If I Stay Review #IfIStay
The perfect movies for girls who wish all boys were anatomically Ken dolls (and the guys who agree with them).
Ho hum. We are now in the dregs of the season movie wise. Too late to be a summer blockbuster, too early to be a Christmas release. This is where movies that the studios know don’t have the chops to compete in with the big boys surface like a bloated corpse in a dank bog. The movies that really couldn’t deal with going to school like a regular kid but hopes they can be the coolest kids on the short bus. You know, big fish in the little pond.
If I Stay is a perfect example of that, as well as a few other lame movie phenomena. It is another attempt to capitalize on the Young Adult book market (I keep seeing other reviewers abbreviate this to YA, which I find infuriating, but will use as long as I can follow it with “, it was a crappy movie”) only without any of the gravitas or imagination that makes other YA book/movies (BMs?) successful (eww. I just implied that Twilight has some imagination. Time to go flagellate myself for an hour (and if you think I just said something dirty you need to go back to high school)). Not that the more successful YA BMs are particularly imaginative (being almost all rip offs of other, better stories or just lore) but at least there was the hint of something interesting in vampires glowing in the light.
No so this film. It rips off pretty much every mediocre ghost/invisible story ever and merges it with a really dumb young love plot. However if you are in the market to see a dull movie I will say this film is particularily economical: for the price of a single boring movie you actually get three! It is a boring ghost story, a really boring teenage love/angst story, and an astounding exciting story about a girl learning to play cello (I hope your sarcasm detectors are working). Such a value!
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 32 the Changeling #StarTrek
This was an episode that didn’t really excite me as a kid but now as an adult I love it. The entire concept was fascinating; an Earth remote probe meets up with an alien probe and the two of them merge into a super monster with a bizarre twisted mission to find perfection and sterilize anything found less then perfect. If you are a fan of the Berserker series by Fred Saberhagen this might resonate with you.
Plus any episode where Spock gets to use his mind meld is plus for me. Of course in later series’s any time a Vulcan showed up on the screen you know it’s only a matter of time before they trot out the old mind meld again. Sometimes it’s ok to come up with something original instead of milking the old cow for the stuff the fan boys crave.
You know, that makes me wonder a lot about mind melds. Can all Vulcans do it? Seems like so. Spock is only half Vulcan, so does that mean Tuvok is twice as good, or is it a training thing? If a Vulcan truly mind melds with someone does that mean the person they are melding with also gets into the Vulcans head? They sure implied that when the Horta learned how to write after merging with Spock in the Devil in the Dark. If so whenever a high ranking Star Fleet officer uses mind meld to gain information from an enemy isn’t there a huge chance that the enemy might get some kind of top secret from him or her? You know, things like access codes, deflector shield frequencies, or Captain Kirks favorite space condom color. You never know when these things can screw you up.
Also, if a Vulcan can mind meld with a giant lava monster in like five minutes doesn’t that mean that two Vulcans should be able to meld in like three seconds? If so why do they even bother with speaking? Seems like if you wanted to get a PhD in Xenobiology you could just brain suck the most advanced Vulcan Xenobiologist and learn all he or she knew (while he or she would gain your knowledge of 15th century bardiches). Since Spock managed to copy his entire personality and download it into McCoy at the end of TWOK it seems like a pretty reasonable thing to do. Why aren’t all Vulcans masters of everything?
Anyway, I do now really enjoy this episode. I love the scene were Kirk convinces Nomad he made a mistake. One scene where Shatners overacting really, really worked. Spock is not the only crew member capable of logical thought. The image I pulled from the Star Trek t-shirt category. Talk to you soon.
the Infamous Dave Inman
The November Man Review
AARP James Bond just got real.
This is one of those annoying movies that I can’t really decide if I like it or not. I like writing reviews for films that really commit to being amazing or sucking like the Sarlacc. No one likes a fence sitter.
I guess it was OK. It was certainly better than the 36% it got on Rotten Tomatoes. I guess I enjoyed Peirce Brosnan although were I to give him career advice (as I sit in my crappy office in a warehouse who’s foundation is at least 8% rat excrement and the neighborhood compares favorable to a demilitarized zone but only just barely) it would be that maybe after doing James Bond the wise move would be to steer clear of spy movies. The story assumed I had an IQ bordering on triple digits and the girls in the film were gorgeous. The action was not grossly over the top but still managed to be well done and exciting. So why didn’t I love this film?
