Movie Review: Silent House
…but Deadly House.
To anyone who got that joke without any prompting, how are things going in your third grade class? Mine is great. Anyway, I saw Silent House last night and am kind of pleased. There are two kinds of horror movies. The first is the lame slasher film that has a double handful of teenagers getting butchered in assorted gruesome ways by some maniac in an isolated cabin in the woods (Friday the 13th image courtesy of the Horror Movie T Shirts). These films quickly devolved into a body count meter and are generally more comedy than horror. The second kind is the one where hardly anyone dies, but over the course of the film you get to really know and care about the characters and are therefore much more worried for them. The horror in these films is much more palpable, and your concern helps put you in their shoes. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is a good example of this, and Silent House definitely fits into that camp.
Another thing that makes this movie work for me is lead actress Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene and a bunch of Mary Kate and Ashley garbage). She has been playing third banana to the Olsen twins all her life, only to surface with her own acting career and an apparent ability to act that goes far beyond anything her sisters have done. In the story of my mind she is Cinderella. While her sisters are handed everything on a stick she has to work away in the kitchen, learning how to be a real actress, not a super hot novelty act, and consequently has smelted herself into an alloy far stronger than her sisters. I predict 20 years from now we will still be impressed with her performances while the Olsen twins will be another question on Trivial Pursuit Gen Y version.
Of course, I know nothing of the dynamics of the Olsen family or her relationship with the twins. I just like having stories in my head.
Anyway, Silent House. It is a creepy horror/psycho drama that I found intense and gripping. That is not to say there aren’t some problems, but overall I was totally engaged. The producers claim all 88 minutes was shot on one camera, with a few breaks here and there. I suppose that is doable, but I saw a lot of shots that would be easy to cut in and out of. The camera bounces around a lot, reminiscent of found footage but really more about trying to put you in Elizabeth’s shoes. For the most part it succeeds.
I won’t get too into the story, as it is pretty simple and also has some stuff I don’t want to spoil. Elizabeth Olsen plays Sarah, a young girl helping her father John (Adam Trese-40 Days and 40 Nights, Palookaville, Zodiac) and her uncle Peter (Eric Sheffer Stevens-As the World Turns, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Body of Proof) fix up the dilapidated family lake house. The house is apparently built entirely of foyers, creepy hallways, and cramped bedrooms. Peter takes off after an argument with his brother, leaving Sarah and John alone in a spooky mansion.
At that point it appears someone is in the house with them. John gets knocked out, leaving Sarah alone to run, pant, and scream in terror at every turn. She is locked in the house and all the windows are boarded up. The power is out so she is left with some propane lanterns and a couple flashlights. There are a lot of scenes of her running, falling, hiding, and crying all over the place. Plots thicken, a dark secret about the house is revealed, and things seem to go from bad to worse.
The stars. Really scary at points. One star. You really feel Sarah’s terror, and connect nicely with her throughout the film. One star. Elizabeth Olsen is easy on the eyes. One star. A lot of things that seem to make little sense early on in the film (and would have rated some black holes) get wrapped up nicely towards the end. One star. Excellent performance from Elizabeth. She really can act. One star. Even if they did have to cut and splice a little, the camera work and shooting were all really long, hard to do scenes, making it all the more impressive. One star. Interesting, different movie from what we are used to seeing. One star. A horror movie that does not rely on body count. One star. Overall a fun, exciting movie. Two stars. Total: ten stars.
The black holes. The movie struggles to give us any real insight into Sarah’s character beyond what is going on at the moment. One black hole. You know all those “Don’t go in there” moments you hate in horror films? This one has more than a few of them. One black hole. This movie was so intense and focused that I felt it really could have used a modest bit of comic relief. Cat in the closet sort of thing. One black hole. The jumpy camera made for some hard to follow scenes, and there were more than a few moments when the lighting meant we were staring at a grey blog on a black screen. The single camera made it hard to keep everything in focus. One black hole. Total: four black holes.
A grand total of six stars. Excellent score, and kudos to Ms. Olsen for a job well done. If you are into this type of horror try to see it on a big screen as I think a lot of the jumpy camera and generally poor lighting will make some of the horror get lost on a TV. Not a good date movie IMO. Sure it’s scary, but I think the terror of the main character will hit your date pretty hard.
Thanks as always for reading. Nothing to see right now, but I think I am going to write up something tomorrow that I should have done a couple months ago. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu or email me at [email protected]. Of course, you can always make a comment here as well. I have to run. Have a good day.
Dave
The Grey Movie Review
Survivor Man just got real.
So my little “Choose Dave’s Adventure” contest ended in an exact tie, with one vote cast for The Grey and one vote cast for One for the Money (by my best friend, whom I think is screwing with me). However, I was feeling like crap and opted to cast the tiebreaker in the direction that would cause me the least pain.
Overall this movie was very good, at least in a couple very specific directions. I don’t know what kind of pain Liam Neeson (the Phantom Menace, Shindler’s List, Taken) has experienced in his life to allow him to project so much darkness all over the screen, but it must have been pretty heavy. No one else can project so much pain and despair combined with anger and gritty realism. He carries the movie entirely on his back, with a support cast of disposable heroes along give him a framework upon which to showcase suffering.
Before I get much deeper into this, let me say that if you have any kind of deep seated fear of plane crashes, being eaten by wild animals, or freezing to death in the Alaskan tundra than this is probably not the movie for you. This movie shows these deaths in a manner that makes you feel like it is you who is getting disemboweled. I will call this a credit to the director, Joe Carnahan (A-Team, Narc, Smokin’ Aces), and say 
further that this movie is far, far scarier to watch than any film about a goofy supernatural hockey mask wearing maniac risen from the dead to kill teenagers with a chainsaw (Friday the 13th image courtesy of the Horror Movie T Shirt category). The fact that these deaths not only could happen but actually have makes them far more graphic and horrible.
Let me also give myself a self congratulatory pat on the back for my prediction about this movie, that there was some factor making the wolves unusually aggressive, being more or less true. Feel free to call me the movie Nostradamus.
In the movie, Liam Neeson plays John Ottway, a sharpshooter hired by an oil company to shoot wolves, bears, and such in order to keep the oil workers safe. He is plagued by his wife leaving him and suffers from suicidal thoughts. He boards a plane for Anchorage which goes down for unexplained reasons (ice buildup on the wings is implied, but never confirmed. Nor does it really need to be). The plane crashing scene is as horrific and realistic as possible without actually throwing the theater you are sitting in down a cliff and setting it on fire. He and six others manage to survive relatively intact and set up a camp in order to not freeze to death. That night they encounter a pack of timber wolves who attack and kill one of them. Don’t make the mistake of seeing these wolves as being like dogs, by the way. They are huge and scary like nothing you have seen before. Anyway, they decide they need to get out of the area before they freeze to death or get eaten. Thus the long trek through the frozen woods begins, with member after member of the party dying with standard regularity, usually just after we learned more about them and got to like them. I want to give props to director Joe Carnahan for managing to make the audience really identify with and like his characters before killing them off. The fact that they were all gritty oil workers rather than vacuous teeny bopper contributed to that.
That’s pretty much the entirely of the movie. I don’t want to give any spoilers but want to say this movie was really, really scary (making the life of the loner movie critic going solo to see this stuff that much harder. I was seeing a lot of wolves out of the corner of my eye as I headed out to the car).
