31 posts tagged “movie review”
Okay, so I'm only about 15 minutes into the movie and all I have to say is:
80s action movies are FUCKED UP.
Thanks, I really needed the two rape scenes within 5 minutes of each other. That'll leave me with sweet dreams tonight. Now I just have the gruesome murders of the perpetrators to look forward to.
... maybe I should stop watching. But I want to know why these were so popular!
Superman is a dick.
Christopher Reeve was hot.
Gene Hackman better have bought a house with the money they paid him to be in that crap.
Oh, and you need more proof that Superman is a dick? Here you go.
Begin flaming me ... NOW.
PS, seriously, how can you argue against him being a dick? He walks Lois Lane off a roof and then, while flying through the mountain range, let's go of her hand and LET'S HER FREE FALL. DICK.
Seriously, how can a vampire movie with Adam Baldwin go wrong?!
::sigh:: This is how. This movie. The ... let's start at the beginning:
Recommendation: You could watch it. I mean, I did, so it's physically possible to watch this movie. Should you watch it? That kind of depends on how much you like Adam Baldwin with a bad hick accent and bad hick clothes. Oh, and gushes of blood and none of the sensuality that other vampire films have, even some of the really bad ones. You also get Jeremy Sisto with a wavering accent, one that goes from Eastern European to hicky southern (and damn, I feel bad for Southerners. I'm fairly certain few of your accents are as bad as he makes it seem) to just his regular accent.
I kind of hope that they all did this movie because they really needed the money, rather than because they thought the script was super cool.
Especially you, Neil Jackson. How... I... You were so hot in Blade: the Series! You were amazing as Marcus! Did you really need the money?! Because I would have been happy to have a bake sale or something to help you out. Especially if you were going to walk around without a shirt. But this movie? SO beneath you.
And Adam Baldwin. I know you've done really bad movies before. REALLY BAD movies. But still.
You want an actual story line after that? All righty:
The story is about a man and a woman, recovering addicts. The woman (I can't be bothered to remember or look up her name) has cancer and is concealing this and her chemotherapy from the man. As someone who's had a family member go through cancer and chemo, I'm not sure how she was able to do this. The hair falling out would have been my first clue that something wasn't right, but she also seemed like a wig girl. It's possible that fooled him.
Finally she tells him, after she vomits while she's stripping (in ballet slippers, oddly enough. Who knew?) and is hospitalized. After he freaks out, she checks herself out of the hospital (after having a nonsense conversation with a girl with hemophilia SPOILER!) and kills herself in their tub... which, um, I'm trying to decide if I should say something about suicide and killing yourself where someone you love will find you and how selfish that is but at the same time, I really don't want more people hating me, even though it is seriously selfish and if you're going to kill yourself, do it somewhere it's easy to clean and holds no meaning for someone else in your family.
He becomes despondent (and no, I don't remember his name either and no I'm fairly certain you haven't seen him in anything, though he tends to look like a few other actors from varying angles. It's kind of freaky), grows a beard and then puts her things in little zip loc bags so he can sniff then.
No, I'm serious, he sniffs her chapstick. It's creepy.
THEN his friend enters, who looked disturbingly like Joe Francis of Girls Gone Wild fame (who I really want to punch in the face), and is all charming and sweet. It kind of made me want to punch him in the face a little harder, until I realized it wasn't Joe Francis and promptly stopped caring.
Blah blah blah, dead girl is dancing in the club, guy keeps trying to find her. He follows her new "family" to a children's Bible camp (boring) and is quickly found and turned.
I have to say, the writer's vision of turning includes ripping out parts of the throat and buckets of blood gushing out, is rather disconcerting. It's kind of like if Quentin Tarantino decided to direct this movie. I prefer the Blade version where it's all sexy and fun.
Blah blah blah, being a vampire and drinking blood is an addiction, they run away from the family, go cold turkey and the rest of the family comes by to kill them. Do they come in a group? Of course not. They come one at a time, because that has historically always worked well.
