watching movies one cup at a time

This is a sort of Vampire Western. A young guy named Caleb runs into a pretty girl named Mae who just happens to be a vampire that runs with a posse of vamps from town to town killing people and lighting stuff o9n fire. Caleb gets sucked in (get it?) and tries to fit in with the homicidal crew but can’t stand the necessity to kill. Eventually he escapes and is “cured” by a blood transfusion before having the final showdown with the vamp posse and rescuing Mae in the process.

This is the directorial debut of Katheryn Bigelow who was considered a protege of James Cameron. In fact three actors from James Cameron’s Aliens (released the year before) are featured in this film – Bill Paxton, Lance Henrikson, and Jeanette Goldstein. The directing is a bit unimaginative though. There is no real energy to it and the characters never really make the leap to actually being scary. They are more dusty and jerks than anything else.

Lance Henrikson is great as the head vamp dude. His naturally creepy face is still young enough that it doesn’t just look old like it does now. Jeanette Goldstein is passable. Bill Paxton lets his full a**hole flag flie. He plays nice guy roles these days and it’s easy to forget he was an a**hole character actor in the ’80s (Weird Science, Aliens, etc.) and in this one he is the most homicidal and crazy of the bunch.

It’s a rather unremarkable movie but kinda fun in parts. A goofier and more fun “vampire western” would be From Dusk Till Dawn.

Fun family movie with excellent acting. Jodie Foster doesn’t disappoint as agoraphobic writer Alex Rover. And Abigail Breslin wins us over to her island girl, Nim. There’s not much to this one, it’s pretty simple. Girl lives on an island with her dad, loves Alex Rover adventure books, Dad gets lost at sea, Alex Rover makes contact with Nim looking for research on volcanoes, winds up befriending her and when Nim begs for help, Alex Ross goes against her fear of everything and makes it to the very remote island. Dad returns, all is well.

The only thing I didn’t like was I felt the ending was too rushed. Alex Ross spends a big chunk of the movie trying to get to this island, and when she finally does, the movie is basically over. We get to see her on the island for maybe 10 minutes. And Nim has already driven out the tourists herself and her dad finds his way back soon after she arrives. So she really didn’t serve any purpose out there, but next thing we know, right away we flash-forward and her and the dad are in a relationship and a new family unit is created. Just too much too fast. There just wasn’t time in this movie to go deeper into the relationship between Alex Rover and Nim and her dad and how it grew. The movie could have been twice as long to tell the complete story. But we’ll just have to fill in the rest ourselves.

Still, that wasn’t a deal breaker. It was still an enjoyable experience for a family movie and it’s nice to see Jodie Foster doing something lighthearted.

This movie was very under the radar. It’s a small independent film released toward the end of the year and it just came out on DVD. I didn’t have high expectations but was pleasantly surprised at how good it turned out to be. I really liked this movie a lot and recommend you give it a chance next time you’re at the video store.

The film stars Ryan Reynolds as the central character. And the story is broken up into 3 distinct sections, with the same actors playing a different role in each story. The 3 stories are connected in a very original and interesting way. It’s not some virtual reality mumbo-jumbo or anything computer related like I thought it might be. Instead it’s a very personal and moving story that poses some big ideas about God and the universe. This story is as high-concept as Southland Tales (probably moreso) but it doesn’t get so self-absorbed in esoteric weirdness like Southland Tales did. The Nines keeps things down-to-earth while at the same time illuminating ideas as big as existence itself.

Ryan Reynolds does a great job in this. I often overlook him because of complete garbage like Van Wilder and Blade 3. But I gotta hand it to him, he nailed it in this one. If an actor can get an intelligent script, they can really shine and show the world they can do more than flex their ab muscles and make boob-jokes. As I have said before, I judge an actor by the quality of their range. This film gave the actors the great opportunity to stretch out into 3 completely different characters. And Ryan Reynolds, Melissa McCarthy, and Hope Davis all do a phenomenal job of transforming themselves within each section.

I won’t spoil the ending on this one because I really think you should rent it. The writer and director John August pulled off a great film definitely worth checking out.

I’ve already said in my review of the first Twilight movie that I am way more in to vampire movies than I am in to sappy, teenage romance movies. And these are the lamest vampires ever. The new sequel doesn’t change any of that and in fact is WAY more sappy and melodramatic than the first one. New Moon is a way over-the-top romance novel come to life as pouting, angsty teenagers say god awful dialogue about being together forever, being hurt, never leaving you, and then leaving you. It’s SO cliche and SO ridiculous I wonder how anyone can actually buy in to it. Are people that lonely and desperate that they think this qualifies as a movie they can actually sit through without completely gagging?

And oh my god, could Kristen Stewart possibly be any more whiny and miserable? Constant drama with her. No wonder her “normal friends” at the high school got sick of her. She spends the entire movie looking awkward and traumatized, occasionally screaming or doing something stupid like fall off a motorcycle because she “can’t live without Edward.” It get’s really old, really fast.

The one thing I did enjoy in this movie were the Volturi, and specifically Michael Sheen as Aro. Michael Sheen has already done some amazing work in Frost/Nixon, The Queen, The Deal and the Underworld Trilogy. And every time his vampire character is on screen it lights up the scene and reminds you what a real actor can do, not just some pouty teenager with too much makeup and a staring problem. I would have much prefered an entire movie just on him and the rest of the Volturi. They make the Cullen tribe look like the Brady Bunch.

But that’s the main problem with this movie. It’s all about pouty teenage romance novel crap and barely about vampires at all. I’m not a teenage girl, I’m not a lonely housewife, I don’t watch soap operas, I don’t read romance novels. This movie is clearly not for me. But on top of that it’s just a really bad movie, overly dramatic and ultimately boring.