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Very much flash over substance. Lots of Michael Mann's stylistic camera shots. Plus a score that often overwhelmed the already stilted dialogue. And an almost laughably under-reacting Chinese government to help set up the Outnumbered Heroes Outsmart the Evil Bad Baddies. And their quest to manipulate the tin market. I mean seriously the initial mass casualty attack on fucking China of all countries is just a test run? Who would do that?
Silver Linings Playbook: Its like Benny & Joon but with grief induced bisexuality and compulsive sports betting. Also I did not recognize Chris Tucker throughout most of this movie...
After Earth: The roommate refused to give up the remote or to not finish watching this. For that he will be forever damned. Just SO MUCH incompetent storytelling going on during this movie...
Ella Enchanted: Cary Elwes makes for a great evil king. He should get a part in another Robin Hood movie as Prince John. The rest of the movie is occasionally a little to cute but otherwise pretty good. Also a "good" Fairy who gives the "gift" of Total Obedience to their charge is in need of many punches to the face...
After Earth: The roommate refused to give up the remote or to not finish watching this. For that he will be forever damned. Just SO MUCH incompetent storytelling going on during this movie...
Ella Enchanted: Cary Elwes makes for a great evil king. He should get a part in another Robin Hood movie as Prince John. The rest of the movie is occasionally a little to cute but otherwise pretty good. Also a "good" Fairy who gives the "gift" of Total Obedience to their charge is in need of many punches to the face...
Man, did I have to tap out on this one damn quick. The "cute" kid was a super-obnoxious brat in need of a serious Time Out. The mom was having some kind of dead-husband inspired midlife crisis involving dating a 2o-something and neglecting her kids. And the sarcastic teen girl lead was..just dull. And that was in the scant twenty-thirty minutes I gave it...
Prince Valiant
Jun. 19th, 2013 09:18 amOh man, this thing was just crazy stupid. But its got Bill from True Blood as Val and Katherine Heigl who looks like 14 in it and Ron Perlman and Warwick Davies who has an eyepatch and an awesome moustache. But its still sooooo bad...
Iron Sky: Well the people behind this had an interesting high concept. Secret Nazi Colony on the Moon. And they built some excellent looking sets and models and Space Nazi costumes. Pity they didn't spend anything on competent script writing or actors with even a glimmer of talent. Ok, they had Udo Kier. But fucking hell was this a steaming turd of a movie. I had to tap out less than half way in. Such a painful and wretched waste of film...
Premium Rush: I skipped this one in the theater 'casue c'mon. Bike messengers? And the actual plot stringing the various characters together isn't much. But the action sequences are pretty sweet looking, fully invoking the needed speed and movement. And I'm nearly always a sucker for Joseph Gordon-Levitt...
The Horseman on the Roof: You've got Italian rebels being hunted thru southern France in 1832 by Austrian secret police. During a cholera outbreak. With a platonic romance between Italian rebel Angelo and French noblewoman Pauline. I wish I could remember where I stumbled across a review of this because I should thank them for putting me onto a pretty damn good movie...
Premium Rush: I skipped this one in the theater 'casue c'mon. Bike messengers? And the actual plot stringing the various characters together isn't much. But the action sequences are pretty sweet looking, fully invoking the needed speed and movement. And I'm nearly always a sucker for Joseph Gordon-Levitt...
The Horseman on the Roof: You've got Italian rebels being hunted thru southern France in 1832 by Austrian secret police. During a cholera outbreak. With a platonic romance between Italian rebel Angelo and French noblewoman Pauline. I wish I could remember where I stumbled across a review of this because I should thank them for putting me onto a pretty damn good movie...
Total Recall
Aug. 8th, 2012 09:35 pmSooooo dumb. I mean I probably could have just moved past the giant piece of stupid at the very start with a single eye-roll, but I swear the movie couldn't go 10 minutes without tossing out some new piece of logic breaking "cleverness". Or terrible dialogue. Or really just overall bad writing. I mean Colin Ferrel, Bryan Cranston and Bill Nighy TRY to put some depth and nuance in, but man are they not given much to work with. As for Kate Beckinsale an Jessica Biel..well they both play Beckinsale's Action Lady. In fact I had to check IMDB to see what Biel's character's name was since I don't recall anyone using it in the movie...