I really want a sarcasm font.
Hemophilia girl (who's actually quite good and much better than this movie really needed) gets killed by three of the vampires and then when the vampires are shot, their blood doesn't clot and they gush through their wounds. I don't completely understand that whole thing but whatever. Then there are things with sunlight and killing the rest of the family and then they...
SPOILER
Kill themselves by holding hands in the sunlight.
... sorry, wait just one sec. I've got to get my eyeballs back in their normal place. I rolled them too hard.
Is this an awful movie? Yes.
Could it have been redeemed? Meh.
Am I being too hard on it? Probably. I think it was my disappointment that Neil Jackson was fully clothed the entire time and Adam Baldwin had an awful, decidedly unsexy accent.
Should you watch it? I'm not your mother, I won't stop you. But it's a waste of almost two hours. They never really present any of the mythos they're adhering to so you're left to guess (hint: crosses and holy water don't do anything) and everyone looks dirty. I like my vampires sexy and clean looking, if rather pale.
I also prefer it if vampirism isn't presented as an addiction (really? An addiction? Thanks, writers. Did you know that witchcraft is an addiction too? It's also symbolic for lesbianism! Just ask Joss Whedon!) and then there was this weird thing where two of the vampires were Chinese, didn't actually speak to anyone in the movie and spent their time giving lap dances and eating people.
... I'm not sure how I feel about that. I have the feeling I'm edging to violently indifferent.
Stupid movie, stupid plot, thank god everyone's dead.
Sorry I haven't really been posting; I'm not in a particularly good mood and my brain's not really working. I think if I posted something outside of a review, it would just be a string of cursing with nonsensical asides about gophers.
Let's get this out of the way:
Recommendation: I really liked this movie.
... I KNOW! I was surprised too! But I did. It was sweet and fluffy and just didn't take itself seriously. I loved the music, I loved the costumes, I loved how much fun it looked.
Dudes, it made me love blue sparkly eye shadow. How huge a feat is THAT?!
I remember when it was released, it was considered a huge flop. Everyone was expecting a huge follow up movie, after My Big Fat Greek Wedding (which I still haven't watched yet) did insane numbers and were really disappointed that Nia Vardalos did this movie.
But for me, and for the little that I have seen of MBFGW, it does follow in the same kind of vein. They're both just sweet movies. They're not meant to be earth-shattering, flag waving, ideology changing movies; they're gentle nudges, laughs exposing you to something you may or may not already know about. It's what she's good at, it's what makes the movies as good as they are.
The story is about two girls (I'm not completely sure where they're from. I'm fairly certain it's east coast but I'm don't remember where and I'm not going to guess) who dream of making it big (-ish, since they tend to target dinner theatre, though this may be my own ignorance of dinner theatre that makes me feel it's slightly lower tier). They get slightly involved with a gangster, unknowingly get passed his drugs, see him get killed then run away from the killers to LA, the land of no culture (hey, don't get mad at me; they said it) because they're certain the killers won't find them there. When they get to LA, they find the only place with any sort of live entertainment scene, a drag bar.
And it really just goes from there. Connie and Carla become a huge hit, drawing both straight and gay crowds and eventually, drawing the attention of the gangsters out to get them.
It's a fairly straight forward comedy (please don't call it a chick flick. I will kick you so hard). Nia Vardalos is hilariously funny, even though she, quite obviously, didn't train as a dancer. She's not an awful dancer, far from it, but standing next to Toni Collette, she's a little more awkward and a little less fluid. Toni Collette is amazing, as she is in pretty much everything, even the very disappointing Shaft. David Duchovny is charming and sweetly romantic as Connie's love interest and more importantly, for me, as a person who doesn't know very much about the drag scene, it seemed fairly respectful and loving towards the drag queens in the movie.
Should you go see it? Yes. Why? Because I liked it. I don't like a lot of things and I liked this. I don't like a lot of people and I love Nia Vardalos. I hate karaoke and I would go karaoke-ing with her. This isn't something you'd watch if you're looking for something to change your world but if you just need a pick-me-up, it's perfect.
