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Reviews
Sucker Punch (2011)
you deserve it if you pay for it
I've seen bad movies. I've seen really bad movies. And I've seen Sucker Punch which has no adjective worthy of describing its stunning mindlessness.
Snyder...though he's had a few movies to PROGRESS and LEARN is devolving with every picture. Can't wait for his Superman reboot...oh, ya, I'll probably just never see that rehash which will save me at least 40 bucks and 2 hours of life I would otherwise waste.
Snyder joins the pantheon of worst directors in history...will he keep getting these obscene budgets to produce these obscenely awful films...or will he finally give us an "In the Name of the King"? I'm hoping for the latter because he doesn't deserve to be given more projects that more talented directors would die for.
Cloverfield (2008)
holy hell i didn't think it was possible
a movie as bad as AVP:r and I didn't even have to wait a month.
I promised I wouldn't see it. Then a friend came into to town and talked me into it. Blair Witch with a budget. Just what I thought it would be.
Much like AVP:r Cloverfield lacks just about everything, such as: a plot, decent writing, believable sympathetic characters, continuity and direction. You suck JJ and if you ruin Star Trek, which based on your casting choices I think is likely, I'm going to be extremely peeved.
Not once did this movie honestly build tension. All tension is created by way of gimmick, ie a quick flash of the camera to an incident. Why is this movie so bad? Because like Blair Witch, which I hated and thought was over-hyped unentertaining trash, the use of the shaky cam is a cheap way to try and build tension the script lacks. Ooooh things are bouncy, they must be running, crash, oohh someone fell--oops. But whereas the BWP was tolerable visually Cloverfield is not. The theater was full when the movie started...not so full when the crap finally mercifully ended. Memo to JJ..shaky cam OK, but you can't focus on strobing lights---are you trying to kill people via seizures? Between the bright lights and nonstop jitter it is hard for someone who doesn't have motion sickness or epilepsy to watch this movie. I'm just glad the people who got sick were able to get up and leave and didn't try and force themselves to stay and suffer worse health problems.
Finally, how do these movies get funded? "I have no script. I don't want name actors. It's going to be shot POV handcam. Monster. Statue of Liberty's head will roll. You in?" "Why sure that sounds wonderful? But how you going to market it?" "Well, glad you asked. We film the trailer first. We leak it on the web. Viral marketing. People will see the trailer. 1-18-08. People will try and solve the riddle of Slusho. 1-18-08. That is all." All aspiring directors, hire a good web based marketing firm then you can produce a five dollar movie and make a fortune. I'm sure the CG, which was clipped and well awful in Cloverfield, was costly but other than that this movie was done on the cheap. The bare bones cheap. The honest to god must've paid cast and crew with beer cheap.
Now a new age old conundrum is born. Which is worse, AVP:r or Cloverfield? Well only about a dozen people shared the theater with me on DEC 26 for AVP:r and none ran out to puke--then again at least a few people leaving Cloverfield were smiling. I don't know.
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Great movie.
Everything about this movie is topnotch. Russel Crowe and Christian Bale are about the best actors around. Without them this movie would have just been another western. With them it is a classic. Amazing what a decent script and great acting can do for a movie. The supporting characters were all well written and well acted, adding to the movies potency rather than detracting from it. I'm not a big fan of the kid who played Charlie Prince mostly because I absolutely couldn't stand the over the top portrayal of his character in the Hostage. But while he was over the top again here it wasn't so far out of the realm of belief pertaining to his character.
All in all this is the best movie I've seen in at least a year. Well done 3:10.
Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
Solid 7, one mild spoiler
There are certain characters I just like regardless of how bad the movie actually might be. Alice is one of those characters. I just love the idea of a mutant bad ast beauty who keeps getting stronger.
The movie is actually more like a four or a five but Milla and her portrayal of Alice earns the movie a better rating. Can't get enough. Bring on RES 4: Showdown Below Tokyo.
Was a little miffed that they brought back Mike Epps and Oded Fehr only to kill the characters off. And what the hell was the deal with Ali Larter's character being able to fly a helicopter? I don't mind it if you at least throw in a one line monologue somewhere where she says "I used to be a helicopter pilot." But the average everyday person running from flesh eating deadites probably wouldn't know how to fly a helicopter.
