Big Wow Comic Fest
Just got back last night from Big Wow in San Jose and I have to say it was a blast. I thought I would do a post show report for any of you considering coming out next year.
First off, it was super crowded and busy, with a lot of cool guests and speakers. This might be due to the fact that Wonder Con moved to Anaheim this year (they are supposed to be back next year) or it could just be a great show that is growing on it’s own strength, but it was super crowded. Not Wonder or Comic Con style, but certainly busier than the Anaheim show.
The attendees: generally very cool. Sunday was dominated by families, with a ton of strollers and little super heroes. Saturday saw lots of teenage to young adults. One nice thing about the mid to smaller shows is I get more of a chance to talk to fans and find out what they are into (generally comic books).
What’s Hot: anything Avengers. I pretty much sold out of my Marvel Comic T Shirts. Batman was really big too, with the new movie coming out. I sold a surprisingly large amount of Flash shirts, but I think that has more to do with the Big Bang Theory than actual fans of the comic (Big Bang shirts did very well too).
What’s Not: zombie stuff seems to be dropping off. Still sells, but I think the saturation point has been reached. Same with Angry Birds shirts. Video games in general seem to have dropped off, although I did do well with Umbrella shirts from Resident Evil.
The Venue: San Jose Convention Center is no worse or better than any other decent hall. I will say the lack of carpet made for a lot of sore feet by the end of the day. Don’t we all love standing around on polished concrete all day?
Parking: excellent. Easy to get to and relatively cheap.
The Costumes: honestly I didn’t see a lot that really impressed me. The 501st was there looking sharp as usual, but nothing new that blew my socks off. Lots of goths.
The Girls: pretty impressive. Lots of cute girls, and the ratio seemed well weighted towards the distaff (in other words, 4 guys to every girl instead of the usual 7 to 1).
Show low point: finding out that the snack bar right outside the entrance didn’t open up until the exact moment the show started and I would have to be in my booth. I was forced to run down to the hotel coffee bar. I also found out that San Jose now forces everyone to charge $.10 for bags. As a friend of the environment I applaud that. As a consumer in a hurry I find it a little annoying.
Show high point: While walking in to the venue after jogging to the hotel coffee bar I heard someone in line say “Oh, NerdKungFu is here.” They must have recognized me, which makes me feel all happy inside.
This show also had me fall in love (or at least a very strong crush) with another movie star. The star in question is the lovely Maxine Wasa, who came by my booth on Saturday, berated me for not having her size in a shirt, and then came back the next day and bought two of them. I reciprocated by buying a very hot picture of her from her booth which she autographed for me. I really don’t do that sort of thing, but she had a spark that entranced me. She will be at Comic Con and I will go by her booth again. She’s had a couple cool roles and is something of a name in the horror scene. She just had a movie come out called No Strings 2. I will track it down and review it, even though it looks like it features a demonic puppet clown. A more freaky combination I can’t imagine.
One more cool thing that happened was a lady bought this Spider Man t shirt from me and then got a bunch of the artists at the show to sketch all over it. Very cool, and I think it looks sharp. I might have to start stocking more white t shirts for shows.
Anyway, I will see Battleship matinee today and if it as bad as it looks excrete my opinion all over it later tonight. Thanks for reading. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu or email questions or suggestions to [email protected]. Sorry for nothing over the weekend, but we were super busy. Talk to you soon. I have to go find a frame for a certain picture, if you know what I mean.
Dave
Sorry about no blog.
I was slammed all day getting ready for the Big Wow Comic Fest in San Jose. If you are coming be sure to stop by my booth and say hi. I will try to see Battleship tomorrow night but I don’t know.
I did have a weird moment today while unpacking this Thor shirt from the Marvel Comic t shirts. I suddenly realized I wanted to see the Avengers a second time. This is something I haven’t done since I started doing the movie reviews. I just want to see the Hulk again. I don’t have the time.
So look for a review tomorrow night, but I might not get it done. Thanks for your patience. Have a great night.
