Act of Valor Movie Review
Kind of lame, but at the same time kind of awesome.
I have been looking forward to this film, mainly due to the trailers being really kick ass. They made it look like the kind of realistic action we never get to see in movies these days where the standard formula is one guy capable of taking on and killing wave after wave of evil henchmen, beating them all the death with the spine of the first no’er-do-well to cross his path. In this movie the good guys, while highly trained and extremely professional, are not bullet proof and are fully capable of being killed, which in a great way makes the action really, really good. The action scenes are shot and edited in a way that really puts you in the scene, and you feel honest to goodness excitement as each mission progresses.
I also wanted to see this as I, like most Americans these days, have a ton of respect for the military men and women of our country in general and of the SEALs in particular and hoped this movie would show their bravery and dedication, which for the most part it did. This film played out like a Navy recruitment film, and like Top Gun did back in 1986 and they should see a nice surge of recruits over the next few months. Since this film was innitiated not in Hollywood but by the Pentagon PR office, I guess this all makes sense. So in part I was very happy and satisfied with the film.
That being said, the first mission the SEAL team should have gone on was to take out script writer Kurt Johnson (300, the Last Photograph, True Vengence, although this film is his only story writing credit, and probably his last) as the script and story was some of the most half assed, hackneyed, cliche garbage I have ever seen. Honestly, the Pentagon should have farmed this idea out to an established studio as the amateurish stench wafts from the screen like they store dead fish behind it. 
The cartoonish main villain (Jason Cottle-Wag the Dog, the Wedding Singer, Cthulu (Miskatonic U image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category)) seems to be evil just for the sake of being evil, starting the movie off with a horrific act of terrorism (by the way, this movie earns its R rating the hard way) but without a shred of explanation as to why except for the fact that he is pissed about something. It is implied that he is against America for occupying Islamic countries, but since he is Chechnyan I had a hard time seeing the connection. I’m sure the motivation makes total sense to guys in the Pentagon privy to inside information about possible terrorist connections, but honestly I think the average American needs to see a motivation slightly more complex than “I want to blow stuff up because I am angry and have a scar on face”. Also, if you are like me be be sure to play the “Guess who’s going to die on the last mission” game. You won’t find it terribly challenging.
The entire story reads less like a movie and a lot more like the plot a first person shooter video game such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, with each hot action sequence being connected by only the most tenuous and and roundabout connections. Again, I am sure if I were more familiar with top secret Intelligence community tactics and deductive reasoning I might have been better able to understand how they moved from some third world village (still not sure what country that one was) to assaulting a multi million dollar yacht. The plot was pretty much obligatory and included apparently under protest only to connect the assorted action scenes showing the SEAL team in action. Also, while I don’t want to be the one to call out the rampant xenophobia in this plot, it seemed like we were attacking pretty much every Third World country EXCEPT Arab countries. Somehow the scriptwriters, in an attempt to not alienate the countries known for actively supporting terrorism, managed to find excuses for the SEALs to fight against people in the Philippines, Mexico, West Africa, Russia, Chechnya, and some other ill defined country. The underlying message of the film seems to be “If you aren’t American you suck” and that message is delivered with bullets.
As for the real life active duty SEAL team members staring in this film, let me say that while I have never ending admiration for their bravery, dedication, and skill they were not recruited by the Navy for their acting ability. Every scene that did not involved them shooting someone or sitting in a briefing room going over a mission to shoot someone felt like everyone was acting while covered in (and had their mouths full of) slowly hardening Elmer’s Glue. I actually hold both them and the director blameless for this, as they all had to work with what they were given. The problem arises when the non-SEAL team characters show up and interact with them. They were all played by professional actors and the disparity in delivery made it seem like I was watching Citizen Cain spliced together with Plan 9 From Outer Space. The acting from the professional actors was what I would have called fairly mediocre in another film, but by comparison it seemed Oscar worthy.
Anyway, the story. Again, if you have ever played a modern FPS video game you have seen it. I don’t even feel the need to get into the details. SEAL Team 7 bounces from country to country rescuing kidnapped CIA agents, trying to capture known terrorist, and stopping terrorists from blowing up Las Vegas. The main terrorist is the Chechnyan turned Muslim Muhammad Abu Shabal (Jason Cottle). He is supported by his childhood friend, Russian gangster and blatantly stereotyped (as the avaricious Jew) Christo and a gang of Philippino suicide bombers (???). Their hobbies include blowing up schoolchildren and torturing women, so obviously the writers felt OK with topsoil level character depth. There is a subplot about one of the SEAL team’s wife about to have a baby, and some social interactive social scenes between the SEALs that will make you wish you actually were playing a video game. The entirely of the plot really only serves to move us from (really freaking good) action scene to action scene.
The stars. The action was unbelievably good and brought a level of excitement entirely missing form most mainstream movies. Three stars. It was interesting as hell to see how the SEALs operate, and since this movie was made by the military and stared real SEALs I can only assume it was 100% accurate. Two stars. I like a movie that doesn’t hesitate to show good guys eating bullets too. All the best heroes are mortal. One star. They didn’t dumb things down for the audience and over explain things. They kept the military jargon and operational tactics real and didn’t bother to explain what was going on the lame civilians such as I, which actually made the movie more interesting and made me pay more attention (what the hell is a QRF? Some kind of vehicle designation?). One star. Overall a lot of fun to watch. Two stars. Total: nine stars.
The black holes. Acting so wooden it might have been delivered by Disney Animatronics. One black hole. A story plot that looked like it had been ripped off from any number of other weak plots and then dashed down on a roll of toilet paper in a mens room while the writer was dealing with an extended bout of diarrhea. Two black holes. Very weak character motivation and depth. One black hole. Xenophobia that was kind of embarrassing. One black hole. Total: five black holes.
A total of four stars. Not bad, really. This movie sells itself on the action and so, if you are an action person, or like realistic movies about elite soldiers, or are just into the military, then by all means see this film on the biggest screen you can find. If you aren’t into those things then odds are you will be OK waiting for NetFlix. Definitely not a good date movie, as there is not a lot of meat here for the average woman and some of the scenes that earned the R rating will really put her off her feed, if you know what I mean.
