The Raven Movie Review
When was this movie supposed to get interesting? Nevermore.
I’m not saying this movie was particularly bad or annoying. It’s just really generic. If you took Seven, mixed in equal parts of Sherlock Holmes and Scooby Doo, added a dash Batman’s the Riddler, and let it simmer for 111 minutes this is the film you would get.
The problems with this film is it just fails to meet expectations. The plot isn’t bad. However, given the source material and claims of being a mystery movie you would expect some kind of plot twist or horrific reveal. Instead we get a led by the nose mystery wherein the villain supplies handwritten clues for Poe to decode and a denouement that ends up being almost random. There is no satisfaction in a mystery solved when the killer just steps out and reveals himself. In spite of the fact that Edgar Allen Poe wrote of some of the most horrifically grisly murders imaginable and this movie has an R rating, with the exception of the pendulum scene all the murders are neutered of all gore and grimness. I saw a more graphic murder last night on the British Being Human. John Cusack acquits himself well but the character he has been given just doesn’t really feel like I would imagine Poe being; a tortured, melancholy, dark alcoholic who revels in gallows humor. Instead we basically get Sherlock Holmes without the deductive ability or English accent.
I think a big part of the disappointment for me is the fact that I am a John Cusack fan. He has been in several of my favorite movies, including Better Off Dead, Hi Fidelity, Gross Pointe Blank, and even Hot Tub Time Machine (Cherobly image courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category). I think he is a talented actor and I enjoy his performances, even in this one. He brings real to the screen.
The story is of course about the last days of Edgar Allen Poe, American literary hero and father of modern horror. He is a destitute alcoholic who is struggling to make money from his past writing and fame. He is also in love with daughter of a rich Baltimore socialite, Emily (Alice Eve-Big Nothing, She’s Out of My League, Sex and the City 2). Her father (Brendan Gleeson-Troy, Gangs of New York, Braveheart) wisely thinks he is bad news and hates him. Meanwhile across town two women are murdered in a scene lifted from one of Poe’s stories. The detective (Like Evans-the Immortals, Clash of the Titans, the Three Musketeers) investigating regonizes the scene and hauls Poe in for questioning. Meanwhile a fat man suffer the Pit and the Pendulum death in the only murder scene worth anything. Turns out he was a literary rival of Poe and suspicion falls on him again. However, he (somehow?) convinces Detective Fields of his innocence and agrees to help in the investigation. Emily gets kidnapped out of a party and at that point the killer starts sending notes to Poe instructing him to follow the clues and keep investigating the murders or she dies.
Honestly if you took a massive bathroom break after the kidnap and came back about two minutes before the murderer is revealed you wouldn’t miss much (and as an aside, my recommendation for a bathroom break is any time after Emily gets kidnapped). Stuff happens. A couple more people die. A string of Scooby Doo-esque clues are followed. Other stuff happens. There is a fire in a random building that turns out to be Poe’s home so he moves in with Fields (did I mention there were elements of the Odd Couple in this?).
The stars. John Cusack did a good job with the acting. One star. I like the source material. One star. I am a fan of that period of American History, and they kept it in tone. One star. The pendulum scene was as grisly and horrible as the rest of the movie was not, in a good way. One star. Overall executed competently, with good pacing, dialog, and camera work with no obvious continuity issues or plot holes. One star. Total: five stars.
The black holes. A real failing to live up to it’s potential, but in plot and rated R material. I’m not asking for nudity here (although a little would have been appreciated) but if you are getting an R anyway why not make this fit in with the world in Edgar Allen Poe’s head? One black hole. With the exception of Fields and Poe, most of the characters were at best expository noise holes. Very two dimensional, even the killer. One black hole. I’m going to hit them for being derivative of a bunch of other movies without really taking a very singular character and making an original film around him. Basically a generic, boilerplate serial murder film sans horror. One black hole. Total: three black holes.
A grand total of two stars. At least it stays positive. I won’t say I regret the time or money I spent on it, because really I didn’t. It’s not a bad, and there are parts you can really appreciate. I just don’t know if it really holds up to a lot of the other movies coming out right now. I think this movie will do great as a late night let’s just watch something kind of film. Date movie? Not really, unless she is a huge John Cusack fan.
Thanks for reading. I will see Safe and Pirates this week, so keep checking back. Also, something Jason wrote the other day about female superhero movies got me thinking about it and discussing it with my friend, so I think I will write something about that tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu or email me at [email protected] if you have any specific questions or suggestions (or if you work for a studio and want to hook me up with some kind of advanced screening). If you have comments about this review feel free to post here. Talk to you soon.
Dave
The Three Stooges Movie Review
This film goes from zero to suxty in 0.00023 seconds.
