watching movies one cup at a time

Two words: Disaster Porn. If you saw the trailers for this movie, you pretty much saw the whole thing. Stuff falls apart, blows up, and chases John Cusack and his kids. Done. Is there anything in the movie that wasn’t in the trailer? A few boring scenes with Oliver Platt and Chiwetel Ejiofor yelling about survival and government or something. Yawn. Basically any time there isn’t something blowing up or crashing, this movie is pretty boring. And you saw all the cool crashy stuff in the trailer already! So don’t bother. This movie is going to make it to basic cable in about a year and get replayed about about a million times. Just wait until then. I’ve seen Roland Emmerich’s other disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow about 50 times on FX, TBS and Spike. 2012 will follow in the fine tradition soon enough.

Okay, what the hell was this movie even about? There were some doll-things numbered 1-9, the world is blown up or something, robots are evil, the dolls have green pieces of some guy’s soul in them – huh? The trailers for this film are full of great images that appeal to my steampunk/distressed aesthetic with it’s broken doll heads mixed with robotic pseudo-insect looking creatures. But this movie is all style and no story. There is a very, very vague backstory about a war and humanity getting wiped out but why these living doll things were created and what the hell they are supposed to be doing is a complete mystery to me and after a while I just didn’t care anymore. This is why Pixar succeeds where so many other animation films fail. Pixar writes a compelling story to drive the animation, not the other way around. The story has to come first or else it’s all just pretty pictures. And unfortunately, despite it’s awesome look and occasionally clever visuals, 9 is precisely that. Plus it’s just plain boring and gloomy. Not worth the time.

I think we’ve finally reached the tipping point where Tim Burton is sliding into self-parody. This movie feels very phoned in, like someone opened the book of “Tim Burton-isms” and piled them all into this rather lifeless mush.

Check out this video called Tim Burton’s Secret Formula. They pretty much nailed it on the head.

The crazy make-up and scenery caught our interest in the build-up to the release, but once again a good story is sacrificed to just having a bunch of crazy-sh*t exploding everywhere. And the original story was hard enough to take seriously to begin with considering it’s mostly surreal nonsense on purpose. But here Burton attempts to take that literary nonsense and fashion a story “with heart” and “real characters”, giving the Mad Hatter a little back story and a little sanity believe it or not. However this makes the character completely impotent and lacking much of a personality at all. Instead we get a sad clown that wants Alice to “do the right thing.” Huh? Sure, Johnny Depp can be fun to watch when he plays these cartoon-like characters, but at this point it’s all been done so many times that the novelty has worn off. It’s become tired and cliche.

The rest of the cast pretty much phones it in as well and is very forgettable. Mia Wasikowska as Alice seems completely bored the entire time and doesn’t care what’s happening because she’s convinced it’s all a dream. This translates into a lifeless performance that never convinces US to care what’s happening either. Helena Bonham Carter is good but is not given much to work with. Anne Hathaway is truly bizarre as the White Queen who for some reason never lowers her arms the entire movie. She is constantly fluttering around with her arms up like she’s dancing ballet or something. It’s distracting and quite silly, in a bad way. Everyone else was forgettable and ultimately pointless.

In general I just never cared about any of the characters or the so-called problems they were facing. The movie was not faithful to the original books and feels like they were trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, covering over their inadequacies with a mountain of CGI rainbow goth vomit. Ultimately this film was pointless and empty. Plus the 3-D that is now so trendy was very lackluster and never wowed us. After Avatar, it’s going to take a lot to make the 3-D really stand out. Otherwise it feels like just another gimmick.

Bottom Line: Lots of pointless noise. Skip it.

Dude, that was messed up. There was some twisted stuff in this movie. Kids getting chest-bursts, a pregnant lady, parents, people getting killed constantly – it was pretty gruesome. And the main problem with all that is it felt really cold-blooded. This movie had no heart, it had no purpose. It was just a series of scenes filled with senseless violence. It felt like the kind of movie that a couple of dorky fanboys would make if given the chance, kind of like if Beavis and Butthead did an Aliens movie. I can just see the film-makers sitting around a stale pizza taking a break from Worlds Of Warcrack and saying “Hey, you know what would be freakin’ cool? If we had a kid get a chest-burst. That would be AWESOME!”