Dave
Attack of the Eyebrows
I was looking at some posters for the upcoming Spider Man movie and I realized the kid they got to play Peter Parker, Andrew Garfield, has big bushy eyebrows. This would not really be worth mentioning were it not for the fact that this guy seems to just be the latest in a long run of young actors considered hot who come from the caterpillar school of eyebrow growth. The obvious one is Robert Pattinson, the Lord God of Eyebrows, but the list includes Chase Crawford, Josh Hartnet, Joe Jonas, Daniel Radcliffe, the Jonas Bros, Charlie Simpson, Pete Wentz, and Jesse McCartney who all seem to have been grown in a tube in the same laboratory by a mad scientist who’s goal is to make eyebrows insanely popular as some kind of plot to conquer the world.
I don’t think it’s a big deal, although I tend to find them distracting. The funny part will come when they develop cosmetic eyebrow hair plugs so guys who are less well endowed in the brow department can feel good about themselves. Eventually all hot guys are going to look like the Lorax. I am sure women will enjoy laughing at that.
This Spider Man image is from Dave’s Marvel Comic T Shirts. I do like Silver Age style art.
Jason
More stupid movie decisions: Jessica Chastain bails out on Iron Man 3
There is something I love about watching otherwise successful people commit career suicide. Jessica Chastain, apparently feeling pretty good about her career after starring in Tree of Life, has announced she will not be in the upcoming Iron Man 3. What’s the matter, Jessica? Is the whole Iron Man/Avengers franchise not successful for you? Seriously? The Avengers nailed $207.4 million dollars this last weekend. Tree of Life grossed $13.3 million in it’s entire run, and based on Dave’s review of it I don’t know if it rated that much.
Honestly, when faced with the chance to hitch your wagon to the most successful team in the world I think it would be worth while to maybe be willing to take less money in return for the opportunity to promote yourself. I can’t imagine what kind of roles the stars of this film are being offered on a daily basis right now. Sounds like you could write your own ticket. Of course, traditionally the third movie in a series tends to feel the suck, so maybe Jessica knows something about the script we are all missing.
This very cool Iron Man I found in Dave’s Marvel Comic T shirts. I have to say I like the retro looking Iron Man from the first movie and early comics. Kind of Ming the Merciless meets Battle Bots.
Jason
Marvel the Avengers in 3D review
As good as I expected, but not a whole lot more than that.
The Avengers is not about surprising the audience with something truly exceptional or unexpected. It does exactly what it sets out to do: deliver a fun, exciting comic book movie with all the elements fans are looking for. The dialog is witty and funny, the action cool and exciting, the heroes all (for the most part) have their own motivation and angst, and the villain despicable yet sympathetic. I will say it was a lot of fun and well worth your time to see in a theater.
Of course, it wouldn’t be one of my reviews if I didn’t find something to nit pick, and this film does have its issues. The first one was the overuse of characters I don’t really give a damn about, specifically Hawkeye and Black Widow. Had they had their own origin movie I might have cared more, but every minute spent on them was time taken away from Iron Man, Thor, Capt. American, or the Hulk. It was like drinking a delicious milkshake from a straw that periodically switches over to unflavored yogurt. Not necessarily bad, but just not really what you want to be drinking. Kind of bland. Also, they really felt lost and out of place without more back story.
Another issue I had was specifically with Black Widow. If you read the post I did a few days ago about the problem of female heroes in comic movies you might have caught the point I made that either super heroines have to be so unstoppable that they never take a punch to the face, or the get beaten heavily, really disturbing most of the audience. In this film the opted for the former, which would have made sense had she actually had some kind of super power. However, she is just a human and the suspension of disbelief really gets strained when you see her killing super powered aliens with her bare hands.
I also had a problem with the super powered aliens invading the earth. Never have I seen a less effective invasion. At the beginning of the movie it was heavily implied that they would beat the combined armed forced of the planet in about a day, but once they arrived they more or less fell over if someone farted in their general direction. I don’t see how aliens can hope to conquer the planet if a chick with a pistol and a guy with a bow and arrow can kill dozens of them.
