Million Dollar Arm Review
Cute and fun.
I actually saw this film a while ago but have not been able to get to writing it up. My life has gotten even busier if that’s possible. I quite enjoyed it. Say what you will about Disney but in the execution of positive, uplifting movies they have no equal. When you see a Disney film you will have your heart warmed whether you want to or not.
Regular readers should recall that the list of things I would rather do than watch baseball is massive and includes things like sort my sock drawer and watch paint dry (I have found you can pretend you are watching a continent slowly being flooded out due to global warming if you look at it properly) yet I love baseball movies. I’m sure there is some kind of psychological reason that will inevitably boil down to a screaming need for approval from my father but the fact is I hate sports but love sports movies. However that kind of deep psychological investigation into my head is a dark and dangerous path so I will simply leave it by saying I have no idea why.
This film has a lot of the things I love in sports films and adds some wonderful cross cultural acceptance elements. My favorite parts were set in India as the main character tromped around the countryside looking for a cricket player who could pitch fast. The cheerful yet mercenary good will of the locals was very entertaining and seeing the protagonist learn to appreciate and love the countryside was refreshing.
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 38 I, Mudd
All good things in entertainment go their start in Star Trek (at least in my mind) and in this episode we see the origin of the recurring villain (I know, Doctor Who probably did it first but throw me a bone here people). Yes, the great Harcourt Fenton Mudd (and no, I did not have to look up his whole name. I’m too big a fan for that. Challenge me with something hard, like what are TOS space outposts along the Nuetral Zone made of? (Cast rodinium)) resurfaces to once again plague the crew of the Enterprise.
I’m going to give this episode an A++ for continuity in that everyone from the ship recognized Harry EXCEPT Chekov. Why not Chekov you ask? Because he did not join the Enterprise until Season 2 and Mudd’s Women was Season 1. This is the kind of fact checking and professionalism I long for in modern entertainment writing. It’s almost like they knew 50 years in the future loser nerds such as myself would have nothing better to do than analyze and notice things like this (what’s that you say? Kironide? Psycho-tricorder? Yangs? Gary Seven? You just reminded me of something important-shut up).
I have to say this is also one of the most fun episodes ever. Mudd is great, and the way Spock and the crew foil the androids is pure Star Trek brilliance. Plus the punishment Kirk thought up with for Harry was awesome (“Stella, dear”. Again, no need for me to look up her name. Am I not awesome? Hot female Trek fans should be throwing themselves at me, unless this is Mirror Earth again. I couldn’t find an image I liked for this post from Star Trek but this Weyland-Yutani android logo from Aliens seems to fit in with the androids from Mudds world. I pulled it from the movie t shirt category).
Speaking of quality writing over the last couple years I have gotten a certain amount of heat from my fellow nerds (I refuse to call them Star Trek fans) for my brutal and unforgiving review of the last awful, awful JJ Abrams space fiasco (I also refuse to call it a Star Trek film). Well, I was very gratified to come across this very accurate Star Trek Into Darkness Honest trailer by the good people at Screen Junkies. If you have always felt like there was something wrong with that film but couldn’t put your finger on it (and are too busy to read the 3,833 words I wrote on it in my own Into Darkness Review) watching this will shed a lot of light on your puzzlement.
the Infamous Dave Inman
A Million Ways to Die in the West Review
Something died on that screen.
I am not feeling good about doing this review. The fact is I love most of Seth McFarlane’s work. Family Guy is awesome and I kind of man-crushed Seth when I reviewed Ted. I even love American Dad (we don’t need to talk about the Cleveland Show). Like a gangster slowly feeling his cement galoshes harden as the movie progressed I had a slow sinking sensation that I was going to have to come home and dump on a guy I really like.
However, honesty is my middle name (unless you are a hot chick, in which case it’s danger. Dave Danger Inman) and I owe it to you, my beloved readers, to tell you my honest opinion and that is this movie kind of falls on its face. There were a few really funny moments but the humor was either amazingly funny or just plain lame with no middle ground. Like a skinny kid and a fat kid on the same teeter totter the massive weight of the lame side kept this film from going anywhere. This issue was not aided at all by the fact that all the best jokes I have seen in about 5,000 trailer showings. Kudos to studio marketing department. I mean that sincerely. They really picked out the best meat for the trailers and left the rest for the carrion (i.e. the audience).
Like I said when I reviewed Ted Seth is really good at writing what are essentially clones of Family Guy but falters when he branches out from his preferred genre. In this film you can almost see him struggling against the restrictions of having to write a story that goes more than 22 minutes and being forced to adhere to some form of continuity. Pacing and editing were serious issues. 117 minutes is an awfully long time to assume you will keep your audience engaged in a comedy. You’re not showing the Lord of the Rings here.