It’s rare that movies start off sucking from the very first scene. Most films ease into suckage, like a proctologist giving you a Valium and telling you to try to relax before starting the colonoscopy. Either that or they have a few minutes of nice, soothing credits to take your mind off the pain to come. This movie, however, leaps right into the deep end of the suck pool from the very first few seconds with a huge rock tied around it’s feet.
It should be noted that I am in fact a huge Three Stooges fan, which probably contributed to the bile you are about to read regarding this bad idea of a movie. Many a childhood afternoon (and, for that matter, adult) was spent enjoying Larry, Moe, and Curly going through their Stooge antics (and, to a lesser extent, Shemp. Curly Joe we won’t discuss here). They were truly comedic geniuses, combining hilarious characters, brilliant dialog, ridiculous situations, and awesome physical humor into a layer cake that has never been duplicated (nor should anyone ever attempt to do so, a thought I wish had occurred to the Farrelly brothers a couple years ago. Three Stooges image courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category).
I would also like to add that I am for the most part a fan of the Farrelly brothers movies. Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary will always rank up as some of my favorite film. I am just going to have to call this one “that movie”. You know. “All the films by the Farrelly Brothers were great except for ‘that movie’.” This will likely be the film that ten years from now in interviews they will point to this film as the one that got away from them, or they were on serious drugs when they wrote the script (I don’t know if they do any drugs, but for the sake of my respect for their movie making skills I kind of hope so). I think my biggest disappointment in this film is that these guys opted to just do a bad remake rather than put the work in to make a good original film.
The problem is the Three Stooges aren’t really about Moe, Larry, and Curly as characters. They are about the comedic genius of Moses Horwitz, Louis Feinberg, and Jerome Horwitz who spent years honing their comedy and had a working chemistry that played brilliantly off each others strengths and weaknesses. You can’t recreate that by getting three guys who look vaguely like them and write a script. You can’t create that genius under direction. Half the time they were ad libbing anyway. They had 20 years of vaudeville experience before ever setting foot in front of a camera, and the thing about vaudeville was if you sucked you got booed off the stage. While the three guys did a decent imitation of Moe, Larry, and Curly they really didn’t have the timing, action, and pacing down well enough to be a tribute.
As I implied in my subtitle, the film starts off badly painfully with a bunch of orphans singing. I consider it a credit to my own humanity that I have never wanted to hit or injure a child in any way, but the opening few minutes really put that whole “never murder a child” resolution to the text. A duffel bag is thrown out of a moving car and the nun opens it up to reveal the three baby Stooges.
This is the first point at which it is driven home that we are not actually watching the Three Stooges (I can’t say the movie ran off the rails, as I don’t think it even knew where the train station was). You see, if this were an actual Three Stooges short or film and they needed baby Stooges the wouldn’t have cast three actual babies with bad hair. The Stooges would have dressed up as babies and continued with the schtick. This is even more driven home when they are shown a few minutes later as ten year old boys. Adult Stooges dressed up as kids with a giant lollypop is hilarious. 20 minutes of ten year olds doing a bad Stooges impersonation is excruciating. It’s like being dragged to the school play of the kid of a guy you see at work once in a while. This scene, which should have lasted 4 minutes (if it was even necessary) drags on as if one of the kid actors was the editors son.
Anyway, we finally get to the Stooges as adults (for the record they are Chris Diamantopoulos-Under New Management, Wedding Daze, Behind the Camera: the Unauthorized Behind the Scenes of Mork and Mindy(???); Sean Hayes-Will and Grace, the Bucket List, Parks and Rec; and Will Sasso-MadTV, Best in Show, Less Than Perfect). The live at the orphanage still doing odd jobs. We are treated to some decent if farcical Stooges-like antics, only to discover the orphanage is being closed if they can’t come up with $830,000. The boys decide to head out and find the money (Mission from God? Anyone else think this smacks heavily of the Blues Brothers? Again, I would have expected more from the Farrelly’s). They head off to the world they know nothing about (again, a failure to connect with the actual Stooges. The three were dumb, but not babes in the woods. In their own way the characters were canny and street wise). A super hot woman (Sofia Vergara-Modern Family, the Smurfs, Four Brothers) and her boyfriend want to kill her husband and promise the Stooges the money they need if they smother him in his sleep.
This is the final nail in the “We’re not in Kansas anymore” Stooges coffin. Sure the couple used some trickery to convince them this was the thing the victim really wanted, but in the real Stooges the three were in all ways decent guys. If they got into trouble with the law it was because they were “victims of circumstance” more than anything else. They always tried to do the right thing within the limits of their abilities (except for the ones where Moe played a spoof of Hitler) and were often motivated to help people.
