Mirror Mirror Review
Not as funny as I had hoped it would be.
I try hard to not get sucked into the hype surrounding the trailers for upcoming movies. I know that often they can simply be the six best moments in the entirety of the film (and in some cases, actually really funny scenes that got cut from the final production). In fact, I frequently find that most trailers either oversell the film or, in many tragic cases, undersell them. The trailers for the Grey had me convinced it was going to be a fairly rote survival movie, and when I saw it I was kind of blown away by how good it was.
So the trailers for Mirror Mirror had me thinking it was going to be a dopey story but that Julia Roberts, whom I think is great, would carry the film by being the bitterly sarcastic megalomaniac character that I love. The few scenes they showed definitely seemed to imply it. However, I probably should have taken a look at the credits and realized that directory Tarsem Singh was also the creator of crime-against-storytelling the Immortals. He also did the Cell, which I always liked, but still he is not known for his story delivery.
What he is known for is amazing visuals, and that definitely shows here. Be it a CGI castle in a cliff, the amazing dresses Julia Roberts wears throughout, or even something as simple as a winter forest every scene screams amazing eye candy, which I did enjoy a lot. The action was farcical but fun, and every shot was done with loving care.
That’s the part that frustrates me about this film. All the pieces of a great, funny film are present. Great camera work. Awesome costume design. Good, creative CGI. Good source material. I thought Julia Roberts did an admirable job as the queen, and her interactions with her toady yes man Brighton (Nathan Lane-The Lion King, Bird Cage, the Producers) were easily the funniest parts of the film. Lily Collins (the Blind Side, Priest, Abduction) managed to be more than a pretty face, and leading man Armie Hammer seemed to catch onto what this movie was supposed to be about and seemed really into the spirit of it. The Seven Dwarfs (Jordan Prentice, Mark Povinelli, Joe Gnoffo, Danny Woodburn, Sebastian Saraceno, Martin Klebba, and Ronald Lee Clark) had the potential to be a real comedy asset, although they got sidetracked into being more the Seven Samurai and less the Three Stooges. It looked like you could really craft something great out of all these parts.
However, like a building made of all the best bricks money can buy but put together with a mix of sawdust, chewing gum, and peanut butter the quality parts of this film never really stick together and fall apart by the end. The story was plagued by continuity problems that bugged the hell out of me. All the characters except the queen lacked any kind of clear motivation to do any of the things they do. The comedy kept shifting tone from acerbic dry humor to goofy kiddy humor (think You Can’t do that on Television as performed by adults) with smatterings of slapstick, none of which really worked off each other and all kind of died on the vine. While the dialog between the Queen and Brighton was good, the rest of it lacked any real impact and the the quick camera work, more apropos for an action scene, robbed a lot of it of any impetuous. There was a dark undertone in the form of the queen really being some kind of Baba Yaga style witch (or at least her alter ego was) that kind of detracted from the lighthearted nature of the rest of the scenes, but that undertone itself was robbed of any gravitas by the lighthearted parts. It was a snake eating its own tail.
Anyway, the story is about as basic as possible. Snow White (Lily Collins) is under the care of the evil(ish) Queen (Julia Roberts) after her father mysteriously disappears in the forest shortly after marrying the queen. The queen is taxing the hell out of the peasants to pay for her Paris Hilton-esque lifestyle while claiming it is all for defense against a mysterious man eating beast in the forest. Snow White goes out in the world to observe what is going on (cleverly disguised as a commoner in her solid gold robe) and discovers the prince and his valet tied up after being robbed by the seven dwarfs (who use expanding stilts that bugged me at first but I got to like by the end). They experience fairy tale love at first sight but pass on. The prince ends up at a ball at the palace where the queen plans to entice him and marry him for his money. Snow White crashes the party and they meet again. The queen sends her to the forest to be killed with Brighton, but he balks and she ends up with the dwarfs.
If your experience with Hollywood and fairy tales hasn’t let you know how this story is going to go from here email me and let me know what kind of Skinner box you were raised in. The Dwarfs aid Snow in getting the prince back. A kiss to break a magic spell in involved. No surprises arise to derail the train before it’s last stop at Mundania.
The stars. Great visual movie. One star. Costuming was really, really good. One star. For the most part acting was well done across the board. One star. Some funny moments, and some of the dialog worth a chuckle. One star. Julia Roberts and Lily Collins are both easy on the eyes. One star. Total: four stars.
The black holes. Pacing/continuity issues that bugged me (one example might be a training montage that turned Snow White from a fairy princess into a deadly warrior in like an afternoon of elapsed movie time). One black hole. Overall not as funny as I think it should have been. One black hole. Story felt disjointed, and lacked a real tone. One black hole. Total: three black holes.
One star total. If any of you have read any of my other reviews you should be able to tell when I am ambivalent about a film by the relatively low numbers of either stars or black holes I give it. Is it worth seeing? Sure, if you just want something that won’t strain your brain and might impress you with some great dresses or scenery. If you are a Julia Roberts fan you might very well enjoy it. Is it a must see? No, not really. You won’t walk away from this film with any kind of enrichment, and in six months it’ll be one of the many “Oh, I saw that” films. However, if are are going to see it you might well benefit from a big screen for the imagery, so consider going to a theater.
Thanks for reading. I am seeing the Raid: Redemption tonight. It is an Indonesian movie and looks freaking amazing. I am a huge martial arts film fan and think this could be awesome. Look for my review on it tomorrow (Invisible Fist image courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category). Talk to you all soon.
Dave
Wrath of the Titans Review in 3D
Sometimes a picture really is worth 1000 words.
So last night I went and saw this snoozefest. Paying full pop on cruddy movies in 3D galls, but when a movie is obviously trying to make it’s money in CGI and special effects rather than story, dialog, action, acting, or any of those other pesky aspects of movies the so called audience is looking for I feel it only fair that I watch it in whatever media the creator intended it to be seen. That being said, there aren’t a lot of things on this planet that would have convinced me to spend another $5 to see it on IMAX.
