John Carter of Mars in 3D Review
Much better than the trailers make it out to be.
These guys need to fire their marketing team, as the trailers for this movie had me convinced I would end up seeing another cheesy Disneyfied victim of the PG-13 serial movie killer. While it does labor under the duel yokes of Disney and the PG-13 taskmaster, it manages to make for a somewhat entertaining film. It also successfully pays tribute to the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel (which I read as a kid) while making it modern enough to not feel archaic.
That being said, it does have its problems. Honestly, the whole thing felt like they were trying to do too much in one film. Overambitious. The story lags quite a bit in the middle (actually to the point of boredom at a couple points), and there are a lot of bad story leaps that progress without logic. It actually seems to fall apart towards the end. I think the main issues there come from trying to fit pretty much everything from the book into one movie, and while I appreciate that as a fan of Burroughs it makes the movie drag. I found it very difficult to tell any of the characters besides John Carter or Deja Thoris apart (even the main bad guy I kept getting confused with Kantos Kan) and the CGI was actually weaker than I expected. It wasn’t bad per se, but the green Martians looked more cartoonish that I would have anticipated from a Disney film with a $250,000,000 budget. Honesty, horrible movie Ghost Rider had better graphics. I also felt the 3D was underused and less than impressive (I actually saw it on IMAX).
On the other hand, some of the visuals were pretty stunning, and they managed to keep the savage Barsoomian tone in the costumes. I thought the two main actors were pretty impressive for relative newcomers (on the other hand, how hard is it to play a character in a pulp action film?)
Before I go into the story, let me call on my old friend Science and talk a little about gravity and the effect it would have on a Terran suddenly transported to Mars. Mars has 38% of the gravity of earth. That means you could pretty much jump three times farther on Mars than you could on Earth. This means if you could long jump 6 feet on Earth you could jump 18 feet on Mars. Pretty impressive and probably a lot of fun. However, what you could not do is jump six football fields up onto a giant tower. Also, lower gravity does nothing to stop inertia. I don’t plan to black hole this movie for this, as the whole jumping thing was a pretty integral part of the book, but just thought you should know. (Pigs Fly image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category).
Where you would be superhuman, however, is in your reflexes. Most science fiction doesn’t really address this, but here is how it works. On Earth if I drop my keys while trying to get into my apartment door a lifetime of video games has given me the reflexes to catch them with my other hand before they fall too far in most cases. If I were a Martian I would have almost 3 times as long to catch the keys, most likely causing them to evolve with slower reflexes. John Carter, while maybe being able to jump 10 yards or so, would actually be insanely fast on Mars and the Martians would to him appear to be moving in slow motion. That does not make for good visuals, however, but there it is.
Anyway, the movie. John Carter (Taylor Kitsch-Friday Night Lights, the Covenant, X-Men Origins: Wolverine) is an ex Confederate cavalryman trying to make his fortune in Arizona. He runs afoul of the local military and has to run off into the desert. While being pursued he and his pursuers are attacked by Apaches. He ducks into a cave and is attacked by one of the bald bad guys (Therns-kind of like much less interesting or menacing versions of the Strangers from Dark City) whom he shoots and gains an amulet. Then, 20 minutes into the movie about Mars, he ends up on Mars. There he discovers that his musculature from Earths gravity lets him jump super high and far. He is captured by Tars Tarkus (William Dafoe-Boondock Saints, Spider Man 2, Finding Nemo), Jeddak of one of the green Martian tribes. They are four armed Martians who live in a semi-savage state (if you read the books you might recall this was the start of some pretty serious racism. Disney managed to avoid most of it). He starts off treated as half prisoner, half child. Meanwhile, we learn of the two factions of red Martians, who look human, fighting it out and the bad guys are winning thanks to a ninth ray weapon given to them by the Therms.
Carter and the green Martians witness a battle in the air between the two factions and he rescues Deja Thoris (Lynn Collins-X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the Lake House, the Number 23), Princess of Helium. He wants her help getting back to Earth, she wants him to fight for Helium. They run away from the green Martians with the aid of Sola (Samantha Morton-Minority Report, In America, Control) and a kind of cool dog like creature who can run ridiculously fast. They travel all over Mars and more or less do a bunch of stuff. The problem is I kind of lost track of who was doing what for what reason. The bad red Martian Sab Than (Dominic West-300, Phantom Menace, the Wire) is involved in some kind of plot with the Therms, but I still can’t figure out what they were trying to accomplish. I was practically begging for John Carter to be taken in chains in front of him just so I could hear a evil monolog telling me what the hell was going on.
Anyway, the stars. Sci Fi movie based on a serious of books I really enjoyed. One star. While they didn’t stay locked on to the story 100% they did enough to not annoy me. One star. Both Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins did a good job as the good guys. One star. I’ll always give a star for William Dafoe, and his character Tars Tarkus was the coolest one in this film. Two stars. A lot of really good visuals. One star. The action and fight scenes were pretty good, and the jumping thing, even though provably not possible, was pretty cool to watch. One star. I thought the airships looked really cool. One star. Overall entertaining. Two stars. Total: ten stars.
The black holes. The pacing really plodded at points, especially at the beginning and the middle. One black hole. Except for the fact that some were green and some were red, I found it impossible to keep the supporting characters apart. One black hole. While the heroes were good, the villains sucked. The Therms had all the menace and threat of a meter maid, and Sab Than felt as dangerous as a rabid purse dog. One black hole. The story had too much stuff packed into it, which led to the characters making decisions based on pretty much plot convenience. One black hole. The movie ramped up in the third act and then petered out in a really drab and boring ending (which was also a massive lead in towards the inevitable sequel). One black hole. By the end of the movie you come to the slow realization that this film is actually kind of dopey. One black hole. Total: six black holes.
