watching movies one cup at a time

First I have to say I really liked the movie a lot. However that shaky camera thing really made me feel nauseous! WTF!? I definitely did not feel good by about halfway through the flick. That’s not something you want from a movie these days – call me crazy. And it appears I’m not alone. I read reports that some theaters posted signs saying the movie may cause motion sickness. Nice job, JJ Abrams!

Nevertheless, the film scores big for originality. The concept of seeing essentially a Godzilla movie in a reality show/documentary style really succeeded in connecting the terror of the moment to the audience. It was very effective and believable. We are so used to seeing reality show footage these days and this just blends right in. I got sucked into the realistically bewildering crisis. Read the rest of this entry »

This movie really desperately wants to be Superbad but it is a much weaker and lamer version without any of the cleverness or heart. Superbad had a lot of crude humor but at least it felt genuine. This film just feels like one cliche after another strung together with beer and topless women. It’s pointless, not funny, and not worth it.

This is a “prequel” of sorts to the original Cube movie and Hypercube, it’s sequel. You don’t have to have seen the other 2 movies, but it helps. This one looks like it has a bigger budget with a slightly better production value. The first Cube movie definitely had a low-budget sci-fi vibe.

The basic idea is that there is an enormous Cube structure that contains many cubed chambers within it. Each chamber potentially has a deadly trap that will kill a person almost immediately. People get put in the cube without any warning or instruction and must figure their own way out. Tho pretty much no one does since there are so many traps.

This Cube movie actually spends the majority of it’s time outside the Cube, sort of behind the scenes. The thing I liked about the first Cube movie was the mystery of who was behind it all. You never found out who or why these things were happening. That left it up to the imagination, and that makes a big difference. The following 2 movies have tried to give insight into the organization behind the Cube. But either tell us all of it or not at all. Just teasing little pieces out only demystifies the whole thing. At least if we heard the whole story it would give it some closure.

The acting and directing were just allright in this movie. By far the best character was Mr. Jax with his messed-up eye. He was great fun.

The movie was cute and had some good moments. But basically it’s just not very remarkable. And I don’t buy that Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche hanging out for just a couple hours is enough to set up the 2 movie hours of awkwardness that follow. Steve Carell is so uncomfortable you wonder how he EVER fit in with this overly bubbly crowd. And Juliette Binoche dating Dane Cook? I don’t think so.

The whole movie just felt a bit cliched and unoriginal. And the wedding at the end felt forced, like a resolution they tacked on there just to show that they stayed together. Why do characters in these kinds of movies always have to end up married? It’s so cliche to end a flick like this with a wedding scene, usually outdoors. I think contemporary life is just not that cookie-cutter.

I did like Carell’s relationship with his 3 daughters. This was a subplot kept completely separate from the love story and that is where the movie showed some spark. If the movie had just been about him and his 3 daughters dealing with life after losing their wife/mother, that could have been an interesting movie. Not the blah attempt at romantic comedy that felt less than genuine and just plain wrong.

There were some funny moments but overall I didn’t buy. It’s a nice little movie but nothing significant.

I really liked the Daredevil comic book when I was a kid. And I like superhero movies. But one thing I don’t like is Ben Affleck’s acting. He is not a good actor. At all. Every movie he’s in he is just Ben Affleck. You never see anything else, just dopey Ben Affleck playing himself. Which is fine for certain kinds of movies. But not this one. He can’t carry the story and I totally don’t buy him as a lawyer, a blind person, or a superhero.

The movie is pretty lacking in general. The story is weak and I feel the rest of the cast is all wrong too. I like Jennifer Garner. But she is not Elektra. In the comic book, she is this iconic black-haired assassin with a red scarf around her head. She is not some cute white girl who looks like she should be baking cookies for the Sunshine Festival. Again, I like Jennifer, even badass secret agent Jennifer, just not in this particular movie with this particular character.

Colin Farrell is also not right. He’s a loud-mouthed Irish dude and that is not what Bullseye was. Sure, Colin can do psychotic. That wasn’t a problem. I just felt again we were going too far from the source material. And that’s allowed if it works. But when it doesn’t you have to ask why bother then? Why not stick to the original comic book and at least please the comic book fanboys. And Michael Clark Duncan as Kingpin? Nope. He’s got the bulk, but Kingpin is a very sophisticated character with a lot of menace. I look at Duncan and all I think about is the gentle giant from The Green Mile. Nothing menacing or sophisticated.

They rushed this thing out because of Spider-man’s success but they made some fatal missteps along the way. No chemistry and no believable characters sank it. And betting everything on Ben Affleck is never a good idea.

I love vampire movies, I have seen most of them. It’s been a bit overdone lately with television shows and films, the culture is getting a bit weary of it all. At this point it can be argued that vampires have been done to death, in just about any way you can think of. Daybreakers attempt at a fresh take on the subject is to transform the entire world into a society where vampires are now the overwhelming majority on the planet with humans being hunted down and harvested for their blood. The central conflict to the movie is that the vamps are running out of human blood and facing a starvation-induced mutation that essentially turns them in to the more monstrous end of the vampire legacy.