Honestly its because it is so formulaic. It’s like if movie scientists wanted to create a perfectly neutral spy movie as a baseline with which to compare all other spy movies good or bad to. It has all the obvious spy elements. (SPOILER ALERTS) A super spy who is betrayed by his government. An enemy who used to be his good friend. A villain who starts off as his friend but betrays him (and if you didn’t see it coming you must still be surprised when red traffic lights turn green). A hot girl in distress. A young girl in distress. A femme fatale. A murdered lover. A secret. A plot twist. Car chases, guns, knives, fights, and the day saved by one of the main guys remembering the value of friendship. With the weight of all the spy cliches packed into this plot I kept waiting for the film to collapse in on itself and create a spy movie quantum singularity.
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 33 Mirror, Mirror
This is one of those episodes that I both love and hate. I love it for being a brilliant episode with a cool story and Spock with a beard. Plus Uhura in a skimpy outfit and Terra kicking ass like I wish they would. I love seeing evil Spock and all his logical glory.
On the other hand I hate this episode for being the standard go-to inspiration for every single series. In any of the following series when things get slow and uninspired at the writing desk they just take a trip to the Mirror universe. TNG, DS9, and Enterprise all did it. Voyager managed to avoid it (I think) but honestly how would the Borg of the Mirror universe differ from the ours? Perhaps they assimilate with flowers and religious pamphlets?
The other part that bugs about the fact that every show has to visit the Mirror universe is that if there is one parallel universe logic tells us that there have to be literally billions, and finding that one specific universe is nearly impossible. Also, what is the deal with Mirror universe having to be evil? It’s like when Kirk got split in two in The Enemy Within. How did he split into good and evil halves? Couldn’t he just split into gay and straight, or the half that is OK telling the world about his toupee and the half that wants to keep it hidden? Does the Mirror universe have to be the evil reflection of our universe, or could it be the version where the Smurfs had a massive resurgence in popularity in 2173 and now everyone takes descriptive names like Brainy or Hefty (or in the case of most red shirts Deadsy. Odds are Kirk would have gone for Sexy although he might have been cool with Papa).
The Infamous Dave Inman
(Good Spock/Evil Spock one of my favorite Star Trek novelty t shirts, BTW. I wear it all the time)
Lucy Review
Ever wonder what Limitless would have been like if Bradley Cooper had breasts and was a hot(ter) chick? Wonder no more.
Before I get into this I want to talk a bit about these reviews. I have been evaluating my time and what the results are. These reviews take hours to write and since I don’t get a lot of readers anyway I think I am going to cut back a bit. No other reviews I read go as deep into it as I seem to so I will follow their lazier example. Maybe I’ll get even more readers? Who’s to say. I will also focus on the fun parts I enjoy: seeing the film, complaining about Hollywood, bitching about my love life, coming up with bizarre entertainment conspiracies, unlikely analogies, and making an ill informed recommendation based on zero qualifying experience. The parts I will skip are the ones that take a lot of time and aren’t even that much fun to read: detailed story recap, listing every actor along with a filmography, and my overly complex stars and black hole rating system. I’ll go to the traditional 0-5 star rating system but instead of stars let’s call them Phasers in honor of my love of Star Trek.
So Lucy. Of the laundry list of things I am disappointed with in Hollywood and the crap they keep pushing out (oh, yeah, I’m definitely not giving up on the subtle biological, scatological, and obscene jokes) has to be the decline of certain movie producers I used to respect. Highest on this list is probably Luc Besson (Wait a minute! Luc + y = Lucy! You clever egomaniac!), whom I used to think was one of my top guys in film but now I approach his movies with the same enthusiasm a finalist in a hot dog eating contest would his 47th hot dog: it probably has some good flavor were this the first one but honestly all you have is an amalgam of random animal parts and rat excrement just like the last 46 and your reward for finishing will be…another hot dog.
So what makes this movie different for Luc is that instead of mining his own old movies in hopes of finding an unused gem he is now ripping off other people’s movies. This film is pretty much the Buddhist female lead version of Limitless with a super healthy dose of the Matrix and a big chunk of Akira floating around like a beer bottle in a swimming pool. Also for some reason Tree of Life dominated the visuals. Since Limitless was kind of a rip off of Charly (which was based on Flowers for Algernon) that makes this the least imaginative story premise ever. I’d also like to point out that the theory that we only use 10% of our brain was developed by two nutjobs in the 1890’s and has since been disproven over and over again. The “science” behind this film is at all times laughable.