All that being said, the movie was great and had a lot of really good points that made up for the negative issues. Iron Man was great, as was Thor and Capt. America. However, in the action scenes it was the Hulk who dominated and added the real excitement. In addition to being amazingly strong and fast he had the added benefit of being really unpredictable, making his scenes that much more interesting.
I don’t want to get to much into the story as I expect every one of you readers to see this film. I will say it falls back onto the traditional Marvel mashup premise: superheroes meet up, find an excuse to beat the hell out of each other, and then later find a reason to team up against the big bad. I personally really appreciate this nod towards true comic book story telling and think it’s a wise move. As for the story, Loki comes back with a device to summon an “unstoppable” alien army. The Avengers are pulled in to stop him. Mass chaos ensues.
The stars. Really great action scenes. Two stars. Comic book movie. One star. The Hulk was freaking awesome. Two stars. Thor, Iron Man, and Capt. America were great too. One star. For the most part sticking to canon. One star. Loki was a really good villain. One star. While definitely riding the lame horse known as PG-13, they still managed to keep the action hot and at least talked about people being killed. One star. There were any number of really clever, laugh out loud lines and moments. One star. Camera work and CGI were flawless. One star. Pacing was great. Even in the otherwise sluggish first 30 minutes I never felt bored or disengaged. Exceptionally well done IMO. One star. The interaction between the differing personalities among the Avengers was really good and added a lot to the story. One star. Overall a great movie experience. Two stars. Total: fifteen stars.
The black holes. Too much screen time burned on Black Widow and Hawkeye, both of whom felt kind of appendix-like. One black hole. The lack of a real back story on either character made me not care about them at all. One black hole. Worthless, worthless 3D. How is it 3D is getting lamer, not better? One black hole. The alien invaders were kind of tissue paper. One black hole. The final battle scene was highly derivative of Transformers Dark of the Moon to the point even the aliens looked a lot like the Decepticons (grey technoblobs that blended in with the background and scenery). One black hole. SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT sorry but since this is a movie I expect you to see you might want to skip down the the next paragraph now. The ending used the stupid, stupid “pulling the plug” tool first pioneered badly in Independence Day and the later used as a severe emetic in Star Wars the Phantom Menace when it came to defeating the alien army. If you are borrowing plot tips from George Lucas you should know you are either being painfully lazy or just stupid. Is it so bad to say “Well, we defeated the enemy but there are still several hundred alien soldiers running around we will have to hunt down over the next several months.”? One black hole. Total: six black holes.
A grand total nine stars. An excellent score, and an excellent movie. If you aren’t a bitter, shriveled soul such as myself the issues I had will be glossed over like a fresh coat of paint on graffiti, and you will enjoy the hell out of this movie. Absolutely see it in a theater on the biggest screen you can find. Well worth it. The movie is interesting enough and the character interaction intriguing enough to even make this a decent date movie for the right girl. Bathroom break? I’d say about the time Black Widow starts talking one on one with Loki. I know it was supposed to be a clever scene that added something to her character but at the end of it you kind of realize it was as worthless as the majority of the rest of her screen time. Everything you learn from it she reiterates in the next scene.
Thanks for reading. Sorry I kind of rushed this one and didn’t research the cast like I usually do but I am really slammed today (Warhammer weekend). Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu or send me an email if you have specific questions or suggestions at [email protected]. If you want to comment on this review feel free to do so here. I don’t know if I will have a chance to see anything this weekend, but if I do I’ll try to write it up Sunday night. Have a good one.
Dave
Wanted 2 looks like it is going ahead
I read online today that Angelina Jolie has passed on doing the sequel to Wanted 2. Good move in my opinion. I mean, her character died at the end of the last one. Were they going to add in some kind of resurrection or twin or something? What is this, Marvel? The Hulk shirt comes from Dave’s Marvel comic t shirts. I couldn’t find any of the guys who died and resurrected, but you get the idea.