I was going to make a Coyote Ugly joke here but my brain seriously isn't working.
I'm still trying to decide how to review this movie without giving it away. Maybe let's start with the hype: many of my friends who'd seen this told me it was better than Matrix. Reviews I'd read said it was the movie that Matrix wanted to be but never really lived up to.
Poppycock.
For me, it's more like Children of Men but sterilized... um, not literally. (HA!... sorry, CoM infertility joke) While CoM is shabby shades of grey, Equilibrium is blinding white and dark black, sharp even in its shades of grey. Also, the story was grounded in more of a sense of reality. Even though both reflect a type of dystopia, with The Matrix, there is still a bit of a division between fiction and non-fiction; very few people would mistake the reality of The Matrix with the reality of life.
Very few people would ever believe we are, in fact, living in The Matrix. But Equilibrium? It's almost shocking how easy it would be for us to fall into a society like the one depicted.
The setting: The survivors of World War III created a new civilization, eradicating all extreme emotion, art, music and love. To keep everyone on that even keel, each morning, every citizen injects themselves with a serum. In every area of the city, televisions play continuously, never leaving a quiet moment, never giving a chance for introspection or true thought or meditation.
The citizenry are policed by a special squad, specially trained to eradicate all rebellion, those who would wish the death of the leader, called The Father, who wish to feel without risk of death. All those who've ceased to inject their serum are put to death. By incineration.
Preston, a Cleric of the highest level, one morning accidentally drops his serum bottle. When he isn't able to replace the dose, he begins to feel and the story really begins.
I'm really not sure how much I can say about the movie without giving away too much of it. I can't talk about my favourite scene; I don't want to ruin your experience of it. The movie builds so gradually that until the finale begins and you start breathing again do you realize you stopped breathing before. The director's use of light and shadow can make you cry in one scene and adds to the action in another. The chemistry between Preston and Mary is so palpable and conveyed so well by Christian Bale and Emily Watson, they're able to show how deep the emotional is between their characters with just a touch of their hands, a meeting of their eyes in a mirror.
And I'll admit, I was composing a scathing review of one of the villains' deaths as anti-climactic, a rant how a good villain deserves a good death when it changed into an amazing death scene, absolutely fitting a good villain.
Yes, I'm not going to talk about the religious undertones, about how the police are now referred to as "Clerics" and how children who wish to become Clerics go through schooling in a Monastery. If I talked about this, the post would be longer than a graduate thesis.
Recommendation: Definitely recommend. The fight choreography isn't as slick as in The Matrix but still very good. Excellent villain death scenes and a sensuality that is unusual to find in a (fairly) mainstream movie. If you don't like it, come back and yell at me.
Now I need to find myself a book of poetry by Yeats.
It has been a long time since I've done one of these. Let's see if I remember how:
This isn't a BBC version of Agatha Christie's A Caribbean Mystery; oh no, it's an American version with everything that's good and bad that implies:
The good? The guy who played the blonde brother in Simon & Simon. I loved that show and I had the biggest crush on him. Then I moved on to Gerald McRaney who aged a lot better than he did, then moved on to have crushes on guys closer to my age. They also did a really good job in setting up the story and explaining who everyone is.
The bad? ::cough:: Well, that's the rest of the review.
I've always found that, for me, a lot of the Miss Marple adaptations really live and die by Miss Marple and the woman who plays her. I find Joan Hickson too dry with not enough twinkle (an opinion not shared by many) but then the newest Miss Marple, Geraldine McEwan, is a little too much twinkle and flutter but not enough of the razor sharp mind.
Yes, I'm quite picky.
But this Miss Marple? Wow... um, she's awful. She can't hold her English accent (she goes positively Southern US once in a while) but she's also so mincey and fluttery and woolly, you wonder how she's able to keep thoughts in her head. There's so much exclaiming and jumping up and running around, it's like watching a farce.