It’s a great idea and it did catch my attention. And while the movie does a good job of world-building, I wish they would have explored it more. Instead, we get glimpses but too soon we are thrust into a car-chase, manhunt scenario that shifts the focus away from vamp society on to human “rebels” perpetually on the run. The idea of our society shifted to a vampire world is much more fascinating to me than just another chase-down of fugitives. I want more vampire world twists on our own culture. I want more of our culture reflected through the eternal night and pale, blue of the vampire world. That is what is different and interesting than the other vampire sagas out there. Turning it into “humans on the run” just feels tired.

Most of the plot devices in the movie are done very simplistically and watered-down. This starts with a good idea that could have been so much better but then dumbs it down for the popcorn crowd. It will make a good cable movie, wait for it.

There have been so many zombie flicks in the past 30-40 years, it’s ridiculous. And we pretty much have George Romero to thank for all that. His groundbreaking film Night Of The Living Dead launched the whole modern concept of a zombie in horror films. They existed before his movie, but really only as either victims of voodoo or poisoning in cheap black and white third-rate horror movies. But it was Romero’s film that set in motion the zombie mythology we know all too well today.

Diary Of The Dead is George Romero’s fifth zombie flick. This time it is told from the perspective of a handheld video camera that students in Pittsburgh are using to document the zombie takeover starting from the time of the initial break out. Some are calling it a cross between The Blair Witch and Dawn Of The Dead. Or Cloverfield with Zombies. It is a kind of original idea and tries to incorporate the notion that bloggers are the future of information distribution. But ultimately the film comes off as a copy of a copy. Kind of like when a one-hit wonder band releases a new CD with a re-recording of their one hit in an effort to cash in again. Read the rest of this entry »

This movie feels more like a gritty movie about South Africa than it does about aliens. It feels closer to movies like “City of God” and “Hotel Rwanda” than your typical sci-fi.

In the film, a derelict alien ship drifts into the skies above Johannesburg. A community of aliens are found inside, not plotting a siege or looking to make friends, just sort of stuck there and abandoned. They are moved to the ghettos of the city and essentially treated as annoying refugees that need to be isolated and ignored. Meanwhile their weapons and technology are irresistible to those who want to exploit it even though humans are unable to use any of it.

We are constantly shown the ugly side of humanity and it is easy to believe that these visitors would wind up experiencing the worst we have to offer. As they say in the beginning, there was no grand first contact, no exchange of goodwill, no dramatic meeting of the worlds. Just ugliness and cruelty. It was refreshing to see a movie that did not just present another “aliens are out to take over” or “aliens are here to show us how to love” kind of sci-fi nonsense. But at the same time it presented a very hopeless and all-too-real vision of man’s capacity for horrible behavior. At the end of the film I felt almost exhausted from the tension and misery.

Still it was a very well-done film and presented an interesting story. I appreciate that the aliens and their world was treated so normally and fluid with the rest of the actors and scenery.

This movie is basically an updated, teen version of Hitchcock’s classic “Rear Window.” A person confined to their home spies on the neighbors and suspects one of them is a killer. Disturbia is not a classic but it is an entertaining film that is well done. Kind of like “Rear Window” mixed with Tom Hank’s “The ‘burbs” and “Fright Night.”

One of the ways it ups the thrill level from “Rear Window” is by making the suspected neighbor much more of a Hannibal Lecter type serial killer. This guy has gone to great lengths to do his dirty work and to make sure it’s covered up. David Morse is sufficiently creepy to play the killer, and he’s played villians many times before, but he is not really a terrifying presence by himself.

Shia LaBeouf plays the main character, Kale, and he does a great job. However, I don’t think Shia is a great actor. He falls into the category of a John Cusack or Julia Roberts where he is good at playing characters like himself, but that’s about it. He’s great at what he does, but it’s the same guy in each movie – Transformers, Disturbia, Indiana Jones, etc. Fortunately that guy is entertaining and very natural. I enjoy him in this movie and that’s good enough.

Bottom Line: The movie is rather light entertainment, but it is entertaining and fairly clever. Definitely give it a shot if you’re looking for a light thriller.

This movie is clearly the bastard child of Road Warrior and Escape From New York. You could even consider this a sequel, it’s so close to the same stuff those films were made of. Just replace nuclear war and rising crime with something a little more contemporary like a deadly virus, but keep everything else pretty much the same and you got Doomsday. It’s set in the near future where a “Reaper Virus” is killing people within Scotland at a rapid pace. The government responds by walling it off and putting the whole region under quarantine. 25 years later the virus pops up in London and the government sends a team back into Scotland to find out why there are survivors in there. Did they find a cure? Well Scotland has sunk into chaos and the survivors are split into two camps. One are the city-dwelling punks that look they turned the Road Warrior movie into a religion, and the the other camp lives in an ancient castle and totally reverted to a medieval way of life. There are sword fights, cannibalism, gladiator matches, crazy tattoo chicks, and a bad-ass car chase that could have easily had Mel Gibson behind the wheel.

Overall it’s a fine movie for what it is. Fans of Road Warrior should eat it up.