watching movies one cup at a time

Ya know, people made a big deal about this movie, but I really didn’t think it was that good. There were a couple “ha ha” moments, but overall it really wasn’t that funny. The funny parts were mostly when the guys were all sitting around talking sh*t. But I have a feeling they do that all the time, except this time someone filmed it. It’s funny but so what. And then later on in the movie they even ditch all that and it goes full-on rom-com (romantic comedy). It felt like 2 different movies, which I’m sure is part of the point to show how much Seth’s character has grown. But guess what? I don’t buy it. The guy spends his whole adult life smoking weed and making dirty jokes with his friends and then ditches it all in 9 months? Granted, a kid is a big deal. But I think in real life that guy would have been a lot LESS cool about it all. Maybe I’m wrong. But it just felt too hollywood to me.

And let me just say that I am SICK to death of Katherine Heigel. I can’t stand hearing people going apesh*t over her. I don’t get it. She’s not very attractive, she’s skinny, and her acting is great if she is playing someone exactly like who she really is. Big deal.

Another thing that bugged me was early in the movie when the guys were talking about their “Big Idea” to build an internet site that just talked about nakedness/sex in mainstream movies (i.e. not porn), my first thought was “Oh, like MrSkin.com” just like Paul Rudd’s character says later on in the flick. Problem is Seth and his buddies NEVER HEARD of MrSkin.com. Huh!? Do they even own computers? How does someone who is looking to get into an internet business have NO CLUE that someone already did it? You’re just one Google search away from saying “Oh, nevermind guys, looks like someone beat us to it. Let’s think of something else.” And you mean to tell me this whole time (MONTHS maybe YEARS) not one of these guys thought to do that? Or someone before Paul Rudd never mentioned it before? Or just surfing porn one of these dudes never came across it!? I don’t think so.

I like Seth Rogen a lot. I do think he’s funny. And I do find a bunch of guys sitting around cursing to be really funny most of the time. It’s childish I know, but I find it to be hilarious. It just seems like Knocked Up is trying to squeeze that humor into a romantic-comedy that doesn’t really want it in there. Top it off with boring and mildly annoying Katherine Heigel and it’s just kind of an okay movie. Go watch 40 Year Old Virgin instead. WAY better.

Nicolas Cage makes a lot of movies where he looks very concerned all the time. In Knowing he’s very concerned because his son has come across a series of numbers that accurately predict major disasters. It’s a leap of faith how this all comes together but it’s believable enough. What to do about it or how this affects anything are kind of lightly touched on but ultimately there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of rhyme or reason to what’s going on here. The ending tries to tie it all together but even that’s kind of a stretch and just seems like an easy way out.

Overall there is not much to this movie. It’s not a bad way to pass some time but don’t go looking for anything too meaningful here.

This movie is like one long Doctor Who episode. It really could have been a Doctor movie without much change to the story. Set in London, the film is essentially about “space vampires” that come to Earth to drain the lifeforce from humans and turn them into lifeforce-draining monsters themselves. It’s very campy and British in the exact same way that Doctor Who was, especially in the ’80s. But it is still enjoyable for a rather silly horror/sci-fi movie. The special effects are pretty ridiculous, again like Doctor Who back-in-the-day, but it doesn’t hurt that the main vampire villain is a hot girl who prefers to be naked all the time, just sayin’.

Transitioning stage musicals to movies can be tricky. However I get the impression that this one did not pose much of a challenge. It all seems rather mainstream and run-of-the-mill, much like the audience I suspect has kept this stage musical going for years. It’s gimmick is that the characters break out into ABBA songs a fairly regular basis and very loosely connected to a story about a girl getting married and not knowing who her real dad is. The songs are loosely connected meaning not very connected at all. They are just kind of there like a karaoke soundtrack shoved in by a crazy, obsessed ABBA fan. And considering how closely associated ABBA is these days with drag/gay culture, it’s no surprise that the movie feels a little bit like a gay pride parade wrapped around a bad soap opera.