Then the story. I don't know who asked these (fairly) capable actors to act in the way they do but whoever it is needs a slap. Not only did I not sympathize with any of these characters (except for the Major who dies initially, which is not in the spirit of the book AT ALL) but I was actively hoping most of them would be killed off in a snuff adaptation. That would have made me feel better after watching them poop out their version of a fairly good mystery novel.
My biggest problem with the adaption? All the yelling. Why all the yelling? And when did the characters all become Americans? Nothing against Americans because I'm sure they holiday in the Caribbean but most of the book's characters (except for Lucky and Greg Dyson, I believe) are all British.
And when did Ruth Walter become a brassy woman on the prowl? No offense to Swoozie Kurtz (even though I kept wanting to call her Sissy Spacek) but your voice hurts my ears. The most defining description of Ruth (who I could almost swear was Esther in the book... but then sometimes my memory of names isn't the greatest) was her quiet disposition, her subdued nature, her ability to handle Mr. Rafael when others were defeated instead of yelling at him like a crazed fishwife.
Okay, so I'm not sure what a fishwife is but I've always loved that description. It makes me think of a a crazy woman wearing a bathrobe and rubber boots with crazy hair, yelling and wagging her finger at a giant fisherman, cowering in the face of her anger.
Is this the worst adapation ever? No, BBC's version of Body in the Library is. Seriously, how do you mess up that adaptation? They probably used all their inspiration in hiring Joanna Lumley as Dolly then their brains shorted out and they thought, "You know what's current and in fashion? Lesbians. Let's make the murderer a lesbian instead of the ACTUAL murderer from the book. We're clever." BAH.
Recommendation: You actually should watch this movie, if just to see the staging and the obvious, "I'm VERY EVIL!" glares given by the actors while they stand stock still as the camera pans past them. But go in to it expecting not a very good film.
I know I mention many times how NOT like the book this movie is; my problem isn't so much that the story isn't a mirror image of the book but that the changes aren't improvements. If you're going to change something, shouldn't you be changing something for the better?
Okay, I'm just going to cut to the chase on this one. Yes, I will be doing up a full review (see below) but if you're just curious whether you should make any effort to watch this if it shows up on your television or in your local video store: No. Emphatically NO. And if you end up watching it anyway... well, I told you so.
Now, on to the review:
I don't know what braintrust thought to cast Heather Locklear as a 30-something Reece who's running from herself and her memories but that person should be taken behind the shed and shot, just to put him/her out of his/her misery.
And mine. Definitely put them out of my misery. For god's sake.
And Jonathan Schaech as the mysterious and solitary writer Brody? Well... he... um... no. I mean, he looks pretty good but in a few scenes, he was out acted by the scenery.
So the basic story is this:
Reece Gilmore (who's name I am probably misspelling) becomes stranded in a small town, Angels Fall, when her car dies right outside of town. After discovering how much and how long it will take to fix her car, she enters the town with her meager funds and, by a stroke of good luck, finds a job as a cook in the local diner.
As she begins to settle in the town, she goes for a hike in the woods and witnesses a murder that, later, no one can find any evidence of, no body, no scene of the crime, no other witnesses.
Reece, with the help of Brody, begins to look in to this murder and someone, discovering the past she's running away from, tries to help her lose her mind. Again.
And while I'm mocking the story (just a little bit), I have to say that I really enjoyed the book. I enjoyed the motivations of all the characters, I loved Reece's strength and also how Brody become reluctantly drawn in to her search, and during that search, how they both fall in love. If you get a moment, give the book a chance.
Even Reece's backstory is fairly interesting. From the beginning, you can tell she's running from something and, of course, the first thought is that she's running from an abusive husband/boyfriend. Seriously, it's like a given. But this time, she's actually running from herself. Two years previous, on her last day at work in a restaurant before going on to become head chef at another, more prestigious restaurant, everyone in working that day was killed in a shooting spree. She survived but with survivor's guilt. The guilt eats at her to the extent that she starts to mentally break down. After the trial, she checks herself into a mental institution. After she is released, she cuts ties from her family and her surroundings and takes to the road.
