Getaway Movie Review
Films like this will definitely make you want to get away.
I like to believe that movies should be like DNA or fingerprints in that no two should be the same. This is an attitude that runs into some rough spots when I see clear remakes like Red Dawn or Footloose, but I am more interested in the idea that each movie, for good or ill, has something to make it distinct from all the other movies out there.
The distinguishing characteristic of this film (and the best way to describe it) is lazy. I don’t think I have seen a film this consistently lazy in years. This isn’t the kind of lazy one finds in someone who wants to take the afternoon off so he can take a nap in the park while work is piling up. That’s amateur lazy as far as this film is concerned. This is the kind of lazy you find in someone who wallows in a pigsty composed of his own filth and dead skin cells, refusing to move unless there is actual danger of death and keeping his mouth open in hopes of a fly or spider crawling down his throat, saving him the effort of picking up nearby dead cockroaches and actually masticating them.
Everything that smacks of effort is avoided like a plagued skunk. A believable story and motivation is hard to write, so let’s just write down of the ramblings of the homeless meth addict down the street, run it through Google translator, and call it a day. Stunt driving choreography is hard work, so we’ll just shoot a bunch of cars driving and flipping and edit together later. Hiring people who speak with a Bulgarian accent (or even Bulgarian) might take more than 10 minutes so lets just hire the usual suspects with perfect American accents (even the wife who is supposed to be Bulgarian). Acting coaches cost money so we’ll just run on the assumption that all of our actors can pull any scene needed just by looking good. Good direction costs is expensive too, especially when a decent director wants to re-shoot bad scenes (hey, film doesn’t grown on trees you know) so we’ll just hire whatever bozo is drinking free coffee at SAG headquarters (for the record I just made that up and really don’t know anything about director Courtney Solomon. He may secretly be another Scorsese but his only two other directing credits are an American Haunting from 2006 and Dungeons and Dragons from 2000. These films garnered a 12% and 10% Rotten Tomatoes rating respectively so I guess the joke is on me).
Ethan Hawke seems to have adopted the Star Trek approach to film career in that he alternates between really great and really toxic projects. He goes from Before Midnight to this medical waste. I first saw him in one of my favorite movies, Training Day, only to have to see him do Daybreakers. He is the Dr. Jeckle/Mr. Hyde of movie careers, and this one is clearly a Mr. Hyde experience.
Selena Gomez was obviously included in this film in an attempt to draw young viewers (and capitalize on the freakish and inexplicable success of Spring Breakers, the movie equivalent of whooping cough) but my God did she feel forced into this film. I am in almost all ways a fan of hot women in films so you can imagine how grating for me she had to be for me to say I absolutely hated her character with the force of 10,000 wet concrete tsunamis. Every scene with her felt fake as hell and she ground on my last raw nerve like a cheese grater. I’m sure she’s a lovely person and I know she has had some great Disney success, but she just can’t pull “street” in any way. Also, if the movie is already PG-13 it’s OK to have her or any other human female show more than 2% of their skin. She was literally in a hoodie the entire film. If she isn’t down with showing a little skin (something I can say based on past films she probably doesn’t have a problem with) then find some beach scene to show us for no reason. It would not be any more out of place than any other scene in this film, and there is only so much Ethan Hawke’s face and/or Budapest police cars flipping I can take in one sitting.
Speaking of the police in this film, it looks they all trained with Roscoe P. Coltrane at the Hazzard County School of Police Driving (Dukes image courtesy of the Retro TV Show t shirt category). Somehow they can’t drive down a road without flipping a car, and it appears the city of Sofia has an inexhaustible supply of police cars and a religious aversion to setting up road blocks or spike traps. The car chase scenes (or rather, the majority of the film) got so ridiculous that after a while I had to make the film more tolerable by pretending that instead of driving around the main guy had telekinetic powers and was flipping the cars around with his mind (if you watch this bomb it actually makes it a better film).
I suppose at some point I should get into what can laughingly be called the story, but let me talk a minute about the villain. All great action films are based around the antagonist, and the more engaging and interesting the hero’s enemy is the better the film. In this film the villain is a faceless, motivation-less voice on the phone who seems to be being a dick just because…honestly I don’t know. I can’t even say he’s just a dick since we learn absolutely nothing about him. The lack of a villain made this film extremely hard to latch on to. Also what was the deal with this guys plan? He needs Ethan Hawke’s character to drive around causing havoc and his whole multi billion dollar plan is centered around this, but then he gives Brent (Hawke’s character) about a million chances to mess up and ruin the whole thing. First off Brent has to steal the car from a high security garage where it had been left for him to use. What if the mirrors had been misaligned and Brent ran the thing into a wall? Every scene is a perfect chance for this car to hang itself on a guard rail or break it’s suspension driving down some stairs, but Brent doing all this is critical to the plan to steal steal 2 billion Euros? Why did he even need to extort Brent into doing this anyway? He managed to hire guys to impersonate him and take the fall, probably incurring decades of prison time and a few other guys to murder policemen and die in horrific motorcycle accidents. Why not just hire a couple of good drivers? The whole plan was a steaming pile of stupid, and without knowing anything about the villain you can’t understand why this plan is anything but the adolescent fantasies of two 16 year old guys who play way too much GTA.
Of course. I just checked IMDB and the two writers have no other writing credits. When did script writing become something you called the local temp agency to get done in an afternoon?
Ugh. The story. Brent Magna (Ethan Hawke-Training Day, the Purge, Gattaca) has to steal a specific car because his Bulgarian wife (Rebecca Budig-Guiding Light, All My Children, Batman Forever) has been kidnapped. (For the record his Bulgarian wife speaks flawless English). He steals the Chevy Cobra and finds it covered in cameras. The voice on the phone tells him to go on a pedestrian mall driving rampage and escape the inept police. He then is told to wait in a garage where Selena Gomez (her film credit lists her character as the Kid, but I refuse to cater to that level of sloth. Oh, yeah. Selena Gomez-Another Cinderella Story, Spring Breakers, Monte Carlo) jumps in the car and holds a gun on him. He gets the gun away and finds out that the car was hers before it was stolen and rather than let the police handle it she opted to find a gun and take care of business (also for the record, she has a face that belongs on the Disney channel. Seeing her try to be some kind of bad ass is painfully laughable).
Anyway, at that point the voice (credited as the Voice, to my mounting frustrating) orders Brent to kill her but then when he refuses tells him she is integral to his plan (see what I mean about stupid? What if Brent was a little more cold blooded, or she had reminded him of an ex girlfriend who dumped him and he capped her? How does the plan progress?). Anyway, imagine about an hour of watching someone play Grand Theft Auto for another hour and you have all of Act II down. The plan is to steal data related to off shore accounts so the Voice can pocket it all. Brent and Selena eventually sort of turn the tables but then it turns out it was all part of the Voice’s incredibly complex plan anyway. In the end everyone wins (except for the guy the Voice paid to take the fall and rot in prison for years).
The stars.
Umm. Hmm. I could say the car was pretty cool, but I am more of a classic muscle car guy. This is awkward. I honestly can’t think of anything, and I really am trying. A film with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Zero stars.
The black holes.
The only way the story could have been more juvenile and ass backwards would be if it had been written by a group of 12 year old boys who had all recently suffered severe blunt trauma to the head. Three black holes. The disparity of a hot girl that I hate so much in the Selena Gomez character might have finally turned me gay (I wish. Unfortunately I am still into women. I say unfortunately because it seems like none of them are into me). Two black holes. The villains plan was so stupid and ridiculously complicated that it would have failed had Brent farted at the wrong time. One black hole. The villain sucked. One black hole. The driving action sucked on the side of ridiculousness. One black hole. No driving stunt choreographer to speak of. It seems like the director was programmed with “10 Police Car Drives. 20 Police Car Flips Over. 30 GOTO 10”. One black hole. Quick cut action sequencing. One black hole. There was one long sequence towards the end that was clearly sped up footage. One black hole. The fact that they filmed the entire movie in Sofia, Bulgaria but had no one in the film speak Bulgarian or even with a real accent. One black hole. The “plot twist” at the end can be summed up with the statement “Remember that bad guy you were chasing? Well, the guy you caught is not the bad guy and the real bad guy is still in a club around the world. Surprise!” (oops. Spoiler alert). One black hole. Dialog so bad you will wish you were deaf and only spoke in ASL. One black hole. Overall a tremendous waste of time and brain cells. Two black holes. Total: sixteen black holes.
A total of sixteen black holes!!! Possibly a new record. Is this film really this bad? I can say without qualm or hesitation yes. It is grindingly awful. It has a 2% score on Rotten Tomatoes and even that feels generous. It is 90 minutes you will regret losing and never see again. Pass. Date movie? Only if your date is a Real Doll and even then she will probably be bored. Bathroom break? Since the writers and director seem to have just gone to the bathroom all over the screen odds are this film could be considered one long break.
Thanks for reading. Almost done with my last convention for a while so more to see soon. Feel free to follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Post comments here on this film or my review. If you have off topic questions or suggestions feel free to email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones Review
Ever wonder what the illegitimate love child of Harry Potter and Twilight would look like? Wonder no more.
It has been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I suppose that is true in some circumstances. Having worked for years in the t-shirt business I can tell you there is a lot of flattery going on when t-shirt companies rip off designs from each other with alarming regularity. However, this is something that people say when someone imitates your idea and comes out with something better (or at least competitively equal). What we have here is less imitation than it is repetition (or perhaps regurgitation).
