watching movies one cup at a time

Tank Girl is based on a popular underground comic by future Gorillaz visual artist Jamie Hewlett. It was indie and gritty and nothing like a Hollywood flick at all. So why did it then get made into a Hollywood flick? I doubt anyone was eager to see this turned into a live-action mess. Probably this movie was trying to ride the wave of “cyberpunk” cool that existed in the mid-90s as the internet was growing in popularity and fears of the end of the millenium was closing in. There were several similar “cyber-future” flicks around this time and they all sucked. It wasn’t until The Matrix that someone actually got it right.

Lori Petty is good as Tank Girl and she is pretty cute most of the time. But the story is a farce, the action is silly, and the “mutant kangaroos” are way stupid. It all feels so forced and pointless. It should have been animated if made at all.

Bottom Line: Skip it.

James Cameron set a pretty high standard with Terminator 2: Judgement Day. It was a smash hit, raised the bar for action, sci-fi movies and was probably the best movie Arnold Schwarzenegger will ever be able to accomplish. But as with any big success in this genre, sequels MUST follow. Terminator 3 was okay but left you wanting more. And ultimately Terminator 4 (aka Salvation) leaves you feeling the same way. It’s not a bad movie but it’s just not a very good one either. And next to T2, it has none of the intensity, cutting edge effects, or even the humor that film was so good at. After watching Terminator 4, you feel like it’s just no big deal.

The story takes place in the future after the machines have taken over but before the events of the first Terminator take place (sending Arnie back and the character of Kyle Reese). The thing I never really understood about the whole Terminator mythology is if it’s entirely based on screwing around with history by going back and killing people who will be important later, why do the machines pick the points in time they go back to and wouldn’t they know immediately in the “new future” if the mission failed or not? Like if a Terminator goes back to kill Sarah Connor, wouldn’t they know immediately in the future if it failed or not. And if it did fail, which it did, why not just keep sending Arnie’s back in time until it was done? Or send them back to kill John Connor’s great grandfather? And they probably figured out that Kyle Reese is John Connor’s dad so why not kill his parents? And if they keep messing with the past, do the people in the future know what’s been changed? Or is it just the same old, same old to them?

There are a million questions that logic wants answers for. And the best the filmmakers can come up is “Ummm, cool robots blow stuff up good!” Which is fine if the movie is as good as T2. But T4 is not and I just wasn’t satisfied.

The acting was actually pretty good. I never liked Nick Stahl in T3. Christian Bale was a little too hard but overall it was fine. I would have liked to have seen more Helena Bonham Carter. She’s basically just a cameo, as well as the otherwise brilliant Bryce Dallas Howard, who is also barely in the movie. But I thought the “fake” Arnold Schwarzenegger was a brilliant move. However, watching Sam Worthington was like watching a mannequin talk. How does this guy keep getting in these blockbusters? He’s such a blank actor and instantly forgettable. I’m still not clear what the hell he was or why he did what he did. More Bale, less Worthington. In fact just delete the character altogether and get to the action.

Bottom Line: A decent movie but not really worth the effort.

This is Denzel Washington’s fourth film with Director Tony Scott and it maintains the same intensity that Tony Scott is known for. He’s got a very stylized way of doing action films that gives it some flair, making it a touch better than the rest of the genre. And as for action movies, this movie has a lot to offer. The story follows a hostage crisis in NYC on a subway train during rush hour. Denzel Washington’s character is working that day in Central Command and gets put in to the position of hostage negotiator by John Travolta’s character. There are a few similarities to Spike Lee’s Inside Job, which also puts Denzel in a hostage negotiator role, but the emphasis here is on the action. The story isn’t weak, but the intensity is kicked up a lot by guns and claustrophobic tension.

Denzel does his usual brilliant job and John Travolta is great. It’s a popcorn flick but a quality popcorn flick. If you’re looking for something fun to pass the time, this will work.

John Carpenter’s attempt at political commentary is pretty ham-fisted. Not going for subtlety, he creates a world where everything is going to hell fast and weird skinless aliens are the cause. And they just happen to be brainwashing all of us through sublimal messages behind everything. Messages like “Obey” “Submit” and “Marry and procreate.” And with “Rowdy” Roddy Piper in the lead role, you know this is going to be more like Die Hard than All The President’s Men. For what it is, it’s not bad. It does provide a way to criticize Ronald Reagan’s Yuppie Utopia of the ’80s and feed into a million conspiracy theories about how this government is controlling us. Aliens? More like the ruling class. I think it’s a little optimistic to pin this on aliens and not the evil nature of men. They don’t need an alien to dupe them into manipulating the masses. But it’s a simple, kinda fun movie. And since we are being manipulated anyway, anyone drawing attention to it is a good thing.