The plot kicks off from there. The Stooges meet an old childhood chum (Kirby Heyborne-Saints and Soldiers, Pirates of the Great Salt Lake, The R.M.) and reconnect with him. The Stooges failed to kill their victim the first time and are off looking for him. At one point they dress as doctors and nurses and use babies as urine Super Soakers on each other (I have stated that rated R comedies now require baby excrement jokes. I guess PG means baby urine). I wish I was kidding. I can’t really see the Stooges condoning this, although at one point they did give a baby a loaded handgun. Then, just when you think you can’t hate the new Stooges anymore, the cast from the Jersey Shore crops up like a herpes sore. Again, I wish I were kidding. They are here, and not just for a few second cameo. Whatever connection this movie had to the original Stooges is more or less broken irrevocably and the movie is officially transformed into absolute drivel, although I have to admit I did enjoy seeing some of those failed abortions get slapped around by Moe.
As an aside, could the Farrelly brothers found a worse reality TV show to try to tie into? The show has really lost its popularity and even when it was hot it was truly polarizing (between the people who liked it and the people with two functioning brain hemispheres). Overall felt really dated. Kind of like the one reality show that answered the phone the day before shooting started.
The stars. I did catch myself laughing a few times. One scene in particular when the three guys were beating on each other on a stage, and some of the earlier scenes with one of the nuns from the orphanage. Also, there was some entertainment to be had watching Snookie get the double poke in the eyes. One star. Sofia Vegara seems to only play complete bitches in the movies I have seen, but I would probably let her stomp on my fingers for a chance at a date with her. One star. That’s it. Two stars.
The black holes. The whole Three Stooges remake concept in general. One black hole. A failure to really understand what makes the Stooges cool or connect properly with what they do. Two black holes. The film is laced with dopey kids who made me yearn for the quality acting and emoting of young Anakin Skywalker from the Phantom Menace. One black hole. Having three of those kids do a painful Three Stooges imitation for an extended period of time. One black hole. Making the Stooges out to be willing to kill someone. One black hole. Hiring actors not known for their physical comedy to do physical comedy. One black hole. Baby urine squirt guns. One black hole. The Jersey Shore. One black hole. A pat ending drawn from so far out of the the writers ass that it came with a free set of tonsils. One black hole. Total: ten black holes.
A grand total of eight black holes. I would love to tell you to not go see this but really, what’s the point? If you are the type to see it you will regardless of what I might say, and if you have any taste or discretion at all you will most likely have already discerned how much it blows and will avoid it anyway. Besides, it doesn’t matter if the movie bombs in America or not. Anything with this much physical comedy is going to kill in the foreign markets, making us slaves foreign cultures. I will say that while I was desperately searching my armrests for a fast forward button or hidden compartment with a handy cyanide pill in it a lot of the rest of the audience was laughing their (dumb) asses off. The fact that I saw it mid day on a Sunday for $5 might be a contributing factor to the audience’s intellect level, but perhaps I really don’t have a grasp on what people like these days. So if you are entertained by idiotic remakes of things that don’t need to be remade by all means go see it. Date movie? Hell no. Women hate the Three Stooges even when it is good. They don’t have the gene to see the quality of that performance (that’s OK. Men lack the gene that would allow us to find Sex in the City entertaining) and odds are she will hate you for subjecting her to it.
Thanks for reading. I saw Lockout this evening and will review it tomorrow morning. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu or send me an email at [email protected] if you have specific questions or suggestions. Feel free to leave comments here if you have something specific to say on this review. Talk to you soon.
Dave
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
Kick Ass 2 is looking kind of Kick Ass
So I was reading a little about the new Kick Ass sequel this morning and actually did something I hate doing, which is research. It seems that at first the original director, Matthew Vaughn, was not going to do it which is always the first recipe for suck. However, it looks now like he is going to step in as a producer. I don’t really know what the difference is between those two jobs or how much more influence the producer could have, but this is promising. Dave is the one who pays more attention to these sorts of things, but I always thought the director did 90% of the work and the producer made sure the staff had enough coffee and donuts on hand. However, if he is involved in any way that lends promise to the sequel.
By the way, I found out Dave does not have any Kick Ass t-shirts on his site, but I did find this pretty kick ass Bruce Lee shirt in his movie t shirts. Seemed appropriate, given how much ass Bruce kicked in his life.
Anyway, unlike most of the posts I do about sequels where I think they are a dumb waste of time, I am looking forward to this. Normally 11 year old girls beating the hell out of adults bugs me, but this one made it work, and Chloe Moretz has said she is going to do it, so that is very cool.
Jason
Dr. Strange movie: To Suck or Not to Suck, That is the Question
So it looks like Marvel is going ahead with a bunch of it’s B level super heroes for movies, and one of the ones they are considering is Dr. Strange. To go with a B level hero they are running with B level writers, specifically Thomas Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer who wrote the remake of Conan the Barbarian. The movie was kind of crap, and a lot of that blame sits right in the writers laps. Conan image from the Movie T Shirts, by the way.