A grand total of four stars. Not bad, but not great either. Worth seeing in a theater? Sure, I supposed. Some of the visuals were pretty good. Worth seeing in 3D? Not really, in my opinion. Of course, I don’t actually like 3D that much so take that for what it’s worth. Date movie? Probably not. I think the dopeyness of the film would be much more apparent to anyone who is not a geek or fan of science fiction, and by the end of the film that dopeyness might extend to you especially if you start talking about having read the books, which any nerd is likely to do.
Thanks for reading. More movies coming up this weekend. I’ll probably see Silent House tonight, although that looks like it will freak me the hell out. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu, or feel free to post a comment here on this blog. If you have specific questions or suggestions feel free to email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Goodbye Davy Jones
Project X was sold out last night, but I am kind of glad as it gives me a chance to say goodbye to a piece of my childhood, Davy Jones of the Monkees. I’ll probably get a lot of heat from my friends for this, but the Monkees appealed to me musically in a way that the Beatles never could. I don’t dislike the Beatles, and I know the Monkees are pretty much a knock off, but it just never spoke to me. Last Train to Clarksville is a song I could listen to any day or night. Pretty much all their songs work for me.
However, it was the TV show that made it for me. For some reason almost all of the late 60’s and 70’s hippy shows never really appealed. HR Puff ‘n Stuff, Seseme Street, the Electric Company, and all those shows that were supposed to be cool for kids sucked, but every Saturday morning I could tune in to the Monkees and enjoy the hell out of it. It was like an American Young Ones staring British guys as struggling musicians is a surrealistic world. They lived in a weird world I could only dream of entering, as it looked so much cooler than my own life.
Davy was the leader of the band, and the coolest of the four. When I heard of his death I was really saddened. It has been a hard year for singers, but this is the one that sucks the most for me. Davy, you were a piece of my culture growing up, and I will miss you.
Dave
P.S. I also have respect for any David willing to go by Davy. That is the tougher road to follow in the name game. Monkey headphones image courtesy of the funny t-shirt category.
Dr. Suess’ the Lorax 3D Review
It’s like a Pixar movie without the Pixar writing.
So I saw this Friday night but have been busy with a Warhammer tournament (I went 3-2 and am disappointed. In retrospect I wish I has brought my Skaven) and couldn’t write it up. I am seeing Project X later tonight and if I feel the love might write it up so this might be a two review day.
This movie definitetly fell into the “overhyped marketing should be a warning of it’s impending suckage” category. The trailer played on every movie I have seen in the last four months (and that is a lot of movies). It has been all over buses, billboards, and bus stops. They even came up with the lamest silence your cell phones movie PSA ever (honestly, everyone who has enough of a conscience to care about this knows you need to silence your cell phones by now. I don’t need the Lorax telling me in a 45 second commercial for it’s own movie what the still slide, Regal opening snack selling montage, and about 50 signs in the theater have already told me) starring the Lorax. Obviously they felt this movie had some failings and needed an extra push.
By the way, as this is a kid’s movie in every sense of the word I will not be doing my usual star/black hole thing. Just feels like punching puppies with I get that detailed.
This film did have some serious failings but the weird thing is it wasn’t what I thought the fail was going to be (Lord of the Fail image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category). I thought the most annoying thing about this movie was going to be the voice characterization. Every time I would see a trailer with Danny DeVito doing the voice I would think “That’s Louie De Palma from Taxi“. The thing about great cartoon voice characterization is that when it is done right the cartoon character doesn’t actually sound like the person doing the acting. A good voice over person will “cartoon it up” or at least make an attempt to change it somewhat but in this movie it is pretty much Danny talking into a microphone. While that carried through and bugged me most of the movie (and, to be perfectly blunt, at least Danny DeVito had a distinctive voice. Zac Efron and Taylor Swift added nothing the their characters and were a blatant ploy to try to suck in a few kids past the age of 11. Based on the audience, that ploy failed) it wasn’t the thing that bugged me the most. Here are a few things that I feel really hurt this movie.
First off, the art. The thing about Dr. Suess that really rocked is he could deliver a cool story (I guess. I was never a huge Dr. Suess fan, except for the Star Bellied Sneeches. Those guys rock!) and do so with an extremely primitive seeming art style. Very classic, very Suessian. What this movie did was more or less recycle all the images from Despicable Me and change…pretty much nothing. Everything looks like a bloated slightly less life-like Happy Meal Toy. I truly believe they made this call simply for the ability to create more toys to sell to impressionable youths (a Google shopping search for “Lorax movie toys” gave me 248 items), but seriously to the detriment of the film. Instead of a distinctive Suess look we got another generic computer rendered 3D exxxxxxxxtravaganze. Nothing in the art is distinctive or even that interesting.
Secondly, the story is ham handed and amateurish. They managed to keep most of the original story (thank you Wikipedia) but added a dopey villain and love plot. Apparently no one in a kid movie can do something unless motivated by sex. Also, the anti-materialism message kind of loses impact in a film that just charged me an extra $3 for a disposable pair of 3D glasses to maximize profits.
I know it’s an oxymoron to call a villain in a cartoon movie “cartoonish”, but the villain in this film (a rich entrepreneur who got rich selling idiots bottled air. By the way, if you were hoping your kids would learn something cool about recycling and environmental science besides “cutting down all the trees is bad” prepare to be disappointed) was so two dimensional (haw!) and dumb he made Arnold Swartzenegger’s Mr. Freeze from Batman and Robin look like Heath Ledger’s Joker from the Dark Knight. No complexity, no motivation besides being evil for money, and his complex plan to stop the heroes is more or less “chase those guys”. Ironically the villain from Despicable Me was pretty cool. I don’t know what happened.
