Archive for the 'movies' Category

Review #192: bleep blorp

Thursday, March 8th, 2007

Ok, so why am I putting symbols in place of letters? It’s an attempt to fight spam.
This is a sweet, safe movie that was pretty entertaining until the end. It was a total cop out and nothing was explained. so there.

Review #184: G#o$t R!der

Monday, February 19th, 2007

The saddest thing about this movie is that it could have been good.
No, don’t laugh, I’m serious.
IT could have been good for my standards, anyway. No, I wasn’t expecting the in-depth character development that is making the $piderm@n movies all epic and shit, but all the elements were there and the special effects were at least up to industry standards. The thing that pissed me off the most was that, even though I don’t like Nicholas Cage that much, I hated when he was G#o$t R!der even more. I actually like the Johnny Blaze character, but whenever he changed he started with the one-liners. I HATE that! Also it would have been cool to see him move around naturally when his head was on fire, but it was like the stage direction was “Okay, remember…your head and hands are on fire!” As a result every single move is a pose that simply must be stricken.
The actress who plays Roxanne, the love interest, is simply terrible. Where did they find her? she can’t act her way out of…well, anything. She can’t act!
Oh, and everyone kept pointing at things.
The bad guys all wore the same goth-rave reject coats even though they were demons. They looked super retarded. One of them, Blackheart, could have been really cool if not played by the weird kid from American Beauty.
Oh, and anything there was wherever these guys went, including G#o$t R!der, got destroyed. Cars, buildings, light bulbs. All destroyed. I bet GR himself killed a shitload of people!
Any redeeming qualities this movie had were washed away by the script. Any Hollywood cliche you can think of was there. It was shit, plain and simple.
So, like I said I could have been good. But it wasn’t.

Review #174: Bandidas

Thursday, January 11th, 2007

This movie had the kind of mixture of adventure, melodrama and lame jokes that could easily be made as a cartoon. That’s probably why I liked it. Well, that and the beer. It’s the story of a pair of senoritas who are out to get revenge against an evil bank guy from New York, evily played by Dwight Yoakam. He’s such a bad ass, he doesn’t seem to care who he kills in order to get that railroad built through the people’s town or whatever.
Steve Zahn must have considered himself quite lucky that the script called for the two girls to constantly be in competition, most heatedly when it came to kissing technique. They pretty much wear his lips off throughout the movie. He plays a science guy hired to solve their robberies but end up helping them. Original.
The script is nothing spectacular and is quite cliched and boring, but my favorite bit of dialogue in the movie is:


steve zahn: No two people have the same fingerprint.
Penelope Cruz: Have you checked everyone in the world?
Steve Zahn: No, but it was proven by science.



I also liked a line from Dwight Yoakam’s character that sounds like a line in a song:


I wouldn’t be suprised
if by the end of this ride
your man was right back
by your side

Review #171: Black Christmas (2006)

Thursday, December 28th, 2006

Spoiler warning…um, there are spoilers.

As far as a slasher movie goes, this one was pretty cool. I mean, why do you see a slasher movie? The plot? No, you go for bloody, gruesome killings and there were plenty of those in here. The story was okay and the acting was painful, but that lends itself to some funny lines.

Sorority chick #1 to Sorority chick #2: “You don’t even have a sister!”
Old sorority chick looking for her dead sister: “Yes, she does.” (she means herself!)


hmmm…it’s funnier in the movie. All of the sisterhood stuff they blab about is.

I’m always suprised by who survives in these movies. It wasn’t Gretchen from Mean Girls. It wasn’t Jessica from Passions. I wasn’t Dawn from Buffy. It was some blonde chick I’ve never seen before. But Dawn eats it via a pair of ice skates and you see a nice shot of the wound on the back of her head. It’s pretty rad.
So, if you dig slasher movies with the good old formula of hot chicks getting sliced and diced, you won’t be disapointed. There are some more creative deaths like flesh christmas cookies and an improbable falling icicle through the eye, but mostly it’s just the killer hacking through the girls. There’s also enough of a plot to pop out a sequel, but I hope they don’t. The plot wouldn’t survive to the end of a second movie.