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 34 the Apple
So this episode was a red shirt bloodbath with three guys dying in the first 10 minutes (poisoned plant dart, explosive rock, and lightning). This is also another one where Checkov almost gets his girl and is totally aced out by the script. He has the worst dating luck since…me I guess. I wonder if he ever went on a date with a girl who turned out to have been born a man?
I supposed I could talk about this episode and how it technically is a huge violation of the Prime Directive, the hair styles that most have been what inspired Flock of Seaguls, or the fact that no one in the episode was wearing a shirt but you know what I always used to wonder about as a kid when I saw this one? I always wondered it was like inside the mouth of Vaal. When the Feeders of Vaal go in was there a conveyor belt or chute to drop the explosive rocks down, or did they go down a stair case to some kind of chamber with a furnace or something? Also if they had been feeding Vaal rocks for centuries wouldn’t they eventually run out of rocks just lying around? How do they find more? What if they find a big one but it’s too big to carry or fit in Vaal’s mouth? How do you break one up without blowing yourself up? Could they mine them somehow? Wouldn’t you constantly be in danger of blowing up the whole planet?
The woman who played Checkov’s love interest Yeoman Landon is Celeste Yarnall. I know this because I see her at every single Star Trek convention I go to. She’s a nice woman but seems to think the Apple was the best episode ever and doesn’t understand why I don’t have 150 Apple t-shirts in addition to this one from the tv show t shirt category or can’t just print up one with her on it. The subtle nuances of licensing are more or less missed by her. Still, she is very sweet and I wish her continued success in selling her Apple autograph photos.
the Infamous Dave Inman
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For Review
Same city.
Have you ever been hanging out with a little kid in a group of adults and he makes a fart joke that just happens to have the perfect timing and words to be hilarious and the entire group bursts out into raucous laughter? At that point you can do nothing but look at the kids parents in sympathy because you know that for the next 12 years or so that kid will do nothing but fart jokes, ever looking for that magical humor lightning to strike twice and probably lead him to a future career as tow truck driver, mall security guard, or writer of a bitter and acerbic movie review blog. Basically if it doesn’t involve flatulence he will no longer think it funny just because a bunch of moronic grown ups laughed at a joke he made at age 6.
That’s pretty much what I see happening here. Robert Rodriguez teamed up with Frank Miller and came out with a mind blowing movie that was lauded for it’s camera work and noir heritage. Since whenever he’s not doing a film like this or Machete he is doing films with titles like The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl one can only imagine he is very hungry for a repeat of that adulation and as I pointed out in my review of Machete Kills he is of the “humor and excitement through repetition” school of movie making it makes sense that he would be totally cool with doing essentially the same movie with a few new characters in it. The problem is the original Sin City was mind blowing for it’s originality whereas this film ends up feeling like you just watched a really well done documentary on a subject you are already very familiar with.
Not that it’s bad. If you loved the original Sin City and found yourself wishing it would go on for another 102 minutes your dreams have come true. Also if you are a fan of Cool World-esque cartoonish camera angles, black and white, and gravel voiced monologues forgetaboutit. If you feel guilty because every year you skip the Film Noir festival at the Castro Theater you could probably fill up your artsy dark movie tank and dash off into the night like a pretentiously mysterious Spanish gentleman in a romance novel.
The Expendables 3 Review
A little less expendable than the last one.
In my bizarre form of personal narcissism I naturally assume that everyone I meet knows who I am and is familiar with me and my life. In particular I assume everyone has at least read my blog (if that were true then according to my tracking data California has a population of about 87 people). Of course my rational brain understands this is tremendously far from the truth and most people I meet assume I am some kind of mover, truck driver, or thug in the employ of the local criminal element. However when I let my blog fantasies write themselves in my head I see all of Hollywood eagerly reading each review, rejoicing at each crumb of praise and bemoaning each gentle criticism (“I really don’t want to hate it and him on all levels (even subatomically) but he just makes it so, so very easy” – recent Transformers review) and taking in my feedback to the betterment of their craft or at least committing ritual seppuku.