Thanks for reading. I have a tournament coming up next weekend and have hit that horrible point where I suddenly realize I need to get four more figures painted, so that will be most of my weekend. I will try to see Wanderlust tonight and review it tomorrow morning, although already I am bitter about that film as I heard Jennifer Aniston shot a nude scene and at the last minute made them take it out. Boo, I say. If I have time tomorrow I will see Gone, but for some reason my early warning suck radar is blaring at me on that one. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. I don’t post a lot, so you know each one is a gem. Feel free to post a comment here or send me an email at [email protected] if you have specific suggestion or questions. Have a great day. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Good news about the plans for Tranformers 4
So Michael Bey is talking about his plans for the upcoming Transformers 4 and has said he plans to get rid of all the actors and start fresh. I totally applaud this move, as the human actors in these movies suck. My next suggestion to Mr. Bey is when he is starts casting his new movie he take all the human characters and fill the roles with more robots.
Remember the glorious cartoon where the only humans were Spike and once in a while his father, and really their only job was to ask stuff like “Why would Megatron do something like that?” just so Optimus Prime could explain what was going on to them and the audience? How the movie was about the Autobots and the Decpticons, not about Sam Witwicki trying to find a job and his parents shopping for matching jogging outfits? You know, pretty much what Transformers are supposed to be about? How about that for a movie? Human suck, robots rule. Do that and I will totally be cool with any amount of explosions Micheal Bey wants to shove into his movie.
By the way, apparently Dave doesn’t have any Transfomers shirts on his site, so I found this cool robot image in the Vintage T Shirt pile. I think it’s pretty cool.
Jason
Man on a Ledge Review
The title pretty much describes the movie.
There’s a little more than that, of course. There is a motivation that seems to work, and the characters all seem to appeal. The story is griping enough and well done through the first 90%, but the whole thing falls apart into Inspector Clouseau style chaos at the end.
I guess it’s inevitable that even movies I enjoy these days seem to have flaws that irk me like a paper cut on the end of my tongue. 
This film has the appearance of a well packed cargo train, with everything tight, organized, and in it’s proper place, that at the last minute had a ton of extra luggage attached to the outside of the third car and a caboose full of clowns hitched up to the rear. There was a long, extended flashback scene in the first 20 minutes that felt completely out of place and in my opinion actually detracted from the story, and at the end, after 85 minutes of decent, coherent story telling the plot exploded like someone flushed a cherry bomb down it’s toilet. All of a sudden the pacing gets cranked up to ramming speed and a the plot threads start flying all over the screen like someone fed crystal meth to a nest of psychotic spiders.
(Train image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category)
On the other hand, this movie features the hottest woman in the history of the human race, Genesis Rodriguez. It frustrates me that women like this exist and don’t want to talk to me. The only thing that could make it more painful was if I found out her name was not a Biblical reference her parents saddled her but a screen name she chose from the Genesis project from TWOK. I think I would be out on a ledge at that point.
The story is, of course, about a man on a ledge. Sam Worthington (Avatar, Clash of the Titans, Terminator Salvation) crawls out on a ledge and starts threatening to kill himself. A crowd gathers. He request a specific police negotiator, discredited Detective Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks-Spiderman, the 40 Year Old Virgin, the Next Three Days). At that point we get into the flashback that in retrospect bugged me so much. It basically details how Sams character Nick Cassidy was an ex cop convicted of stealing a gigantic diamond from the bad guy David Englander (Ed Harris-A Beautiful Mind, the Abyss, the Rock) and how he escaped from prison and ended up in this hotel. First of all this whole sequence felt really out of place, but more importantly I think the story would have gone a lot better if we had discovered these things as the police did. Add an element of mystery to the whole thing.
Anyway, he is motivated to prove his innocence, and while he is distracting everyone his friends, including the aforementioned Genesis Rodriguez (Prisionera, Doña Bárbara) and his brother (Jamie Bell-Jumper, the Adventures of Tintin, Billy Elliot). Somehow they have become expert cat burglars and safe crackers with no experience whatsoever. Whatever. So the plan is based entirely on Nick distracting people at the right moments in order to give his team the time they need. Stuff blows up. Genesis strips down to her underwear and slithers into a body stocking in the most gratuitous and appreciated scene (from me) in cinema history. I don’t want to give the ending away, but all of a sudden the story takes every freeway off ramp simultaneously and then ends up in a multi car crash at the denouement (this is a word I just learned a few minutes ago. Me so smart).
Anyway, the stars. While not terribly original, it was an interesting twist on a crime story. One star. Acting was decent from Sam Worthington and the rest of the cast. One star. In spite of spending the entire time on a ledge, there were definitely parts that were exciting. One star. Genesis Rodriguez. One star. I do enjoy a good crime story, with the burglars having to defeat each of the security systems in turn. One star. I thought Ed Harris did an admirable job as the villain. He seemed a little over the top and out of place at times, but really gave you someone to hate. One star. I thought direction and camera work managed to give a definite sense of vertigo. Well done IMO. One star. Generally a good film that didn’t make me think I had wasted my money. One star. Total: eight stars.
The black holes. An ending that can best be described as a clusterf***. Two black holes. The early on out of place and unnecessary flashback. One black hole. Total: three black holes.
In the irksome but not black hole worthy category, I have a couple. The idea of Nick’s compatriots somehow having the skills need to defeat a multi million dollar security system is laughable, but since it gave a lot of screen time to my dream woman I can’t complain too much. Also, after an entire movie of sneaking through vent shafts and tricking cameras the final stage of the security system is defeated by opening up a thermostat control box and clipping a single wire. It’s like they paid their security systems consultant but ran out of budget for the last 25 minutes.
So a grand total of 5 stars. A decent score for a decent movie. I think you would enjoy seeing this on a big screen. The sense of danger the vertigo gives you will probably be lost on a TV. I think this would make a decent date movie too. There is some emotional stuff going on, and a couple of decent female characters. Nothing uber creepy that might put her off the idea of intimacy if you know what I mean. Good luck.
