watching movies one cup at a time

This is the sequel to Rob Zombie’s first film The House of 1000 Corpses and it’s not even half as good. Basically this sequel took out all the things I liked about the first movie and just left a run-of-the-mill “serial killers on the loose” movie with no real point or original idea. There was none of the style and flair of the first movie. And all of the bizarre Satan stuff was dropped like it never happened, which is weird to me because I felt that was a big part of the first movie. This flick is just dirty people doing disgusting things and swearing a lot like we’ve seen a million times in movies like Natural Born Killers, From Dusk ‘Til Dawn, Near Dark, and a ton of other b-grade white trash slasher flicks. Except done much more poorly. It just had no character, no style, no flair.

This movie was really stupid. It pairs up the Farrelly Brothers and Ben Stiller once again but unlike There’s Something About Mary, the jokes here fall flat and Ben Stiller’s character is a lot less likable. In fact, many of the jokes here feel like they’re recycled from Mary like a bad imitation.

The Farrelly Brothers really never were able to recreate their success with Mary. There have been a few interesting movies here and there like Fever Pitch but for the most part it’s felt like they have been chasing Mary and playing off their reputation as the “gross out kings” to attract an audience. And The Heartbreak Kid is no exception. There are more than a few gross-out jokes in this one that are really just plain gross. They aren’t funny and they feel very forced. Read the rest of this entry »

Boring. Lifeless. Uninspired. This is a live-action film of a very popular animated series, and the film fails in every way. What is going on in this movie and why should I care? M. Night never delivers a satisfying answer and ultimately wastes our time.

The characters are drab and the acting is terrible. And why aren’t the main actors Asian? The entire animated series is Asian! This really pissed off the massive fanbase for this movie, NEVER a good idea. And since none of the non-asian actors add ANYTHING to the movie, what was the point? Just racist pandering to white audiences? Either these actors really suck or M. Night just sucks as a director. And since he wrote the REALLY BAD dialogue for this movie, my guess is that the blame falls on M. Night.

The effects in this movie are so lifeless that it’s clear this movie should have stayed in animation and not live-action. The whole concept of the characters “bending” the elements just never connects. The fire doesn’t burn anything, the water never gets anyone wet, the dirt is hardly intimidating, and god-forbid you get hit by THE WIND! Didn’t M. Night learn anything from that failed “Happening” movie? Wind isn’t scary or tough. This movie could have been made 10x better as an animated film. And the 3D is completely pointless. It’s never used to any dramatic effect and feels very tacked on purely for profit.

The fight scenes are just stupid. No one looks like they are actually fighting. It more closely resembles a bad dance routine. With so many fantastic martial arts movies being made all the time, there is no excuse to have such lame action sequences in a contemporary film. Hire a director JUST for those scenes if you can’t do it yourself, M. Night. None of his previous movies ever had any kind of fighting in them so why he felt he could jump in with both fists and get away with it seems ridiculous. When Quentin Tarantino directed Kill Bill, he not only had studied martial arts films for years, he also brought in the best to help with the fights. And it worked! The fights in this movie are about as fierce as the worst episode of “So You Think You Can Dance” and are just as boring and lifeless as the rest of the movie.

Bottom Line: Boring and pointless, don’t bother.

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 »