Clash of the Titans came out before I was fully into the whole movie review thing and so I managed to miss it. From what I have heard and read I didn’t miss much. Is it fair to review a sequel without having seen the first one? In once sense no, but in the sense that unless the first movie had hypnotic subliminal codes embedded that makes the audience more receptive to blurry CGI and camera work, plot holes the size of a medium Midwestern town, and acting so phoned in I kept mistaking the film for an extended Sprint commercial than I don’t think any aspect of the first movie would have increased anything other than my dread at having to sit through this one.
This movie will seem familiar to a lot of people, and that’s because watching it is like watching someone else play God of War badly. Pretty much every visual, character, and bad guy was lifted from that game, and if there is one thing that bores people it’s watching someone else killing stuff on a computer. The game-like status of the film carries through every aspect of the 99 minutes, except that I have seen my share of better CGI, story, and acting from any number of good video games (God of War image courtesy of the Video Game T Shirts).
One area where the movie diverges significantly from its video game forefather is in the action. Everything is rushed, blurry, and way too close while at the same time horrible sanitized by the PG-13 rating. I suppose this is actually a good move, as the only audience members who will enjoy this film are probably kids, but it made everything seem tame and drained whatever tension that had been generated.
The story is of Perseus (Sam Worthington-Avatar, Man on a Ledge, the Debt) a few years after he beats the Krakon. For reasons really unexplored he has opted to not life like a half god and instead wants to be a fisherman with is son Helius (John Bell-a Shine of Rainbows, Transit, Life of Riley). He gets a visit from his father Zeus (Liam Neeson-Taken, Phantom Menace, the Grey) who warns him that the Titans are breaking out of Tartarus and will wreak havoc on the world. He says that since humans are no longer worshiping the gods (?) they are losing power and Chronos will eventually break out and destroy the world. Perseus opts to not help, because he and his son don’t live on the world about to be destroyed or something. Titans start showing up in all their mediocre CGI glory. Persues somehow kills the first one (I’m honestly not sure how. None of the action seemed designed to give any kind of information about what was happening to the audience) and goes on a quest to talk to the father he just blew off a few hours ago.
Anyway, Pegasus shows up, looking pretty mediocre in the CGI department too. If it weren’t black I might have mistaken it for the claymation Pegasus from the original Clash. He hooks up with Queen Andromoda (Rosamund Pike-Die Another Day, the Big Year, Johnny English Reborn) who has just gotten back from Disposable Henchmen-R-Us where they were having a massive clearance sale. Meanwhile Hades (Ralph Fiennes-Voldemort from Harry Potter, the Hurt Locker, Nanny McPhee Returns) and Ares (Édgar Ramírez-Vantage Point, the Bourne Ultimatum, El Don) have betrayed Zeus and Poseidon (Danny Huston-X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the Aviator, Children of Men) and are helping Chronos in return for not being killed or something.
I don’t really want to go on with this story recap, because to be honest I was really starting to check out. They go on a dumb quest with the help of one of Poseidons sons who was supposed to add some comic relief or something. They have to free Zues before Chronos sucks his power dry. Stuff gets blown up, it is strongly implied in a PG-13 manner that people get killed, and more mediocre CGI is rolled out.
The stars. I don’t know. I guess I kind of liked seeing Voldemort again, and I always appreciate Liam Neeson. That’s two stars.
The black holes. Big plot holes. One black hole. I really disliked the way the camera work was done. One black hole. Mediocre CGI. One black hole. Story was dumb, and lifted from a video game without giving the game credit. Two stars. Action that did nothing to hole my interest. One black hole. The curse of a violent movie with a PG-13 rating. One black hole. Uninspired acting all around. One black hole. Little to no development for most of the characters, and what little there was did nothing to make me sympathetic to Perseus. His entire motivation seemed to boil down to “He has a son”. One black hole. Taking a very liberal hand with the mythology of Perseus in order to make a bad movie (in mythology Perseus never fought the Minotaur. Of course none of the gods ever died either. The Greeks knew a thing or two about the definition of immortality). One black hole. The ultimate bad guy Chronos suffered from the same problem as the gigantic gas cloud from the Green Lantern in that he was more like a force of nature than something evil, resulting in me never caring about him. One black hole. This was another movie where no one could decide what kind of accent ancient Greeks would have when speaking English so everyone just rolled with whatever they had. I heard Australian, English, and American. One black hole. I know this is both super nerdy and nit picky, but I am really bothered by the use of counterweight trebuchets by the ancient Greeks. This war machine was not invented until the 12th century and primarily used in France. One black hole for tweaking my historical inaccuracy nerve. And finally, the bottom line is I was bored through most of this film. Pacing didn’t so much as suck as actively enhance the fact that the action was dull and the interstitial scenes connecting them even duller. Watching this movie was like driving across West Texas. One black hole. Total: fourteen black holes.
A grand total of twelve black holes. Pretty miserable. The film feels like they were just going through the motions and not really trying too hard, like a married couple that wants to get divorced but is waiting for the kids to graduate high school. Should you see it? Probably not, unless you are easily amused. With enough alcohol or acid you might enjoy this just for the flashy blurry stuff on the screen. Date movie? Probably not. If a super nerd such as I had to struggle to stay awake your date will be dozing off in the first 20 minutes. On the other hand, if you are determined to see it watch it on a big screen, as the shots will probably suck a lot more on a TV. Do you have a $1 Theater nearby? Probably a decent choice there.
Thanks for reading. More movies out this weekend, so maybe I can wash this one out of my mouth with Mirrror Mirror, which I think looks funny. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu, or email me with questions or comments at [email protected]. Feel free to post comments about this movie here if you like. As long as you keep it clean and aren’t just trying to spam this blog for links I will approve them. Talk to you soon.
Dave
The Arriviste Movie Review
Newcomer filmmaker Pascal Santschi contacted me and asked me to watch and review his very independent film, the Arriviste. I am a big fan of indy films and am of course happy to view a screener, so was glad to oblige.