Three movies in three days and I am kind of movied out. I will take a break for a day or two. I have some thoughts on the Academy Awards Nominations (mostly around God awful Tree of Life getting nominated for anything other than going out and getting beer for all the other movies) and might do something on that tomorrow. Thanks for reading. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Talk to you soon.
Dave
This Weekends Movies.
Things are looking really busy this weekend, with three new movies on my must see list. I will see one a day for the next three days, and review each in turn the next morning. I offer to you, my beloved readers, the chance to help determine what order I should see them in. If there is a movie upcoming that you are interested in but would like my humble opinion early on speak now via comment here or Twitter. Your choices are:
The Grey-Liam Neeson and a bunch of disposable heroes land in the frozen North and have to escape while being hunted by a pack of wolves. I can only hope he is forced to eat his fellow passengers to survive. My prediction is that there turns out to be some kind of external influence causing the wolves to be unusually aggressive.
Man on a Ledge-I consider it both an insult to my intelligence and a warning sign of incoming suck when the movie description (not a review) calls this movie “heart pounding”. I have a feeling these descriptions are actually written by the marketing department for the film itself. The more they hype it the more it probably needs hyping. My prediction: so little heart pounding that I will be checking my pulse in order to make sure I haven’t accidentally passed away during the show. Man stands on a ledge in order to distract from his friends trying to steal a $40MM diamond in order to prove his innocence. Is it so much to ask that a movie premise make sense? I mean, does every crime in a movie have to be for some noble purpose? Would it not be enough to simply say “A guy stands on a ledge in order to distract from his friends stealing a $40MM diamond which they intend to sell and use the money to buy stuff”? Seems to make a lot more sense to me.
One for the Money-if your intention is to screw with my head vote for this one. A super hot girl is desperate for cash and decides to become Dog the Bounty Hunter. Apparently she is going after her ex boyfriend. My predictions: a lot of “girl too dainty to do anything all of a sudden kicks a guy in the balls and discovers she enjoys the feeling of power and regained self worth”; a highly improbably series of luck allows her to exceed the performance of one or more much more experienced bounty hunters; and finally she catches her ex only to discover she has feelings for him. These feeling either motivate her to let him go, or he is able to exploit her feelings in order to trick her and get away in the last five minutes. (Protect your Nuts image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category)
So make a comment here of hit me up on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Given the actual number of responses I get from these things the first person to hit me up will probably be casting the deciding vote. First review should be up tomorrow. Thanks everyone for reading. Have a great day
Dave
Joyful Noise Movie Review
Here is a movie to make you wish human beings had never developed vocal cords.
And I’m not talking about the singing. In fact, the music was one of the few redeeming qualities of this film. I am not a real fan of Gospel, but can appreciate the sound and understand what a powerful tool it can be for the advancement of the Christian pantheon (I consider myself more agnostic than anything else, although if I were forced to choose a specific religion I think I would roll with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster). No, it’s not the singing that made me want to stuff chewing gum in my ears. It’s the freaking dialog. If I have to hear Dolly Parton or Queen Latifah spout out another hillbilly, earthy country platitude (“If the jury is full of foxes then the chicken is always guilty”) I will be forced to go on a berserk chainsaw rampage.
The story is the unnatural offspring of Sister Act and Footloose, with lingering eye contact made with the Bad News Bears during conception. The proud parents had their child and, because someone else had already used the name Glee, ran with Joyful Noise. The weird thing is when you make a movie out of two mediocre movies you normally only take some elements from each and combine them into a crappier movie. What director/writer Todd Graff (The Electric Company, the Abyss, Five Corners, Stranger Days) did was, with the exception of the gangsters trying to kill Whoopie Goldberg, take ALL the elements from those two movies and pile drive them into one script until the screen is bursting with badness like rancid corpse stuffed into a corset. I mentioned Glee because that appears to be Mr. Graff’s favorite show, and honestly this movie reads like an entire season of bad TV compressed into 117 minutes with each episode creating yet another 5-10 minute subplot.
Fragmented doesn’t begin to describe this story. It is even more fragmented that the horrible New Years Eve I reviewed last year, although at least all the characters in this film know each other. The sub plots are legion. There’s the “main” plot of the losing church choir winning the national Joyful Noise competition. There’s the competition between Dolly Parton and Queen Latifah to be the choir director. There’s Queen Latifah’s hot 16 year old daughter rebelling against her mother’s restrictive nature, as well as her romance with Dolly’s grandson. There’s her Asperger brother trying to deal with being different from everyone else, learning to play the piano, and taking his sunglasses off. There’s the small Georgia town suffering from economic collapse. There’s the choir singer who’s father’s hardware store is closing. There’s Dolly Parton dealing with the death of her husband by ignoring it completely. There’s Queen Latifah’s husband joining the army to get away from her and the two kids. There’s Latifah’s struggle to provide for her family. There’s the grandson’s checkered juvenile past. There’s another girl hooking up with a guy and killing him after the first night (that subplot resurfaces later and somehow hijacks the whole story at the end). There’s the preacher who doesn’t want to spend money on the choir. There’s the struggle that the grandson and Dolly have to update the choir with more than just traditional music in order to win the big contest (oh yeah, somehow winning the contest is integral to the survival of the town. Still not sure what that was about). There’s the preacher hating the new music and pulling out his support. There’s the other kid who gets into a fight with the grandson over the daughter’s affection but later joins the choir as the worlds greatest guitar player or something. The list goes on and on.
In the credits (I read online. I didn’t really stay for the credits. I couldn’t get out of the theater fast enough) it is revealed that Todd Graff’s mother was in a choir, which makes a lot of sense. This movie looks a lot like a self indulgent labor of love, and Graff wanted to stick every small town or choir story schtick he could find into it. Next time I would suggest he make a list of his 20 best ideas and get a third party to whittle them down to like three. Just because you have an idea doesn’t mean you need to execute it.
Before I go on I’d like to say a few words about Dolly Parton. It seems pretty obvious that she is single handedly supporting the plastic surgery and hair care industries. That being said, I can’t argue with the results. She is 66 and looks at most 42-45ish. She also seems to have a sense of humor about it too, and plastic surgery jokes come about in a scene with Queen Latifah that was one of two that I actually enjoyed. Also, while she definitely is a lady throughout the film, her outfits seem designed to emphasis the assets she is known best for, if you know what I mean (her singing voice, obviously. What were you perverts thinking of?)