Sunshine (2007)
highs and lows
But the lows win out thus I rated the movie a five.
The first hour or so was a fairly well written and well crafted film. With the decision to go on a rescue mission to the first Icarus the movie begins a rapid decline in believability and continuity. So grading the movie again reveals the first hour was a 10 and the remainder of the movie earned a whopping goose egg. 5.
For all the fans of the director I ask this: Why? It is a simple question. 28 Days was a decent zombie flick. That is all, no more no less. 28 Weeks, however, is a friggin train wreck. Trainspotting proved the director has talent. 28 days Later showed he still had talent but was opting for box office numbers instead of fine film making. 28 Weeks showed that he has become a numbers pandering movie maker. Sunshine cements that notion. It is one thing to fail with original thinking but to take so much from previous genre staples and fail is unforgivable. You could play a drinking game just picking out the ideas taken from 2001: A Space Odyssey. But that is the way of today. Steal what you can't come up with and then in all of your interviews claim it was done as an homage, thus freeing them from that cumbersome word--PLAGIARISM. Come on Danny come up with something new and original or go the hell away.
28 Days is lauded for changing the nature of the zombie flick. The zombies move faster. That is all. Other than that it is a fairly straightforward rip-off of (insert your favorite zombie flick here).
Back to the movie. The character development was good. The acting was good. The f/x were good. The direction for everything save the action scenes was good.
The bad. The introduction of the solar powered psychopath was bad. Living on a dead ship for seven years while orbiting the sun closer than Mercury? Dumb, real dumb. Having a whining sniveling little biyotch like Harvey being a part of the crew? Dumb. The writer, Alex Garland, did fine for the first hour then he got stuck, "how to make it to feature length? Oh I know, I'll have a guy survive Icarus 1 who has been blinded by religious fervor. He will have murdered his own crew. Will have sabotaged his own ship. And now he'll do it to Icarus 2. Cool." No Alex it isn't cool. Why? Because you don't explain WHY! For a mission such as the one Sunshine is based on, saving earth, only the best and toughest people would be chosen. You wouldn't have a Harvey who is paranoid that he is the odd man out in all situations. You wouldn't have a Trey "fukking up". You would have a crew filled with Mace's who are tough, practical, and committed. But would you have Mace sending Capa out to repair the ship when later Mace acknowledges the fact that Capa is the only one of them who isn't expendable? I think not.
But the solar god creature is the crap de la crap. Dumb idea. Then made worse by the stupid use of effects to show the character as something possibly more than human. From the intro in the solar viewing chamber to the final scene where he gets his skin ripped off we never get a good look at the character. You know you have an idea that can't be fleshed out in print or on story boards when the best you can come up with is to bathe the character in light, then hide him in darkness. Dumb, dull, threadbare.
If Danny Boyle's next film is akin to this then I will cease watching his movies and put him in the same class of director as everybody's favorite whipping boy, Uwe Boll.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008)
OK for a TV series
Some of the scenes were good. Some were awful, like the opening dream sequence. Others were ripped directly from the Terminator movies. Put together the show was OK with definite room for improvement. Now that its off the start line hopefully the writers/directors will move the show in its own direction.
Lena is HOTT as always. The actor playing John is finally someone I don't want to throw a hammer at (not that I found Furlong annoying or Nick Stahl totally miscast).
But Summer Glau is awesome. I loved her in Firefly and the movie installment Serenity. She's got a great look and she is so impossibly graceful in her fight scenes. Hopefully someday she gets a part where she doesn't have to be a quirky killing machine.
Girlfight (2000)
good movie
great first role for Michelle. She's perfect for the role. And I would love to see MRod kick the shite out of Hilary Swank's Arse.
that is all, just a great great fun entertaining movie of a tough girl trying to balance being tough and being feminine.
And MRod is super feminine, super hot, and I love it when she gets Kick Butt roles.
too bad she's gets in so much trouble.