One for the Money
Jun. 5th, 2012 07:00 pm*sigh*
Well that was a big disappointment. It should be obvious to anyone who reads my end-of-month book lists for any length of time that I'm a big fan of Evanovich's "Stephanie Plum" series. And this movie version somehow failed to capture any of what makes it one of my favorite junk food reads. Heigl, as Stephanie, has like zero chemistry with either Jason O'Mara as fugitive cop Joe Morelli or Daniel Sunjata as bounty hunter mentor Ranger. And neither O'Mara or Sunjata pulls off the raw sexuality that is supposed to be oozing out of the pores of their characters. And the various supporting characters from the bad guys to Stephanie's family or friends or co-workers all feel muted. Honestly it lacks all the over-the-topness of the book characters and the sense of fun...
Really the only positive thing I can think of is that of changing crazy boxer Benito Ramirez into crazy MMA fighter Benito Ramirez...
Well that was a big disappointment. It should be obvious to anyone who reads my end-of-month book lists for any length of time that I'm a big fan of Evanovich's "Stephanie Plum" series. And this movie version somehow failed to capture any of what makes it one of my favorite junk food reads. Heigl, as Stephanie, has like zero chemistry with either Jason O'Mara as fugitive cop Joe Morelli or Daniel Sunjata as bounty hunter mentor Ranger. And neither O'Mara or Sunjata pulls off the raw sexuality that is supposed to be oozing out of the pores of their characters. And the various supporting characters from the bad guys to Stephanie's family or friends or co-workers all feel muted. Honestly it lacks all the over-the-topness of the book characters and the sense of fun...
Really the only positive thing I can think of is that of changing crazy boxer Benito Ramirez into crazy MMA fighter Benito Ramirez...
Dark Shadows
May. 16th, 2012 11:02 pmA tolerable movie, even enjoyable at times. Depp's vampire anachronism bits were pretty good. Of course in the final act everything comes apart as minor twists are just tossed in from nowhere. The bit with Michelle Pfiefer's character's daughter especially irks me. Irks me soooo much...
Hanna is a teen-age girl who's been raised in the sub-arctic woods by her father. Trained to be an elite espionage agent. Until she's ready to go out and so he has her get picked up by..um I'm not sure. The CIA maybe. So she can kill Cate Blanchett. Which is about the last point when any of the plot points really make much sense at all. After that its Australian neo-hippies vacationing in Morocco and a gang of soccer hooligans led by some whistling dude who track down the girl by sheer random chance on behalf of Blanchett and lots of vaguely fairy tale imagery and some kind of super-soldier breeding program and bleargh. The movie lacks for a consistent theme or characterization or even level of bad-assedness from Hanna, the dad or the vaguely defined spies...
The A-Team
Aug. 13th, 2011 08:07 pmI can't believe it took this movie almost an hour to get to the basic premise of the original show. An hour of crazy stupid action. And I don't mean that in an over the top WOO ACTION kind of way. I mean in a are you fucking serious kind of way. Though it does have lots of shots of Bradley Whitford's magnificent abs. For the ladies. And the gay dudes I guess...
Dead Awake
Apr. 18th, 2011 06:03 pmSo there is this guy who works at a funeral home and some tragedy involving a cab crash happened to him like 10 years ago and he's lonely and so he fakes his own death but maybe he's really dead and there is his high school ex and some junkie girl and then I realize the movie is halfway over and that I have no clue what, if any, kind of plot I'm supposed to be following so I stop the movie and try to figure out what the hell made me add it to my 'flix queue in the first place...
Breaker Breaker
Apr. 9th, 2011 05:02 pmOh man. Chuck Norris delivers trucker vengeance to a town of Texas rednecks in California. Yes, Norris in eagle-painted van karate fights a town to destruction in retribution for the death of his brother...