One thing I also dislike about Hollywood versions of stage musicals is that they tend to hire actors based on their names and not their singing/dancing ability. This has gone on for ages, like the time Audrey Hepburn got the movie role in My Fair Lady that a lesser-known Julie Andrews had already performed brilliantly on stage. Meryl Streep is of course a great actress but she is not known for her singing ability or has ever performed in a musical as far as I know. Add to that Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, and the rest and you’ve got some decent actors but not necessarily good musical performers. This adds to the “forced” nature of the musical acts and the rather flat feeling the movie has all around.

However, after having said all that, if you just want some light fun and who cares about the details or sophistication, you won’t go wrong with Mamma Mia! It has fun moments and is certainly good to pass the time.

This is a sort of Vampire Western. A young guy named Caleb runs into a pretty girl named Mae who just happens to be a vampire that runs with a posse of vamps from town to town killing people and lighting stuff o9n fire. Caleb gets sucked in (get it?) and tries to fit in with the homicidal crew but can’t stand the necessity to kill. Eventually he escapes and is “cured” by a blood transfusion before having the final showdown with the vamp posse and rescuing Mae in the process.

This is the directorial debut of Katheryn Bigelow who was considered a protege of James Cameron. In fact three actors from James Cameron’s Aliens (released the year before) are featured in this film – Bill Paxton, Lance Henrikson, and Jeanette Goldstein. The directing is a bit unimaginative though. There is no real energy to it and the characters never really make the leap to actually being scary. They are more dusty and jerks than anything else.

Lance Henrikson is great as the head vamp dude. His naturally creepy face is still young enough that it doesn’t just look old like it does now. Jeanette Goldstein is passable. Bill Paxton lets his full a**hole flag flie. He plays nice guy roles these days and it’s easy to forget he was an a**hole character actor in the ’80s (Weird Science, Aliens, etc.) and in this one he is the most homicidal and crazy of the bunch.

It’s a rather unremarkable movie but kinda fun in parts. A goofier and more fun “vampire western” would be From Dusk Till Dawn.

This is an interesting sci-fi movie set on a massive ship that has left Earth with the last remaining survivors from Earth. They are headed to an Earth-like planet far away but somewhere along the way something has gone wrong. 2 crew members woke up from hypersleep to find the ship is derelict and the crew has disappeared. Slowly they find out the truth and discover many of the ship’s survivors have mutated into monsters or have been killed by the cannibalistic creatures. It’s a dark and claustrophobic movie filled that does a pretty good job of keeping the suspense going throughout. The ending is very satisfying and overall it’s a good schi-fi flick. However it’s not great and I felt they could have pushed it a little further.

This movie follows in the tradition of Blair Witch as a “found footage” video camera film depicting something that supposedly really happened. In this case it’s a “demon” tormenting a young woman and her boyfriend. What I liked about it was the very original spin on a very cliche genre. I liked the natural dialogue, and I like the disbelief of the boyfriend who seems to be determined to push his girlfriend to extremes so he can get some kick-ass video footage, presumably to immediately post to youtube and high-five his other douchebag buddies. It’s a very contemporary reaction from a generation raised on youtube overexposure, counteless reality shows, and endless horror movies that retread the same old scares. I felt the final impact of the film wasn’t as powerful as Blair Witch, but it does succeed at creating a very creepy environment that makes you tense and uncomfortable.

Definitely worth checking out.