I remember seeing this movie and liking it. Dave was saying that while bendy bullets are theoretically possible they got the physics wrong, at least for the last one. However, I don’t remember this movie doing amazingly well but somehow it took in over $341 million. How is that possible? I guess overseas sales. Angelina is pretty popular around the world. How is this movie going to do without her? Dave liked it too, but he has been doing nothing but groaning about bad sequels this year.
I’m glad they are making this movie. I will probably see it and enjoy it, although I will leave the review to Dave. He loves writing. I get bored after 10 minutes, which is why I do the short blogs. I’d probably just say it was good and walk away.
Jason
Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengence Review
The Drone Ranger rides again.
This movie was actually slightly improved over the last one, but honestly it is on the level of being held under water for 10 minutes instead of 20. At the end of the day you have still drowned in a lake of plot holes, bad acting, and eardrum damaging dialog, which is unfortunate as Ghost Rider is one of my favorite comic book characters and I feel he is really cool with an interesting story. (Ghost Rider image courtesy of the Marvel Comic T Shirts)
Before getting into the meat of this flick I thought it worth looking into the two directors, Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine, and seeing if they had produced anything worth anything. The answer is more or less a resounding no. They are attached at the hip and have almost exactly the same film credits: Crank, Crank II, Gamer, and Jonah Hex are considered their premier releases. The funny thing is other than that they seem to have only technical credits. Brian Taylor in particular is mostly listed as a camera man on a bunch of documentaries. I am all for giving up and coming directors a chance, but given that this film had a $75 million dollar budget this sounds like the equivalent of getting the guy who mops up the operating room floor to perform a heart transplant. If this is how Hyde Park feels they need to flush their money give me 1/3rd the budget and I can probably make something at least as good.
It is rarely a good sign when a movie starts in the first two minutes with a gaping plot hole, and at first I was surprised at something so dumb so early in. However, within 40 minutes I realized the entire script was composed almost entirely of plot holes, like Swiss cheese without the flavor. The plot holes kept growing and spawning new plot holes like a fast acting virus, and by the end of the movie my brain had been so inundated by them that I stopped noticing them as they flew past the screen (actually, in a strange way kind of a brilliant movie making strategy. If your writers are too dumb (Scott M. Gimple-El Tigre: the Adventures of Manny Riviera (??? A cartoon I guess), Filmore!, Pepper Ann. That’s three “major” credits since 1997 and Seth Hoffman-Prison Break, Prison Break the Final Break, House M.D.) to avoid gaping craters in the script just add more until they all kind of blur together. I just don’t credit the directors with making an active decision to pursue the plan. Looks like a happy coincidence).
If I had the energy to keep score I think the one thing this movie would have had to compete with the massive number of plot holes would be the also massive number of completely worthless and non contributing scenes. They seem to fall into the two categories of either showing how cool Nicholas Cage is on a motorcycle or burning up the remaining special effects budget with extra CGI.
And of course the final nail in the proverbial coffin would have to be the monotone drone of Nicholas Cage (Con Air, Face Off, Season of the Witch, Drive Angry). Most of this movie he does in his trademark deadpan robot like (for lack of a better term) acting. To be fair, there are a couple scenes where he does seem to emote a little, but they both seem like he is doing them under protest and they were both CGI enhanced. I think I figured out why his last few roles have been so bad in comparison to earlier movies like Raising Arizona and Kiss of Death: he can only really act when he doesn’t play tough good guys. When he is a hardened lone wolf hero something twitches in his brain and he thinks the way to manifest the character is to pretend he is a corpse. Honestly, Chuckie emotes better.
I will say the camera work was impressive, but by that I mean it was impressive for a skateboard video. In fact, the whole film felt like an action sports video with big action explosions interspersed with a montage of guys drinking beer and yelling at each other. There were a couple really cool camera shots, but not enough to make things up for all the jumbled low camera YouTube worthy filming. Some of the action was also pretty cool, but when it is established in the first action scene that the Ghost Rider is more or less impervious to any kind of attack or weapon it exhausts all the excitement in the scene like a Roofie colonic. At that point it really doesn’t matter how many hundreds of armed mercenaries you send at him. The audience knows all the bullets, grenades, and bunker buster rockets are going to pass right through him with all the impact of a wet fart.
