like a Hollywood blockbuster compared to this film. One of the closing lines, “I kissed my dead sister’s severed head. I think instead of dinner, I might need to go get some trauma counseling.” Alright, that was funny. But that’s the extent of the humor in this film.
The clown is sitting in the strip club crying in his beer and talking with his friend or agent or cameraman. Apparently, the sad clown is the director of Terror Toy and knows people hate his movie. The clown sleeps with a dancer and he kills her when he crashes his car driving her home. Then he saves her body and ends up using her body to make the special effects in his movie more believable. The director goes to the office of the critique that wrote the most recent bad review and kills her.. with a movie scene clacker with teeth. The director goes on a killing rampage to put people (or at least their body parts) into his films.
Meanwhile, the sister of the dancer he killed first begins searching for her sister. The sister is a television reporter and talks her boss at the television station into hiring the city’s best private investigator to help find her sister. The PI snoops around and gets a little too close to the director. The director starts to plot how he’s going to kill the PI. The sister shows up to audition for the director’s newest film and ends up holding her sister’s decapitated head in her hands while reciting Shakespeare. Creepy. The director continues to kill random people to harvest their body parts for placement in films. Eventually he kills enough people that people catch on, including the PI hired to bring him down.
This film is pretty terrible and not really worth watching. I totally fell for the hype and the write up of this one. It’s got bad dialogue, costumes, fight scenes, and plot. It’s probably one of the worst endings eve done in a film, and I don’t think you’ll fill a bit of suspense or drama in this film at all. It actually makes me want to watch Puppet Master, knowing it will seem like a Hollywood blockbuster compared to this film. One of the closing lines, “I kissed my dead sister’s severed head. I think instead of dinner, I might need to go get some trauma counseling.” Alright, that was funny. But that’s the extent of the humor in this film.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Ninja Death
I love old traditional kung fu films. It reminds me of my youth when I watched hours and hours of Kung Fu Theater. And since I was a hormonally-riddled teen when this was airing, I secretly hoped to see a scantily clad lady or thought I might hear a swear word more harsh than “bastard”. Where has this movie been my whole life??? It has BOTH!!! And then an entire non-PC scene with derogatory homosexual comments – yes, inappropriate, but hilarious during the 1970s.
Here’s the plot: Tiger works at a whorehouse (ahhhh, feel the irony in that sentence…). The Japanese immigrants have set up a rival brothel down the street in an attempt to find a kung fu master with a plum flower tattoo on his chest. We later find out that kung fu master is Tiger. Tiger isn’t ready to take on the ninjas, mainly due to the fact that he’s never heard of them or know what they are. His master HAS heard of them and sets about training Tiger to fight them (mainly by kicking his ass repeatedly). As a baby, Tiger was taken from his mother during a ninja battle and the ninjas have returned to finish him off years later. The end of the movie stops short in preparation for Ninja Death II and Ninja Death III (yes, I own them all), so I am looking at this like the kung fu version of Lord of the Rings.
Here are some things that I learned from Ninja Death:
I wouldn’t run out and buy this series but it is pretty amusing. I hope the second and third ones are equally amusing. As is typical for traditional kung fu films, the overdubbing is half of the comedy. However, halfway through the movies, the accents suddenly turn British instead of American, up to that point. There are some pretty sweet fight scenes, but there are also some awful special effects that counter the awesomeness. There isn’t much about the plot of this film that makes it stick out amongst the hoards of difficult-to-differentiate kung fu films, but like most of them, you won’t feel like you wasted your time. And for the record, this is borderline Bad Movie Night material… Also is it ninjas or ninja (similar to deer or deers)?
Here’s the plot: Tiger works at a whorehouse (ahhhh, feel the irony in that sentence…). The Japanese immigrants have set up a rival brothel down the street in an attempt to find a kung fu master with a plum flower tattoo on his chest. We later find out that kung fu master is Tiger. Tiger isn’t ready to take on the ninjas, mainly due to the fact that he’s never heard of them or know what they are. His master HAS heard of them and sets about training Tiger to fight them (mainly by kicking his ass repeatedly). As a baby, Tiger was taken from his mother during a ninja battle and the ninjas have returned to finish him off years later. The end of the movie stops short in preparation for Ninja Death II and Ninja Death III (yes, I own them all), so I am looking at this like the kung fu version of Lord of the Rings.
Here are some things that I learned from Ninja Death:
- Hitting 300 pressure points will stop someone from puking
- Suspender snap hurts kung fu masters worse than multiple punches in face
- British overdubbed voices pronounce “ninja” like “ninjer” – I giggle every time
- If a female ninja attacks you, she can be defeated by trying to kiss her – apparently, they’re powerless against the kissing attack. The tradeoff is that three Japanese geisha can bring down a kung fu master with giggles
- Everytime I hear a clarinet, I’m going to be on the lookout for ninjas
- Ninjas used to be sex machines
- A man with long black hair that wears a long black wig looks exactly the same when he takes said wig off
- Ninjas take baby steps when they run
- Hugging is foreplay
- Based on the amount of passion demonstrated by female ninjas during kissing, I hope I never kiss a female ninja
- Beggars hold their own pretty well against a swarm of ninjas
I wouldn’t run out and buy this series but it is pretty amusing. I hope the second and third ones are equally amusing. As is typical for traditional kung fu films, the overdubbing is half of the comedy. However, halfway through the movies, the accents suddenly turn British instead of American, up to that point. There are some pretty sweet fight scenes, but there are also some awful special effects that counter the awesomeness. There isn’t much about the plot of this film that makes it stick out amongst the hoards of difficult-to-differentiate kung fu films, but like most of them, you won’t feel like you wasted your time. And for the record, this is borderline Bad Movie Night material… Also is it ninjas or ninja (similar to deer or deers)?
Julie & Julia
Julie and Julia is a cute little film about Julia Child, the famous cook played here by Meryl Streep, before she became famous and modern Julie, played by Amy Adams, who is kind of a non-famous writer. Julie has a bunch of rich and important (read: snooty) friends who have no idea what she's going through because they can't relate. Julie decides, with the recommendation of her boyfriend, to go through Julia Child's entire cookbook and blog about the experience. She does so (with some difficulty), but gets quite a following of friends and readers she doesn't know.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Get Him To The Greek
I had mixed feelings going into this movie, but based on the previews I thought I had better at least give it a shot (especially since someone else was paying). It’s about a record company kid (Jonah Hill) trying to make a splash in the business by pitching an idea to his boss (played by P.Diddy) to have a just-past-peaked rock star (Russell Brand) play a show at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. The trick is getting this drug- and drink-consuming machine to the theater in the first place.
Aldous Snow is a rock star who used to be a pretty big deal. He and his band released a pretty crappy album which got scathing reviews. He split with his pop star wife because they had both been cheating and living the rock star life style. She’s been clean for a while, but Aldous has been pounding drinks and narcotics for long enough that it’s clearly effecting his performance.
Aaron Green (Hill) works for Sergio Roma (Diddy) at a record label and Sergio asks his people for advice on how to make the next big smash hit artist. Aaron says they should get Aldous Snow (Brand) to play the Greek Theater and make a huge comeback (along with all kinds of interviews and publicity along the way). Aaron flies to London after breaking up with his girlfriend to pick up Aldous and all kinds of hilarious things happen because Aldous doesn’t feel like going to the US right then. Aldous takes Aaron out on the town (for a continuous three days) and gets him amazingly loaded.
They eventually make it on to a plane to the US and have stops in NYC, Vegas, and Los Angeles for publicity and eventually the concert. Aaron tags along and manages to drag Aldous to barely make each engagement. Aldous stops in Las Vegas to see his washed-up musician of a father and serious comedy happens here. I hate to admit it, but as slapstick as this stupid scene is, I hurt myself laughing at everything that happens here. Everyone on drugs and drinking leads to hilarious fist fighting and a fire in the hotel.
I’m not going to ruin anything by telling you Aldous makes it to the Greek Theater to play the show, but not until after being seriously messed up (mentally, emotionally, physically, and probably a few other adverbs). There are some touching “buddy moments”. There are some messed up relationship moments. There are some hilarious (and true) rock star d-bag things that happen. And there are incredible moments of comedic brilliance.
This may not be my favorite movie of the year, but it was a really solid movie that I’m really glad I saw. The acting in the film is really funny. I’m not even sure it was believable, but I’m not sure it was supposed to be. Honestly, P.Diddy was hilarious in this film and did some things that were probably outside of his comfort zone, but it totally worked. Russell Brand should be the only persona allowed to play a rock star for as long as I’m alive. He’s an amazing combination of borderline-gay, douche-bag, pompous ass, pretty boy, emotionally void moron, and charismatic British playa. The film has more intelligent humor than most films out there, while still containing enough impossibly zany things to make you feel guilty for laughing. I’m not really comparing the two films, but if you like movies like The Hangover, then you’ll probably love this film. It’s worth checking out, for sure.
Aldous Snow is a rock star who used to be a pretty big deal. He and his band released a pretty crappy album which got scathing reviews. He split with his pop star wife because they had both been cheating and living the rock star life style. She’s been clean for a while, but Aldous has been pounding drinks and narcotics for long enough that it’s clearly effecting his performance.
Aaron Green (Hill) works for Sergio Roma (Diddy) at a record label and Sergio asks his people for advice on how to make the next big smash hit artist. Aaron says they should get Aldous Snow (Brand) to play the Greek Theater and make a huge comeback (along with all kinds of interviews and publicity along the way). Aaron flies to London after breaking up with his girlfriend to pick up Aldous and all kinds of hilarious things happen because Aldous doesn’t feel like going to the US right then. Aldous takes Aaron out on the town (for a continuous three days) and gets him amazingly loaded.
They eventually make it on to a plane to the US and have stops in NYC, Vegas, and Los Angeles for publicity and eventually the concert. Aaron tags along and manages to drag Aldous to barely make each engagement. Aldous stops in Las Vegas to see his washed-up musician of a father and serious comedy happens here. I hate to admit it, but as slapstick as this stupid scene is, I hurt myself laughing at everything that happens here. Everyone on drugs and drinking leads to hilarious fist fighting and a fire in the hotel.
I’m not going to ruin anything by telling you Aldous makes it to the Greek Theater to play the show, but not until after being seriously messed up (mentally, emotionally, physically, and probably a few other adverbs). There are some touching “buddy moments”. There are some messed up relationship moments. There are some hilarious (and true) rock star d-bag things that happen. And there are incredible moments of comedic brilliance.
This may not be my favorite movie of the year, but it was a really solid movie that I’m really glad I saw. The acting in the film is really funny. I’m not even sure it was believable, but I’m not sure it was supposed to be. Honestly, P.Diddy was hilarious in this film and did some things that were probably outside of his comfort zone, but it totally worked. Russell Brand should be the only persona allowed to play a rock star for as long as I’m alive. He’s an amazing combination of borderline-gay, douche-bag, pompous ass, pretty boy, emotionally void moron, and charismatic British playa. The film has more intelligent humor than most films out there, while still containing enough impossibly zany things to make you feel guilty for laughing. I’m not really comparing the two films, but if you like movies like The Hangover, then you’ll probably love this film. It’s worth checking out, for sure.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
It’s Complicated
My new boss suggested I check out It’s Complicated during a conference call two weeks back. If I had declined, the rest of the people would think I was a jerk (they’ll find out soon enough anyway), so I told her I would. I moved it to the top of the Netflix list to try and suck up. I now realize my boss and I will have to disagree on which movies we like.