Finally this story (and most of the other decisions) reeks of “design by committee”, which makes sense as this film has not one but two directors (Chris Renald-Despicable Me, Despicable Me 2, No Time for Nuts and Kyle Balda-Despicable Me, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc.). It seems like each director had ideas of how to cram as much as possible into the movie and see what aspect rose to the top. There is a strong divide between the chacacters created by Dr. Suess (Ted, the Once-ler, and the Lorax) and the characters created to take a 30 minute story and pad it out to 86 minute (Mr. O’Hare, Audrey, and the entire rest of the cast). Other things are tacked on to the script like the writer was the architect in charge of the Winchester Mystery House. Need to appeal to more kids? Let’s through in some snowboarding for no reason. Not enough excitement? How about some random axe blades for even less reason than the snowboarding? Teeny boppers? Zac Efron and Taylor Swift should pull in their soft sheep-like brains. The list goes on and had I reviewed this the morning after seeing is as per usual I could probably list more.
Anyway, the story is of Ted (Zac Efron-17 Again, High School Musical 1-3. Wow. Pretty much everything he has done except for a couple episodes of Robot Chicken bugs me. I think I found a new actor to hate) lives in Thneed-Ville, a town comprised entirely of plastic including the trees and bushes. The cars are all giant and ridiculous (think of Gru’s car from Despicable Me with a bright and colorful paint job and less fins or spikes), the architecture a failed attempt to 3D render the buildings from the book, and since there are no trees around everyone buys air from Mr. O’Hare, who delivers it in Sparklets jugs (if you listen carefully you can hear your kids grades in science slip a notch right about then). He is in love with the girl across the street Audrey (Taylor Swift-Hannah Montana the Movie, Valentine’s Day, Jonas Brothers the 3D Experience. I just looked at some pictures of her and there is something really off putting in her facial expressions. It’s like she’s looking at you through a worm hole from another dimension) who tells him about trees, which apparently everyone has forgotten about. She says she would sex up (I mean marry) anyone who brought her a real tree. He embarks on a quest to find her a tree. Apparently the only person who knows what happened to all the trees is the Once-ler (Ed Helms-the Hangover, the Hangover Part 2, the Office), whom Ted finds by going on a journey out into a barren and polluted wilderness populated by tree stumps. The Once-ler opts to tell Ted the story of what happened to all the trees, which kind of drags on.
Basically the Once-ler started to cut down all the trees in order to make his invention, the Thneed (imagine if you wanted to knit a scarf for Cthulu). He cut one down and was at once confronted by the Lorax (Danny DeVito-Taxi, Get Shorty, Batman Returns, LA Confidential), a mystical orange creature who “speaks for the trees”. The Once-ler agrees to not cut down any trees but once his stereotypically southern hillbilly relatives show up they go slash and burn on them. While being told the story by the Once-ler Ted is confronted by Mr. O’Hare, who doesn’t want trees as they produce free air. The Once-ler gives Ted the last tree seed, at which point the movie devolves into a chase scene like Scooby Do doing a cameo on a Roadrunner cartoon.
Again, I don’t do my usual rating system for kids movies but instead base my recommendation on how the kids in the audience react. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t hear kids laughing their asses off. There was laughter, and some cool visuals for the kids, but nothing like I heard in any number of kids films from the last year. Even Tintin seemed to have kids enjoying it more. I think the problems for kids are it was too polished, too clean, too many attempts to make the movie appealing to adults (which for the most part failed IMO), and no kids really care about ecological recycling save the trees messages. However, I think the most disappointed viewers will be the adults who grew up reading Dr. Suess and were hoping to see a tribute to a great and classic teller of children’s stories rather than a punch in the stomach attempt to exploit a dead man’s work and run off into the night with as much of their money as possible. I saw a few people in the audience wearing Cat in the Hat hats and I don’t think they were too terribly pleased by the end of the film.
Should you take your kids to see it? Sure, why not? The scenes with the Lorax in it will entertain them and at the least shut them up for a couple hours. I don’t think they will necessarily be bored. However, in the lexicon of childhood movie memories this one will barely register and will not stand out 20 years from now as a warm remembrance, motivating them to buy it on brain wave or whatever media storage device we are using in 2032. See it as an adult? Not really worth it. Except for aspects of the story and the fact that it stars an orange furry guy the connection to Dr. Suess is tenuous at best, kind of killing the nostalgia and leaving you watching a film made for grade school children.
Thanks for reading, as always. Look for Project X tomorrow (I expect it to suck, but you never know). Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu (who wants to be my 146th follow?), or feel free to post a comment here or email me at [email protected] with any questions or suggestions. People asking for specific movies are a boon, as it helps me figure out which ones to review next. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Wyoming wants to create it’s own Navy?
So I read today on the Drudge Report that State Representative Kermit Brown of Wyoming had put a bill forward that passed that creates a commission study options in case of a nationwide economic or political collapse. While I may or may not question the need of such a bill, I saw something really funny in it. The bill wants to study options for creating Wyoming currency, starting up a draft, creating it’s own standing army, acquiring aircraft for an air force, and best of all, acquiring an aircraft carrier.
Now I may not have gotten all A’s in geography back in high school, but apparently I am better at it than State Representative Brown because I happen to know that Wyoming is completely landlocked. The nearest ocean is the Pacific, which is at least 600 miles and two states away. What oceanic interests would they need to protect? Where would they dock it? I mean, if you are going to front a bill that could be interpreted as silly by any number of political opponents why would you include a provision that takes it from the kind of silly category and catapults into the whoopee cushion zone?