The story, from what I could discern by looking past all the obscuring plot holes, is once more Johnny Blaze (now apparently not stopped by daylight) cursed with being Ghost Rider. The Devil (Ciaran Hinds-the Road to Perdition, Munich, There Will Be Blood, The Debt) has had a kid (Fergus Riordan-I Want to be a Soldier, Fragile) and wants him to take over the family business or something. Instead of simply using his powers to, you know, just take him away he hires a crew of mercenaries who attack a monastery and start the long, long chase after the boy. An alcoholic priest named Moreau (Idris Elba-you might remember him as Hiemdall from Thor. Also the Losers, the Office) shows up to rescue the child but his mother Nadya (Vilante Placido-the American, Moana, Sleepless) manages to escape with her son. Turns out she used to date the head of the mercenaries. Moreau finds Johhny Blaze and convinces him if he helps the kid then the curse of Ghost Rider can be lifted (speaking of plot holes, being Ghost Rider is the curse and power the devil gave Blaze. How is it he can then operate to stop the devil?). Thus the chase that dominated the remainder of the movie trundles its way through the next two hours. The mercenary gets transformed by the Devil in Blackout, a pretty cool villain from the comic. Flaming skeleton hijinks ensues. Lots of stuff gets blown up, along with lots of guys.
The stars. Comic book movie that managed to stay closer to the actual story than the last crappy Ghost Rider movie. One star. A couple action sequences and a couple of camera shots were impressive. One star. The transformation sequences were seriously goofy, but once he transformed the CGI for Ghost Rider was pretty cool. One star. Ghost Rider had chains this time, not a shotgun. One star. Total: four stars.
The black holes. Multiple gaping plot holes each big enough to park a small fleet of Winnebagos in. Three black holes. Deadpan, deadish acting from Nicholas Cage and pretty much everyone else. Two black holes. Pacing was really off. It jumped right into action with no transition and then made us sit through long sequences of nothing to get to the next one. One black hole. Multiple scenes that added nothing to the film and really should have been carted off with the rest of the deadwood. One black hole. Did I mention that the directors felt the best way to highlight Nicholas Cage’s acting ability would be to have him also deliver some really dopey monologs (you know, the lazy directors way of avoiding figuring out how to explain things to the audience) accompanied by some cartoons that looked like they had been created by some high school kid using MS Paint? One black hole. The entire movie was supposed to be set in Eastern Europe but everything looked and sounded suspiciously like West Texas. One star. Dialog from Hell (haw!). One black hole. Making me pay $11 for a action video I should have been able to see for free on YouTube (glad I didn’t spring for 3D). One black hole. Overall kind of a waste of time. One black hole. Total: twelve black holes.
A grand total of eight black holes. It’s been a while since I really blasted a movie like this. Honestly, the feeling I got from this movie is the two directors really couldn’t care less about Ghost Rider and just used this as a vehicle to make an action video they should have done for about $1,000. Worth seeing at all? Maybe if you are a huge GR fan and/or are easily amused by explosions and moving skeletons. If you are that type of person you had best see it on a big screen. If not, just NetFlix it in two months and have a shot of Jamison every time you spot a plot hole. Within 20 minutes you will be wasted enough to not even care about them and should be able to enjoy the film.
Thanks for reading. Lost of movies to see this weekend, but I will be spending a lot of time at a gaming convention playing Warhammer. Wish me luck. If I do well in the tournament and get a chance I will try to see This Means War and The Secret Life of Arietty. If I do poorly I will punish myself by seeing Mysterious Island. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. If you don’t like tweeting and or making comments here feel free to email me with questions or suggestions [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Marvel sometimes sucks.
So I read something disturbing today. The comic book character Ghost Rider, shown here from the Marvel Comic T Shirts, was created by an artist named Gary Friedrich. When the lame Ghost Rider movie came out he tried to sue, claiming that while he did not have the rights to the Ghost Rider comic book he should have the rights to the movie. He lost, which is what happens when you go against a major corporation in this country.