Jake and Jane (Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep) have been divorced for 10 years and are civil to each other, despite the fact that Jake has remarried a significantly younger and sluttier woman. At Jake and Jane’s son’s graduation, the two ex’s have a few drinks and “hook up”, as the kids call it these days. This illicit affair goes on for a short while with Jane loving it at first, and then becoming more and more distraught as she begins to realize what she’s doing. John Krasinski plays her son in law who actually sees some of this affair happening and doesn’t let on that he knows. During this affair, Jane is also torn because she ends up liking the attention she’s getting from Adam (Steve Martin), the architect who’s working on her remodel project. Jake finally leaves his young wife to pursue a legitimate relationship with his ex-wife.
The movie starts out really slow. In fact, I made a couple of comments about 30 minutes in and 45 minutes in, asking when it was supposed to get funny. It didn’t. It dragged out mercilessly without humor for over an hour before it got an actual laugh from me (and that was a John Krasinski line, I believe). Even Steve Martin, whom I LOVE, didn’t even make me crack a smile. He’s super cute in his usual way, but they didn’t capitalize on any of his humor in this film – including the scene where they get smoked up and get giggly, which I didn’t believe for a second.
The acting was a tad (sometimes more than a tad) overdone in the entire film and characters were just a bit too chipper. Alec Baldwin either needed to be more friendly and likeable or he needed to be more of an ass, like in 30 Rock. If he had done either of those things, I would have liked him a LOT more in this movie. At the end of the movie, I said, “maybe if I was a middle aged woman or a cougar, I’d find this movie funnier.” Actually THAT got the biggest laugh of the night. Sad, but true. This movie kind of sucked the life out of me and stole two hours I will never see again.
Jake and Jane (Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep) have been divorced for 10 years and are civil to each other, despite the fact that Jake has remarried a significantly younger and sluttier woman. At Jake and Jane’s son’s graduation, the two ex’s have a few drinks and “hook up”, as the kids call it these days. This illicit affair goes on for a short while with Jane loving it at first, and then becoming more and more distraught as she begins to realize what she’s doing. John Krasinski plays her son in law who actually sees some of this affair happening and doesn’t let on that he knows. During this affair, Jane is also torn because she ends up liking the attention she’s getting from Adam (Steve Martin), the architect who’s working on her remodel project. Jake finally leaves his young wife to pursue a legitimate relationship with his ex-wife.
The movie starts out really slow. In fact, I made a couple of comments about 30 minutes in and 45 minutes in, asking when it was supposed to get funny. It didn’t. It dragged out mercilessly without humor for over an hour before it got an actual laugh from me (and that was a John Krasinski line, I believe). Even Steve Martin, whom I LOVE, didn’t even make me crack a smile. He’s super cute in his usual way, but they didn’t capitalize on any of his humor in this film – including the scene where they get smoked up and get giggly, which I didn’t believe for a second.
The acting was a tad (sometimes more than a tad) overdone in the entire film and characters were just a bit too chipper. Alec Baldwin either needed to be more friendly and likeable or he needed to be more of an ass, like in 30 Rock. If he had done either of those things, I would have liked him a LOT more in this movie. At the end of the movie, I said, “maybe if I was a middle aged woman or a cougar, I’d find this movie funnier.” Actually THAT got the biggest laugh of the night. Sad, but true. This movie kind of sucked the life out of me and stole two hours I will never see again.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Sword of Doom
Sword of Doom is an old black and white samurai movie from Japan. A swordsman shows up on a mountainside and kills and old man praying at a shrine to Buddha. The swordsman is supposed to fight another guy in the town the following day and a woman shows up to try to talk him out of it. He asks her if it’s worth her giving up the goods to stop the fight. If the girl’s husband (as it turns out) loses, then he loses the right to teach at the school he’s in charge of – and it sounds like this is very likely.
They fight the next day in front of the town at some sort of competition. He kills the husband who has just divorced his wife when he found out she was sneaking away to sleep with the bad guy. She wants to run away with the bad guy and he casts her aside before he’s ambushed by the townspeople loyal to the now-deceased husband. The ex-wife ends up with the bad guy and they have a kid together. Oddly enough, they both appear to hate each other.
Bad guy’s father is on his deathbed and tells the husband’s brother to kill his son (that killed the husband). The brother tracks down the bad guy in Kyoto, but the bad guy is going a bit crazy and starts killing all kinds of people he’s with. He does sustain some injuries however. Then randomly, there’s a pillow-throwing scene to distract the weakened samurai – I had no idea their weakness was pillows.
Then the movie just ends. I’m assuming he dies, but seriously, he’s midway through killing everyone in the building and the credits roll. Weird ending. I’m not sure how much of this movie actually made sense in a linear plot sort of way. It’s not disjunct or anything, it’s just pointless and doesn’t end. I’d not recommend this film to people who like movies with a plot.
They fight the next day in front of the town at some sort of competition. He kills the husband who has just divorced his wife when he found out she was sneaking away to sleep with the bad guy. She wants to run away with the bad guy and he casts her aside before he’s ambushed by the townspeople loyal to the now-deceased husband. The ex-wife ends up with the bad guy and they have a kid together. Oddly enough, they both appear to hate each other.
Bad guy’s father is on his deathbed and tells the husband’s brother to kill his son (that killed the husband). The brother tracks down the bad guy in Kyoto, but the bad guy is going a bit crazy and starts killing all kinds of people he’s with. He does sustain some injuries however. Then randomly, there’s a pillow-throwing scene to distract the weakened samurai – I had no idea their weakness was pillows.
Then the movie just ends. I’m assuming he dies, but seriously, he’s midway through killing everyone in the building and the credits roll. Weird ending. I’m not sure how much of this movie actually made sense in a linear plot sort of way. It’s not disjunct or anything, it’s just pointless and doesn’t end. I’d not recommend this film to people who like movies with a plot.
MacGruber
Here is what I knew about MacGruber before going to see this film: MacGruber is a character from an SNL skit (I haven’t seen SNL in more than 15 years) and MacGruber is a spoof of MacGyver (I haven’t seen MacGyver in more than 15 years). I wasn’t familiar with the skit and I hadn’t even seen a preview, I’d only heard people say “it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.” Where I come from, that’s usually means I should see this film.
[Side note here: I wondered if my theater ran some sort of special night for whores on Thursdays, but it turns out it was just the opening night for Sex in the City. I still don’t understand why ladies would tramp themselves up for this premier – it’s a safe bet any guy in the theater in line for SITC isn’t going to be interested in a female in the first place, right? Just sayin…]
MacGruber’s wife has been killed at the altar by Dieter Von Kunth (and yes, they say his last name as many times as humanly possible in this film). Kunth is played by who I initially thought, “Wow, Brad Pitt has really let himself go.” Sadly, Kunth is actually played by Val Kilmer, who has also let himself go – but I’ll be honest, is still a good looking guy that makes me miss Willow. Kunth is now an arms dealer and has gotten his hands on a nuclear missile and plans to blow up Washington DC. The US military has asked MacGruber, the world’s top special ops killer, to take down Kunth and get his final revenge.
MacGruber resists at first, but eventually caves and assembles a team of top thugs and then proceeds to accidentally blow them all up. The brass try to pull him off the case but MacGruber sets up another team, including Ryan Phillippe and Kristen Wiig, to go after Kunth. MacGruber isn’t the awesome fighter/mastermind people assume him to be, but he’s got a pretty high opinion of himself, which is hilarious/pathetic at times.
Then… there are the love-making scenes. I’m convinced they were written by the writers of Family Guy, since they went on just long enough to make you uncomfortable and then annoyed, and then it comes around back to being funny again and finally stops. MacGruber has sex with Wiig and then out of guilt goes back to his dead wife’s grave and then has sex with his dead wife’s ghost. It’s ridiculous, but again, somehow ends up being enough to get a laugh.
The funny part for me is that MacGruber doesn’t use guns (but only because he doesn’t know how). He does the MacGyver thing and makes things out of bubblegum and tennis balls that never work, and he also has his patented move – the throat rip. He grabs bad guys’ throats and then rips out their windpipe. It’s hilariously gruesome and I love it.
The movie is filled with all kinds of slapstick prop humor (like shoving celery up their asses) and dressing Wiig up like MacGruber in one scene (where she flips out in a coffee shop and it actually IS funny) and then dresses her (poorly) as one of the criminals. At one point, he ends up using Phillippe as a human shield for a long period of time and somehow it is much funnier than you’d expect. But the film is also filled with occasional brilliant writing. The acting is supposed to make you uncomfortable and isn’t supposed to be good. Plus, Chris Jericho (whom I used to be mistaken for when he had hair) is in the film, so you know it’s quality casting, right? It helps that there are a handful of other wrestlers in the film – no wait, it doesn’t help.
So, despite it being a 90-minute SNL skit, it still ended up getting more laughs than I thought it would… including from me, sadly. At the beginning of the film, there were stupid bastards laughing at everything on the screen, like they were FORCING themselves to laugh at this low-brow humor. For some reason this always annoys me – maybe they’re warming up their laugh muscles for when it ACTUALLY is funny. I’ll laugh if it’s funny, but I won’t laugh just because I paid money to be entertained. About half an hour in and I found myself laughing as well. I guess I’m a stupid bastard now. Sigh…
[Side note here: I wondered if my theater ran some sort of special night for whores on Thursdays, but it turns out it was just the opening night for Sex in the City. I still don’t understand why ladies would tramp themselves up for this premier – it’s a safe bet any guy in the theater in line for SITC isn’t going to be interested in a female in the first place, right? Just sayin…]
MacGruber’s wife has been killed at the altar by Dieter Von Kunth (and yes, they say his last name as many times as humanly possible in this film). Kunth is played by who I initially thought, “Wow, Brad Pitt has really let himself go.” Sadly, Kunth is actually played by Val Kilmer, who has also let himself go – but I’ll be honest, is still a good looking guy that makes me miss Willow. Kunth is now an arms dealer and has gotten his hands on a nuclear missile and plans to blow up Washington DC. The US military has asked MacGruber, the world’s top special ops killer, to take down Kunth and get his final revenge.
MacGruber resists at first, but eventually caves and assembles a team of top thugs and then proceeds to accidentally blow them all up. The brass try to pull him off the case but MacGruber sets up another team, including Ryan Phillippe and Kristen Wiig, to go after Kunth. MacGruber isn’t the awesome fighter/mastermind people assume him to be, but he’s got a pretty high opinion of himself, which is hilarious/pathetic at times.
Then… there are the love-making scenes. I’m convinced they were written by the writers of Family Guy, since they went on just long enough to make you uncomfortable and then annoyed, and then it comes around back to being funny again and finally stops. MacGruber has sex with Wiig and then out of guilt goes back to his dead wife’s grave and then has sex with his dead wife’s ghost. It’s ridiculous, but again, somehow ends up being enough to get a laugh.
The funny part for me is that MacGruber doesn’t use guns (but only because he doesn’t know how). He does the MacGyver thing and makes things out of bubblegum and tennis balls that never work, and he also has his patented move – the throat rip. He grabs bad guys’ throats and then rips out their windpipe. It’s hilariously gruesome and I love it.