The story reads like it was written by the second place winner of a 5th grade creative writing contest. I don’t know if I need to get into it too much, as I seem to have covered it in the sub plot rehash. The church choir director (Kris Kristofferson-Blade trilogy, Planet of the Apes(2001)) drops dead during a choir competition, leaving Queen Latifah (Bringing Down the House, Living Single, Taxi) and Dolly Parton (Sweet Home Alabama, Moulin Rouge, Transamerica) up for the gig. Latifah gets it with the goal of winning the big Joyful Noise competition. Dolly’s grandson Randy (Jeremy Jordan-not much of a filmography. Looks like he was in Newsies on Broadway) shows up, falls in love with Latifah’s daughter (Keke Palmer-True Jackson, Cleaner, Akeelah and the Bee), who is a good church girl. At that point the story more or less explodes into the aforementioned subplots like a watermelon with an M-80 stuck in it. Church choir hijinks ensues. No real conflict arises. The story chugs along like a V8 with only three cylinders firing to the inevitable predictable conclusion.
The stars. The music and singing were actually pretty good. One star. The actors, working within the limitations of a bad script and horrible dialog, managed to deliver a decent performance. Kind of like winning a three legged race. One star. Queen Latifah is at her best when she is bitching someone out, and there were two scenes (one with Dolly in particular) that were entertaining that way. One star. Keke Palmer is super cute. One star. Total: four stars.
The black holes. Dialog that made me want to never see another film again. Two black holes. 1 kazillian subplots that went nowhere. One black hole. 1 subplot in particular was especially cringe-worthy. One black hole. Pretty much all the rest of the subplots gave me an attitude that rhymed with “Eye Mont Bare”. One black hole. 
The pacing dragged like trying to pull a corpse to a shallow grave by yourself (not that I would know anything about that. Where did I put that body image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category). One black hole. Glee ripoff. One black hole. Overall story seemed both pointless and dumb. One black hole. A movie that is supposed to be uplifting and heartwarming laced with death and sociopaths apparently not caring about it. One black hole. Two more black holes for generally wasting my time. Total: eleven black holes.
So a grand total of seven black holes. This is another one that was weird in that the audience around me seemed to be enjoying it and laughing. However, I suspect a lot of them came to see it from some kind of church obligation and had to pretend to like it otherwise their friends might think they were not the good Christians they like to think they are. A lot of the laughter sounded forced, like laughing at your bosses bad jokes. Speaking as a creepy loner who couldn’t care less about what the people around me think (if you don’t believe me just look at how I dress every day) the only prayer I was making was for the credits to start rolling. I don’t know. Was it better than tripping and falling into a tree shredder? In most ways yes. Was it better than spending those two hours working on my Doom Fortress in Minecraft? Absolutely not. However, if you are dating a girl who is Christian this could be a good one to see, especially if you are willing to wait until your wedding night for sex.
I’m back to scraping the bottom of the barrel on movies. Nothing to see tonight, but maybe I’ll see My Week With Marilyn. No way there is anything in that film to annoy me. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Thanks for reading. Talk to you soon.
Dave
The Adventures of Tintin in 3D Movie Review
Kind of boring as a film, but kind of interesting as a case study in schizophrenic movie making.
I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. Any family get together where the assorted factions amoung my cousins don’t melt down like Chernobyl is a winner in my book. Plus my mom got me complete Star Trek TOS season 2, so count me happy.
Anyway, Tintin. I am in general a Spielberg fan. In fact, I just gave his filmography a look and, except for the first two Transformers movies I love pretty much everything he has ever done. This is not even a case of having done something long ago and riding that into the ground. He recently worked on Real Steel, Super 8, True Grit, and Falling Skies, all of which I have enjoyed immensely. Also, Tintin is based on a comic, which is usually win in my book. So, why then didn’t I love this movie?
Well, to be brutally honest, Tintin the character is kind of boring and two dimensional. I enjoyed Snowy the dog a lot more, and I hate animal characters. Tintin looks like young Howdy Doody got his wish and was transformed into a real little boy. The problem is he is then thrust against gritty, harsh, realistic guys and the disparity is jarring. His motivation to do anything at all is highly questionable. He shows no real emotion and I felt no real connection with his character, which more or less robbed the film of any tension when faced with a life threatening situation. I felt a better connection with Captain Haddock, and felt my pulse quicken a bit when he was involved in an epic sword duel with the baddy. Fortunately, just before my eyes were in serious danger of opening all the way Tintin swung in on a rope and robbed the situation of all tension, allowing me to return to my previously torpid state.
The other problem I had with this movie was I couldn’t figure out who this movie was made for. It seemed at first for kids. Swashbuckling adventure with a young boy and his dog, some really goofy comic relief characters, simplistic story, and no motivation whatsoever says children all over. They really went out of their way in the first half to maintain that PG rating. A guy gets riddled with bullets and is only injured. Another guy falls off a moving ship and gets caught up in some rigging. Bullets miss easy targets in a manner that would embarrass the A-Team producers. Then, all of a sudden we are faced with the brutal and horrific execution of a ships crew (tossed overboard into shark infested water) and the death of the first villain (run through with a sword and left to drown on a sinking ship). It was like they spliced two minutes of the Human Centipede into Winnie the Pooh. Also, the running joke throughout the movie was about a probably terminal case of alcoholism that Captain Haddock was suffering from. The previously child-simple story takes a turn for the extremely complicated. I still can’t decide who that movie was made for, and honestly that is a bad sign.
I can say one thing about who this movie is for, and that is clearly males. There is literally one female character in the entire film, and that is Tintins landlady who has about three lines total. Other than that it’s a total sausage fest. I’m not looking for eye candy in what may or may not be a children’s film (or, for that matter, a cartoon), but it seems foolish to not include any single character for 50% of the potential viewing audience to identify with. I actually find myself in a weird place on this point. On the one hand I despise movies that force characters into existing stories in order to broaden the appeal. On the other hand I really felt this movie would have benefited from a little more estrogen on screen. Take that for what you will.
