Two Hours I Want Back

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

2011-05-06T11:17:00.000-05:00

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is one of the best films I’ve seen in a really long time. Combine Earnest Goes to Camp with Friday the 13th and you’ll have this masterpiece. Tucker is the more macho of two hillbilly best friends, and he’s a really nice guy who has spent his entire life savings on a vacation home—a super rundown cabin in the woods where he and his best friend Dale can drink beer, go fishin’, and just get away from it all. These college kids have shown up and are ruining things. Eight frat/sorority kids go to the woods to drink and have sex (like most college kids do in the movies). There’s the standard campfire legend of “killers in the woods” to set the stage, and then the kids decide to go skinny dipping. One girl falls off a rock and knocks herself out. These two hillbillies who are vacationing in the area and happen to be fishing in the area see she hasn’t come up for air and rescue her. The frat kids think the hillbillies have captured their friend and they go after them.

College kid perspective: Two psychopathic hillbillies have captured their friend Alison (Cerie from 30 Rock—the hot dumb assistant to Liz Lemon) and now are systematically picking each of the friends off, one by one. The kids will do anything they can to get Alison back, and their self-proclaimed leader, Chad, is slowly losing his grip on reality. From the kids’ perspective, everything they do or see could verify this psychobilly killer theory.

Hillbilly perspective: A group of college kids have shown up and done everything they can to disturb the peaceful vacation Tucker and Dale had all planned out at the new vacation home. The kids clearly have all agreed to some sort of suicide pact and are killing themselves off, on Tucker’s new property. Not only that, but they want Alison to kill herself as well, so they’re storming the vacation home doing anything they can to make sure Alison ends up dead, as well. From the hillbilly perspective, everything that Dale and Tucker see happen could verify this college kid suicide pact theory.

Somehow, this movie pulls off total camp, but you get suckered in 100%. You know none of these coincidences would ever happen in real life, but it’s so outrageous that you buy it. All of it. The entire theater was cracking up at MANY points in the movie. Not a couple of times—MANY times. You actually enjoy seeing how the next frat kid is going to kill themselves because you know it’s going to be hilarious and not at all what you expected. The acting is better than most horror films, as is the budget. The special effects (mainly blood spraying in hilarious ways as people keep killing themselves accidentally) are very well done.

If you’re a fan of Shaun of the Dead, you’ll likely get a huge kick out of this. It’s probably not a film to watch by yourself, since it isn’t much of a thinking-man’s (or -woman’s) film. It doesn’t have the zombies that Shaun does, but it is equally well done and equally entertaining. This is leaps and bounds better than anything I’ve seen recently. Thank you Minneapolis Film Festival for bringing this film to my attention. Well played.

…Also, never trust a guy named Chad when he’s carrying an axe in the woods… just sayin’…

Spoiler alert!!! All of the trailers for this film basically show the entire film and spoil all of the hilarious scenes. If you can get away with NOT seeing a trailer for this film, you’ll do yourself a favor seeing the film absolutely unknowing.

Kunoichi: Lady Ninja

2011-04-28T16:31:00.000-05:00

Kunoichi: Lady Ninja opens with bad guys storming a sanctuary for women (known as a convent). Heads (and eye balls) roll – literally. Then the daughter of the original owner of the convent comes back and scares away the bad guys. The convent hires the help of paid assassins to defend the convent against further attack. Meanwhile, the remaining women train to be ninjas.

There are additional battles between the some other bad guys, who are some sort of evil warlords with magic powers, and the remaining women, complete with hokey effects and fighting. The main bad guy is capturing brides and grooms for his own sexual purposes, so the paid assassin thinks some of them should get married to lure the bad guy to them. It works and then they infiltrate the stronghold as submissive women. But they’re actually ninjas. But the bad guys refer to them as Hori women and I keep thinking they mean whore-y women. Weird. One of the bad guys has energy bullet magi and can shoot invisible bullets (an endless supply) out of his hands that blow things up. The guy winds up a major one and throws an energy ball at one of the lady ninjas. She somehow absorbs it with a glowing light from her vagina – yes, really that just happened. She throws it back at the guy and he explodes. What just happened?!

There’s more useless plot and then three of the girls get hung up on crosses as bait for the other ninjas. The monk hands out various ass whoopins (way more than the lady ninjas, in fact) and fights the bad guys in one crazy blow out at the end. Then all of their collective magic glass eyeballs combine to make a super sweet sword for which to kill lots of bad guys. Not sure why she needed a magic sword –seems like a regular sword would have done the exact same thing.

I know this movie has a handful of wildly hilarious parts in it (not to mention the really bad heavy metal soundtrack thrown in), but it just doesn’t keep your attention. In fact, I fell asleep three or four times while watching it and had to back up so I didn’t miss anything. If you fast forwarded to some funny parts, it might be worth watching, but as an entire movie, it’s kind of a dud that doesn’t make a whole lot of linear sense. Not recommended.

The Return

2011-04-27T16:29:00.000-05:00

This Russian movie was recommended to me by a friend who likes his plots simple and direct and moving. This movie has all of these things and, despite not being all that uplifting, has even MORE than just these things. It’s about two brothers who arrive home to find their father has returned from a 12-year abandonment. They go on a fishing trip and things don’t turn out like the boys expected.

The movie starts with a group of boys jumping off a tower into the water. It’s a long way down and they all agree that if someone uses the ladder to climb down, they’re a chicken. The youngest boy, Ivan, can’t make the jump so he simply stays at the top until his mother eventually shows up. Ivan meets up with his friends who razz him because he was too scared to jump. His brother also calls him a coward and Ivan dukes him in the mouth. They then race home on foot through their small city to be the first to tell their mother on the other one. Their mother is outside and tells them their father is asleep.

They haven’t seen their father in 12 years, when he walked out on the family. There is no explanation as to why he’s returned, nor what he wants. The boys are a little leery about it, but Andrei does his best to buddy up with his father, while Ivan, extremely stubborn, does everything he can to make his dad’s life miserable. They decide to go on a short fishing trip which turns into more than any of them bargained for.

Along the way, the new dad tries to see what kind of men his kids are going to grow into. He berates them, hits them, and is generally just mean to them. However, he teaches them all kinds of street/camping/living skills along the way, so it’s not all bad. The dad is no a mission to do something, and he ever divulges what that is to the boys. They end up taking a repaired boat to an island where the dad has buried something in a small burned out house. He retrieves it from the ground and brings it back to their camp. Then things get weird.

Ivan, the stubborn one, is really upset with how he’s being treated and constantly mocks his older brother for kissing up to this guy they don’t even know if it is their father. The boys are constantly scuffling, but they seem to end up fishing and things are fine. Most of the time.

I won’t ruin the ending of this film, because it wasn’t how I expected it to end up. As I said, it’s simple, but it’s also intense. For me, the best part about this film was the scenery and camera shots. The shots of life in the city are dark, drab, and muted. Very grim and very well filtered (or whatever the director did to the shots). However, all of the ocean shots, and grassy plains shots, and the forest shots are simply brilliant. Extremely vivid colors and contrasts. This movie makes me wish I had seen it on the big screen. The copy I watched was letterbox, so you got a good perspective, but it really is visually awe-inspiring.

The movie itself goes from intense to dragging, but very appropriately, depending on the scene at the moment. It isn’t dull, but the pacing of the film is well-done. It shows boys being boys and a gruff father trying to toughen up his boys. There are some aspects of the film that are left completely unresolved, so you’ll have to deal with that. But in my own head, this allows the viewer to make up whatever he or she wants it to be. The storyteller isn’t just going to give you all of the details – he’s going to bring you in and let your imagination help you through some of it. Very well done foreign film. I’m glad I saw it.

Thankskilling

2011-04-26T16:28:00.000-05:00

This movie starts out in the “olden times” (literally, the screen says this) with a topless pilgrim running through the woods with a carnivorous turkey chasing her. Turkey comments on her “attributes” and then kills her. The turkey was cursed/possessed when a Native American was angry that the white man had begun to take over, so he vowed to kill at the white people he found – through the use of a killer turkey. Flash forward to modern days where there’s a bunch of college students heading home for thanksgiving break. Then out of nowhere (I’ll warn you in advance since my friends HATE these kinds of surprises), a dog gets killed. You guessed it – Evil Turkey comes back to life.

The college kids have a breakdown on the road and end up having to camp in the same town where this horrific first thanksgiving killing happened. And it also happens to be the anniversary of the first Thankskilling. The kids make it home alive to their respective families, but the turkey has begun its killing spree. That’s not all this evil turkey does – let’s just say he uses gravy flavored condoms. Hahaha. The college kids eventually get stuck in one of their houses with the turkey and have to find out a way to kill it.

This film is pretty awful, even for an independent horror film. The acting is atrocious and probably a bunch of friends getting together and winging it – pin intended. It’s clearly some film students having fun with buckets of blood and newly learned special effects skills. I won’t even comment on the chuckle-worthy-but-terrible sparely-used CGI (thank you for that, director Jordan Downey). It isn’t intended to be a Hollywood blockbuster, but it’s still so far from good, it’s almost painful. That being said, I’ll probably show this during my poultry-themed bad movie night around Thanksgiving. We love a good theme night!

Roller Blade Seven

2011-04-25T16:27:00.000-05:00

Roller Blade Seven is a really awful post-apocalyptic movie by this terrible director who puts roller skates, roller blades, and skateboards in a bunch of movies that are all stupid. I’m a bit confused about the plot of this movie. It’s kind of like Mad Max in that it takes place in a dessert. Which is doubly funny since it appears relatively easy to sneak up on people, despite the sever lack of any sort of obstacle or tree to hide behind and sneak up on someone. To add to this, there are miles and miles of concrete throughout the desert which makes it much easier to skate around.

Father Donaldo (the director of the film) sends a girl in an incredible hot (in the 80’s) ripped swimsuit and roller blades into the Wheel Zone with a samurai sword while he repeats ridiculous advice ad nauseum. Hawk (the producer of the film) has been summoned by Father Donaldo to go after their sister who has been captured and taken to the Wheel Zone. Rhonda Shear (amazing host of USA’s Up All Night) is some sort of security guard / gatekeeper of the Wheel Zone. She harasses this guy dressed as Elvis for not wearing skates, and then lets Hawk, a long-haired guy with a receding hairline, through without problem. Hawk fights a couple ninjas on skates and eventually catches up to his sister as she’s killed.

Hawk tries to get out of the wheel zone and is confronted by a stupid clown wielding nerf baseball bats uselessly and eventually becomes his friend. I’m unsure of how ANY of this happens since there is no dialogue during this part of the movie – only terrible music playing while various people skate around in circles and fight each other and mostly pose with swords in their hands. Simply stupid. They actually fight to banjo music, which angers me considerably.

Hawk meets up with a spirit guide and also with Karen Black (who you’d recognize since she’s been in like 200 movies, but never actually “made it”). Neither of these people serves any purpose at all, aside from feeding Hawk Psychedelic mushrooms and teaching him to roller skate. There’s a guy named Pharaoh in a lather mask and a wheel chair who is clearly a bad guy with a gravel-y voice, but it isn’t really explained what his tie is to the movie. There’s a black night that seems to be pulling some strings as well, but I don’t get his role either. Oh wait, there’s also a random guy in shorts and sports coat sitting under an umbrella in the dessert. Seriously, none of the characters are connected.

This movie would be considerably shorter if they would cut out all of the repeated scenes. Seriously, there are like 25 instant replays for almost every scene. It’s AWFUL. These people spin around and face off with each other without ever swinging their swords that they don’t know how to use. Then there’s a significant use of smiley faces throughout the movie that I can’t tell if it’s kitsch or just someone’s little kid got on the set before each shot and put these things all over the place.

This is going straight to the second worst movie ever created, on my personal list. (Nothing will ever beat out Barn of the Blood Llama – ever.) The whole thing angered me and I wanted to punch the screen out of my tv. The acting in this film is brutally painful and just infuriating. There are completely unnatural and quirky head tilts that make people look like an insect and their hand motions throughout the film are moronic. I hated every second of this film. Not even Rhonda Shear could save this film. They should have taught some of the actors to skate before putting them in a movie called Roller Blade Seven. And for that matter, there aren’t seven of ANYTHING in this film!!! What is the significance of the SEVEN!!!!! This movie makes me want to kill.

That being said, I’m going to try to make it through the sequel to this movie without punching a goat in the spleen…

The Men Who Stare At Goats

2011-04-24T16:26:00.000-05:00

This is a story about a reporter (Ewan McGregor) who interviews who he thinks is a crazy person (played by Stephen Root) who talks about being trained by the military to stare down animals and ultimately kill them with their minds. Some sort of telepathic soldiers. The reporter doesn’t believe him (at first), but sadly, the reporter’s wife leaves the report for his editor and in a desperate move, the reporter sends himself to Iraq. He tells his x-wife he’s joined the military, but he’s on his own dime.

The reporter runs into Skip, played by George Clooney, at a restaurant and they strike up a conversation. Skip was in the army with Stephen Root and also trained in psychic warfare. He gave the background on how the pentagon funded this insane program. The army was attempting to create “warrior monks” who can pass through walls and see into the future. Jeff Bridges plays the soldier who wrote the instruction manual on psychic warfare. Clooney takes the reporter into Iraq with him so he can write a story on the Army’s program.