The movie is filled with all kinds of slapstick prop humor (like shoving celery up their asses) and dressing Wiig up like MacGruber in one scene (where she flips out in a coffee shop and it actually IS funny) and then dresses her (poorly) as one of the criminals. At one point, he ends up using Phillippe as a human shield for a long period of time and somehow it is much funnier than you’d expect. But the film is also filled with occasional brilliant writing. The acting is supposed to make you uncomfortable and isn’t supposed to be good. Plus, Chris Jericho (whom I used to be mistaken for when he had hair) is in the film, so you know it’s quality casting, right? It helps that there are a handful of other wrestlers in the film – no wait, it doesn’t help.
So, despite it being a 90-minute SNL skit, it still ended up getting more laughs than I thought it would… including from me, sadly. At the beginning of the film, there were stupid bastards laughing at everything on the screen, like they were FORCING themselves to laugh at this low-brow humor. For some reason this always annoys me – maybe they’re warming up their laugh muscles for when it ACTUALLY is funny. I’ll laugh if it’s funny, but I won’t laugh just because I paid money to be entertained. About half an hour in and I found myself laughing as well. I guess I’m a stupid bastard now. Sigh…
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Moon
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this film. I knew it was kind of a space-themed movie, but I wasn’t sure if it was like Aliens or like Event Horizon (my favorite movie of the space-genre). Did it have monsters? Suspense? Lasers? Explosions? Flash-frozen humans that shatter? It doesn’t have any of those things, actually, yet, it’s a decent film.
Moon is set in the not-too-distant future where a company had developed a way to mine energy from the radiation found in moon rock. The company has set up a base on the moon and has manned it with one guy (Sam Bell) who lives up there for three years at a time. He maintains contact with his bosses with a non-live (or delayed) video/audio feed to his bosses and to his wife and family. He records various messages and sends them back and then watches their video feeds when they arrive. He occupies his time with building a model of a town he used to live in from earth and also working out, reading, and watching old television shows.
On board is a service robot (with the cool monotone voice of Kevin Spacey) named Gertie. Gertie takes care of the operations, listens to Sam talk when he needs to vent, and takes care of medical things. It’s a very efficient system. Sam has to go out to one of the giant mining machines to collect the energy capsule and while he’s out there driving on the moon, he crashes his rover into the mining machine. Sam wakes up in the infirmary with Gertie tending him and telling him he’s had an accident while checking on the mining machine. Then things start to get weird. Weird and depressing.
This movie doesn’t have a lot of action in it. I’m pretty sure that’s the point of it all. It’s about a guy stuck on the moon for three years at a time and trying not to go crazy in the meantime. It’s supposed to be long and drawn out and depressing and gloomy and sterile. The more Sam Bell finds out about why he’s here on the moon base, the more he realizes how expendable he is to the company that employs him. I don’t think there’s a moral or a point to this movie, but it was well done and well acted. There aren’t a lot of characters in this movie, so I think once they found one that worked (Sam Rockwell), they just had him do everything. The film is worth seeing, but I realized I was more depressed than I thought afterwards and didn’t talk for like 4 hours. Weird.
Moon is set in the not-too-distant future where a company had developed a way to mine energy from the radiation found in moon rock. The company has set up a base on the moon and has manned it with one guy (Sam Bell) who lives up there for three years at a time. He maintains contact with his bosses with a non-live (or delayed) video/audio feed to his bosses and to his wife and family. He records various messages and sends them back and then watches their video feeds when they arrive. He occupies his time with building a model of a town he used to live in from earth and also working out, reading, and watching old television shows.
On board is a service robot (with the cool monotone voice of Kevin Spacey) named Gertie. Gertie takes care of the operations, listens to Sam talk when he needs to vent, and takes care of medical things. It’s a very efficient system. Sam has to go out to one of the giant mining machines to collect the energy capsule and while he’s out there driving on the moon, he crashes his rover into the mining machine. Sam wakes up in the infirmary with Gertie tending him and telling him he’s had an accident while checking on the mining machine. Then things start to get weird. Weird and depressing.
This movie doesn’t have a lot of action in it. I’m pretty sure that’s the point of it all. It’s about a guy stuck on the moon for three years at a time and trying not to go crazy in the meantime. It’s supposed to be long and drawn out and depressing and gloomy and sterile. The more Sam Bell finds out about why he’s here on the moon base, the more he realizes how expendable he is to the company that employs him. I don’t think there’s a moral or a point to this movie, but it was well done and well acted. There aren’t a lot of characters in this movie, so I think once they found one that worked (Sam Rockwell), they just had him do everything. The film is worth seeing, but I realized I was more depressed than I thought afterwards and didn’t talk for like 4 hours. Weird.
The Losers
The first time I saw a preview for this, I thought I wanted to see it. Then the more reviews I read about this film, the less I wanted to see it. The previews made this seem like an awesome film – so mission accomplished trailer-people. Sadly, the rest-of-the-movie people didn’t come through. When I read it was a bad adaptation of the A-Team, I was intrigued. Sadly, those reviews were pretty spot on.
The film is about a group of military special ops people sent into the rain forest of Bolivia to take out a drug dealer. However, the dealer has a handful of kids on site to make sure they don’t get attacked. The commandos roll into the drug operation, shoot up the bad guys and rescue the kids before an air strike is called in to blow up the whole thing. The special ops people are presumed dead and are given dishonorable everything so their country thinks they had turned into bad guys at the end.
The good guys find some sort of sponsor who is willing to fund a mission to track down and find the person responsible for the blowing up of the children and loss of the teams American identities. They sign on and sneak back into the country with a ton of money and a bunch of guns. The bad guy is a major arms dealer who is building these things called Snukes – or super nukes. These weapons, with the help of some awful CGI, make whole island disappear in the ocean. The bad guy is selling them to the highest bidder and has no problem killing people who get in his way. The “B-Team” ends up finding him and there are all kinds of glass and explosion-filled shootouts.
Where to start…? The acting in this movie is absolutely wretched. Thankfully, I was one of two people in the theater when I saw it (that should tell you something), so we were able to get quite vocal during the film. Lot’s of “COME ON!” and “REALLY!?” and “That doesn’t happen!” happened during this film. What’s worse the the direct tie to the A-Team is the fact that it has an even closer tie to Tropic Thunder. Every character in The Losers has a counterpart in Tropic Thunder. Sad but true. So I found myself thinking of Robert Downey Jr and Ben Stiller way too many times. There was some sort of weak tie to a graphic novel or comic book shoutout in the opening and closing credits, but nothing about the film reminded me of comics at any point. Seemed like a waste if that's what they were going for.
Save yourself the time and money by not seeing this film. It had one good line that I remembered from the preview. That’s one of the few times I laughed – at least when I was supposed to laugh. I laughed at quite a few things the producers of this film didn’t intend. Terrible film.
The film is about a group of military special ops people sent into the rain forest of Bolivia to take out a drug dealer. However, the dealer has a handful of kids on site to make sure they don’t get attacked. The commandos roll into the drug operation, shoot up the bad guys and rescue the kids before an air strike is called in to blow up the whole thing. The special ops people are presumed dead and are given dishonorable everything so their country thinks they had turned into bad guys at the end.
The good guys find some sort of sponsor who is willing to fund a mission to track down and find the person responsible for the blowing up of the children and loss of the teams American identities. They sign on and sneak back into the country with a ton of money and a bunch of guns. The bad guy is a major arms dealer who is building these things called Snukes – or super nukes. These weapons, with the help of some awful CGI, make whole island disappear in the ocean. The bad guy is selling them to the highest bidder and has no problem killing people who get in his way. The “B-Team” ends up finding him and there are all kinds of glass and explosion-filled shootouts.
Where to start…? The acting in this movie is absolutely wretched. Thankfully, I was one of two people in the theater when I saw it (that should tell you something), so we were able to get quite vocal during the film. Lot’s of “COME ON!” and “REALLY!?” and “That doesn’t happen!” happened during this film. What’s worse the the direct tie to the A-Team is the fact that it has an even closer tie to Tropic Thunder. Every character in The Losers has a counterpart in Tropic Thunder. Sad but true. So I found myself thinking of Robert Downey Jr and Ben Stiller way too many times. There was some sort of weak tie to a graphic novel or comic book shoutout in the opening and closing credits, but nothing about the film reminded me of comics at any point. Seemed like a waste if that's what they were going for.
Save yourself the time and money by not seeing this film. It had one good line that I remembered from the preview. That’s one of the few times I laughed – at least when I was supposed to laugh. I laughed at quite a few things the producers of this film didn’t intend. Terrible film.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Sex Drive
A high school kid who’s playing the part of a nerdy kid (if they wanted a real nerdy kid they would have found ME in high school) who has some trouble with girls. He meets a girl on the internet and despite him having a fake photo up, she somehow convinces him to drive halfway across the country to have sex (hence the drive to have sex – aka sex drive).
He and his best friend steal his D-bag brother’s super awesome GTO out of the garage and pick up one of their lady friends and drive to Kentucky. They run into all kinds of problems. They overheat the engine and have to pee in the radiator with the help of the guy that plays Packer of a creepy hitchhiker. They then get picked up by Seth Green playing an Amish guy (actually he’s really good at it). Then they run into Brian Posehn playing a carnie at a county fair.
They have some pretty stupid adventures, including the kid pledging abstinence while rocking a serious erection. Getting thrown in jail, smacking a girl in the face with a lollipop, and sitting in a dentist’s office with a shirtless guy. The nerdy kid has proclaimed his love for the girl that is along for the ride, and she realizes on the trip that he’s right for him. This leads to some tension and the nerdy kid tries to back out. And I’ll be honest, the kid’s d-bag brother is hilarious in this movie. He says the most classic and inappropriate lines. Equally awesome are the pair of hilarious metal guys that say wildly inappropriate sexual things to every girl they see.
This film was the unrated version and the directors have computer generated all kinds of absolutely ridiculous gratuitous nudity. It will be a completely innocuous scene and you’ll see a naked girl walk across the screen. It’s pretty hilarious. There’s also a lot of male frontal nudity, so if you’re squeamish about that, get the rated version. The movie is like one of those American Pie/Superbad/Eurotrip kind of films, but a little more low-brow, if you can believe it. I probably could have slept through a lot of it, but I ended up chuckling through a bunch of it, even the parts where there were balls all over the screen for overly-long periods of time. It’s probably not worth renting, but you might be amused if you’ve got an couple hours to kill – it IS over two hours long… yikes.
He and his best friend steal his D-bag brother’s super awesome GTO out of the garage and pick up one of their lady friends and drive to Kentucky. They run into all kinds of problems. They overheat the engine and have to pee in the radiator with the help of the guy that plays Packer of a creepy hitchhiker. They then get picked up by Seth Green playing an Amish guy (actually he’s really good at it). Then they run into Brian Posehn playing a carnie at a county fair.
They have some pretty stupid adventures, including the kid pledging abstinence while rocking a serious erection. Getting thrown in jail, smacking a girl in the face with a lollipop, and sitting in a dentist’s office with a shirtless guy. The nerdy kid has proclaimed his love for the girl that is along for the ride, and she realizes on the trip that he’s right for him. This leads to some tension and the nerdy kid tries to back out. And I’ll be honest, the kid’s d-bag brother is hilarious in this movie. He says the most classic and inappropriate lines. Equally awesome are the pair of hilarious metal guys that say wildly inappropriate sexual things to every girl they see.