Anyway, I thought it was funny. This Titanic image I found in Dave’s funny t shirts. Have a good one.
Jason
Act of Valor Movie Review
Kind of lame, but at the same time kind of awesome.
I have been looking forward to this film, mainly due to the trailers being really kick ass. They made it look like the kind of realistic action we never get to see in movies these days where the standard formula is one guy capable of taking on and killing wave after wave of evil henchmen, beating them all the death with the spine of the first no’er-do-well to cross his path. In this movie the good guys, while highly trained and extremely professional, are not bullet proof and are fully capable of being killed, which in a great way makes the action really, really good. The action scenes are shot and edited in a way that really puts you in the scene, and you feel honest to goodness excitement as each mission progresses.
I also wanted to see this as I, like most Americans these days, have a ton of respect for the military men and women of our country in general and of the SEALs in particular and hoped this movie would show their bravery and dedication, which for the most part it did. This film played out like a Navy recruitment film, and like Top Gun did back in 1986 and they should see a nice surge of recruits over the next few months. Since this film was innitiated not in Hollywood but by the Pentagon PR office, I guess this all makes sense. So in part I was very happy and satisfied with the film.
That being said, the first mission the SEAL team should have gone on was to take out script writer Kurt Johnson (300, the Last Photograph, True Vengence, although this film is his only story writing credit, and probably his last) as the script and story was some of the most half assed, hackneyed, cliche garbage I have ever seen. Honestly, the Pentagon should have farmed this idea out to an established studio as the amateurish stench wafts from the screen like they store dead fish behind it. 
The cartoonish main villain (Jason Cottle-Wag the Dog, the Wedding Singer, Cthulu (Miskatonic U image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category)) seems to be evil just for the sake of being evil, starting the movie off with a horrific act of terrorism (by the way, this movie earns its R rating the hard way) but without a shred of explanation as to why except for the fact that he is pissed about something. It is implied that he is against America for occupying Islamic countries, but since he is Chechnyan I had a hard time seeing the connection. I’m sure the motivation makes total sense to guys in the Pentagon privy to inside information about possible terrorist connections, but honestly I think the average American needs to see a motivation slightly more complex than “I want to blow stuff up because I am angry and have a scar on face”. Also, if you are like me be be sure to play the “Guess who’s going to die on the last mission” game. You won’t find it terribly challenging.
The entire story reads less like a movie and a lot more like the plot a first person shooter video game such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, with each hot action sequence being connected by only the most tenuous and and roundabout connections. Again, I am sure if I were more familiar with top secret Intelligence community tactics and deductive reasoning I might have been better able to understand how they moved from some third world village (still not sure what country that one was) to assaulting a multi million dollar yacht. The plot was pretty much obligatory and included apparently under protest only to connect the assorted action scenes showing the SEAL team in action. Also, while I don’t want to be the one to call out the rampant xenophobia in this plot, it seemed like we were attacking pretty much every Third World country EXCEPT Arab countries. Somehow the scriptwriters, in an attempt to not alienate the countries known for actively supporting terrorism, managed to find excuses for the SEALs to fight against people in the Philippines, Mexico, West Africa, Russia, Chechnya, and some other ill defined country. The underlying message of the film seems to be “If you aren’t American you suck” and that message is delivered with bullets.
As for the real life active duty SEAL team members staring in this film, let me say that while I have never ending admiration for their bravery, dedication, and skill they were not recruited by the Navy for their acting ability. Every scene that did not involved them shooting someone or sitting in a briefing room going over a mission to shoot someone felt like everyone was acting while covered in (and had their mouths full of) slowly hardening Elmer’s Glue. I actually hold both them and the director blameless for this, as they all had to work with what they were given. The problem arises when the non-SEAL team characters show up and interact with them. They were all played by professional actors and the disparity in delivery made it seem like I was watching Citizen Cain spliced together with Plan 9 From Outer Space. The acting from the professional actors was what I would have called fairly mediocre in another film, but by comparison it seemed Oscar worthy.
Anyway, the story. Again, if you have ever played a modern FPS video game you have seen it. I don’t even feel the need to get into the details. SEAL Team 7 bounces from country to country rescuing kidnapped CIA agents, trying to capture known terrorist, and stopping terrorists from blowing up Las Vegas. The main terrorist is the Chechnyan turned Muslim Muhammad Abu Shabal (Jason Cottle). He is supported by his childhood friend, Russian gangster and blatantly stereotyped (as the avaricious Jew) Christo and a gang of Philippino suicide bombers (???). Their hobbies include blowing up schoolchildren and torturing women, so obviously the writers felt OK with topsoil level character depth. There is a subplot about one of the SEAL team’s wife about to have a baby, and some social interactive social scenes between the SEALs that will make you wish you actually were playing a video game. The entirely of the plot really only serves to move us from (really freaking good) action scene to action scene.
The stars. The action was unbelievably good and brought a level of excitement entirely missing form most mainstream movies. Three stars. It was interesting as hell to see how the SEALs operate, and since this movie was made by the military and stared real SEALs I can only assume it was 100% accurate. Two stars. I like a movie that doesn’t hesitate to show good guys eating bullets too. All the best heroes are mortal. One star. They didn’t dumb things down for the audience and over explain things. They kept the military jargon and operational tactics real and didn’t bother to explain what was going on the lame civilians such as I, which actually made the movie more interesting and made me pay more attention (what the hell is a QRF? Some kind of vehicle designation?). One star. Overall a lot of fun to watch. Two stars. Total: nine stars.