Skip and McGregor get captured on the way, during a conversation in which Skip spouts off all crazy-style. While in custody, some fire-fights break out and they escape and eventually get rescued by the Americans over there. The pair commandeers a car and drive into the dessert to continue their journey. There’s continual backlog to get you caught up to where we are at currently in the dessert. There was a “goat lab” in the basement of one of the military buildings – this was where they learned to kill goats with their minds.

When they crash their car again, they are rescued by the Americans that set up the psychic warriors operation and things start go get weird on the reporter. Not just weird, plain ridiculous. This is where I totally lost interest in the movie. It doesn’t wrap up nicely, it just gets frustratingly stupid.

The movie is slightly entertaining, but it’s so unrealistic that you just can’t buy what they’re trying to sell to the viewer. It’s difficult to follow for this reason and I’m thinking this is why the movie didn’t make a big splash, despite having a bunch of top-notch actors in it. Sad reality, but if the story line had been less “off the deep end” it would be a lot easier to believe…

Dynamite Warrior

2011-04-23T16:25:00.000-05:00

Dynamite Warrior (Kon Fai Bin)– In this Thai Martial arts films, some water buffalo herders (yes, Asian cowboys) are attacked by this random masked guy – Jong Bong Fei. He’s not an ordinary cattle rustler – he shoots giant bottle rockets at them and then rides a giant bottle rocket like a surfboard into the fray to kick even more ass. All of this, painfully CGI’d to anger me. He then whips all the cowboys’ shirts off – I’m hoping he’s looking for some sort of unique tribal mark or something, rather than just being creepy.

Here’s the premise of the movie: In the early 1900s, a tractor salesman comes to Siam and tries to sell the new American invention to the poor farmers. They don’t seem interested, mostly because of the cost. The tractor salesman decides to find someone to steal everyone’s cattle to make his tractor proposition seem more appealing. A bad guy has just gotten out of prison and goes into the woods to find his henchmen. They get propositioned by one of the rich people in town who is working with the tractor salesman. The rich guy has come to offer them jobs stealing buffaloes and killing buffalo traders for a fee. The guy he gets is a huge oaf of a man who uses two thick bows to beat people down. I don’t mean arrows, I mean the actual bows are used as clubs.

Then there’s a random guy who is a cattle trader with a tattoo/brand on his chest and has some sort of magical power where he can put the spirit of animals into other people with tattoos and kind of possess them into being fighting machines. They attack the bottle rocket-shooting guy and it’s a pretty close match. The bottle rocket guy appears to be trying to stop the cattle rustling. To kill the magic guy, the cattle rustler must find the menstrual blood of a virgin born with a greater zodiac sign than the magic guy. Jong Bong Fei is the only one that can defeat the magic guy (who we find out murdered Jong’s mother and father). It gets a little confusing on who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy in this film. Eventually it gets explained, but if you’ve made it this far in the film, then you’ve already committed a lot of time to it. Cut to an EPIC battle at the end of the movie. It isn’t very often that I actually hope a movie will end sooner rather than later, but this film’s final battle seemed to go on forever.

I’m not a huge fan of Thai-style martial arts – it’s all knees and shins, rather than hands and feet (it’s very close combat and not as suited to awesome camerawork like traditional kung fu or jui jitsu. On top of the lack luster fighting style, it’s just an ok film. I don’ think I’d recommend it, but there are some hilarious bottle rocket fighting scenes. Not enough to hold your attention or really wow you, but there are a couple. And, for the record, there IS a Thai dwarf in the film, but not an obvious Thai-Lady-Boy.

You probably should watch the English dub of this as well as the subtitles (that’s my favorite way to watch kung fu movies). Apparently, all of the actors they used for the English overdub have watched too many Cheech & Chong movies since they all sound like bad impressions of those guys. It’s pretty awful.

Dead Snow

2011-04-22T16:25:00.001-05:00

I was completely sucked in by the front of the DVD case with Dead Snow. Nazis AND Zombies? Sold! Then throw in some snow and the search for Nazi gold? How could this movie fail?

Some Norwegian medical students (not sure why they were written as med students, but whatever) are on winter break and head to a secluded cabin in Norway. A random guy shows up in the middle of the night and warns them about the Nazis that were frozen here in this area during World War II. The random guy leaves and goes off to his tent. And the zombies get him.

The zombies then show up at the cabin and attack the people inside. Some make it, some don’t. The next morning, the zombies have disappeared…. Or have they?!? These aren’t third shift zombies apparently! Then the epic and timeless battle of human vs Zombie commences for another hour.

The film is mildly amusing, with some one liners that even translate well across subtitles. The action is good and there’s lots of running and blood spraying and intestine pulling. The plot is, at the very least, unique. The effects are fairly well done and inventive (how often do you get to mount a giant machine gun to a snowmobile? Not often enough, I say!). But the film seems like it drags for a while before getting started. This film wouldn’t go over well at Bad Movie Night – it just isn’t interesting nor funny enough by the half-hour point.

Dead Snow isn’t scary enough, nor does it contain enough jump scenes. However, it does well on humor without being slapstick. And it has pretty decent gore in it. I’ve seen way better, funnier, scarier, and more graphic zombie movies. This one was just alright. I had high hopes for this film, but it seemed like the awesome concept just wasn’t executed as well as it could have been.

Remarkable Power!

2011-04-22T16:24:00.001-05:00

In Remarkable Power!, late-night talk show host Jack West (played by Kevin Nealon) is found dead at the beginning of the movie. The film flashes back to explain how we got to this point. And I assure you, it’s a complex story.

Flashback – The Jack West talk show is threatened with being cancelled. West’s life is unraveling and his wife is sleeping with a baseball player. Enter Tom Arnold as a private investigator spying on Jack West’s wife. Completely unrelated (or is it?), there’s this kid who lives in Korea Town in Van Nuys—he’s got a Winger poster on the wall and is hitting a beer can pipe, so you KNOW he’s half-retarded. The kid is watching a self-help infomercial about “Remarkable Power!” being hocked by Christopher Titus. The pot kid runs across a guy from the Remarkable Power! infomercial (wearing a neck brace) and ends up in his beach house rolling a joint. The pot kid accidentally kills the infomercial guy in his own beach house. In the mean time, a girl who runs a website that shows pictures of dead people gets photos of the dead body and sends them to the kid online to freak him out. The pot kid freaks and goes to the cops, but they don’t believe him since there is no body back at the beach house. The death-picture girl sees Tom Arnold is investigating and ends up hanging out with him and sharing info.

Flashback – The story flashes back further to explain how infomercial guy got the neck brace, and how the infomercial guy got tied up with some Russian mobsters (because he owed money to his Jewish drug dealer) (I TOLD you it was convoluted).

Flashforward a little bit – On Jack West’s last show, he brings on the guy who’s sleeping with his wife. The baseball player kills Jack West, like we saw at the beginning. The cops mistakenly think the Jewish drug dealer killed the infomercial guy. The end of this film had quite a twist that I wasn’t expecting, and ended up being pretty decent (though a bit convoluted).

In this who-dunnit film, there is some amusing character development that almost reminds me of a non-committal guy-head-nod to Tarantino. The characters are slightly over the top, but are believable in most cases. Yes, there are some unfortunate bystanders who get shot or beat up, but, all in all, the story wraps itself into a little knot that turns into a pretty bow at the conclusion of the film. I liked this one for its complexity and uncomfortable laugh scenes.

A Necessary Death

2011-04-22T16:23:00.002-05:00

A Necessary Death is a documentary about a documentary. Gilbert is doing a final thesis for film school in L.A.—it’s about suicide. Gilbert believes if you don’t cross a line in filmmaking, people are going to just overlook your work. His cameraman and sound girl tell Gilbert he needs to do some legal legwork before they’ll agree to the project. Is it even legal to follow and interview someone who’s going to end their life? Are there liabilities or consequences? As it turns out, NOT stopping someone from killing themselves is not illegal—assisting them is criminal, but not simply observing.

Gilbert places an ad looking for people willing to be the subject of his documentary. He assumed this film would be difficult to find a subject; however, he ended up having 11 messages on his answering machine when he arrived home the next day. After watching some of the interviews for potential candidates, his team begins to realize this topic is more than just an “outside-of-the-box” film subject. His sound girl is having serious reservations about helping with this, but the cameraman hesitantly agrees to doing it. Also, we find out that the sound girl is an ex-girlfriend of Gilbert, which may shade some of the project.

The film school won’t condone the project, nor allow the use of the school’s name, nor allow the use of the school’s equipment, nor fund the project at all. However, if the project is completed under the guidelines of the thesis project and turned in by the deadline, it will be accepted as a final project and Gilbert will graduate. So, Gilbert’s mother remortgages her house to help fund the project. Gilbert finds a subject with a brain tumor who wants to choose the time of his death, rather than let the tumor kill him, causing immense pain. The filming goes on and is surprisingly touching for a documentary. Despite some motion-sickness-inducing hand-held shots, it is shot in a real, raw manner that works much better than a flashy Hollywood-feel with added polishing.

The film crew tries to find out what makes their subject tick. They hang out with him, go to the beach, play tennis, meet his mom (which ends up being very heart-wrenching), and stake out suicide places. Gilbert realizes the crew may be too close and wishes they would have shot things more cold than they ended up doing. In fact, their subject ends up changing some of his plans due to some complications with the crew. The experience of shooting this film apparently changed some of the crew and helped some of them grow up. The movie ends very abruptly and with a twist.

Summer Scars

2011-04-22T16:23:00.001-05:00

In Summer Scars, some British kids skip school and wreak havoc about the town. Two of them steal a scooter from an old lady. Another of their friends carries his paraplegic brother into the woods with them. They hang out in the woods at a fort they’ve built and just have a good time during the summer. Two of them take off on the scooter and end up hitting a random guy in the woods.

The guy has lost his dog, and the kids decide they’ll help him track down his dog (named Jesus). The random guy’s name is Peter and he ends up pairing up with one of the kids named Paul (sense a theme here?). Two skater kids show up and start harassing the school-skipping kids. Peter whips out a gun and runs off the skaters, but the other kids are a little weirded-out by the gun. Peter gets a little creep-show on the kids and talks about them joining his “army.” Then Peter tells the kids to beat him up and when they get too rough, he starts handing out an ass-whoopin’. One of the kids tries to run away and Peter captures him; while capturing the one kid, another runs away. The hunt begins again.

The guy says the police will be here soon and continues to be creepy with things he does and says (including leading them in a random prayer from out of nowhere). Then he forces Paul to drop trou and show the girl the hair on his balls—I told you it was weird. Then he tries to get the girl to show him hers, by showing her his. The one kid that ran away shows back up with a gun he stole from his father and shoots Peter. The kids leave the guy in the woods (after the y remember to go back and pick up the paraplegic brother) and the movie ends.

This movie had potential to really be interesting if they would have put in some sort of plot twist or not let it fizzle at the end. I was really surprised when I saw the credits rolling. Then, during the credits, there’s a cell phone ringing and you see Peter’s bloody hand—but nothing happens. It completely fizzled, like they ran out of money and had to wrap up the film as tightly—and boring-ly (is that a word?)—as possible. The film was shot well (with the exception of the scooter-riding scenes) and had good tension, music, and acting. But it simply didn’t go anywhere, which is unfortunate. Kind of an anti-climactic let-down. True story or not, if it’s not actually interesting, why make a movie about it?

Seventh Moon

2011-04-22T16:22:00.001-05:00

In Seventh Moon, a couple is spending their honeymoon in China. The movie opens at a street festival to honor the spirits of ghost legends, and they’re checking out the activities, burning papers with wishes/prayers on them, and sampling local food and drink. They meet back up with their tour guide/driver and he drives them into the country and gets lost. Their driver goes to find help at this old creepy house and doesn’t return after an hour, so the couple goes and looks for him in the dark.
The house they stop at appears to be some sort of random slaughter house with cages for animals around the perimeter, but there is blood everywhere—turns out the animals were sacrifices to keep the spirits away. The couple gets back in the missing driver’s car and takes off, but they don’t know how they got to the slaughterhouse. Frankly, the wife is a bitch that has issue with her husband falling asleep during the multiple-hour drive and blames him for them being lost. Then she gets all smart-assed and impatient when he tries to find a radio station and has trouble translating it for her. A random human–shaped figure runs out of the woods in front of their (stolen) car and they swerve off the road and get stuck. They get unstuck and begin arguing again. She blames him for being Chinese and wanting to go to China for their honeymoon—told you she was a bitch.

They end up hitting a random person on the road and they throw the guy into the back of the (still stolen) car. They start to hear things in the woods and these pale-skinned things end up chasing them. They come across another house in the woods and go inside. The guy they hit attacks them and tries to get the couple to sacrifice themselves, or those pale-skinned creatures are going to come in and get them all. There’s lots of yelling and punching and running and darkness and suspense and bone crunching. Then it gets weird(er).