However, I just found out that he has been supporting himself in retirement by going to comic book conventions and signing autographs as the creator of Ghost Rider, just like any number of other artist do. The thing is, Marvel has sued him for the right to claim he created anything, and want him to pay them the $17,000 he has made over the last couple years. The thing is, they are not denying that he created GR. They just don’t want him telling anyone that he did.
The other part that sucks about this is Marvel is worth billions and probably spends more than $17 grand a day in executive toilet paper. All that and they still want to take money away from a 68 year old retiree? Really? Personally I see this as a sign of the negative influence Disney has had on them. “When you dance with the devil the devil doesn’t change. The devil changes you.” That quote was from 8MM, by the way.
Bottom line, Marvel is showing themselves to be pretty heartless here. I would say don’t go see the new Ghost Rider movie. The first one sucked anyway, and it still stars Nicholas Cage, who for some reason can’t seem to play any role well lately.
Jason.
The Avengers Trailer is looking pretty damned cool.
Already I can tell you all must think I am the guy who craps on everything, and for the most part you would probably be right. However, I have to say the trailer I saw this morning for the Avengers is looking pretty amazing. I will leave the whole reviewing business to Dave, but I have a good feeling about this movie. I am pretty sure it is going to rule.
The only weird thing is, as you can see from this image of the classic Avengers from the Marvel Comic T Shirts, the Hulk was never really featured much, and in fact I think he left the Avengers after the first few issues. The whole question of how to actually control him or write in a reason for him to just happen to be pissed off at whoever the Avengers were fighting I think seemed a little awkward. In the trailer I just saw Tony Stark seems pretty confident about the teams ability to keep the Hulk under control, but personally I think that sounds a little optimistic. Part of the thing that made the Hulk so cool was the fact that he could fly off the handle at any given moment.
Other than that, I think this movie is looking pretty amazing, and will probably at least go with Dave on opening night to watch it. I just don’t want to listen to him bitching about pacing and other dumb movie stuff.
Jason
Contraband Movie Review
I really can’t decide what kind of movie this is or if it was actually good or bad.
I’m going to coin a new descriptive phrase and expect every other review who uses it to send me a $.25 royalty: script confusion. This describes a movie that can’t decide what kind of movie it wants to be when it grows up. This film was torn between a crime drama and an action movie. The crime drama felt awkward and haphazard, especially when it is established 10 minutes in that the main protagonist is reputably the greatest smuggler who ever lived. Throughout the crime aspects of the movie the story seems to indicate that secretly it wants to be an action film but, like a transgendered man taking her first steps in high heels, when we actually get to the action scenes they feel awkward, comedic, and tacked on.
That’s not to say this movie is bad. I found that it’s many shortcomings were often times balanced out by it’s more virtuous aspects. The comical gunfight and getaway is balanced out by some very clever smuggling tricks. The over the top main bad guy is balanced out by the very entertaining ship captain. The continuous sequence of narrow escapes is balanced out by a decent plot twist that comes about fairly organically. In fact, the whole movie seems so perfectly balanced that I can’t help but think this was intentional on the part of the director, Baltasar Kormákur. I have in the last year become a big fan of Scandinavian film makers (check out my review of Trollhunter), and while is filmography lacks a lot of main stream releases (Jar City, A Little Trip to Heavan, the Sea) it looks like he might be worth keeping an eye on.
The story. A loser kid Andy (Caleb Landry Jones-X-Men First Class, No Country for Old Men, the Last Exorcist) dumps a cargo of drugs overboard a freighter when it gets boarded by customs agents and now owes a ton of dough to the local campy bad guy Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi-Avatar (the corporate guy), Saving Private Ryan, Gone in 60 Seconds), who is going to kill him in horrible ways if he doesn’t get his money. Andy is the brother of Kate (Kate Beckensale-Underworld, the Aviator, Pearl Harbor) who is married to the most famous smuggler that ever lived, Chris Farraday (Marky Mark Wahlberg-Boogie Nights, the Fighter, the Other Guys). Now it is up to Chris to find the money to pay off Briggs, and given that he has retired from smuggling in order to be a blue collar business owner, his only option is to go back into smuggling. He is aided by long time friend Sebastian (Ben Foster-the Mechanic, the Messenger, 3:10 to Yuma), who has also gone legit with a construction business. They plan to smuggle in a huge stack of counterfeit money (yay for supporting the American economy!) on another freighter.