I have been told by several of my more literate friends that author Cassandra Clare is a writer who borders on competent and who’s books actually have something of interest rather than being uber trite brain damaging garbage spewed out from her fingertips, unlike a certain author who shall go nameless in this review but whose name may or may not sound like Mephanie Steyer. Apparently her main character in this series is more than a two dimensional, bland cute chick with all the appeal of moldy bread and her love interests are more than sizzle chested man/boys who cover the screen with metrosexual good looks and estrogen. This may or may not be true, but if it is then she has been done very badly by director Harold Zwart (the Karate Kid, One Night at McCools, Agent Cody Banks (really??)) and screenwriter Jessica Postigo (no prior film credits). The two of them look like they swallowed the Twilight punch and have set up a franchise distribution business. Does this sound familiar? A cute but otherwise unremarkable (in literally every sense of the term) chick discovers a world of mythical creatures and magic where she is torn between the love of a safe and familiar friend and a hot and dangerous magical newcomer who wants to induct her into his world while fighting against evil super villains. Oh, yeah. There are vampires and werewolves in here too.
Let me talk for a minute about the screenwriter Jessica Postigo as she relates to a phenomenon you only see in Hollywood (for the record I don’t know her or her work. For all I know she could be the next William Shakespeare, although based on my one experience with her writing I sincerely doubt it. Zombie Shakespeare is from our zombie t shirt category). If I had a budget of $60,000,000 (this film’s estimated budget) to build a new business and someone came to me and said “We have a person who has never done anything like this in your industry and has no track record whatsoever but we think she would be great at it” I would have that person killed and his or her head placed on a pike outside of my office as a warning to all the rest of the idiots to not waste my time. Yet somehow in movie making multi million dollar productions find people with no experience whatsoever and give them the keys to this Exxon Valdez. Honestly, take $1,000,000 and hire a team of the best writers in movie history to make your film. Writing should not be treated like a minor technical position.
Anyway, this turd. The issues are extensive and since I have no life I will list them all in detail. The biggest one is that this film suffers from the condition known as Nocluus Nocarrus. In other words, if you didn’t read the book you have no idea what the hell is going on and therefore will never care. What grinds is they had not just one but two perfect opportunities to explain everything through extensive fish-out-of-water exposition with the main character and her man-friend eunuch. What do demons really hope to accomplish? Do they have super powers or are they just gross? They seem to go down pretty easy to swords and knives. Do Shadowhunters have super powers? How to those tattoos work? Do they drain your life force or have a cool down, or can you just use them with impunity? If so why would you not cover your body with them? Are vampires super human too? They also seem to go down to a quick knife in the gut pretty easy too. Are vampires and demons immune to guns? If not why are you idiots running around with swords instead of Kalashnikovs? Especially when in the last half of the film one of the Shadowhunters starts running around with a m-f-ing flamethrower! If flamethrowers work why don’t you all carry them? For that matter how does a flamethrower work against demons who seem to made from molten lava? Why did Jocelyn not take the magic cup and create like 10,000 Shadowhunters to kill Valentine? Again, what does being a Shadowhunter do for you other than make you think BDSM Goth is the fashion to go with?
Sigh. Next up up characters. The only character I felt even the slightest connection to was Simon, Clary’s man friend, and that was only because he got punched in the face with the let’s-be-friends speech so hard I think his parents felt it. Having suffered through more than a few reiterations of that speech (by a couple orders of magnitude. Just this week a girl I have been attracted to for a long time told me how she went out last week, had a couple beers, and hooked up with some random dude. Let’s just say the next Warhammer player who crosses my path will suffer for that) I felt his pain, but other than that he was another drip in a sea of drips. The main character is a bland little whiner who contributes next to nothing to the film except to give the camera something to focus on. The “hero” is a blond pretty boy you will hate from his very first scene. He looks like exactly the dude who shows up at your party, drinks all your booze, smokes a bunch of pot in your living room, vomits into your bed and pulls the covers over it, and then cuts out with the pizza and the girl you were into five minutes before the cops show up. He has two facial expressions: I’m Bored and I Just Sharted But Secretly Don’t Care. He’s also the guy I really hope to run into at my next Fight Club as I know in spite of his washboard abs (shown extensively) and the fact that he’s at least 20 years younger than me I could break him like a tongue depressor. Too girly to really be an action movie guy. The mother is a non-entity and her man friend (I’m starting to get a clear understanding of the male relationships Cassandra Clare has in her life) is a werewolf (yep) who is basically there to provide the red shirts. The other Shadowhunters are The Angry Chick and The Angry Dude, although I will give this movie props for having a couple of gay characters.
Then there is the costuming. The costume designer obviously gets a discount at Hot Topic, as Goth is the word of the day. Ever wonder why martial artists wear loose cotton gi’s? If you ever tried to kick someone in the face wearing leather pants and thigh high boots, or fallen onto your studded leather jacket you will understand why. If these kids are more or less invisible why not walk around in full body armor? Also the Shadowhunters all have symbolic tattoos that give them powers that (I’m not kidding) look like they were drawn on with a Sharpie. Once I noticed it I couldn’t help but look for it in every scene and it was driving me nuts.
Naturally the CGI sucked, which is weird as I hardly see that anymore in any film with more than a couple mil budget. It’s something of a novelty these days. It has been years since I saw the sideways pool of water as a magical portal trick (1987, to be exact. Prince of Darkness by John Carpenter), and the rest of it nothing to write home about.
And finally, the story. OMG awful. Nothing seems to have a reason for anything. The romance felt completely forced and unnatural, like Joseph Stalin’s attempt to breed ape human super warriors (no joke. Google it). Most of the scenes were expository dialog, but instead of explaining what the hell was going on it was all bad romance and tertiary crap. The secondary plot seemed even more worthless than the first. And the whole thing ground on for an agonizing 130 minutes.
Another film where I am 1380 words in without even getting to the story. Clary (Lily Collins-the Blind Side, Mirror Mirror, Priest) is a teenage girl living with her artist mother Jocelyn (Lena Headey-Dredd, the Purge, 300) in NYC. She is haunted by a symbol of some kind and keeps drawing it, something of concern for her mother and mother’s man friend Aleric (Harry Van Gorkum-the Karate Kid, Batman and Robin, Gone in 60 Seconds). She goes out with her own man friend Simon (Robert Sheehan-Misfits, Cherrybomb, Season of the Witch) to a suicide poetry reading (in other words, listening to this poetry makes you want to commit suicide) and on the way home stop off at a club. They are let in by a Goth guy who turns out to be a demon, but before they can talk to him the demon is killed by Jace (Jamie Campbell Bower-Sweeney Todd, Rocknrolla, Twilight), a Shadow Hunter.
The next morning Jace tracks down Clary and talks to here while her mother is kidnapped by some Goth thugs (the fact that her mother has been kidnapped is pretty much forgotten by Clary for most of the rest of the film). Jace takes Clary and Simon to their castle in NYC where she meets the other two Shadowhunters (Kevin Zegers-Dawn of the Dead, Wrong Turn, Frozen and Jemina West-Lines of Wellington, the Messenger, Play it Like Godard) and the head guy Hodge (Jared Harris-Natural Born Killers, Lincoln, Sherlock Holmes: a Game of Shadows).
Bleh. Recounting this story is giving me a rash. I’ll speed up. The bad guy Valentine (Jonathan Rhys Meyers-Match Point, Bend it Like Beckham, August Rush) wants the magic Shadowhunter cup that Jocelyn hid in order to do something (?) with demons. Everyone else wants the cup for some other unspecified reason. Clary has her memory blocked by her mother and they have to visit the Wizard of Brooklyn (Godfry Gao-101 Proposals, All About Women, the Queen of SOP). Simon gets kidnapped by vampires, who in this film don’t speak and are pretty much evil henchmen for someone (?) and go down by the bucketful. They are rescued from the vampires by werewolves (who are good henchmen also for someone(?)). Stuff gets blown up, there are a couple of obvious twists, Jace temporarily gets possessed by the spirit of Moe from the Three Stooges, Clary is revealed to be the magic queen of bad tattoos and two dimensional hiding stuff (as well as two dimensional acting), and a lame plot twist is revealed that makes the romance possibly even more creepy and contrived than it already was.
The stars.
I suppose I have to give the film credit for at least having action happen often enough to earn it’s PG-13 rating. One star. Lily is super cute, and at one point (for literally the most contrive reason of all time) they find an excuse to dress her as a super hot hooker. One star. I did glean some amusement when characters (appropriately) made fun of all the Goth clothing (I can’t decide if that’s the movie sincerely poking fun at itself or just an attempt to draw in kids who don’t think vampires are super sexy). One star. Total: three stars.
The black holes.
Where to begin? The fact that the writers assumed that we the audience each wrote a PhD thesis on the book and know every detail going into the theater. One black hole. I hated all the characters in this film (some more than others) and was really hoping they would all die (and ironically, none of them did. Hope I didn’t just spoil the film for you). One black hole. A bonus black hole for the blond man/boy, whom I especially hated. One black hole. The romance in this film made me wish for the sweet, sweet kiss of chemical castration. One black hole. The Goth clothing was nothing short of ridiculous. The costumes the Strangers wore in Dark City looked more real, functional, and believable. One black hole. Crappy story that I couldn’t care less about. One black hole. Crappy CGI. One black hole. Tattoos that looked like they were bought out of a vending machine at Denny’s. One black hole. Twilight rip off, complete with vampires and werewolves. One black hole. A million blatantly ignored questions. One black hole. A bunch of sub plots hinted at and then ignored as well (again, maybe if I had read the book). One black hole. Paced like watching old people f…requent a local dining establishment (what did you think I was going to say there?). 130 mind numbing minutes. One black hole. Overall a complete failure to entertain me or give me the slightest reason to care. The entire cast and crew could fall into a sink hole and it wouldn’t phase me one bit. Two black holes. Total: fourteen black holes.