The spooky creatures hear a whispering voice that makes them leave, but makes the husband think it’s a good idea to go to find their lair. There are candles everywhere, and chanting. Then the couples’ clothes start coming off, like some creepy monster orgy. Turns out this capturing of tourists is a regular thing for Chinese monsters. Who would have known?! The husband is still needed for the sacrifice, to save his wife from the monsters. But will his sacrifice really save her? I won’t ruin it for you.

This film is very dark—and I don’t mean the humor, I mean the lighting. It made CSI look like it was filmed on a sunny day at the equator at noon. I spent several minutes reversing the film to rewatch scenes that I was unable to make out. There are long sequences of no action but heavy breathing, which I’m assuming were meant to build suspense, but ended up making the film longer and boring. The camera work is really shaky since it’s handheld (this film is from the director of The Blair Witch Project—you’d think the guy made enough money off that film to buy a tripod or something). The plot itself wasn’t clear, which was magnified exponentially by the aforementioned lighting issue and unsteady camera work. I don’t even have any suggestions as to how to make this film better (aside from brightening it a notch or two)—it’s just a lot of sub-par things compounded to make a pretty poor film. Personally, I was more scared by the trailer than the actual film—the trailer makes this film look like it will scare the hell out of you, but it didn’t even come close.

Junkie Nurse

2011-04-22T16:21:00.001-05:00

In Junkie Nurse, a guy in medical scrubs, Eric, is driving a junked-out car around town, shooting up drugs (yes, while driving). He ends up hitting a guy who has escaped from an old folks home. He returns the old guy to the home and ends up in a job interview with the head nurse. I’m not even sure if that was planned or not. Apparently, the guy’s goal is to get into the pharmacy inventory. He ends up befriending the guy that he hit and they strike a deal to get Eric more drugs.

The nurse’s first night, one of the old people dies and he has to call the paramedics to come get the body. Eric falls asleep on the job, and wakes up and quickly types a report about the guy’s passing. He gets on the boss’s good side with this industrious attitude.

There is a crotchety old woman from Puppetmaster, who makes Eric’s life hell. She’s a not-so-old lady pretending to be old and dingy and crotchety. She doesn’t pull it off very well. Eric breaks up a fight between the old guy he’s struck a deal with and another old man, and drives him into the hood to get all stoned. The boss tries to find the old guy, but Eric has him on a field trip to the ‘hood. The old guy cancels the deal he’s got going with Eric because Eric isn’t keeping his end of the bargain. The entire facility is on lock down, but people get out all the time, which is odd.

Eric throws the old man a birthday party with booze and drugs, but it’s in the middle of the night, which I didn’t get at all. Then Eric keeps shooting up in the bathroom at night. The old guy ends up dying on Eric towards the end—but at the same time, the boss gets fired for cashing old folks’ checks and Eric gets a promotion. The residents still love Eric. Why? Because he offers to get them water at any opportune moment. Dumbest premise for a film ever, just a non-interesting chain of events that would never ever happen in a million years.

This movie is poorly acted, and poorly filmed. It’s got an awful script, most of which doesn’t make sense and is completely implausible. Just about everything in this movie angered me, not quite to the point of me yelling at the screen while watching, but close. Don’t waste your time on this film, even if it does make it to a theater—which isn’t likely.

Today's Special

2011-04-22T16:20:00.002-05:00

Today’s Special is a film about a sous chef named Samir working his way up in a fancy kitchen in NYC. He’s got his hopes set on becoming the head chef at an expansion restaurant from the one he’s currently working in. His boss has other plans.

Samir quits his job and tells coworkers he’s going to Paris to work at a fancy restaurant. He goes home to tell his parents about it and this causes his father to have a heart/panic attack from the stress. The doctor tells Samir’s dad to take it easy, so Samir offers to run his father’s restaurant. Samir tries to be the boss, but finds out it isn’t as easy as stepping into the role at a high-class restaurant.

Samir befriends a cab driver who has some experience cooking. In fact, the cabbie turns the restaurant around with his amazing Indian cooking, and the crowds are beating down the door. The father decides to sell the restaurant just as the restaurant gets a huge boost from a New York Times review.

The film is well-acted and fairly believable; however, there are TONS of opportunities for this to be a “food porn,” and it falls completely flat in that aspect. The cooking is very glossed over and not filmed well. Even a little quality lighting would have helped. You WANT there to be slow motion shots of the food, but that doesn’t appear to be the director’s MO, sadly. In fact, I heard a number of viewers mention the same thing after the film. It’s a good story with a good love story, but there’s a lot left out. The romantic portion of the movie could have been expounded on a bit (remember, this is a GUY saying this), and the pacing could have been a little better. It started strong, then got long-winded, then got good again. And the fact that the cabbie got like 10th billing was a little disappointing as well. He was the one with all the character pizzazz!

Decent film and pretty amusing, but I wished it had been better.

King Cobra

2011-04-22T16:20:00.001-05:00

Some scientists, are working on bio-genetically altering animals (like they do). An evil red head (Malachi from Children of the Corn) takes over the lab. The experiment goes wrong and almost everyone in the lab dies, some from the explosion, and some from the 30-foot king cobra (with a rattle in his tail for some reason) that magically appears without any explanation.

Cut to two years later (…really? That’s a long time for a giant snake not to get some notice…). The snake is on a killing spree all around town. The local doctor is leaving the town for bigger and better things and his girlfriend (the town sheriff) is trying to get him to stick around. But they both get called on by the people to stick around town and help with all these mysterious deaths. The mayor (the guy from Gremlins) knows they’ll take care of it.

Apparently all around this small town are hundreds of serpentologists who can just show up at the drop of a hat. One of those serpentologists (or herpetologists, actually) is Mr. Miagi. He doesn’t have much going on, so he rolls over to the slowly disappearing city and tries to figure out what he can do. The town is midway through a beer festival, so there’s lots of rowdies walking around all the parks with blue party cups dancing like idiots. And a hilarious cameo by Eric Estrada, who’s playing a flaming gay peg-leg-pants-wearing fifi-dog-holding boyfriend of a townsperson, does absolutely nothing for this movie at all. Does he even have street cred anymore, or influence people to buy poorly written movies? Nope.

The small town doctor is still trying to get away to the big city when they find out the only other doctor in town has been eaten by the snake. So the guy at the local gun store just starts throwing guns into the hands of anyone wearing camouflage. The mayor shuts down the beer festival. And then we find out why the cobra has a rattle—because a cobra was gene spliced with a diamond back rattlesnake to produce a super-aggressive test specimen, DUR.

The sheriff sends all kinds of people out into the woods with guns to hunt this thing. Mr. Miagi is trying to trap the thing instead of kill it, since he’s a scientist. The other people are just trying to stay alive. Sadly, I’m not sure if it’s the snake that is killing the townspeople or the terrible special effects. Ridiculous slow motion, poorly edited shots, super fake snake models that roar like lions, echo-y voices in dream sequences, and Mr. Miagi spinning around on a blurry merry-go-round—any one of these things could have killed one of the townspeople hahahaha.

This is a pretty boring movie, even as far as bio-genetically engineered giant aggressive animal movies go. There’s nothing you aren’t expecting, no plot twists, and pretty awful acting. Don’t bother with this one. It isn’t going to change anyone’s life and now my eyes hurt from rolling them so much…I should have grabbed that 40 of King Cobra beer to make this one more palatable. It couldn’t hurt.

Robogeisha

2011-04-22T16:19:00.001-05:00

Robogeisha starts with a guy running for the office of prime minister. His assistant comes in and tells him if he doesn’t withdraw from the election, his life will be forfeit. The future prime minister pledges his love to a dancing geisha who’s singing about baseball. He cops a feel on his lady friend and she freaks out and splits in half. Literally splits in half, and two scantily clad Japanese Goblins emerge from inside her. I can tell right away this movie is going to be awesome.

The robot girl leads the representative away from the ensuing martial arts extravaganza and a circular saw blade pops out of her mouth. Meanwhile, in the martial arts fray, the lady goblins fire ninja stars out of their asses—I’m not kidding—and kill the representatives assistant. Circular-saw-robot is interrupted by Robogeisha, who saves the representative from certain doom.

Flashback to Robogeisha’s childhood and we see her older sister is a fancy geisha. Robogeisha’s name used to be Yoshie, and she’s never going to be hot enough to be a geisha like her sister. Yoshie catches the eye of the president of a steel company. He sees that she has something special and invites her to dinner. They are attacked in the woods and Yoshie defends the guy, then runs away. The guy calls forth the previously seen lady goblins who spray the attacker with “hell’s breastmilk”—this seems to be acid sprayed from their breasts. It isn’t getting any more normal-sounding, is it?

Yoshie is recruited to be in the steel company’s secret military project where they’re making assassin geishas. Yoshie has to fight her sister to join the team, and they both end up being recruits. As they progress through their training, they are given special robotic cyborg-type “enhancements.” The two sisters are sent on a mission to prove themselves in the field, and the older sister gets hurt. However, Yoshie keeps moving up in the ranks and becomes a great assassin.

Yoshie fails at the mission but is given more chances. She is sent by the steel company to break up a troublesome ring of old folks. Yoshie finds out the old people are simply meeting to try to get their captured daughters back from the steel company. Yoshie knows many of their daughters and granddaughters, and tries to figure out a way to return the ladies to their families.

The film is done by the same people that did Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police, so there are some pretty hilarious fight scenes in this film, many of them involving ridiculous weapons sprouting from all sorts of places on ladies’ bodies. It’s quite amazing and now I’m worried I will have REALLY messed up dreams. The special effects in this film are really awful, but in that comical way that makes you hope to see more. There are some outlandish costumes and plot twists, but the movie is amusing. This might be a good one to watch with a group, since people won’t believe you when you tell them everything that happens in this movie.

The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine

2011-04-22T16:18:00.002-05:00

Yeah, this title got your attention too, didn’t it? I bought this film in hopes that it would stand up to scrutiny from my friends at Valentine’s Day-themed Bad Movie Night. However, it ended up with three strikes against it: 1) It’s subtitled and my friends hate to read while looking at gratuitous nudity; 2) It’s Italian, which means it makes no sense, despite seeing loads of gratuitous nudity; 3) It’s one of the worst plots ever, sadly not redeemed by gratuitous nudity.

The movie starts out with a man on the run from the Spanish Inquisition (I know, right? NO ONE expects the Spanish Inquisition!). The heretic is shot and falls off his horse, but it must not have been a big deal since he somehow finds the power to defeat trained soldiers in a sword fight. The heretic, Esteban, heads to a nearby convent which we find out is the convent his lover is being held at to keep them from marrying each other.

The verger (butler/handyman) for the convent finds a hiding spot for Esteban and tries to bring him back to good health; apparently, making out with your lover who’s about to become a nun helps. Random punishments and stretchings are common at this convent and all are done topless—because, why wouldn’t you? Fortunately for us, all of the old lady nuns keep their clothes on during these beatings. The girlfriend, Lucita, is accused of harboring her lover—and also murder, after her lesbian roommate is discovered dead in the hallway. She’s tortured (topless, of course) and eventually confesses. That’s how interrogation worked back in the day.

Things get really crazy at this point. The Head Abbess ends up being Satan in a habit. People start dying left and right. Then some people are just rumored to be dead. The head inquisitor orders the convent sealed up with cement so the nuns (really quickly) go crazy with hunger, thirst, and lesbianism, after they paint a picture of Lucifer with a large member on the convent wall— it’s weird how that happens. Hahaha.

The film is decently acted, but the sets are terrible, and the plot is pretty ridiculous. Despite there being plenty of topless and pointless activity, it isn’t “hot” at all. It isn’t even interesting, in fact. I probably would have ranked it higher if I hadn’t seen the film—the title alone is enough to make my own thoughts far more perverse than what they actually show in the film. This movie was made in the 1970s and that explains a lot, but I set my expectations far too high with this one. I won’t be showing it at Bad Movie Night—sorry, pervs…

Sharktopus

2011-04-22T16:18:00.001-05:00

This not-based-on-a-true-story movie starts out with a shark attack on a bikini-clad co-ed. Yes, I said STARTS OUT. Brilliant. Eric Roberts is a scientist who has developed a combination of a shark and an octopus—a sharktopus, if you will. This sharktopus, named S-11, protects the girl from being eaten by a shark. Then the remote controller breaks off the sharktopus and it goes on a killing spree, targeting no one in particular.

The scientists are now trying to capture S-11 and bring him back home where he can be re-controlled. Eric Robert’s hot daughter is flirting with a young reckless scientist who’s trying to get paid all sorts of money to help out Eric Roberts. The sharktopus is on a murderous rampage in Puerta Vallarta, and a reporter has shown up to film it all and interview a local fisherman. The film crew catches some incredible footage, since they just happen to be in the right place at the right time —every time. And yes, the sharktopus attacks are as hilarious as you think they would be. Ever since I heard about this movie concept, I’ve dreamed about sharktopus attacks, and the ones on the film are pretty close to my scotch-induced dreams.

The sharktopus can walk on land using his tentacles, and walks all over. Just when people think they’re safe, the thing walks onto the shore and snaps them in two. The scientists are trying to hit the sharktopus with a tranquilizer gun so they can reestablish a remote control device on it and bring it home, but obviously the sharktopus isn’t having it. Anger the sharktopus, you get bit —maybe I’ll put that on my headstone when I die. The tranquilizer is in limited supply, so the scientists end up wasting all of it. The nerd and the vigilante scientist are just about fall in love when the tough guy is sent to finish off the sharktopus. They’ve given up on taking it alive—they just need to destroy it at this point.

