watching movies one cup at a time

First let me say I LOVED Ocean’s Eleven. It was brilliant. And I HATED Ocean’s Twelve. It was pointless and a waste of time. So I had no preconceptions going into Thirteen. It could easily have sucked and it could have also easily been brilliant. And of course it wound up falling somewhere in between. But the good news is that it fell much more to the brilliant side than the sucking side. Thank goodness Clooney and crew came back and cleansed our palette from that horrible Twelve movie. Yuck.

They did the right thing by going back to Vegas. The original classic with the Rat Pack was set in Vegas. And the far superior Eleven was in Vegas. The problem with Twelve is they went all over the place just doing random crap. Who cares? A big heist that all comes together is the piece that makes this work and Thirteen’s got it. Al Pacino was great as a douchebag casino owner as was Ellen Barkin as his stressed-out second-in-command. And the whole Mission Impossible vibe keeps you on the edge of your seat trying to figure how it’s all going to go down. Of course they are going win in the end, but how they pull it off is the fun part.

Danny Ocean is the perfect character for Clooney. He plays it very natural and smooth as glass. Brad Pitt as his sidekick is the perfect understated operator that you could see pulling this off. Some of the remainder of the cast could maybe take a time out at this point though. And I didn’t miss Julia Roberts one bit. I’m not a big fan of hers anyway and in Twelve she was just downright annoying a lot of the time.

Ocean’s Eleven still reigns as the best of this bunch. But Thirteen was good enough to almost make up for Twelve. Let’s hope Fourteen (I’m sure they are doing a Fourteen) won’t suck either.

This is Bill Maher’s documentary on religion and basically he goes around the world talking to people of all faiths about their religion and offers them some challenges. It would be impossible to say that the film is not biased, it of course reflects the atheist point of view of the filmmakers. However, everything has a bias so why not listen to someone who is at least challenging people to defend what they have placed so much value on. Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Catholics, Christians, and more get their time with Bill to discuss why THEY are the ones with the truth and everyone ELSE is f-ing nuts. I admit that I am much more in sync with Bill Maher than I am with all the religious representatives in the movie so I fully admit that by liking this movie and literally the choir he is preaching too. But the film brings up a LOT of good points and I think it really shows how there is a large over-zealous population out there that has taken a thirst for answers in an unknown universe and used it as a means to oppress and exploit both their own people and other peoples of the world. The point to me does not seem to be that God is bad but more that organized religion is often in the hands of manipulative and destructive forces that are less about spirituality and more about man-made power and gain.

There are some classic scenes in this movie like when Bill visits the “Holy Land Experience” in Florida as fat tourists watch a re-enactment of Christ’s crucifixion while sucking down a Pepsi. And when he goes to visit the Creation Museum, still under construction, that depicts man and dinosaurs hanging out together (a la Flintstones) as an accurate depiction of history according to the Bible.

Bill Maher may not be 100% right but I think his point is that no one is 100% right when it comes to “God’s plan” and to act any differently is insane. Regardless of your religious convictions, check the movie out. Anyone with a sense of humor should definitely enjoy it.

Classic ’80s zombie movie! When we were kids and starving for any view of punk culture in the mainstream, this movie was perfect.

A group of “punk rock” kids break into a cemetery to hang out and wait for their friend who works at a medical supply warehouse next door. The warehouse happens to have a chemical that can raise the dead and of course it gets loose and floods the cemetery. The dead rise and they need brains… lots of brains. What I love about this movie is that even though the punk kids are cliche and kind of cheesy, they have a tongue-in-cheek playfullness and are never treated like bad people. I’m reminded a little bit of some of the characters from Repo Man. It’s got a similar vibe. And having The Cramps, TSOL, and The Damned on the soundtrack adds a lot of credibility. I also like how the zombies have a sense of humor about them. This isn’t the highest budget flick and the zombies are mostly just covered in mud, but they are this crazed mob that just swarms everything that comes into cemetery, even when the zombies call the cops themselves to get more cops to come. The ending is pure ’80s nihilism too as the government simply nukes a major city to solve the problem.

This was OUR zombie movie and it’s brilliant.

I give a lot of points for originality. By 2008, most everything has been done and done to death. I get really bored by a lot of movies, especially just recycled mediocrity that we get pummeled with all the time (Ben Stiller, no more romantic comedies, I beg you). So I was happy to see that Sin City had a truckload of originality to it. I saw a film style I’d never seen before and I liked it. It wouldn’t work for everything, but it worked here.

As most people know, this film is based off of the Sin City graphic novel series by Frank Miller. If you have read the books, you are familiar with the sharp black and white (no grey, no shading) style with the very deliberate and minimal use of color. What Frank Miller does with just black and white is pretty amazing. And the stories are basically Film Noir on crack. Extreme violence, extreme language in an extreme world. Read the rest of this entry »

When they said “reboot” they weren’t kidding. This basically flips the Star Trek mythology on it’s ears and pushes it in a whole new direction. The way they do that is thanks to the old Star Trek friend – time travel.

Star Trek has always had a pretty cozy relationship with time travel. And I always appreciated the way the Next Generation handled it in particular. After the cancellation of the most recent Star Trek television series and the less than spectacular performance of the last Star Trek movie 7 years ago, many considered the franchise to be dead. The Next Generation cast wasn’t getting any younger and the Original Series cast is dying off slowly. And without a bankable new television show, where could it go? Well time travel can solve everything.