Somehow he and Andy get hired onto another freighter headed to Panama and meet up with a number of supporting characters plucked fresh from the the ground of the stereotype farm. Once on board Chris catches the eye of the ship captain (the great J.K. Simmons-J. Jonah Jamison from the Spiderman franchise, Juno, the Closer. Spiderman image courtesy of the Marvel T Shirt category), who was easily my favorite character and knows of Chris’s history and is instantly suspicious. They get to Panama in about 45 minutes where Chris gets involved in some kind of local gang lord crime spree. At that point the movie shifts gears into 
what I like to call the Scooby Doo chase sequence, where the story and characters progress only by the most ridiculous sequence of perfect timing and coincidence, like when the bad guy in the rubber costume is chasing Scooby and Shaggy through the corridor with the six doors (you know what I’m talking about). This part feels more that a little hackneyed, which surprised me as most of the rest of the movie seemed pretty well put together. Either Baltasar (what a cool name. I want to name my hypothetical son Baltasar) was trying to convey something I am too dense to pick up on, or he caved in to outside pressure from the studio to make the movie somehow more exciting by hoisting the audiences disbelief a little higher up.
Anyway, smuggling hijinks ensues. A lot of time is spent looking into shipping containers. Some kind of interesting plot twists reveal themselves.
The stars. Decent story. One star. Direction was pretty good. One star. In spite of the whole Scooby Doo portion, overall the pacing was right on target. There was no time that I felt bored or that things were dragging or progressing too fast. One star. Mark Wahlberg delivered a credible performance, in spite of the occasional campy dialog. One star. Decent plot twists, although a perceptive person might have seen them coming ahead of time. One star. Captain Camp was great. One star. In total a decent film that was enjoyable in a kind of bland way, like chewing on gum that has already lost it’s flavor. One star. Total: seven stars.
The black holes. A movie that is rated R for language is a huge waste of potential. It’s like going to jail for stealing socks. If you are going to eat the R rating anyway you might as well throw in more horrific violence, blood, and some nudity. One black hole. Some of the characters, Briggs in particular, seem really over the top. One black hole. Some ocean container sized plot holes. One black hole. Almost all the characters worked on having some kind of New Orleans accent except for Wahlberg, who in spite of the fact that his character supposedly grew up on the Big Easy sounded like he just got off the plane from Beantown. One black hole. While it seemed like a decent movie, I walked out feeling no real connection to the story or any of it’s characters, and honestly struggled this morning to remember the plot and my feelings for it. Definitely a forgettable film. One black hole. Total: five black holes.
A grand total of two stars. Meh. You won’t feel like you wasted your time or money seeing this, but a week afterward it won’t really stick with you. If you can see it cheap cool. If you wait until DVD you won’t really lose anything. There aren’t any cinemagraphics that requires a big screen. Date movie? Sure. Exciting and interesting enough to keep her into it while being bland enough to not offend or overstimulate her. Marky Mark keeps his shirt on for pretty much the whole film so you don’t have to worry about the comparison factor too much. However, this movie is kind of neutral in that it will neither help or hurt you in your campaign to seduce her, so if you haven’t closed the deal yet try to find something more enticing (or better yet, do something more fun and exciting than a movie).
Thanks for reading. I will eventually get the rest of my best of 2011 stuff done, but there are a bunch of new movies I want to see. My best friend tells me he wants my review on Joyful Noise. I will see it, but I suspect he is just screwing with me because he knows this film will drive me nuts. Also I am working on another huge project for work, so I might not get a lot done in the next week or so. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Thanks for reading. Talk to you soon.
Dave