The black holes. Acting so wooden it might have been delivered by Disney Animatronics. One black hole. A story plot that looked like it had been ripped off from any number of other weak plots and then dashed down on a roll of toilet paper in a mens room while the writer was dealing with an extended bout of diarrhea. Two black holes. Very weak character motivation and depth. One black hole. Xenophobia that was kind of embarrassing. One black hole. Total: five black holes.
A total of four stars. Not bad, really. This movie sells itself on the action and so, if you are an action person, or like realistic movies about elite soldiers, or are just into the military, then by all means see this film on the biggest screen you can find. If you aren’t into those things then odds are you will be OK waiting for NetFlix. Definitely not a good date movie, as there is not a lot of meat here for the average woman and some of the scenes that earned the R rating will really put her off her feed, if you know what I mean.
Thanks for reading. I have a tournament coming up next weekend and have hit that horrible point where I suddenly realize I need to get four more figures painted, so that will be most of my weekend. I will try to see Wanderlust tonight and review it tomorrow morning, although already I am bitter about that film as I heard Jennifer Aniston shot a nude scene and at the last minute made them take it out. Boo, I say. If I have time tomorrow I will see Gone, but for some reason my early warning suck radar is blaring at me on that one. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. I don’t post a lot, so you know each one is a gem. Feel free to post a comment here or send me an email at [email protected] if you have specific suggestion or questions. Have a great day. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Post Apocalyptic Zorro?
So I read online that they are casting Gael Garcia Bernal to play Zorro in the next reboot. My first thought was who cares about a Zorro movie? Zorro has always been kind of a dumb character in my book. Like the Three Musketeers, he suffers from the fact that he looks like a ponce in his outfit and is fighting with a sword when any idiot could just shoot him with a black powder gun.
Then I read that they are considering making the new Zorro a futuristic post apocalyptic story and my second thought was how dumb. Why mess with something that has worked for decades? Does there really need to be a re-imagining of Zorro?
But then I combined those two thoughts and came up with my final thought on the matter, how freaking cool could this movie actually be? I love post apocalyptic anything and this could possibly take care of a lot of the costume and sword issues that have plagued the story from the start. I think this could possibly be one of the best Zorro movies ever.
This children are the future image was the closest I could find for a post apocalyptic image. It comes from the funny t shirts Dave carries.
Interesting trivia: the Mask of Zorro was the movie Bruce Wayne was watching with his parents right before they got killed. I suppose I could have pulled a Batman image pretty easily. Oh well.
Jason
The Woman in Black Review
Scary Potter.
I actually saw this Saturday night and will say it was scary. However, it is of the jack-in-the-box kind of scary where something jumps out at you, causing a minor adrenaline spike and the occasional need to change your undergarments. It is not the kind of scary that builds up in the back of your mind like water balloon on a faucet that you forget is running. The terror builds steadily until it finally burst and gets all over everything. Instead it is Snakes on a Plane scary, where after the first 20 minutes, once you understand the nature of the villain, you begin to expect to see something horrible and predetermined scene locations and, for the most part, you are not disappointed. (Jack in the Box image courtesy of the Funny T-Shirts category).
The film also makes the cardinal mistake of establishing early on that the one character you are destined to connect with, Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe-Harry Potter and not a whole lot else) is actually in no real danger from the ghost, as she has a thing for children. Once you understood that tension in the scenes bleeds off like the aforementioned water balloon with fifty or so pin pricks in it. Still scary, but not in the same sense of danger you get from a movie like Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, where you know the bad guys are actively looking to cause harm to the character you like the most. Instead the danger is focused on a bunch of kids, which is bad in a very general sense, but since none of the kids have more than a couple minutes of screen time pre death you never connect with any of them. Honestly, if some excuse had been found for a couple kids to hang out with Arthur so we could get to know them, then I might have cared when something horrible happened.
The other big mistake this movie makes is it fails to give us a real reason for Arthur to be doing anything besides running screaming into the night, along with any of the other characters. I’m sorry, but if I am by myself in a big, creepy mansion and there is a rocking chair moving by itself after a day of seeing a ton of other creepy stuff I would be out of there so fast your eyes would spin, and by the way I’d be setting fire to the place on my way out the door. The villagers are idiots too. It is established early on that the local innkeeper had lost a child to the woman in black. He then has another child that he keeps locked up for her own safety. Why the hell didn’t he move to another town, along with anyone else who had a child? Is parental instinct such a rarity these days? Sometimes I think so, but if you live in a town with a local supernatural killer of children you might want to consider a different school district.
Anyway, the story. Arthur Kipp is a widower with a young son (again, a great opportunity to connect with a potential victim squandered. We meet him briefly at the beginning and again at the end) who is in danger of losing his job as a solicitor. He has a job to go out into the countryside and sort out the final affairs and sell the old mansion of someone (??? To be honest I can’t tell you who died and left the house. It might have been the woman in black, but it seemed to be implied that she had been dead for decades. Also she didn’t appear to have ever lived there. It might have been her unseen sister, but the sisters grave looked about 100 years old too. The house itself looked as if no one had been there for a while as well. If someone knows who’s affairs were being taken care of please post a comment). His son he leaves with a shockingly hot nanny (Jessica Raine-Robin Hood, Call the Midwife, Elsewhere) but they plan to join him shortly in the creepiest village in English history (sorry to keep hitting you with these questions, but if Arthur was nigh bankrupt as is stated several times how can he afford a nanny and vacations and so on? That kid should have had “latch-key” written on his underwear band). He arrives in town to encounter the typical “we both have a deadly town secret and hate all outsiders” attitude from the local bumpkins. Everyone seems unusually protective of the kids, but nothing is ever explained.