I think the best word to describe this film is Ambitious, with a capital A. It is obviously a labor of love, with Mr. Santschi more or less doing all the writing, directing, shooting, scoring, editing, and now marketing of the film. It puts the “ow” in low budget, but wears the label proudly as a badge of honor. It is the lowest budget film ever produced on 35mm at $9,500, and to be honest I have seen worse films done with literally 2,000 times the budget.
That being said, it definitely suffers from all the gremlins that plague a low budget film; poor shot quality, framing issues, limited scene location, a lack of action or believable special effects, mediocre sound quality, homemade score, poor lighting in most scenes, and shaky camera work. The film is shot in NYC, yet somehow fails to carry the location across. It could have been shot in any urban city in America. However, due to the nature of the budget and my own love of indie films I am going to suspend my usual star/black hole rating system, as the technical issues alone would rack up an unfair amount black holes rapidly. I would like to give Pascal props for pulling off a completely guerilla shooting production, something that hearkens me back to my days in art school.
The film looks, sounds, and feels like an early 70’s American or late 70’s French hard boiled crime drama. It follows young Nick, a troubled guy on probation, looking for the lost corpse of his dead older brother William. William was blackmailing some people, and they seem to believe Nick has it. William also had a generous life insurance policy which Nick is supposed to be the beneficiary of, but he can’t collect it until he proves his brother is dead (hence the need to find the corpse). There is another guy trying to buy out the policy from Nick, the people looking for Williams information, and a reporter trying to get the details in order to sell his true crime novel. A nurse shows up as the only female character and has her own agenda as well. 
To be perfectly blunt for most of the movie I really thought the plot was a little too complex and convoluted for my soft brain, but at the end the script pulls out a couple of twists that tie things up nicely in a manner I found pleasing (I Thought the Wizard Promise You a Brain image courtesy of the Cheap T Shirt category).
Like I said, I won’t get into my normal nit picky stars/black holes on this. I will say this film, while chock full of low budget and overambitious problems, had seeds of brilliance sown in as well. I thought the editing was excellent. The acting ran hot and cold, but then out of nowhere a scene that was exceptionally well acted would appear. There were all kinds of camera and shot problems, but then a shot would come that was exceptionally well done.
So was this film good or not? If you try to compare it to most current films with a budget you might not think so. Odds are you will find the grainy film quality difficult to enjoy. However, if you take it for what I see it as-a dedicated attempt at a guy to break into film making without having to do all the creativity crushing menial bull crap that Hollywood uses to make sure everyone continues to toe the line and keep producing rote garbage like any of the Transformers movies-than it is absolutely amazing. Should you try to see this movie? If you are a fan of rote garbage and think movies are somehow improved if you can see them in 3D probably not. If you have an appreciation for the different, enjoy independent films, are now or have ever studied film seriously, or just want a glimpse into the heart of a true artist and believer, absolutely. When you see a movie this raw and bare bones you can actually perceive the movie making process, and I find that refreshing.
Thanks for reading, and thanks to Pascal Santschi for letting me see this film and review it. I honestly would like to see what he could do given a bigger than 4 figure budget, so if anyone out there is looking to support what could be a great future movie talent consider contacting him. I will go ahead and link the Arriviste Facebook Page here. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu or email me with comments, suggestions, or invitations to screen your films at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Friends With Kids Review
It’s nice to see a movie celebrating all the worst life decisions a couple can make.
So I was feeling kind of melancholy last night when my router crashed, cutting off most of my available media and leaving me with not a lot to do. I could have worked on my commercial site, but was kind of done. This might have been a good chance to hang out with a girlfriend or something, but as I have stated ad nauseum I am miserably and soul crushingly single. So what will help with all these? Probably not a rom com (in fact, in retrospect I can state that watching a rom com by yourself in a huge theater when you are desperately lonely is possibly the worst solution available. It’s like treating heartburn with acid in hopes of burning out the nerve endings in your digestive tract. Somehow I see the Unibomber starting out like this) but that was pretty much all I had to work with (plus a free movie ticket) so I went for it.
Like most R rated comedies these days it was neither bad nor good. It cruised the middle lane of the mediocrity highway steadily for 105 minutes, then in the last two minutes ripped off the ending from When Harry Met Sally and called it a day.
Honestly it watched more like a documentary for relationship counselors than a film. Most modern films follow a three act plot process. Act 1 introduces the characters and possible problems they will have to deal with. Act 2 has the characters develop while looking for the tools to fix the problems. Act 3 resolves the problem (usually with some dramatic flourish) and delivers the characters into their new state of being.
Friends with Kids instead skips the first act, jumps right into the characters as fully developed persons, and more or less putts along at lukewarm until the end, when suddenly a single dramatic scene resolves everything forever. If drama were a bar graph this movie would be steadily at about a 3 for the entirety, with a minor spike to 5 during one dinner party and suddenly shoot up to 8 at the end.
The documentary nature of the film made a lot more sense once I learned that the film was written and directed by the star, Jennifer Westfeldt. She displays a level of self esteem issues no director not emotionally involved with the story would allow. I revise my earlier statement. This film is less like a documentary and more like a movie production of Jennifer Westfeldts personal journal.
All that being said, the film itself, like most documentaries and journals, was refreshingly honest and real. While the two main characters make a fairly long series of bad decisions they do so in a manner that anyone who has ever watched the old 
Jerry Springer show would totally understand (Jerry Springer image courtesy of the TV Show T Shirts). All the characters with two notable exceptions seemed very real and extremely well developed. Dialog was brisk and sharp, and the script overall felt very current, if you know what I mean. I was also glad to see the return of comedic team Kristin Wiig and Maya Rudolph, and was pleasantly surprised to see they could both hold up a non-comedic role admirably.
The story itself feels kind of inane. Julie Keller (Jennifer Westfeldt-Kissing Jessica Stein, Keep Your Distance, Notes from the Underbelly) and Jason Fryman (Adam Scott-the Aviator, Step Brothers, Knocked Up) are both Manhattan yuppies who have a circle of friends that is steadily being siphoned away by the obligations of kids and family. She works for some kind of non profit and is super cute with massive self esteem issues and he is a sleazy womanizer who works in advertizing. Through a seriously convoluted logical train they both decide what they need to meet “the one” is to have a kid out of wedlock. The thought is as best friends with no sexual interest in each other they wouldn’t be buried in the mire it seems their friends keep getting trapped in. If this sounds like an offensively bad idea wait until you hear how much thought they put into the child’s mental well being, which is none.