Anyway, the movie. Tintin is a famous boy reporter who buys a model ship of the famous Deus Ex Machina, I mean the Unicorn. Some other characters offer him large sums of money for it, but he refuses based on his love of this model ship (I guess. His apartment shows no sign of any interest in anything model related, ship or otherwise. I guess he imprinted it (Twilight joke there, fans) Otherwise there is no reason shown that he wouldn’t have flogged it for a serious profit). Turns out there is 1/3 of a secret message from an old ship captain about a lost treasure. Tintin gets his ship stolen but has the message. He gets kidnapped by some merchant marines and then the adventure begins! He meets up with the chronically comedically drunk Captain Haddock (seriously, this guy puts away enough booze to kill my Irish grandfather) and they escape the ship in a life boat. The adventure follows a pretty standard Indiana Jones plot from there, if Indiana was an annoying kid and was also channeling Benjamin Franklin Gates from National Treasure. Repressed memories surface that in fact have nothing to do with actual finding of the treasure, only pad out the screen time. Stuff gets blown up. Tintin and Haddock engage in things that should have had them in jail for life. The story drives through the some gaping plot holes to arrive at a pretty pat ending.
I normally don’t do the stars/black holes things for kids movies, but the ambiguity behind the intended audience on this is allowing me some leeway on it. Stars first. Comic book movie. One star. The animation was really good. Overall really impressive visually. One star. Excellent motion capture, mainly by the great Andy Serkis (Ceaser from Planet of the Apes and Gollum from the Lord of the Rings). One star. A few exciting and/or humorous moments. One star. Snowy the dog was cool. One star. Total: four stars.
The black holes. Tintin as a character failed to interest me in the slightest. I couldn’t have cared if he if he fell off a cliff. One black hole. The pacing dragged at times like a front wheel drive car missing it’s rear axle. One black hole. The whole kids/adult movie question. One black hole. Failure to provide me the slightest hint of why Tintin was doing anything. One black hole. The story was so full of deus ex machina it was brushing it’s teeth with the stuff. One black hole. The ending included a less than subtle pitch for the inevitable sequel. One black hole. No female characters of any kind in a film that really felt the need. One black hole. Ultimately, a film that was sold as really exciting and fun that was actually pretty boring. One black hole. Total: eight black holes.
A grand total of four black holes. Pretty mediocre. I know, this movie has done amazing things in Europe and all my European friends will probably yell at me for it, but let’s face the fact: Europeans are weird (Normal People Worry Me image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category). 
Tintin has been hugely successful as a comic book in Europe for years and never even approached the surface here in the US. Worth seeing? Not really. Not kiddy enough for your kids and not adult enough for an adult. Maybe if you are European or have a deep appreciation of bad European entertainment. On the other hand, this could actually work for the right girl as a date movie. She may well be impressed that you like something so Euro and pretend to like it herself in spite of being bored to tears. This may translate into her pretending to like you in spite of being bored to tears in an attempt to look like she has traveled farther than Bakersfield in her life. It’s worth a shot. Be sure to talk about all the subtle nuance on the screen and use the line “Americans always have a hard time appreciating the European aesthetic” at least once after the movie.
That’s it. There is a ton of new stuff out this week, so look for a new review tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Thanks for reading. Talk to you soon.
Dave
New Years Eve Movie Review
There aren’t enough synonyms for “trite” in the English language to allow me to review this movie.
Actually, I kind of like to think of this movie as an experiment in alternative script writing methods that went horribly wrong and, like all bad science experiments is destined to rise up and destroy us all. You see, most bad movies take a crappy story idea and run it into the ground. What the writer of this bomb did (Katherine Fugate-Valentine’s Day, Room in Rome, the Prince and Me (grammar is optional in movie title writing, really)) was take ten bad stories, interweave them into a tapestry of horribleness, and then drape it all over the screen like a death shroud. The funny thing is each story in turn actually magnifies the bland horribleness of the previous one in an exponential manner, so that by the time you get to the 10th sub story you get horrible to the ninth degree.
The whole story chain is weird. The system is a blatant vehicle to cram as many celebrities into one bad movie as possible. The laundry list is endless. Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert DeNiro, Zac Effron, Halle Barry, Alyssa Milano, Jessica Biel, Katherine Heigl, Seth Meyers, Ashton Kutcher, Jon Bon Jovi(?), and Sarah Jessica Parker to name a few. In my mind’s eye I see this movie as the “rock soup” approach to film making. Here’s how I think it works. They get the first star, say Sarah Jessica Parker for example. They write a crappy little drama about her and her daughter. Then they approach the next on the list and say “Hey, we’ve got Sarah Jessica Parker”. The next celebrity joins in and so they write a crappy drama for him or her. Rinse and repeat, and at the end you have a crappy pot of soup made only with a rock!
Of course, with ten different stories in 118 minutes (was it really that long? Felt more like four hours) none of the characters get to in any way develop, or give us any reason to connect with any of them, or for that matter in any way give a crap about anything that happens on the screen. The crappyness of the script might have shot right past the thinking part of each of the actors brains, but it obviously lodged deep into the brain stem and and subconsciously inspired them each to phone in their performances. The acting felt so much like a first or second rehearsal I kept looking to see if the stars actually had scripts in their hands they were reading from. It looks like another draw for each of these people is the fact that they could probably film their respective parts in about a week.
The strange thing (and this is in no way an endorsement or encouragement of this movie) is if you are forced to watch this movie you actually get a little interested in the individual stories, if only to see which of them is going to end the most horribly (the Sarah Jessica Parker one IMO). It’s like watching a leper marathon; you know it is going to be bad to watch and terrible things are going to happen, but you really can’t help but watch if only to see which participant has the most body parts fall off.
One last thing on the multiple story chains is I didn’t realize they had the hydra-like ability to spawn other story chains. You finally get one of them concluded and somehow another one spontaneously germinates. I’d say it grinds, but this whole movie was such a grind that by the time I got to that part most of my gears were stripped.