The stars. Liam Neeson was awesome. Two stars. Most of the rest of the cast was really great too. One star. Scary, scary movie. Two stars. The wolf CGI was very good. One star. The director managed to make me connect with pretty much every character before killing him off. One star. Overall he also managed to keep the tension ratcheted up to eleven on a continuous basis. One star. As long as you aren’t terrified of plane crashes or wolves, an excellent movie. Two stars. Total: ten stars.
The black holes. One of the support characters seemed a little over the top (although he got cool towards the end) and was sort of bugging. One black hole. The pacing, which seemed spot on for most of the movie, really slowed down in the last 20 minutes. One black hole. SPOILER ALERT I don’t want to spoil this movie in any way, but if you are clever you might be able to infer something from this next point so maybe you want to skip to the next paragraph. The entire movie seemed to be pushing towards some kind of meta message about things happening for a reason and the hand of God creating fate, only to prove that there was no reason of any of the stuff that happened in this film. I left the theater with a distinct feeling of “What point was the director trying to make?” in my head. One black hole. Total: three black holes.
So a grand total of seven stars. A really good movie, if you want scary. I think the camera work warrants a big screen, so try to see it in a theater if possible. Not a good date movie, in my opinion. There is nothing going on here that will inflame your her passion, unless she is turned on by gritty middle aged men wearing six layers of clothing (in which case, after you fail with her send her my way).
A little shorter than I would like, but I really am feeling like crap and think I am going to go crawl back into bed. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. If I wake up with enough energy I will probably go see One for the Money, which I expect to suck like nothing ever seen before in this universe or the three universes next to us. Feeling this bad will probably hone my bitter sarcasm to the point that I will either write the best negative review ever or just spew a bunch of random words and letters all over the screen. Talk to you soon.
Dave
The Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 1 Movie Review
Bare chestapalooza.
Yes, I saw it last night and yes, I felt my testosterone level drop as the title credits rolled across the screen. I was with a friend who loves Twilight (and who probably hates me now for the snide comments I was making throughout the film) and a bunch of other women and browbeaten boyfriends.
I am probably going to throw a few spoilers out here, so if you are for some freakish reason a fan who is going to see the film but haven’t read the books (illiterate, maybe? I can’t figure out any other reason. But then, what are you doing here?) maybe skip to the conclusion. Something I heard a couple years ago that is the author of the books, Stephanie Meyer, is an uber Mormon (magic underwear?) who not only hates the idea of premarital sex but sex in general. I know this sounds weird in a story that seems to capitalize on hot, young hairless guys who lack enough money to buy shirts, but when you think about it the main protagonist, Bella, remains a virgin until she gets married (at age 18) where on her wedding night has painful, bodily injuring sex exactly once and gets into the most horribly painful unwanted pregnancy since Eraserhead. Talk about punishment. When you think about it, seems like a certain morality agenda is being forced down the throats of young women worldwide, with some serious damage being done to women’s liberation along the way (Bella is, in almost all circumstances, the passive vessel for all of the what can laughingly be called masculinity on the screen).
Anyway, is the movie good or bad? Depends on your perspective. If you are a fan I’m sure you can enjoy it. If you are more like me and really only hold a passing interest in the cultural phenomenon generated by the series than it kind of seems sluggish and pointless, with a lot of really mediocre acting and dialog. I think the best way to describe this film is with the word “filled”, as in it is full of filler. You see, as far as I can tell the book Breaking Dawn was not really significantly longer than any of the others, yet somehow the studio has decided they need to make it into a four hour epic (Part 1 was 117 minutes). Every scene seems horribly stretched and elongated to no purpose, with a ton of flashbacks to scenes lifted from 15 minutes earlier. It’s like if you were making an energy bar and wanted to increase the size and weight by throwing in handfuls of sawdust into the mix. I spent the first 45 minutes praying for ANYTHING to happen (and by anything I mean I would have been happy if the Earth had fallen into the sun). Stretching a 2 hour movie into two parts is a way of doubling your revenue, but it really doesn’t add anything to the experience and, honestly, if it works here will set an ugly precedent for future sequels.
Anyway, the movie starts off with Jacob (Taylor Lautner-all the Twilight films plus the horrible Abduction (check out the review I did for that dog)) ripping off his shirt (surprise, surprise. Yes, ladies, he has his shirt off within five seconds of the opening credits ending) and running off into the woods as a wolf, dropping his invitation to Bella and Edwards wedding (Kristin Stewart-wow. She’s got nothing really besides the Twilight series. I guess bland doesn’t translate well to films designed to appeal to groups besides teenage girls. Edward is of course Robert Pattinson, whom I blasted in my review for Water for Elephants. Looks like his new emotion chip failed again). A bunch of other people whom I am sure would be important to me had I seen more than one of the other Twilight films get invitations too. We get subjected to more of the same chemistry-less romance between Bella and Edward and Edward runs off to his bachelor party that we don’t get to see (what to vampire bachelors who don’t actually drink human blood do at a bachelor party? Sounds like a quiet evening at the library to me). The wedding scene seemed to go on for 83,000 years and was overall kind of awkward and painful. Then a flight to Brazil and a romantic beach bungalow (what do these vampires do for money, anyway? None of them seem to have a job, unless being overly good looking pays) where the two of them have sex exactly once and spend the rest of the honeymoon playing chess (no joke. I wish I was joking). Edward is afraid he will hurt Bella because he bruised her or something during that first night.
Bella gets painfully pregnant and starts showing within a couple weeks (isn’t part of being a vampire that your cells are effectively dead, or perhaps crystallized? How, then, can vampire sperm cells fertilize an ovum? And what aspect of that union means the fetus will develop in a month?). They fly back to their estate in Washington (home of Starbucks. I’m not saying that Starbucks is run by vampires, but the evidence is stacking up) where the other main vampire/robot Carlisle (Peter Facinelli, another guy who has nothing else going on, unless playing Zan from the Wonder Twins in a film short counts for something. Everything else is garbage) announces that the fetus, who for some reason has put a lead shield or something around the womb preventing xray or ultrasound (???) from showing it, will probably kill Bella. She refuses to have the child aborted and has to drink human blood, in spite of still being human. Meanwhile, the werewolves come to the conclusion that the baby will be a monster and threat to them for reasons they opted to not really share with the audience. Once again we are treated (subjected) to vampire on werewolf action where no one of any significance dies. Vampire havoc ensues. You are finally given some action, although it is short lived and ultimately kind of pointless.
Before I get into the stars and black holes, I have a few questions I want to ask of any Twilight fans out there. First of all, if you are a vampire and your plush vampire house is surrounded by werewolves who significantly outnumber you, wouldn’t you look for some kind of equalizer? And by that I mean guns. Is there some rule that vampires can’t use guns at all? They seem to have unlimited money. A couple of SPAS 12’s would have put a hurt on the wolves as they came bounding towards you. For that matter, if you have the resources just mount an M2 .50 cal on the roof and surround your house with Claymores. That would put paid to the wolves pretty quick, and it’s not like local law enforcement has any interest in what goes on in the woods.
The second question is when did the Twilight series turn into a Saga? Crowbarring that into the title really bugged me, like adding Part 2 to the Hangover. Saga is a Norse term for an epic tale. Sorry, but there is nothing epic about watching Bella and Edward having “romantic” scenes with all the natural chemistry of a sugar cube being dissolved in water while Jacob skulks around outside.
Thirdly, what ever happened to the vampires sparkling in daylight? This is actually a point that grinds me like nothing else about this series, but if you are going to make it a point of the film please try to maintain it. Don’t just drop it (Sparkly vampire image courtesy of the Horror Movie T Shirt category).
