watching movies one cup at a time

Well, it is what it is – a b-grade zombie flick loosely based on a video game. I’m not a big fan of any of these movies. They are pretty weak in general. I like the idea of an out-of-control company like the Umbrella Corporation, but we don’t get much insight into them. This film takes place in a future where the whole world has pretty much been taken over by the “T Virus” which kills everything and then reanimates it zombie-style. Milla Jovovich is back as the genetically-enhanced Alice, ready to kick some a** as usual. And really that’s the most fun part – watching Milla do her thing. She pretty much only acts in movies where she can whup on people nowadays so she’s gotten really good at it. High kicks, flipping all over, knives, guns, what’s not to like? The rest of the cast and the story is pretty forgettable. Even as an end-of-the-world scenario it’s so-so.

Bottom Line: Fun if you want something mindless.

It’s a very cliche story: Lone wolf outsider comes into town, thinking he can change things. Big bad evil rich dude “owns the town and everyone in it” and tries to kill/shut down the lone wolf. Explosions, fist fights, smashed glass. Good guy wins, bad rich dude dies. There are whole tv series based on that simple plot line. Road House fits that model perfectly and features Swayze kickin’ some ass. Lotsa violence in this one. Including one badass scene where he literally rips out a dude’s throat. Who does that? Seriously. Ultimate fighting fans should dig this, the rest of us can probably do without the whole ripped-out throat thing.

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.

Another pointless remake. It just wasn’t scary. And for god’s sake, what the hell does it take to make this lady grab her kids and GET THE HELL OUT OF THE HOUSE!!?? The whole movie this messed-up stuff keeps happening and she STAYS IN THE HOUSE! WTF!!?? Most mom’s I know would be like “Walls are bleeding, ghost kids are telling my daughter to jump off the roof…. yea, time to get the HELL OUT OF HERE!” Does she think that this whole “crazy devil nonsense” is just going to go away on it’s own? Beyond stupid. And again, there is some bizarre plot twists at the end that just seem pointless and made up. I didn’t buy it. This movie is a waste of time.

I felt like my life stood still while watching this movie. As far as disaster movies go, this one just dragged on with very little momentum or excitement. All the cool visuals were mostly already out there in the trailers leaving us with just a very emotionless Keanu Reeves, witless Jennifer Connelly, and an annoying kid played by Jaden Smith (Will and Jada’s kid) already showing signs of monster ego.

Keanu Reeves has made a career out of emotionless, dispassionate characters. You could totally see his character in this film turn around and say “We have to go. Morpheus is waiting.” He has the charisma of a can of paint. And Jennifer Connelly is a competent enough actress, but why she is there, why she believes this alien, and pretty much why she does anything are all a mystery to the audience. Who knows why anyone is doing anything.

The plot is basically humans are jacking up the planet and the aliens want to stop them from doing that by getting rid of the humans. Supposedly they have good reasons to believe that humans are hopeless and doomed. Yet the alien somehow has his mind changed in less than a day. Huh!? And honestly, humans ARE jacking up the planet so even I don’t believe Jennifer Connelly’s heartfelt pleading that “we can change!”. I don’t believe her and I don’t get why Keanu would either. Let the big bad alien wipe them out, humans probably deserve it.

And speaking of the big bad alien, the “enforcer” alien – GORT – was pretty bad ass. I really wanted to him just start going nuts on those soldiers. To be fair, GORT was only playing defense. They screwed with him first every tiime.

Overall this movie was a big snoozefest that did not deliver on the hype. Rent it on DVD, you are not missing anything in the theaters.

I feel like the knives were out for M. Night Shyamalan this time around. No matter what movie he did, I get the impression the critics were going to rip him and people just weren’t going to get behind it. I think it’s a common phenomenon where an artist peaks on their first project and then spends the rest of their career trying to best that initial success. And it really does seem like each of his films has gotten weaker and weaker. Now I didn’t hate his last film, The Lady In The Water, like so many other people did. But it wasn’t great. And now we have The Happening and again pressure is put on M. Night Shyamalan to “win back” his audience and live up to the burden of his potential that was put on him after The Sixth Sense.

But unfortunately The Happening isn’t the one that’s going to do that. The story is interesting but it’s paper-thin. There is just not much to grab on to here and the characters spend most of the time running from the wind. Yes, the wind. Sound scary? “It’s getting windy!!! HOLY CRAP!!!” is not really the spine-chilling scream we usually hear in movies like this. But yea, it’s the wind. Ya see, the plants are revolting against the evil, polluting humans and are releasing a chemical toxin into the air that basically reverses a person’s self-preservation instinct. So as a result they immediately kill themselves. I didn’t think about it before I saw the movie, but once I was watching it I realized I was watching over an hour of people committing suicide. Sound like a good time? Not really. It was kind of a big bummer actually. Especially when they throw in kids and parents and all that sentimental stuff that is only there to make you feel terrible. Read the rest of this entry »

Why? Why redo this movie? The original was a subtle, black and white haunted house movie. This new version went completely psycho-nuts with the computer-generated crap all over the place. WAY over the top. I’m all for CGI adding something to a movie, but they just ripped out any subtlety and ran right into using every opportunity they could to CGI something. Doors, curtains, fireplaces, paintings, smoke, beds, you name it. And it was ugly CGI too with weird beds coming to life looking like some kind of alien escaped from war of the worlds.

They added a bunch of extra nonsense to the script as well making the plot a lot more complicated. And that didn’t help things. Again, too much. I must say the house looked fantastic though. I’d love to live in such a huge mansion with such rich decor. Just skip the CGI kid-ghosts on the fireplace coming to life.

The acting was okay. Lili Taylor didn’t really fit here though as Nell, the lead female character. She doesn’t convey the same vulnerability as Julie Harris did so well in the original. Liam Neeson as the head of the project is pretty much wasting his talents here too. Owen Wilson pops in and is his usual annoying self. I can’t stand that guy.

Overall this film was a waste of time. They should have built on the originals creepiness factor instead of ramming a bunch of CG effects down our throats. The imagination is much more fertile ground for what scares us than CGI curtains.

Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman are a couple staying in a remote house one night after a disappointing evening at a wedding. Three strangers show up and start to terrorize the couple while wearing some goofy masks. Terror ensues. This movie is pretty much a one-note suspense flick where every 5 minutes someone jumps out or creeps up and goes “boo!”

Bottom Line: Watch it on cable if youv’e got nothing better to do.

It’s been 10 years since the last X-Files movie, 6 years since the series ended, and it’s heyday was in the late ’90s. So why drag it out of retirement now? Is there a story that just has to be told? More secrets to reveal? Sadly no. The movie doesn’t seem to serve any purpose except to give Duchovny, Anderson, and Chris Carter something to do. The movie is essentially a glorified TV episode and not a very good one. The story is very boring and hardly seems worth the effort at all. We waited all these years for this!? Spare us. If that’s all you got then just let the X-Files die.

Bottom Line: It’s a waste of time. Rent if you’re an X-Files fan, otherwise skip it.

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.