What can we do, you ask? Well, in this post I am going to list a few major mistakes these two guys could make in hopes that they might read this and pick something up. First of all, Dr. Strange is gay. There, I said it. You don’t need to hide that fact, and more specifically you don’t need to write in a female love interest.
Second of all, Dr. Strange has all kinds of mystical powers but really isn’t much for physical. You don’t have to have him punch some guy out. He uses his brains and powers to defeat bad guys, not a gun. For that matter, his villains tend to be more than the run of the mill bank robbers, so let’s try to keep things nice and occult.
I’m sure there are other ways to suck this one up. If I think of any I will mention it, but I feel like hell tonight and need to get to bed. Have a good one.
Jason
Sooo many shirts
So I am trying to get all the shirts unpacked from WonderCon and it is quite the task. Almost overwhelming, really. The cool part is it is a nice chance to look at and mentally review all the shirts and licenses.
It is also a chance to think about what I would like to bring in at my earliest opportunity. Due to the nature of the licensed t-shirt industry I can’t just have anything I want made up. All the shirts on our site are licensed so I have to find someone who actually paid royalties to the studios who made them. Here is a partial list of shirts (mostly movie t shirts) I would like to find:
Mad Max (MFP), Road Warrior, Deathrace 2000, Harry Potter, Stripes, Caddyshack, The Maxx, Spawn, Hellboy, Kick Ass, Cowboy Bebop, Astro Boy, Mars Attacks!, Gorillaz, Drinky Crow/Tony Millionaire’s Maakies, Space Ghost, The Walking Dead, Venture Bros, Babylon Five, and Brazil.
Here are the shirts I probably should bring in based on their popularity by my basic humanity will not allow:
Twilight
That’s pretty much it.
‘The Big Lebowski’ Improves with Age
Some movies are so imminently quotable and frequently hilarious that they command a viewer’s attention the whole way through. The first time I saw “The Big Lebowski” in theaters back in 1998, I was somewhat confused by the on-screen spectacle. At the time, there’s no way I would have placed it among the top comedy movies of all time. In truth, I didn’t know what to expect from this movie. It certainly wasn’t anything like the Coen Brothers’ previous offering, the relatively straightforward “Fargo.”
As it turned out, repeat viewings allowed me to appreciate the movie for the comedic masterpiece it is. Jeff Bridges turns in perhaps his signature role as Jeffrey Lebowski (I don’t care if he did just win an Oscar), a down-on-his-luck acid casualty from the ’60s. The adventures of “The Dude” and his best buddy Walter Sobchak function as a witty subversion of hardboiled crime thrillers and shaggy dog narratives. The Big Lebowski used to be the quintessential cult comedy, but with people sporting Big Lebowski shirts like this one from our movie t shirt collection and annual gatherings to celebrate the film, it has certainly risen above cult status.
V returns?
Not V for Vendetta (which is an insanely cool movie and one that I keep hoping to find t shirts for) but V, the tv invasion serious. I guess ABC saw what happened with Battlestar Galactica and opted to cash in.
The thing is, I don’t recall the original V as being all that engaging or interesting, and I also don’t recall ABC as having a staff of writers who know anything about science fiction. It also seems they suffer from the same moronic executive pool that Fox draws from, as some executive (head of the company or something. It think it was Stephen McPherson) opted to bury Masters of Science Fiction and cut it short. This serious could have been great.
Who knows. Maybe ABC will impress me somehow. I have my doubts. I also have issues with aliens who look like humans. All aliens should look like Alien (as seen on this shirt from the movie t shirt section) or something equally weird. If HR Giger is not involved in the design I doubt it could look good.
Anyway, I will probably watch it, but won’t go out of my way for it. Not hearing a ton on it. That being said, I think I will watch V for Vendetta tonight on DvD.
We hit 300!
T shirts, that is. I was saying at DundraCon that my goal was 300 different shirts on our site, and as of last night we are at 301. I am very excited.
Played a great game of Warhammer last night against a guy from Belgium. I am playing a list I call “the Brown Submarine.” Basically it is purposely weak in order to get some really soft games round one and two of any tournament and win through soft points. Of course that requires that I upgrade the paint considerably, but I am working on it in whatever free time I have (almost none). I also enjoy playing it in that I have to work really hard to win. It is a thinking man’s army.
Anyway, back to the t shirt grind. I am happy to say my women’s t shirt section has grown fivefold, from one to five including this gem from my movie t shirt section. I will be expanding my selection as my budget allows. That being said, I have another six new men’s shirts to work on today.
Anyway, looking forward to a good weekend. I have a few things going on for a change. I’ll talk about terrain day next post.