Fourth, what the hell was the deal with those creepy looking vamps and the hot girl during the credits? I know those guys are the bosses from Italy, but what exactly was up with the girl? She didn’t seem to do anything wrong. Also, one thing I kind of liked about Twilight (there are words that I thought I would never type) is they managed to stay away from the Emo vampires, and then at the end there they are. Is there a minimum Emo requirement for any vampire movie?
Fifth, they seem to make sure you see Jacob and the rest of the werewolves rip out of their clothes every time they transform in an attempt to help show how wild and savage they are, but where do they get clothes for their next human scene? The wolves surrounding the house clearly left their territory in wolf form, but when they need to talk all of a sudden it’s like they found a lost truck full of Abercrombie and Fitch merchandise. Do they have secret caches of clothing hidden all over the place? Does the magic that transforms them back to human give them clothes again? I could actually buy that, as it was a premise in a Harry Dresden novel, but why then show the clothes ripping off? Muscle shirts a go go. For that matter, what do the werewolves do for a living as well? Their wardrobe budget would bankrupt a small European country.
Anyway, I could go on, but better get to the stars. I don’t know if this is a accurate assessment, as my liking his acting is only in comparison to the sub mediocre acting from everyone else, but I kind of liked Taylor Lautner’s performance. At least he showed emotion once in a while. One star. The flash back to the 30’s when Edward was killing humans was kind of cool, I guess. One star. I can’t think of anything specific, but will award two stars for not sucking as bad as I thought it was going to suck. Total: four stars.
The black holes. The plot had more holes than a golf course. One black hole. Horrible, deadpan, emotionless, drab acting from almost everyone. One black hole. Long, boring scenes that accomplished nothing. One black hole. Stretching one two hour film into 2 two hour films in a blatant attempt to take advantage of your gullible fans. One black hole. Filler added by recycling scenes from earlier in the movie just to run out the clock. One black hole. A decided lack of motivation on the part of the werewolves. A little more thought and/or expository dialog would have been appreciated. One black hole. The writer seemed to pull the ending from so deep in her ass that she must have bumped her tonsils on the way out. One second you are gearing up for the final, epic battle where someone might have actually been in mortal danger, and the next everyone goes home and orders pizza. One black hole. Robert Pattinson’s eyebrows. One black hole (petty, I know. But still. They are almost hypnotic in how they draw your eyes). Deus Ex Machina set to full power. One black hole. Thinly disguised religious morality message. One black hole. Total: ten black holes.
So a grand total of six black holes. Honestly, before you hate spam me I could have been a lot harsher. On a bad day each of those questions I asked earlier would have been another black hole. And again, if you are a fan I am sure you will find the love for this film. Just do your suffering boyfriend a favor and go with your girlfriends. Date movie? Maybe. I think a lot of girls might look at you weird if you expressed an interest in seeing this. Not the most macho choice you could make.
Thanks for reading this particularly long review. Feel free to post comments here, and as long as you don’t cuss I will approve them and try to respond. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. More coming up soon. Cheap movie night so I should be able to see something. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Jack and Jill Movie Review
So bad it could be considered a crime against humanity.
I know I went off on a huge “What happened to Adam Sandler’s career?” diatribe when I wrote my review for the Zookeeper, but really, what happened to Adam Sandler’s career? How did he go from the Waterboy, Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, and even serious comedies like Punch Drunk Love to playing, not a cop pretending to be a woman but an actual woman, and himself in a non funny piece of tripe laced with toxic humor that would embarrass a third grader? Is this what happens when comedians sell out? Is this what happened to Jay Leno? All great comedy is laced with tragedy, so maybe the comfort, success and wealth he has enjoyed has permanently damaged his ability to perceive funny. Either that or he fell off a ladder onto his head and this is what serious brain damage looks like.
I will say I did derive a certain amount of satisfaction from the fact that I totally expected it to suck, but based on the trailers any idiot could see that coming. That’s like seeing your dentist pull out the extra big drill and saying “this is going to suck”. However, even I was surprised at how deep the suckage delved. Odds are during the last year and a half of doing these review I have probably overused the phrase “praying for a merciful death”, but during this movie I was really hoping for the sweet kiss of oblivion, or at least a nice restful coma.
What’s really sad is it not that it’s totally bad, but that it’s not totally bad. By that I mean if it was just so bad it was actually comical I could sit back and enjoy how bad it was, like Killer Klowns from Outer Space (Klowns image courtesy of the horror movie t shirt category). No, instead we get ghostly images of a decent film. Kind of like seeing a good foundation in a house that is rotting apart and build on a toxic waste dump. There are a few funny moments (mostly involving any of the secondary characters). Al Pacino (more on his participation in the bomb later) was entertaining. The kids were cute and the adopted Indian one was amusing (Elodie Tougne and Rohan Chand. I hope the fact that this movie was each their first role doesn’t relegate them both to reality TV hell). Katie Holmes player her typical bland, no personality supporting wife but does it well and is easy on the eyes. There were a couple other sub plots and minor characters that had potential. But these elements are like small pockets of air you suck on while trapped under the ice, desperately looking for the ice hole.
The thing (literally) that dominated every moment of the film and you dread seeing throughout it is Sandler’s female character, Jill. She is gross, shrill, whiny, repulsive, and in all ways so fake looking and sounding that she sucks whatever talent or decent dialog is flying around the screen into a black hole that nothing returns from. I liken her character to a parasitic worm that bores its way into your head through your ear hole and spends 91 minutes eating tunnels through your brain, stimulated the occasional pain center or muscle spasm while steadily diminishing your intellectual capacity.
Let me make sure I have explained the character of Jill accurately enough. It’s like if a once talented comedian created an otherwise inoffensive romantic comedy and then, at the last minute, made one of the main characters a walking turd monster. Not a cute one like Mr. Hanky, but an actual, human sized creature made of excrement with arms, legs, and a mouth, and then had everyone else act like it did not look, smell, or feel like crap. Then he gave it a voice that made fingernails on a chalkboard sound like the sound of gentle rain and dialog that made you wish you never learned to understand English, or any other language for that matter. That is the character of Jill.
The weird question that kept rattling through my worm infested brain, however, was not what happened to Adam Sandler, or how any studio was dumb enough to green light this thing, or why there were two other people in the theater with me, but rather what kind of blackmail material must Adam Sandler have on Al Pacino to get him to agree to do this travesty? I mean, is Al that desperate to get on screen? Does he have a secret yearning to do comedy? Aren’t there 1,000,000,000 better scripts he could possibly work with? It’s one thing for an actor to take a role that make him look kind of like a twit. It’s another thing to take a role that kind of makes him look like a twit and give him a romantic interest that no human, man or woman, gay, straight, or anywhere in between, would ever have an interest in. Then, it’s an even bigger thing to take that twit role with the horrid love interest and play it AS HIMSELF! Yes, Al Pacino does not play a weird guy with issues and an interest in a drag queen that makes Divine look feminine. No, he plays Al Pacino with serious issues and an interest in Adam Sandler in a dress. I don’t think there is enough money in the world to make this worth his while. I am a lot less expensive to hire than Al Pacino, but there would have to be a lot of money in it for me to do something like tattoo “loser” across my forehead, which is what I see this role as doing for Al.