So teen-ager kidnaps his little kid brother to get them away from their abusive father. And then keeps him locked in their cheap motel room while he works at the local Gulp N Go so that he can earn the money so they can live in Alaska. Because..er..Alaska is a cheap place to live? And thinks about maybe one day maybe some day getting around to even trying to hold a conversation with cute co-worker Robin Tunney. And..argh don't care! These people are so dull. Boring boring boring. Plus its all interspersed with boring scenes from the teen's therapy sessions. I guess I'll never know if they make it to Alaska where living is easy and simple...
He loves..LIKE A BARBARIAN. A movie so bad it gave John Wayne cancer...
Sherlock Holmes
May. 8th, 2010 05:00 pmNo not the recent Guy Ritchie/Downey Jr one. This is a direct-to-video one. With a dinosaur. And Holmes' brother. Nope, not Myrcroft. His other brother, the crippled ex-cop. Yeah I didn't know about that either. And then towards the end Sherlock (aka Bob Holmes) fights a dragon in a helicopter/balloon. Despite the terrible acting, the cheap fx and the laughable plot I mostly enjoyed this movie in a dumb, noise in the background kind of way. And for something that was probably a SYFY original its a pretty high mark...
New Waterford Girl
Jan. 7th, 2010 07:01 pmwell that was one of the more boringly pointless movies I've watched. Anyway, its in small town Nova Scotia. And is about some teen-age girl. And some other teen-age girl who moves there for totally unclear reasons. And then fake pregnancies and vengeful face punching. Plus Andrew McCarthy. All very pointless...
Wise Blood
Nov. 5th, 2009 03:15 pmI am very, very disappointed in you John Huston. Or possibly Flannery O'Connor. Maybe the story of an angry veteran who decides to create the Church Without Christ in Macon, GA could be interesting. And it does have Harry Dean Stanton as a scuzzy street preacher. But everyone in the movie seems to be either stupid or crazy or both. By the half-way point every character was working my nerves something fierce...
Too stupid to actually finish watching. Hell, too stupid to watch more than a half-hour or so of...
I mean just this bit alone.
1. The Evil Conspiracy has super-scent AND psychometric trackers. Which are able to find the "hero" using a TEN YEAR old scent from a toothbrush in a hotel room.
2. They bother because they think he will lead them to an escaped woman.
3. Said woman having only recently escaped.
Does anyone else see the conceptual fail illustrated there?
I mean just this bit alone.
1. The Evil Conspiracy has super-scent AND psychometric trackers. Which are able to find the "hero" using a TEN YEAR old scent from a toothbrush in a hotel room.
2. They bother because they think he will lead them to an escaped woman.
3. Said woman having only recently escaped.
Does anyone else see the conceptual fail illustrated there?
I don't tend to remember much of anything about my dreams. So I wanted to get this down before it fades away. So in the dream I'm in some movie and part of the time I'm Tobey McGuire. And at the end of the film I get crucified except its not a Jesus bio-pic and then it is. I don't know. But I do know that at the wrap party I'm trying to convince the rest of the cast and crew to do another scene for the dvd. A fake trailer really...
"So you have this big crowd gathered outside the tomb. And then AC/DC's Thunderstruck starts up. And the boulder in front of the tomb starts shaking. And just as the thunderstruck line hits the boulder explodes into dust. And there I'm standing. In some kind of kung fu stance, and I'm still bleeding from the wounds and shit. And I just say "Who's ready to rock"?"
"No, "Who's willing to walk the walk and talk the talk?""
"Oooh! Even better. And then it goes to black and the title. The Greatest Sequel Ever Told."
There was also something where I'm telling the actor who played Judas how we can bring him back as a Roman built zombie-cyborg...
"So you have this big crowd gathered outside the tomb. And then AC/DC's Thunderstruck starts up. And the boulder in front of the tomb starts shaking. And just as the thunderstruck line hits the boulder explodes into dust. And there I'm standing. In some kind of kung fu stance, and I'm still bleeding from the wounds and shit. And I just say "Who's ready to rock"?"
"No, "Who's willing to walk the walk and talk the talk?""
"Oooh! Even better. And then it goes to black and the title. The Greatest Sequel Ever Told."
There was also something where I'm telling the actor who played Judas how we can bring him back as a Roman built zombie-cyborg...