A grand total of 11 black holes. A crap score for a crap movie. I don’t know. From what I hear the source material is better than this so perhaps they could have done better, but it looks like the studio had Twilight fever and this is the result. Any reason to see it at all? Sure, if you read the book and/or love Twilight and wish to return to robot love and machismoly challenged “men”. Perhaps you just had brain surgery and need to avoid thinking too much and/or non dark images gives you a migraine. Do you work at Hot Topic and want to feel like your life and job are not a complete drain on American culture? Write a bitter little movie review blog and are looking for something to make fun of for a couple hours in order to make up for your feelings of inadequacy? These are all perfectly valid reasons to see this film. Otherwise give it a pass. NetFlix is fine on this one. Date movie? Sure, if she loved Twilight. If she suggests it you can probably convince her that after suffering through this bomb the least she can do is reward you with a sexual experience. Bathroom break? At 130 minutes you will probably need it, if only to vomit. Any of the romance scenes would be great, especially the Three’s Company-esque moment when Jace is walking Clary back to her bed and finds Simon in it. Actually your brain would thank you for missing that whole sequence starting with the walk in the roof garden so take a few minutes to make sure you got everything out, grab a smoke, and run upstairs to punch the projectionist in the head.
Plenty more to see soon. Too late tonight so maybe tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have comments on this movie or my review (please comment if you disagree on this one. I love a good laugh) feel free to post here. Off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected]. Have a great night.
Dave
P.S. Where the hell did the title of this movie come from? They mentioned the City of Bones like once and looked at it for about 20 seconds. The rest of the time this film was all about the City of New York. Lame.
D.
P.P.S. I just checked and this film flopped badly its opening weekend. The theater I was in was pretty empty for a Saturday on opening weekend, so I’m not surprised. Most of the audience was laughing at things I’m pretty sure the director didn’t really think was funny. Also I forgot to black hole this film for really horrible dialog, so I guess they get a pass on that one.
D.
The World’s End
I treated myself to something special for this film. One of our local theaters was hosting the Cornetto Trilogy, which was Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and then the World’s End and I loved every minute of it (plus they game me a free t-shirt. Wish I knew were I could get more cool nerd t shirts. Oh, wait. I do). I wish to hell Hollywood would take a lesson from Simon Pegg and figure out that big stars and massive gun battles (well, except for Hot Fuzz) are not what’s needed in a good movie.
Yes, another film I rolled in to with a predisposition, thus making my unbiased reviewer qualifications suspect. I am a fan of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and love all their films (even Paul). I expected this one to be amazing, and am pleased to announce that my expectations were met. I am sure a less generous (cough cough fan boy cough cough) reviewer might find things to take issue with, but overall I enjoyed this film immensely.
What’s neat is once again Simon has taken a nerd trope and made it cool again while reinventing his and his friends characters into something completely different. Nick Frost is no longer an unemployed pot dealing loser or half assed cop but rather a high powered and very responsible lawyer (at least until he gets five shots of whiskey into him). Simon Pegg is the loser in this film, a barely adult who has never let go of how cool he was back in high school and yearns for those days all over again (like most of the idiots I spoke to at my reunion. As for me those four years are in my past and if I could call in a tactical air strike on the section of my brain that remembers high school I would (along with my alma mater. Burn in hell SCHS)).
And of course where would a Simon Pegg movie be without a campy action sci fi component. Paul was aliens, Hot Fuzz was cops, Shaun of the Dead was zombies, and the World’s End is all about robots (and sort of aliens). There was also a very cool Invasion of the Body Snatchers component that I enjoyed a great deal. I actually believe a robot uprising to be even more possible than a zombie apocalypse (and if you know how much I believe we are due for zombie apocalypse then you understand how likely I consider the robot uprising) and therefore makes for a great story premise.
It kind of makes me wonder why we don’t have more robot themed movies. Last one I can think of would have to be I, Robot and it really didn’t do very well (to be fair, it was kind of a crappy adaptation of a really good book). I think the issue is most people kind of understand that if there ever were a robot uprising we the human race would be royally boned. Just like it’s hard to have a superhero who is too powerful to compete against (Superman, for example) you can’t have a villain (or villainous force) that the heroes can’t really compete with. It is difficult to imagine fighting something you will break your hand punching in the face. In movie fantasy everyone likes to see themselves as a hero cutting down dozens of bad guys with their machine gun or ninja sword, not one of several thousand faceless BBS’s (Basic Bullet Stoppers) assigned to climb onto a robot tank in order to break it’s suspension with the combined weight of their corpses.
This film manages to get away from that by making the robots old school G.I. Joe style, where the heads and limbs come off easier than a Mr. Potato Head with an M-80 in it. I don’t want to start finding reasons to give black holes, but if I were going to use robots to take over the world I would probably make them at least tough enough to go mano a roboto with some out of shape middle aged drunkards.
So the World’s End. The film starts off with Gary King (Simon Pegg-not going to bother with film credits. If you don’t know who he is get off my blog) recounting the greatest night of his life when he and his four best friends from high school attempting the Miracle Mile-a route planned out to hit 12 pubs in one evening ending up at the World’s End in Newton Haven. He then goes around trying to convince his now grown up friends to recreate the trek and actually finish it this time. They are all grown up and have responsible lives and little interest in a night of alcoholic debauchery. For the record they are Any Knightly (Nick Frost-same as Simon), Peter Page (Eddie Marsan-Snow White and the Huntsman, War Horse, the Best of Men), Oliver Chamberlain (The Hobbit: and Unexpected Journey, Pirates! a Band of Misfits, Sherlock Holmes), and Steven Prince (Paddy Considine-Now is Good, Girl on a Bicycle, Submarine). (See what they did with the names?)
Anyway, Gary bullies, lies, and cajoles them all to join him and they all return to their home town of Newton Haven, a quaint old fashioned burb that I guess England is loaded with and reminds me of a lot of small towns in New Hampshire. Andy is now a teetotaler (what does teetotaler mean? It means you should have stayed awake more in school). They hit the first couple pubs and notice odd things, like no one seems to recognize them. They run into Olivers sister Sam (Rosamund Pike-you know she is really very attractive and an accomplished actress but her filmography reads like a skunk/steamroller mass murder crime scene-Johnny English Reborn, Jack Reacher, Wrath of the Titans. Those three films garnered a total of sixteen black holes from yours truly (granted, Wrath earned most of them but none of them were in the positive)) who Gary did back in the day but Steven has always had a thing for.
Gary gets into a fight with a kid in the mens room and accidentally knock his head off, discovering the awful secret of Newton Haven-most of the town has been taken over by robots. He and his chums mix it up with more and take them all down. They decide the best way to survive is to finish the pub crawl to avoid suspicion (this part didn’t sit great with me, and here is where I show you all what a hypocrite I really am as I have tossed films I cared less about down multiple flights of stairs for plot holes less weighty than this). Gary seems the most interested in finishing it as he appears to have nothing else in his life.
So the film progresses. Things get weirder at each stop as they discover the secret of what the robots are after. The story gets super cool at the end and then hokey again.
The stars.
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Two stars. Robots. One star. All the inside jokes that only a fan of the Cornetto series will get are in full force. One star. A surprise appearance by some very cool stars. One star. Seeing Nick Frost go on a berserk rampage. One star. A film that manages to use the story and action to show the development of relationships between characters rather than treating character development like the muck you pull out of your rain gutter. A true buddy film in the sense that friendship triumphs in the end. One black hole. Free t shirt (which I am wearing right now). One star. Some very cool camera work (as per one of these films) and excellent pacing. One star. No need to bring in huge Hollywood names based on the mistaken belief that people will go see it just because of the star (cough cough Ben Affleck Batman cough cough). One star. Overall an excellent movie experience. Two stars. Total: twelve stars.
The black holes.
I really don’t wanna, but I suppose my much abused credibility needs a bone thrown to it once in a while. The fact that the robot costume I made with a cardboard box, some silver spray paint, and duct tape in 3rd grade had more strength and durability than these robots. Also what was up with the hand thing they all kept on trying to do? When you see it you will understand. One black hole. The logical reason to keep on with the pub crawl was tenuous at best and was literally the turd in the punch bowl for a big chuck of the film for me. One black hole. Total: two black holes.
A very grand total of ten stars. Yes, you should go see this. Yes, you should watch Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz again before seeing it. I’ll say this film was on the level of Hot Fuzz but not quite as good as Shaun (but remember also I have a love of zombies, making that opinion suspect too). See it in a theater and pay full price as a means of telling Hollywood what we, the unwashed nerd masses, want from our films. Date movie? Of course. If the girl you are seeing isn’t turned by a good Pegg/Frost film drop her off at the bus stop and give her a buck for fare as you will never find true happiness with her. Bathroom break? Hell no. Hold it for 109 minutes. Either that or get one of these portable Pit Stops before heading in.