So, the movie. Jack and Jill are twins. Jill is everything I just described, plus a nice side helping of serious codependency issues. Jack is an obnoxiously rich and successful (again? Really?) owner of an ad agency that needs Al Pacino to whore himself out for Dunken Donuts. Jill is coming to town for Thanksgiving. She shows up, makes things uncomfortable for everyone (especially the audience), and leaves a Godzilla like path of destruction behind her. Jack and Jill (just putting those words together makes me want to forget that I ever went to kindergarten) have a fight, and in order to make it up to her Jack brings her to a Laker game that he knows Al Pacino is going to be at. Al blows him off, but meets Jill and falls head over heels in love with her. I really don’t want to get to much into the story, as it is giving me a series case of PTSD, but chaos ensues, lessons are learned, and endings are trite and happy.
The stars. Al Pacino was entertaining at times, especially when he was bitching out Jack on the phone. One star. That Indian kid was cute and responsible for most of the laughs. One star. That’s it. Two stars.
The black holes. Adam Sandler has created arguable the worst comedic character ever. Three black holes. I want to give a black hole for every time I wished I was in another theater or possibly another planet with no breathable atmosphere, but I didn’t keep track so I will cut it back to four black holes. Excrement and fart humor. One black hole. A comedy with nothing in it actually funny. Two black holes. Gratuitous product placement. One black hole. Some of the scenes that were supposed to be some kind of development really dragged on for no reason (the theater scene in particular). One black hole. A bunch of semi-cool minor characters and sub plots that disappeared after a couple scenes. One black hole. Miserable dialog. It seems the writers don’t know how to write anything that isn’t whining. One black hole. And finally, two more black holes for taking a five minute Saturday Night Live skit and stretching it into 91 minutes.
So a grand total of 14 black holes. I’m not even going try to be funny here. Please don’t see this film. The only way we can stop the deluge of of crap pouring out of Hollywood is to not support it in any way. This movie has to fail miserable, or we will see sequels and copies until our brains shrivel up and look like giant raisins. Now, if we could only get the foreign markets to stop supporting this drivel we might be able to make a difference.
By the way, for the record Rotten Tomatoes gave this dog a score of 4.7%. I didn’t think a movie could get so low. I thought it was more like the SATs where you get 400 points just for showing up.
Anyway, thanks for reading and sharing my pain. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. I’m starting to thing about what I am going to do after the New Year. I want to do some kind of award series for best and worst movie, best gratuitous nude scene, worst action sequence, etc. I need a name for my award, like the Nerdy’s or something. If you have a suggestion post it here or Tweet me. I’m also taking suggestions for humorous award categories. Also, if any of you have a clue how I can start seeing movies before they come out legally (i.e. any studio people reading this and want to have me review your film etc) feel free to post, although after this review I don’t know if any studio will ever want me to see one of their films. I have given good scores too. I liked Tower Heist. I swear!
Dave
Johnny English Reborn Review
Comedy through repetition.
This movie was something of a landmark for me, in that this is the first movie I have seen in years (and most definitely since I started doing these reviews) wherein I can pinpoint the exact moment it officially started to suck. Most movies either start off sucking, like walking into a boring political theory lecture where the professor insist on calling everyone Mr. or Ms. So and So, or they start off looking like something almost decent but the suckage steadily builds pressure like an impending bowel movement at a giant swap meet where the only toilets are Porto-Potties that haven’t seen a cleaning hose in many a moon. You keep trying to deny the need to express the suckage, but eventually you have to bite the bullet and admit that what you have been watching for the last 45 minutes has been total garbage.
No, this movie picked an exact moment to shift from stupid/funny to just plain old stupid. In case you were wondering, it’s when Johnny English is flying a helicopter to get a dying man to a hospital and decides the best way is to follow the road. At a height of two feet. Until then it was definitely dumb, but dumb in a funny way. After that the funny was smothered by the pillow of stupidity.
That’s kind of a lot of analogies for two paragraphs, but it has been that kind of day. Anyway, Johnny English Reborn. Yes, it is a sequel and no, I did not see the first one. Does that make me unqualified to review the sequel? Probably. However, unless the first one was the Citizen Kane of physical comedies, I am pretty sure I got the gist of what this character is about. He’s a cocktail made with equal parts James Bond, Jacues Cousteau, and Austin Powers filtered through a dog hair colander and left underground for a few months to ferment into comedy kim chee. Did I miss anything? I don’t think so.
Anyway, between the last movie and this one Johnny English (Rowan Atkinson – Mr. Bean, Mr. Bean’s Holiday, Johnny English, the Lion King) was disgraced in Mozambique for letting the new president get assassinated. He has spent the last five years living with Tibetan monks learning how to get kicked in the balls. For no reason whatsoever a former CIA operative has some kind of top secret information and says he will only give it to Johnny, in spite of the fact that they both act like they never met each other. Johnny gets pulled back into MI7 (which is now partnered up with Toshiba, a running gag that probably looked a lot funnier on paper) by a long lost dream woman of mine, Gillian Anderson (Scully was in many ways the perfect woman. Hot, super smart, red headed, carried a gun, and used handcuffs. What more could a guy ask for?). He is partnered up with Tucker, a young agent (Daniel Kaluuya. His filmography feels a bit on the sparse side), who goes with them to meet the CIA guy. A Chinese sexagenarian hit/cleaning woman (Pik Sen Lim, and the only character who I consistently liked) with a killer vacuum kills his contact, but Johnny learns of a secret team of assassins called Vortex, who are out to kill the Chinese Prime Minister. Johnny gets one of the three key parts absolutely needed for Vortex to accomplish their goal but loses it in a bumbling scene that would embarrass Cousteau.
Anyway, he gets in trouble. More assassins are uncovered. He goes through a really long and drawn out chase scene in a powered wheelchair through London. A super hot blond falls in love with him for no apparent reason. Some not really funny running gags get beaten into the ground until you literally want to gag. More Austinteaubondian hijinks ensue. The plot twists feel more like gentle bends on a freeway, and are in almost all circumstances facilitated by the general stupidity of not just English but the entire cast.
The stars. There were some funny moments, especially some of the physical comedy. That is one thing Rowan Atkinson can really do. One star. Gillian Anderson. One star. The Chinese cleaning woman/assassin was funny. One star. Total: three stars.
The black holes. The biggest problem is the movie couldn’t decide if it was a comedy action spy movie or an action spy movie with comedy elements. The story and plot were too serious to be a good vehicle for slapstick, and the slapstick was too over the top to allow you to take the story seriously. One black hole. Rated PG, not even PG13. At this point I don’t think PG13 has ever hurt a movies’ gross. Put a curse word in there somewhere. One star. Beating multiple dead horses. One black hole. Not even an attempt to make the movie remotely smart or clever. I expect more from movies that feature British accents. One black hole. All the characters were hand picked from the shelves of Stereotypes-R-Us. One black hole. At the end of this comedy, I just didn’t find it very funny. One black hole. Total: six black holes.
A grand total of three black holes. Look, it’s pretty obvious what happened here. The first Johnny English bombed horribly here in the US, but did phenomenally well overseas. Rowen Atkinsons physical comedy translates well, and we see a lot of it here, including a one-hand-against-the-other fight scene lifted almost frame for frame from the Evil Dead 2 (Ash image courtesy of the horror movie t shirts). I don’t think the producers of this film expect to have lightning strike so much as they are going to milk the international cow. This sort of thing makes money, I guess. It just seems that if you are going to go to the effort of making a film that you plan to release in the US anyway, why not put some effort into it and make it work here too?
I’d say don’t see this film until it shows up on NetFlix streaming, and at that point smoke a lot of pot while watching it. It won’t hurt your brain. If you have kids the PG rating makes it very appropriate, and it is funny enough and entertaining enough to keep mom and dad from clawing out their eyes while watching. Otherwise let’s just throw it on the pile.