Technically this is a sequel to the last movie, Star Trek: Nemesis. But by sending some of the characters back in time, the Original Series characters are spun off into an alternate reality. They even go as far as to say that “this is a new alternate reality” rather explicitly in the film. Basically all bets are off now because this new cast is free from the past mythology, which has now been made irrelevant.

Is this a good thing? Ultimately it’s a good thing for the franchise. The new cast is good, it’s got action, it’s got humor, it’s an enjoyable movie with some style. But I can see Star Trek purists not being into this. And my personal preference was always for the Next Generation, which was already very different from the Original Series, and is very different from this cast. However, judging this separately from the rest of Star Trek, this is a very enjoyable movie. The goal here is to win over new fans and I think this Star Trek will do that. It’s a much better fit for our current culture than the previous films and much more inviting to non-Trekkers.

If you like Sci-fi, you’ll like this movie. If you are a Star Trek fan, watch this with fresh eyes. It’s a bold step and I think it pays off.

I’m not a big fan of stoner humor. But this movie was actually pretty good. It never got too gross or over-the-top. And some of the jokes were definitely pretty clever. It’s from the Broken Lizard group and is about a bunch of state troopers who mess around more than actually work. Eventually that leads to them getting shut down, also due to budget cuts, but it all works out in the end. I especially liked Jay Chandrasekhar’s character and his very deadpan joke delivery. He is also the director and one of the writers.

Bottom Line: Overall it’s not brilliant, but I would say it’s definitely worth watching.

I have to admit, I have been going back and forth with this one. When I first saw it in the theater, I was not thrilled. It’s grim and very bloody. Just heavy dark, nonstop. But I found myself going back to the music again and again. I wound up downloading the soundtrack and I can’t stop listening to it. That is mostly to the credit of Stephen Sondheim for writing the songs. But I do like the versions from the film a lot better than the original Broadway recordings. Tim Burton gives it a lush feel to match the depths of the city around the characters. And Johnny and Helena do a great job with the music.

Johnny Depp is of course amazing again. The range he is capable of is quite impressive. This character was like a cross between Edward Scissorhands, Jack Sparrow and Willy Wonka all combined and much more sinister. It was a delight to watch him fill the room every time he was in the scene. Helena Bonham Carter was very good as Mrs. Lovett and managed to evoke tenderness convincingly alongside cold-blooded murder. After seeing the movie it’s hard to see anyone else in that role. And of course Alan Rickman was his usual perfect self. Timothy Spall did his fabulous nasty toady role that he has perfected in many films over the years, always creepy. Read the rest of this entry »

Jodie Foster doesn’t make bad movies. She just doesn’t. Sure, they aren’t all as brilliant as The Silence Of The Lambs or The Accused (her 2 Oscar-winning roles) but they are always interesting and quality experiences. It almost feels like just having her there makes the film take on a whole other dimension. Even her small role in Inside Man was brilliant and remarkable. She just really gives it her all.

The Brave One could have been a cliche vigilante movie. I’ve seen it before – person gets attacked, person recovers and starts taking revenge out on all the “scum of the city,” a cop befriends them and eventually figures out it’s them doing the vigilante killings, they have a big confrontation where the cop pleads “You don’t have to do this! This is not the answer!” which is followed by either the person getting shot or giving up and going to jail. Vigilante movies are nothing new. Thankfully though, The Brave One does not sink into cliche and is in fact very original and a really well done movie. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t care what anyone says, I liked this movie. I heard a lot of smack being talked about it around the time of it’s release. Everyone was making a big deal about it’s $180 million dollar budget and how it was going to bomb and ruin the filmmakers. There was a lot of talk as well about some supposed controversy surrounding the original novels that the story is based on and how that was going to sink the movie. Well I say nonsense. The movie was good and in my opinion it was a helluva lot better than Narnia, which everyone seems to get all crazy about.

The Golden Compass is based on a trilogy of books by Phillip Pullman. I haven’t read the books but from what I have been hearing in the discussions of this film is that a central themes to the books is an anti-organized religion stance as characters stand up to an oppressive governing religious institution. Of course dogmatically religious people can’t stand to have anyone tell stories that may criticize them so of course these books are condemned by zealots and thus an attack was made on the movie as well. The movie studio has even gone as far as to make it clear to everyone that they “toned down” the religious aspects of the story. More like “watered down.” But on the other side, ardent fans of the books are crying foul, saying that the movie is ruining the power of the story by blunting it’s edge. Consequently you have two sides to an argument and neither wants to see the movie. Not a good sign for a movie that has $180 million invested in it. Read the rest of this entry »

Robert Wise directed this between West Side Story and The Sound Of Music. And though it isn’t as grandiose as either of those, it is still an exceptional movie executed by a very talented director. It’s essentially a ghost story, and what I like about it is that it simply relies on sounds, shadows, and camera work to convey the terror. Shot in gorgeous black and white, it leaves more to the imagination than anything else, and that is always more effective at scaring the audience.

The Haunting is a horror story based in a Shirley Jackson novel. It centers around a house that is supposedly cursed and filled with a powerful negative energy. 4 people come to the house to investigate the paranormal activity. One of the characters, Nell, gets carried away by the house and is driven a bit crazy. There is a lot of inner dialogue going on with her as she becomes more and more enveloped in the house.

The house is pretty grand. It’s huge and you could easily get lost in it. And of course every shadow seems menacing. Loud noises plague the halls, unexplained coldness and footsteps. It’s very simple yet very well done. Even for an old black and white movie, it’s quite a scare.

There was a remake in 1999 which was less than appealing. Let’s look at that one.