Anyway, I can’t really get to into the story without submitting the entire script, so I will just recap each of the stories that stuck in my head enough to talk about it. Robert DeNiro is in a hospital dying of cancer (and while his performance was far sub par of what I would expect from him, at least he looked like he was dying) and Halle Barry is his nurse, who also has a husband in the military overseas. Michelle Pfeiffer is a mousy spinster secretary who quits her job in a huff and bribes Zac Effron to make her bucket list come true in the next ten hours. Jessica Biel is pregnant and her wimpy husband Seth Meyers wants her to give birth right after midnight to win some cash prize but are in competition with some other couple. Katherine Heigl is a caterer who is contracted to do food for a huge music industry party, and her ex boyfriend rockstar “Jensen” (played by an almost lifelike Jon Bon Jovi robot of some kind), who is the uber-prosaic music entertainment for the party and the Times Square deal, wants to win her back with emotionless dialog. One of “Jensen’s” background singers, Lea Michelle, gets stuck in an elevator with loser hipster comic book artist Grinch Ashton Kutcher (loser hipster is not much of an acting stretch for him, IMO) and proceeds to teach him something important about the true meaning of New Years Eve. Sara Jessica Parker reprises her Sex and the City roll with a 15 year old daughter, who wants to run around unsupervised through New York. Meanwhile, her long lost love interest Josh Duhamel plays one of the music company owners and apparently the hottest thing in NYC until he decides to meet Sarah at midnight. That’s most of what I can remember. Oh, yeah. Hillary Swank plays the woman in charge of the ball dropping who has to deal with an edge-of-the-seat situation when a fuse in the ball goes out, and then turns out to be the estranged daughter of Robert DiNero.
Honestly, that’s it for story. There is no actual conflict in any of these stories except for the whole “giant ball fuse” business. No one does any one thing remotely interesting. It was like watching 10 bad after school specials all edited together.
The stars. Honestly, I would normally give one for a guys like Robert DiNero, but he didn’t exactly light up the screen. I would also do one for some of the hot women in this, but for the most part they were bundled up for December in NYC and not that good looking. Also, I don’t know what this movie was doing with a PG-13 rating. It was so tame it was almost a G in my opinion. The only time any one of the characters even implied that sex ever occurred between humans was at the end when Katherine Heigl said something about it with the Bon Jovi-bot, and that image is going to take some drinking to get rid of. I’ve never not given any stars to a movie before. I guess I could give them one for the morbid curiosity the movie generated when I wanted to see which ending would suck the most. Kind of like how you don’t want to look at a car wreck when you drive by but cant help yourself. Total: one star.
The black holes. I’ll give 1/2 a black hole for each stupid sub plot, and call the extra ones spawned at the end a wash. Five black holes. The dialog was god awful. Two black holes. In addition to the dialog from the main characters sucking, the writers felt compelled to inject background dialog that made me want to murder puppies (I would never actually hurt a dog, BTW). One more black hole. A movie with no protagonist, antagonist, conflict, story, or point. Two black holes. Acting reminiscent of the Robin Hood play I had a bit part in back in second grade (I was guard #3. My one line was “I don’t like the forest”. Why can I remember that but not my social security number?). One black hole. Opening the movie with the odious Ryan Seacrest and having him resurface later like a flush that didn’t quite go all the way down. One black hole. Having two different musical numbers coalesce out of the ether like a torpedo launched from an underwater submarine. One black hole. Creating a fictional super star (“Jensen”) in a movie flush with real celebrities acting as themselves. One black hole. Pat endings so sugary sweet they could possibly kill every diabetic in the world. One black hole. The dumbest, slowest car crash in the history of movie making. One black hole. Total: 16 black holes.
So, a whopping 15 black holes, possibly the worst I have given this year. Was it really that awful? Yes. Yes it was. Can some enjoyment be had from it? Maybe, if you are stupid. Or perhaps have a serious case of ADHD. Good date movie? Sure, if your date is stupid or has a serious case of ADHD. Honestly, this movie should not only never be seen again by another human, but the 500+ stars of the film should band together with pitchforks and torches and burn the windmill in which the mad scientist/director Gary Marshal has set up his lab with his assistant/writer Katherine (Igor) Fugate. (A.D.D. image courtesy of the funny t-shirt category)
Wow. This isn’t my longest review, but it definitely took the longest to write. I wish I could just write “It Sucks” and hit the publish button. Oh, well. More movies this weekend. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Thanks for reading. Don’t see this movie.
Dave
The 10 Best and 5 Worst Mel Gibson Movies
Yes, nothing new in movies this week that really intrigues me, so I thought I would work on something else. Mel Gibson has taken a lot of abuse lately, and some might even call it justified, what with his drunk driving, spousal abuse, and racist rants. I can honestly say I would think very hard about spending money to see one of his movies currently. However, I have enjoyed many of his films in the past, and when I was doing my 5 Worst Kurt Russell film list I came across one that Mel was in as well. You’ll see it in a bit.
So these are, in my opinion, his best and worst of what he has done and I have seen. As always, feel free to disagree or point out things I might have missed, but I feel pretty good about this list. Best first.
10. Ransom-Mel owns an airline and his son is kidnapped. I remember liking the way Mel’s character handled this situation, by taking the ransom money and turning it into a bounty on the heads of the kidnappers. Not really exceptional, but worth watching.
9. We Were Soldiers-the story of the first major battle of the Vietnam war. Mel plays Lt. Col. Hal Moore, commander of the newly created Air Cav of the US Army. This movie was cool in that it showed the battle from both the American side and the Vietnamese side. The action was pretty brutal, so don’t get to attached to any of the supporting characters, if you know what I mean. Sam Elliot as Sgt. Maj. Basil Plumley was really cool too. However, the battle scenes kept cutting back to the wives of the soldiers having to deliver the death notices to the other wives in a manner that was jarring like editing scenes cut from Scarface into the Sound of Music. Also, don’t death notifications take more than 30 seconds for the war department to process? Still, good movie.
8. Hamlet-I’m not a big Shakespeare fan, to be honest. Maybe it’s because I have a hard time staying awake during plays, which is ironic as I have no problem staying awake during the most boring of films. However, I found this rendition with Mel playing Hamlet to be really engaging.