This film was the unrated version and the directors have computer generated all kinds of absolutely ridiculous gratuitous nudity. It will be a completely innocuous scene and you’ll see a naked girl walk across the screen. It’s pretty hilarious. There’s also a lot of male frontal nudity, so if you’re squeamish about that, get the rated version. The movie is like one of those American Pie/Superbad/Eurotrip kind of films, but a little more low-brow, if you can believe it. I probably could have slept through a lot of it, but I ended up chuckling through a bunch of it, even the parts where there were balls all over the screen for overly-long periods of time. It’s probably not worth renting, but you might be amused if you’ve got an couple hours to kill – it IS over two hours long… yikes.
9
I’m not a major fan of animated films – I was probably held back due to my dislike of comics (aka I like girls) – aside from all but a handful of films. I was unsure of this film, but once I saw Crispin Glover was one of the voices, I was sold on it. It’s kind of a post apocalyptic movie about these little machines made from the soul of a scientist before he died.
The scientist made these little steampunk guys by hand and then used some machine to put his soul into each of nine of them. They all end up finding each other after all the humans get gassed and exterminated. The scientist originally had been hired to make a super machine that was going to be the answer to all the world’s problems. But the bad guys somehow took control of it and turned it into an evil machine. The evil machine built more evil machines which soon took over the world (and gassed everything like I said before).
The last little burlap guy (named 9), gets rescued from a robot dog by number 2 after he awakens to find the scientist dead in his lab and a leftover piece that looks important is laying on the floor. Number 2 gets taken away and when the other numbers find 9, they are upset with him for letting 2 get taken. Number 9’s voice is Elijah Wood which actually suits the mannerisms of the character well. There are two mute characters who play librarians who have the answers to fighting the big machine in their repository. The oldest character, 1, is kind of a crotchety old guy who really ends up being a pain in everyone’s ass. The old guy keeps telling the other numbers to give up and that it’s no use trying to fix anything. In fact, he’s the one that sent one of the numbers out to die at the hand of the robot dog. He’s very frustrating.
John C. Reilly plays 5, and ends up being pretty funny. Not in a slap stick way like most of his movies, but in a regular funny guy way. Jennifer Connelly plays 7, who’s like this gung-ho acrobatic martial arts girl who kicks a lot of ass. She’s pretty amusing. And Crispin Glover plays 6, kind of an insane rag doll that just draws pictures of the piece that 9 picked up in the scientist’s lab over and over again.
9 convinces the other dolls to attack the evil machine, even though 1 tries to get them to all wait it out and hope things blow over. They trek out across this barren wasteland of a city to attack the machine in its secret lair. The machine comes to life when 9’s machine piece gets inserted into it (not intended to be dirty, I promise you). The machine begins to make other evil machines again and fights back to the bitter end. While fighting, the machine basically sucks the life out of these rag dolls and they “die”. You forget their little robot creatures and you forget it’s an animated film.
The film is super dark. Even though there’s not a speck of blood in the whole film, these characters get their lives sucked out in front of your eyes. They have emotions and they’re torn between saving themselves and saving each other. The leader, 1, is so frustrating you want to scream. Tim Burton has his hands in a lot of the film, and you can clearly see his influence. However, you are assured regularly that it’s not a Disney film, because it is dark. I mean really DARK. Scary dark and not a lot of uplifting scenes in it. And despite the fact that Crispin Glover’s cinematic brilliance is not highlighted in this movie, I’m going to add this to the handful of animated films I really like. It’s pretty moving and deep for an animated film and I wouldn’t recommend it for kids at all. It is just too depressing and multi-layered. I would, however, recommend it to everyone else. I liked it a lot.
The scientist made these little steampunk guys by hand and then used some machine to put his soul into each of nine of them. They all end up finding each other after all the humans get gassed and exterminated. The scientist originally had been hired to make a super machine that was going to be the answer to all the world’s problems. But the bad guys somehow took control of it and turned it into an evil machine. The evil machine built more evil machines which soon took over the world (and gassed everything like I said before).
The last little burlap guy (named 9), gets rescued from a robot dog by number 2 after he awakens to find the scientist dead in his lab and a leftover piece that looks important is laying on the floor. Number 2 gets taken away and when the other numbers find 9, they are upset with him for letting 2 get taken. Number 9’s voice is Elijah Wood which actually suits the mannerisms of the character well. There are two mute characters who play librarians who have the answers to fighting the big machine in their repository. The oldest character, 1, is kind of a crotchety old guy who really ends up being a pain in everyone’s ass. The old guy keeps telling the other numbers to give up and that it’s no use trying to fix anything. In fact, he’s the one that sent one of the numbers out to die at the hand of the robot dog. He’s very frustrating.
John C. Reilly plays 5, and ends up being pretty funny. Not in a slap stick way like most of his movies, but in a regular funny guy way. Jennifer Connelly plays 7, who’s like this gung-ho acrobatic martial arts girl who kicks a lot of ass. She’s pretty amusing. And Crispin Glover plays 6, kind of an insane rag doll that just draws pictures of the piece that 9 picked up in the scientist’s lab over and over again.
9 convinces the other dolls to attack the evil machine, even though 1 tries to get them to all wait it out and hope things blow over. They trek out across this barren wasteland of a city to attack the machine in its secret lair. The machine comes to life when 9’s machine piece gets inserted into it (not intended to be dirty, I promise you). The machine begins to make other evil machines again and fights back to the bitter end. While fighting, the machine basically sucks the life out of these rag dolls and they “die”. You forget their little robot creatures and you forget it’s an animated film.
The film is super dark. Even though there’s not a speck of blood in the whole film, these characters get their lives sucked out in front of your eyes. They have emotions and they’re torn between saving themselves and saving each other. The leader, 1, is so frustrating you want to scream. Tim Burton has his hands in a lot of the film, and you can clearly see his influence. However, you are assured regularly that it’s not a Disney film, because it is dark. I mean really DARK. Scary dark and not a lot of uplifting scenes in it. And despite the fact that Crispin Glover’s cinematic brilliance is not highlighted in this movie, I’m going to add this to the handful of animated films I really like. It’s pretty moving and deep for an animated film and I wouldn’t recommend it for kids at all. It is just too depressing and multi-layered. I would, however, recommend it to everyone else. I liked it a lot.
Happy Times
Happy Times (or Xingfu Shiguang) is a Chinese film about an aging bachelor, Zhao, who’s pretty much desperate to find a wife to take care of him in his old age. He meets up with this rather rotund lady who seems all sweet and jolly and they talk about getting married. Zhao goes over to her house and the façade starts to crumble a little bit with the lady, due to the way she treats her equally rotund kid and this blind girl who’s the lady has locked in her room most of the day.
Zhao is working with a friend to set up what I will simply call a “sex bus” – it’s an abandoned bus in a public park that they have fixed up so people can pay them to have sex inside. Zhao convinces the lady that he’s in the hotel business and she comes up with the brilliant idea of having the blind girl work for Zhao at the hotel. When he takes her to the bus, it’s being removed and he tells the blind girl that they’re doing renovations. During this time, there are some sensitive moments when Zhao begins to realize the girl isn’t happy in the home.
He solicits the help of his friends to build a fake massage parlor (a legit one) so the girl can work during the day. Zhao’s friends all pitch in an set up a fake room with fake street noise and fake customers, until they all go broke paying this young girl tips for the massages. The girl figures it all out but plays along with when she realizes what Zhao has gone through to make sure she’s taken care of. Zhao meanwhile tries to maintain contact with the less- and less-friendly Rubenesque woman and when they eventually meet up, she’s already found another guy to marry who does have money. She ends up being a really nasty person and it’s unfortunate, since I really liked her at the beginning of the movie.
The film is amazingly touching. The characters are very well portrayed, and not just the main characters – the friends of Zhao are also super cute and helpful and will do anything for Zhao or this girl. Zhao is just a cute old man who gets taken advantage of, but he’s really trying to make things work – for the woman at first, and then for the young girl he’s taken under his wing. I would recommend the heck out of this movie, but it’s not all flowers and rainbows. It’s really dark and doesn’t end up in a happy place. As long as you’re ok with that, I really think you’ll like it. It’s very well written, shot, and acted. What’s not to like?
Zhao is working with a friend to set up what I will simply call a “sex bus” – it’s an abandoned bus in a public park that they have fixed up so people can pay them to have sex inside. Zhao convinces the lady that he’s in the hotel business and she comes up with the brilliant idea of having the blind girl work for Zhao at the hotel. When he takes her to the bus, it’s being removed and he tells the blind girl that they’re doing renovations. During this time, there are some sensitive moments when Zhao begins to realize the girl isn’t happy in the home.
He solicits the help of his friends to build a fake massage parlor (a legit one) so the girl can work during the day. Zhao’s friends all pitch in an set up a fake room with fake street noise and fake customers, until they all go broke paying this young girl tips for the massages. The girl figures it all out but plays along with when she realizes what Zhao has gone through to make sure she’s taken care of. Zhao meanwhile tries to maintain contact with the less- and less-friendly Rubenesque woman and when they eventually meet up, she’s already found another guy to marry who does have money. She ends up being a really nasty person and it’s unfortunate, since I really liked her at the beginning of the movie.
The film is amazingly touching. The characters are very well portrayed, and not just the main characters – the friends of Zhao are also super cute and helpful and will do anything for Zhao or this girl. Zhao is just a cute old man who gets taken advantage of, but he’s really trying to make things work – for the woman at first, and then for the young girl he’s taken under his wing. I would recommend the heck out of this movie, but it’s not all flowers and rainbows. It’s really dark and doesn’t end up in a happy place. As long as you’re ok with that, I really think you’ll like it. It’s very well written, shot, and acted. What’s not to like?
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Date Night
I hadn’t heard much good about this movie, so when M.Giant asked if I was up for a movie and suggested it, I reluctantly caved and agreed to do it. I do like both Steve Carell and Tina Fey, so I figured at least I’d be entertained by them. The movie is about a married couple living in New Jersey and they have a pretty boring and routine life together. They’re comfortable but maybe not happy.
Their friends mention they are getting a divorce because they discovered they were just really good roommates, rather than in love with each other. Both Carell and Fey then decided they were going to spice up their lives. They head into NYC for a fancy dinner. They don’t have reservations, but they take someone’s reservation that is a no-show. These two thugs show up to their table and have them go into the alley with them. They’ve been mistaken for the Triplehorns – the people who didn’t show up for dinner. The actual Triplehorns have photos and documents on a flash drive that these thugs want back.
The bad guys take them to central park to find this flash drive that neither Carell nor Fey know where it is. They escape the bad guys and enlist the help of shirtless Marky Mark to help them track down the Triplehorns. Marky Mark is a black ops government agent, so he’s got some skills. The original two thugs (who turn out to be crooked cops) turn up at Marky Mark’s house, he sends the couple out the garage in one of his cars (an amazing Audi R8 – super hot car). There’s a slightly far-fetched car chase in NYC where they destroy the beautiful car. There’s all kinds of shenanigans that happen between Carell and Fey during the night, including getting the flash drive and then losing it in the East River.