Thanks for reading. I’ll see something else tonight and write it up tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu and like us on Facebook please. If you have a comment on this film or my review post it here, and any off topic questions or suggestions can be sent to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
Sea of Suck.
One of the may lies I tell myself frequently (along with I am not a self delusional megalomaniac and the only reason I am still single is I haven’t met the right girl yet) is that I am actually impartial in these reviews and allow each film to stand on it’s own merits regardless of how much it’s predecessor, director, or source material may or may not suck.
Like most of my comfort lies this is sort of true but sort of not. I do try to stay impartial, but when handed a film by Lucas, McG, or anything with sparkly vampires I tend to show up at the theater with my canines sharpened, salivating at the smell of fresh blood in the air. At this point I when I start off a review with something like this I usually say something like “But this one surprised me and made me ashamed of my natural predilection” but honestly, my instinct was pretty spot on. There was blood in the water and when I followed the trail I found a fat, badly wounded sea lion to chomp on.
My predispostion stems from making the mistake of watching Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. That movie also suckled at the suck teat, but honestly it was a more solid effort than this garbage. At least all the actors made an effort and tried to look like they cared. In this film the actors all looked like they had been rejected by a Thunderbirds casting call. I honestly can’t imagine any director going with the performances delivered. The whole thing had a very Ed Wood style to it. “Act scared! More scared. Too much scared! Now act sad. Cut! That’s a wrap! Next scene!”
So this movie is left with all the crap that clogged down the last film (the story equivalent of getting kicked in the head by a horse, a base premise that suspends your disbelief so high it needs oxygen masks, and a desperation to be the next Harry Potter so tangible you can almost hear the director demanding that the prop guy design some Greek flying brooms) without any of the parts that made the first movie not quite a grilled cheese and razor blade sandwich. Normally to get a shift in acting talent this severe you have to go with a new cast, but it looks like the crew took one look at the script and opted to do the whole movie on dog tranquilizers.
Speaking of Harry Potter (and attempting to recreate that magic) they cast a new guy as Percy’s brother who looks like his real brother was Ron Weasley. Honestly, that’s just pandering. They kind of missed the point of Harry Potter and the humor level in those films when they opted to add in slapstick humor with metronome-like regularity. I also had a nice reminder of the difference in movie ratings. It’s often you will find me railing at a PG-13 when the action pretty clearly called for R, but this movie had me yearning for the good old days of PG-13. I’ve seen more violent and dangerous pillow fights.
I do feel like a bit of an ass bitching about too much deus ex machina in a movie about gods, but it looks like the writer learned about deus ex machina but was never told that it is a lazy writers tool to move the story along and therefore bad. It’s like if you house trained your dog by giving him a treat every time he craps on the carpet. The crew needs to find a mysterious island and has no way of finding it? Let’s have three blind witches give them literal map coordinates. Scooby Doo would be embarrassed by that. They need to get from a dock to a ship out at sea? They pray to Poseidon and he sends a giant water horse to carry them. I have never seen it so blatant before. In the great words of Gunnery Sergent Hartman from Full Metal Jacket “If God would have wanted you up there he would have miracled your ass up there by now, wouldn’t he?” In this case the god did want them out to the ship.
Sigh. I could go on, so I will. The special effects ranged from halfway decent CGI to mediocre CGI all the way down to a corpse puppet that looked suspiciously like the Cryptkeepers wife (I’m not kidding). At some point they ran wanted to spice up the scenery so when they got to the mythic island where the cyclops guarding the Golden Fleece (which, by the way, is actually a fleece, not a gold threaded baby blanket) they find…an abandoned amusement park (again, no joke). The writers must have hit a “Buy one cliche, get 49 more free” sale and spent their life savings (including the inevitable trope of having the black guy dress up in drag). The villains plan was so painfully stupid you pitied him more for his learning disability than hated him for being evil. The CGI characters who spoke must have had the voices done by whatever jackass was hanging around the studio that morning. I think subconsciously the director understood what he was creating because at one point he had the main characters get sucked down in what can only be described as a giant toilet.
I really don’t want to do the story recap so I will buzz through. Percy is living at Camp Half Breed (isn’t the term Half Breed racist? I thought it referred negatively to a half Native American) with the other demigods, being annoyed by some new chick who is the daughter of Mars. The magic tree that protects the camp gets poisoned and a mechanical bull (looking extremely like one of my beloved Juggernauts from Warhammer) breaks in. Turns out they need the Golden Fleece to save the tree or be killed by something (apparently everyone in the universe that isn’t a part of their super guy camp hates them (including me)). The Mars chick is sent out but Percy, the blond girl from the last one, the black Satre, and Percy’s Ron Weasley looking Cyclops half brother (apparently if a god has sex with a nymph you end up with a cyclops. Does that mean that all cyclops’s are demigods?) go after it themselves. The Satre gets kidnapped by the bad guy from the last film leaving Percy, Ron, and the chick to complete the task (why does that party mix sound so familiar Harry?).
The bad guy’s plan is to use the Golden Fleece to resurrect Chronos, the original Titan known for eating all his children and have the guy destroy all the gods of Olympus and the world too (I guess the dude thought Chronos would stop at his grand children. See what I mean about a stupid plan?). They travel the world (where they apparently have friends in every city in the universe) and eventually end up on the amusement park island where they play keep away with Fleece from a cyclops who speaks like an Oxford don. Eventually Chronos is raised, only to be killed like 30 seconds later by Percy (why were they all afraid of this guy again?).
The stars.
Really there is only one, and that is Nathan Fillion as Hermes. I’m not sure what the hell he was doing in this film but seeing him was like a breath of fresh air after spending all day trapped in a rancid sewer (Nathan image courtesy of the Firefly T Shirt category). One star. Total: one star.
The black holes.
Being slapped across the face over and over again by the hand of god. One black hole. Acting like everyone was sleep deprived. One black hole. A plot that can be called a story only because we don’t have a word stupid enough to accurately describe it. Two black holes. Harry Potter rip off. One black hole. All those little things I listed four paragraphs ago. I count five items, with a bonus for the amusement park. Six stars. All the horrible comedy bits, especially the three blind sister taxi drivers. One black hole. I especially hated the new cyclops guy and wanted to see him die. One star. I didn’t talk about it much, but this film is kind of a step backwards in terms of racial equality as well as loving yourself for who you are (the cyclops seems really concerned with hiding his one eye instead of ever embracing it). One black hole. Total: fourteen black holes.
So a grand total of thirteen black holes. Not an auspicious number. Is there anything worth seeing? No, not really. I can’t even comment on the hotness of the girls in this film as a draw. I’ve seen nuns show more skin. This film is tanking at the box office and it’s easy to see why. I’d say give it a pass. Date movie? If your date is or has the mentality of an eleven year old girl maybe, although please go to jail. Bathroom break? There is not a single second of this film that is not an excellent time to run out and take a dump, so if you have the trots this might be the perfect film for you.
Thanks for reading. Headed to Vegas tomorrow so nothing going on blog wise until Thursday when the new Simon Pegg film comes out. Looks good. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu, like me on Facebook, and if you have a comment for this film or my review post it here. Feel free to email me with any off topic questions or comments to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Kick Ass 2 Movie Review
Pretty much lives up to it’s name.
Yes I’m still sluggish getting these out. Saw this movie Thursday night but honestly if you saw the amount of work I have piled up (literally) you would understand.
So I enjoyed this film about as much as I expected to (something of a singular event these days). Fortunately I expected to enjoy it a lot. This film follows the typical sequel pattern of a kick ass first movie (haw!) followed by a sequel that is about 80% of the first one. However, when you have a movie as good as the first Kick Ass 80% of it make it as good or better than all the Ryan Reynolds films put together.
The film definitely had a different tone. I would have to say this one was darker, grimmer, and lacking in the cuteness of young Hit Girl. Her assault down the hallway in the gangster penthouse (with Bad Reputation by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts playing in the background) is one of my personal favorite action scenes of the last ten years. She is an iconic character and based on the number of HG costumes I saw at Comic Con a popular one.
Hit Girl is back, but now is cursed with all the teenaged angst that they seem to hand girls on their first day of high school. Due to the nature of the story she is in the film less and fight less, at least until the last 20 minutes, and her fights are just not as super squirrelly as they were in the last one. Her best fight she is not even wearing her HG costume, although that was the fight that most reminded me of the last film.
On the other hand Kick Ass is back and faces some interesting comic book-ish issues, such as why he even became a super hero and what he hopes to accomplish from it. A lot of this movie is taken up with him and Hit Girl in street clothes trying to figure out what they should be doing in life, which tended to make the film less cool and exciting but added a nice note of realism and drama otherwise missing from the last one.
The story starts off with Kick Ass (Anderson Taylor-Johnson-Kick Ass, Savages, Nowhere Boy) back in high school with Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz-Dark Shadows, Hugo, Let Me In), except Hit Girl has been cutting class to train. She gets Kick Ass (yes, I know his character name is Dave and Hit Girl’s is Mindy. I just like calling them by their superhero names) to join her and they start fighting some crime. During their first caper she gets caught by her now legal guardian Marcus (Morris Chestnut-the Call, Boys in the Hood, Identity Thief) and he gets her to promise to stop with the Hit Girl thing. She does out of respect for her father.
