watching movies one cup at a time

Two words: Disaster Porn. If you saw the trailers for this movie, you pretty much saw the whole thing. Stuff falls apart, blows up, and chases John Cusack and his kids. Done. Is there anything in the movie that wasn’t in the trailer? A few boring scenes with Oliver Platt and Chiwetel Ejiofor yelling about survival and government or something. Yawn. Basically any time there isn’t something blowing up or crashing, this movie is pretty boring. And you saw all the cool crashy stuff in the trailer already! So don’t bother. This movie is going to make it to basic cable in about a year and get replayed about about a million times. Just wait until then. I’ve seen Roland Emmerich’s other disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow about 50 times on FX, TBS and Spike. 2012 will follow in the fine tradition soon enough.

Zombies movies these days are very cliche these days. Almost as bad as vampires. What sets this movie apart though is there is nothing supernatural involved here. The so-called “zombies” are in fact victims of a catastrophic outbreak of a disease that infects the blood in a matter of seconds, turning the infected person into an out-of-control raging monster. They cease to function as a human beings and are instead reduced to a form of sub-human incapable of rational thought or behavior, with nothing but homicidal urges completely taking over everything else. It plays on our societal fear of bio-terrorism and viral outbreaks. And as the norms of society are wiped away in the 28 days of the title, we are shown the good and the ugly side of everyday people force to survive on their own.

The film is directed by Danny Boyle and the tone of it reminds me of his film, Shallow Grave, and has Christopher Eccleston again performing another brilliant character. Cillian Murphy also turns in a brilliant performance as the audience’s view into a horribly twisted world he literally wakes up in to. But be warned, this new world is brutal and harsh as we find some of the human “survivors” can be worse than the infected.

Not for the squeamish but definitely worth checking out.

The vampire has got to be the most overused and cliche cultural subject out there. What makes this movie different is the movie’s setting in an arctic Alaskan town that is in complete darkness for part of the year, and the depiction of the vampires as an animalistic pack of feral creatures in wool trenchcoats. The fear they inspire comes from the cold blackness of their eyes and the shark-like rows of teeth that are used more the destroy than to delicately bite a neck. These creatures are here to destroy their prey until every drop of blood is drained from this town that gives them unfettered freedom to move about in the darkness.

Based on a popular comic book series, the flaws of this movie come from the transition from print to screen and from some mediocre acting. What is dark and menacing in print loses all subtlety up on the screen where each frame needs to be filled with something thrilling and eye-catching. It works often, but is nowhere near as intense as the comic book artwork. And a couple things about the story really bugged me. Like the vampires are there for 30 days but it seemed like they killed everyone in the first week. Why bother hanging around? Why not move on to the next town? Or why not save some blood for later? Seems a waste to pig out all in one week.

Danny Huston and Ben Foster are both brilliant as the purely evil visitors to the town, but Josh Hartnett continues to just stink up every movie he’s in. I just don’t buy anything coming out of his mouth and his character just got pretty annoying after awhile. In more capable hands, his heroic figure would have had a lot more heart to it instead of feeling half-baked.

Bottom line: Worth checking out but could be better.

Visually this is an amazing looking film. I love it when the frame itself is used as a stylized element, making it a really immersive experience. If you took that away and had a more mediocre director, this movie would just have been a boring Gladiator-like retread. But Zack Snyder pulled it off. It’s a visually rich and exciting movie.

The story follows a group of soldiers in Sparta who have to defend their city/state from invading Persians. Double-dealings have cut off the whole of the army from fighting, so it’s up to 300 soldiers to fight hundreds of thousands headed their way. Fortunately they figure out that if they take their stand at a narrow canyon passageway, they will strategically be able to fight off the hordes. I found it kind of ridiculous that these guys were basically only wearing underwear and capes. I’m sure it’s somewhat historically accurate, but still, they look like Superman B.C. And though they have big shields, they do seem very wide open to something stabby.

But this movie was a fun ride. Very entertaining and quite a site to experience. Maybe they’ll make a sequel called “301″

(500) Days of Summer is a story about a guy named Tom falling in love with a girl named Summer and the entire course of their relationship over a year and a half. But what makes it an interesting and engaging story is a combination of the original way the story unfolds combined with empathetic characters that feel very genuine. This is a love story I can see happening around me in real life. It’s not a fantasy, a happily-ever-after, or overly-dramatic. In fact it’s pretty simple and uncomplicated, as life often can be. And it’s uncomplicated-ness is it’s charm.

The clever story technique employed here involves taking each day of their relationship and jumping around the numbered days 1-500 to piece together how their relationship began, unfolded, and eventually fell apart. The natural highs and lows, the awkward moments, the painful conflicts, the expectations and realities. There is a brilliant sequence where Tom, riding high on a positive post-breakup experience with Summer, gets invited to her place for a roof-top party and we are shown how his high-hopes for the evening play out next to the all too crushing reality. It’s a scene most people can relate to and reinforces the sense in the film that life is rarely one beautiful scene after another. It’s messy, unplanned, and unpredictable, but that is also it’s source of hope. An unexpected turn, a chance encounter, a moment of intimacy can come seemingly out-of-the-blue and change our entire perspective.

The acting is great here as well. I’m a big Joseph Gordon-Levitt fan and he does his usual brilliant job here. There is a classic dance sequence in the middle of the film that beautifully articulates the feeling of the euphoria the character has, and JGL pulls it off effortlessly. Zoey Deschanel is a perfect fit for her character, however, I often feel like she is just playing herself. I suspect that Summer is really just Zoey with scripted dialogue. Nevertheless, I believe these characters and I believe this relationship. These feel like real people, not two-dimensional caricatures.

(500) Days of Summer is warm, endearing and clever film that rises above a lot of other “relationshop” flicks, even the cool, hipster indie ones. I enjoyed it from beginning to end. Go see it.

88 Minutes stars Al Pacino as Dr. Jack Gramm, a college professor and a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI. A series of murders are being committed that match the work of a serial killer on death row whom Gramm help send to prison. When Gramm receives a death threat claiming he has only 88 minutes to live, he uses his skills and training to try and narrow down the possible suspects and the connection to the murders before his time runs out. Alicia Witt, Leelee Sobieski, Amy Brenneman and Neal McDonough also star.

To say this movie is getting ripped to shreds by the critics would be an understatement. Metacritic.com, which compiles reviews from movie critics around the world, has ranked the film at #3 on their All-Time lowest review scores. Having seen the film, I must say that while it is far from being a good movie, I don’t think it’s one of the all-time lowest. It’s got some tension, some mystery, and a couple twists. But ultimately the movie just collapses from it’s own laziness. It’s a lethargic movie that never matches the energy level it WANTS to be at. Instead, Al Pacino kind of sleep walks through this with wide-eyed confusion. Boring.

Okay, what the hell was this movie even about? There were some doll-things numbered 1-9, the world is blown up or something, robots are evil, the dolls have green pieces of some guy’s soul in them – huh? The trailers for this film are full of great images that appeal to my steampunk/distressed aesthetic with it’s broken doll heads mixed with robotic pseudo-insect looking creatures. But this movie is all style and no story. There is a very, very vague backstory about a war and humanity getting wiped out but why these living doll things were created and what the hell they are supposed to be doing is a complete mystery to me and after a while I just didn’t care anymore. This is why Pixar succeeds where so many other animation films fail. Pixar writes a compelling story to drive the animation, not the other way around. The story has to come first or else it’s all just pretty pictures. And unfortunately, despite it’s awesome look and occasionally clever visuals, 9 is precisely that. Plus it’s just plain boring and gloomy. Not worth the time.