While I don’t think this film was hilarious or funny in most places, it was decent and I did laugh out loud at a couple of points. There were some great characters with Ray Liotta and William Fichtner playing bad guys, Mila Kunis playing a stripper, Common playing a crooked cop, and Will i Am playing himself. The acting was fine in this movie and Carell and Fey really are masters of improvising lines, as shown in the outtakes during the final credits. It’s probably not worth running to the theaters to see this film, but it’s a decent film overall. It’s just soooo far-fetched that you couldn’t really believe any of it was happening. In the words of M.Giant, “It’s a good thing they got Tina Fey and Steve Carell to act in this film…”
Their friends mention they are getting a divorce because they discovered they were just really good roommates, rather than in love with each other. Both Carell and Fey then decided they were going to spice up their lives. They head into NYC for a fancy dinner. They don’t have reservations, but they take someone’s reservation that is a no-show. These two thugs show up to their table and have them go into the alley with them. They’ve been mistaken for the Triplehorns – the people who didn’t show up for dinner. The actual Triplehorns have photos and documents on a flash drive that these thugs want back.
The bad guys take them to central park to find this flash drive that neither Carell nor Fey know where it is. They escape the bad guys and enlist the help of shirtless Marky Mark to help them track down the Triplehorns. Marky Mark is a black ops government agent, so he’s got some skills. The original two thugs (who turn out to be crooked cops) turn up at Marky Mark’s house, he sends the couple out the garage in one of his cars (an amazing Audi R8 – super hot car). There’s a slightly far-fetched car chase in NYC where they destroy the beautiful car. There’s all kinds of shenanigans that happen between Carell and Fey during the night, including getting the flash drive and then losing it in the East River.
While I don’t think this film was hilarious or funny in most places, it was decent and I did laugh out loud at a couple of points. There were some great characters with Ray Liotta and William Fichtner playing bad guys, Mila Kunis playing a stripper, Common playing a crooked cop, and Will i Am playing himself. The acting was fine in this movie and Carell and Fey really are masters of improvising lines, as shown in the outtakes during the final credits. It’s probably not worth running to the theaters to see this film, but it’s a decent film overall. It’s just soooo far-fetched that you couldn’t really believe any of it was happening. In the words of M.Giant, “It’s a good thing they got Tina Fey and Steve Carell to act in this film…”
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Clash of the Titans
Against my better judgment, I went to see Clash of the Titans with my friend M.Giant. I knew there was going to be craploads of CGI in the film, and yet somehow he convinced me I needed to see it. I think he just wanted to see me have an aneurysm in the theater or go postal on some people. I even opted to NOT drink in the parking lot as originally planned, mostly so I would remember some of what I had seen.
For those that don’t know, it’s a remake of a film from long ago, which I grew up watching and would still watch over and over again. The original isn’t the greatest film of all time, but for a kid, it was amazing – plus, I’ll be the first to admit the Original Clash of the Titans is the only reason I passed the Mythology section of Art History in my undergrad – sad but true. Perseus is the son of Zeus. Zeus impregnated a human and her husband had them both cast into the ocean. Perseus was raised by a fisherman and then set out on his own when the fisherman was killed by one of the gods who was having a bad day.
Perseus ends up in Argos where the angry god comes and threatens the entire city with destruction unless they sacrifice their princess. They have like 10 days to decide. This gives Perseus enough time to head out and find a way to kill the Kracken – the giant monster that’s going to destroy the city. He fights all manner of creatures and beasts and then has to make it back in time to fight the Kracken.
Now I’m going to go off, but I’ll keep it to a minimum if possible.
I hated 87% of the computer imaging in this movie. There were a handful of scenes that I thought were well done. But for the most part, I was either seriously annoyed or flat out enraged. Medusa, the gorgon with snake hair, was entirely made by the computer and 100% not believable, especially her asinine facial expressions. In fact, less believable then the stop action version in the original movie. Stupid. The Kracken itself was large enough that they could take some liberties, but at least THAT creature was believable. Not so much with the flying horses – complete shite. Dessert Scorpions? Ridiculous and campy when the dessert people ride them across the dessert.
The costume on Zeus was probably one of the worst parts. His beard looked like they spirit gummed yarn to his face. Couldn’t they have CGI’d a better beard on Liam Neeson? And I’m going to say something here that might ruin Liam Neeson for the rest of your life. I get Liam Neeson and Ed O’Neil mixed up all the time. This movie I think made it worse since Neeson was so unbelievable. So now, you’ll be picturing Al Bunde every time you see Neeson now – mission accomplished. Additionally, all of the bad guy creatures had a similar look to them – they all looked like their face was pulled down over their missing eyes. I’m not sure if the monster people just ran out of ideas and just went with something they were confident with or what, but they could have mixed it up a bit. Or heck, for that matter, make up some stupid crap and throw it in a computer and make it less believable.
They gave a shot out to Bubo, the brass owl in the original, but then put him back in a box and didn’t utilize him in his crucial role he had in the original. However, they made up for it by having a smoking hot Gemma Arterton playing Io. Yes, her hair style, make up, and clothing changed from scene to scene, but that didn’t hurt her at all. I’m a fan. SO much of the acting was community theater-level or worse that I couldn’t get past a lot of it. Just didn’t buy the facial expressions of the fighters nor the delivery of lines. (Keep in mind, I love B-movies and don’t expect all that much from actors – that’s how bad this was.)
To sum this film up – I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Go see the original, even with the stop-action effects they have. I think you’ll be less angry this way. I know I am. I even waited until the end of the credits to find out who did all the awful CGI in the film. However, there were like 5 CGI production companies, so I don’t even know who to be angry with. This movie was a complete waste of time and money in my opinion.
For those that don’t know, it’s a remake of a film from long ago, which I grew up watching and would still watch over and over again. The original isn’t the greatest film of all time, but for a kid, it was amazing – plus, I’ll be the first to admit the Original Clash of the Titans is the only reason I passed the Mythology section of Art History in my undergrad – sad but true. Perseus is the son of Zeus. Zeus impregnated a human and her husband had them both cast into the ocean. Perseus was raised by a fisherman and then set out on his own when the fisherman was killed by one of the gods who was having a bad day.
Perseus ends up in Argos where the angry god comes and threatens the entire city with destruction unless they sacrifice their princess. They have like 10 days to decide. This gives Perseus enough time to head out and find a way to kill the Kracken – the giant monster that’s going to destroy the city. He fights all manner of creatures and beasts and then has to make it back in time to fight the Kracken.
Now I’m going to go off, but I’ll keep it to a minimum if possible.
I hated 87% of the computer imaging in this movie. There were a handful of scenes that I thought were well done. But for the most part, I was either seriously annoyed or flat out enraged. Medusa, the gorgon with snake hair, was entirely made by the computer and 100% not believable, especially her asinine facial expressions. In fact, less believable then the stop action version in the original movie. Stupid. The Kracken itself was large enough that they could take some liberties, but at least THAT creature was believable. Not so much with the flying horses – complete shite. Dessert Scorpions? Ridiculous and campy when the dessert people ride them across the dessert.
The costume on Zeus was probably one of the worst parts. His beard looked like they spirit gummed yarn to his face. Couldn’t they have CGI’d a better beard on Liam Neeson? And I’m going to say something here that might ruin Liam Neeson for the rest of your life. I get Liam Neeson and Ed O’Neil mixed up all the time. This movie I think made it worse since Neeson was so unbelievable. So now, you’ll be picturing Al Bunde every time you see Neeson now – mission accomplished. Additionally, all of the bad guy creatures had a similar look to them – they all looked like their face was pulled down over their missing eyes. I’m not sure if the monster people just ran out of ideas and just went with something they were confident with or what, but they could have mixed it up a bit. Or heck, for that matter, make up some stupid crap and throw it in a computer and make it less believable.
They gave a shot out to Bubo, the brass owl in the original, but then put him back in a box and didn’t utilize him in his crucial role he had in the original. However, they made up for it by having a smoking hot Gemma Arterton playing Io. Yes, her hair style, make up, and clothing changed from scene to scene, but that didn’t hurt her at all. I’m a fan. SO much of the acting was community theater-level or worse that I couldn’t get past a lot of it. Just didn’t buy the facial expressions of the fighters nor the delivery of lines. (Keep in mind, I love B-movies and don’t expect all that much from actors – that’s how bad this was.)
To sum this film up – I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Go see the original, even with the stop-action effects they have. I think you’ll be less angry this way. I know I am. I even waited until the end of the credits to find out who did all the awful CGI in the film. However, there were like 5 CGI production companies, so I don’t even know who to be angry with. This movie was a complete waste of time and money in my opinion.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Alice in Wonderland (3D)
While not quite the same story as most of us remember from our childhood, this Tim Burton film sees Alice back in Wonderland after 10-12 years when she’s 19. Alice gets invited to a really large garden party where the surprise of the day is that this stuffy ginger boy is going to propose to her.
Alice has been seeing what she thinks is a rabbit all day and when the ginger finally proposes, she says she needs time to think. After chasing the rabbit, she falls in a hole and goes to Wonderland. When she arrives, the characters we all know (Cheshire cat, Tweedle-Dee, Tweedle-Dum, etc.) don’t recognize her and are unsure if she is the same Alice as before. The Red Queen’s men (or cards, rather) show up, led by Crispin Glover and a giant attack dog – a Bandersnatch (which is now my new favorite word) and capture some of them. Alice escapes and runs into the Mad Hatter (played by Johnny Depp) who gets captured while trying to protect her from the Red Queen’s men.
When Alice shows up at the Red Queen’s palace, she says her name is “UM” and befriends the queen. There’s all the “off with their heads!” yelling, as you’d expect from the previous story, but eventually the Red Queen and her men find out she’s the Alice that’s been sent to kill the queen’s champion – the Jabberwocky. Alice is trying to get the Vorpal sword which is the only thing that can kill a Jabberwocky, so it’s up to Alice to find and free the well-protected sword. There’s an epic battle at the end of the film between the White Queen and the Red Queen to determine who should hold the crown.
As many of you know, I loathe CGI. This movie is sort of an exception since I liked what they did with CGI about 40-50%. I especially liked what the director TRIED to do with CGI. For example, the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) had an enormous head which I absolutely loved and totally bought 100% – and sadly, found strangely arousing. But then Crispin Glover’s character had Crispin’s head and a tall, skinny, and awkward CGI body. WHY?!?! Isn’t Crispin Glover tall, skinny, and awkward? YES! Another fun and cool thing was Johnny Depp’s eyes. Just his eyes were CGI’d – and totally believable and realistic. I buy it. But then some of the talking animal stuff was absolute bullshit and hokey. Almost all of the landscape and background stuff the CGI people did was exquisite though – I loved that part. Either I’m becoming numb to CGI now or they’re just getting better at it.
Secondly, I saw the 3D version of this film, just to make sure I got ALL the awesomeness. And truly, they did an amazing job with the 3D aspect of the film – about 75% of the time. Lots of cool visuals with things flying at the camera and very cool shots where you could definitely see the depth of the shots. Then they’d computer-generate some dumb-ass flying rocking horse fighting a sea horse or something and it would completely ruin the illusion. During the scene where Alice fell into the hole to get to Wonderland, there were ridiculous CGI things happening that just angered me – the falling part was cool and you felt like you were falling as well, then you’d see something that made you yell “Come on!” and then you’d just get angry (or maybe that’s just me. Hahaha).