Meanwhile Kick Ass has a taste for the action and looks for other super heroes to team up with. New York is now lousy with them and through a guy called Dr. Gravity (Donald Faison-Scrubs, Remember the Titans, Clueless) he meets up with Justice Forever, a team lead by the psychotic Col. Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey-Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, The Truman Show). One of his fellow team members Battle Guy is his old friend Marty (Clark Duke-Hot Tub Time Machine, A Thousand Words, the Croods) 
and a hot chick named Night Bitch (Lindy Booth-Wrong Turn, Relic Hunter, Dawn of the Dead (image courtesy of the Zombie T Shirt category)). They run around the city doing public service and catching bad guys.
Meanwhile Kick Ass’s old enemy Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse-Superbad, Role Models, Pitch Perfect) is back. He has kind of lost it and is now a super villain named the M-F-er whose sole purpose is to cause pain and suffering in order to destroy Kick Ass. He recruits a bunch of other psychopaths and they go berserk.
I’m going to blow off the rest of the story mainly because it’s late and I always find the story recap to be the most boring and arduous part of these reviews. A movie like this I expect any of my readers to see so the recap is redundant anyway. Sufficed to say crosses are doubled, stuff gets blown up, and a lot of asses get kicked.
The stars:
Hit Girl is awesome again. One star. The evil team the M-F-er put together was also pretty awesome, especially Mother Russia. One star. I expected all the new super heroes to suck (except for Col. Stars and Stripes) but in fact they were each cool in their own way. One star. All the acting was dead on perfect. One star. The story delved deeper into the angst of being a super hero than most films bother to. I thought it was neat. One star. The fight scenes were all really cool and fun. One star. Comic book movie. One star. Over all a fun, exciting film. Two stars. Total: nine stars.
The black holes:
Honestly I’m at a loss. I could give one for there being less action and more character development, but I just gave the film a star for that a in the last paragraph. Pacing slugged up at times but overall felt right. I’m going to have to do my very rare no black hole reviews. There wasn’t anything I wish they did differently.
So a total of nine stars and my hearty endoursement of this film. Not better than Kick Ass, but worthy be being mentioned in the same sentence. Please see this film in a theater. We need to encourage quality film. Date movie? Meh. Romance was kind of limited to Kick Ass knocking boots with Night Bitch in a bathroom, so not really. Plus if are a Hit Girl fan you might end up looking kind of creepy. Bathroom break? Depends on what you are here for. If all you want is action that kicks ass (that’s the last one I swear) I’d say go in any of the scenes where Hit Girl is trying to convince Kick Ass to put on his costume or Kick Ass is trying to do the same for Hit Girl. If you like the characters and angst involved go during any of the action scenes. (Or if you are a true fan just hold it. It’s only 103 minutes long).
Thanks for reading. I’ll see something tomorrow for sure, but have another trip to Las Vegas that I leave for Monday so I don’t know if I will have time to write it up. Sorry. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. By the way it would be very cool if you liked us on Facebook. If you have comments about this film or my review feel free to post a comment here. Off topic suggestions and review can be emailed to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Elysium Movie Review
Not really District 9. More like District 3.
Once again I must apologize for not getting this done sooner, or not posting at all for like a week. I am now way behind on movies and will try to get at least three done this weekend. I was at the Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas all weekend and enjoyed it immensely. Unfortunately I was so busy selling Star Trek t-shirts I never had a chance to write it up.
That’s not entirely true. I did see this the night it opened (for the record the theater at the Palms is really nice) and probably could have ground it out one of the evenings. The fact is I was kind of disappointed by this film and just not really motivated to write this up.
This is another case of me still not learning the important lesson of never expecting movies to do anything but suck. If I had approached this film with that attitude I would have been pleased enough to give it a modest thumbs up as a relatively decent sci fi film. However the fact is I am a huge fan of District 9 and as such expected this to at least blow one of my socks off. Instead I got pretty formulaic Hollywood pap and glitz without the gritty, engaging story that made District 9 what it was.
I now believe the weight of working with major Hollywood stars and operating under the thumb of an actual Hollywood studio crushed Neill Blomkamp’s creativity and caused him to push out this very pretty and expensive by-the-numbers BM (either that or given three and a half times the budget of his first film he suddenly pulled a Lucas and thought that cool CGI makes up for lame story. God I hope not). While this film had it’s moments and were it of a lesser pedigree I might give it a pass it really didn’t feel like it was made by the same person.
I think the best way to explain my issues is to talk about what made District 9 great and how this one failed to live up to that legacy. In his first film Blomkamp took a total nobody protagonist and a sidekick that looked like a seven foot tall bipedal potato bug and managed to make us not only like but care about them both. The social issues addressed made sense and seemed like a potentially realistic approach when dealing with a mass immigration of blue color alien bugs. The villains were motivated to do what they thought was best for their society rather the just plain evil, and the denouement, while opening the door to the potential of conflict resolution, managed to avoid the Disneyfied “all must be right in the world by the end of Act III” rule that is the Black Plague of Hollywood scripts. The CGI and science fiction were tools to tell a great story and engage the audience with cool characters.
In this film the main character is the very human Matt Damon, who is motivated by the simplest and most inane of reasons to do bad, explosive things. His character develops only in the most tertiary of manners, and all of the supporting characters looked like they were created by a supercomputer designed to create the greatest stereotypes of all time. The villains seemed to be in a contest to see which of them could be the most evil for evils sake: the brutal, exploitive capitalist who treats his workers like expendable slaves (to the point that he kicks Damon out of the infirmary in order to save the cost of replacing the hospital bedding), the bitchy, callous, power hungry security director who wants to be the Hitler of space or something, and the psychopathic South African mercenary who apparently gets his rocks off killing and raping everything he comes across. It was like they all went to the Dr. Evil School of Super Villainy and graduated with comical honors. The story lacked any kind of real drama or arc (anyone else remember the slow and methodical way that Wikus Ven De Merwe changed his attitude towards the aliens even as his body changed?) and naturally since this is a big budget Hollywood film we have to pull out the inevitable MacGuffin that will save the world. Throw in a ton of unnecessary action to appease the unwashed masses and I guess we have a film.
Sigh. I will give this film props for some of the action being both believable and cool, and also for not feeling the need to explain how the science of a ring world works. I guess Blomkamp assumed we had all read Ringworld or played Halo once or twice in our lives. I guess it was pretty and the CGI flawless. If you ever wanted to see every villain from Snidely Wiplash to Khan Noonien Singh distilled into a potent evil serum and injected into three otherwise talented actors than I guess this would work for you. As a movie it’s not awful, just mundane. It’s just that I expected so much more.
SPOILER ALERT. Skip ahead a few paragraphs if this puts you off. The story starts off two hundred years in the future. The Earth is pretty much permanently screwed thanks to our pollution and overpopulation. Like all problems money is the answer, so the rich of this future have all moved to a ring world called Elysium that closely resembles a less crowded Newport Beach in orbit around the earth . Max (Matt Damon-Good Will Hunting, The Bourne Identity, Inside Job) is an ex-con trying to go straight at a dead end job manufacturing the very robot drones that are used to keep him and the rest of the population under suppression (um, could I get an extra helping of irony with my movie please?). Meanwhile, dragon lady Elysium defense director Delecourt (Jodie Foster-the Silence of the Lambs, Contact, Panic Room) has the job of shooting down ships filled with families trying to escape Earth to Elysium, a job she appears to approach with the same relish that a dingo would working as a guard dog at a pre school.
In the future they have medical tanning beds that will cure all diseases in like three seconds, but of course the super rich being intrinsically evil and selfish keep them for themselves and leave the rest of us to pound sand. Max gets his arm broken by the very robots he is building (ironic!) and while at the hospital runs into childhood friend turned hot nurse Frey (Alice Braga-I am Legend, Repo Men (no, not Repo Man. Repo Men), City of God). She has a child dying of leukemia (Emma Tremblay-no other film credits).
Max gets back to work where he is forced to enter a chamber to fix something and receives a lethal dose of radiation (OSHA apparently ended in the mid 21st century). The owner of the company John Carlyle (William Fichtner-Black Hawk Down, the Dark Knight, Contact) is a billionaire Elysium resident and all around dick. He kicks Max out of the infirmary in order to save on the laundry bill (he has nothing better to do with his time?).
Meanwhile on Elysium Delecourt is in trouble for her shoot-first-ask-no-questions approach to security. She is called to the carpet by the president (Faran Tahir-Star Trek (2009), Charlie Wilson’s War, Iron Man) and then decides the only thing she can do is stage a coup and take over entirely. She recruits Carlyle who writes a program to basically rewrite everything in the Elysium system.
Max now needs to get to Elysium in order to get cured. The only way he can do that is to do a job with local crime kingpin Spider (Wagner Moura-Elite Squad, VIPs, Romance). Spider wants to kidnap some Elysium resident and steal data from his brain, and naturally Max chooses Carlyle. In order for Max to operate in spite of the fact that he is dying they graft a powerful exoskeleton to him (the exoskeleton was pretty cool, and probably my favorite part of the movie). They get Carlyle and the data turns out to be the very program needed to completely fix the world.
At that point all hell breaks loose. Delecourt unleashes psychotic mercenary Kruger (Sharlto Copley-believe it or not this is the guy who played Wikus in District 9. I’m still not sure I believe it. Also the A Team, Europa Report) who uses some fairly cool high tech tracking techniques to hunt down Max. Stuff gets blown up, people get killed, and there are like five double crosses in the last ten minutes of the film.
The stars.