The CGI (which is everything involving the sharktopus) is quite awful in this film. It is actually does approach the point where it’s comical, but doesn’t quite make it there. It simply remains in the embarrassingly annoying stage—which is unfortunate. The plot isn’t anything special, but at least was linear enough to base a decent movie around. Sadly, it wasn’t paced well and didn’t have me waiting for the climax of the movie. I was just waiting for it to be over so I could find something else to do. I had high hopes for Sharktopus making it to bad movie night, but I don’t think the action in the entire film is going to hold our attention.

The Troll Hunter

2011-04-22T16:13:00.000-05:00

In this Norwegian homage (I think) to The Blair Witch Project, a set of video recordings shows up at a film studio anonymously. It shows footage from an amateur film crew from a college in Norway following Hans, a Norwegian troll hunter. Like Blair Witch, it is all handheld shots, with long sequences of running, screaming, and mysterious sounds. However, this film has TROLLS instead of a “witch.”

Knowing full well that this film was all handheld, I got smart and took Dramamine before going to the theater—yes, I’m dead serious. Normally, I’d just close my eyes for 95% of the film like I did with The Wrestler, but this film has subtitles that I’d have to read to understand the storyline. We also ended up getting the second to the front row of the theater, which doesn’t help the motion-sickness I’m afflicted with.

Norway has been seeing a lot of bear attacks recently. There’s a guy in a Range Rover that always seems to be around whenever these bear attacks show up. The national bear hunters (yes, the bear population in Norway is regulated by the government) don’t know who he is, so they are all suspicious of him, especially since he keeps to himself and only goes out at night. They think he’s a poacher. There is a college news reporter, a cameraman, and an audio girl that interview the hunters and try to get an interview with the mysterious lone hunter. The lone hunter refuses, so the film crew follows him. A LONG way.

The crew finds the hunter (Hans) and follow him into the woods one night. They hear all kinds of strange sounds and see flashing lights. Then, the hunter bursts out of the woods right in front of them and yells, “TROLL!!!!” The crew and hunter have a discussion about whether trolls are real, and the fact that the crew’s car is flattened and mangled seems to lend some heavy weight to the “Fact” side of the argument.

In effect, the government has hired Hans to keep an eye on the troll population, who have been in Norway since the dawn of time. If the trolls venture out of their assigned region, the Troll Hunter is called to destroy the troll. UV light makes them either turn to stone or explode (depending on the age of the troll). The whole thing is covered up by blaming it on bears, and, in some cases, planting evidence, which the DNR representative has to explain away in public statement. All sorts of fairy tales and legends are proven and disproven for the film crew as they follow the Troll Hunter from region to region. Some trolls appear to be 10 feet tall, and some are as large as mountains.

The suspense in the movie is pretty solid. The film does a great job of using the lighting and sounds to its advantage. The CGI in the film leaves a lot to be desired, but probably works better since the cameras are all handheld (probably a nightmare to work with in combining digital and handheld footage—so kudos to the editors for that part). The actors in the film are rumored to be popular Norwegian comedians, so there’s a bit of fun in the movie. Nothing slapstick or outright comical, but there are parts where glances at the college kids’ cameras are caught and lend a lighter atmosphere of this pretty dark film. Despite the super nausea-inducing camera work (including REALLY long scenes of running and simple lack of action) and the non-professional CGI trolls thrown in, this movie was quite good. I don’t think I’d rave about it, but I would recommend it to most people. There isn’t a lot of gore, but the suspense is high, even when reading text from the screen and trying to follow the action in your peripheral vision so you don’t throw up.

And I will warn you in advance, a lot of the trailers contain a serious amount of spoilers, so keep that in mind.

Disco Girls in Hot Skin 3D

2011-02-10T15:30:00.000-06:00

I would try to explain to you how 3D pornography blurs the line between awesome and horrific, as well as disgusting and hilarious, but I can’t. Suffice it to say, it isn’t arousing. It wasn’t arousing in the 70’s and watching a movie from the 70’s in the 2010’s STILL isn’t arousing. However, watching adult films with 100 other people in a large mainstream theater IS pretty awesome. This isn’t the first 3D "blue movie" I’ve watched with a large crowd of people, sadly.

I know it’s an adult film, but there truly IS a plot. Chick (yes, that's his name) is a nightclub owner who can’t … uh… perform with a girl he likes. He can do everything else, but can’t seal the deal. He gets professional help from a few people. Chick's ex-girlfriend still comes around the office with her creepy and sleazy boyfriend Harry. Anytime someone leaves the room, he whips it out. Harry is a wanted man and the cops on trying to bring him down. Harry ends up… how can I put this delicately?... Harry ends up sodomizing a woman while simultaneously drowning her in a bowl of chicken soup. I didn’t say the plot makes sense, I just said there is one.

The humor in the film is pretty weak, but you’ll occasionally groan (seriously, from the jokes, not from anything else)(aside from the GIANT patches of unkempt fur you don’t usually see since 1985). They keep repeating this annoying joke involving Harry’s name until it grates on your ears.

The legendary John Holmes is highlighted on the advertisements for this movie, however, he’s on the screen for like 30 seconds and only grunts. If he’s your selling point, you shouldn’t be buying. Also, Uschi Digard has a pretty major part in this film – you’ll know her from the Ilsa movies, a couple of Russ Meyer films, and a whole lot of adult films all through the 70’s and early 80’s. The best part about this film is watching it with a hundred drunken 18-50 year olds. People were laughing and cheering and mimicking the cat sounds coming from one of the ladies and mocking and commenting on the unkempt landscaping. This movie is great for that.

You really have to TRY to like the 3D aspect of this. Basically the 3D glasses given to you are just a hassle and actually detract from the film more than help it. Let’s just say they hadn’t quite mastered 3D in the 1970’s. Not even close in fact. However, they did have high aspirations for their placement of 3D-appropropriate scenes. There’s a lot of bodily fluids headed at the camera lens. More so than in the other 3D adult film from the 70’s, Lollipop Girls in Hard Candy. Hard Candy had much better 3D scenes, but the plot was like Bruce Campbell had written it immediately after getting kicked in the head by a camel.

Go see this movie if they show it in a theater, but don’t run out and try to score a copy for your own “private” use. It isn’t worth it. However, telling your friends all about it, who DIDN’T go see it will torture them for years!!!

Zombie Strippers

2011-02-08T11:32:00.000-06:00

This movie is exactly like what you’d expect it to be from the title. Add in the fact that Jenna Jameson is one of the main stars of the film, and you know you’re in for a clothing-minimal zombie movie. Add in Robert Englund (of Freddy Krueger fame) and you’ve just taken that zombie film to a new low-budget level.

Even though you don’t care about the plot, I’ll give it to you anyway. The government is developing some sort of virus that reanimates flesh. They planned to use it as a military weapon once they perfected it. They have a couple of loose zombies locked up in a facility of some sort and they send in a team of commandos to eradicate them. One of the commandos gets bitten and then runs away – to a strip club.

The infected guy bites Jenna Jameson (after her way-too-long dance routine) and turns her into a zombie. Yes, a zombie stripper. She comes back out on stage and does a zombie dance that gets all the guys in the place riled up. Then she takes a fan backstage and eats him. Robert Englund is the owner of the illegal strip club and figures he can capitalize on the zombie stripper since it’s bringing in money. The other girls see how well Jenna is doing with the cash and ask to get bitten as well. Soon, there’s a hoard (or whore-d) of zombie strippers – which subsequently brings in more fresh meat for the strippers to eat (and turn into more zombies). The extra zombies are then locked up in the basement.

The film is absolutely terrible when it comes to acting and special effects. They spent all their money on acquiring Jenna Jameson (who I’m SURE is expensive) and Robert Englund (who probably just needed a few dollars to eat, since he’s not doing much these days – and clearly isn’t taking any acting lessons in his free time). The special effects were really poorly done and the CGI they added enraged me at first, then amused me, then went quickly back into enraging me. It was terrible.

The plot itself is, yes, ridiculous, but they could have at least made it funny (and possibly took out some of the non-funny racist jokes which are everywhere). This would have been the perfect opportunity to make a REALLY funny zombie movie, and they blew it. Speaking of blowing, there were faaaaaaaaar too many stripping scenes. I actually said out loud, “I wish there were more zombie parts and less stripper parts” more than once. It was really quite boring during these parts and I wished they had hurried up. Yes, the first time was fine to set the stage with Jenna Jameson. Whatever - she doesn’t interest me, but you can’t have a movie called Zombie Strippers, unless there are actually strippers.

I will say this, it appears the strippers used in this movie are actually having fun dancing as zombies. There’s an energy on film that you can tell they had a good time when they weren’t required to speak and were wearing hilarious blood and latex fake wounds while gyrating to increasingly awesome music. For example, the music started with pretty odd (but standard) house techno whore-dancing music. By the end of the film, it turned into pretty awesome metal and hardcore breakdown-infused awesomeness. (I now hope there is a soundtrack available for this film…)

Depending on your persuasion, you’ll be amused at the numerous political messages about George W. Bush, Jenna Bush, and the NRA, including Robert Englund’s comment “The second Amendment says I have the right to own guns, not that I have to know how to use them.” Worth a chuckle at least.

Yes, this movie is filled with tons of gratuitous TNA, but eventually, it’s dancing corpses as the bodies look worse and worse. But if you’re watching this film, you’re probably not all that hopeful for an awesome plot nor top-notch acting. It’s probably funnier in theory and concept than it is entertaining. If you see it on sale somewhere with a serious discount, consider picking up a copy.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

2010-12-15T15:38:00.002-06:00

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.

The Pope's Toilet

2010-12-15T15:38:00.001-06:00

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.

Love and Other Drugs

2010-12-08T13:52:00.001-06:00

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.)

Nun of That

2010-10-25T00:46:00.000-05:00

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.

Shaolin vs. Evil Dead

2010-10-13T12:36:00.001-05:00

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.

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole

2010-09-28T11:36:00.001-05:00

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.

Machete

2010-09-28T10:57:00.000-05:00

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.

The Expendables

2010-08-23T16:20:00.002-05:00

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...

Red Riding Hood

2010-07-28T10:52:00.000-05:00

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.

Predators (2010)

2010-07-13T14:25:00.002-05:00

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.

Dora-Heita

2010-07-13T14:24:00.000-05:00

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.

Smash Cut

2010-07-13T14:23:00.001-05:00

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.

Ninja Death

2010-06-18T10:27:00.001-05:00

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:

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

2010-06-18T10:25:00.000-05:00

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.

Meanwhile the other story is how Julia Child got to where she first published her book. She had moved to France and couldn't decide what she wanted to do being the wife of a U.S. government employee. She finally decides to go to the Cordon Bleu school of Culinary Arts to pursue cooking. She starts out poorly and the school administrator hates her because she's trying to learn French cooking so she can write a cookbook in English for Americans. She eventually passes the program and writes the cookbook and gets it published.

Julie hopes Julia Child has seen or heard about her blog and dreams about meeting her someday. She invites her friends over for various dinners and they rave about the cooking. Apparently, Julie is quite good at this. I won't ruin the ending of this one, but there's not much in the way of gun fights or car explosions.

The film is probably in that "girl-movie" range, but I did enjoy it (mostly for the food porn aspect of it all – seriously, everything looks delicious). It's not action packed or anything, but the story line is easy to follow and it's quite enjoyable. Streep plays a pretty good Julia Child. If you've ever seen Child on television, you know she's basically a whack job and a complete airhead and Streep plays up both parts without going too over the top with it. Amy Adams is slightly less believable, but still does a decent performance overall. It's worth watching if you like food/cooking, or if you want to impress your lady friend without boring yourself silly.

Get Him To The Greek

2010-06-08T20:54:00.000-05:00

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.

It’s Complicated

2010-06-01T13:55:00.000-05:00

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.

Sword of Doom

2010-05-28T10:00:00.001-05:00

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.

MacGruber

2010-05-28T09:57:00.001-05:00

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…

Moon

2010-05-04T21:56:00.001-05:00

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.

The Losers

2010-05-04T21:55:00.000-05:00

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.

Sex Drive

2010-04-13T20:58:00.004-05:00

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.

9

2010-04-13T20:58:00.003-05:00

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.

Happy Times

2010-04-13T20:58:00.001-05:00

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?

Date Night

2010-04-11T20:05:00.001-05:00

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…”

Clash of the Titans

2010-04-06T19:33:00.000-05:00

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.

Alice in Wonderland (3D)

2010-03-16T19:30:00.001-05:00

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.

Salò o le 120 gionate di Sodoma (Salo)

2010-03-02T12:14:00.001-06:00

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.

Whip It

2010-03-02T12:12:00.001-06:00

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.)

Transsiberian

2010-02-24T23:41:00.002-06:00

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.

The creepy girl, from Seattle oddly enough, is clearly alarmed when her boyfriend hands over his well-used passport while comparing them to Woody’s. Woody is playing a country bumpkin from Iowa and sadly, isn’t nearly as endearing as he was from Cheers. And actually, Woody is pretty unconvincing as an actor in this film, which isn’t a surprise to anyone who has seen him act since Cheers.