7. Conspiracy Theory-ever want to see Mel play a paranoid schizophrenic? Now you can. Actually, I love this movie because the writers obviously knew my cousin Matt and based the story around him. Whenever I have to answer the question “Any history of insanity in your family?” I have to mentally rewrite my family history. (Paranoia shirt image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category)
6. Payback–I love noir and dark stories, and trust me, this one is dark. Mel plays a criminal who is betrayed by his former partners and spends the rest of the movie trying to get his $70,000 like an even more psychotic version of the paperboy from Better Off Dead. Gruesome and dark, this is one of those movies you enjoy in spite of the fact that you have very little sympathy for any of the characters.
5. Mad Max-some of the lists I have seen have this one at the top, and I will say it has a really cool ending, but as much as I enjoyed it, there were others I enjoyed more. I think I found the motivation a little too simplistic. Also, as a fan of Max the idea of him with a happy family even at the beginning of the movie seems wrong. There should be no happiness in Max’s life. He should always be a shell shocked waste case, like he was in the next two.
4. Braveheart-painted blue ass a go go. What a great film. Mel plays William Wallace, Scottish patriot and all around bad ass. Great battle scenes, good humor, and an evisceration scene that had me loosing my popcorn, if you know what I mean.
3. Lethal Weapon-remember a few lines ago when I said Max should always be a shell shocked waste case? This is because this is the roll Mel plays best. Here he is Martin Riggs, burned out Vietnam vet with a death wish. That “nothing to lose” aspect of his personality makes him truly kick some ass. The last few minutes of the movie, where he decided there was stuff in life worth living for, felt really out of character and kind of continued in the next three sequels. Great movie, nonetheless.
2. Gallipoli-ever have the feeling that your life is just too good and happy and you want to bring it down a few dozen notches? Then this is the movie for you. One of his earliest roles, he plays an ANZAC soldier in the assault on Gallipoli during WWI. However, as depressing as it is, the movie is great and you will enjoy it. Just make sure you have your anti-depressants handy for the last 10 minutes of the film. Also, by the end of the movie you will hate the British officer class.
1. The Road Warrior-not only my favorite Mel Gibson films, but one of my top 10 of all time. Who doesn’t love a apocalyptic wasteland with Mohawk biker gangs running around doing horrible things to all the remaining good people? Actually, while this movie is in all ways cool, it is the driving sequences that make it happen. Check out my blog post about the best movie chases scenes of all time for more details on that. This is the movie that made me fall in love with double barreled sawed off shotguns (very illegal, btw). If I ever get enough money to buy a muscle car, it will be the MFP Interceptor from this movie (for the record, it’s a 1973 Ford Falcon XB Coupe, a car only available in Australia. It had a Concorde front end. The supercharger poking out of the hood was for looks only). Ironically, the filmmakers sold the Interceptor for scrap, but fortunately it was saved by a fan of the movie.
So there it is. However, as Winter follows Fall, as good opposes evil, and as yin matches yang we have to have the bad films to go with the good. Here you go.
5. Bird on a Wire-I remember walking out of this film wondering what the hell just happened. This was three years after Lethal Weapon and I was hoping to see Martin Riggs kicking ass. Instead I saw Mel Gibson with a bad 80’s Flock of Seagulls haircut and a goofy smile on his face. I put the blame for the silliness of this movie on Goldie Hawn, who I find really hard to take seriously in any serious film.
4. Signs-I know. Alien invasion movie. I should love it. But the big M. Knight Shyamalan twist (SPOILER ALERT) is the aliens are poisoned by water! Yes, let’s invade a planet that is 70% covered with a toxic substance and fight the natives who are 90% made of said toxic substance. It’s hard to take seriously an enemy I can literally kill with spitballs. This is like the US invading Iraq, except instead of sand the country is made of radioactive waste. Also, this is another movie where you get to spend 100 minutes praying for something to happen.
3. Tequila Sunrise-hey, what’s bad for Kurt Russell is bad for Mel Gibson. Check out my Kurt Russell post for more details on this convoluted dog.
2. What Women Want-jeez, talk about pandering. This so called “movie” is just painful on multiple levels, at least from a male perspective, and honestly if I were a woman I think I would be really offended by the simplistic treatment of stereotypical women. Also, it should be pretty clear from the phone conversation tape his ex girlfriend made that Mel Gibson really DOESN’T know what women want.
1. The Patriot-oi, what a piece of crap this was. OK, I know I’m a nut about historical accuracy in movies, but this one didn’t even try. Instead, we got a super USA propaganda piece that managed to completely skirt around the issues of slaves and the fact that the Continental Army managed to win not a single battle during the course of the Revolutionary War. We got our asses kicked from one end of the country to the other, and only won because the British decided the war was costing too much money. Hey, a win’s a win, but still. This film is painfully one dimensional and ultimately kind of stupid.
That’s it. Post here if you think I am an idiot for any of these (or any other thing, for that matter). Thanks for reading. I would go see a cheap movie and review it tonight, but there is nothing out I haven’t seen except for Happy Feet 2, and I really can’t force myself to watch dancing penguins (this is why I didn’t see Mr. Popper’s Penguins). Also, I didn’t see the first one and feel I might miss some of the nuance of the sequel for the lack of it (ha ha haha ha). I’ve got an idea for tomorrow but if I don’t get it together will just do the Star Trek thing. Thanks for reading. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Farewell, Anne McCaffrey
Anne McCaffrey holds a weird place in my heart. She was not my favorite, as I tend to go more of harder military sci fi and her stuff felt very soft, even feminine, to me. However, this is a result of her intention rather than any failing in her writing. I like to think that she saw the universe as a place where strife existed but peace and love could as well.
The reason she is special to me is that she was instrumental in my developing a love of science fiction through an act of kindness. As a kid we were very poor (food stamp poor) and the only books I could get were the $.10 paperbacks from the local thrift store. This unfortunately meant that reading a series was nigh impossible, as I would find the third and fifth in a series, but never the first and second and never in any kind of order. I had not read much science fiction when I had the fortune to come across a copy of the Dragonriders of Pern, first in the Dragonrider series. I read it and it was kind of mind blowing for my youthful brain. Telepathic dragons who get ridden by guys and fight space worms? The ability to bond with a friend for life who would love you unconditionally? All on an alien planet far from the PTSD inducing life that was my home and school world? Sign me up please!
