Review Compendium

Apprehension [ap-ri-hen-shuhn]
  -noun
  1.) What I go into any comic adapted movie with.

Iron Man was no exception here. I can’t help it. I’ve been let down so many times before, but it’s always worse in cases like this than just being let down. They take something I love, shatter it right in front of my face, and I pay for it. The Punisher, Hulk, Spiderman sequels, Daredevil just to name a few. None were more attrocious that The Fantastic Four or X-Men 3. I could write a whole article on X-Men 3. I mean HOW do you have Cain Marko walk right past Professor X without them even acknowledging each other. They are step brothers for christ sake! What was I talking about? Oh yeah, how the list of comic to movie failures is so large that just trying to explain it shoots me off on a tangent like that. I read good reviews, and even heard first hand from people who’s taste I trust that it was good, but I still didn’t buy into it. My mind just wouldn’t allow it. However, after actually seeing it I think I can safely say that it is battling Batman Begins and my favorite comic hero movie.

I have always been a fan of iron man. The general idea of an empowering mechanical suit intresed me so much that I was not only an Iron Man fan, but also of the lesser known X-O Manowar comics.  When I heard Robert Downey Jr. was going to play Tony Stark I was rather pleased.  It’s one of those casting decisions that just fits perfectly like Patrick Stewart as Xavier or Kelsey Grammer as Beast.  Downey did a great job at making Tony Stark true to form.  A millionaire playboy with a smart mouth and a drinking problem.  It would be easy to imagine the frequent quips and one-liners from Stark being cheesy and lame if not delivered right, and to Downey’s credit, most of them were as natural as could be.  The script was a lot funnier than I anticipated too.  In general, the film was very well rounded on all fronts.  Perhaps that is what made it good.  Instead of trying to hard to focus on fight scenes, CGI, or something else, Iron Man was balanced to have cool scene’s while still spending plenty of time explaining things that most superhero movies skip right over with a one sentance explaination.  Overall, completely awesome movie which I highly recomend it.  That is of course if someone else hasn’t already done so.

So I was driving home a while ago when I noticed a Hollywood Video with a “Going Out Of Buisness” sign.  Needless to say I immediately did a u-turn and  tried to get in to see what goodies I could find.  Anything good or well known was of course taken at this point, but the low end horror movies, the meaty film pleasure which I love so dearly, remained on the shelves.  I had to limit myself as they were so cheap, so I restricted myself to five.  One of them, and the only one I was expecting to be any good, was The Host, which I have already reviewed.  No worries, I likely won’t subject you to the rest of them, but who knows.  My final list was composed of: The Host, Boa vs. Python, Mr. Jingles, Carnosaurs, and Decoys 2: The Second Seduction.  As I placed my purchases on the counter I got a response from the clerk which I probably had coming. “Dude, How can you come to me with these movies with a straight face.”

 Boa vs. Python isn’t quite a shiny gem of entertainment, but it was pretty amusing.  It’s one of those monster vs. monster movies where somehow a group of humans get stuck in the middle so there is a way to interject dialog and “plot”.  This is certainly not a new idea.  Godzilla movies did this forever ago.  Now adays the genre shows itself in the form of things like Freddy vs. Jason, or Alien vs. Predator.  So what plot could they come up with to get a giant boa to fight a giant python?  Well it starts off simple enough.  A group of the super rich from all over the place ship a super huge killer python from Africa so they can hunt it.  Naturally it escapes its captors, and bolts into the sewer system.  How can we hunt it down?  OK.  So here is where we start to stray off course a bit.  Appearently the FBI’s best plan in this situation is to bring in a snake specialist who has a trained giant boa constrictor.  They place a device in its head via a quick surgery so they can see what it sees and let it loose in the sewers to hunt down the python.  Yeah, that makes sense.

Near the end of the film the python moves from the sewers into the city.  It goes in a crowded building where the final showdown occurs.  Now ask yourself, what building should we use?  It could be anything.  A crowded resaraunt, department store, a library?  They must have decided like this:
“We really need to pick a location for this scene.”
“Well.  We are a little low on our tits quota.”
“So … a strip club?”
“No, that’s too trashy, not to mention those are pretty common.  We need somthing really unlikely and ridiculous, like our plot.”
“How about a danceclub with a black light, glow in the dark paint rave sections with topless chicks”
“Jackpot!”I hope no one ever has to see this film again.  It wasn’t the worst of the worst, but if you are looking for a comedic low budget horror flick, throwing a dart at a board to choose should yeild better results than picking this thing up.-Cardwell