Anyway, after one of the most awkward sex scenes ever they have a super cute boy, and settle into their single parent lives. Things seem to be nigh perfect. Jason run into and dates Mary Jane (Megan Fox-Transformes, Jennifer Body, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People) who couldn’t have felt more forced into the movie if she had been a pickup truck driving through the plate glass window of a Chick-fil-A. Julie starts dating Kurt (Edward Burns-Saving Private Ryan, She’s the One, the Brothers McMullen-is it me or does he seem like he’s constantly staring out a porthole or something?), who is also super amazing and kind of fake seeming. The fact that in a film filled with well developed and real characters these two seemed kind of fake (and even more fake in comparison) kind of implies that this was a conscious decision on the part of Westfeldt to make them seem like super boyfriend/girlfriend robots, thus making the two main characters seem even more human. I certainly hope so. Otherwise it was just a bad casting decision, although I could spend 107 minutes just looking at a picture of Megan Fox (yes, I am one of those guys. Don’t hate me for having testosterone).
Things sort of come to a head at a big ski trip where on of their drunken friends Joe Hamm (Sucker Punch, Mad Men, the Town) starts asking some pointed questions that should have come up before the whole thing starts like what are you going to tell the kid, etc. Things melt down between him and his wife (Kristin Wiig-Bridesmaids, SNL) while Julie realizes she has immense feelings for Jason. At that point things come to a simmer (in a more exciting movie I might have said come to a boil, but the passion in this film at no point exceeds about a 4). Emotional drama ensues.
The stars. Excellent characters with progressive development for all of them except Mary Jane and Kurt. One star. Well acted all around. Two stars. Really decent dialog. One star. Any film where I can watch Megan Fox is a plus, and while I don’t usually go for blonds I thought Jennifer Westfeldt was super hot too. She has some amazing hair. One star. There were some funny moments I found myself laughing at. One star. Total: six stars.
The black holes. At no point in the film did I feel like the plot pulse quicken. The entire thing was like watching slightly hardened Elmers glue pour down a slide. One black hole. The other thing about Elmers glue on a slide is you can pretty easily predict where it is going, and that analogy holds up for the plot direction too. Really predictable. One black hole. While I felt the characters and decisions were real, the situation they were thrusting themselves into was ridiculous and really badly thought out. One black hole. Yet another rated R movie with no nudity worth mentioning. Also, when did rated R in a comedy turn into feces covered baby taint? Seems to be a lot of that going around lately. One black hole. Total: four black holes.
A grand total of two stars. Meh. Nothing worth rushing out to see, yet nothing preventing you from seeing it if you need to get out of the house or are hiding from someone. Overall innocuous. Nothing on the screen says see it big, so feel free to wait for video. As for my new policy of trying to identify the best place to cut out for a bathroom break, honestly anywhere in this film would work. The bland pacing and predictable nature of the plot means you should be able to infer anything you might have missed. If I had to pick a point I think you could safely miss out on the date/love scene between Julie and Kurt, which starts with them meeting at some school function and drinking punch out of plastic cups. It seemed especially worthless. Date movie? Maybe if you just started dating her. If you are in a long term relationship this might get you started on a conversation regarding kids you should be prepared to have, so only see it if you want to tread down that path.
Thanks for reading. I am going to watch that indie film tonight and review it tonight (for the record it’s called the Arriviste). Feel free to post comments here, and please follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. For specific questions or suggestions email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Can someone tell me when Mass Effect is supposed to get fun?
My best friend gave me an Xbox 360 and helped me hook it up to my entertainment system. Xbox live rocks, and he and I are having fun playing Halo Reach together (I don’t have any images from Halo Reach, but this poster for Halo 3 I have stuck in with the video game t shirts. It’s pretty cool). The game came with Mass Effect 2, and I was thinking about playing it. Another friend of mine told me to play ME1 through first because it is supposed to have this amazing story on the order of Knights of the Old Republic. This is saying a lot, because Knights has one of the best “OMG” moments in game play history in my opinion, but I figured I’d try it out and see what it is like.
I downloaded it last night and started playing this morning. After two hours I am bored stupid. I have probably spent 2/3ds of that time generating my character, watching cut scenes, grinding my way through interminable dialog sequences with every dope in the universe, trying to figure out the game interface (the in game controller guide offers a chance to change your Y axis, something I have never ever known anyone to ever do, and that’s it. No manual with a download. Besides, I’m not trying to break a government spy code. Most games are pretty intuitive and I can usually figure them all out within a few minutes. It shouldn’t be this painful) and micromanaging not just my inventory but the inventory of two other NCP morons who seem to feel the best way to protect me is to get in between my gun and the enemies. The game itself plays like I’m trying to push a car to a gas station while steering it through the open window, and aiming feels like I am trying to flick a light switch from across a room with a 30 foot PVC pipe.
I am sure that over time once I figure out all the controls, level up so I am not worthless in combat, get some decent gear upgrades, and stop caring about all the dialog and inventory crap, it could get fun (although the reason I keep getting sucked into the dialog is because I want to see this amazing story and I feel if I don’t play the RPG part of it I might miss something cool), but why would Bioware make a game that starts you off feeling like you are trying to pass a kidney stone rather than make it fun and interesting so you get sucked in and want to play it through? Most games start off easy and get harder as it progresses, but I don’t know how much harder to play they can make it without figuring out a way to electrocute me through my controller.