The problem, as aforementioned, was that it would be many a moon before I saw another in the series. However, one of my mom’s friends was over visiting and notice me reading my copy for like the fifth time. She went home and a week later stopped by with the entire series to date, laid out in order. Seems she was a fan. It was wonderful. I consumed the entire series in about two weeks and proceeded re reread the series for most of the rest of the year. At that point I started saving up whatever money I could get (mostly from collecting aluminum cans like a homeless person, although this was before it became popular with the homeless. However, as a result I have experience as a dumpster diver) and buying sci fi novels instead of candy or junk. I always kept an eye out for McCaffrey novels. I read the Ship that Sang, an anthology Anne edited, and was introduced to several other authors. I read the Crystal Singer series and was introduced to the concept of of hot women in space singing for crystals (the cover art was pretty good on that one. Hey, it was the early ’80s).
By that time my love of reading and science fiction was firmly entrenched in my mind and continues to this day. Over time my taste shifted over towards more military stuff, as well as stories with more tragic characters or endings (ever read Iann Banks?). I remember in 6th grade we had an assignment to read 300 pages of a novel (our parents would sign off for each book we finished) in a single semester. I found that laughable and set a personal goal of 10,000 pages, which I achieved (and cemented my place as a loser nerd with my classmates. Maybe I should have set a goal of learning to throw a football). Reading has been my friend for my entire life and a big part of that I lay thankfully at the feet of Anne McCaffrey.
I was extremely saddened to learn of her death yesterday, and hope her legacy carries through and inspires other young people to love reading. I also hope that if they make a movie out of her books they follow the pattern set by the Lord of the Rings trilogy rather than Green Lantern pattern. There have been some very well done movies made from novels lately, and I hope the same movie makers are the ones to get a hold of the Dragonriders. Anne McCaffrey’s legacy deserves the best.
(Lord of the Fail image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category)
Thanks for reading. I might go see a movie on Thanksgiving (cough cough no life cough cough), so I should have something to write about this weekend. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Thanks again, and talk to you all later.
Dave
How the government can help with unemployment and possibly fix the economy.
So something came up and I didn’t see a movie last night. I don’t really have anything on deck right now, and thought I might share some thoughts I have had recently regarding our current economic situation.
I normally don’t get political, but like most Americans have been worried about what we are doing with our economy and do believe that if you don’t do what you can to fix a situation than you deserve the results. I am also not any kind of expert in economics or politics, but I work alone, and therefore have a lot of time to think. I have come up with a plan that I believe has the duel benefit of helping people in our struggling economy and helping companies as well, thus resulting in an idea that should appeal to both sides of the political water, if for different reasons. (Ben Franklin image courtesy of the Political T Shirt category).
The problem we have had with the stimulus money is that (obviously) it went to people who don’t actually stimulate anything. Banks are not exactly lining up on my site to buy t-shirts, and as they keep sending jobs overseas it really doesn’t do much at all. Sure, some decent construction jobs were handed out, but the problem is those are all temporary situations. Eventually the bridge will get finished and all those guys will be out of work again.
What we need is stimulus into jobs where Americans actually manufacture stuff and then that stuff gets sold to other Americans. Sure, we tried that with cars by bailing out some incompetent care manufacturers, but no one I know is looking to buy a new car. The jobs we need are the ones that make all the little widgets that are current being mass produced overseas, mostly in China. Electronics, consumer goods, novelty items; you name it, our country used to make it and the companies making them made a profit. Why don’t we still do these sorts of things? Well, the obvious answers are corporate greed in an increasingly competitive market. However, the underlying reason is cost of labor. Americans just cost too much to hire and pay. As a country our workforce has priced themselves out of the job market and are therefore now unemployed.
So what is the answer? Glad you asked. What I would do if I were president and Congress (or had some kind of mind control device) is I would create a program called the General Labor Pool. Similar in theory to the labor programs started by President Roosevelt during the other Depression, the difference would be that anyone on unemployment insurance would actually be enrolled in this program and be required to report for work for however many hours a week was deemed appropriate. Not a full 40, as this would allow them time to look for work. But instead of sweeping up public buildings and the like, the people in the General Labor Pool would be hired out to private companies at significant labor discounts.
You see, instead of paying the unemployment insurance to the individual people, the money would be sent to any company hiring them to offset the cost of their wages. This idea has many benefits.
1. The companies participating would get a ready pool of employees at rates that would make it economically feasible to manufacture (or phone support, etc) here in the US rather than overseas. Furthermore, as labor is usually the number one cost to most companies this would give them the ability and incentive to actually grow and hire even more (previously unemployed) people.
2. The formally unemployed people would actually be making more money than they would be while unemployed, allowing them to buy things like shoes and clothes, thus supporting floundering retail business in local communities, and thus allowing those retailers to hire more people and place orders for more goods, hopefully manufactured by other recently rehired Americans.
3. People would be working, and not sitting around getting depressed and watching TV.
4. Since we are paying unemployment insurance anyway, it really doesn’t cost us anything. It’s more like a job placement fee.
Once the unemployment runs out there might have to be some kind of other incentive to keep people employed. However, if the company let go of the people every three months and hired more people from the same company, would that be so bad? Working for three months is not a bad deal, and odds are there will be another company looking to hire that same person through the same program.
Look, I’m probably some kind of idiot and there are probably 100 reasons why this plan won’t work, but to be honest I don’t really see any of them. It all seems pretty obvious to me. It helps the working person, so Democrats should be happy. It helps companies, so Republicans should be happy. If you can think of a reason why it wouldn’t work feel free to post a reply here. If you can think of a reason it would work do the same, and maybe write your Congressman.
Thanks for reading my plan. I promise tomorrow I will be back on the humorous movie reviews, with a full frontal charge at the newest Twilight movie. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Talk to you soon.
Dave
