watching movies one cup at a time

In general I am a fan of Kevin Smith movies. He’s usually good for a few good laughs and I appreciate his unique style and talent. He makes good movies that are true to his vision and they always have a lot of heart in them. Now, having said that, I do usually find his films lacking in several areas. Most often in the character development and in the very lengthy stretches of dialogue some of his characters spew out that can sound forced and unnatural. But that may just be a fault of the actors too. He’s cast a lot of so-so actors in the past that couldn’t really deliver the words effectively. The scenes that work best are always the ones with the best actors in them because you need someone with some skill to make the speeches flow naturally.

Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks do a great job as Zack and Miri in this movie. All their scenes feel natural and I believe these characters. Kevin Smith has said that he really wanted Rosario Dawson in the role of Miri but I think that would have been a mistake. Elizabeth Banks is perfect as the flawed Miri. She’s very pretty but she’s not perfect and has kind of a downtrodden edge to her that is a perfect match to Seth Rogen. Rosario Dawson is too much “the hot chick” and would not have been anywhere near as believable. I don’t see her and Seth Rogen together. I very much see Elizabeth Banks and Seth Rogen together, but not in a very overt way, which is perfect for the movie.

The reason why I didn’t give this film a higher coffee cup count is because I didn’t buy the story. The whole porno idea seemed rather half-baked and it just never connected for me. Plus it did not pay off at all by the end of the movie. It basically got dumped and forgotten about so the love story could take center stage. That just didn’t work for me.

One highlight though was the one scene with Justin Long. His scene at the high school reunion with Brandon Routh was the funniest thing in the whole movie and I would have much rather kept them around the whole time.

See the movie, support Kevin Smith, but it’s not perfect.

There is a new trend cropping up with 3D movies becoming more and more frequent. And this isn’t the crappy blue and red 3D your parents had to deal with, this is very intense and in your face 3D like you’d expect to see in a theme park in Florida. Except now it’s everywhere and more and more films are jumping on the bandwagon. I haven’t seen too many yet but this Monsters Vs. Aliens was very effective at using the 3D as part of the film and not just as a gimmicky trick. It’s huge scale environments and large-scale action scenes were very effectively done using the depth the 3D world allowed.

The story in this film is pretty simple and centers on the recently mutated “Ginormica” character. There really aren’t that many “monsters” here and only one alien. I would have liked to have seen more variety but it’s a good start to what might potentially be a series of films. And while the plot of the film didn’t have a lot of depth to it, it was more than enjoyable for the younger audience without relying on the more gross-out humor of Shrek. Like Shrek, this is a Dreamworks film and Pixar still has the high bar for it’s storytelling. But it did succeed in creating characters that the audience can root for and the movie does wrap up it’s story very well.

Overall it was enjoyable if not super-deep or having a lot of variety. Definitely worth seeing in the 3D theater before it hits DVD.

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.

I feel like I’ve grown up with the Watchmen. I read the entire series in high school and immediately loved it. I enjoyed the rich characters, the harsh realities, the bleak outlook, and the compelling artwork. I loved how Dave Gibbons panels mirrored eachother as they moved into the next scene. And I loved how Alan Moore’s many tangled storylines all came together in the end to a satisfying, albeit horrific ending.

There has been talk of a Watchmen movie ever since the first Batman film made boatloads of cash. I was among those who thought it would be near impossible to condense such a rich and detailed story into 2 hours. So when it became clear that finally, after 20+ years, someone was actually going to make a go of it, I did get excited. And everything leading up to the release pointed to good things. The trailer was great, the costumes looked legit, it was all coming together.

So now that I’ve seen the actual movie, did it deliver? For the most part, yes, it did deliver an exceptional movie that is above and beyond just about anything else out there. But it is not without it’s flaws and I think this strikes at the heart of the contradictions between the comic book crowd and the movie-going public. Read the rest of this entry »

This movie really desperately wants to be Superbad but it is a much weaker and lamer version without any of the cleverness or heart. Superbad had a lot of crude humor but at least it felt genuine. This film just feels like one cliche after another strung together with beer and topless women. It’s pointless, not funny, and not worth it.

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.

Much nas been said about Mickey Rourke’s role in this movie and his subsequent award noms and wins. And truly he does a briliant job in this movie. I believed every minute of it and it was far from over-the-top. He really put his heart and soul into this flawed character and it paid off in a rich and multi-dimensional portrayal of a man with nothing left to lose.

This wasn’t Rocky where the loveable loser goes against all odds to be the big hero. There is no glory left for Rourke’s character Randy The Ram. He is beaten, broken, and left with nothing. What meaning he can barely scrape together is empty and hollow, leaving a lonely man who just has to keep moving or completely disappear forever. He holds on to wrestling as his one lifeline to any kind of self-esteem. And when his body just can’t take any more of the weekly beatings, he keeps doing it anyway because he realizes he has absolutely nothing else to give his life any value at all. He may as well wrestle until it kills him because he literally has nothing else to live for.

While the performance were great, I gotta say the one thing I didn’t like was just the non-stop bummer this movie was. The whole subplot about Randy trying to reconcile with his grown daughter was heartbreaking. And I know it was right for the movie, but it just ends on a very hopeless note. You leave the movie feeling like you got “body-slammed.” That’s not a bad thing, but it’s not really the uplifting charge I prefer to movies I see these days. We all have enough in real life to bum us out, I don’t really need something else helping.

Overall, brilliant performances and worth seeing. But be in stable emotional state or you might lose it.

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.

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.

This is an interesting little movie that kind of flew under the radar this year. It’s set in an underground city at some time in the future when the surface of the planet has presumably been made uninhabitable. The underground city has aged well past it’s expected use and is falling into disrepair. The ones who built the city have long passed away and so the current residents simply exist in a perpetual state of being fixed up with whatever temporary solutions are at hand. It’s a crumbling structure that is getting harder and harder to maintain. The leaders of the city are content with just keeping things as they are so they can horde the city’s limited resources for themselves. While a couple of kids figure out that there was a plan of action lost a long time ago that was intended to lead them out of the city and back to the surface.

The sets in this film are quite well done with a very rich level of detail. It reminds me very much of Terry Gilliam’s fantasy movies like Time Bandits and Baron Munchausen or Jeunet’s City of Lost Children. They do a great job of conveying the layers of layers of crumbling and quick fixes that have covered the city. Nothing is ever replaced with something new, it’s simply patched or tied together.

Overall the story was good but I felt it could have used a little more punch to it. It could have been a little more exciting and given a stronger edge of urgency. But it’s not bad and it’s a shame more people didn’t see it. Bill Murray as the corrupt and lazy mayor does an excellent job as do the two child leads, including Saoirse Ronan who was so brilliant in last year’s Atonement.