As for this amazing story that is supposed to surface if I can stomach about 1,000 hours of dialog boxes, during the 20th minute of trying to figure out how to level up, or if that was really an option in this game, or if it was an option at the baby level I was on, it suddenly occurred to me that if I really want to see an amazing story maybe I should go watch a movie, something I have a bit of experience at and (sort of) get paid to do if in a roundabout manner. While I have had a couple of very positive video game story experiences (KOTOR and Silent Hill, for example) for the most part a story is icing on the cake for games. If the icing is delicious but the cake itself is made of sawdust, asbestos, and dog excrement I am pretty disinclined to eat it.
I’ll probably return at some point and see if it is due to improve, or if my attitude is better, but to be honest I don’t have time for it. My time is better spent writing up reviews for bad movies. As for comments, feel free to post here but be warned that anything on the order of “You must suck at video games (and/or life) to not be able to play ME” will be promptly discarded. I am not an maniacal video gamer, but have been playing them for most of my life and like to think I am at least of average ability. If an average person cannot make this game fun than that pretty much says there is something wrong here. I am sure ME2 and 3 are better from a game play point of view, but at this moment I think I would rather go back and play a few hours of I Maed a Gam3 W1th Zom1es in it!!! Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu or email specific questions or suggestions to [email protected]. More movie stuff coming out soon. Talk to you later.
Dave
Hunger Games Movie Review
Decent movie, although it did feel a little malnourished.
Yes, I went to a midnight screening last night with 1,000,000,000,000 teenage girls. Fortunately I had some friends along with me so I didn’t feel too creepy. And no I did not read the book ahead of time, so I will be reviewing this movie solely on it’s own merits.
First off, this is the much better looking sister of the whole Twilight series. It has a lot in common with Twilight: fairly attractive teenage boys (or so the audience seemed to feel), a relatively bland looking main girl thrust into a horrific series of violence and action, a star crossed romance, and a plot that makes you want to disconnect the higher functions of your brain. However, in general the story is less lame, the acting almost borders on good instead of making you wish you were watching grade school kids performing Hamlet, the special effects didn’t feel glossed in to facilitate a dumb love story, in spite of the massive 144 minute run time pacing was great and didn’t slow down, everyone kept their shirts on, and absolutely no one sparkled in daylight. Overall a credible movie, and in spite of my grumpy old man approach I found myself entertained. (Buffy Staked Edward image courtesy of the TV Show T Shirts).
That being said, the “violence” suffered from the PG-13 demon in a big way. The writers and director (Gary Ross-Ross-Pleasantville, Seabisquit, Big) seemed to be making an effort to remain true to the book, but according to my friends who have read it failed in some really big ways. However, that effort resulted in about a million supporting characters all screaming for some kind of back story or development left dying on the vine. Honestly, either give us something or relegate them to the faceless bad guy minion category. In an effort to lighten the plot some pretty big plot holes were added in, all of which might have been better understood by the ignorant audience (in this case, me) had they spent another 15 minutes on expository back story or just a better understanding of the characters involved. The denouement (that’s fancy review speech for the ending) felt rushed and campy, both of which could have been alleviated with more story. However, if I had gotten all the movie I felt was needed this thing would have gone like four hours and I would have missed a lot taking bathroom breaks.
Speaking of bathroom breaks, a suggestion given to me by one of my 18 friends named Mike was to look for a good chance to cut out and use the restroom. I am going to suggest the beginning of the cave/soup scene. Seemed like a lot of emotional touchy/feelie stuff that did pretty much nothing to advance the plot, and it goes on for a while so you will have time to take care of most of your business.
Anyway, the movie itself. It stars Jeniffer Lawrence (X-Men First Class (young Mystique), Winters Bone, Like Crazy) as Katniss Everdeen, a young girl living in a bucolic dystopic future where everyone seems to be in serious danger of starvation and she has to support her family by hunting with a bow. She and her 12 year old sister Primrose (Willow Shields-Beyond the Blackboard, In Plain Sight) are entered into the drawing for the Hunger Games, some kind of Battle Royale contest that happens every year where kids from the 12 districts battle to the death in punishment for some kind of rebellion or something (remember all that missing development I mentioned?). Primrose gets selected, but Katniss volunteers in her place to save her life. The other guy from her district is Peeta (Josh Hutcherson-Journey to the Center of the Earth, American Splendor, the Kids are All Right), a guy that she has some kind of ill defined previous relationship with (I’m serious here. He fed her bread or something, but did she hate him or love him? He later reveals he had feeling for her, but can someone tell me what the hell was going on between them before the games? Oh, yeah. Missing story development). He is supposed to be the charismatic one, which will serve him later as the sadistic bastards in charge of this crime against humanity opt to support the kids with cans of soup or whatnot. Anyway, the two of them and the other 22 tributes are put through a PR blitz and training/evaluation montage that, like a lot of this film, felt incomplete. There we are sort of introduced to some of the other contestants, but these supporting characters are introduced to us in the most cursory and insubstantial manner. It was like trying to grow a plant but the only source of light is a tiny pinhole (the story and characters being the plant and the light being character development). The biggest victim of this is the antagonist Cato (Alexander Ludwig-Escape to Witch Mountain, a Little Thing Called Murder, The Seeker; the Dark is Rising), who is supposed to have some kind of troubled past that is hinted at in the last scene but never comes to fruition. I just read over a list of all the contestants and they all seem to have some kind of cool story. I’m not saying develop all of them, but one or two would not have been remiss.
Anyway, during the training we get to know former victor Haymitch Abernathy (the great Woody Harrleson-Natural Born Killers, Cheers, Friends with Benefits) who is there to mentor them, and meet the president played by the great Donald Sutherland looking a lot like a skinny Santa Claus. Eventually the kids are injected into the fight arena, where PG-13 bloody mayhem ensues. It is here that a lot of the plot holes surface like unsightly pimples, and towards the end the story takes a big detour down Dopey Lane.
The stars. Better than I expected. Two stars. The story wasn’t really that bad. One star. Woody Harrelson. One star. Donald Sutherland. One star. Acting all around was commendable. Not Oscar worthy, but worthwhile. One star. Some of the futuristic scenes in the capitol city were pretty cool. One star. Excellent pacing for a film this long, and admirable camera work. One star. I really like the idea of exposing young ladies to science fiction in any form, in hopes that future male nerds don’t suffer the pain of finding girls who can talk about anything remotely interesting. One star. For all that it was PG-13 and therefore completely lacking in gravitas, the fight action was pretty cool. One star. Total: nine stars.