Holy Hell, that sucked! You know, going into Transformers 2 I didn’t have very high expectations. Exploding crap, fighting robots, hot chicks, I get it. But even with low expectations this film was painful to sit through. It goes so far beyond ridiculous that I have to narrow it down to the Top 10 Reasons Transformers 2 Sucked:

10. Whirling robot chaos – when the robots fight, there is so much going on that I can’t even tell where one robot ends and the other begins. It’s just one big flurry of robot crap. I’m all for robots beating the crap out of each other, but this a mess.

9. Egypt is a stereotype from hell – This movie makes Egypt out to be every generic cliche someone who has never been there could possibly come up with. According to this movie, the entire country of Egypt is one big dessert with ancient runes all over the place, camels, and blown-out remnants of walls. The Egyptian people are just ignorant peasant in robes with chickens running around their homes in the middle of the dessert where they all apparently live. It’s ignorant and racist.

8. The “Ghetto” robot twins – Speaking of racist, what’s up with the f-ing Amos and Andy robots? They are practically in blackface doing a minstrel show. It’s just one cliche stereotype after another! Read the rest of this entry »

I like vampire movies. I like them a lot. I am not so fond of teen romance dramas. Not so fond at all. Going in to Twilight I knew I was going to get some weird mish-mash of vampire movie and teen romance drama, but what I didn’t know was that I was going to being getting a movie that was ENTIRELY teen romance drama with just a little sprinkling of vampire underlying 2 hours of a guy with too much make-up on staring at Kristen Stewart. Clearly this movie (and the books it’s based on) is for lovesick teen girls who want to “fall in love forever!” with some hot, loner dude who only has eyes for them. And that is really NOT what I am interested in from a vamp flick.

It’s just non-stop fantasy that feels like it was written by some girl who didn’t get asked to the prom so they stayed home whining about it and pouring their angst into a drippy, melodramatic story. And then they threw vampires in to the mix just to make it “edgy”, but in a very non-edgy way. Seriously, there could not be any wussier vampires on the planet. They go out in the sunlight, they only eat animals in the forest, and they go to high school. What!? Do you think the vamps in The Lost Boys worried about f*cking high school? Hell no!

And the so-called “evil vampires” just really feels tacked on and uninteresting. All-of-a-sudden they show up and everyone freaks out and for some unclear reason they want to kill the human chick, Bella. Just cuz I guess. They fly across the country (!) and beat each other up in some silly wrestling match that looks like it was choreographed by Cirque Du Soleil. Then pretty much without a whole lotta effort, they kill the “bad guy” and light his ass on fire. There, problem solved in about 15 whole minutes. Hardly seems worth the effort at all really.

If you’re a lonely teenage girl, hey, more power to ya. I’m sure you’ll love this as you cry about how you’ll never find “my Edward”. But it’s not for me and it’s not for anyone who is in to vampire movies… like, at ALL.

This is the third film in the so-called “Twilight Saga” and the ads for this movie promised a lot more action than the previous two. Ultimately though it’s just the continuation of the same melodrama and weak story from the other Twilight movies. We do get more scenes of vampires and werewolves kickin’ some ass, but it’s far too short and the “big battle” towards the end is not that big or much of a battle either. It’s pretty much over in about 5 minutes with no real threat displayed and no real consequences, other than pretty easily killing off the villains who seem to be obsessed with killing Bela for no real established reason. Seriously, why are they so desperate to kill her? It’s really never made clear in any satisfying way. It just feels like a puffed-up excuse to have Edward and Jacob both say a million times “I did it to protect you” and “I would rather die than let anything ever happen to you.” But why does this motivate the entire Cullen clan AND now the werewolf pack to put their lives on the line to defend her? And defending her is apparently really easy because, like I said, the “big battle” is over pretty quick despite the main villain, Victoria, taking a whole year to build up this apparently impotent vampire army.

What I did like about this movie was how they went more in to the backstory of some of the vampire characters. I find that part is always interesting, especially in other vampire stories like the vastly superior True Blood. I liked the new villain, Riley, and the scenes of him causing havoc in Seattle. I currently live in Seattle and wouldn’t mind seeing some hipsters get chomped on. But his scenes were far too short and left me wanting more.

Read the rest of this entry »

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 preferred 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.

Bottom Line: If you like cheesy romance novels, this is right up your alley. Like vampires? Go watch The Lost Boys and see how it’s done.