watching movies one cup at a time

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 »

This is a kid’s flick about the Loch Ness monster, except in this movie he’s not a monster. He’s a lovable, misunderstood little scamp that devours lots of food and is best friend’s with a young boy who finds his egg. Too cute for you? Well there is that whole WWII thing going on at the same time, which the kid’s father has already died in. And the intrusive soldiers shacked up at the family’s home, adding a lot of tension and generally shooting at whatever comes in their path. But in general it’s a nice enough story that kids probably around 7 or 8 will enjoy best. There is some kid style action but not enough to be frightening. And of course there is a happy ending, which I think is a must in a kid’s flick. Nothing very challenging here but like I said, it’s nice. And sometimes that’s just good enough.

This is generally considered to be the best Alien film in the four part series. And I must agree it is the most fun to watch. Each film is very different in tone and style. The first Alien movie was much more of a classic haunted house story where this movie clearly borrows from the action movie genre. This is really James Cameron’s vision as he came up with the story idea, wrote the screenplay and directed the film. There is a lot of connection to similar war movies with soldiers under siege. And following this movie, there were many more sci-fi stories involving soldiers in space, both in film and on television.

The story follows Ripley after her escape from the Nostromo. She’s been in space for 57 years and returns to an unfamiliar Earth and a shell of her former life. Colonists has populated the planet from the first film and discovered the alien creatures. Ripley and a team of marines go to investigate the colony’s communication breakdown under the direction of the Weyland-Yutani corporation (“the Company”). Of course all hell breaks loose and it becomes clear that the Company wants the alien for it’s bio-weapons division. Ripley barely escapes alive along with colony child-survivor Newt, the last marine Hicks, and the android Bishop. The colony explodes in a nuclear meltdown and presumably it takes all the aliens with it. The movie ends on a happy note as a mother-daughter bonded Ripley and Newt go to peaceful cryo-sleep on their way back to Earth. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

It is generally acknowledged that the Batman film franchise went down in flames with the campy, horrible Batman and Robin film from 1997. Nevertheless, Batman’s power as a recognizable icon and marketable hero is still irresistible for film studios, especially in the wake of the gazillion-dollar-making Spider-man movies. So it is not surprising that a new Batman movie would get made, but clearly a new direction had to be taken.

First a little back story. Frank Miller is a legend in the comic industry. The writer and artist has released several groundbreaking and masterful graphic novels and series over the past 30 years, including some fantastic Batman stories. The most famous one is The Dark Night Returns which inspired some of the style used in the first Tim Burton Batman movie and is considered a landmark in the Batman canon. It could be argued that the popularity of The Dark Night Returns contributed significantly to the first Batman movie getting made at all. There is another great Frank Miller comic book mini-series called Batman: Year One. In that series, Miller fleshes out how Batman got started and the rocky road he took to perfect his technique. It is set against a corrupt and desperate Gotham City and the series reads like a noir detective story. Batman Begins doesn’t tell the same story as Year One. But clearly there is a connection and the idea was sparked in those pages. 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 »

I’ll warn you up front that there are “spoilers” in this review since people are making a big deal about the ending. If you haven’t seen it and don’t want to know the ending, skip this review until later.

I read “The Mist” when I was in high school and I have always really liked it. I had mixed feelings about a movie version but in general I was pretty excited to see it. We all know how mixed Stephen King movies can be. But one of Frank Darabont’s other Stephen King movies, The Shawshank Redemption, is absolutely brilliant. So the odds were in favor of this one turning out better than most.

The story is basically a monster movie/disaster flick. A thick mist descends on a town and it’s filled with horrible creatures possibly from another dimension. A group of survivors are holed up in a supermarket but things quickly unravel and between gruesome monster attacks and panic-driven mob insanity, all seems pretty hopeless. Read the rest of this entry »

This film is the 4th version of the Invasion of The Body Snatchers that’s been released. Originally the first film released in the 50′s was a rather obvious “red scare” flick barely hiding it’s metaphor of alien clones as evil commies coming and brainwashing freedom-loving Americans. However now that the “red menace” is a forgotten bedtime story, what do the aliens represent this time?

There are some huge plot differences in this version. The main one being that the humans are no longer replaced by alien clones. In the original, there would be a pod-like thing that would suck all your mojo from you while you slept and then spit out a perfectly identical clone. In the new version tho the alien takeover is more like a virus that gets in your system and kind of reprograms you. But it can be cured, whereas in all the previous flicks once they got you, it was over. You were dead and Mr. Pod Clone was the new you. Which is how this movie scored a happy ending while the other ones kind of ended rather ominously. Does this help or hurt the movie? Well it’s not as scary if you can “cure” an alien invasion. It was much more frightening when they were just straight up killing people and replacing them with “pod people.” Read the rest of this entry »

This movie was very under the radar. It’s a small independent film released toward the end of the year and it just came out on DVD. I didn’t have high expectations but was pleasantly surprised at how good it turned out to be. I really liked this movie a lot and recommend you give it a chance next time you’re at the video store.

The film stars Ryan Reynolds as the central character. And the story is broken up into 3 distinct sections, with the same actors playing a different role in each story. The 3 stories are connected in a very original and interesting way. It’s not some virtual reality mumbo-jumbo or anything computer related like I thought it might be. Instead it’s a very personal and moving story that poses some big ideas about God and the universe. This story is as high-concept as Southland Tales (probably moreso) but it doesn’t get so self-absorbed in esoteric weirdness like Southland Tales did. The Nines keeps things down-to-earth while at the same time illuminating ideas as big as existence itself.

Ryan Reynolds does a great job in this. I often overlook him because of complete garbage like Van Wilder and Blade 3. But I gotta hand it to him, he nailed it in this one. If an actor can get an intelligent script, they can really shine and show the world they can do more than flex their ab muscles and make boob-jokes. As I have said before, I judge an actor by the quality of their range. This film gave the actors the great opportunity to stretch out into 3 completely different characters. And Ryan Reynolds, Melissa McCarthy, and Hope Davis all do a phenomenal job of transforming themselves within each section.

I won’t spoil the ending on this one because I really think you should rent it. The writer and director John August pulled off a great film definitely worth checking out.

Dude… WTF? Seriously… WTF? This is the long-awaited follow-up to the cult hit Donnie Darko from writer and director Richard Kelly. And I get the impression he is going for the “David Lynch of the 21st Century” title for crazy-ass movies. In fact I think Mullholland Drive might have made MORE sense than this film if you can believe that.

To say this movie didn’t make any sense would be like saying the ocean is wet. I’m all for sophisticated movies that make you think, but I don’t want a movie that I have to think THAT hard about. And one gets the impression that there isn’t much point to “figuring it out” anyway. Who cares? I’ve read this is a retelling of the Book of Revelations, but again, so what? It’s still very random, very all over the place, and the character relationships are very confused. Every one of the characters seems to be on the good guys team AND the bad guys team at the same time. There are so many backstabbing plots going on that you need a team of detectives to keep it sorted. Read the rest of this entry »