Anyway, the story is almost painfully linear. Naturally no one wants Arthur around and do whatever they can to make his life uncomfortable, except for the local rich guy (magistrate? Judge? It seems to be implied that he has some kind of local power but it is never explored. Played by Roger Allam-V for Vendetta, the Queen, Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides) and his insane wife (I can’t seem to find her credit. Weird) who’s son died under mysterious circumstances. He doesn’t believe in ghosts and puts up Arther, helping him along. Arthur decides the best way to go through a bunch of old paperwork is by sitting up all night by himself in the the creepiest mansion in the history of the world instead of in a nice office or hotel room. Naturally weird stuff starts happening, and kids in the village start dying. The locals opt to blame Arthur instead of burning the mansion to the ground and/or just moving the hell away. The backstory of the woman in black is spoon fed to us in the most painfully obvious manner; a monolog delivered in a woman’s voice as Arthur reads a bunch of old letters.
SPOILER ALERT: if you have a brain you might be able to infer some info about the ending from the next few lines, so maybe skip ahead a bit. While the action had a number of creepy surprises, the actual story was about as linear and predictable as long distance train track. Whatever tension the movie started with gets pretty much drained by the last 20 minutes. Arthur pulls some Scooby Doo shenanigans in order to appease the ghost and takes a swim in muck. Everyone in the movie make the dumbest choices possible (most of them being “Let’s hang out instead of making like a hockey player and getting the puck out of here”). The depressing and predictable ending that had been looming over the story like a suspicious lump in your testicle sack is made manifest.
The stars. Say what you will, the director (James Watkins-My Little Eye, The Descent Pt 2, Eden Lake) knows how to do creepy. Everything in this film looks like it was rejected by Hellraiser for being a little over the top. The problem is, of course, a lack of contrast actually makes the creepy stuff less creepy. However, if creep is what you like, this movie has it in spades. One star. Daniel Radcliffe managed to deliver a pretty good performance while completely divorcing himself from his Harry Potter legacy. Good script choice IMO. One star. The minimal special effects and camera work were really well done, helping to deliver on the tone the director was striving for. One star. There were some definite heart in your throat scary moments, so if you are looking for an adrenaline rush go for it. One star. Pacing and direction were pretty good. One star. Generally a fun movie to watch. Two stars. Total: seven stars.
The black holes. Predictable. One black hole. Once you realized the ghost wasn’t going to kill Arthur due to the fact that he wasn’t a child the was a serious lessening of tension. One black hole. This movie I think would have actually benefited greatly from a couple more characters. One black hole. Total: three black holes.
A grand total of four stars. This movie is actually better than that score indicates. I think it worth seeing. Definitely a good date movie, as your date should be gripping your arm nicely and not want to go back to her creepy, lonely apartment if you know what I mean. However, if watching guys in movies make bad life decisions infuriates you, maybe you should give it a pass.
That’s it for this weekend’s movies. I’ll try to get something watched this week, but have a couple other ideas to talk about soon. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Thanks for reading. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Man on a Ledge Review
The title pretty much describes the movie.
There’s a little more than that, of course. There is a motivation that seems to work, and the characters all seem to appeal. The story is griping enough and well done through the first 90%, but the whole thing falls apart into Inspector Clouseau style chaos at the end.
I guess it’s inevitable that even movies I enjoy these days seem to have flaws that irk me like a paper cut on the end of my tongue. 
This film has the appearance of a well packed cargo train, with everything tight, organized, and in it’s proper place, that at the last minute had a ton of extra luggage attached to the outside of the third car and a caboose full of clowns hitched up to the rear. There was a long, extended flashback scene in the first 20 minutes that felt completely out of place and in my opinion actually detracted from the story, and at the end, after 85 minutes of decent, coherent story telling the plot exploded like someone flushed a cherry bomb down it’s toilet. All of a sudden the pacing gets cranked up to ramming speed and a the plot threads start flying all over the screen like someone fed crystal meth to a nest of psychotic spiders.
(Train image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category)
On the other hand, this movie features the hottest woman in the history of the human race, Genesis Rodriguez. It frustrates me that women like this exist and don’t want to talk to me. The only thing that could make it more painful was if I found out her name was not a Biblical reference her parents saddled her but a screen name she chose from the Genesis project from TWOK. I think I would be out on a ledge at that point.
The story is, of course, about a man on a ledge. Sam Worthington (Avatar, Clash of the Titans, Terminator Salvation) crawls out on a ledge and starts threatening to kill himself. A crowd gathers. He request a specific police negotiator, discredited Detective Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks-Spiderman, the 40 Year Old Virgin, the Next Three Days). At that point we get into the flashback that in retrospect bugged me so much. It basically details how Sams character Nick Cassidy was an ex cop convicted of stealing a gigantic diamond from the bad guy David Englander (Ed Harris-A Beautiful Mind, the Abyss, the Rock) and how he escaped from prison and ended up in this hotel. First of all this whole sequence felt really out of place, but more importantly I think the story would have gone a lot better if we had discovered these things as the police did. Add an element of mystery to the whole thing.
Anyway, he is motivated to prove his innocence, and while he is distracting everyone his friends, including the aforementioned Genesis Rodriguez (Prisionera, Doña Bárbara) and his brother (Jamie Bell-Jumper, the Adventures of Tintin, Billy Elliot). Somehow they have become expert cat burglars and safe crackers with no experience whatsoever. Whatever. So the plan is based entirely on Nick distracting people at the right moments in order to give his team the time they need. Stuff blows up. Genesis strips down to her underwear and slithers into a body stocking in the most gratuitous and appreciated scene (from me) in cinema history. I don’t want to give the ending away, but all of a sudden the story takes every freeway off ramp simultaneously and then ends up in a multi car crash at the denouement (this is a word I just learned a few minutes ago. Me so smart).