I may have made the book sound slightly overwrought but it's good. The movie however? Was a freaking waste of time. I had to FF through a bunch of it just to get to the end but especially the ::sigh:: sexy scenes. Why would you cast two people who have no chemistry when standing next to each other? Why? Sure, when they're throwing glances, they've got a TON of chemistry but that only means that they have chemistry with either the camera or the cameraman.
I think the height of my distaste for this movie was during this scene where Reece and Brody are in the Sheriff's office, waiting to see if a woman that was recently found in the woods is the woman Reece saw murdered. Brody had just found an album of Reece's with her slain co-workers X'd out with DEAD written on them and INSANE written on her and he brings this up as proof that someone is trying to drive her insane.
In the book, this is the point Reece realizes that someone IS messing with her, that she would never desecrate the memory of these people who she did love with something so heinous.
In the movie? This is what we get:
"Oh, I did that." ::shrug::
Thanks, script writer. You suck. And thanks, Heather Locklear. We probably could have gotten a less wooden reading from the chair in that corner. Please go back to playing man-eaters.
And also, how fucking stupid do they think we are? They're playing up this one character as the "HE MUST HAVE DONE IT" to the point where it would have looked less stupid if they just had a giant flashing red arrow with "RED HERRING! WE WANT YOU TO THINK HE DID IT! LOOK AT THE WAY HE'S SKULKING AROUND! HE HAS LONG SCRAGGY HAIR AND HE'S A MANWHORE!".
I think they only decided to stay away from the subtle approach because that's too many words to fit on a red arrow.
Yes, he's one of the suspects in the book but he gets the chance for redemption and it's not just having sex with the cute waitress at the diner and asking her to marry him. What the fuck kind of redemption is that?! In the BOOK, he actually helps SAVE Reece and Brody from the murderer. THAT'S motherfucking redemption!
Why don't I learn? Why don't I learn that, even though people are buying her books because they're supposedly really good books and therefore have a built in audience, they decide to fuck up all the characters in order to make it easier for them to shoot? Well, I hope you're happy counting your money, NORA ROBERTS. Good job on the script consulting. I hope your messed up characters haunt you in your sleep.
Recommendation: Only watch this movie if you're doing it with friends, wine and food so that you can have a night of bad movies. HOWEVER, if you've never read a Nora Roberts book, watch this movie and let me know what you think. I'd like to know if I'm being overly harsh because I enjoy her writing or if the movie actually stinks this much. Thanks!
I flat out loved this movie. Just loved it. If you watch one movie this year... well, it should probably be Beerfest. But if you watch two... you know, maybe you should watch a Bourne movie or something. But if you're not a monk and are willing to watch a varying number of movies during the year, you should make one of them this one.
Truthfully, when I first added this movie to my queue, I wasn't expecting too much, mostly because so many critics loved this movie and half of them talk out of their asses, myself included.
I mean, I loved Beerfest. My opinion is suspect.
But from the first meeting between Jennifer Tilly's Violet and Gina Gershon's Corky in this gorgeous red elevator, I was hooked. I think part of it was that the Wachowski Brothers (I KNOW! Those guys! BTW, Andy Wachowski sounds like the fun part of that duo) started this movie with Corky tied up in Violet's closet. It becomes this guessing game of "Who betrayed her? WAS she betrayed? What the hell is going on?! Where can I find that wallpaper?!"
... I fell in love with the wallpaper in Corky's apartment. ::shrugs::
The other part is that Violet is the consummate 50s bombshell, beautiful and seeminly fragile but with this thread of steel that most people wouldn't recognize as such. You can see her twisting all these characters around her pinky without breaking a sweat and afterwards, the characters would thank her for it.