Thanks for reading. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. I have no idea what’s coming up this weekend. I think I will do another Star Trek retrospective tomorrow. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Ides of March Movie Review
All the elements of a great movie except a plot.
This is a good movie in many regards. Acting was great from everyone, dialog was quick, clever, and well delivered, and the pacing appropriate for a movie based on a relatively sluggish subject, election primaries. However, the plot, which started off relatively strong, gets mired in betrayal, twists that seem more like shock paddles for a cardiac victim than legitimate story moving points, and a mounting sense that in spite of good, popular actors and well developed characters you are going to end the movie liking none of them. The movie ends with the feeling that, in spite of a bunch of stuff being resolved, nothing is resolved. The overall movie felt like I was trying to catch bubbles.
The story. Ryan Gosling (Drive, Lars and the Real Girl, Half-Nelson) plays Stephen Meyers, a campaign manager for the front runner in the Democratic primary, Gov. Mike Morris (George Clooney, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou, Oceon’s Eleven, Up in the Air, the Peacemaker), a charismatic, passionate liberal like most Democrats wish Obama could be. His boss is Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman, the Big Lebowski, Before the Devil Knows Your Dead, Moneyball), veteran campaigner who knows all the ins and outs of Washington. Morris’s rival is Pullman, whom we never really see. Who we do interact with is Pullman’s campaign manager Tom Duffy (Played by the great Paul Giamatti, whom I have heard several times interviewed on the Howard Stern Show. Good interview IMO. Saving Private Ryan, Sideways, Cinderella Man), another ruthless campaign manager. 
They are aided by hot young intern Mollie (Evan Rachel Wood, the Wrestler, True Blood, and a bunch of small stuff. True Blood image from the horror movie t-shirts) who shows up on screen with a huge blinking neon sign saying “Trouble” as far as I was concerned.
Anyway, Morris is in the lead but there are a number of issues that could derail his campaign. Meyers makes the mistake of meeting with Duffy in a move that Paul will see as a betrayal. Meanwhile, he hooks up with Mollie in what looks like the easiest seduction of all time (God it must be easy for guys who look like Ryan Gosling. If you look like that I hope you get your face caught in a tree shredder at some point and get to see what life is like for the rest of us). Anyway, that is kind of where the plot starts to fall apart. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but some kind of obvious stuff goes on. Turns out everyone betrays everyone and, while appearing to be moral good guys, are all kind of bastards. Somehow the Republicans never surface in any significant way, making the overriding campaign feel as good as watching two brothers beat the hell out of each other. The movie ends without ever really giving the audience something tangible to grab on to.
There are two other problems plaguing this film in my opinion. One is that no one really cares about primaries, especially for fictional candidates that have no apparent commonality with any of the actual candidates. The in fighting between men who theoretically should be allies is annoying and frustrating, and that’s in real life. Had this movie actually been during the real election between the Republican and Democratic candidates than I think the audience might have cared more. As it is the whole movie had the same impact I would have watching two candidates for Homecoming Queen back stab and connive against each other as they campaign.
The other problem compounds the first one and that is a lack of passion from any of the characters. I thought Ryan Gosling was playing a deadpan robot in Drive as a plot device, but it turns out that all he is capable of delivering. He doesn’t show any emotion in pretty much the entire movie, even when presented with situations wherein a normal person would (getting betrayed and fired, having someone close to you die, etc). This deadpan delivery spreads out from him and infects pretty much every other actor in the film, except for the young intern Mollie. Paul Giamotti is great when he is yelling and screaming at people, but never gets the chance. Hoffman gives a long speech about loyalty and betrayal to Gosling before firing him and he could have been discussing which pet groomer he brings his dog to for all the emotion he had. I actually lay this firmly at the feet of director George Clooney. He gets his actors to sink their teeth into the dialog in a very real delivery, but then doesn’t let them show anything when spitting it back out. Might be a reflection of his own acting style, which tends towards the dry.
Anyway, the stars. Excellent casting and acting, except for the emotionless stuff. Two stars. Great dialog. One star. I don’t know if the term to use is really character development, as there was less development and more just revealing previously hidden aspects of each characters personality, but a decent arc and character development. One star. Pacing and camera work were good. One star. Paul Giamotti. One star. George Clooney did manage to deliver a great performance as a presidential candidate. One star. Total: seven stars.
The black holes. The plot got stuck in the mud halfway through the film and stayed there. Two black holes. Dry, emotionless acting from most everyone. One black hole. There was never a reason given for the audience to really care about anything that was going on. One black hole. By the end of the movie every character seemed like a different kind of bastard and I liked none of them. One black hole. Total: five black holes.
So a total of two stars, kind of a middle of the road score and about what I left the theater feeling. If you like political drama, George Clooney, or Ryan Gosling go see it (although, as my friend who was with me was quick to point out, no bare chested Gosling scenes). If you are looking for something exciting or well developed, give it a pass. Not a great date film in my opinion, as it might end up seeming really dry. There is absolutely nothing visually motivating you to see it on a big screen, so I think it totally doable on NetFlix.
That’s it for now. New stuff coming out soon, but unfortunately (for me) it mostly looks like crap. I’m working on a new list that I will put out tomorrow that I think is pretty funny. Follow me on Twitter. Talk to you soon.
Dave
The Top 10 Nerd Movies of all Time
Sort of. You see, when someone says top 10 nerd movies of all times, it always devolves directly into the Lord of the Rings, Batman Returns, and Empire Strikes Back. However, those types of lists are so pedestrian and have been done to death. Instead, I want to do the top 10 movies with nerds in them. Specifically, nerds who act as I have known nerds in real life and who end up kicking ass.
The thing is I am going to try to avoid movies that paint nerds as charactertures of nerds. When I first suggested this topic last night a friend of mine said “Oh, you mean like Revenge of the Nerds.” No. Movies like that (or Napoleon Dynamite) are designed to make fun of nerds and their nerdishness, while instilling a bit of feel good when the geeky underdog wins in the end over the moronic jocks. I actually don’t like that, as all it really does is reinforce the negative stereotypes that I and my nerd friends have been laboring under for years. Even movies that I really enjoy like Weird Science manage to paint nerds as total geeks who eventually get a lucky break. I don’t want to add to the problem.
So what I am focused on are movies that feature nerds who are in no way apologetic or ashamed of being a nerd, and use their nerd skills to advance themselves and their agenda. I like to see this as a little window into a perfect world where nerds rule everything and the jocks all dig ditches for a living.
10. Shawn of the Dead. Honestly, this one almost didn’t make my list, as an argument could be made that Shaun doesn’t really qualify as a nerd in the true sense of the word. He has a cute girlfriend, doesn’t really work with computers or technology other than to sell it, and starts the movie without a clue how to fight zombies. However, he is an avid video game player, and manages to survive a zombie apocalypse, so I think I will include it, albeit at the very bottom of my list. Of course, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are among the biggest nerds on the planet, so anything they do is worth consideration. (image courtesy of the horror movie t shirts category)
9. Office Space. Revenge of the cubical gnomes. Yes, the main characters in this film are nerds in every sense of the term, and while they fail miserably at least attempt to use some nerd skills to stick it to the man. Also, did I ever mention I have had a huge crush on Jeniffer Aniston for years?
8. Spiderman. Yes, Peter Parker is a super nerd. Geeky, glasses, into science. What more could be asked for? I almost stuck Superman in here as well, but realized that Clark Kent is actually Superman pretending to be a nerd to hide his identity, while Peter Parker is a nerd who gained super powers.