Anyway, the stars. While not terribly original, it was an interesting twist on a crime story. One star. Acting was decent from Sam Worthington and the rest of the cast. One star. In spite of spending the entire time on a ledge, there were definitely parts that were exciting. One star. Genesis Rodriguez. One star. I do enjoy a good crime story, with the burglars having to defeat each of the security systems in turn. One star. I thought Ed Harris did an admirable job as the villain. He seemed a little over the top and out of place at times, but really gave you someone to hate. One star. I thought direction and camera work managed to give a definite sense of vertigo. Well done IMO. One star. Generally a good film that didn’t make me think I had wasted my money. One star. Total: eight stars.
The black holes. An ending that can best be described as a clusterf***. Two black holes. The early on out of place and unnecessary flashback. One black hole. Total: three black holes.
In the irksome but not black hole worthy category, I have a couple. The idea of Nick’s compatriots somehow having the skills need to defeat a multi million dollar security system is laughable, but since it gave a lot of screen time to my dream woman I can’t complain too much. Also, after an entire movie of sneaking through vent shafts and tricking cameras the final stage of the security system is defeated by opening up a thermostat control box and clipping a single wire. It’s like they paid their security systems consultant but ran out of budget for the last 25 minutes.
So a grand total of 5 stars. A decent score for a decent movie. I think you would enjoy seeing this on a big screen. The sense of danger the vertigo gives you will probably be lost on a TV. I think this would make a decent date movie too. There is some emotional stuff going on, and a couple of decent female characters. Nothing uber creepy that might put her off the idea of intimacy if you know what I mean. Good luck.
Three movies in three days and I am kind of movied out. I will take a break for a day or two. I have some thoughts on the Academy Awards Nominations (mostly around God awful Tree of Life getting nominated for anything other than going out and getting beer for all the other movies) and might do something on that tomorrow. Thanks for reading. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Talk to you soon.
Dave
This Weekends Movies.
Things are looking really busy this weekend, with three new movies on my must see list. I will see one a day for the next three days, and review each in turn the next morning. I offer to you, my beloved readers, the chance to help determine what order I should see them in. If there is a movie upcoming that you are interested in but would like my humble opinion early on speak now via comment here or Twitter. Your choices are:
The Grey-Liam Neeson and a bunch of disposable heroes land in the frozen North and have to escape while being hunted by a pack of wolves. I can only hope he is forced to eat his fellow passengers to survive. My prediction is that there turns out to be some kind of external influence causing the wolves to be unusually aggressive.
Man on a Ledge-I consider it both an insult to my intelligence and a warning sign of incoming suck when the movie description (not a review) calls this movie “heart pounding”. I have a feeling these descriptions are actually written by the marketing department for the film itself. The more they hype it the more it probably needs hyping. My prediction: so little heart pounding that I will be checking my pulse in order to make sure I haven’t accidentally passed away during the show. Man stands on a ledge in order to distract from his friends trying to steal a $40MM diamond in order to prove his innocence. Is it so much to ask that a movie premise make sense? I mean, does every crime in a movie have to be for some noble purpose? Would it not be enough to simply say “A guy stands on a ledge in order to distract from his friends stealing a $40MM diamond which they intend to sell and use the money to buy stuff”? Seems to make a lot more sense to me.
One for the Money-if your intention is to screw with my head vote for this one. A super hot girl is desperate for cash and decides to become Dog the Bounty Hunter. Apparently she is going after her ex boyfriend. My predictions: a lot of “girl too dainty to do anything all of a sudden kicks a guy in the balls and discovers she enjoys the feeling of power and regained self worth”; a highly improbably series of luck allows her to exceed the performance of one or more much more experienced bounty hunters; and finally she catches her ex only to discover she has feelings for him. These feeling either motivate her to let him go, or he is able to exploit her feelings in order to trick her and get away in the last five minutes. (Protect your Nuts image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category)
So make a comment here of hit me up on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Given the actual number of responses I get from these things the first person to hit me up will probably be casting the deciding vote. First review should be up tomorrow. Thanks everyone for reading. Have a great day
Dave
Joyful Noise Movie Review
Here is a movie to make you wish human beings had never developed vocal cords.
And I’m not talking about the singing. In fact, the music was one of the few redeeming qualities of this film. I am not a real fan of Gospel, but can appreciate the sound and understand what a powerful tool it can be for the advancement of the Christian pantheon (I consider myself more agnostic than anything else, although if I were forced to choose a specific religion I think I would roll with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster). No, it’s not the singing that made me want to stuff chewing gum in my ears. It’s the freaking dialog. If I have to hear Dolly Parton or Queen Latifah spout out another hillbilly, earthy country platitude (“If the jury is full of foxes then the chicken is always guilty”) I will be forced to go on a berserk chainsaw rampage.
The story is the unnatural offspring of Sister Act and Footloose, with lingering eye contact made with the Bad News Bears during conception. The proud parents had their child and, because someone else had already used the name Glee, ran with Joyful Noise. The weird thing is when you make a movie out of two mediocre movies you normally only take some elements from each and combine them into a crappier movie. What director/writer Todd Graff (The Electric Company, the Abyss, Five Corners, Stranger Days) did was, with the exception of the gangsters trying to kill Whoopie Goldberg, take ALL the elements from those two movies and pile drive them into one script until the screen is bursting with badness like rancid corpse stuffed into a corset. I mentioned Glee because that appears to be Mr. Graff’s favorite show, and honestly this movie reads like an entire season of bad TV compressed into 117 minutes with each episode creating yet another 5-10 minute subplot.