This film follows in the footsteps of Cloverfield and The Blair Witch Project as a movie seen entirely from the perspective of one handheld camera. This time it’s about a deadly virus that is an extreme form of rabies, kind of like 28 Days Later but not quite as gruesome. Another movie this year, Diary of The Dead, also made a similar attempt at telling a zombie-type flick through a handheld camera. But this one was a little different because the filmmakers decided to go with known actors for all the main roles. Not well-known, but known. The other movies made a point of having unknown actors play all the roles to increase the sense of reality in the footage. That does hurt the film a little bit because it feels as though we’re watching actors acting. Not real people dealing with a crisis. And that brings the movie to a “made-for-TV” level, like so many low-grade disaster movies on the Sci-Fi Channel. Plus this movie really isn’t covering any new ground at all. 28 Days Later and it’s sequel did a much more terrifying job with the outbreak scenario. And the 2006 indie flick Right At Your Door did a much better job with the whole quarantine/disease crisis thing. You’d be better off renting those.

Bottom Line: This film is passable as something fun to watch on a Friday night, but don’t go out of your way for it. You’re not missing anything.

If this movie is true, the Mormons were some f*cked up, bloodthirsty motherf*ckers when they first started. This movie is about the Mountain Meadow Massacre that took place about 160 years ago in Utah. A wagon train from Arkansas was traveling through Utah on their way to California and stopped to rest by a Mormon town. Well, besides cursing everything that wasn’t Mormon, Brigham Young and his associates decided that this wagon train meant to kill him and all the Mormons. So they decided to kill them first and they sent their Mormon militia to massacre over 120 innocent men, women, and children. Of course it was all “by Jehovah’s command” and whatever. Eventually one Mormon man was convicted and executed for the massacre. But the Mormon’s still deny any involvement in it to this day, as the movie points out. Its pretty shocking to watch this religious zealotry allow such horrible violence, especially against little children. It’s an evil that men allow themselves to be capable of in the name of righteousness and “separating themselves from the damned.” Any so-called religion that preaches separation and exclusion is capable of the same thing.

Bottom Line: The movie is well-acted and I suspect pretty controversial. But its well done and worth a watch.

This film falls in to the category of ridiculous action movies like the Transporter films. The shooting and stunts in this movie make the phrase “over the top” seem tame and weak. All of that can be forgiven if the movie is fun and enjoyable, and for the most part this movie delivers. But at some point while watching this you just have say “Oh come on!” at the absolute wacky lengths the film goes to in order to make Clive Owen this unstoppable, shooting machine that will ALWAYS take out the 50 armed men coming after him, no matter how impossible that may seem. The tipping point where it slides into insanity has to be toward the end (spoiler alert) where Clive Owen’s fingers are all broken but he STILL manages to shoot a guy full of bullets by putting the bullets between his fingers and shoving his hand in a fire to make them go off right at the guys chest. Seriously. There’s suspension-of-disbelief and then there’s just outright fantasy.

The acting in this film is fairly good. Paul Giamatti is especially fun to watch playing a sharp-shooting badass that is a nice change from the loser/schlubs he tends to play a lot. Even with not much to work with he makes the most of his character and delivers many subtle elements that add a lot to the character. Monica Berllucci is pretty much just there to add some sex appeal and look good while running from gunmen. And she is more than adequate for a rather adequate character. Her one real scene of depth, describing the still-born loss of her child, is the only time she is able to transcend the otherwise one-dimensional character and she pulls it off brilliantly. Clive Owen is essentially playing the exact same guy he played in Sin City. He never smiles, has a long overcoat, shoots a lot, and says very little. Sure he is great as a cold, ruthless guy-with-a-gun, but I’m starting to wonder if there is much more to him as an actor. Except for maybe Gossford Park or Closer, I really haven’t seen much from him that’s any stretch outside of his apparent comfort zone. It makes me very glad the Bond filmmakers went with the brilliant Daniel Craig to play James Bond instead of him.

Overall the movie is not bad, despite being paper-thin as far as story goes. There was something about a political conspiracy, a baby, and gun laws, but that’s all really just background noise that gives Clive Owen an excuse to kill just about everybody who comes near him in the most ridiculous way they can think of.

Bottom Line: Lives up to the title. If you want a lot of wacky gun action without any challenging plot development, this is your movie.