7. Ghostbusters. These guys are nerds, especially Egon Spengler, and don’t care who knows it. Also, the amount of geek credibility this movie gets for not only casting the great Sigourney Weaver as the love interest but also showing us one of the best thigh shots in nerd movie history is astronomical. By the way, if you ever are looking for a definition of nerdy/sexy, just take a look at Annie Potts as the receptionist in this film.
6. Darkman. Yes, there are those who say this movie sucks, but I beg to differ. Liam Neeson as Peter Westlake is a total nerd. Besides, which of us nerds has never dreamed of being a scientist and having a horrible accident give us both super powers and a thirst for revenge? Hell, when I got my laser eye treatment I was praying for a freak accident that would give me the ability to shoot lasers OUT of my eyes.
5. the Matrix. Neo is a computer hacking nerd, in spite of looking like he works at Abercrombie and Fitch. One of the issues I have with the second and third Matrix (among several dozen) is the fact that they kind of drop the idea of him as an obsessed computer nerd and just make him into a cheesy pretty boy action hero.
4. the Incredibles. Yes, my favorite Pixar movie (Steve Jobs, thank you). You might think there is no nerd in this one, as Mr. and Mrs. Incrdible are pretty cool, at least at the start of the movie. However, you are forgetting the biggest nerd out there, Syndrome (formally known as Buddy). He is a complete and utter scientist nerd and could not care less if you thought so. He gets rejected in a way all nerds my age remember having happen as a kid and uses his brain to get his revenge. Awesome.
3. Back to the Future. Dr. Emmet Brown was a complete nerd who was willing to go toe to toe with terrorists in order to advance his science. Also, Marty McFly was pretty geeky too. Of course, a real geek would understand how the Butterfly Effect would make it almost impossible for Marty to mess around in the past and still exist. Even a slight altering of his parents time line would most like cause one of the other several million sperm cells to fertilize his mom’s egg, giving him a completely different genetic structure. But I digress.
2. Real Genius. Nerds doing what nerds do in the best way possible. This movie rules, and if you haven’t seen it stream it tonight to increase your nerd credibility. These guys had nothing to apologize for, and used their brains to totally screw with people. The only issue I had was the idea of a super hot woman who’s only goal in life was to sleep with the 10 smartest men on the planet. If women actually exist who are attracted to intellect rather than looks and/or money please point them in my direction. I have yet to meet one.
1. Wargames. David Lightman is an early hacker computer nerd who totally screwed with the defense department and almost blew up the world. What else can a true nerd dream of? Except for the underwear in his room he made no apologies for his lifestyle and managed to outsmart any number of jockish military types. This movie was the first one to really show what a true nerd is potentially capable of, and since I was starting high school that year I could have only wished that my so called peers might have picked up a warning from it. Unfortunately, their limited intellect prevented them from understanding the dangers of messing with someone with a superior intellect. Savor the irony with me for a moment.
Anyway, that’s my list. I had a bunch that almost made it, but I feel good about this. Feel free to disagree or point out any movies I might have missed by commenting here or via Twitter @NerdKungFu. You can follow me too if you like.
I’m kind of dreading this weekend, as the first movie I will probably have to see will be Footloose and I’m viewing that with all the anticipation of a root canal. No movies tomorrow as Thursday is my regular Warhammer night. If you like my writing I have been doing more descriptions on the commercial site, so check out some of the ones on the home page. Most of them are pretty funny, in my opinion. Thanks for reading, and have a great night.
Dave
Movie Review: Don’t be Afraid of the Dark
Kind of a surprising week. I thought I was going to love Colombiana and was really disappointed. I kind of thought this was going to be yet another dumb ass horror movie and loved it.
Don’t be Afraid of the Dark is, in my less than humble opinion, the best horror movie this year. It is super creepy, the terror builds up over time, and you honestly care about the characters and are worried about what is going to happen to them. Best of all, it does not at all rely on slasher gore or body count. There is actually very little death, and yet somehow it comes across as more horrible than some maniac running across town with a chainsaw.
This actually got me thinking quite a bit about horror and why movies like this work so well when every teenage slasher film leaves me bored (Texas Chainsaw Massacre image courtesy of the horror movie t shirt category). Some good examples of movies low body count thinking horror would be the Shining and the Ring. I think it is several levels. First of all, when we are introduced to 10 different teenyboppers who are all destined to die on the edge of a machete we can never really develop any kind of connection with them. The movie starts off with us knowing that most of them are going to die in ridiculous ways and the only thing we do is try to figure out which of them is going to survive (typically the hottish, nerd girl. See, ladies? There are serious advantages to being a girl nerd. Join us on the nerd side). In a movie where we are only given a couple of characters and have to interact with them throughout the film, especially when one of them is an innocent and troubled child or equally sympathetic character, we the audience really start to care and worry about them. I was on the edge of my seat hoping the little girl in this film made it out OK.
The other thing that makes films like this work my personal theory of concept horror verses hind brain horror. A maniac running around killing people with a glove full of knives is more of a hind brain, adrenalin rush film that is designed to trigger your fight-or-flight response. The problem is you get desensitized to it pretty quick. The spiky adrenalin rush you feel from Freddy’s first kill fades to almost boredom by the tenth, and then if you see the next sequel in turn (or even another slasher film) you are more or less over the whole idea and at that point you are more into seeing what kind of creative ways the director can come up with for the next kill. In most cases it devolves into almost comedy. In a concept horror film, the director lets your own imagination terrify you. We are always better at scaring ourselves when given the chance. As a child I was absolutely convinced there was a crocodile living on the floor of my room at night and he would bite off any part of my body I dared stick beyond the edge of my bed (my parents had him relocated to a zoo as my eleventh birthday present. Thanks, mom and dad). That is real horror. In films like this the story presents you with a creepy situation and then lets your imagination run with it. What are those monsters? What do they really want? What are they going to do with that girl? Your brain keeps feeding you worse and worse scenarios.
Not that this movie doesn’t have it’s problems. For one thing, the main bulk of the story we have all seen before. A lonely and troubled child in a huge, creepy mansion is beset by supernatural terrors while her parents remain blithely and almost willfully ignorant. Another thing is the creatures, who start off terrifying and mysterious, get more and more exposed as the film progresses and take on a comedic aspect. Fortunately by that time your connection with the young girl and the two adults is strong enough to carry through. Not even sure they could have avoided that, as they had to show them sometime. Finally, while I was extremely sympathetic and liked the little girl a lot, she was dumber than a sack of hammers. Maybe I’m fooling myself, but I can’t think there was ever an age where I was dumb enough to stick my head into a dark culvert in a super creepy basement just because some evil sounding voice told me to. Of course my childhood is no barometer for average children’s behavior, but still.