The black holes. Those plot holes I spotted, while not huge, were weighty and distracting, like accidentally swallowing a snooker ball. One black hole. No attempt was made at all to appeal to straight males. The girls were, while not necessarily bland, definitely not Megan Fox hot and for the most part wore baggy futuristic combat fatigues. One black hole. The costumes the upper class citizens wore throughout the film actually caused eye pain. Imagine if a troupe of circus clowns took over a steam punk clothing factory. One black hole. The whole movie was headed towards a really cool and tragic ending, but then pulled the rip cord and took the easy way out. One black hole. The sadistic glee that the adults took watching kids brutally maul each other to death was more than a little off putting. One black hole. Total: five black holes.
A grand total of four stars, which is way more than I thought it would get. I honestly expected it to suck more. A pleasantly surprising movie. If I were to take into account the audience for which is was intended (teenage girls) than this movie is absolutely brilliant and accomplishes exactly it’s goal (of launching another huge money making franchise bent on depriving kids of their disposable income and some brain cells). Should you see it? If you have no Y chromosome absolutely. If you read the book absolutely, but plan on spending an hour or so afterward bitching about all the things they couldn’t fit in. Great date movie, but if you are a single male loser you might just wait for video. However, if for whatever reason you are going (date, group of friends, stalking expedition, etc) be sure to watch Battle Royale and then annoying everyone around you by telling them all in excruciating detail how it is all just a rip off of a Japanese movie made in 2000.
Thanks for reading. Looks like every other film in the world didn’t want to compete with this monster, so not a lot to see this weekend. A guy sent me a screener for his independent film. Looks like some kind of crime drama. I will watch it these weekend and review it for you. It is pretty low budget, so I will be taking that into account as I watch it. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu or email me at [email protected] if you have any questions or suggestions. Comments feel free to post here. Thanks again, and talk to you soon.
Dave
A Seperation Movie Review
Conclusive proof that life can suck in any language.
After failing miserably at my guessing how much a movie is going to suck when it came to the Artist, I decided I had better see some of the other Oscar winners and was fortunate enough to find A Separation playing at the Grand Lake Cinema down the street. I feel vindicated, as my early assessment of this movie-that it would be really good and really depressing-were pretty much on the money.
The film is Iranian, and shot in a much more day to day style than pretty much anything else I have seen from Arabic countries. As a look into life in Iran, combining elements of what we would consider normal with severe religious and cultural differences, it was brilliant and fascinating. You see a family dealing with divorce and an ailing Alzheimer relative much as a Western family would have to, but while dealing with the Islamic court and serious religious considerations. Very well done, and well worth your time in viewing. The thing I liked the best was the sympathy and empathy that I and I believe the entire audience felt for the characters, in spite of the fact that Iran is currently being vilified on a daily basis by popular media. It was wonderful to see human faces put on a culture that most Americans would not even want to learn anything about.
That being said, the movie was as depressing as humanly possible. The concession stand could have done a bang up business selling cyanide pills. The filmmaker Asghar Farhadi (Trial on the Street, Tambourine, About Elly) successfully gets the audience to become fully invested in all the characters in spite of the massive cultural divide and consequently we all felt a great deal of sadness and empathy for the tragic events unrolling on the screen. No one is happy through most of this. BIG SPOILER ALERT: skip to the next paragraph if spoilers bug you, but if you are the type of person who enjoys a film that wraps things up and has a nice conclusion for good or ill, prepare to be bitterly disappointed.
The story is of an Iranian couple going through divorce. The wife Simin (Leila Hatami-Leila, the Deserted Station, Salad-e-fasi) wants to leave the country with their eleven year old daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi-no other credits, but daughter of the director). The husband Nader (Peyman Moadi-Coma, Atash, Cafe Satareh) needs to stay home to take care of his Alzheimer afflicted father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi -no other credits). They seperate, and she moves in with her parents while he stays home with his father and daughter. He hires a woman Razieh (Sareh Bayat-no other credits) to take care of him while he works. She comes over with her young daughter (Kimia Hosseini-no credits. By the way, this little girl is possible the cutest kid ever) to take care of the old man. She suffers a crisis when he soils himself and she has to change his pants for him. She has to call a religious hotline to see if it would be a sin to help him with it. Dealing with the old man is much harder than she first anticipated, especially when it is revealed that she is pregnant. She struggles to maintain him and do the local chores, and when Nader comes home to find his father tied to the bed and the woman missing he pushes her out the door, possibly inducing her miscarriage.
At that point we end up in Islamic court, which is considerably different than American court. There are no lawyers or juries, just an elder judge who basically argues with both sides until he gets a picture of what he thinks happened. They also let the two parties sit in a crowded hallway giving each other the stink eye all day long. The woman’s husband Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini-Final Whistle, About Elly, Zero Degree Turn) is a passionate and hotheaded man who has been unemployed for months. He spends a lot of time basically stalking Nader and his family while pursuing his case in court. Things go from bad to worse, and the case gets continuously more complicated and ugly as time goes on.
The stars. An amazing look into a culture that we as Americans know very little about. Three stars. Extremely well acted and portrayed. All the characters showed passion and in spite of the fact that it was all subtitled I felt I got to know all of them as much as my Western perception would allow, and I came to care about all of them. Two stars. For the technology and production limitations the movie was very well shot. One star. Story was good, and had a few really cool twists once you got your head around the fact that you were not watching an American court movie. One star. Overall an extremely well done movie, deserving of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Two stars. Total: nine stars.
The black holes. The ending made me want to scream in frustration. When you see the movie you will understand. One black hole. That’s it.
A grand total of eight stars, and you know a foreign film has to be good for me to not black hole them for the sin of making me read throughout an entire movie (I hate subtitles). If you have any interest in other cultures at all, or would like to see Iranians portrayed as something other than lunatic terrorists, then definitely see this film. If you can get to a theater cool, but if not I don’t think you will miss much if you see it at home. None of the camera work was groundbreaking.