Maybe the time in jail will sober her up in more ways than one.
Lost is horrible and too bad she let her agent talk her into that trash.
is my 10 line min. up yet?
Cool.
Soldier (1998)
One of my all time favorite flicks
Not a big fan of Jason Scott Lee (save for Dragon and the Jungle Book) but I love Connie Nielsen and Kurt Russel played this character so well.
This is one of those movies where things don't have to be plausible or critically acclaimed to be enjoyable. It just works. I'm a picky movie critic. I generally like all facets of a movie to click and be professionally done.
Technically Anderson is as good as anyone. But he's too Stephen King, too much rote and not enough passion. But for this movie it works because the main characters, the soldiers, are supposed to be passionless. Connie Nielsen's character provides the humanity, not because of Anderson's direction, but because she's not only talented she's a professional and doesn't need to have her hand held throughout a scene by a director.
Kurt Russell makes the movie though. From his intro to the very end he stays in character perfectly. I'm sure a lot of people hated the pace of the movie. It is boring if all you wanted is non-stop violence but the point of the movie wasn't violence and maybe that's why people don't like it that much but hey, too each their own.
AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004)
I just re-watched this movie
and I'm giving it a 10 because I hated AVPr so much more.
Let us speak the truth. AVP is not an earth shattering sci-fi epic. I personally find the whole idea of AVP asinine but if your going to do it do it good. In defense of Anderson, who has received so much crap from turd-brained gamers and AVP comic lovers, HE TRIED. He tried to come up with a concept that put the two alien species together and have a human element as well. The film is actually pretty slick. But that is its major problem, it is too slick. There is no attention to detail, no love shone by the director for any of the characters, ALEXA being the sole exception, but there was so much going on that ALEXA remains unsympathetic. I don't doubt the makers of AVPr love the characters but love ain't enough when making a movie. You have to be able to tell whether the script is decent. You have to be able to cast and direct appropriate actors. You have to be able to stage a scene. They are visual f/x guys but the f/x in AVPr are decent at best so even what they are supposed to be good at, they SUCK at.
My biggest complaint was the pred hybrid hatchling. That is taking a stupid concept and dumbing it down even more.
As for the movie, I give the Director a solid B. The script I give a C-/D+. The acting I give a solid A (Sanaa Lathan did what she could with the part, but I thought the casting was great for what the movie was--the peripheral characters played their parts well--save for Colin Salmon, I just can't stand that guy (love it when he gets shredded by the grid laser in Res. Evil.) I really like Tommy Flanagan, this wasn't his best character but I think he must have owed someone a favor to take the part. And Ewen Bremner is just a great supporting actor. I hope no one tries to make him a lead and ruin him like they did Paul Giamatti.
All in all I'd really give this movie a 6 but AVPr was so dreadfully wrong in so many ways that the 10 is to poke those little twits who gave AVPr a 10 and seriously think it is a better movie than this one.
The script for AVP sucks but it tries to follow a path from start to finish. AVPr starts wrong, goes in fifty directions which are all wrong, then ends as bad on down note as well. Same for the direction. Anderson got paid well I'm sure but he didn't have the love for the Alien or the Predator necessary to treat the characters as they were established in their earlier films. Other than that though Anderson actually knows how to stage and shoot a scene while the Brothers Dumbass do not. Anderson chose to go with cgi for the f/x while the Brothers Dip and Shite opted for rubber suits and dark lighting. But at least the cgi meetings between the A and the P were visible and viewable. In other words AVP was a professionally done movie (save the script) whereas AVPr was amateur hour from top to bottom.
Juno (2007)
no heart, no soul
First, the script is third rate. Cody the Stripper thinks that creative writing is non stop teen sarcasm that most of the time isn't funny or biting like sarcasm should be but just....(I screamed did you hear it?) That is what this movie is, white noise with no heart and no soul.
Juno is a teenage bitch. She isn't funny. She isn't clever. She isn't a sympathetic character.
I could run down the list of copied work this film "borrows" from but who is going to care? Once again audiences are throwing money at a movie that doesn't deserve their attention for reasons I don't comprehend.