Most of the hard core sci fi was pretty cool. The robot police, the actual ring, the medical beds, and a lot of the technology was in the very cool category. One star. I have to give a bonus for the grafted exoskeleton. I really want one. One star. Each of the actors played their fairly one dimensional characters as well as could be expected. Someone told Sharlto to play a crazed psychopath and he ran with it. One star. Action was pretty good, and nothing in this movie strained my sense of disbelief too far. One star. CGI was flawless and used in the right proportion to actual sets and actors. One star. Total: five stars.
The black holes.
Unfortunately a lot of these are going to stem from comparisons to District 9, but I can’t stop myself. The story was extremely linear, with character motivations being delivered with all the subtlety and depth of a mackerel slapped across your face over and over again. One black hole. In spite of the fact that all the characters were human I couldn’t generate 1/4 the caring that I did for any of the Prawns. None of them drew me in and the film gave me no reason to care about them in the least. One black hole. The villains were evil for no apparent reason and by the end of the film were more comical than serious. One black hole. In spite of the coolness of the ending in D9 Blomkamp obviously caved in to the studio and came up with yet another Save the World MacGuffin for this one. One black hole. Total: four black holes.
So one star. I suppose I could have been kinder, but I have seen and been excited by the trailer for this film for months and to be this disappointed just feels crappy. If you have never seen D9 I suppose you will enjoy it, as long as you just want sci fi action. If you have a decent sized TV it’s worth seeing on DvD or NetFlix. Date movie? Meh. No reason not to bring her along but it won’t impress her. Bathroom break? Honestly nothing springs to mind. Maybe any of the scenes with Frey and her daughter. Not a lot going on there.
Thanks for reading. I will try to get some more going on soon. Now that my show season is more or less over I can concentrate on doing more of these. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. If you have a comment on this review or the movie feel free to post them here. Off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected]. Have a great day.
Dave
Turbo Movie Review
Sigh…
This may come as something of a surprise to any regular reader but the fact is in spite of my incessant bitching about the sewage outflow that passes for Hollywood mainstream movies I am a fan of film. Movies are my escape from reality into worlds of wonder and excitement. I love theaters, and find the whole cinema experience magical. I even love popcorn.
Even bad movies have their place in my heart. A bad film gives me perspective, and occasionally takes the audience in a hilarious new direction that the writer and director never saw coming. Those films are the crown jewel of bad films, but even the mediocrely bad films can at least claim Bedazzler rhinestone status.
The point is it’s extremely rare that I come across a film that for all its merits or detractions feels like a complete waste of my time. Unfortunately Turbo has fallen onto that rare precipice. It is hard to put my finger on what makes it feel so worthless, but that is the ethereal nature of such films. 
It is easy to pick out the details that make a great film great or a bad film bad, but when faced with a truly worthless film it seems like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal is the rule of the day (Heisenberg image courtesy of the Funny T-Shirt category).
This film tanked as hard as a film can and is causing the bookkeepers at Dreamworks a huge number of problems (such as their printers can’t print pink slips fast enough). If anyone at Dreamworks is still puzzled by that failure in spite of a massive marketing campaign I have a few thoughts that may help solve the mystery:
1. The movie is about a SNAIL THAT WINS THE INDY 500! The tragic assumptions made here is that kids really are that stupid. Kids are inexperienced and ignorant, but for the most part they tend to be pretty quick on things they understand. The idea that snails are slow and race cars are fast is a concept absorbed by kids by kindergarten age. Thinking back to my own childhood (chronologically a long time ago, but mentally shorter than most of my acquaintances would assume) I really think presented with a movie concept like that I would find it pretty stupid. I see this as a sign of secret contempt for the audience on the part of the studio.
2. The main character is a SNAIL! Look, I know the Little Mermaid opened the door for invertebrate cartoon characters, but every kid knows that snails are gross slugs with shells and leave icky trails where ever they go. As a kid I can remember going outside after a rain storm and almost throwing up after accidentally stepping on a snail. I honestly can’t think of a worse kids character than a gastropod, unless they wanted to do a film about a cute, cuddly family of parasitic worms (and honestly I think I would by one of those plushy’s for my kid before a snail).
3. Kind of tying into the last point, when a kid sees a movie he or she wants to be one of the main characters. Girls want to be Ariel and boys want to be Woody or Buzz Lightyear. If there is a kid out there who dreams of being a snail I foresee major self esteem issues in his or her future.
4. All those issues that I just listed go tenfold for the parents who have to sit through this dross. Creators of kids film sometimes forget that there are adults who are forced to watch these films with the kids and if the film is painfully stupid or gross then they are very likely to just bust out a Incredibles DVD and call it an afternoon.
I am going to stop harping on Ryan Reynolds. Two bombs back to back is tough for anyone to take, and even I get tired of clubbing baby seals after a while. Honestly there is very little you can do to hold a voice over actor responsible for a films performance. Either they are truly brilliant (Mark Hamill) or at least average. Unless he or she has some kind of speech impediment there isn’t much you can do to screw up. I keep waiting for Ryan to do something amazing to help make up for the Green Lantern, but instead I think I am just going to stop out of pity.
On the other hand with his looks and fame he can probably score with more hot chicks in a week than I will in my lifetime, and he still has a ton of money (broke again this week. Top Ramen city for me!). Suck it Ryan Reynolds!
The story. Turbo (Ryan Reynolds-R.I.P.D., Safe House, the Change Up) is a garden snail who dreams of going fast. He got the idea by watching footage of Indy racer Guy Gagne (Bill Hader-Superbad, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) on a TV in the garage next door. His brother Chet (Paul Giamatti-Saving Private Ryan, Rock of Ages, the Ides of March) advises him to keep on working in the humble tomato factory but his dreams power him on. He falls into an intake manifold and he gets injected with nitrous oxide, making him glow blue and be super fast (as well as develop a radio, headlights, backup lights, and other car paraphernalia). He gets caught by local Mexican stereotype Tito (Michael Pena-End of Watch, Shooter, 30 Minutes or Less) and entered into the snail races. He discovers his power and wins big.
Meanwhile Tito’s brother Angelo (Luis Guzman-Carlito’s Way, Boogie Nights, the Last Stand) has a taco stand (really?) that is in dire need of more customers. Tito comes up with the idea of entering Turbo into the Indy 500 based on the tried and true principal that if something is not specifically outlawed than it must be legal (for the record, the rules for vehicles entered into F1 competitions are extremely specific and exacting. Also just because something is not illegal does not make it allowed. I doubt there is a specific rule against having sex with a train car coupling but I really wouldn’t want to explain that to a judge). He cajoles the rest of the stereotypes in the crappy strip mall his brother shares into coming up with the entry fee.
Honestly, if you have a brain you know how this goes. Gagne turns out to be a secret jerk. Turbo enters the race. I am not going to spoil the film by giving away the ending but if you thought it might be interesting to see a film that highlights the concepts of a noble effort that still fails a la Rocky or the Bad News Bears prepare to be disappointed.
I don’t do stars and black holes for kids movies but instead judge it by the kids in the audience. Unfortunately the theater I saw it in was kind of a ghost town with not a kid in sight so I am going to have to channel my inner child and say that I thought the film was visually stimulating enough for a toddler but otherwise too dumb for anyone old enough to speak in sentences. A kid might enjoy this film but it will not stand out as a cherished childhood memory. Parents bringing kids to this film should pack extra gauze for when their brains start dribbling out their ears.
Thanks for reading. I’m headed to Las Vegas Tuesday morning and while out there will try to see and review Elysium, but really won’t have a lot of time. If you are going to the Las Vegas Star Trek Convention please stop by my t-shirt booth and say hi (6’5″, dark hair, goatee, strong dislike of the JJ Abrams Trek films). If you don’t feel like telling me what kind of an idiot I am to my face feel free to post comments here regarding this film or my review. Off topic questions or suggestions can be sent to [email protected], and you can always follow me on Twitter for the 2-4 Tweets I do per week (I suck at social media). Talk to you soon.
Dave
2 Guns Movie Review
Huh?
That’s pretty much what I was saying through most of this film. “Huh? The US military is involved in stealing money from drug cartels inside our borders?” “Huh? The CIA feels comfortable running around killing and torturing Americans inside the US (for the record the CIA’s remit is specifically operations outside of the US borders but a pertinent fact such as that would require like at least 30 seconds worth of research. Google doesn’t type questions in itself).” This wasn’t a movie about lots of little plot holes. This was a movie about a few massive, huge plot holes that made the entire film seem dumb and worthless.
I see this as symptomatic of the lowering of standards for movie writing. It’s like if you are building houses out of bricks and only use the highest quality materials, but once in a while a brick made out of dried cow dung sneaks in. At first you worry about lowering the quality of the house but you soon realize that you make the same amount of money off houses with a few crap brinks in it as you do with a complete brick home, and you figure out that dried cow dung bricks are both easier and cheaper to use so you start increasing the ratio of excrement to bricks leading us to the inevitable conclusion: a complete bulls@&$ house.
For those of you slow on the uptake or were sick on the day they did analogies in school the dung bricks are the plot holes in a movie. Never let it be said that I am not clear in my writing.
(Actually this is my pleasant, relatively naive theory. My darker theory is that Hollywood has done market research and somehow figured out the you, the mouth breathing audience, feels some kind of pleasant sense of self worth every time you spot a plot hole in a script and now they are stuffing them in on purpose in order to appeal to the general population. If this is true than we have no one to blame than yourself and I secretly hate you all for it.)