Blended Movie Review
You’ll want to stick your head in a blender after this one.
I like to think of myself as an everyman when it comes to movie reviews. I mean, sure I’m probably smarter and better looking than most of you (or at least so my mother keeps telling me. I just wish single women of appropriate dating age would figure that out) but grew up poor working class and get a real kick out of most low brow humor. My father was the king of the fart jokes (you main glean some insight into the origin of my own sense of humor there). I nearly hurt myself laughing when I saw the first Jackass movie and am willing to see any Shemp- or Curly Joe-less Three Stooges. In my mind there is no better Friday night than drinking beer and doing donuts in the parking lot of the local bowling alley while my friends shoot guns into the air.
Well, maybe not that last part. But the point is when I review a film I find I tend to be more in line with the average American movie goer than some other reviewers. However, when God was handing out senses of humor I got shorted in my ability to enjoy Adam Sandler’s current style of movie humor. It’s weird. I sat in the theater alternately groaning and holding my breath in hopes of passing out into a restful coma while the rest of the theater was laughing their collective asses off.
This movie was pretty mediocre. However it was not as bad as the last Sandler joint I reviewed, Jack and Jill. This film didn’t have me praying for an asteroid to destroy the earth to save future generations the pain and embarrassment of having to see what we were up to in the early teen years. In fact, I hardly prayed for death at all (great sound bite, in case the producers of this film are looking for something for the Blue Ray box art. “I hardly prayed for death at all!” -theNerdBlog). There were some funny moments and there is no denying the humorous chemistry that Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore enjoy. This film actually found a tone and maintained it. Unfortunately the good elements were mixed in (blended, almost) with dumb humor, horrible stereotypes, fake settings, bad cliches, uncomfortable situations, and metronomic predictability into a sewage runoff like mixture.
Maleficent Review
Kind of OK.
The day will come when I finally learn to not get excited by good trailers but that day is not today. (I also like to tell myself that the day will come where I win the lottery, get Congress to pass my mandatory death penalty for Mimes and Clowns law, complete my unstoppable world conquering army of mutant atomic super men, and get a girl to go on more dates than I have fingers on one hand but that day is also not today.) I have been seeing Maleficent trailers for months and each time I get more and more excited. Angelina Jolie as an evil fairy with horns and wings? A clever re-imaging of a classic fairy tail? A battle between what we in the Warhammer world we would call the Wood Elf Forest Spirits and the Bretonians? Amazing special effects and CGI? How can this be anything less than amazing?
Then I see the movie. I’m not going to disparage it. It’s not bad. It’s just not great. It’s more or less just…there. It really tends towards the standard design-by-committee take no chances pap that every other main stream movie is, counting on visuals and star appeal to make up for the lack of creativity and quality writing. Angelina Jolie is pretty amazing and more or less carries the whole movie on her sexy shoulders but her character is so watered down that everything she does leaks impact from every seam. The CGI is as amazing as a $200,000,000 budget will get you (in case you were wondering, $200,000,000 is enough to send 307,692 children to school in Africa. I’m just saying) and there is not a hint of bad acting. It’s just clear that this film was paralyzed into mediocrity by a fear of doing anything outside of the formula.
In truth I am pretty disappointed by Hollywood’s inability to do the whole fairy tale redo thing and have it do more than just suck. I really want to see some cool stories come from the classic Brothers Grim but instead we are fed dross such as Hansel & Gretel, Snow White and the Huntsman, Jack the Giant Slayer, and Mirror Mirror. 
They didn’t all totally suck (well, Hansel & Gretel did, and Jack the Giant Slayer will put you to sleep in the veterinary sense. Image courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category) but every time they come out all I see is more wasted potential. It’s like the goal is to come out with the blandest porridge possible, fulfilling all the minimum nutritional requirements but not much more. Pretty much the gruel they ate in the Matrix. I’d put this movie at the top of that list of films but not by more than a nose.
X-Men: Days of Future Past Review
X-tremely good.
First off, sorry I have been so lax on my writing lately. I have had two back to back shows and am still up to my neck in work. However I have nothing lined up for most of June so I hope to get caught up on my movie reviews, as well as Star Trek and the occasional true nerd rant.
So X-Men: Days of Future Past. I loved it. Veteran readers of my blog may see some irony in that statement as I have said that time travel as a plot device is the tool of the amateur scriptwriter (one could also say that sarcasm is the tool of the amateur movie reviewer, but that’s neither here nor there) but I have seen a few films (Looper, for example) where it has been used effectively and this is one such film.