Review # 170: Lady in the Water

Sunday, December 24th, 2006


Good God almighty, this movie was terrible. I’ve come to expect certain things from M. Night Shyamalan; slow-moving action, even slower-revealing revelations and some suprise twist or another. This movie had all of those and, although I was at least entertained by movies like The Sixth Sense and The Village (apparently a LOT of people don’t like that one, either), this one sucked donkey nuts. Here’s why:


>>There is a “bedtime story” that is apparently true and now these people have to deal with it. However, the story-within-a-story dynamic falls drastically short of any sort of success.. Everyone accepts it all as fact WAY too easily.


>>None of these people can act. Seriously. The way they all talk to each other is uncomfortable to watch as you can feel them thinking about how they are going to say their lines. The worst, by far, is Shyamalan himself. It’s just like his painful performance as the guy who killed Mel Gibson’s wife in Signs, but the role is much bigger and so the pain is in a larger dose.


>>Why, oh, why does the girl (who has the horrible name of “Story”) have to sit in the shower through most of the movie? Why can’t she hang out in the pool? She slept a whole night in Paul Giamatti’s apartment without the shower but suddenly will dry up or something?


>>The only thing that got me through this movie was the fact that, for some reason, I find Paul Giamatti to be cute and cuddly. AND he’s wearing a lot of earth-tones in this movie…*sigh*


>>Shyamalan should have either waited until he had enough money to make a movie about the “bedtimestory” itself, or not relied so much on the story to dictate the actions of the characters. They’d pump the chinese granny for more details of the story (BTW, she had and answer for every single question) and do whatever she said. The granny, however, plays no role except the source of this information. The woman’s daughter has no problem translating what she thinks is just a rather involved bedtime story to her building’s super.


>>This movie sucked.

Review # 169: Danielson: A Family Movie

Wednesday, December 20th, 2006


Tonight the guy had a suprise Christmas present for me. I had no idea what it was, and I had my defenses up when I found out it involved GOING somewhere. Imagine my suprise when we rolled up to the theater and BAM! Danielson was playing! How the hell does this guy know me so well?
What can I say, I love the Danielson Familie and their incarnations. This movie explores the history of the band focusing mainly on the lead man Daniel Smith. The rest of the family are sort of studio musicians for the music he writes. While they have their lives doing other stuff in addition to the music, he has his life of making music or art. The archival footage starts as early as Daniel’s art school thesis performance with his brothers and sisters, before the first album was recorded. Many of the family members have their own narratives that each give a different perspective of their musical endeavors.
If you are a fan of the Danielsons, whether it’s because you like good music or because they seem to be popular with the hipsters and you will like them while you’re being told to, you really ought to see this movie. It’s not in wide release, unfortunately. In fact I didn’t even know it was playing here in Seattle. So you may have to wait for it to come out on video. I thought I was going to have to.
The movie has a subtitle: Make a Joyful Noise HERE. It could have been: Struggling in a Sea of Douchebags. The pure honesty and happiness of the Smith family highlights how inane and stupid everyone around them is. Including that fuckhead Sefjan Stevens. Yes, of Illinois and all that. He was in the band touring and whatnot for quite a bit. Then he played solo and blew up. Daniel Smith, meanwhile is too God-y for mainstream and not God-y enough for christians. There are some “man on the street” interviews about the band and everyone’s all like “They’re weird, but I like them. They’re scary. I don’t get it. Are they christian? I like it, but I’m not into Jesus,” etc. Everyone seemed afraid to say that IT WAS GOOD MUSIC! Then there are some Sefjan audience interviews and everyone basicaly jerks off onto his face. (I’m sure the familie would disaprove of my harsh words toward their friend.)
So, this movie ruled and I wish the Smith familie the best.