The other ugly trend I am noticing is how these days every modern film villain inevitably has to be a rogue American military or spy element. The reason for this is clear: if Hollywood is going to maximize its profits (the number one goal of every filmmaker in the world. Creative vision and artistic integrity? File those with petticoats in the list of things relevant today) they need to appeal to the foreign markets, and the only villain countries like China find acceptable is Americans. Of course, we can’t have America portrayed as the villain (you know, pre-emtively invade a country looking for non-existant WMD and then have the companies that supported the President make billions exploiting it) so the only choice is left is crazy or greedy Americans (or countries that don’t actually watch our films. Helloooo, North Korea!)
I have traveled around and enjoy meeting people from other countries, but as movie goers they are a plague of locusts so thick that they have clogged up all the breathing holes in Hollywood and cut of oxygen to the studios brains. Can’t you find some kind of local entertainment to occupy yourselves with and let us go back to making movies that don’t have to be 90% visual and specifically don’t suck? (yes, there are older movies that sucked but at least they never had a multi million dollar marketing campaign pushing them, unless you count Godzilla 1999).
Anyway, 2 Guns. I don’t think this movie is really going to be seen by a lot of people so SPOILER ALERT. Bobby Trench (Denzel Washington-Training Day, Flight, Man on Fire) and Michael “Stig” Stigman (Mark Wahlberg-Pain & Gain, Ted, Broken City) are two criminals casing out a bank robbery. There is a flashback to they dealing with a Mexican drug cartel and not getting the cocaine they wanted. Instead they opt to rob a bank that the cartel uses to store $2-3 million.
At that point we learn that both of them are agents of some kind or another. Trench is a DEA agent and Stig works for Navel Intelligence (??? The list of issues with this is staggeringly long. The Navy does not work on drug trafficking, does not have intelligence operations inside the US, does not rob banks, does not kill DEA agents, and pretty much does not let commanders run around doing whatever they feel like. During the course of the movie you do not see the ocean once. It all takes place in a desert, pretty much making it the one place the Navy has no reason to visit. In fact, this is where you would go to get away from the Navy). Trench is trying to bust the drug Cartel and Stig’s commander wants them to rob the bank in order to use the money to fund other operations (??? Jeez). Trench is helped by his DEA controller Deb (Paula Patton-Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Deja Vu, Precious) and Stig by his a-hole commander Quince (James Marsden-X-Men, Superman Returns, X-Men First Class).
They are going to go through with the robbery but Trench wants the DEA to bust them. The DEA doesn’t show up for mysterious reasons and the two get away with all the money. They double cross each other and Stig gets away after realizing Trench was DEA. Quince gets pissed off because Stig did not obey his order and kill Trench and tries to kill Stig.
At that point the best character in the film shows up in the form of CIA Agent Earl (the great Bill Paxton-Weird Science, Aliens, Titanic. Alien image courtesy of the Sci Fi T shirt collection). Turns out there was a lot more money in that back and it all belonged to the CIA as a slush fund they collect by delivering drugs for the cartels (???). His character was comically over the top but Bill played it so well that you can’t help but love him. He pretty much stole every scene. Anyway, he’s pissed about his money and starts torturing and killing people to get it back. The story gets a little convoluted at that point. Earl blackmails Trench into helping him recover the money. Stig want to clear his name. The local cartel kingpin gets involved, certain people are betrayed, and like all modern movies it all boils down to a multi-bad guy gun fight at the end where Stig shoots down a helicopter with a pistol.
The stars.
I thought Bill Paxton was awesome. One star. I am a Denzel Washington fan, and enjoyed Mark Wahlberg as well. One star. The action was decent once it got started. One star. Nice little nude scene in the first 1/3rd of the film. One star. The movie was cool with being rated R and never felt like they either ramped anything back or injected anything in just to cater to the MPAA. One star. Pacing was decent, and they at least made an attempt to have a fairly complicated plot. One star. Total: six stars.
The black holes.
The whole premise was a massive plot hole that sucked the rest of the film into it’s event horizon. One black hole. All the other plot holes did not help. One black hole. As much as I enjoy Denzel Washington I look forward to the movie where he does not just play his Training Day character. One black hole. The opportunity to make the plot twists extra cool was missed on several occasions as they did not even try to keep the secrets. One black hole. The film suffered from a lack of a tone. At first it was supposed to be a buddy comedy action film, then it turned into a dark crime film where people get executed, and in the last fifteen minutes turned into a different kind of buddy comedy action film. Two much gear shifting burns out the clutch in my brain. One black hole. Total: five black holes.
A grand total of one star, which puts this film firmly in the “Meh” category. The potential for greatness was present but missed like my high school guidance councilor telling me I should become a farmer. Worth seeing if you are bored and just want to be mindless entertained with the emphasis on “-less”. The plot seems complicated enough but if you try to suss it out you will just realize it’s all pretty dumb. Date movie? Another “meh”. Nothing here will lower her inhibitions but at the same nothing should increase them, unless she has a thing for smooth ruggedly handsome black guys in which case bail. Bathroom break? Nothing jumps out at me. Maybe the scene where the kingpin has the guys tied up with the bull. You’ll know it.
Thanks for reading. More coming soon, although I leave Tuesday for Las Vegas and will unfortunately be there at the Star Trek Show when Elsyium comes out. Talk about ironic. I have been waiting for that movie for a while (on a side note, if you work for the studio and can get me an advanced screening please contact me. I tend to be more kindly disposed towards films I don’t have to pay for and/or see in advance, I swear). Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Comments on this review or the movie you can leave here. Off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
The Wolverine 3D Movie Review
Better than I expected.
Trailers are a problematic phenomenon in that they either give you the entirety of the film in 30 seconds or leave you wondering what the hell the movie is about. This is an issue I deal with pretty regularly and have come to grips with. The real issue I have with trailers is when I see them over and over again for weeks prior to the film I tend to show up with a preconceived notion about how good or bad the film is.
The best case scenario is one in which the movie more or less matches the quality implied by the trailer. In less optimal situations the people responsible for creating the trailers are really good at their job and like a pedophile luring small children into their vans with candy tend to make the film look way better than the actual reality of the movie going experience. Depending on degree this is the equivalent of going on a date with a hot girl only to find out she just broke up with her boyfriend and was only looking for someone to share the excruciating details of what a jerk he was for hours on end before telling you that she is going to switch to women and besides she thought you were gay anyway (no personal experience used there. I swear).
Once in a while you get the other extreme, where the people responsible for the trailer obviously never bothered to actually watch the film and have been on the hot new “Lead Paint Chip Diet” for the last 35 years. In this case the trailer manages to hang suck all over the film like a legless dog trying to mark its territory. Seeing this film is the equivalent of every porn movie ever written where a guy goes in to do something lame or horrible (root canal, fix a clogged toilet, tax audit) only to find the dentist, homeowner, or bookkeeper is a hot girl who just broke up with her boyfriend and wants to sex up the first Y chromosome she stumbles across in revenge (definitely not delving into personal experience there, damn the luck).
Not to say that the trailers for The Wolverine made the film look bad. Just that it laid the groundwork for some definite suck potential. The idea that a guy with super powers sees it as a curse and wants to lose it is about as dumb as the idea that vampires are kindly sizzle chested man/boys who sparkle in daylight. The trailers managed to inject that idea into my perception of the film with a fire hose, making me secretly dread this movie.
The movie doesn’t actually take that direct approach (again implying that the trailer makers didn’t actually see the film) and instead came through with a decent comic book style film with some pretty cool action and a ton of Hugh Jackman shirtless for those of you into men. That’s not to say this was a great or even good film, 
unless you are comparing it to X-Men Origins Wolverine in which case this movie is the deep fried bacon sushi of film (Deep Fried image courtesy of the Cheap T Shirt category). The film had it’s weaknesses which I will get in to shortly, but overall was an exciting, quality experience.
I will say there were a number of plot holes and logical failure that managed to clog up my enjoyment pipeline a few times. It seems Hollywood feels plot holes are like ants at a picnic; unless you go to exorbitant lengths (in other words, put some effort into your writing) you are going to get them, so let’s just add enough explosions and action to make the cake so big and appealing that the audience doesn’t mind eating a few bugs with the frosting.
This film also suffered immensely under the crushing weight of the PG-13 rating. I know that all the X-Men have gone for this rating, but the fact is Wolverine is in the comic world a brutal, bloody figure and every fight scene felt like a campfire with a wet blanket thrown over it. I’m not going to start a campaign for an R rated Marvel film (Punisher War Zone was rated R and sucked at the box office. I, however, liked it a lot as it stayed true to the character. Frank Castle isn’t the Punisher if he is not punching someone’s eyeball out) but I will say that this film would have made for a better viewing were it not for the need to cater to the freaking kiddie winks (does Hollywood really thing an R rating will keep kids from seeing this film?).
Anyway, the story (lots of spoilers incoming, so SPOILER ALERT). Logan (Hugh Jackman-the Prestige, Z-Men, Les Misérables) is living in a cave in Canada. He is haunted by the death of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen-Golden Eye, X-Men, Taken 2) and has frequent nightmares about her. He also dreams of being at Nagasaki when the bomb went off and saving the life of a young Japanese soldier Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi-the Life Aquatic, Push, the Way Back). He goes into town and mixes it up with some local color before being picked up by a hot chick super ninja Yukio (Rila Fukushima-first real acting role. Hope to see her on more). She tells him that Yoshida wants to see him and thank him before dying.