I think it boils down to two factors: how it is used and how it is explained. If you use it as a non-pivotal plot point that propels the story without dominating the flow I think that is good. If you use it as a tool to avoid actually writing a story and/or and carte blanche to destroy a story that is already flowing that is bad. Time travel used poorly is a non-religious version of deus ex machina (another writing tool I rail against). As for the explanation, time travel is constantly rife with plot holes and gaps. This is one of the few times I will say that a major plot point is better used with a minimum of explanation as to how it works, or what effect it can have on the timeline.
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Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 38 Metamorphosis
I have mixed feelings on this episode. On the one hand it was a cool story and involved sex with an alien so weird even Kirk wouldn’t go there (we hope). On the other hand it unleashed the most annoyingly abused character in the Star Trek universe: Zefram Cohrane.
I know I should be cool with him but it seems like every time you turn around another series or movie is digging up his corpse to make another dumb story (before all you Borgphiles and Next Gen fans give me crap I will go on record to say that First Contact was a plot hole ridden disaster who’s poor story is only overtaken by the incredibly out of character portrayal of Captain Picard. In my opinion Next Gen never survived the translation to the big screen. You can all thank Rick Berman).
Also what is the deal with the universal translator? It is introduced here for the first time and in one sense is really cool, but in another sense what the hell have they been using in the previous 37 episodes? Do all aliens speak flawless Midwestern American English? The whole language issue is something Star Trek studiously avoided for most of its existence mainly for convenience sake. By introducing the device here it kind of opens a big can of worms in the whole translation department.
The Zefram Cochrane Memorial Library image I pulled from the Star Trek T Shirt category. Love him or not it’s pretty cool.
“the Infamous” Dave Inman
Godzilla Review
Too much humans, not enough Godzilla.
This whole “fill the screen time with lame humans instead of expensive CGI” is something of an ongoing issue with movies involving really cool giant whatever. Maybe it’s just me. I bitched about this in Transfomers. I bitched about this in Pacific Rim. I even kind of bitched about this in the Avengers. To me it is the curse of Hollywood these days that a film titled “The Super Awesome Nostalgic Icon We All Want to See” will feature about 10 minutes of SANIWAWTS and 140 minutes of some early 20’s douchebag all true nerds learned to hate when he was getting laid in high school and we were playing Car Wars until four in the morning running around doing crap no one cares about.
To be fair to my own opinion any amount of screen time 0< dedicated to Shia LeBeouf is a waste of time, film, and brain cells. Michael Bay I want about 50 minutes of my life wasted on him in the last Transformers movie refunded please.
So it is with this film. The moments with Godzilla or one of the other monsters on the screen were like playing with a kindle of the cutest kittens ever but as soon as the camera switched to a non Godzilla scene the kittens morphed and merged into a 15 year old smelly bloodhound laying on the porch too lazy to do more than breath and fart. SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT BIG SPOILER ALERT DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU I had real hope for this film giving me someone to engage with outside of Godzilla when they cast the great Bryan Cranston (and featured him extensively in every single trailer) but his character dies after like 25 minutes, leaving us with hunk-of-the-month Aaron Taylor-Johnson to carry the entire rest of the film on his woefully inadequate acting shoulders (that’s not really fair. He has done some decent work but this film did not give him any kind of depth to sink his teeth into).
So about halfway through the film you realize you care more about Godzilla and the other monsters than any actual human on the screen. This has the net effect of making you resent any time spent watching humans without a giant monster turning them into toe jam. That being said the scenes with monsters were freaking amazing. The one thing this movie did better than any I have seen in a long time is it really made you feel what it would be like to be a human running around while Godzilla stomps through your local Pick N’ Save. More than ever I felt what it must be like to be so insignificant that the monsters don’t even notice you. Normally to feel that insignificant and disregarded I have to go out trying to meet women. Truly effective.
Plus the action was amazing, although they did a lot of it at night and obscured by smoke, clouds, or random debris. I got frustrated a couple times when they were lining up for a major battle only to show it for 10 seconds before cutting to video footage on a newscast. They did however push the PG-13 to a level I found acceptable. There was no shortage of destruction, death, and mayhem. I mean, we aren’t going to a Godzilla film to see him destroy an abandoned tenement block and then sort the wreckage into the worlds largest compost pile. When I think of Godzilla I want to see skyscrapers crumbling on top of thousands of screaming humans. Godzilla is serious business. Of course since 9-11 it is super bad PC karma to show anything destructive happen to New York the go to city for mass destruction is San Francisco. I naturally felt an even closer connection to the action when I saw Godzilla stomp on a bar in Chinatown where I have seen a friend of mine puke on the sidewalk.