I loved the little things that happened in this movie. For example, the Red Queen has animals holding all of the furniture and fixtures around the palace. Monkeys are holding candelabras and desks, pigs are underneath chairs, walking fish are serving drinks, frogs are butlers, and flamingos and porcupines are croquet mallets and balls. Very imaginative and mostly well-depicted with CGI. I loved the fact that they explain that Alice had been wrong all along calling it Wonderland instead of Underland – which is actually what it is called. I loved the voices playing the CGI animals and people. Alan Rickman (Snape) played the opium-smoking caterpillar, Stephen Fry played the Cheshire Cat (who was awesome), I love Crispin Glover, Anne Hathaway as a hilariously aloof White Queen, and one of my favorite actors – Matt Lucas playing both Tweedle-Dum AND Tweedle-Dee (it took me forever to realize it was him playing both parts and arguing with himself hilariously – I LOVED these guys, especially because they almost looked like Matt Lucas).
There is, oddly, lots of eye-gouging in this movie. Multiple characters get their eyes plucked out in this film, so at least be ready for it. None of it is actually bloody and it always ends up being sort-of comical, but it’s still people and animals getting their eyes poked. Weird. And also look for the woman with the shelf-boobs on the Red Queen’s court – they’re awesomely hilarious and only in one scene where she catches Crispin Glover putting the make on Alice, even though he and the queen are an item. Finally, when you put dancing in my movies, I’m going to get mad. Sorry. There was ridiculous AND computer-enhanced dancing in this film that was 1000% unnecessary and infuriating. What a waste of the movie goers time – thankfully, it was only like two scenes.
Overall, I thought this film was really well done and pretty entertaining. It is a great spin on the original story and doesn’t try to copy it for the most part. I was annoyed with the CGI, but I knew I would be. Despite the oddly used CGI and ridiculous dance scenes, there were enough cool CGI things and fun parts (and 3D parts) that I really enjoyed the film. Go see this one with friends or a significant other. You’ll be entertained, fo sho.
Alice has been seeing what she thinks is a rabbit all day and when the ginger finally proposes, she says she needs time to think. After chasing the rabbit, she falls in a hole and goes to Wonderland. When she arrives, the characters we all know (Cheshire cat, Tweedle-Dee, Tweedle-Dum, etc.) don’t recognize her and are unsure if she is the same Alice as before. The Red Queen’s men (or cards, rather) show up, led by Crispin Glover and a giant attack dog – a Bandersnatch (which is now my new favorite word) and capture some of them. Alice escapes and runs into the Mad Hatter (played by Johnny Depp) who gets captured while trying to protect her from the Red Queen’s men.
When Alice shows up at the Red Queen’s palace, she says her name is “UM” and befriends the queen. There’s all the “off with their heads!” yelling, as you’d expect from the previous story, but eventually the Red Queen and her men find out she’s the Alice that’s been sent to kill the queen’s champion – the Jabberwocky. Alice is trying to get the Vorpal sword which is the only thing that can kill a Jabberwocky, so it’s up to Alice to find and free the well-protected sword. There’s an epic battle at the end of the film between the White Queen and the Red Queen to determine who should hold the crown.
As many of you know, I loathe CGI. This movie is sort of an exception since I liked what they did with CGI about 40-50%. I especially liked what the director TRIED to do with CGI. For example, the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) had an enormous head which I absolutely loved and totally bought 100% – and sadly, found strangely arousing. But then Crispin Glover’s character had Crispin’s head and a tall, skinny, and awkward CGI body. WHY?!?! Isn’t Crispin Glover tall, skinny, and awkward? YES! Another fun and cool thing was Johnny Depp’s eyes. Just his eyes were CGI’d – and totally believable and realistic. I buy it. But then some of the talking animal stuff was absolute bullshit and hokey. Almost all of the landscape and background stuff the CGI people did was exquisite though – I loved that part. Either I’m becoming numb to CGI now or they’re just getting better at it.
Secondly, I saw the 3D version of this film, just to make sure I got ALL the awesomeness. And truly, they did an amazing job with the 3D aspect of the film – about 75% of the time. Lots of cool visuals with things flying at the camera and very cool shots where you could definitely see the depth of the shots. Then they’d computer-generate some dumb-ass flying rocking horse fighting a sea horse or something and it would completely ruin the illusion. During the scene where Alice fell into the hole to get to Wonderland, there were ridiculous CGI things happening that just angered me – the falling part was cool and you felt like you were falling as well, then you’d see something that made you yell “Come on!” and then you’d just get angry (or maybe that’s just me. Hahaha).
I loved the little things that happened in this movie. For example, the Red Queen has animals holding all of the furniture and fixtures around the palace. Monkeys are holding candelabras and desks, pigs are underneath chairs, walking fish are serving drinks, frogs are butlers, and flamingos and porcupines are croquet mallets and balls. Very imaginative and mostly well-depicted with CGI. I loved the fact that they explain that Alice had been wrong all along calling it Wonderland instead of Underland – which is actually what it is called. I loved the voices playing the CGI animals and people. Alan Rickman (Snape) played the opium-smoking caterpillar, Stephen Fry played the Cheshire Cat (who was awesome), I love Crispin Glover, Anne Hathaway as a hilariously aloof White Queen, and one of my favorite actors – Matt Lucas playing both Tweedle-Dum AND Tweedle-Dee (it took me forever to realize it was him playing both parts and arguing with himself hilariously – I LOVED these guys, especially because they almost looked like Matt Lucas).
There is, oddly, lots of eye-gouging in this movie. Multiple characters get their eyes plucked out in this film, so at least be ready for it. None of it is actually bloody and it always ends up being sort-of comical, but it’s still people and animals getting their eyes poked. Weird. And also look for the woman with the shelf-boobs on the Red Queen’s court – they’re awesomely hilarious and only in one scene where she catches Crispin Glover putting the make on Alice, even though he and the queen are an item. Finally, when you put dancing in my movies, I’m going to get mad. Sorry. There was ridiculous AND computer-enhanced dancing in this film that was 1000% unnecessary and infuriating. What a waste of the movie goers time – thankfully, it was only like two scenes.
Overall, I thought this film was really well done and pretty entertaining. It is a great spin on the original story and doesn’t try to copy it for the most part. I was annoyed with the CGI, but I knew I would be. Despite the oddly used CGI and ridiculous dance scenes, there were enough cool CGI things and fun parts (and 3D parts) that I really enjoyed the film. Go see this one with friends or a significant other. You’ll be entertained, fo sho.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Salò o le 120 gionate di Sodoma (Salo)
This Italian film from 1975 takes place during the Nazi era of Italy’s past. The film starts out with some aristocrats signing some sort of document. Turns out they’ve all agreed to marry each other’s daughter to make some sort of unbreakable pact between them all. A group of gentlemen round up a handful of teenage hoodlum boys and talk about deflowering them, though I’m not sure that’s what they mean. Then a group of men round up a group of girls and the girls are forced to strip in front of a panel of guys who are judging her.
The children are taken to a mansion in the countryside where they are forced to “perform” for the men – both boys and girls. Apparently, the “instructors” there are training them all to become whores. The trainees are humiliated and beaten and sexually abused for the pleasure of this group of aristocrats. They are forced to do pretty awful things, including a banquet of excrement. Yeah, really. The woman who plays the storyteller is pretty creepy as are every one of the adult actors in the film – many of them are recanting sexual stories (which apparently are taken from Marquis de Sade and other erotic authors). The big shots decide to have a contest to see which child (girl or boy) has the best ass, and the winner of the contest gets the grand prize of being killed. In fact, the aristocrats get off on watching the children being tortured and murdered in gruesome ways.
Once again, the Italians have succeeded in making me say “WTF? Do these things really happen in Italy?” I have asked this question soooooo many times before, I’m beginning to believe it. This film, despite containing about 90% nudity, is pretty uncomfortable to watch. It’s disgusting and is intended to horrify viewers. If you are into graphic and violent sex movies, this film is for you. If you are not, then I would steer VERY clear of this film. It’s not a pretty film and I’d be surprised if you made it through the first 20 minutes of the film, honestly. Apparently, this film has a few different versions with some very rare scenes cut out. If found with all of the scenes, this DVD is one of the most expensive DVDs known to collectors (thank you IMDB). Still not sure if I’d track it down though. That’s just me.
The children are taken to a mansion in the countryside where they are forced to “perform” for the men – both boys and girls. Apparently, the “instructors” there are training them all to become whores. The trainees are humiliated and beaten and sexually abused for the pleasure of this group of aristocrats. They are forced to do pretty awful things, including a banquet of excrement. Yeah, really. The woman who plays the storyteller is pretty creepy as are every one of the adult actors in the film – many of them are recanting sexual stories (which apparently are taken from Marquis de Sade and other erotic authors). The big shots decide to have a contest to see which child (girl or boy) has the best ass, and the winner of the contest gets the grand prize of being killed. In fact, the aristocrats get off on watching the children being tortured and murdered in gruesome ways.
Once again, the Italians have succeeded in making me say “WTF? Do these things really happen in Italy?” I have asked this question soooooo many times before, I’m beginning to believe it. This film, despite containing about 90% nudity, is pretty uncomfortable to watch. It’s disgusting and is intended to horrify viewers. If you are into graphic and violent sex movies, this film is for you. If you are not, then I would steer VERY clear of this film. It’s not a pretty film and I’d be surprised if you made it through the first 20 minutes of the film, honestly. Apparently, this film has a few different versions with some very rare scenes cut out. If found with all of the scenes, this DVD is one of the most expensive DVDs known to collectors (thank you IMDB). Still not sure if I’d track it down though. That’s just me.
Whip It
Being a big fan of roller derby, I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to see this film. Sad, but true. This film is kind of an exaggerated expose drama on women’s banked-track roller derby in Austin, Texas. A young girl named Bliss, Ellen Page (from Juno fame), lives with her parents in a rural town. Her mother keeps signing her up for beauty pageants with her little sister, but Bliss just wants to experience life. She works at a local diner with her hot friend Pash, played by Alia Shawkat, and their friend Birdman. Bliss runs into some roller girls while buying new clothes with her mother and grabs one of their flyers. She sneaks away with Pash to go watch derby and falls in love with it (like you do).
Bliss shows up for try-outs and makes the team, despite being underage for the league. While her parents think she’s taking an SAT class, Bliss is practicing with the team becoming a phenom. There are after-parties where there’s a lot of drinking and sex and Bliss and Pash get caught up in it, resulting in Bliss getting a boyfriend from a band and Pash getting arrested for underage drinking. Bliss’ parents find out about the roller derby and freak out on her. However, her father watches some videos online of his daughter and realizes that a) this sport is awesome and b) his daughter is really good at this sport. However, the championship bout is the same night as this major pageant, so there’s a pretty major problem.
I like that the basic rules of derby are explained in this film. Yes, some of the rules are outdated and there are serious penalties (punching, tripping, tackling, fighting) that are not called. The acting by Ellen Page, Alia Shawkat, Marcia Gay Harden, and Daniel Stern (probably one of his best acting roles ever, to be honest) is REALLY good. However, the rest of the actors have a lot of unbelievable moments.