You’re an asshole David Schwimmer.  Seriously.  Why did you have to go and mess up the natural order of things?  Before it was always so easy.  You were associated with something, and I stayed away, but now it’s changed.  With your movie directing debut you actually made something good.  This means next time you make something that looks moderate, I will likley go see it and be subsequently dissapointed.  However, I give credit where credit is due, this was pretty good.  Though I place a lot more of the success on Michael Ian Black and Simon Pegg.  Afterall, they wrote the film and Pegg stared in it.  I’m glad for Black especially.  I’ve considered him pretty funny for a long time, loving Wet Hot American Summer as well as good cameos in Reno 911 and Tom Goes to the Mayor, but lately he’s been pretty dissapointing.  Remember that show Stella he had for a while on Comedy Central?  I wish i didn’t.  It was hard to watch.

All this being said, I recommend going to see Run Fatboy Run.  At least if you like cheap laughs.  Plot-wise it was extremely predictable, but that’s not as important in a film like this where the gags and one-liners are what make it.  I mean, any movie that teaches me to use the phrase “scrotal zone” can’t be too bad.  It’s also good to be reminded every once in a while that no matter how overused and cheap it is, someone getting slammed in the nuts is always funny.  Sorry.  It just is.  The way the film progressed was also a little odd.  Let me show you a timeline of how I think the film was put together:

Not that this was a bad thing.  It just was just too blatent not to notice.  The first half of the film had a lot more jokes and was thus funnier, where the second half had more predicable plot turns because the movie had to go somewhere before it ended.  Overall, this film was enjoyable enough, and Simon Pegg did a great job of expected.  I have never seen a movie he was in that wasn’t good, and I hope it stays that way. 

-Cardwell

I’m going to start this out with an informative flow chart …

As you can see.  You  will probably like The Host.  A South Korean movie dubbed over and released here, The Host gets right to the point.  Within about five minutes after the film starts, the monster is in full glorious view, running amok while killing and eating.  It’s a welcomed suprise in a genre that is often too cliche and predicatble.  The film follows the quest of a family on a mission to find and kill the mutant monster that swallows the daughter in the initial attack.  One really cool thing about the monster scenes was how this thing moved.  Often hanging out around a bridge it flipped itself end over end, traversing the bridge monkey bar style using its mouth and tail to swing around.  Pretty agile for a beast with random mutant fish limbs sticking out its back.  Which begs another question, this thing is the size of a bus.  If it mutated from dumped chemicals, wouldn’t it at least have to grow for a while?  What did it do while growing?  Perhaps it hunted the sewers eating stray dogs and homeless people.  There appear to be a lot of them, since at least three of the characters in this film were homeless.

Most monster and horror films contain a fair bit of often dark humor as well for comic relief.  The Host was no exception, but it was kind of hard to know what was supposed to be funny.  Maybe it was just because it was intially in a different language and culture where comedy is perceived differently.  Maybe it was that the film was made with an akward sense of humor, but there was one scene in particular that was odd.  The family was coming together right near the begining of the movie for the funeral of the daughter and they began weeping very oddly and thrashing about, almost restling.  I think it was supposed to be funny, but it still was as uncomfortable as a Patrick Swayze joke being unsure if you are just a dark person for laughing at people crying at a little girl’s funeral.

Overall it was a pretty cool monster movie.  I think i liked it because it was a little different and didn’t beat around the bush trying to build up some sort of monster mystery.  I’d recomend checking it out if you had a chance and fit into that first flowchart.

-Cardwell

Well my, my.  Looks like I finally get to write my first favorable review, and it will more than make up for all the negativity.  I can’t say enough about this film.  I love it.  It’s damn near perfect in every possible facet I can think of.  It’s not the best movie ever, but damn is it up there.  This came as no suprise to me though, as I absolutely love all Wes Anderson movies.  It’s not just me though.  While I’ve watched many other Anderson films with people before, this is the only one where everyone who has seen it has liked it.  EVERYONE.  Many even loved it as much as I do.  So what was the difference made by Anderson this time? I think it was the scenery.  The very dry and spontaneous humor Anderson uses still exists here.  As does his style of storytelling which is all excellent, but this time he made you notice his visual aesthetics.  They have always been there, caked in the suburban landscape, urban rooftops, and open seas of his other films. but many people just don’t notice or look for those things.  In The Darjeeling Limited, the beautiful, colorful Indian towns and open country are combined with great composition and cinemetography perfectly.  Every shot looked like it was very carefully and individually drawn and plotted out to get that exact shot.