Review #166: Firefly/Serenity

Tuesday, December 12th, 2006


Been bowling tonight, ergo, I’m drunk. Bring on the bullets!:
-The scene(s) where River is whaling on the Reavers is probably one of my favorite scenes in a movie, ever.
-I thought there was no way that a 2 hour movie could satisfy my curiosity after finishing the Firefly series, mostly thinking of Shepard Book’s mysterious past. I was wrong. The movie basically told the audience, by telling Mal (Captain Reynolds), “No, you’re never going to know.” They at least addressed it, wich suits me fine.
-There is a cool site that has Serenity acted out with paper puppets. Click here to see it. Click here to see why I couldn’t see it until I had seen Serenity.
-Finally someone made a show about Space Cowboys. Man, that’s awesome.
-The characters are too good. I think Whedon’s characters (in general) may have sparked the beginning of my inability to distinguish fantasy from reality. However, no one on this show was better than Anya.
-The theme song to the series was REALLY bad. I hated it.
-The Jaynestown episode was SO stupid. If there’s a stand alone episode about Jayne, they could have made it not suck so bad. I suppose he was suposed to learn a lesson in it, but that would fundamentaly change his character. And, just like the theme song, the epic folk song about him sucks. Goddam mud people can’t write a song to save their lives.
-Still drunk, want to move on. Maybe I’ll add more later.
-Watch this. NOW!

Review#162: Superman Returns (2006)

Monday, December 4th, 2006

Jesus, this movie sucked. Halfway through I thought it could be good, but the ending was atrocious. The inclusion of a super-kid made me hate the world. Not even Parker Posey could have saved this movie, a misfortune that depleats my faith in mankind.



Kevin Spacey could have made a good Lex Luthor if he was more evil and less goofy. The guy who played Superman (I’m not going to learn his name because I’m sure it will never be used commonly by the celebrity-watching public) might have been good if he was older and didn’t look so sad all the time. Frank Langells might have made a good Perry White if he actually had a part in the movie.


The worst parts were 1) Lois Lane married to someone else and 2) Superman having spawned a child. Both of these things go against a certain fundamental lore that Superman has, and that’s not me just being a comic purist. This pertains to any version of tv show, cartoon, movie, anything. It’s like if you told the story of Jesus, but in this one, he’s not the son of God.

Review #155: Shortbus

Friday, November 17th, 2006

I didn’t see this movie. It looks pretty good, and not just because there’s a bunch of sex in it. I bet I’ll be pissed that I missed it in the theater when I see it on dvd. It’s only playing through tuesday and I’m working through then. What happened is that I was late getting to Jeremy’s house so we missed the 5 o’clock show. Then he misread the Google listings, so we missed the 7:30 show. We are both retards. Man, I wish he didn’t have to work tonight.

Review #144: The Omen (2006)

Sunday, October 22nd, 2006

Antichrist or not, the coolest children are the ones who never say a word.It’s been a few years since I saw the original movie, so I don’t recall the fine details, but for the most part this movie stayed remarkably close to the original. So close, in fact, that I have to say I don’t think it needed to be made. Dissapointingly, this movie is also the biggest thing to exploit the date 06-06-06 last June. You’d think Satan himself would’ve made an appearance.


At first I thought the idea of Mia Farrow playing the nanny was hokey, what with her being in Rosemary’s Baby and all, but she did a pretty good job. I believed she was evil. Julia Stiles was okay. Whenever I think of her or Heath Ledger, my mind goes straight to 10 Things I Hate About You. This creeped me out when I noticed in this movie that Stiles is beginning to look like Ledger.


The big differences that I did notice were stupid. First, instead of the baboons in the drive through zoo,which were scary as fuck, we have hissing capuchins and what looks like an animatronic or cg gorrilla trying to break a window. ooh, scary. Secondly, instead of ridint a three wheeler to knock his mom off the balcony, he’s riding a Razor Scooter. I thought they were updating this movie, not setting it back in time eight years.


In a nutshell, see the original. It’s, like, the same.