Some more spoilers incoming so if that is a problem maybe skip the story recap. Five paragraphs. SPOILER ALERT It starts with two Japanese(ish) scientists of some kind (actually if any of you can figure out what they were will you let me know? Were they paleontologists? Biologists? Geologists? Seems like they were whatever the plot needed at the moment. Ken Watanabe-Inception, the Last Samurai, Batman Begins and Sally Hawkins-Layer Cake, Blue Jasmine, All is Bright) being called in to look at a giant sink hole. They climb inside and discover the massive bones of some gigantic monster. Skip a few miles away to a Japanese nuclear reactor and engineer Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston-Breaking Bad, Argo, Drive) living with his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche-Dan in Real Life, The English Patient, An Open Heart) and son Ford (CJ Adams-the Odd Life of Timothy Green, Dan in Real Life, Against the Wild). There is some kind of seismic activity that seems to be traveling towards their reactor. Joe sends Sandra into the reactor to do something and she gets cooked when the whole thing melts down.
Skip ahead 15 years and Ford (now Aaron Taylor-Johnson-Kick Ass, Savages, Kick Ass 2) is now a navy lieutenant in charge of bomb disposal and Joe a weird conspiracy nut, convinced that the reactor meltdown that killed his wife had some kind of other cause than just an earthquake. Ford rotates home to be with his wife Elle (Elizabeth Olsen-Silent House, Oldboy, In Secret) and son in San Francisco only to find out his father has been arrested again by the Japanese for trying to sneak into the radioactive quarantine zone. He has to fly to Tokyo to bail Joe out.
Once there he gets sucked into Joes conspiracy world with little effort and together they sneak into their old home to recover some old floppy disks of data. Joe is convinced whatever happened before will happen again. They get arrested and taken to a secret compound where something in the ground is being studied.
Honestly you don’t really need to know a whole lot more. The thing in the ground is a gigantic monster called a M.U.T.O. (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) that jumps up and wrecks most everything, including Joe. At that exact moment all the character development and story that had been written into the first 40 minutes of the film more or less flies out the window. The Muto also flies off into the night and wrecks Tokyo. Meanwhile another monster is being tracked and turns out to be Godzilla, somehow tracking the MUTO (?) and rapidly identified by the Japanese scientist as an Alpha predator. They fight and the MUTO flies off towards the US West Coast, followed by Godzilla. It’s mate surfaces in Nevada and wrecks Las Vegas (I found that very amusing. I spend way to much time in Vegas for work to have anything other than contempt for the Strip).
During all this Ford is getting involved mainly by hitching a ride on different military transports without any orders. All the monsters seem to be headed towards San Francisco. The military comes up with a plan to lure them together and nuke them all in one fell swoop (I guess they were short on nukes? Seems the prudent thing to do would have been drop three separate nukes on each of the monsters while they were in the in the middle of the ocean or desert but I guess I’m not Sun Tzu). Because the MUTO puts out an EMP pulse they have to put in a mechanical countdown clock on the nuke. The MUTO steals the nuke (oh, yeah, they eat radiation. No violation of the laws of conservation of mass to see here folks. Move along) to feed it’s clutch of eggs. Ford has to parachute into the heart of San Francisco to disarm the nuke now. Godzilla shows up, kicks ass, and leaves San Francisco a physical wasteland to match the cultural wasteland that the tech yuppies are turning it into.
The stars:
Duh. Godzilla movie, and not the god awful Godzilla 1998. Two stars. When you could finally see him Godzilla was the classic, awesome monster. One star. What action there was was really great. Two stars. Bryan Cranston and the first 40 minutes with him was a really interesting, in depth story with great characters. One star. Amazing CGI and effects. One star. Camera work was superb. One star. The film really made you feel like you were in the movie during the action scenes. The term to use is immersive. One star. In truth a really fun movie experience well worth your time. Three stars. Total: twelve stars.
The black holes:
Our time with Godzilla was limited, and a lot of it was really murky and hard to see. The rest of the film was filled with people who might have just been little Godzillas in rubber human suits. One black hole. SPOILER ALERT Once Joe dies all the time spent trying to get us to engage with the characters was totally wasted. One black hole. SPOILER ALERT Also once Joe dies what was a fairly well written and professional story turned into a lazy mishmash of random crap that only distracted us from what was going on. Can someone tell me the point of the little Japanese kid on the train who appeared from nowhere and ten minutes later disappeared like a rogue Spanish swashbuckler from a heaving bosom romance novel? One black hole. With the exception of Bryan Cranston pretty much every scene involving humans was boring military crap or even more boring exposition. One black hole. SPOILER ALERT While I think Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a talented actor his character was really pointless. He treated the death of his father like the passing of a neighbors pet guinea pig and dropped the very interesting obsession with finding what killed his mother in order to become a very boring military guy. I felt a stronger connection with his wife, who spent most of her time starring at a phone, the Japanese scientist of indeterminate nature who spent most of his time off center looking fretful, and Godzilla who spent most of his time underwater. When the guy in the rubber suit has a stronger connection to the audience than your protagonist you need to look at your writing again. One black hole. 