They fly to Japan where Yoshida is dying, attended by hot blond endocrinologist Viper (not her doctor name, I guess, but that’s how she’s credited. Svetlana Khodchenkova-Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Mala Moskwa, Blagoslovite Zhenshchinu) and his hot daughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto-no other film credits. She is a Japanese super model and it’s easy to see why). Yoshido tells Logan he can “gift” him with mortality and wants his healing properties for himself. Apparently you can’t just copy super powers they have to be transferred. Logan refuses and the next day Yoshido dies.
His son Shingen (Hiroyuki Sanada-the Last Samurai, Twilight Samurai, Rush Hour 3) wants control of the company but Yoshida has left it to Mariko. Logan goes to the funeral where he fights a bunch of Yakuza and rescues Mariko. They flee but are pursued by Viper, the police, the Yakuza, and some ninja guy who used to be childhood friends with Mariko (Will Yun Lee-Total Recall, Die Another Day, Electra). At that point it is a convoluted James Bond plot. Viper is a mutant and wants Logans DNA or something. Shingen wants Mariko dead so he can have the company. Honestly it bogs down pretty heavily until the big “reveal” at the end (which I managed to predict about 40 minutes into the film. Me so smrat!).
The stars.
Comic book movie. Two stars. I am a huge Wolverine fan, and love Hugh Jackman as Logan. He really nailed it again. Two stars. Action was good, especially the bullet train scene. One star. With one exception I liked all the supporting characters and their portrayal by the assorted actors, especially Yukio. Two stars. Camera work and CGI were for the most part excellent. One star. Pacing and editing were dead on. 126 minutes that felt like exactly the right amount. One star. Overall a fun time watching. Two stars. Total: twelve stars.
The black holes.
The villain Viper was the weakest character in the film by a lot. I just couldn’t buy her as anything serious at all, and she barely had the level of menace I normally feel for any hot woman (which is considerable, but not in the same way you want a villain to be menacing). One black hole. While none of the plot holes were gargantuan, they were frequent and annoying. One black hole. I had a hard time discerning the motivation for any of the characters other than Logan to do anything at all. Most of the characters were supposed to be loyal to Yoshida but changed sides so frequently I felt like I needed a score card. One black hole. For all the hot Hugh Jackman shots (he spent a lot of time with his shirt off or in a tight wife beater) there wasn’t much eye candy for the suffering straight men and lesbian women in the audience. The women spent most of the movie dressed like it was the 1800’s and exposing an ankle was enough to send men into a sex frenzy. One black hole. Of all the films I have reviewed this one probably compromised it’s action the most in order to get that precious PG-13 rating. The action felt really unfulfilling. Two black holes. Total: six black holes.
A grand total of six stars. Very good, and like I said better than I expected based on the trailers and last film. I just feel like with a little more effort this could have been a classic X-Men movie instead of just another lead up to the next blockbuster. Worth seeing, and worth spending money for a big screen. Date movie? Hugh Jackman will get any woman’s heart beating. However if your own midriff bears a stronger resemblance to a keg than a six pack you might suffer in comparison. Approach with caution. Bathroom break? Hmm. The quality of the editing doesn’t really leave a lot of dross lying around. There is a love scene in the last half that could be missed, especially given that the you somehow manage to see less of Tao Okamoto than you do when she is fully clothed. Also most of the dream sequences with Jean Grey are kind of repetitive. You could skip one pretty easily.
Thanks for reading. More to see this week. Now that I am back from all my trips I want to get caught up on all the films out there. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. If you have comments on this film or my review feel free to post them here. Off topic questions or suggestions can be sent to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
R.I.P.D. Movie Review
Rest in Peace Division? I certainly found the parts I dozed off in restful.
I consider this review a testament to how much I love you, my beloved readers, and writing these blogs. You see, I spent all last week at Comic Con (awesome, BTW. I’ll try to write up something on it later this week) and just arrived back home yesterday afternoon to unload the hundreds of nerd t shirts I brought down there for the show 
(if you are curious, this Havard Law shirt was pretty much the best seller we had down there) and pack up all the orders that piled up while we were in geek heaven. Then, rather than rest, eat, or take a much needed shower I opted to go see a crap movie in order to give you all something to read this night.
Of course, I had a sneaking suspicion that there would not be many people in the audience to be offended by my stench (I like to think of it as a manly musk) and as it turns out, I was right.
It looks like the make up, facial hair, clothing, and personality worn by Jeff Bridges in the movie True Grit have become permanently attached to his body and soul as that now appears to be the only role he can perform. This film is a clear rip(d. Haw!) off of Men in Black and Ghostbusters with a bad buddy cop overview involving Rooster Colburn and Martin Riggs. The thing with rip offs and fusion films is they can be quite good if you take the cool, functional parts and meld them into a decent story and good characters. Classics are classics for a reason.
Unfortunately this film did none of those things. I often talk about Frankenstein movies where the parts of other dead films are sewn together and animated with electricity into something that moves like a live movie and occasionally does something really amazing. If this film were the work of Dr. Frankenstein however it looks like he was getting over a long crystal meth bender and just stuck all the dead movie parts into a meat grinder in order to form them into a giant man shaped meatball that he stuffed into the nearest microwave and went to go pass out. The only thing this film is good for is decay and collecting maggots.
I should probably find something good to say before Universal sends a hit man after me. I guess the reason Jeff Bridges keeps playing Rooster Cogburn is he is a cool and interesting character, and this movie milks that for as much as it is worth. This film does nothing to alleviate the burning hatred I feel for Ryan Reynolds for his butchering the Green Lantern, at least it did nothing to bury the needle further. At least he wasn’t playing his odious Van Wilder character (again), and he and Bridges managed to generate a little chemistry together. I have always had a weird thing for Mary-Louise Parker, and her looking like an uptight school principal was kind of lighting my fuse the whole time (take that for what you will).
The story is of Nick (Ryan Reynolds-the Green Lantern, Safe House, the Change-Up), a Boston PD officer. He and his partner Hayes (Kevin Bacon-Sleepers, Mystic River, X-Men First Class) stole some gold in a drug bust. Nick feels guilty and is going to turn his share in. Hayes opts to shoot him in the face during a bust.
Nick flies up to some ill defined afterlife in the sky (Heaven? Why do parts of of look decidedly Hell-ish? Reminds me of the last trip I took to New Jersey) but at the last minute gets pulled into an office with Proctor (Mary-Louise Parker-Weeds, the West Wing, Red), one of the heads of the Rest In Peace Department. They go out and capture spirits who have skipped out of judgement (no clue how this is done) and are hiding among humans. She offers him a job and he takes it.
He then partners up with Roy (Jeff Bridges-True Grit, the Big Lebowski, Iron Man), a cantankerous old West guy who fell out of the stereotype tree and hit every branch. They go out looking for bad Deado’s using Indian food and assorted spices. Meanwhile Nick is obsessed with his living ex wife Julia (Dinner for Schmucks, We Bought a Zoo, the Devil Wears Prada) but to the living he appears as a creepy old Asian man (James Hong-Blade Runner, Big Trouble in Little China, Mulan).
Roy’s physical appearance is that of a super hot blond chick (Marisa Miller-Victoria Secret, Entourage, just generally looking hot I guess). Trust me when I say the incessant jokes that situation raises gets old so fast I think it bent time.
Anyway, the two come across some gold similar to what Nick stole and it leads them to a plan to conquer the world or something. Nick deals with his own death and the loss of his wife while Roy orneries things up.
The stars.
I guess I like Jeff Bridges and his Rooster character. I just hope he doesn’t purposely typecast himself. One star. Umm. I guess I liked Mary-Louise Parker and her character. One star. Total: Two stars.
The black holes.
Bad rip off of several different movies. Two black holes. The rules of being dead were never really defined. They don’t have any sense of taste but they do feel? Do live humans see them as monsters when they get released? How does one avoid being sucked up into the sky? Can dead people kill live ones? The questions keep on coming. I suspect these questions don’t really occur to someone who has read the comic book, but to me they were like cinder blocks tied to my body for a swimming lesson. Two black holes. The whole structure of the RIPD is never defined, and nothing was done to establish it. One black hole. The story was lame, predictable, and meandered back and forth like watching back to back Scooby Doo episodes. One black hole. The whole thing felt really unfinished, especially the characters and their development. The entire film felt rushed. One black hole. Pacing was weak. It definitely dragged pointlessly at points. 96 minutes that felt like three hours. One black hole. I can’t for the life of me figure out what the main bad guy hoped to accomplish. One black hole. Once it was established that the main characters were effectively indestructible the action got painfully boring. I literally was struggling to stay awake. The curse of the PG-13 gremlin did not help. One black hole. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this, but the CGI was like 10 years ago. They tried to speed up the action in order to hide that fact that we were seeing cartoons on the screen, but there wasn’t much hiding it. One black hole. Total: eleven black holes.
A grand total of nine black holes. Not really worth spending money on IMO. If you are bored on a Tuesday night and have a box of wine to kill this will help fill up the time. Date movie? Hell no. Odds are you shouldn’t see it solo. Bathroom break? Given that Jeff Bridges was probably the most entertaining part of the film ironically you can easily miss any of the action scenes without hurting your viewing experience. However, since I expect most of you to see this at home just hit the pause button (or fast forward, if you know what I mean).
Thanks for reading. I am on a business trip right now but will try to see something else this week. I also will try to post something on Comic Con. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Post any comments on this film or my review here. Off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