Anyway, the move. A very young Sally (played brilliantly by Bailee Madison. Where do these great child actors keep coming from? I predict impressive things from this young lady coming up) is being sent off by her more or less negligent party mother to live with her father Alex (Guy Pearce, the Hurt Locker, L.A. Confidential, Momento) and his girlfriend Kim (played by Scientology weirdo Katie Holmes. You know, I always thought she would have a more impressive film biography, but except for Batman Begins and Dawsons Creek she has been in nothing but crap. Oh, wait. Thank you for Smoking was pretty good too) in their super creepy fixer-upper mansion. Sorry, but if some real estate agent shows you a house and the front door is carved to look like a giant Japanese Manga squid monster attacking, punch him in the face and then try to run him over in your car as you leave. This place made the House on Haunting Hill look like Peewee’s Playhouse (also kind of creepy, but for other reasons). Anyway, Alex is some kind of architect who is down on his luck and has invested every dime in restoring this old house in an attempt to get it on the cover of Architectural Digest. We are never told why his career tanked or how this magazine cover will save it and, to be honest, it kind of bugged me. Kim is his interior decorator/live in girlfriend who is trying to form an attachment with Sally, who really wants nothing to do with it. Meanwhile, you hear creepy voices and see the green glowing eyes of dozens of rat sized creatures in a metal grate in the even creepier basement. They convince Sally to open the grate. They are afraid of bright light, so we are treated to all kinds of cool lighting for effect shots. They want to kidnap and probably kill Sally. The entire rest of the film is them stalking Sally while her dad and Kim believe she is having some kind of mental breakdown. Honestly, there isn’t much more I want to tell you about the story, as it would be quite the spoiler and I think you should all see this.
The stars. Super, duper, awesomely terrifying and creepy. Three stars. Amazing camera and lighting effects. Two stars. Bailee Madison was freaking awesome. Two stars. The creatures, once you saw them, were really cool and creepy with good CGI. One star. A horror movie that relies on story and great camera work rather than body count to make the horror happen. One star. The set was really well done also. One star. Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes were both pretty good. One star. A rated R movie that didn’t need gore and/or nudity (although I was hopeful). One star. Great ending with a cool twist. One star. Two more stars for a great movie experience. Total: fifteen stars.
The black holes. Sally’s bad decision making process kind of bummed me out. One black hole. The fact that we never find out why Alex is in such desperate straits with regards to his career when it is such a critical plot point that they remain in Creepy Mansion was annoying. One black hole. We also never find out what was up with party mom, which was also a key plot point. One black hole. Alex’s inability to listen to the serious needs of his child (even if she were imagining the creatures and they weren’t really alive, this is some serious crap any responsible parent would have to at least pay attention to her) really made me lose most of my sympathy for him. One black hole. There was a definite moment where any rational person would have bugged the hell out and set fire to the place as they left, but they didn’t. One black hole. Too much exposure to the creatures made them lose a lot of their menace towards the end. One black hole. Total: six black hole.
In the irksome category I will say this film is extremely derivative of a bunch of other films, particularly the Shining. This doesn’t get a black hole because it is an extremely good derivative and, honestly, there are so many movies out these days that it is nigh impossible to come out with something that doesn’t smack of something else.
A grand total of nine stars, a great score and at least 4-5 higher than I would have thought it would get when I was waiting on line to get my popcorn. I highly recommend you all see it if you are looking for a thrill. This, by the way, is a great date film in that it is not a slasher, has a very sympathetic little girl, and if your date isn’t clutching your arm and/or climbing into your lap by the end of it I would check her afterward to make sure her robot batteries are fully charged.
By the way, follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Fun!
Movie review: Dylan Dog, Dead of the Night
So I am doing this review by request from my best friend Dave (yes, my best friend is ALSO named Dave. He does exist, and just because none of my other friends have ever met him or can tell you what he looks like in no way implies that I made up an imaginary friend and gave him the same name in some kind of schizophrenic ego boost. By the way, Dave is watching you right now and thinks that t-shirt you are wearing is pretty cool). He has been reading the Dylan Dog comic for years and tells me it is both bloody and chock full of gratuitous nudity. It is written Tiziano Sclavi in Italy. He says it is great, and wanted to get my opinion of the film.
Actually, I can’t help but feel like the lab monkey on this one, or the kid the other kids get to eat something first. However, I have been looking for a bad movie to review for a while and, to be honest, was usually the first one to try something as a kid, so I don’t mind. In fact, if you have a movie you would like to see a review from feel free to post a response to any of my review or send me an email at [email protected] or send me a message on Twitter and I will see what I can do.
Also, I don’t know if this is at all significant, but in addition to Italy and USA Dylan Dog is published in Croatia, Serbia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Turkey. I’m kind of at a loss as to what kind of observation I can make based on that list, but somehow it seems more than a little weird.
Anyway, Dylan Dog the movie. Honestly, I am a little repulsed by movies like this not because it’s particularly bad or good but because it is so bland. I mean, it definitely sucks on many levels, but it doesn’t suck enough to make it really fun and interesting. I think the best way to describe it is confused. It can’t really decide what it is. Is it a monster hunting Buffy the Vampire slayer flick or a true horror movie? One minute you are seeing some really decent (given the budget they probably were working with) CGI werewolf transformation and in the next seeing a guy in a rubber suit that looks like it escaped from the set of Creature from the Black Lagoon. Are vampires and werewolves faster and more powerful than mortals, or can an ordinary human kill mass numbers of them with impunity? 
Are zombies creatures of horror, or are they cheesy comedy relief? Are vampires sexy creatures of the night (Twilight sucks) or are they primitive, savage killers? It is all so disjointed. However, from what I have seen I can’t really blame the comic. These issues I lay firmly at the feet of the director and producers.
(Lugio Fulci Zombie image courtesy of the horror movie t shirt category)
SPOILER ALERT! I don’t really expect many of you to see this film, so I am going to let myself go nuts on the story details. If you plan to see this film and feel that me telling you the ending might detract from the subtle nuances of the film maybe you should skip to the final two paragraphs of this review. I don’t think I will be annoying many people.
Anyway, the story. Honestly, if you have ever read any of the Dresden Files than you pretty much know the story already (Dylan even drives an old Volkswagon), although Dylan Dog preceded Jim Butchers novels by about 10 years, so I guess it’s possible Butcher borrowed from Dylan. Dylan is a private investigator that used to specialize in the paranormal, although he claims to be retired and now does divorce investigations. A hot chick with a really annoying Scandinavian accent hires him to investigate the death of her father, who was killed by a werewolf. He refuses, but agrees after his best friend (who managed to deliver a homoerotic undercurrent with Dylan) is also killed (for no reason that makes sense to me) and comes back as a zombie. Zombies in this movie are not mindless, soulless flesh eaters. Instead they are relatively normal with their intellects intact, except for the fact that they keep rotting and have to eat worms, grubs, and hot dogs (actually that made me laugh). They are also pretty much the comic relief of the film, with a market selling replacement body parts and so on.
Dylan also used to be the mortal intermediary between vampires and werewolves, which is how he got into this business. He lost his job when he went nuts and killed a bunch of older vampires with wooden bullets (?? Honestly, wood does not sound like it makes the most accurate projectile, and the human heart is about the size of your fist. If you have ever been to a gun range you know how hard it is to hit on a paper target that isn’t moving, but somehow Dylan manages to hit every vampire he shoots at in the movie in the heart with surgical precision). After his friend gets killed he takes the case. The movie kind of gets confusing at that point. The dad at one point had a silver cross that could summon some big bad ass monster and everyone wants it. The vampires seem to get the bad guys, but they tend to look a lot like the werewolves, and somehow they have a giant zombie working for them who also looks like a werewolf. Undead action hijinx ensues (sort of). Some civilians are killed, including two cops, but no one seems to care. At the end the girl who hired Dylan turns out to be from a family of monster hunters and wants to summon the big monster herself. The monster is summoned and then more or less stupidly kills himself (it was established multiple times that the only way to kill the big bad would be to kill the person who summoned him. Why then would he take the girl who summoned him and toss her across the room, then leave to let the werewolves literally eat her). Dylan really has nothing to do with the ending and could probably have stayed home and not gotten an ass beating.