Thanks for reading. I plan to see the Hunger Games (due to licencing restrictions I can’t get any Hunger Games t-shirts on my site, but whenever I get hungry I start thinking about bacon and thought this shirt from the cheap t shirt category might be apropos) at midnight on Thursday/Friday, so look for that review Friday morning. I don’t think I can (or want to) see anything else before that. I’m kind of in a mood to do some dating advice again, so I might throw something out there tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu, or email suggestions or questions to [email protected]. Feel free to post comments here. Unless you cuss I am happy to allow them even if you disagree with me (or Jason, as he found out a couple days ago). Thanks again. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Casa de mi Padre Review
I’m pretty sure they had a point, but I can’t figure out what the hell it was.
Casa de mi Padre is a study in “sort ofs”. It’s sort of funny. It’s sort of dumb. It’s sort of a spoof on a movie that sort of started off as a spoof. The cast sort of plays the roles seriously, while the entire movie is sort of silly. It’s sort of like watching a SNL 15 minute skit stretched out to 84 minutes, and it’s sort of like watching 84 minutes of Mexican drama on Telemundo.
One thing this movie is definitely not sort of is well paced. The film drags for comedic effect, because slow is always funny. At least one person in the row in front of me fell asleep and started snoring, and I was seriously wishing I could turn on my phone to check my email. That being said, most of the audience was laughing, but it was that special kind of desperate laughter one gets when they believe something should be funnier than it really is. Kind of like when you pay good money for a movie touted as a comedy that seems to have all the elements of funny, but doesn’t quite add up to really gut busting and you end up forcing yourself to laugh in order to not feel like you just got ripped off.
The one running gag was purposeful editing and continuity errors. Bad animatronic animals, painted on backdrops, horrible stunt man doubles, and repeated driving footage resound. It all would have been really campy and funny if they had purposefully shot it with poor quality camera effects, but the camera work was fairly flawless, making the dopey purposeful film errors seem really forced and fake. Honestly, if they had ramped the film effects back to the level of say, Six String Samurai, then it would have truly played out as a great spoof and tribute to Mexican drama. Instead it was like some jackass hipster wearing clothing from the local thrift store in spite of making six figures in order to seem more “real”.
The story. Will Ferrell (Zoolander, Stranger than Fiction, Anchorman, Talladega Nights. Zoolander image courtesy of the Movie T-Shirt category) plays Armando, son of a Mexican rancher and generally fairly dopey guy. His father has some ill defined problems but thinks Armando is to dumb to help. Armando’s brother Raul (Diego Luna-the Terminal, Y Tu Mamá También, Milk) comes home with his gorgeous fiance Sonia (Genesis Rodriguez-Prisonera, Man on a Ledge, Doña Bárbara. By the way, I said in my Man on a Ledge review that Genesis is my dream woman, and this movie only reinforced it). Armando finds out that Raul is involved in the drug trade and is here to take of the territory of another drug lord, Onza (Gael Garcia Bernal-Bad Education, the Science of Sleep, the Motorcycle Diaries). Armando confronts Raul and is uninvited from the wedding by his father. At the wedding the script gets hijacked by Scarface and the father is killed. Armando is shot, and while dying is visited by his spirit animal and has a dream vision that looks like the bullets were all laced with peyote. At that point it devolves into a goofy shooter that was equal parts Scarface, Police Academy, and the Three Stooges.
Anyway, the stars. There were portions of this film that were really funny. Two stars. I don’t know if Will Ferrell speaks Spanish or not, but he managed to make the role seem believable and passionate. One star. Genesis Rodriguez will always get a star from me. One star. I am also a fan of Will Ferrell from his Zoolander and Elf days. One star. Total: five stars.
The black holes. Pacing like watching a zombie horde cross a rocky slope. One black hole. Taking 20 minutes of funny and stretching it into 84. One black hole. Failing to deliver a point. One black hole. Total: three black holes.
So a total of two stars. Given the relatively low star and black hole count this movie sits right in the middle of mediocre. I actually left the theater kind of regretting spending the money on time, where even a really bad movie I often feel like I got something out of it. Worth seeing? If you are a Will Ferrell fan or watch a lot of Telemundo sure. Nothing on here needs to be seen on a big screen. In fact give the bad set backdrops and props it might even look better on a small screen. Netflix it IMO. Date movie? Meh. Like everything else in this film I am right in the middle on this. Maybe if there is nothing else to see.
Thanks for reading. Shortish review but that is what always happens when I get a movie that sits in the middle. Nothing to review tomorrow, but I have a couple things I want to write about so I will come up with something. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu or email me questions or suggestions at [email protected]. Any comments on this review itself feel free to post here. Talk to you soon.
Dave
The Hollywood “We Have No Imagination” Tour continues
So I was looking around online this morning and was struck by how many remakes and continuations/sequels are coming out soon. It pretty much looks like the so called creative types in Hollywood have thrown in the towel and are instead going to continued banking on making money on nostalgic morons who feel some kind of obligation to see a badly made movie based on something they watched as a kid when their brains were softer. Here are a few you can look forward to:
The Cat in the Hat animated (I guess they figure they don’t need Mike Myers). Home Alone 5, starring some new kid (looks like the mug shots of Macaulay Calkin don’t scream super cute kid anymore, although if they really wanted to do something cool they would star him as one of the burglars). Battleship (Are they kidding?). Red Dawn (I think the reason this movie worked back in the day was we were pretty tight in the cold war. Who do they think is going to invade now?). Weird Science. Short Circuit. Friday the 13th. Top Gun (hahahahaha). Judge Dredd. Akira. Annie. All Quite on the Western Front. 
Carrie (Image from the Horror Movie T Shirts). Child’s Play. Evil Dead. Mad Max (gah!). Pet Semetary. Point Break. Robocop. The Birds. The Crow. Barbarella (if this isn’t rated R I’m going to burn down the movie theater. However, since it looks like Katherine Heigl, odds are it won’t be). Drop Dead Fred. Starship Troopers. The NeverEnding Story. The Seven Samuraii. War Games. Time Bandits. American Psycho. Death Wish. Escape from New York. Heavy Metal. Lethal Weapon. Porky’s. Skarface. The Bodyguard. The Warriors. Westworld.