The cabinmate Carlos and Emily appear to be getting quite close on the trip and the Seattle girlfriend begins to get suspicious. But the girlfriend still manages to crack the surface of Emily by asking about her past. Apparently, Emily has a criminal and drug- and alcohol-filled past. Woody confides in Carlos that they are having marital problems - basically that she doesn’t want kids and such. Woody disappears and Emily thinks he’s been left at the previous train station.

The trio spends the night in a small town to wait for the next train with Woody on it. Carlos is obviously making moves on Emily and she’s not exactly shutting him down. Carlos leads Emily out into the woods where there are no witnesses and things start to get creepy. Carlos makes a serious and angry move on Emily and she smacks him in the head a couple of times with a branch and kills him and leaves him in the snow.

She heads back to wait for Woody and doesn’t tell anyone she left the body in the woods. After she’s reunited with Woody, they hop back on the train and their new cabinmate is Ben Kingsley – a Russian police officer. Strangely, Carlos has filled Emily’s bag with drug-filled Russian dolls and Emily is trying to off-load them at every opportunity. It’s not going well, especially under the watchful eye of the police detective. As the detective gets more suspicious, he begins interrogating the couple in an increasingly aggressive manner. It gets brutal.

I won’t ruin the ending of this one, but it gets a little convoluted towards the end. The film isn’t a bad one, though it does take a while to get rolling and is a bit drawn out. I kept watching the clock and hoping it would be over soon. The acting by everyone except Woody is decent, and there are some intense moments followed by some lulls. The story is bit unbelievable, though that’s nothing new I Hollywood (or Russia, maybe). The music seemed appropriate except for when Woody was on screen, then sometimes it got hokey, like the music people were insulting him subtly. Hilarious. The film is supposed to be some sort of travel adventure murder mystery, but is a weak attempt at suspense. Then again, it’s Woody Harrelson and he’s hard to believe in a lot of films. I’m not sure I’d recommend this to a lot of people. It was watchable, but not really that likable.

Pineapple Express

2010-02-24T23:41:00.001-06:00

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.

Zombieland

2010-02-15T14:36:00.002-06:00

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.

Return to Oz

2010-02-15T14:13:00.001-06:00

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.

Tokyo Gore Police

2010-02-05T01:02:00.003-06:00

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.

Bart Got a Room

2010-02-05T01:02:00.001-06:00

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.

Executive Koala

2010-02-05T01:01:00.003-06:00

Executive Koala is a really bad Japanese film about a Koala (or a guy in a koala suit) that works at a large company. Koala boy puts in crazy hours for his boss (who is a rabbit – that coincidentally sounds like a Japanese Bugs Bunny). Apparently, the Japanese love their furries.

Anyhow, Koala’s girlfriend shows up brutally murdered and the police think he did it. It’s also suspicious that his ex wife has been missing for three years and they think he’s responsible for that as well. The police bring him in for questioning and there’s an article about him in the paper. People at his office freak out when he shows up for work, but his boss welcomes him back with open arms and suggests he puts in extra hours at the office.

Koala has a big client coming from Korea and takes him out on the town. This client has brought his pet flying squirrel into the country with him in a bag. Yeah, a flying squirrel. The squirrel takes a liking to Koala. Then there’s a Korean martial arts scene with hilarious shots of food in the background. Mr. Kim from Korea pens the deal with Koala and then later that night, drops the bombshell on Koala that he was his girlfriend’s previous lover. Apparently, she wrote him and feared that Koala would somehow hurt her. Mr. Kim showed up to size up the Koala. Apparently, Koala has a nasty track record of violence that he’s suppressed from his memories. Now he’s on a killing spree (apparently when a Koala’s eyes glow red, get the hell out of their way – good rule to live by). Then there’s a crazy weird singing part in a court scene. This all leads to a crazy surprise ending plot twist.

While this movie is one of the weirdest films I’ve seen, it’s certainly not the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Yes, there are a bunch of ridiculous costumes and really stupid dialogue, but the plot is more believable than some Japanese films. The film is supposed to be a follow-up to Kalamari Wrestler, but other than the same director shooting it, I don’t think there are any similarities. This is leaps and bounds more entertaining than Kalamari Wrestler.

Big Man Japan

2010-02-05T01:01:00.001-06:00

This Japanese film is a fake documentary on a “real life” super hero who protects Japan from monsters. The film crew is interviewing Big Sato, who is the youngest (the sixth one) in a long line of monster-fighters in Japan (meaning he fights monsters, obviously). The guys in this family get phone calls from the department of defense and go to a power generation station to get electrocuted into a 100-foot-tall muscle guy.

Sponsors pay money to get their logo tattooed on his chest or hips or back. The big men fight the monsters and when they defeat the monster, the monster gets taken up into the heavens by a bright light beam. The film crew is asking questions about growing up and how the bloodline has gotten publicity over the years. Apparently things were pretty sweet for the rockstar “Fourth”. Then the Fifth gave himself too much juice at the power plant and electrocuted himself. The Fourth is now in an old folks’ home and gets regular visits from his grandson, the Sixth. At one point, the senile grandfather sneaks out, juices himself up and wreaks havoc throughout Tokyo while wearing an adult diaper (which they never explain how they made a diaper so big, but that’s the least of my worries in this film).

Big Sato has a daughter who is living with Sato’s ex-wife. He gets to see his daughter about once a month and the crew follows him for a visit. He’s good with his daughter, but his ex doesn’t want any more visits than she has to endure. Big Sato ends up dropping a baby monster and the public is outraged that he has killed a (50 foot) baby in broad day light. The media has a field day with him, and it’s not good. They make television shows mocking him having trouble defeating this one particular red demon kid.

The previews for this film made it impossible NOT to watch, but it was kind of a let down from the preview. I still laughed a couple of times, but mostly at myself being stupid enough to have actually purchased this film. The Japanese folks certainly have a way of showing Hollywood what TRUE creativity can inspire. IF they could wrap it into a more believable plot or add some worthwhile special effects, they’d be a force to be reckoned with. But as it stands, they’ll continue to make ridiculous movies. And I’ll continue to buy them hahahahahaha.

The Calamari Wrestler

2010-01-21T23:07:00.001-06:00

As odd as this sounds, the Japanese actually made a film about a giant squid that wrestles people. The movie opens with a wrestler winning the championship belt in a title match in front of thousands of fans. Suddenly, the belt is snatched out of the champs hand by a giant squid, who proceeds to hand out an ass-whoopin’ to a handful of wrestlers, including the recently-crowned champ. Wow. I don’t think I ever imagined I would just write those words.

The wrestling commissioner wants to make money by staging an official rematch between the champ and the squid, but he wants the squid to throw the match for publicity’s sake. The squid isn’t havin’ it. The squid is actually the former champ come back in the body of a squid. The squid is after both the title and the champ’s girlfriend, and he’s got to somehow convince the commissioner to let him fight. He’s fighting to get his girl back, so he’s got motivation on his side. The final championship match is set up, but there are some surprises in store.

This film is utterly stupid. It’s not even amusing to watch and there’s no action. It’s supposed to be entertaining, especially since it’s about an entertainment mechanism (wrestling), but it totally flops as far as plot (even *I* didn’t expect this weak of a plot). There could have been more wrestling and more explosions and more drama or more hilarious dialogue or simply some fantastical action – it’s a freaking SQUID movie after all. But they act like it’s totally normal and kill all of the hype I had expected in this film. I’m super disappointed in this film. You’ll tell people about this one, but you won’t let them watch it, if you want to keep your friends.

Without a Paddle

2010-01-15T21:32:00.002-06:00

Four friends grew up together and have pretty different personalities. Once, they’re older they’ve gone their separate ways. One of them dies and they all come back to Oregon for the funeral. They go find their old tree house and there’s a box with what amounts to a treasure map inside that Billy left them shortly before he died. So they owe it to Billy to follow the map and find the treasure. They head onto the river in a canoe with minimal supplies and then a whole bunch of ridiculous things that would never happen actually happen. Seth green gets carried away by a bear and they have to rescue him. Brother Randy is hunting fish with dynamite. They hit super bad rapids and launch over a huge waterfall. Then they find Brother Randy is growing pot in the woods. Then they run into two hot lesbian hippies in a treehouse. And of course, they run into Burt Reynolds living like Grizzly Adams in the woods as well. None of these things are remotely believe and the acting in this movie is so outlandish that it’s painful at times. Since this movie was recommended to me, I’ll go slightly easy on the bad-mouthing of it, but not on the rating. This movie was pretty terrible. And not in a good way, like usual. Don’t watch this one.

Sukiyaki Western Django

2010-01-15T21:32:00.001-06:00

If you’re not familiar with Takashi Miike, then you should move out of the box you’re living in and get some culture – I say that, but by crawling out of that box, you’ll be opening yourself up for one of the most messed up minds in Japanese horror/gore/weird films. When Miike makes a western, you’ll pay attention. Sukiyaki Western Django is a samurai western – yes, Japanese cowboys with swords. Where’s the bad?!?

The movie opens with some bad CGI birds – seriously, between Noah’s Ark and this movie, I’m wondering if birds are extremely difficult to do special effects with. And if it is, why do directors insist on putting birds in every shot? Geeeesh. Anyway, Quentin Tarantino tells the story to some people who are holding him at gunpoint: there’s two clans, the reds and the whites and they battle in Nevada, where they live across the street from each other. They’re in town looking for this hidden gold and they constantly argue and shoot each other up. Most of the actual townspeople have left because of all the fighting over gold. A stranger shows up in town and tells both the reds and the whites that he’ll hire himself out to the highest bidder in return for a portion of the gold when he finds it. They fight and haggle over it and there’s no real clear winner.

A wagon shows up (pulled by a bunch of people) and it’s carrying dynamite and also a coffin with a giant automatic machine gun. The reds try to hijack the wagon and end up getting blown to bits by the machine gun. Tarantino shows up later as an old man after he has trained Blood Benton (Double-B) to be a fancy gunfighter. She’s quite the badass, actually. The conniving town sheriff has a bad case of the angel/demon on the shoulder and it makes him beat himself up occasionally. The keepers of the town gold bring it into the town plaza and when the whites try to take the gold, someone shoots them in their peni. Yup, really. There’s a big shoot out at the end of the movie involving the reds, the whites, and the keepers of the gold.

This movie was slightly entertaining, but nothing like Miike’s other films. I found myself pretty bored and felt like the previews and trailer showed the best scenes and made it out to be MUCH more entertaining than it actually was. I was very disappointed. However, some of the actors haven’t learned English (CLEARLY) and someone has taught them the individual phonetic syllables in Japanese sounds, so it’s quite painful, but borderline hilarious. You can tell Miike made this film, but it’s no wonder why it made a big splash (because it had some backing from Tarantino, obviously) and then fizzled out quickly. It’s very unfortunate, as I had really high hopes for this film before its release.

Stevie

2010-01-15T21:31:00.000-06:00

A guy from Southern Illinois University spent some time being a “big brother” to Stevie in the 80’s and feels guilty about not keeping in touch 10 years later. This is the story of him going back to visit Stevie and his family and get caught up. Stevie is kind of a slow nerdy racist redneck with big glasses. He lives with his grandmother because his mother allegedly beat him pretty good. There’s all kinds of threats of killing each other (mother and son) and now he’s living at grandma’s house.

He’s got a girlfriend/fiancé that’s kind of “touched” as well, but they’re truly happy together. They love each other and say nice things about each other. Her parents don’t like Stevie because he drinks and smokes weed. But as long as he doesn’t hit her, they’ll leave Stevie and their daughter alone. Stevie was married once before, but he tried to kill her (and failed), so clearly he’s got a temper. The Big Brother brings his family down to see Stevie, since it’s been ten years, and the kids have to leave the room when Stevie talks about killing his ex-wife.

Stevie has a bit of a criminal record and the Big Brother tries to keep in touch with him. Stevie was in jail the next trip down to see him, for allegedly sexually assaulting a child, and the family is convinced that it’s a set-up by Stevie’s mother. This is all weird because the mother comes to see Stevie in prison, and we’re not sure the whole story is being told. The fiancé says she won’t let Stevie back into her house, but you can kind of tell she’s waffling about it.

Big Brother gets a phone call one day and Stevie is getting out of prison, but he wanted Big Brother to loan him a hundred dollars bail money to get out. But Big Brother’s wife won’t let him post bail for him. Eventually, the mother and/or grandmother post the bail and he gets out. Big Brother goes back to discuss what’s going to happen with the grandmother and explains why he didn’t give him the money and then discusses it with Stevie to see if he understands it all too. Big Brother finally gets to talk to Stevie’s mom and it doesn’t go all that well.