The best performance of the three brothers has to be Adrian Brody.  Both Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson were good as well, Brody really pulled them all together.  He was the brother trying to act the most impervious to the positive or negative emotions coming up along the trip, but it turns out he is the most in touch with reality of the three.  Brody does a great job of acting like he doesn’t care, while at the same time being clearly affected.  You can see it in almost every scene if you watch carefully.

One of the coolest scenes in this film has to be near the end when there is a long pan along a train representing and showing all the secondary characters that the three brothers are concered with.  A summary of what has happened, what matters, and what they still need to deal with.  Each cabin custom designed very creatively to keep it all contained in the train theme. Veeeeeeery visually pleasing.

Now for a little story about me getting this film.  I first saw the film here in Bellevue and was very happy with it.  A bit later when I was revisiting Ohio in late December, I drove a few people up near Cleveland to see it in a small theatre there.  Then just the other week, it was release on DVD.  Natually, I had to pick it up immediately.  I went to Best Buy about two or three days after release.  I check the new release shelf. Copied of Beowulf on two whole rows! But I don’t see anything Anderson here.  I assume at this point no one has heard of it, so it’s back with all the other films.  I find it, and buy one of just three copies. THREE!  Really? This movie is amazing and it goes right to the catalog shelves with a handful of copies? Wow.  I realized a few other people could have picked it up in the few days it was out, but i’m sure it wasn’t a lot.  My point is this.  Odds are good if you aren’t a Wes Anderson fan, then you havn’t even heard of this movie.  Do yourself a favor and pick it up.  As you can tell, I am a fan.

Rating: 5/5 Giant freaky clown smiles:

p.s. Amazing soundtrack.

ooooo boy.  Here’s a film I would never go see on my own accord, but thanks to my work I was given the opporunity I would never have given myself.  This movie made me remember how much you can hate a movie for things completely unrelated to the film.  This is true for anything you watch, but especially this gem.  Let’s analyze the external factors for Jumper, shall we?

1.) Hayden Christensen is in the star role.  Im not going to bother explaining this further. -5
2.) Samuel L. Jackson is the main antagonist.  Normally this would be fairly big plus, but after Samuel L. Jackson’s career moves lately, it gets only minor props. +2
3.) The story takes place and was filmed in Ann Arbor, MI.  For this it gets an immediate -2, but then there is all the University of Michigan refernces floating around.  I’ve been trained for years to spot this shit from miles of way, only to immediately invoke a feeling of rage.  So if they think they can can slip a U of M sweatshirt, pencil holder, ect. past my scarlet and grey eyes, they’ve got another thing coming. -10

So there we go, I don’t know what -13 really means, but i can tell you one thing, it didn’t bode well for this movie.  Then we get to the actual content of the film.  Holy shit.  I haven’t seen a film this horrid in theatres since I saw The Forgotten in the dollar theatre.  Oddly (or not), they had about the same amount of gaping plot holes.  I’m going to warn you now.  If you really wanna see this film, well … please don’t.

This had to be the least amount of explaination for any sort of supernatural based film I have ever seen.  Have you seen the previews?  Hayden Christensen is a guy who can teleport and Samuel L. Jackson is running around trying to kill him.  Great, now you know as much about the premise as I do after watching the damn thing.  Speaking of Samuel L. Jackson’s character.  What the hell?  He’s some sort of martial arts master who uses futuristic tazers and a big ass Rambo style knife to kill teleporters.  How did he get to that point?  Never mentioned.  Why the fuck is his hair bright white? Never mentioned.  Why does he hate people who can teleport? Never mentioned.  But you know what?  I get it.  I really do.  When you are on the opposite side as Hayden Christensen, what more motivation do you need.

This movie has the obligitory “how I found my powers” intro where as a 15 year old, David Rice (Christensen) learns he can teleport when he falls in a hole in the ice after the school jock is a dick to him.  How unique.  Anyways, everyone thought he died because once he learned to teleport, he didn’t come back to school.  Until of course, he ends up back there 8 years later when the film takes place.  So here is what I don’t get.  A lot of people recognize him immediately.  Who looks the same from 15 to 23?  Even those who didn’t immediately realize it was David was only mildly suprised he was there.  “Oh David.  I thought you were dead, but you aren’t so I guess thats cool.”  What the fuck?