I don’t know how writers in Hollywood can call themselves writers anymore. Xerox machines, more like. Does anyone remember when movies were original and studios would take chances on films? Oh, yeah. Back when all these got made the first time.
Dave
21 Jump Street Review
Worth jumping to see.
I had serious doubt about this film when I first heard about it. God knows we have seen our share of really lame remakes and reimaginings over the last few years, most of which did not need to be made, nor was the public clamoring for them. Was there any part of the original Footloose that had you desperate to see it redone badly last year? Or the A Team? Now they are remaking Red Dawn and Top Gun. It’s like an insane architect designed a house with the septic/bad 80’s culture storage tank on the roof and in the last couple years the bottom is starting to rust through.
Of course, at least that would have been a creative and new idea, something that has become anathema in Hollywood these days. If it hasn’t been done successfully (or not) in the last generation most of film industry will treat it like a week dead skunk.
21 Jump Street was notably only for launching Johnny Depps career. Otherwise it was another dumb late 80’s cool kids acting all serious and having fun in high school. Kind of like 90210 with guns. When I heard they were remaking it I had that slow sinking sensation you might get when told there is an 80% chance you are going to have to pass a number of kidney stones. You know it’s likely to happen and very likely to suck. When I heard it was a being written as a comedy I thought either that would be the life preserver that keeps this film afloat or the anchor that drags this remake down to a watery grave.
Fortunately the comedy works, and works in a big way. I, along with most of the audience, laughed my ass off throughout most of this film. The jokes are funny, relatively original (is a joke original if it is purposely calling back on a dead horse that has been beaten by many other movies? Kind of a conundrum), and extremely well delivered by Jonah Hill and (to my surprise) Hollywood pretty boy Channing Tatum. The story, while not overly complicated or complex, was direct and to the point enough to make me not be distracted from the humor, a lot of which was tongue-in-cheek directed at exactly the deluge of bad remakes I just spent the introduction of this review railing against. Extremely fun and funny.
Not to say it didn’t have it’s problems, most of which seem to stem from the action sequences. Towards the end the movie tries to switch gears from a comedy into an action/buddy film and ironically I found that part to be the slowest and least intriguing. The action was too tame to pull me in and too out of tone to fit in with the comedy. Odds are it was necessary for the story, but the first chase sequence had a Police Academy feel to it that I thought worked better in the context of the entire film than the last big chase/fight scene. Not to say you won’t enjoy the film because of it.
Anyway, the story. Jonah Hill (Moneyball, Knocked Up, Superbad) plays Schmidt, a fat loser in high school who wants badly to be Slim Shady. Channing Tatum (the Vow, Haywire, the Eagle) plays Jenko, popular jock at the same school and recurring tormentor of Schmidt. A few years after high school they both enroll in the police academy together, where they discover Jenko’s physical prowess and Schmidts scholastic ability is what they both need to help each other graduated, thus becoming friends. After screwing up their first bust they are assigned to the 21 Jump Street program, where young looking officers are sent in to high schools to solve crimes. There is a new synthetic drug out there and they are told by their very funny (in a stereotypical way) captain Ice Cube (Friday, Boyz in the Hood, Office Space) to find the supplier.
Once at the school they get their identities mixed up, and discover that since they graduated the jock stud has become very unpopular and the sensitive, eco-conscious nerd is popular (proof once more that I was born in the wrong decade). Schmidt gets hooked up with the popular kids, including his (kind of creepy, although the make a point of telling us she is 18) love interest Molly (Brie Larson-Scott Pilgrim versus the World, 13 Going on 30, United States of Tara) and most popular kid in school, Eric (Dave Franco-Superbad, Fright Night, Charlie St. Cloud) 
while Jenko gets hooked up with the local geeky science nerds, who somehow in this age of enlightenment are still really unpopular (science image courtesy of the vintage t shirts). They encounter a super cute science teacher (Ellie Kemper-The Office, Bridesmaids, Get him to the Greek) and a Coach McGuirk (from Home Movies. If you don’t know this guy you fail in geek cred. Go watch a few episodes) style coach (who’s credit I can’t find but I have seen him before).
At that point we get a lot of high school humor, but because it is adults trying to fit in I found it more tolerable. They guys throw an epic party. Stuff gets blown up. Bad guys surface. An extremely cool twist shows up and brings the funny back during the final action scene for a moment.
The stars. Really, really funny. Three stars. Excellent performances from everyone. Two stars. Story was pretty good. One star. Rated R without trying to get rated R. Star. Ice Cube and a couple other surprise appearances were great. One star. A remake movie that pokes fun at all the other remake movies. One star. Overall fun movie. Two stars. Total: eleven stars.
The black holes. The action towards the end was really out of place and felt forced into the film. One black hole. Rated R for language is a huge waste of an opportunity to show nudity or some graphic violence. One black hole. My whole issue with kids having fun in high school. Am I the only one who remembers going to high school and wishing for the sweet caress of oblivion most of the time? One black hole. The character of Molly felt somehow faker than the rest of the characters, although I thought Brie did an admirable job with the role she was given. One black hole. Total: four black holes.
A grand total of seven stars. This movie is totally fun and definitely worth seeing. Go to a theater in support of quality film production, please. Date movie? I’m kind of neutral on this. Your date will probably enjoy the experience of watching it, but there is nothing in the film that will either encourage or discourage her feelings for you. Also, you will lag in comparison to Channing Tatum by a lot.
I gotta run, so I’m not even going to edit this for spelling until later tonight. Please forgive any you see. Thanks for reading. Not sure what I am going to watch tonight. Nothing really caught my eye. If you have any suggestions feel free to email me at [email protected] or Tweet @NerdKungFu. If you have a comment be sure to post it up here. Talk to you all soon.
Dave