I will be the first to say that I LOATHE Drew Barrymore and the fact that she plays a completely unbelievable idiot in this film only furthers my rage at having to see her on a screen. I applaud her for making this film, but I humbly ask that she hang up her acting hat so I don’t have to scream at her on the screen any more. The film is really innovative, especially since there really hasn’t a big Hollywood film about roller derby. However, the film itself really wasn’t phenomenal, especially due to the acting and the fact that the film took all of the real athleticism out of a sport that I love. It’s probably good for the sport that more people have been exposed to it and now know some of how the game is played, but I’m worried people will get the wrong impression of what Is an actual sport. (And for the record, it is completely accidental that I’ve been seeing everything Alia Shawkat has been in recently. Happy to do so, but still accidental.)
Bliss shows up for try-outs and makes the team, despite being underage for the league. While her parents think she’s taking an SAT class, Bliss is practicing with the team becoming a phenom. There are after-parties where there’s a lot of drinking and sex and Bliss and Pash get caught up in it, resulting in Bliss getting a boyfriend from a band and Pash getting arrested for underage drinking. Bliss’ parents find out about the roller derby and freak out on her. However, her father watches some videos online of his daughter and realizes that a) this sport is awesome and b) his daughter is really good at this sport. However, the championship bout is the same night as this major pageant, so there’s a pretty major problem.
I like that the basic rules of derby are explained in this film. Yes, some of the rules are outdated and there are serious penalties (punching, tripping, tackling, fighting) that are not called. The acting by Ellen Page, Alia Shawkat, Marcia Gay Harden, and Daniel Stern (probably one of his best acting roles ever, to be honest) is REALLY good. However, the rest of the actors have a lot of unbelievable moments.
I will be the first to say that I LOATHE Drew Barrymore and the fact that she plays a completely unbelievable idiot in this film only furthers my rage at having to see her on a screen. I applaud her for making this film, but I humbly ask that she hang up her acting hat so I don’t have to scream at her on the screen any more. The film is really innovative, especially since there really hasn’t a big Hollywood film about roller derby. However, the film itself really wasn’t phenomenal, especially due to the acting and the fact that the film took all of the real athleticism out of a sport that I love. It’s probably good for the sport that more people have been exposed to it and now know some of how the game is played, but I’m worried people will get the wrong impression of what Is an actual sport. (And for the record, it is completely accidental that I’ve been seeing everything Alia Shawkat has been in recently. Happy to do so, but still accidental.)
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Transsiberian
In Transsiberian, Woody Harrelson and his wife (Emily Mortimer) are leaving a missions trip in China and taking the Transsiberian express train across China and Russia to see the countryside, such as it is. The couple gets another couple as cabinmates who are a bit creepy.
Pineapple Express
This film starts with a military-sponsored marijuana experiment which gets shut down (which then doesn’t end up having anything to do with the rest of the film at all). Then it cuts to Seth Rogan driving around wearing various costumes, serving people subpoenas. He’s dating a girl from high school and when he goes to visit her between classes he argues with one of her teachers. She’s trying to get him to meet her parents for dinner but since he has a job, he’s having trouble working out the timing.
He drives over to his dealer’s house and they have a very in-depth weed conversation and smoke some Pineapple Express before Seth goes back to work. Seth heads back to work and while smoking weed in the car, a cop pulls up behind him. The cop goes into the house he’s staking out and Seth sees a bunch of people getting shot up. He freaks and drives away and goes back to his drug dealer’s house. They both get paranoid and freak out and leave, but some of the bad guys show up at the dealer’s house to wait for him. Since the two are paranoid, they smash their phones to bit so they can’t be tracked and then when they wake up 18 hours later, they’re screwed. Seth makes it to his girlfriend’s parent’s house and tries to get them to run for it.
More zany adventures happen and it’s basically a ridiculous end to what wasn’t a great movie to begin with. The film is really long and even though, there are some pretty hilarious scenes, it really doesn’t stand up to any sort of scrutiny at all. It was very long (over two hours) and it seemed to drag quite a bit. I hoped this film would end a couple of times. The dialog and plot are pretty basic, even for a drug movie, and there’s a lot of stuff that just plain isn’t believable in it (then again, it’s a drug movie). I was a tad let down by this movie, but I’ve never been a fan of the genre, so take that with a grain of salt. If you liked Supertroopers or a lot of other Seth Rogan stuff, you might like this film. But I have heard people say they’d only watch this film again if they themselves were baked out of their mind. That should speak for itself.
He drives over to his dealer’s house and they have a very in-depth weed conversation and smoke some Pineapple Express before Seth goes back to work. Seth heads back to work and while smoking weed in the car, a cop pulls up behind him. The cop goes into the house he’s staking out and Seth sees a bunch of people getting shot up. He freaks and drives away and goes back to his drug dealer’s house. They both get paranoid and freak out and leave, but some of the bad guys show up at the dealer’s house to wait for him. Since the two are paranoid, they smash their phones to bit so they can’t be tracked and then when they wake up 18 hours later, they’re screwed. Seth makes it to his girlfriend’s parent’s house and tries to get them to run for it.
More zany adventures happen and it’s basically a ridiculous end to what wasn’t a great movie to begin with. The film is really long and even though, there are some pretty hilarious scenes, it really doesn’t stand up to any sort of scrutiny at all. It was very long (over two hours) and it seemed to drag quite a bit. I hoped this film would end a couple of times. The dialog and plot are pretty basic, even for a drug movie, and there’s a lot of stuff that just plain isn’t believable in it (then again, it’s a drug movie). I was a tad let down by this movie, but I’ve never been a fan of the genre, so take that with a grain of salt. If you liked Supertroopers or a lot of other Seth Rogan stuff, you might like this film. But I have heard people say they’d only watch this film again if they themselves were baked out of their mind. That should speak for itself.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Zombieland
This is a zombie film with the running-crazy zombies rather than the undead crawling up out of their graves kind of zombies. It stars Woody Harrelson, whom I personally have blacklisted from film since his brilliant performance on Cheers, back in the day. This movie changed my mind though.
The film starts after the zombies have already taken over the country (possibly world, but it’s not really discussed). This young kid (Columbus) who’s playing the part of Michael Cera (let’s just be honest, he IS) is writing down a list of rules he’s compiling which help him to stay alive during this zombie apocalypse. It’s pretty common-sense items, so it all makes sense. He runs into Woody Harrelson – or Tallahassee – and they agree to stick together for a very short while, as long as it doesn’t interfere with Tallahassee’s search for Twinkies (yes,really).
Tallahassee plays a bad ass gun slinger who is very good at killing zombies. They come across these two girls who trick the boys into surrendering their vehicle and guns to them and despite the fact the girls get away, they keep running into each other throughout the duration of the movie. Which also means Columbus falls in love with one of the girls. They are trying to get back to an amusement park in Hollywood which they believe is zombie-free. The group runs into Bill Murray along the way and end up crashing at his house. The Bill Murray scenes are a little campy, but not too terrible. I heard a lot of people had issue with that particular part of the film, but it was passable. The girls steal the car again and head to the amusement park. It is zombie-free, until they flip on all the lights and rides and draw the attention of thousands of zombies. I won’t ruin the ending for you, but it’s probably about what you’d think it would be.
Overall, I thought this movie was really well made. The special effects, even though I loathe CGI, were pretty awesome and almost 100% believable. Lots of blood splattering and hilarious situations that, despite being outlandish, were hilarious to watch. It's meant to be funny and gory, so be ready for both of those things. And honestly, some of the best slow-motion camera work I've ever seen. It just added to the comedy in almost every situation. There was some cheesy dialogue in the film, especially with the Bill Murray stuff, but on the whole, it was VERY entertaining. Not the best zombie movie I’ve ever seen, but I liked pretty much all of it and laughed quite a bit in this film. It’s worth a look, for most people.
The film starts after the zombies have already taken over the country (possibly world, but it’s not really discussed). This young kid (Columbus) who’s playing the part of Michael Cera (let’s just be honest, he IS) is writing down a list of rules he’s compiling which help him to stay alive during this zombie apocalypse. It’s pretty common-sense items, so it all makes sense. He runs into Woody Harrelson – or Tallahassee – and they agree to stick together for a very short while, as long as it doesn’t interfere with Tallahassee’s search for Twinkies (yes,really).
Tallahassee plays a bad ass gun slinger who is very good at killing zombies. They come across these two girls who trick the boys into surrendering their vehicle and guns to them and despite the fact the girls get away, they keep running into each other throughout the duration of the movie. Which also means Columbus falls in love with one of the girls. They are trying to get back to an amusement park in Hollywood which they believe is zombie-free. The group runs into Bill Murray along the way and end up crashing at his house. The Bill Murray scenes are a little campy, but not too terrible. I heard a lot of people had issue with that particular part of the film, but it was passable. The girls steal the car again and head to the amusement park. It is zombie-free, until they flip on all the lights and rides and draw the attention of thousands of zombies. I won’t ruin the ending for you, but it’s probably about what you’d think it would be.
Overall, I thought this movie was really well made. The special effects, even though I loathe CGI, were pretty awesome and almost 100% believable. Lots of blood splattering and hilarious situations that, despite being outlandish, were hilarious to watch. It's meant to be funny and gory, so be ready for both of those things. And honestly, some of the best slow-motion camera work I've ever seen. It just added to the comedy in almost every situation. There was some cheesy dialogue in the film, especially with the Bill Murray stuff, but on the whole, it was VERY entertaining. Not the best zombie movie I’ve ever seen, but I liked pretty much all of it and laughed quite a bit in this film. It’s worth a look, for most people.
Return to Oz
This film from 1985 is a sequel to the original wizard of Oz from back in the day. The film takes place a few months after Dorothy gets back from the Oz. She hasn’t been sleeping and her Aunt Em is concerned about her mental health. Em decides to send Dorothy to the doctor for some electro shock therapy, since it’s all the rage.
Dorothy spends the night in the hospital and just as she’s about to get zapped, there’s a power outage and an odd girl helps Dorothy escape. The two girls fall into a river and when Dorothy wakes up, she’s back in Oz with her pet chicken. Yeah, Toto has been upstaged by a chicken. Oz isn’t the same when she gets there. The yellow brick road is all grown over and the Emerald City has been overrun by the Wheelers – guys who skate around and thug people for their mistress. Dorothy enlists the help of a copper robot and a pumpkin head guy to find out where the king has been taken (the king is the scarecrow who has risen to power). The kingdom was overrun by the king of the gnomes who took back all of the emeralds the citizens of the city had stolen from him.
The film is pretty dark, although I’m not sure how much darker than the original – that one was pretty dark as well. Almost all of the characters are creepy in this movie including Dorothy, the wheelers, the scarecrow especially, and just about everyone else in the film. It’s shot well (mostly) and is a good story (it’s based on one of the sequel books written about Oz, so it’s got to be a good story, right?). I basically just got a creepy vibe from the film, which is probably why a lot of parents were disappointed when they ran their kids to the theaters to see the follow up film. It’s odd, but it’s probably worth seeing if you’re a fan of the original.