And hey, in all honesty, maybe I’m not the one this movie was made for. Maybe I’m the one who’s thinking too much and should just keep it to myself. But this isn’t stupid Freddy Kreuger we’re talking about. This is the Aliens movies. These movies have had amazing directors like Ridley Scott, James Cameron, David Fincher, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. And they told some real stories mixed in with the action. Some better than others. But the point is they weren’t so mindless, and skilled directors with a good cast were able to make interesting films. The Predator series on the other hand always kinda sucked. And maybe it’s watering down the Alien movie mythology too much. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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 »

I have to admit, I didn’t really watch this film. I’m not a JLo fan and I had no interest in it. But I wanted to mention it because I was in the room while my wife watched it and I could easily tell I wasn’t going to like it.

The movie is basically the story of Hector Lavoe who started the salsa movement in 1975 and brought it to the United States. To say this movie caused some controversy would be putting it mildly. As I understand it, the salsa community HATED this frickin’ movie. Even people who contributed and consulted on this flick later slammed it mercilessly. And considering the movie is about a salsa legend, that’s probably not a good thing. I could see maybe in a really, really early discussion it seemed like a great idea to get Marc and JLo in this flick together. But someone should have gotten wise and saw the trainwreck coming.

As for the movie, all I heard for 2 hours was JLo YELLING constantly “How can you do this to YOUR WIFE, Hector!” I mean just yelling the whole time – at this person, at that person, shrieking. And Marc Anthony just kind of dazed out. Man, it was so annoying. Why would I want to go see a movie where some arrogant diva is constantly berating everyone around her? This is entertainment? This is a story that has to be told?

It’s clear that JLo’s star is flickering out. She had a nice run but clearly no one’s buying what she’s selling any more. Her last album completely bombed and she has had a steady stream of movie failures starting with the career-killing Gigli. El Cantante might be the last straw. We’ll see.

This is the fourth major movie from Mike Judge, the creator of King of the Hill and Beavis & Butthead, and it is definitely the most boring and unfunny. Judge hit a high point with his second film, Office Space, that he hasn’t been able to match since. While that movie has gathered a strong cult following and continues to be quoted 10 years later, his latest film just fails to connect. I was even a fan of his third film, Idiocracy, with it’s clever premise and funny send-up of trash culture elevated to ruling status. But Extract lacks all the cleverness of his previous films and feels like a half-baked collection of unfunny, unconnected ideas that don’t really go anywhere or give us any reason to get interested in the story. It’s just very flat and most of the cast feels as though they are sleepwalking through it.

Bottom Line: Not funny and boring. Don’t bother.

In 2009, in regards to the horror genre, one has to ask if Jason is really up to speed with today’s current level of slasher villain. Back in 1980 when he was first introduced, the mainstream slasher film was in the early days of cheap blood and guts special effects. A knife in the head was still a shocking image. But now in 2009 when computer-generated gore has people exploding and getting ripped in half very realistically and effortlessly, is some big guy with an axe the scariest thing in the world? We have movies like Hostel, Saw, High Tension, Grindhouse, and Rob Zombie’s flicks that have redefined the evil psychopath for a jaded culture that is not shocked any more by a guy in a hockey mask with mommy issues.

Now, having said that, this isn’t such a terrible movie. It’s miles above the previous 5 or 6 Jason movies at least and it’s good to see a franchise like this shake off the Z-grade stigma it had built up with “Jason takes Manhattan” and other such crap, in a very similar way that Rob Zombie reinvented the Halloween film for a more twisted and ugly world. If you like these kind of slasher flicks, or just want some nostalgia for your misbegotten youth, this is worth a look.