The bottom line is that this was bad.  Real bad.  I could go on about it for hours.  Note that I didn’t even touch on Hayden Christensen’s performance.  I figured I didn’t need to tell you it was wretched.  I will say that the hardest I laughed during the whole movie was when Hayden screamed “We’ve got to go get her!”, in his most serious line of the film.  It was so overacted I couldn’t help but to cackle in his face. Eh, i’m done with this film.  Forever.  Now I just need to go watch Hayden in Awake.  He’s blown in everything else, but I’m sure that one is just super.  Which is why it was in theatres for about five minutes.

Rating: 3 puddles of fake vomit and 1 of real vomit

-Cardwell

I’m not going to lie.  I was excited for this movie. As soon as it came out on DVD this month I went ahead and made sure to get it from Netflix.  After loving The Squid and the Whale, I couldn’t wait to see what else Noah Baumbach could create.  I was, however, ultimately dissapointed.  The characters were way to similar to his previous movie.  Remember Laura Linney’s charactrer as the mother in The Squid and the Whale? Well imagine two of them talking and acting the EXACT same way as the main characters.  That’s what you’ve got here.

Now I’m about to say something that I can’t beleive I’m about so say.  I mean, it pains me to say this, but by god, it’s got to be done.  Jack Black saved this movie.  Yeah, Jack Black. This guy:

He did it, and I can’t fucking beleive it.  He completely upstaged Nicole Kidman in this movie.  Who saw that coming? Not me.  That’s who.  However, in a world filled with similar characters constructed by Baumbach, it was great to see Jack Black take the cake as best character and performance.  Besides bitching about the characters, the movie was very aesthetically pleasing.  It was shot and edited well enough that everyone seemed to come into frame at the right time.  Except for this one pair of glasses.  Who the fuck thought that was a good idea.  Both times they are pulled out (and for very short times I should add) all you can think is, “Jesus! Look at the those big ass glasses!”  Not only that but Nicole Kidman does it so nonchalantly.  No one called her out on it when she busted them out.  I would have at least expected Black’s character Malcom to throw a smart ass quip her way, but hey, he can’t be perfect.

This is the second film in a row from from Baumbach that contains some form of BOTH pedophilia and young boys (under 13) masterbating.  The first time it was a little shocking but had a point, but after the second time, you gotta start wondering where he’s getting this material.  Has anyone looked in to his background?  Come to think of it, where has Jake Lloyd been since Star Wars?  Well, no matter what the reality, you have to admit it’s at least a little disturbing.

Then came the ending.  Not that you saw it coming, because you didn’t.  No one did.  It comes out of absolutely fucking nowhere, solves nothing, and leaves you a little stunned.  I want to say its the most abrupt ending i’ve ever witnessed, but as far as I know, that title still belongs to God’s Bloody Acre.  I don’t think that ending will ever beat, so there is no shame following a bit behind it.  But just in case you were looking for resolution or anything else that resembled closure, too bad.  Well, after realizing i’ve ripped this film a new asshole, I have to say its not that bad.  There are some funny parts, but the downfalls were just so glaring that it was hard to stop ranting about them.  I feel like this is a movie that can grown on you after first viewing, and its all I can do to hope for that.  If I ever get around to it again.  Now, should I give movies some sort of rating?  I don’t think anything concrete matters, but it needs something.  I guess i’ll stick with assigning films useless things, so here we go.

Margot at the Wedding: 3/5 Baumbach’s + 1 bonus Jack Black (and those are rare!)
+

-Cardwell

Alright! First post on this thing.  I’ve written up a fair bit of cutom theming for this.  Got catagories displaying just post names in alphabetical order so it can act as an index of all things reviewed.  Set up user specific  images inserted in the post headers, and may change some of the background colorings in the near future.  First, lets go over some basics.

What are you going to post here?

Reviews of movies.  I know what you’re thinking.  “Hey that’s genius.  It’s never been done before!”  I know, I know. Thank you.  Hopefully the reviews will provide some entertainment as well as be helpful.  Well, helpful if your tastes resemble mine.  Also, I hope it will be fun for me to write, and eventually a good list of reviews will be built up.

 What are you going to review?

Movies.  What movies? Any.  If I see it, I’ll review it.  This is not restricted to films i’ve never seen or new films.  If I am sitting at home watching an 80’s Segal film on TNT on a sunday afternoon, I may review it.  If i go see a brand new movie in the theatre, I may review it.  I think you get the point.

So that’s the general idea.  Leave me some comments, suggestions, even insults if you wish.  I’m likely to have a few other contributors come on board here as well.  Besides all our latest reviews on the main page, each reviewer will get their own archive so you can easily see reviews from the person you choose.  Right now, your only option is me.  And since I haven’t posted a damn review yet, I’ll get on providing content right away.  Enjoy!

-Cardwell