Big Brother recounts Stevie’s childhood, failed placements in group and foster homes and mental hospitals and behavior disorder schools and drug therapy. Clearly, Stevie loves his family and would do anything for them, however, they’re all mean to Stevie, and he’s mean right back. That’s how they operate. Really bizarre. He’s a super grudge-holder and makes his fiancé feel awful by saying her father isn’t going to be able to see their kids if they have some. They want to get married, but he’s not wearing a tux or a suit and he’s kind of an ass about it. They end up at a dance club in downtown Chicago and he gets all sloppy drunk and belligerent with his lady and dancing with random people. When he got back home to Pamona, he got worse and more troublesome and raising hell with the townspeople. Stevie pleads guilty to a child molestation charge and his racist friend tells him he’ll help him get into the Aryan Brotherhood in prison, and it’s pretty messed up.

This movie is super depressing. I mean gut-wrenchingly depressing. These people have given up on Stevie, on each other, and on life as a whole. Stevie’s friend flat out says it – it just doesn’t matter anymore. You feel bad for Stevie, but at the same time, you know how helpless and vulnerable he is. It’s a really good documentary and at the same time, it’s brutal. Big Brother asks Stevie and his family some difficult questions and gets to the heart of a lot of things. This film is not remotely uplifting in any way shape or form, but it’s really quite good. Are you supposed to feel bad for Stevie? Are you supposed to blame his family for raising him that way? Do you get mad at society for throwing him from foster home to group home? You’ll feel very conflicted watching this film, I can assure you that. And clocking in at over 2 hours, you’re going to be emotionally exhausted. Needless to say, NOT a date movie.

Anatomy of Hell

2010-01-11T19:34:00.002-06:00

This French film opens with a guy performing felatio on another man in an alley outside a club, and I don’t mean hinting at it – I mean full-on shows it. Viva la France. Inside the club, there’s a lot of gay men dancing and grinding on each other while a random girl strolls through the crowd. She’s on a mission to kill herself and tries to cut her wrists in the bathroom, but a guy stops her. He gets her fixed up and walks her home (she blows him on the way).

She wants to pay the guy to watch her roll around naked and do things to her. She’s trying to convert him from being gay or something. It’s kind of difficult to tell, since he’s critiquing her very clinically and she’s asking for all kinds of input, saying he knows nothing about women. He talks about the deceptive softness of women and how it’s a trap (all true, of course).

The movie is pretty graphic, with all kinds of things inside other things. There’s a female narrator, presumably, the woman paying the man, who tells you all kinds of intimate secrets about what women are thinking. Then the voice is that of the man, so it’s confusing a bit. He basically has his way with her while she’s just a rag doll for his experimentation. He comes back subsequent nights and does the same thing, though sometimes with gardening implements. There is a tampon scene that will flip squeamish people out, fo sho.

At the end, the guy doesn’t want to take the money because he actually felt something for her, but he does anyway, to sort of wrap up the contract. He has a heart to heart with a guy at a bar about how he shared utter intimacy with this woman and never even found out her name. Then, he leaves all the money she paid him (which is a LOT) for the bartender.

Despite the film being about 85% naked woman and 5% naked guy, it’s not nearly as arousing as one might think. Yes, the French have pushed the envelope with nudity and f’d-upedness, they certainly haven’t pushed the boundaries of a little thing we call plot. I won’t say it doesn’t have a point because it appears to be a mechanism for a modern woman to tell her perspective of intercourse and what she feels and doesn’t feel and what she fakes feeling because she knows men want to hear it. And, of course, it’s much easier to get guys to watch this sort of film is you do the entire thing naked – I’ll admit it. The film is at most, interesting. Not anything I’d rave about, so I’m telling you these things so when you see the box for this film, you won’t be duped into thinking it’s the most awesome movie in the world. It isn’t.

Ashes of Time Redux

2010-01-08T19:54:00.001-06:00

This is a Chinese film about a swordsman, Huang, who shows up at a friend of his’ house (Feng) with a jug of magic wine that makes people forget. He doesn’t believe it, but tries it anyway and actually forgets his past. He goes back to find out some things about his past and also about the person that gave him the wine. Feng is sort of a middle man that connects swordsmen with people who need swordsmen. Huang was drunk and agreed to marry what appears to be a tranny’s sister. This is where I get confused, is the tranny the sister as well?!?! Agghh!!!) Huang skips out on the promise to marry the sister and the tranny hires Feng to kill Huang.

To complicate things, there are various other things going on with Feng. He’s trying to hire swordsmen to kill a band of roving thieves. He hires a few people, which ends up weird – one he tries to pimp on some people because he’s wearing shoes, unlike other hired swordsmen. And another one is going blind and wants to get home to see some flowers blooming (aka his wife) before he goes completely blind. I won’t tell you how it ends, mostly because I’m not sure how it ends. I’m bad with symbolism, so what I saw on the screen might not have been what actually happened. Lots of people die though, so be ready for that.

This movie is super confusing (or maybe I’m super slow). I literally had to watch this film twice and I’m still not sure everything in it made sense. That being said, I really liked it a lot. There’s great action, great choreographed fighting, great costumes and special effects, and believable acting (even with subtitles). I’m not sure I could explain this any better even if I watched it a few more times. It’s convoluted, but strangely draws you in, nonetheless. I’d love to give this a higher rating than this, but it was simply too confusing for me. If you can figure it out, it might rank higher on your own list, since I already think it’s pretty good. It’s a re-edited version of the film put out in 2004, so I’m curious if it’s more linear in the earlier version, but I’m guessing it’s not as visually stunning as this one is.

Up in the Air

2010-01-08T19:35:00.000-06:00

This recent film stars George Clooney as Ryan Bingham, a traveling “termination manager” – he flies around the country working for companies downsizing and he fires people. He’s on the road (or the air) 95% of his time and actually complains if he has to spend time at home. His family doesn’t see him, he doesn’t get tied down with relationships or responsibility or commitments, and one day, his company decides they’re going to shift to an online version of what he does. Clearly he’s not happy. Natalie, a recent college grad, has talked Ryan’s boss into doing the firing virtually and saving the company tons of money in expenses. Ryan unwillingly takes Natalie along on one of his trips so she can see how what he does matters to people in person. She’s a little taken aback by some of the employees reactions to being let go, since one of them go by the book. Ryan is working a book deal on the side, as well as speaking engagements, and also finds himself in the beginnings of a relationship with a woman named Alex (Vera Farmiga from The Boy in the Striped Pajamas). Vera rocks his world in a good way and Natalie rocks his world in a bad way. Ryan gets invited to a relative’s wedding and invites Vera. Things get all girly and I heard people in the theater crying openly. Uncomfortable… Anyway, things don’t go as planned with either girl, and Ryan finds himself back in the old routine.

The film is quite good, though it is very depressing and slow paced – intentionally. I really enjoyed the acting in it and it’s likely a very good portrayal of life on the road. There were times I thought the music was a bit odd and sometimes distracted from the scenes, but take that with a grain of salt since I’m a musician from way back. Great shots of the cities they travel to, which are numerous and are well portrayed (except for Omaha, which is tough to portray well – suck it, Nebraska). For the girls who are Clooney fans, he occasionally shows up in a robe or shirtless, but you’re likely to be depressed by the whole thing. That being said, it’s still a worthwhile film.

Volver

2010-01-08T18:10:00.001-06:00

This is a Spanish film about a family living in Madrid. The mother and father have passed away in a fire and the elderly aunt is getting up there in years and bit crazy. The daughter pops in to take care of the aunt and the aunt keeps talking as if the mother were still around taking care of her. She writes it off as crazy talk, but after the aunt dies, we find out the mother faked her death in the fire and has been taking care of the aunt. The mother goes and hides out at her other daughter’s house and pretends to be a Russian hair dresser and steers clear of the oldest daughter.

Meanwhile, the oldest daughter illegally borrows her friend’s abandoned restaurant to start a catering business. And finds out her own daughter has killed her boyfriend when he gets drunk and tries to rape her one night. They hide the body for a while in the restaurant and the whole thing is just weird. The oldest daughter eventually finds out about her mother still being alive and shacking up with her sister. A family friend gets diagnosed with cancer and the supposedly-dead mother simply moves houses to take care of the cancer lady. It’s kind of a touching story and I was pleasantly surprised with this film. There’s not a ton of action in it, however, the Spaniards do enjoy some plot, so I feel like this film is one of the better foreign films. Additionally, it's got singing parts in it, which never thrills me, but that's my own personal beef with films. It’s got a couple of plot twists I didn’t see coming either, so it’s got that going for it.

The film stars Penelope Cruz as the oldest daughter, and a lot of other actors who aren’t big names, but act very well. The film is a little far fetched, but aside from two women carrying a dead body down a wide-open street, it’s fun enough to be believable. This is a film for the ladies, so if you like ‘splosions and fire, you’re not going to get it in this film. Even so, it’s worth watching.

Cautiva

2009-12-29T01:21:00.002-06:00

This is an Argentinean film about a 15-year-old girl, Christina who goes in for a routine blood test and the doctors find something they don’t go public with right away. She has a pretty frank discussion with her mother about having kids and her mother is pretty weirded out by the questioning – you might think because of the girl’s age, but you’d be wrong. The students in Christina’s school are studying how a bill becomes a low in the United States, and one of them gets belligerent about the power the president has to pardon criminals. We find out this girl’s parents “disappeared” due to the fact they were leftist supporters – only some of her friends know what happened. And now the girl has been taken out of the school. One day, Christina gets called to the school office where there are government people waiting to take her to a judge. She finds out her parents aren’t really her parents and also finds out her name and birthday aren’t what she thought, either. It’s a little hard to take, obviously. She is sent to live with her biological grandmother in a strange house since her grandmother has been searching for her since she was born. While at school volleyball practice, Christina runs into the girl who disappeared from her school and they have an uncomfortable discussion while naked in the shower. They decide to try to track down as much information about their parents as possible. They were both born in clandestine political prisons and Christina finds out more about her adoptive family and her biological family than she had wanted to. She doesn’t find out where they’re at currently, and then the movie ends. It was very anti-climactic. It just fizzled at the end. There’s very good acting in it, and it looks like it’s going to be a great plot, and then it just doesn’t go anywhere. Very disappointing ending to a decent foreign film.

Sherlock Holmes

2009-12-29T01:21:00.001-06:00

Despite some confusion surrounding the name of this film, it is not about a certain adult film star’s younger lesser talented brother. It’s about Sherlock Holmes, the world greatest detective and his sidekick, Dr. Watson. They solve a variety of crimes thanks to the amazing gift of combining minute pieces of information/evidence together into a story. This film iteration of the literary series stars Robert Downey Jr. playing Holmes and Jude Law playing Watson. Holmes and Watson capture an occult-dabbling big-shot named Blackwood. After Blackwood is executed, a groundskeeper claims to have seen him rise from the dead. Blackwood’s reputation with the occult has people flipped out when he keeps popping up. Blackwood tries to take control over parliament by rigging up some sort of chemical weapon and trying to pass it off as an occult weapon. Holmes and Watson systematically debunk all of Blackwood’s occult shenanigans and eventually kill Blackwood. It’s a fast-paced murder mystery and only a handful of obvious CGI (one of which was so outlandish I couldn’t believe they left it in the film). Otherwise, it was mostly green screen stuff in the background, which I can generally deal with. The film ends with an obvious set-up for a sequel as Holmes and Watson received what will lead to their next case. The film was well-acted and of course Robert Downey Jr. is hot and shirtless in a couple scenes. Watson doesn’t play a bumbling sidekick, he plays a very competent and hilarious partner in mystery-solving. It’s not an amazing film, but it was pretty good.

The Mutant Chronicles

2009-12-29T01:02:00.001-06:00

There’s a machine that changes men into mutants and it’s buried under the earth and its secret is protected by a secret cult. It’s been around since the medieval times, but has lasted through the year 2707, when four corporations rule the world. They’re all at war with each other, but the battle between “Capitol” and “Bauhaus” is the most extreme right now in what used to be Europe. Out of nowhere, these random zombie–like mutant pop out of the ground and start cleaning house on both sides. Apparently, war broke the seal and awakened the machine. The mutants take civilians and military people to the machine and it changes them into a bunch more mutants. Ron Perlman, as Brother Samuel, asks the leader of the cult (John Malkovich) for a small team of people to go destroy the machine. Samuel pulls together soldiers from each of the four corporations to be the fighting unit, including Thomas Jane (from the Punisher) as Mitch Hunter. The Mutant Chronicles are a prophecy/guidebook to how the machine can be shut off. The team is instructed in how to destroy the machine and how to fight the zombie mutants (which includes swords), and then sent off to destroy the machine. Most of the people on the mission are killed by the mutants, but Mitch keeps going and brings as many pieces of the Chronicles as he can scrap together. He gets captured by the machine and half turned into a mutant. Then he grabs a couple of injured soldiers and proceeds to try to blow up the machine, which turns out to be a giant space ship and launches into space. Who writes this stuff?