Fragmented doesn’t begin to describe this story. It is even more fragmented that the horrible New Years Eve I reviewed last year, although at least all the characters in this film know each other. The sub plots are legion. There’s the “main” plot of the losing church choir winning the national Joyful Noise competition. There’s the competition between Dolly Parton and Queen Latifah to be the choir director. There’s Queen Latifah’s hot 16 year old daughter rebelling against her mother’s restrictive nature, as well as her romance with Dolly’s grandson. There’s her Asperger brother trying to deal with being different from everyone else, learning to play the piano, and taking his sunglasses off. There’s the small Georgia town suffering from economic collapse. There’s the choir singer who’s father’s hardware store is closing. There’s Dolly Parton dealing with the death of her husband by ignoring it completely. There’s Queen Latifah’s husband joining the army to get away from her and the two kids. There’s Latifah’s struggle to provide for her family. There’s the grandson’s checkered juvenile past. There’s another girl hooking up with a guy and killing him after the first night (that subplot resurfaces later and somehow hijacks the whole story at the end). There’s the preacher who doesn’t want to spend money on the choir. There’s the struggle that the grandson and Dolly have to update the choir with more than just traditional music in order to win the big contest (oh yeah, somehow winning the contest is integral to the survival of the town. Still not sure what that was about). There’s the preacher hating the new music and pulling out his support. There’s the other kid who gets into a fight with the grandson over the daughter’s affection but later joins the choir as the worlds greatest guitar player or something. The list goes on and on.
In the credits (I read online. I didn’t really stay for the credits. I couldn’t get out of the theater fast enough) it is revealed that Todd Graff’s mother was in a choir, which makes a lot of sense. This movie looks a lot like a self indulgent labor of love, and Graff wanted to stick every small town or choir story schtick he could find into it. Next time I would suggest he make a list of his 20 best ideas and get a third party to whittle them down to like three. Just because you have an idea doesn’t mean you need to execute it.
Before I go on I’d like to say a few words about Dolly Parton. It seems pretty obvious that she is single handedly supporting the plastic surgery and hair care industries. That being said, I can’t argue with the results. She is 66 and looks at most 42-45ish. She also seems to have a sense of humor about it too, and plastic surgery jokes come about in a scene with Queen Latifah that was one of two that I actually enjoyed. Also, while she definitely is a lady throughout the film, her outfits seem designed to emphasis the assets she is known best for, if you know what I mean (her singing voice, obviously. What were you perverts thinking of?)
The story reads like it was written by the second place winner of a 5th grade creative writing contest. I don’t know if I need to get into it too much, as I seem to have covered it in the sub plot rehash. The church choir director (Kris Kristofferson-Blade trilogy, Planet of the Apes(2001)) drops dead during a choir competition, leaving Queen Latifah (Bringing Down the House, Living Single, Taxi) and Dolly Parton (Sweet Home Alabama, Moulin Rouge, Transamerica) up for the gig. Latifah gets it with the goal of winning the big Joyful Noise competition. Dolly’s grandson Randy (Jeremy Jordan-not much of a filmography. Looks like he was in Newsies on Broadway) shows up, falls in love with Latifah’s daughter (Keke Palmer-True Jackson, Cleaner, Akeelah and the Bee), who is a good church girl. At that point the story more or less explodes into the aforementioned subplots like a watermelon with an M-80 stuck in it. Church choir hijinks ensues. No real conflict arises. The story chugs along like a V8 with only three cylinders firing to the inevitable predictable conclusion.
The stars. The music and singing were actually pretty good. One star. The actors, working within the limitations of a bad script and horrible dialog, managed to deliver a decent performance. Kind of like winning a three legged race. One star. Queen Latifah is at her best when she is bitching someone out, and there were two scenes (one with Dolly in particular) that were entertaining that way. One star. Keke Palmer is super cute. One star. Total: four stars.
The black holes. Dialog that made me want to never see another film again. Two black holes. 1 kazillian subplots that went nowhere. One black hole. 1 subplot in particular was especially cringe-worthy. One black hole. Pretty much all the rest of the subplots gave me an attitude that rhymed with “Eye Mont Bare”. One black hole. 
The pacing dragged like trying to pull a corpse to a shallow grave by yourself (not that I would know anything about that. Where did I put that body image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category). One black hole. Glee ripoff. One black hole. Overall story seemed both pointless and dumb. One black hole. A movie that is supposed to be uplifting and heartwarming laced with death and sociopaths apparently not caring about it. One black hole. Two more black holes for generally wasting my time. Total: eleven black holes.
So a grand total of seven black holes. This is another one that was weird in that the audience around me seemed to be enjoying it and laughing. However, I suspect a lot of them came to see it from some kind of church obligation and had to pretend to like it otherwise their friends might think they were not the good Christians they like to think they are. A lot of the laughter sounded forced, like laughing at your bosses bad jokes. Speaking as a creepy loner who couldn’t care less about what the people around me think (if you don’t believe me just look at how I dress every day) the only prayer I was making was for the credits to start rolling. I don’t know. Was it better than tripping and falling into a tree shredder? In most ways yes. Was it better than spending those two hours working on my Doom Fortress in Minecraft? Absolutely not. However, if you are dating a girl who is Christian this could be a good one to see, especially if you are willing to wait until your wedding night for sex.
I’m back to scraping the bottom of the barrel on movies. Nothing to see tonight, but maybe I’ll see My Week With Marilyn. No way there is anything in that film to annoy me. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Thanks for reading. Talk to you soon.
Dave
