Movies

2007-03-28T15:36:00.000-07:00

watched tuesday:

Frailty (2001) 6/10
Tadpole (2002) 6/10
Robinson Crusoe (1954) 7/10

Thundercats Ep 12
Band of Brothers Ep 4

2007-03-27T05:33:00.000-07:00

watched yesterday: forgot to post

Thundercats Ep 7-11

2007-03-25T20:23:00.000-07:00

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) 5/10
The Blob (1958) 5/10
Master and Commander (2003) 6/10

Band of Brothers Ep 3

2007-03-24T16:47:00.000-07:00

The Last Starfighter 6/10
Westworld 7/10
Lone Wolf and Cub 2 Baby Cart at the River Styx 6/10

Band of Brother Ep 1-2
Thundercats Ep 5-6

2007-03-23T20:51:00.000-07:00

Night of the Comet (1984) 5/10
Dune (1984) 5/10

2007-03-22T20:14:00.000-07:00

Tideland (2005) 3/10
King Arthur (2004) 7/10

Lost S3 E12-13
Thundercats ep 1-4

2007-03-21T20:25:00.000-07:00

Wag the Dog 6/10
Die Hard 2 6/10

2007-03-20T15:43:00.000-07:00

i think that i'm gonna start back up, but instead of writing reviews just list what i take in day by day. whatever. just cause.

The Host (Korean) (2006) 7/10
Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) 6/10

ep 10-11 of Lost Season 3

An American Haunting

2007-01-27T19:03:00.000-08:00

well.. this one looked like horse shit. just another in the line of ghost stories. but upon having free rentals at blockbuster, and not a lot i wanted, i picked it up and tossed it in. the first hour was actaully really good. it had the tension and setting that i felt Sleepy Hollow should have had. then the last 25 minutes (yes, finally a movie that comes in at less than 2 hours!) totally sold out and died. SPOILER. the film is nothing more than a 'sins of the father' scenario. bullshit. die.

Idiocracy

2007-01-27T17:30:00.000-08:00

the new mike judge film starring luke wilson. this movie is for idiots only. it made me feel stupid. don't watch it.

catch up on movies!

2007-01-24T21:10:00.000-08:00

hahahah i haven't written here in sooooo long. and i really haven't seen that many films since i last posted. lets see.

Cutthroat Island - a pirate film from '95 starring geena davis. i dunno. the story was absolutely weak. geena had no idea how to be a pirate, and lets face it, she's just not that attractive. pirates are pirates.. but not even that could make this a good one. 5/10

Cars - the newest pixar picture. i didn't really have any interest in talking cars, and i should have left it at that. this was a complete and utter waste of time. in the first 2 minutes of being introduced to the lead car i knew exactly what the entire story was going to be. and i was right. and its not worth watching. 4/10

Nine Months - one of those chick flicks from the mid 90's with the man hugh grant that has enough man stuff and comedy in it to make it a good chick flick. great cast. but overall the story is just a bit too sappy. still a good film tho. 5.5/10.

Little Miss Sunshine - seems to be the new film everyone is raving about. it was pretty good, but not great. the characters were all cool, tho some were painfully loserific. i love toni collette tho, steve carell did a magnificent job and my favorite of all was new comer paul dano. ultimately the film hit its mark a little too close tho. i don't like losers. and that's exactly who these people were. 6.5/10

Address Unknown - i haven't been digesting enough asian cinema lately. not nearly enough. i forgot this was a ki-duk kim film when i put it in. probably not what i should have used to get back in the asian groove. despite being dark, grungy and depressing as shit, it was still a pretty damn good film. moral of the story is korea 's war messed these people up. bad. 6.5/10

Bandidas - sometimes i find myself asking 'why did i watch that?' this is one of those times. the answer? 50% i don't know. 50% hot chicks. don't bother. 5/10.

Snakes on a Plane - YES i watched it god damn it and it was WORTH IT! entertainment to the max. good film? no. entertaining. well yes, i already said that. see it. and have fun. period. 6.5/10.

i'm sure i'm missing like.. 1 or 2 or 3. but whatever.

Quest for Fire

2006-12-15T09:14:00.000-08:00

Quest for Fire

Year: 1981
Directed by: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Starring: Ron Perlman, Rae Dawn Chong

This was an interesting film. Taking place when humans were still very far from being humans tribes are fighting over fire because they do not yet know how to create it. after an attack a tribe loses their flame and they send out 3 of its members to find more. on a long and intense journey they meet a woman from another tribe who by accident leads them to her own tribe where they know how to make fire. they teach the newcomers who then set out to return to their own tribe. a very interesting film with no real dialog. the landscapes are beautiful. the acting is rich and organic. the depiction of life is cold and barbaric. i dunno. this was a good film. a unique experience.

Quest for Fire
7.5/10

Superman Returns

2006-12-15T09:03:00.000-08:00

Superman Returns

Year: 2006
Directed by: Bryan Singer
Starring: Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey, James Marsden, Parker Posey

Let me start by saying i never saw any of the original films. i never really liked superman at all.

I liked this film a lot. I've really been diggin on the whole superhero comic films lately. even the mediocre ones. its only the poor ones like elektra and um.. whatever that one with ben afleck in that have been really shitty. but for the most part, the high profile ones have really been rockin. I really dug this one. i liked that clark kent was such a tiny part of the film. there was virtually none of the "are they going to guess his identity?!" and the love story was pretty much nil even tho it was there in the background. it wasn't a key element. so staying away from those two dead horses i thought was a fantastic move. I thought lex luthors scheme was relatively weak, but kevin spacey was the man. i dunno. the story, overall, was relatively weak, but i thought the composition of the film and sequence of events made for a very enjoyable watch. oh yeah.. and the kid.. i think he's an alien. i dunno. he looks unnatural.