For being 2707, the weapons are surprisingly 1950-ish. A lot of heavy iron and oddly, what appears to be steam-powered stuff. Really? It’s some sort of steampunked WWI combined with Alien and with a splash of Sin City thrown in. I still can’t figure out why the mutants seemed to be pieced together with bits of metal band-aids and such. The CGI in the film is really bad, not tear-wrenchingly terrible, but it’s still pretty obviously low-budget and painful. Almost as bad as Megafault, but that one still wins the prize for the worst of all time.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

2009-12-28T20:09:00.002-06:00

This film takes place during World War II in Germany. A young boy comes home from school to find his family is planning for a dinner party and discussing moving to the countryside since their dad got a promotion. The young boy, Bruno, isn’t pleased about the move since he loves the house they’re in and all his friends. The family’s new home is a bid drab and gloomy and not at all warm and inviting like their last home – more of a walled compound than a home. It’s also in the middle of freakin nowhere in the countryside. Bruno can see a farm from his window with a bunch of children. He says the kids are a bit strange, since they all wear pajamas. He asks his mom if he can play with the children, and when she finds out what their “pajamas” are, she freaks out a little bit. The father tries to explain who the farmers are by saying those are not people, and that he should not play with the children on the farm. While Bruno explores, he comes across a kid in striped pajamas on the other side of a fence. Bruno doesn’t understand what’s going on with the whole concentration camp situation, so he thinks this is just another kid playing. Bruno begins to understand some of what his tutor and sister and father are teaching him about Jews. But not enough. He arranges to have the little boy bring him some of the pajamas and a hat to sneak him into the camp. The little boy can’t find his father and Bruno wants to help him out. Bruno digs under the fence and gets into the camp dressed as a prisoner. Things don’t go well for Bruno or the other little boy, or for a lot of Jewish people during World War II. I won’t ruin the ending, but it’s not bunnies and flowers. This film is extremely well done and is very touching. The photography is great and the acting is superb. The movie implies a lot without showing the horrors of the holocaust and shows how children are brought up in the culture without knowing they are being brainwashed. Yes, you have to overlook the fact that everyone has British accents in Germany, but that’s easy to do, right? It’s a very depressing movie, but it’s still quite good.

Step Brothers

2009-12-28T20:09:00.001-06:00

Some people hate Will Farrell, and some people wish they could hate Will Farrell, but can’t. I’m in the latter group. This film is about two single parents that get combined (thankfully, Mary Steenburgen is the smokin’ hot mom, so SCORE for me) and two adult children living at home are now forced to live with each other. Yes, Will Farrell acts like an overgrown idiot kid (like most of his movies), and it always comes across as moronic, but he does string enough one liners together that it passes for comedy. While the fight scenes between the two step brothers are moronic, there are some classic moments in many of them. I will say that singing in any film ruins it for me, especially when people sing Guns N Roses songs as operatic barbershop quartet idiocy – this film does have that, so be warned. Farrell’s biological brother stops by for a visit and is a pompous ass to everyone, and ends up winning over the new dad. Farrell’s brother dares the step brothers to punch him and John C. Reilly socks him right in the face. Farrell and Reilly become best friends. The step brothers go job hunting (as a team), which fails miserably, and they decide to go into business together and start an entertainment company. All kinds of things go poorly and they’re forced to move out of their parents’ house (because they caused their divorce) and get real jobs. The parents eventually get back together and everyone lives happily ever after. It’s a ridiculous movie, and doesn’t stand up to scrutiny except for a handful of one liners, especially the line about Kobayashi. Those one liners are classic, but seriously, it’s probably not worth the 1:45 you have to invest in the film to get them.

Gomorrah

2009-12-28T19:38:00.004-06:00

This Italian film opens with a bunch of guys getting tanned and manicured together. Two guys pull guns and start blasting the other guys, spraying blood all over the salon. There are multiple local crime bosses, the Camorra, who take a fee on what people make. They get money from drug dealers, prostitutes, old people, whoever. That's how things operate in this area, I guess. Two local small-time kid drug runners hold up a larger operation and steal their drugs. Their local crime boss isn’t too happy about it, so these two kids think they’ll set up their own shop and be the bosses. The two wanna-be crime bosses steal some guns and go practice shooting in their funderoo’s at a lake – still not sure what that’s all about. The kids in this apartment complex are all in training to be runners and lackeys for the crime bosses. They run errands and get shot while wearing flak jackets and such to prove their manhood. Some friends end up being paired with different crime bosses and are forced to split their friendships over turf. There are all kinds of shootings in the apartment complex and some of the kids are forced into doing the dirty work. There are two side stories in the film as well: a cartel who disposes of toxic waste and also a tailor who sells his services to the Chinese. These things are unrelated to the main plot, but since the Camorra has their hand in these industries, I guess the directors felt they needed to include them in some way. I think this is sort of an expose on the Camorra, the mafia in Scampia – one of the largest drug trafficking areas in Italy. It’s pretty brutal, but it really doesn’t have much of a linear plot. It’s an interesting film, but really doesn’t have much plot to grasp onto. It’s not an uplifting film, since there’s a lot of shooting, including two of the main characters, but it is enlightening. It just kind of left me hanging.

Megafault

2009-12-28T19:38:00.003-06:00

Since I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie with Brittany Murphy in it, I felt I owed it to her legacy to watch one of her films. This SyFy channel-appropriate movie is about earthquakes ripping through the country across faultlines and swallowing whole cities. The feds send in seismologists to research it and they don’t get very far. Brittany Murphy is one of those experts. The film starts with an incredibly bad CGI mining blast scene and gets worse from there. I HATE watching films where I yell bullshit in the first minute of a film. I also realize I am not a fan of Brittany Murphy. I also heard there were a couple of scenes in the film shot in Davenport, IA (which I grew up near) – which is true since one of the first scenes was shot at the RiverCenter in D-port. And, as it turns out, the rest of the film’s scenes are shot in the Quad Cities and LeClaire, IA (despite the city names they put on the screen). And now that I know this, I’m embarrassed to be from there. Whether it's Lexington or Aspen, you'll find a Major Art and Hobby Store on the corner of 2nd and Perry, only wearing different clothes so you know it's cold - are viewers REALLY that stupid? All of the cities filmed get painfully and fake-ly sucked into the center of the earth. It’s absolutely ridiculous that someone would try to pass these scenes off as acceptable special effects. It’s probably the worst special effects I’ve seen in a Hollywood production. Yes, I was yelling at the screen, in fact. Loudly. Actually, I’m pounding out the letters on the keyboard as I type this. I really need to get this CGI-rage under control. Or maybe the film makers in Hollywood need to get their CGI shit together. Maybe Eriq LaSalle should get his shit together as well, since he was more believable in the Soul Glow commercials he did in Coming to America. The seismologist team decides to shoot a magic laser to freeze the underground water and create a second earthquake to cancel out the first earthquake. Then if things go bad, the Grand Canyon will absorb the second earthquake and stop it from spreading like the initial earthquake. This is the most ridiculous plot ever. And I’ve seen better special effects on an 8mm home film camera from the 1950s. I’m done with this review, or I’m going to have an aneurysm.

Shut Up & Shoot Me

2009-12-28T18:59:00.001-06:00

This is a Polish film that starts with a guy who appears to be a butcher, a mailman, a pooper scooper, and a bartender – I think this is the comedy part (Oh, those crazy Pollacks!!!). The real plot is actually about a British couple spending time in Prague and worrying over whether he turned off the iron in their room before they left. A statue falls from a building while they are walking and crushes the wife – seriously, DESTROYS her. As he’s in his flat later, he tries to electrocute himself with said iron after that, and it doesn’t go well. The guy from the beginning of the film shows up to drive him to the morgue as he’s crawling out of the bathtub. He receives an urn full of his wife’s ashes and he’s a bit mentally frazzled. The husband is still suicidal and wants to hire the guy from the beginning of the film to kill him. They go to a secluded field and the husband tries to pay the guy with a credit card – yes, to kill him. The driver takes him to an artillery field and sits him in the middle of it. There are shells exploding all around and none of them kill the husband. So the husband has to hitchhike to a hotel. The husband tracks down the beginning guy and asks him to finish the job – so the beginning guy talks the husband into jumping off the roof of the apartment building. The husband won’t jump, so he ends up sleeping on the couch at the beginning guy’s flat. The beginning guy’s plan is to have other people kill the husband and they get into all kinds of ridiculous situations in which the husband still ends up not dying. They accidentally kill a mobster’s girlfriend in a parking garage and through the surveillance tape, the mobster finds out who these guys are. The two guys try to dispose of the mobster’s girlfriend and aren’t having any luck with that. A couple of other people end up dead as well.

The film almost became one of those “buddy movies” where zany things happen, only this is more depressing – so maybe it’s more hilarious at the same time. This film amused me, but it wasn’t one I’d rave about. Surprisingly, this film had about 413 times more plot than most foreign films. Go Poland! I did chuckle a couple of times at how ridiculous it was, so maybe it is worth a look.

Stuck

2009-12-28T18:52:00.001-06:00

A nursing home nurse is being considered for a job promotion due to the crap (literally) she deals with every day at work. Her boss tricks her into coming into work on her day off and the nurse isn’t happy about it. This film is about the rough day this nurse is about to have. This film is supposedly based on a true story about a woman in Texas to which this happened - I'm not sure I'm buying it based on this film.

Across town, this other guy can’t pay his rent due to his recent job loss, so the landlord kicks him out of his apartment. The landlord is kind of a douche and tells the guy he can’t take any of his belongings with him when he’s throwing him out. There’s a scuffle in an upstairs apartment and the evicted guy grabs his belongings and runs for it. The guy has an appointment with an employment agency to find a job, but it doesn’t go well. He ends up sleeping in a park that night. The nurse is at a club on some drugs and goes home slightly tipsy. She’s on her cell phone when she runs the homeless guy over and he sticks in her windshield, bleeding all over the inside of her car. She freaks out and keeps on driving, through the city and to her house. She parks her car in the garage to hide it and when she reaches for her purse, the guy moves and asks for help. She freaks out and runs inside the house to her drug dealer boyfriend. She tells him she hit a homeless person and he tells her not to worry about it. Then they end up having sex and she keeps seeing the homeless guy’s face on her boyfriend’s while he’s “getting’ up in them guts.”

The next morning, she goes out to the garage and the guy is still alive and still stuck in her windshield. She remembers she’s supposed to be at work, so she calls as cab. As she’s going out to the cab, the homeless guy honks the horn on her car. She whacks him in the head with a board to make him stop. When he wakes up, he uses her cell phone to call 911, but the battery dies in the cell phone. He continues to honk the horn and a boy hears him and goes and gets his mom. The kid’s dad says he doesn’t want the police around or they could get into big trouble. Unfortunately, the father won’t let the mother and kid call for help.

The guy climbs all the way into the car, grabs a bottle of water, and fashions a splint out of the board she smacked him with. The nurse gets off work and goes to her drug dealer/bf’s house where she finds another woman in his bed. She whips the new girl’s ass (including hitting her with a frying pan) and throws her out into the hallway. She gets over the infidelity pretty quickly and gets the bf to help her with the guy she hit the previous night. He suggests calling 911 – hilarious. The bf ties the guy up so he doesn’t keep crawling around everywhere. They tie him up and sack him up in garbage bags, right when the nurse’s co-worker walks into the garage to check things out. The couple comes up with a story about hitting a deer, since she saw the car and all the blood. The co-worker had come by to tell the nurse that her boss knows she left work and things are turning south at work.

Meanwhile a neighbor is walking his dog and the dog gets into the garage and gets blood all over her fur, yet the owner thinks it’s food or ketchup or something and takes the dog back home. The couple tries to figure out how to dispose of this guy. The homeless guy unties himself and is ready for the bf to come back. The bf pulls a gun on the guy and it goes off right as the homeless guy stabs the bf in the eye with a ball point pen and kills him. The nurse comes back out to the garage and finds her dead boyfriend and the guy bashes her in the head with the car door. And for a guy with two compound fractures, he’s walking pretty well, using the broom as a crutch – weird.

He gets out into the street and pulls the gun on the nurse. The gun goes off and she smacks him in the head with the shovel. Apparently, no one sees her dragging his body back into the garage. She dumps gasoline all over the bodies of her bf and the homeless guy and argues with the homeless guy. He starts the car and then runs the nurse over inside the garage. He breaks both her legs and she’s now laying on the hood of her own car. She tries to shoot the homeless guy with the gun and the sparks from the gun end up lighting all the gasoline she’s poured all over the place. The homeless guy manages to get the garage door open and crawls to safety.

First off, she’s a nurse, so she’s not an idiot. Secondly, he’s got compound fractures in both legs with bones sticking out, and he’s been sliced open badly by the windshield he’s sticking out of, but he isn’t dead. Thirdly, the neighbor kid and mother would have called 911 no matter what if they saw a guy sticking out of a windshield moving around. Fourth, you don’t just whip together a splint out of a board and a plastic bag, especially when you’ve got bones sticking out of your pantleg. Fifth, the nurse got over the whore much quicker than I expected. This list goes on and on and continues to get more and more ridiculous. This movie is so far beyond the scope of reality that it’s not funny or even entertaining. It’s just annoying and implausible. The acting in the film is decent, so I’ve got no complaints there, just with the writing. Don’t waste your time with this film.