First the stars. Comic book movie. One star. Zombies. One star. Vampires that burst into flame in the sunlight, not sparkle (Twilight sucks). One star. Some episodes of decent CGI. One star. There is good chemistry between Dylan and his zombie sidekick that wanders aimlessly into the entertaining zone. One star. Total: five stars.
Now for the sweet, suc(k)culent black holes. Throughout the movie Dylan Dog does a detective noir voice over monolog that made me want to run upstairs and murder the projectionist. One black hole. The acting from all characters except for the zombie comedy relief dismally sucked. One black hole. Dylan Dog, in spite of trying to appear a grizzled private dick, looked and sounded like the really annoying version of Superman (not a coincidence, as Brandon Routh played Superman in the last film). One black hole. The directer couldn’t find a tone for his movie (Horror? Comedy? Grindhouse? Detective film? Two part Buffy episode?). Two black holes. The film really bent time and space in order to maintain that PG-13 rating. No real gore, and absolutely no nudity in spite of the source content. I swear they might have gotten a PG rating if they tried. The movie felt like the vampire version of the Goonies. One black hole. There was no appeal for the protagonist or his romantic interest. The only character worth watching was the zombie sidekick. One black hole. The movie established early on that Dylan would suffer no consequences from the bad stuff by falling off a second floor and landing on a table only to jump up to fight, making the action painfully boring. I found myself struggling to stay awake during some of the action sequences. One black hole. The boss monster, while kind of cool looking, was really dumb in letting his mortal connection die easy. One black hole. In spite of having the strength of 10 men and otherwise being superhuman, the vampires seem to die in droves at the hands of humans. One black hole. In spite of the clues spoon fed to us by the Dylan Dog monolog the story was pretty confusing. One black hole. The “hot girl” was not that hot, seemed to have issues showing anything more than a shoulder blade, and had an annoying accent. One black hole. The makeup for the werewolves is really amateurish. I have seen better on YouTube videos. One black hole. Total: 13 black holes.
So a grand total of eight black holes, which is kind of worse than I thought it was going to end up with. It seems to suffer from the director wanting to cram about five years worth of comics into one movie. I don’t think it is in real danger of turning into a cult movie. That being said, a decent evening could be had with beer and pizza watching it online.
It might be pretty obvious to most savvy readers, but I am kind of new to the whole internet promotion thing and social media. I probably should have been putting this into my blogs months ago, but you can follow me on Twitter at @nerdkungfu. My Facebook page is pretty pathetic, so I will forgo posting it here, but you can find me if you look hard enough. I’m headed to a weekend Warhammer tournament and probably won’t post anything until Sunday night, but will be updating things on Twitter. Thanks everyone for reading this and your support.
Movie Review: The Green Hornet
OK, I admit I have been holding back on seeing this movie because I was hoping to bring a certain girl with me. Last night it happened and we had fun, although I don’t know where the whole dating thing is going, so I will have to see. I am sure one way or another it will turn into a future blog post for you folks. I do like the girl a lot so I am very hopeful.
So I saw the Green Hornet last night in 3D. I normally would have not seen it so as 3D often gives me a headache, but I wanted to see this movie at it’s best potential in hopes that the 3D effect would greatly enhance the experience. Sadly, it did not. The movie is, honestly, no better for being in 3D and truly the 3D effects are not really all that great. I think the producers just went with brand X of 3D rather than the premium brand. It looks like it was filmed in 2D and had 3D added in post production.
Anyway, the synopsis. Seth Rogan loses about 80 pounds to play Britt Reid, the spoiled decadent son of a rich newspaper owner. His father, in the about 30 seconds he was alive and on the screen, is a controlling, abusive jerk who somehow is still cool with funding Britt’s extravagant hedonistic lifestyle instead of cutting him off and making him work for a living like a responsible parent would. His two interactions with Britt mostly involve telling him what a loser and disappointment he is. He dies, Britt inherits everything, and Britt meets Kato (Jay Chao), his father’s mechanic and apparent martial arts expert. They accidentally rescue some couple from trouble, decide to become superheros while pretending to be villains (???), Britt takes over his father’s empire Beverly Hillbillies style, they run across the world worst criminal kingpin (the great Christopher Waltz, from Inglorius Bastards, and the only character in the movie I remotely liked), and chaos ensues. Guns, explosions, car chases, and every attempt to make the LAPD look like complete morons follow course (I guess Seth Rogans years of ducking the police while trying to score pot played a hand in the script writing). Cameron Diaz shows up in a completely unnecessary role as the super hot temp worker (how many of those do we run into every day?) who happens to have degrees in Journalism and Criminal Justice and plays yet another comic relief character.
I say another comic relief character but the fact is they were all comic relief characters. What this movie needed was an action relief character. Honestly, the super hero in a comic movie should not be the funny one. His side kick should be. Instead, Britt was a moron throughout the film showing no ability in any regard to actually be a hero other than having a capable assistant and being freakishly lucky. His main plan sucked like Hitler’s to invade Russia, and all his lesser plans sucked too. Kato was supposed to be the straight man, I guess, but he couldn’t help but be funny as well. Cameron Diaz was eye candy if you are into waifish blond women and was funny too. Even the villain, who started out kind of serious, got to be a joke by the end when he decided the thing to do to fight a super hero was to become some kind of campy super villain. Enough with the humor. Is it so much to ask that super hero movies at some level take the story at all seriously? I found myself not rooting for anyone in the movie. I didn’t want to see the Green Hornet fail and die, but honestly couldn’t be bothered to care if he lived and succeeded.
Lets do the stars. Super hero movie. One star. The Green Hornets car is truly amazing and bad ass, even without the machine guns and stuff. Two stars. They shot some of Kato’s fight scenes using a cool “inside his mind’s eye” technique that was pretty neat. One star. While the story kind of sucked, most of the dialogue was pretty good. One star. In spite of wanting an action movie there were scenes and dialogue that made me laugh out loud. One star. They didn’t try to baby up the story by having the heroes operate under the burden of never killing anyone. One star. Cameron Diaz was pretty hot. One star. The fight choreography was decent, and they paid tribute to Bruce Lee by having Kato repeat the famous “One Inch Punch.” One star. Cinematography, sets, props, and special effects were all at least good. One star. Total: 10 stars.
Now the black holes. There was no understanding of any single characters motivation at any level. Britt had no real compulsion to become a super hero. Kato didn’t need to be his sidekick. The villain did all kinds of things that made no sense. Two black holes. The story had gaping holes in the plot you could drive a Mack truck through. One black hole. The 3D was mediocre and added nothing to the movie. One black hole. The characters were yucking it up for laughs the whole time. One black hole. The “hero” was a spoiled little moron with all the abilities of a hydroponically grown hemp plant. One black hole. The whole script was trying to seamlessly merge Batman Returns with the Three Stooges meet Frankenstein. One black hole. About half the action strained my suspension of disbelief so much I think it gave it a double hernia. One black hole. Total: 9 black holes.
So a net of one star. Overall I’d say the movie was stupidly entertaining, but only if you don’t expect to get much from it. You and your life will not in any way be enhanced for having seen it, so if you have two hours and a few excess brain cells to kill go for it. Otherwise go see the other color/animal movie out there, Black Swan.
As for last posts who-would-win question, prom superstar Carrie versus super hot teen queen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I am going to have to go with Buffy. While Carrie has great abilities and an awesome dress, the fact is Buffy has beaten any number of villains with similar or greater powers. Sorry, Carrie (image courtesy of the horror movie t shirt category).
As long as I am in the mode of girl on girl fights, I present the question of who would win, Buffy the Vampire Slayer versus Xena, Warrior Princess?