The direction is OK. The acting is OK. But the script is awful. AWFUL! It is amazing that some movies are so clichéd and so formulaic but critics and fans latch onto them like they are groundbreaking classics, while other movies who have a smattering of both are roundly panned although they are worthier films. No accounting for taste I guess.
Just to get this off my chest: Jennifer Garner can't act, period. She is a charmless, soulless, Hollywood creation. Her expressionless visage, Predator sized forehead, and nice behind may have worked well on the trite and equally soulless ALIAS but it doesn't work on the big screen. From her attempt at remaking BIG (dumb going on dumber--or was it 13 going nowhere), to the should have been career killing ELEKTRA, to the god-awful hackathon the KINGDOM, I think we've seen enough of Ben Affleck's Bennifer2. Maybe she should try directing. Affleck is much better behind the camera than in front of it. And Jason Bateman is like Michael Pare or Jean Claude Van Dumb, if they are the best actors you can get then the script wasn't worthy of a real actor even considering the part.
My dollar forty-seven.
P.S. I Love You (2007)
please tell me
why Hilary Swank is so highly regarded? She's a good actress but she isn't a great actress. She was very good in Boys Don't Cry but it helps that she looks like an anorexic boy. But other than that she's been very average or less than average. Million Dollar baby was a good movie but neither the direction nor the acting was outstanding. Morgan Freeman was good as the haggard old boxing teacher/custodian/friend. No way Eastwood should have gotten a nod for directing that predictable tripe. No way Swank should have won another Oscar.
Freedom Writers was a good movie but switch Swank out with any other average actress and its still the same movie.
Now this movie is the same thing. The difference between an average actress and a great actress? A great actress makes the role her own, a role that you know cannot be played by another actress to the same ability. Swank can't do that, not now and probably not ever.
So while the movie is OK Swank is once again, average. But you've got to give credit to her agent for getting her roles in movies that have good scripts and decent crews from directors on down because she could no more carry a film on her talent or looks alone than could well, Lisa Kudrow for instance, who should have called it a career the day Friends wrapped (of course that could be said about the entire cast of Friends.)
PS I CAN'T STAND YOU
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)
watchable and enjoyable
but unlike Apatow's 40 Year Old Virgin the movie isn't a classic comedy.
John Reilly is good and enjoyed his performance. Maybe I was expecting more because of Apatow or because I really liked Kasdan's Orange County. But at the end of the movie I got up and walked out thinking, could have waited to see that on video.
In need of a few great laughs and some chuckles after a stressful holiday season? Dewey Cox can deliver but definitely doesn't live up to the writers and director's best work. If you haven't seen Orange County rent that instead, Jack Black will have you laughing till your gut hurts.
I Am Legend (2007)
Dear Hollywood et al
please take two scripts for the same movie, read them, then decide in whatever manner you use to choose scripts on a winner. Throw that one out and go with the one you hate because the scripts you are choosing are crap.
Anyone who has read I Am Legend will be disappointed in the movie. However the disappointment is bearable in this case as the movie, as a whole, is watchable. It isn't great. Nothing about it is great save the realistic vision of an empty NYC. Will Smith once again shows that he is the new Tom Cruise, talented enough to make people show up but not talented enough to blow you away. Part of this can be blamed on the director, part on the script but Smith has never been believable in anything that wasn't a comedy. Basically if you want to see the agony of a lone survivor, rent Cast Away one more time.
Anyone else tired of doomsday flix that promise so much but deliver so little? There were a few tense moments a few chills but other than that the movie was Hollywood 101. Big name star. Big budget wasted on CGI. CGI dominates and eventually causes viewer to lose interest in the story. Dog and Smith or Hanks and ball? Watchable movie that won't make you think of Oscar's but also won't make you cringe at the money you just spent.
But fans of the book will be disappointed that the movie isn't faithful to the source material. Fans of movie making will be the biggest losers as once again a studio took great source material and made it something far less than what it could have been. How does an inexperienced director coming off the disappointing Constantine get handed another big budget movie? How do the writers off such trash as Constantine, Batman Returns and Poseidon get chosen to write this script? How does the pedestrian Smith get handed a part that requires such depth? Memo to Akiva Goldsman stop taking classic sci-fi material and mangling it.
AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem (2007)
waste your time and money on something else (spoilers)
The review on the main page admits that the movie is horrible but that you should forgive it because it is nicely violent. No you shouldn't. There are spoilers at the end of this review but how I can "spoil" this rotten movie I have no idea. Even if you are a die hard Alien/Pred fan like I am wait for the DVD. It isn't worth a 3.99 rental either but you'll be much less inclined to truly hate this film if you pay that than 12 bucks or better per person plus concession purchases at a theater.
In the theater I watched AVPr there were exactly two laughs, both by a girl sitting next to me. Other than that there was total silence throughout. No ooohs, or "that was bad ass!", nothing. Imagine being a patient on an operating table and just being given the anesthetic. Now you know what you'll feel like in the theater after the opening scene of AVPr.
What was the budget on this movie? Like War of the Worlds, MI 3, and other f/x driven movies the director seems far more involved in what the CGI people can come up with than developing characters or a plot. Spielberg has tried and failed at this several times, usually with Tom Cruise. Sure the movies make money but should they? War of the Worlds and Minority Report had the budget to pay for a decent script, Tom Cruise et al, and SS himself but were still awful. I'm sure AVP wasted 90% of their budget on CG and had no choice but to hire any actor that would say yes even though the casting agent would have done better by going to the supermarket and picking actors at random.
There is no tension developed in any scene so we are never close to being surprised. Who cares who gets killed? We didn't know any of them, we all know what happens when the lil aliens make their corporeal exit, we all know the blood is acid. In Alien, Aliens, 3, Resurrection, and even AVP the directors make use of the fact that the Aliens can think, can hide and can lay traps. This director decided that the Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and others were idiots for developing characters you actually want to see either live or get killed. In this installment you will never care who lives or dies, not a kid, a parent, a pregnant woman. The characters serve only one purpose in this movie, to die. The opening scenes establish the fact that the movie is going to be a predictable joke. The character development scenes mix clichés, bad humor, and bad acting and numb the viewer to the point where we really don't care if they get killed so long as they die in never before seen ways. But they don't. The director tried to make something different from those who preceded him in the Alien franchise but only succeeded in discarding the good parts of the first films, the human protagonists, and stealing the rest from other recent sci-fi films.
There is not one original use of the either the Alien or Pred characters. The Pred actually has little trouble killing Aliens by the dozen even though the last movie led us to believe that Pred revered the Aliens as such a deadly foe that they used the killing of one as Rite of Passage. The AlienPred is never really developed as a fearsome creature. Its ability to inject parasites into a host is ripped from several different movies most recently probably was Hellboy where Samiel's dismembered tongue injected eggs into Hellboy or Doom where the mutated creatures would leave their tongues behind after they speared a victim's throat.
Simply put we aren't given reason to care about anything in this movie. There is violence but it doesn't shock or surprise and is nothing that hasn't been seen in any of a hundred slasher flicks. The CG is OK and both species of alien are made to look and move as they have in movies past. But since the characters are never developed and the acting is so bad we kind of hope that they all die. The little girl was probably the best actor of the bunch but sadly we aren't made to care whether or not kids, women, or anyone else lives or dies. We just want the movie to end. Eventually it does but not before another stolen plot line from Resident Evil 2 has a nuke aim Gunnison's way to wipe out the "infection". And not before yet another stupid scene that is supposed to open the door for further sequels but does it? In a movie filled with bad scenes the worst may have been saved for last.
Sorry for the repetition but everything bears repeating: bad script, no plot, unoriginal action scenes, uninspired direction, abysmal acting, decent f/x that were wasted because of the many flaws.
I don't mind going to an indie film and being disappointed. The actors and directors and crew are probably getting their careers going and working on a shoestring budget. For a movie with this type of budget and hype I feel cheated along with disappointed. This movie is a painfully boring waste of time from the opening scene to closing credits. Sad to say that a preview of Hellboy 2 was the best part of AVPr and HB2 didn't even look that good.