Ninja Assassins

2009-12-21T23:59:00.001-06:00

This is a modern day ninja movie that takes place in Berlin of all places. Aside from the unusual setting, the movie explains why after thousands of years, people who look into what ninjas are doing end up dead. The film is made by the same people that did the Matrix, and it seemed pretty clear in the effects throughout this film. In fact, I described this movie to my friend as a combination of the Matrix, Ghost, and the 1980’s television series “The Master”. (Which is also appropriate since Sho Kosugi is one of the main characters in the film and was in the 1980’s television series.) Two Interpol agents begin looking into some mysterious deaths they think are paid assassinations. All signs point to a group of assassins who are infants stolen as children and put into ninja training. The ninjas try taking out the two people investigating them and come very close, if it weren’t for the meddling of one of their former students who is trying to help one of the Interpol agents. They never really say why he’s helping her, other than she has a “special heart”, which is absolutely asinine. But whatever. The film is action packed with lots of explosions, TONS of ninja stars, swords, and scorpion whips. There are some really awesome blood spurting scenes and most of the special effects are top-notch, especially the parts where limbs and whole bodies are being chopped in half. There were a couple of spots I (quietly) yelled bullshit in – the fact that the Interpol operatives managed to get a crap ton of Humvees up on a remote mountain ninja training camp without being heard even though there are no roads – this was where my friend TheDoctor yelled “AMURKA!!!” in the theater – it was classic. There were a couple of other ones aside from that, but that was the funniest one. I’m not a huge fan of modern day martial arts movies – I’m more of an old school guy, but I make exceptions. This film is good, but not great. I’m glad I saw it, but I really thought it would be better than it was. One thing this movie will do is make martial arts movies more accessible to the masses of people that loved the Matrix. So I guess it’s a good thing, after all. And yeah, I’ll probably add it to my vast collection of martial arts DVDs when it comes out.

Pirate Radio

2009-12-17T11:10:00.001-06:00

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this film, originally titled "The Boat That Rocked". I saw the previews for it and some clips with interviews with the actors and a huge part of me wanted to see it. And then there were parts with ridiculous clothing and dancing and singing on a ship – which 1000% turned me off. Thankfully, the singing and dancing were reserved for very specific and (almost) appropriate parts of the film. This film is about a time in British history where pop and rock music simply were not played on the radio. There were boats anchored off shore that would broadcast music people actually liked and were technically doing nothing illegal. The government hated these stations for giving kids a rebellious attitude, but the only thing the government could do was create BS laws that would make what these ships were doing crimes of the highest order. The story line of this particular adventure is a young kid gets sent to live on the ship by his mother (his godfather is the ship’s captain), because he isn’t adjusting well socially and he’s been caught smoking a bit of the herb. The ship’s residents – all on-air-disc jockeys – take him under their wing and show him a bit about life and a bit about radio. They have huge outlandish parties on board where they ship women from the shore to the boat and do wild things to them and then send them back home. The government passes a law to make paid advertising illegal on these ships and this only slows down the ship’s team. The government passes an additional law saying the radio signals endanger merchant marine’s lives. The government then sends out an armada of boats to shut down the ship, but the ship sets sail on the lamb still broadcasting… until it hits something and starts to sink. Then the government won’t step in to help save the lives of the radio people. The film is really well done. Despite some super shaky hand-held footage aboard a rocky boat at the beginning, they eventually find a tripod that helped my nausea. Philip Seymour Hoffman is brilliant in this film as is the guy from Shaun of the Dead (Nick Frost). You actually grow to love these characters and their off-beat sense of humor and camaraderie. I would recommend this film to people who grew up listening to the radio, people who are old enough to remember the 60’s (which I am not, just so you know), or people who have roots in radio or broadcast (which I do, consequently). Apparently, the film is historically-based (still fictional, so not historically accurate), so it should tell you something about how far the media has come in the last 40 or 50 years.

Murder Party

2009-12-15T09:00:00.001-06:00

Random guy is walking down the street on Halloween night and steps on an invitation to a Murder Party. He has just rented some videos to watch that evening, and since he has nothing else to do, decides to go to the party. He dresses up as a cardboard knight and heads out. He shows up at this warehouse where these costumed people are waiting to kidnap him, torture him, and kill him. One of the costumed girls falls over and impales her head accidentally. Should we be laughing? Yes, I thought it was hilarious. Turns out the costumed people are all artists who are vying for some artistic grant money by coming up with the best idea for killing the random guy who showed up. Alexander, the grant money guy shows up and talks to them about challenging themselves to reach for the stars when coming up with ideas for killing this guy. They all sit around and inject themselves with truth serum and just spill their secrets – kind of hilarious also. Then things start to go terribly wrong. People start killing each other in brutal ways. The murder party expands into another art party nearby where more people get killed. The knight eventually escapes and makes his way home. Even though there was a definite climax, it was kind of anti-climactic. Not a fantastic movie and I think the script writing could have been more funny during most of it, but it was still fairly amusing. I did laugh at a couple of inappropriate times, however. That's got to mean something, right?

Chinese Hercules

2009-12-09T00:01:00.000-06:00

This is a traditional kung-fu film in which an orphan kung-fu student accidentally kills a guy in a fight over a girl and has to run for his life and also vows never to fight again. He leaves the area and gets a job hauling bags of rice from ships to a storage facility. He tries to be a good person, but every time he does, the bad guys beat him down (sometimes physically). This evil syndicate closes down the pier he works on and all of his coworkers fight back without effect. The girl he fought over shows up randomly to bring a message to the runaway, and tries to get him to fight back for his coworkers. This huge muscle guy works for the syndicate as a thug and can only say a few hilarious words like “We kill them. We dump them.” Classic. The girl the runaway fought for enrages him enough that he goes after the muscle guy in an epic battle. The film is not the greatest sound or visual quality, and the plot is a tad weak in that I’m not sure if the huge muscle guy is Hercules or the fighter runaway guy. And if it is the muscle guy, he only has about 10 minutes of screen time – but I guess it is a better title than “scared runaway kung-fu guy.” It’s one that most people can pass on, but since I’m a fan of kung-fu movies in general, I wasn’t going to pass this one up. It’s forgettable.

Awake

2009-12-02T13:50:00.001-06:00

In this movie, a rich NY kid has a bad heart and undergoes a heart transplant. However, when they give him the general anesthesia, he doesn’t actually go under. His vital signs all read as if he’s unconscious, but he hears and feels everything the doctor is doing. To keep his mind off of the procedures and pain, he focuses his attention on his new wife, but his thoughts drift wildly the whole time. Turns out his surgeon is in some sort of plot to kill the kid because he’s rich. Oh wait, his brand new wife, Jessica Alba, is in on it too. But they kill him on the table by saying his heart was rejected (by the way, this part of the movie is super graphic – just a warning). He’s still on the breathing machine, so he’s technically alive when another surgeon shows up and steals the heart from the rich kid’s mom, in a super unexpected turn of events. The film is an interesting concept, but is not exciting by any stretch. I could have lived without seeing this one. They really could have made this one a bit more suspenseful.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

2009-11-24T10:02:00.001-06:00

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

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

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

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

2009-11-22T23:57:00.001-06:00

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

Hank and Mike

2009-11-20T01:33:00.001-06:00

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

Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day

2009-11-19T23:33:00.001-06:00

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

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

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

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

Frontier(s)

2009-11-19T23:28:00.000-06:00

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

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

Special

2009-11-17T01:18:00.000-06:00

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

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

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

Quarantine

2009-11-16T20:14:00.000-06:00

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

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

Careful

2009-11-15T21:47:00.000-06:00

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

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

Primer

2009-11-15T20:52:00.000-06:00

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

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

The Orphanage

2009-11-15T20:38:00.000-06:00

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

RocknRolla

2009-11-06T20:23:00.001-06:00

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

In Bruges

2009-11-06T19:41:00.001-06:00

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

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

Re-Cycle

2009-11-06T19:40:00.000-06:00

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

Monster Camp

2009-11-01T21:48:00.000-06:00

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

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

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

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

The Signal

2009-11-01T02:07:00.002-06:00

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

Teeth

2009-10-29T13:54:00.001-05:00

This is a film about a super goody-two-shoes high school girl who actively and militantly preaches abstinence. The reason she preaches is is due to the fact that her lady parts have teeth (I’m guessing because she was raised next to a nuclear power plant that is shown in as many shots as possible). Her step brother gets his finger bitten when they’re small kids playing in the wading pool out front. All of the kids make fun of her at school because of the abstinence thing, but clearly they don’t know about her fanged ‘gyna. She gets herself a boyfriend who seems cool, but then basically assaults her. For his trouble he gets his Jansen bit off. She had a gynecologist check her out and he gets his finger bit off. Apparently, it’s only when she doesn’t want to be violated that the teeth come out. She nails this random guy that asked her out some days ago with complete success, and we do eventually get to see her nekid – which is nice. When she finds out she was part of a bet, his Jansen gets bit off as well. Here mom goes into the hospital because her step-brother ignored her screams for help. So she sleeps with him to bite his Jansen off. She does and then the dog eats it – ridiculous. It’s a better movie than I thought it would be, but it’s not fantastic. Well acted, written, and directed, but there’s a reason it didn’t make a huge splash in Hollywood.

Ping Pong Playa

2009-10-29T00:01:00.004-05:00

This is an amusing movie about a Chinese guy that thinks he’s a basketball playa (in every sense of the word). He is a freeloader from his friends and family and lives the life I can only dream about. His brother is a famous ping pong player and his mom and dad run a ping pong shop (really). The brother and mom get in a car accident and break bones people utilize in ping pong. The basketball brother is forced to teach ping pong classes to little kids. His older brother calls him a “Yellow Fonzie” since he lives in his parents’ house – hilarious. The playa starts ringing people for money at the ping pong table with the help of his grade school students and it’s hilarious. His basketball friend breaks the reality to him that he’s not a baller and never will be. Playa decides to compete in the “Golden Cock” (seriously) tournament that his brother always wins – and his dad agrees to train him. It’s a pretty ridiculous film, but I did laugh at a couple of lines in it. It’s not terrible, and it’s better than Balls of Fury. I don’t know that I would run out and buy it, but I’m not embarrassed to say I enjoyed it.

Let The Right One In

2009-10-27T21:44:00.001-05:00

This is a vampire movie from Sweden that isn’t what I thought it would be. I really am used to vampire films being very suspenseful with some crazy jump scenes where stuff jumps out where you don’t expect it. But this isn’t one of them. I was sort of disappointed. A little boy gets a new neighbor, a girl about his age. She ends up being a vampire, but is very matter of fact about it. Her father tries to kill people and drain their blood for her, but keeps botching the exercise and eventually lets his daughter drink his blood before he dies. The girl and the boy have a puppy love relationship and she ends up moving away. It’s got good effects (minus the CGI cat scene which is borderline slapstick and should have been much scarier and well done), and the film really isn’t that gory, especially for a vampire film. I had much higher expectations. However it is a foreign film, and we all know those are a little light on plot most of the time. Too bad, Sweden. You’ll get ‘em next time.

My Name is Bruce

2009-10-26T23:14:00.001-05:00

Alright, I’m the only lover of bad movies in the history of the planet that doesn’t like Bruce Campbell at all. I’m sorry. I respect what he’s done for the genre, but I can’t stand him or his moronic acting. This is a movie directed by Bruce Campbell about himself. He’s a low budget horror film actor who gets kidnapped by a superfan to protect his hometown of Goldlick from an evil Chinese demon. It’s the most ridiculous film ever, complete with stupid blood splattering like in all of Bruce Campbell films. The kid that captures Bruce goes after the demon himself and Bruce has to return to the town to save the kid and then nail the kid’s mom. If you like Bruce Campbell, you’ll probably like this film. If you don’t (like me), you’ll hate this movie. I’m just glad to get this one checked off my Netflix list.

The Foot Fist Way

2009-10-26T01:49:00.001-05:00

This is a Will Farrell-endorsed movie about a Tae Kwan Do instructor. There are some hilarious one liners in this movie. He yells at his students and had one of his students hand out an ass-whoopin to an elderly lady in his class. I shouldn’t have laughed, but I totally did. The guy finds xerox copies of his wife’s boobs and ass in some papers when she had been drunk at an office party. The instructor is a creepy doosh redneck who beats up on his students. To get back at his wife, he hits on one of his students who clearly is not interested. The couple try to get back together, but when he brings his movie star hero to town for a demonstration (for which, he has to sell his Ferrari to afford), his wife sleeps with the movie star and he catches them. They break up again, but not before he pees on her in the bleachers of a school. It’s a ridiculous movie and nowhere near as funny as I would expect, even from a Will Farrell-endorsed film. Don’t bother. It doesn’t have enough one liners to sustain the thing.

The Rocker

2009-10-25T18:06:00.002-05:00

This is basically one of those “School of Rock” movies that’s not good at all, despite featuring Dwight from the Office. While Dwight is hilarious in that setting, he doesn’t play a metal drummer very well – even a washed-up one. It’s a pretty pathetic and unbelievable film in which a high school band has one of their uncles fill in on one of their gigs. He makes things happen and they go on the road and get a record and video deal (like no one does). Dwight refuses to open up for one of his previous bands who booted him and they replace him with an Abercrombie & Fitch drummer (their term, not mine). Although, I hated the movie, I think it’s absolutely hilarious how sweaty he gets when he plays – only because I got that sweaty when I played drums. Classic. Also the amount of “Final Countdown” is classic since Gob from Arrested Development is also in the film. Dumbest ending for a movie ever. So many things happened in this movie that never happen in real life that it just angered me. Don’t watch this movie.