watching movies one cup at a time

Since The Dark Knight opens today, they are playing a lot of the previous Batman movies on cable. Batman Forever was included and I’d forgotten how stupid it was. Way stupid. It’s the second worst Batman movie after the criminally terrible Batman & Robin. Val Kilmer is a terrible Bruce Wayne/Batman, just stiff as a board and looking bored the entire time. Nicole Kidman is a disposable vamp who is just filling in the cliche, must-have love interest role. Tommy Lee Jones is over-the-top in a bad way and just annoying, a total waste of his talents. And Jim Carrey… holy crap he needs to be shot! Over-the-top doesn’t even cover it. He blew the top off, ate it, vomitted it up, and blew it off again. And it’s all 100% stupid.

Tina Fey is awesome. She may not be the best actress in the universe but what she is capable of, she does extremely well. Baby Mama is the story of Fey’s character, Kate, who decides that after years of being a career-centered woman she now wants to make room for a family. Unfortunately she finds many road blocks in making that happen and decides to go the surrogate route. Amy Poehler becomes the surrogate and eventually winds up living with Kate. From there we get a lot of “The Odd Couple” type of jokes but it never gets stupid or overly-cliche. And eventually both characters make changes for the better. Read the rest of this entry »

It is generally acknowledged that the Batman film franchise went down in flames with the campy, horrible Batman and Robin film from 1997. Nevertheless, Batman’s power as a recognizable icon and marketable hero is still irresistible for film studios, especially in the wake of the gazillion-dollar-making Spider-man movies. So it is not surprising that a new Batman movie would get made, but clearly a new direction had to be taken. Read the rest of this entry »

A lot has been said about this movie’s use of CGI. It was made by the same people that created the Polar Express. It uses motion capture technology to digitally record an actor’s real, physical performance, and then interpret that into a computer to guide a computer generated character. So in that sense it greatly differs from films like Shrek and the Pixar films. It is much more direct attempt to mimic a “real life” depiction through computer generated animation. The people are meant to look like real people, etc. As opposed to the more “cartooney” CGI movies put out by other studios. Does it succeed? Do the digital characters look like real people? Well, it’s getting close. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone always talks about the movie Breakin’. And I think Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo not only goes down as the stupidest sequel title, it is also the most played-out sequel joke of all time. I’ve got nothing against Breakin’. It was a decent movie. But Beat Street was the S**T. These 2 movies came out within a month of eachother at a time when breakdancing was huge and, along with hip-hop, it was making it’s way into mainstream culture. Breakin’ pretty much stole all the attention. But while Breakin’ was all L.A. and sunny, Beat Street was The Bronx in the winter. It was raw and it was real. Read the rest of this entry »

This movie was quite a phenomenon when it came out in 1989. I remember actually waiting in a line that stretched down the block on opening day. People ate it up. The timing was just right for this movie and Tim Burton did a great job of capturing a dark, brooding Batman that had become popular largely due to Frank Miller’s milestone graphic novel, The Dark Knight Returns. Read the rest of this entry »

Jodie Foster doesn’t make bad movies. She just doesn’t. Sure, they aren’t all as brilliant as The Silence Of The Lambs or The Accused (her 2 Oscar-winning roles) but they are always interesting and quality experiences. It almost feels like just having her there makes the film take on a whole other dimension. Even her small role in Inside Man was brilliant and remarkable. She just really gives it her all. Read the rest of this entry »

Holy Bats**t, Batman! This movie SUCKED! It sucked so fiercely there is a video montage on YouTube of just the sucky parts strung together (shown below in this post). Though one could argue the entire film itself is just one big sucky part. By far the worst Batman film ever, where do we even start with the crimes committed by this movie? Read the rest of this entry »