(classic Expendables poster from the movie t-shirt category)
The point is it almost feels like the producers of the Expendables 3 read my Expendables 2 review and took out 70% of the stuff that really bugged the hell out of me. They cut back on the classic action star deluge to a manageable level and didn’t have them popping out of the scenery like heavily armed prairie dogs. They got rid of the horribly invasive plot devices to include all of them. They had a story that didn’t suck (and was almost coherent). The non-classic action movie actors they hired could deliver a line with more nuance and emotion than an Animatronic buccaneer from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. The plot advanced organically and didn’t leave giant plot holes in its wake like massive road apples. The film felt adequately long at 126 minutes. There was no completely unnecessary and annoying romantic love interest. The comic relief was actually pretty cool and fitted in well. In general a true improvement over the last film.
What, then, about the remaining 30% that annoyed me you ask? Well, unfortunately nothing was done to improve most of that. In fact it got tragically worse. The biggest problem this movies suffers from is the fact that they went in for a PG-13 rating. I have talked about PG-13 draping over other action films like a wet blanket but in this film it is like an ocean container full of wet blankets landing on the screen and flattening it out. They tried to push the PG-13 boundary as far as they could and took full advantage of the one per film allowable S-word and F-bomb but were I a witness in court and was asked if I had actually seen any of the several hundred peopled killed in this film die I would have to answer “I don’t know”. For all I know they were all stunned with rubber bullets fired by a completely different team never shown on screen.
The Giver Review
I wish this movie had given me more to care about.
So when I first heard about this film I made the immediate and completely logical assumption that it was an attempt to launch another of the interminable Twilightesque teenie bopper franchises. It had all the warning signs: two hot young boys who look like girls in a slightly futuristic fantasy society that oppresses their love and emotions while centered on a hot but bland young girl based on a novel that is supposed to be popular with young people. However at that point all of my friends who were in middle school in the 90’s told me it’s a classic that is taught in schools for some reason and is really good.
Then I saw it and found it to be another bland teen-centric romance in set in a future society bent on oppressing young love so I guess my first instincts were right? What sucks is the source material is supposed to be better than most but thanks to this bomb I am more inclined to read Star Trek fan fiction than anything by Lois Lowry. She may just be a brilliant writer but to me she looks and sounds like another half assed author who thinks all you need to be science fiction is some hovering robots and everyone wearing the same jumpsuits.
The point is it is exactly the same as any other teenage disposable income vacuums and not as well done as most of them. Sure it’s better than the Host or Mortal Instruments but the producers of the Hunger Games and Divergent would be well within their rights to spit on this film as they walk by. It does have Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep in it but honestly they weren’t enough to save the picture.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Review
Functionally entertaining.
Regular readers of my blog (all three of you. Hi mom!) should have by now realized that I have an issue with Michael Bay and his movies, and that by “issue” I mean to date I have hated him and his work with the burning passion of 10,000 suns. His style of movie making (no story, big explosions, treating source material like toilet paper during a prune and Mexican food festival, acting that barely compares favorably to watching department store mannequins stare at each other, dopey cartoonish CGI that obscures the action and special effects with action and special effects, and characters who develop only under protest and usually come out looking like a failed mad science experiment) is everything I think is wrong with mass market movie making and I arrived at the theater like the bastard love child of MacGuyver and Elmer Fudd: armed and equipped with every literary shotgun, rifle, bear trap, claymore, and excrement coated punji stick to take down another gigantic movie wildebeest and mount it’s head up on my trophy wall. Imagine my surprise when I walked out of the theater realizing I had just seen the best movie of my life.
Wait, did I just write that correctly? No. What I meant to say was I had just seen the best Michael Bay movie of my life. On another day that might be like saying that the sand filled garden hose I had just been beaten with was made of the softest rubber available or that the piece of my brain they removed was the least important lobe but as the movie progressed I found myself warming up to the CGI turtles and being reasonably entertained. At no point during the movie did I want to see another human in the theater bleed (including myself or the projectionist. Surprises never cease) and at the end I felt like I had gotten my monies worth from the experience. It wasn’t a bargain and it wasn’t enriching but it did serve to entertain.
(note-I know there are those of you out there who will say the Rock was Michael Bay’s best movie but honestly if you go back and watch it again and mentally block out the stunning presences of Sean Connery and adequate presence of Nicholas Cage you will realize what schock it really was)