I know I shouldn’t but I can’t help myself: the “science” in this film makes applying leeches to bleed illness out of you look like a valid medical treatment. (I’m just too big a fan of science to let really bad stuff slide. Science is Awesome image from the funny t shirt category) One black hole. Total: six black holes.
So a total of six stars, a solid score from me. Could it have been better? Absolutely. Should you see it anyway? Absolutely. See it on the biggest screen you can find to maximize the insignificance you will feel as another potential grease stain under Godzilla’s might foot. Date movie? If she’s into it. If not she will (correctly) determine that you are subjecting her to your interests and really don’t care what she wants to see. See it with some dudes, dude. Bathroom break? Any scene sans Godzilla or MUTO is a good candidate. There is a scene where they are all standing around planning on how to detonate a nuke that should work pretty well. Also most of the train business could be missed easily.
Thanks for reading. I’m seeing Million Dollar Arm tonight so let’s see if my love of sports films while hating actual sports has me enjoying this one. I’m also a fan of Indian culture (and by “culture” I really mean “women”) and hope to see some good stuff tonight. Disney doesn’t screw up too often so it should at least be fun. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Post a comment here if you have a thought on this film or my review and email me at [email protected] if you want to ask an off topic question or make a suggestion. Talk to you soon.
“the Infamous” Dave Inman
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 39 Journey to Babel
This is one of the episodes that as a kid I found kind of confusing and as such have a less than fond feeling for. I couldn’t figure out who all these aliens were and why they were on the Enterprise. I liked Sarek and thought the Andorians were cool, but then one of them turned out to be a spy and I thought the fake antennae kind of gross. Also I never liked the Tellarite. Sorry but pig+man=/=great alien in my book.
(Episode image courtesy of the Star Trek T Shirt category)
As an adult I get more from it. I appreciate the sacrifice Spock is willing to make for his duty and the effort Kirk put into getting Spock down to sick bay. I’m still not sure how Thelev knew how to perform Tal-Shaya when he killed the Tellarite. Was he a surgically modified Vulcan? Did he receive training in Vulcan martial arts, like when we study Kung Fu or Krav Maga? Given the differences in alien physiology how did Spock even know that Tal-Shaya was used? If someone were to kill a Horta with Tal-Shaya would it be instantly obvious to another Vulcan? Maybe Tellerites just have naturally weak necks and Gav snapped it when he tripped on his shoelace. What if Thelev just hit Gav in the neck with a big spanner and it looked like Tal-Shaya?
Also I’d like to point out that the trick of shutting down all internal systems to suck in an enemy ship closer had already been used in Balance of Terror. This episode was in the middle of Season 2, so really they should not have been recycling stuff quite so soon. Still, some great entertainment to be had here. If you are clever you can see the changes they made to the Andorian costume from this episode and the one in Enterprise.
“the Infamous” Dave Inman
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 40 Friday’s Child
Another one I actually quite like. I thought the Capellans were pretty cool and the story great. From a social perspective it nicely explored cross cultural negotiations as well as honor and honestly. I also like the idea that bows, having never been invented on Capella, gave Kirk and Spock a distinct advantage (although technically introducing an unknown technology is about as flagrant a violation of the Prime Directive as having the Enterprise lift out of the ocean in plain sight of a primitive species and giving them a brand new god to worship after defiling and robbing their old temple.
However, let’s talk about one of the greatest unacknowledged tools of the the original series: rubber boulders. Yes, these old friends showed up so often it was almost like the Enterprise would seed the transport area with them in order to give Kirk and crew an emergency weapon to hurl or avalanche at their enemies. It’s like whenever they needed something resembling action they would just fall back on the warehouse of rubber boulders and a half dozen PA’s to bowl them down the hill. Sometimes I wish I had a truck full of rubber boulders to have some fun with. They even spoofed it in Galaxy Quest in with the rock monster.
Anyway, like I said I enjoy this episode and would one day like to do some cosplay as a Capellan. My height would work nicely for that and they do have some cool costumes. Of course first I would have to do Ruk from What Are Little Girls Made Of. That would rock (pun intended). Rock image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category.
“the Infamous” Dave Inman