Dorothy spends the night in the hospital and just as she’s about to get zapped, there’s a power outage and an odd girl helps Dorothy escape. The two girls fall into a river and when Dorothy wakes up, she’s back in Oz with her pet chicken. Yeah, Toto has been upstaged by a chicken. Oz isn’t the same when she gets there. The yellow brick road is all grown over and the Emerald City has been overrun by the Wheelers – guys who skate around and thug people for their mistress. Dorothy enlists the help of a copper robot and a pumpkin head guy to find out where the king has been taken (the king is the scarecrow who has risen to power). The kingdom was overrun by the king of the gnomes who took back all of the emeralds the citizens of the city had stolen from him.
The film is pretty dark, although I’m not sure how much darker than the original – that one was pretty dark as well. Almost all of the characters are creepy in this movie including Dorothy, the wheelers, the scarecrow especially, and just about everyone else in the film. It’s shot well (mostly) and is a good story (it’s based on one of the sequel books written about Oz, so it’s got to be a good story, right?). I basically just got a creepy vibe from the film, which is probably why a lot of parents were disappointed when they ran their kids to the theaters to see the follow up film. It’s odd, but it’s probably worth seeing if you’re a fan of the original.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Tokyo Gore Police
This Japanese (overdubbed) film is about a girl, Ruka, whose father was killed in the first scene and makes her want to go into crime fighting. The first few scenes are filled with BUCKETS of blood spraying all over the place, chainsaws, razor blades, and bullets. Ruka is so bad-ass, she doesn’t even get blood on her uniform while standing in the middle of gallons of blood being sprayed into the air.
Tokyo is being overrun by these criminals called “engineers” who are super smart crazy people with a common trait – they all have a specialized tumor in their bodies that must be separated from the host to actually kill them. Ruka is actually an engineer hunter for the now-privatized Tokyo police corporation. There’s a brothel in town where someone is implanting some of the girls with this tumor. The madam of the place ends up getting milked for her blood for some reason that isn’t explained, but it’s an interesting way of extracting blood – weird. And then a commercial for teen-marketed razor blades: “Wrist cutting is so stylish! Yaay Yaay Yaay!!” WTF???!!! And then, just to be gross, I think, there’s a bug eating scene where you see the guy putting live bugs into his mouth and crunching them while they squirm around and try to get out. I feel a little sick now. Hahaha.
Ruka ends up fighting an engineer who begins the fight by pulling the top half of his head off and then gun barrels appear from his eye sockets. He seems to be carrying the tumor around with him like a key and puts it in her skin to turn her into a killing machine (which she kind of already was). Apparently, he is the master-mind behind the engineer mutants. Insert another commercial for a super-sharp sword for impaling yourself. Insane. Somehow, Ruka either isn’t affected or she’s faking it, since we saw the guy stick it in her skin. Then there’s another commercial for a Wii game where you can execute people by slashing them to bits while they’re tied up. Do commercials like this really exist in Japan? I MUST find out.
I have no idea what happens next, but there’s a stripper with a penis for a nose and an eyeball in her mouth. Then there’s another stripper whose breasts have been cut in half horizontally and then stitched back together. Then the third stripper has eyeballs on stalks like a snail. At the end of the little strip show, there’s a chair that’s shaped like parts of a girl that pees on the crowd – I have no idea what goes through some of these people’s minds. And the next scene is a guy sitting in another chair getting his Jansen chopped off by the half head engineer-tumor-impregnator. As you can see, it’s a little convoluted.
Just when I thought it wasn’t able to get weirder, it DOES. A girl pops out from behind a wall and instead of legs, she’s got alligator jaws. Now just picture that for a moment: regular girl from the waist up, right leg-upper alligator jaw, left leg-lower alligator jaw. And she keeps spreading her “jaws”. Frankly, at this point, I’m impressed. Hollywood can suck it. It gets better. Another engineer shows up with a katana for a right hand and also sporting a huge deformed phallus out in the open that makes an elephant trumpet sound when they show it. Also the wang shoots some sort of bullets – you know, like they do. In the second half of the film, they explain how the engineers got started.
SPOILER: There was a kid whose policeman father got shot by an assassin of some sort. That cop was also Ruka’s father. The kid grew up to study biology and biotech and the gene samples of various serial killers, so he could get vengeance on his and Ruka’s father’s killer. Then, he began to grow an army of mutants who kill random people. Even though it’s apparently Ruka’s brother, she still chops him in half and then goes and fights a bunch of engineers. Then a prostitute-turned-engineer sprays green acid from her boobs onto her opponent – yeah, seriously. There’s an awesome drawing and quartering scene shot from four different cameras on the same screen (kind of like GoldenEye for the N64) – kudos to the director for that stroke of brilliance!
SECOND SPOILER: Remember the tumor Ruka was implanted with? Yeah, when she gets mad, it activates and turns her into some crazy engineer with an extendable moray-eel-arm and cyborg eye. She’s mad as hell. She has to fight people she used to work with, one of whom is shooting the largest gun I’ve ever seen. And why, you ask, is it so large? Well, because, obviously, it shoots dismembered fists. Awesome. The final boss at the end has this pet person who has ninja swords for legs and arms and they did an awful job of cgi-ing a fight with Ruka – enough to really anger me. The makers of this film had been fine with the makeup and fake blood up until this point. Now I’m pissed. Now the movie just got plain ridiculous! Hahaha.
This film is not the greatest thing to come out of Japan, but most of it is fairly comical. Not laugh out loud funny, but still kind of WTF-funny. I don’t know that I’d recommend it to very many normal people, but purely based on the out-of-the-box thinking that went into this film, I’m slightly impressed. You, my friends, probably won’t be.
Tokyo is being overrun by these criminals called “engineers” who are super smart crazy people with a common trait – they all have a specialized tumor in their bodies that must be separated from the host to actually kill them. Ruka is actually an engineer hunter for the now-privatized Tokyo police corporation. There’s a brothel in town where someone is implanting some of the girls with this tumor. The madam of the place ends up getting milked for her blood for some reason that isn’t explained, but it’s an interesting way of extracting blood – weird. And then a commercial for teen-marketed razor blades: “Wrist cutting is so stylish! Yaay Yaay Yaay!!” WTF???!!! And then, just to be gross, I think, there’s a bug eating scene where you see the guy putting live bugs into his mouth and crunching them while they squirm around and try to get out. I feel a little sick now. Hahaha.
Ruka ends up fighting an engineer who begins the fight by pulling the top half of his head off and then gun barrels appear from his eye sockets. He seems to be carrying the tumor around with him like a key and puts it in her skin to turn her into a killing machine (which she kind of already was). Apparently, he is the master-mind behind the engineer mutants. Insert another commercial for a super-sharp sword for impaling yourself. Insane. Somehow, Ruka either isn’t affected or she’s faking it, since we saw the guy stick it in her skin. Then there’s another commercial for a Wii game where you can execute people by slashing them to bits while they’re tied up. Do commercials like this really exist in Japan? I MUST find out.
I have no idea what happens next, but there’s a stripper with a penis for a nose and an eyeball in her mouth. Then there’s another stripper whose breasts have been cut in half horizontally and then stitched back together. Then the third stripper has eyeballs on stalks like a snail. At the end of the little strip show, there’s a chair that’s shaped like parts of a girl that pees on the crowd – I have no idea what goes through some of these people’s minds. And the next scene is a guy sitting in another chair getting his Jansen chopped off by the half head engineer-tumor-impregnator. As you can see, it’s a little convoluted.
Just when I thought it wasn’t able to get weirder, it DOES. A girl pops out from behind a wall and instead of legs, she’s got alligator jaws. Now just picture that for a moment: regular girl from the waist up, right leg-upper alligator jaw, left leg-lower alligator jaw. And she keeps spreading her “jaws”. Frankly, at this point, I’m impressed. Hollywood can suck it. It gets better. Another engineer shows up with a katana for a right hand and also sporting a huge deformed phallus out in the open that makes an elephant trumpet sound when they show it. Also the wang shoots some sort of bullets – you know, like they do. In the second half of the film, they explain how the engineers got started.
SPOILER: There was a kid whose policeman father got shot by an assassin of some sort. That cop was also Ruka’s father. The kid grew up to study biology and biotech and the gene samples of various serial killers, so he could get vengeance on his and Ruka’s father’s killer. Then, he began to grow an army of mutants who kill random people. Even though it’s apparently Ruka’s brother, she still chops him in half and then goes and fights a bunch of engineers. Then a prostitute-turned-engineer sprays green acid from her boobs onto her opponent – yeah, seriously. There’s an awesome drawing and quartering scene shot from four different cameras on the same screen (kind of like GoldenEye for the N64) – kudos to the director for that stroke of brilliance!
SECOND SPOILER: Remember the tumor Ruka was implanted with? Yeah, when she gets mad, it activates and turns her into some crazy engineer with an extendable moray-eel-arm and cyborg eye. She’s mad as hell. She has to fight people she used to work with, one of whom is shooting the largest gun I’ve ever seen. And why, you ask, is it so large? Well, because, obviously, it shoots dismembered fists. Awesome. The final boss at the end has this pet person who has ninja swords for legs and arms and they did an awful job of cgi-ing a fight with Ruka – enough to really anger me. The makers of this film had been fine with the makeup and fake blood up until this point. Now I’m pissed. Now the movie just got plain ridiculous! Hahaha.
This film is not the greatest thing to come out of Japan, but most of it is fairly comical. Not laugh out loud funny, but still kind of WTF-funny. I don’t know that I’d recommend it to very many normal people, but purely based on the out-of-the-box thinking that went into this film, I’m slightly impressed. You, my friends, probably won’t be.
Bart Got a Room
This is one of those teen high school comedies similar to SuperBad or Napoleon Dynamite. Danny is a regular kid with divorced parents and he’s trying to find a date for the senior prom. He attempts to ask a couple of girls including a sophomore cheerleader who changes clothes in his car regularly when he drives her home from school. Alia Shawkat co-stars in this film and she’s trying to get Danny to go to the prom with her (the guy is a complete moron for not taking her up on the offer – she’s smoking hot). All of Danny’s prom dates bail on him and he’s going to surprise Alia, but he then finds out one of his friends asked her. So the dad, played by William H. Macy, drops everything (including a date with the smoking hot Jennifer Tilly) to find his son a date.
It’s a tiny bit zany but it’s good clean fun. The acting in it is pretty amusing and kind of has a feel like “But I’m a Cheerleader” (which I’ve never made THAT comparison before, I assure you – but that’s what I thought of when I saw this film). It’s also got fun color treatment on the camera shots that make it kind of pop in a whitewashed sort of way. The comedy is mid-brow (as opposed to low brow or high brow) and will have you chuckle through much of the film. Make sure you watch for the boom mic operator in the final scene. Not the mic itself – the ACTUAL STAGE GUY made it into a shot and I can’t figure out how they missed it in editing. Weird. Good fun film that’s pretty non-offensive to most people.
It’s a tiny bit zany but it’s good clean fun. The acting in it is pretty amusing and kind of has a feel like “But I’m a Cheerleader” (which I’ve never made THAT comparison before, I assure you – but that’s what I thought of when I saw this film). It’s also got fun color treatment on the camera shots that make it kind of pop in a whitewashed sort of way. The comedy is mid-brow (as opposed to low brow or high brow) and will have you chuckle through much of the film. Make sure you watch for the boom mic operator in the final scene. Not the mic itself – the ACTUAL STAGE GUY made it into a shot and I can’t figure out how they missed it in editing. Weird. Good fun film that’s pretty non-offensive to most people.
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