Okay, I have a bit of a girl-crush on Jennifer Tilly. I didn't realize it until this movie but she's so lush and gorgeous. Plus I covet her hair in this movie with the big curls and her gorgeous lipstick. In a few of the scenes, it's like her lipstick is made out of sunshine.
Then the couple of Violet and Corky are so strike with Tilly's lushness and Gershon's more spare-looking figure with this masculine energy. You can see Corky being drawn to Violet, almost like she has no choice, no real will of her own.
And yes, there's sex.
Then there's Joe Pantoliano who is amazing in this movie as a man who slowly descends into paranoia when the money entrusted to him to deliver gets stolen. As part of the plan, Caesar believes the mob head's son Johnny (played by the amazing Christopher Meloni in his patented role of a psycho) stole it to get him whacked or to make him run. His plan is to shame Johnny in front of Gino Marzzone (the father), to force them to believe that Johnny stole it to make him look bad.
At that point, everyone's plan goes to shit and that's when the movie starts to come alive, when everyone is scrambling, trying to figure out what move to make next, how to out-maneouver each other.
I watched the movie twice in a row, just to absorb everything and I still don't think I got it all. Just an amazing movie. I highly recommend it.
Unless you're a prude who thinks two women having sex is icky, in which case, stop reading my blog.
So. This is supposed to be an updated re-telling of the classic Red Riding Hood story.
Yeah.
Bad animation (you couldn't have shelled out for Pixar? Actually given your characters some DEPTH?), silly storyline that's all fluff (and I know, this is aimed at kids. I guess. I'm not sure how many kids would be able to appreciate some of the humour or the frog detective outside of him just being a frog who's also a detective) and the villain who's just screaming, "I'M A VILLAIN! I'M A VILLAIN!"
The only thing he's missing is the "My Name is" tag.
Sure, some of it is rather clever. I like how the stories segue together (I should probably explain about that) and it's interesting to see the story from various view points.
But it's all buried under super bad animation. They may as well have made the movie with puppets. It would have looked better.
And where are Red's parents? The girl's running around, making deliveries for her granny, where are her parents? Even in the fairytale she had parents!
So the story is fairly clever with the varied viewpoints. It starts in the middle, where Red goes to Granny's and finds the Wolf in Granny's bed.
Not like that. It's not THAT much of a re-telling.
The wolf tries to steal Red's basket, Granny hops out of the closet all tied up and a wood cutter comes flying through the window, screaming like a crazy person.
The police come, try to arrest the Wolf as the Goodie Bandit (the bandit stealing all the recipes from the goodie stores in the forest) when the detective frog comes by, a cross between Clark Gable and Nick Charles, walking a little dog.
They each tell their version of what happens and it's interesting to see how their storylines all intersect.
And it just reinforces my opinion: never trust a bunny. Especially when he sounds lke Andy Dick.
Recommendation: Eh, if you're really bored it might be something you can watch and then ignore a little bit. The squirrel's pretty cute before he's caffeinated.
I think I've learned my lesson. Seriously. I don't think I'm ever going to watch another Jason Statham movie again unless Jet Li's in it. This is seriously a horrible, horrible action movie. It's trying to be all fun and interesting and cute and it's just not.
JUST NOT.
Sure, the action is interesting and pretty amazing but everything else? Fuck.
Damn you, Jason Statham, you are so much better than this dreck. Why? Why?! WHY?! Why do you do this to me? ::sigh:: I need to stop being reeled in by a pretty face. And why can't you have a decent woman in ANY OF YOUR FUCKING FILMS?! WHY? You don't hate women as far as I can tell. Why do these women ALL SUCK?
I can't keep watching. I'm going to drill a hole in my head soon.
... though oddly, now that I've skipped about half the movie, it's not that bad. At least she's all down with him being a hitman. And her dress is cute so maybe I will watch the rest of the movie.
I'll keep you updated.
Edited to add: Yeah, I watched it to the end. It... well, let's say the whole movie was the same quality so at least that's good. I feel kind of bad being so mean about this movie since the guys who made it seem so cool but damn.