Superman Returns 7.5/10 (Very Good)

The Woods

2006-12-15T08:54:00.000-08:00

The Woods

Year: 2006
Directed by: Lucky McKee
Starring: Agnes Bruckner, Patricia Clarkson

I was pretty disappointed with this one. Directed by Lucky, the man behind May, i was expecting something pretty demented. Instead i got a mediocre failure to impress. The story is bizarre and strange. a girl is sent to an all girl boarding school where shit is really weird and creepy. she tries to run away but the woods are majorly creepy and she hears voices and sees girls running around. all the teachers are conspiring something. there's a couple gruesome setups but it all boils down to this really stupid bizarre playout that just... fails in every way. the teachers are witches and they need a certain number of souls to.. do something.. i don't really know what it was. so they've been rounding up random girls that they can sacrifice.. and don't ask me what role the woods really played.. but they were alive and killed a few people. i dunno. it was weird. very disappointed.

The Woods 4/10 (weak)

Television Shows

2006-12-15T08:39:00.000-08:00

Well, i've been watching a ton of cartoons and whatnot lately. they are easy to put down.. 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there. and i don't need to pay as much attention to them as i do a full film.

Fraggle Rock Season 1 Disc 1: Fraggle rock is just bad ass, period. I'll watch anything done by jim henson and his crew cause the results are always the same. the first disc of course introduces you to the world of the fraggles. its deffinitely aimed at very young kids with silly moral resolutions and whatnot but its still great fun.

Family Guy: I watch family guy periodically. I've got all the dvd releases so i just grab one randomly and pop it in. Family guy is just genius. I never watched it when it was on tv cause i never really watched tv that late as a kid (it was on relatively late at night when it originally aired). But now i am enjoying it completely. I've seen all the episodes, but rewatching them is still just as funny.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (original series) I watched the first volume of this which i think was 7 episodes. Its cool to watch these in order from the beginning all over again. I hadn't seen these in years and years and years and watching them now its just like i saw them yesterday. Super awesome show.

The Real Ghostbusters: This show is rediculously awesome. one of the few staple shows that they haven't done full releases of yet but there are 3 compilation dvds with random episodes. so that kinda stinks that i can't revisit them from the beginning of the series, but its still cool to see some episodes. its a much darker cartoon than you would suspect. the atmosphere is very heavy. awesome.

Transformers: you can't say enough about the transformers. this is probably the finest cartoon that the 80's saw.. besides possibly GI Joe.. but i haven't had a chance to watch those yet so i can't compare. you might think it would get a bit tedious where every single episode megatron wants to rule the universe and the autobots successfully stop him.. but man.. it just doesn't. it just rocks nonstop. I'm in the second season of this killer show.

Sealab 2021: one of the funniest audult cartoons i've ever seen.. probably THE funniest. i didn't have season 4 yet on dvd so i grabbed that recently and put it on the other day. i actually had never seen some of those episodes and i was almost on the floor laughing. friggin awesome.

Voltron: Defenders of the Universe. I'm just now putting in the first disc of voltron, which is what prompted me to write this post. Voltron is mega classic. i haven't checked to see if the original japanese dub is on here cause i want to do other stuff while i'm watching it, but you better believe i'll spin this in japanese if its on there. such a classic show.

and then also there's Doctor Who which is a bit different from all of these, but still incredibly awesome. i watched another story arc a few days ago called 'horror of fang rock' or something like that. it wasn't as good as genesis of the daleks, but it was still super awesome good doctor action. i do wish i could watch these sequentially as well, as the good doctors companions randomly change and i don't know why because i didn't see the events that led to that. oh well. still.. super awesome show.

i have also recently aquired the first season of the muppets, so you better believe i'll be watching that too, as well as getting further into all these others.

Thins I've rewatched

2006-12-15T08:29:00.000-08:00

well, things have been busy which means i haven't had as much time for media lately. i've still tried to stuff in some movie time though by watching things i've already seen so that i can work on other things at the same time and not really worry about missing stuff. so here's some titles i've rewatched

Apollo 13 (8.5/10) I really think this is a phenominal film. fantastic cast and acting. superior intensity. and excellent heroism. one of tom hanks' many greatest hours.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (8/10) Yes, pirates completely rule and they did just about everything right with this film. my only real complaint is the kraken. i didn't really dig it that much, and it looked kinda funny. the digitalness of it was a little too apparent. This film is a fantastic treat though. action packed, hilarious and fantastically imaginative.

The Princess and the Warrior (7/10) This one didn't hold up as well the second time around, but it was still a great watch. I still have trouble dealing with mental people in films though. i don't know if its hard to relate or what but they just make me uncomfortable.

I think there's another 1 or 2 that i've watched that i'm forgetting about. oh well.

Abominable

2006-12-09T09:44:00.000-08:00

Abominable

Year: 2006
Directed by: Ryan Schifrin
Starring: Matt McCoy, Haley Joel, Lance Henriksen

When i first heard of Abominable (which i think was several years ago) it was being highly anticipated by B-horror fans. it kind of slipped under the radar with its long road from production to release but i guess it finally came out in this past month or so. I snatched it up even tho my excitement for a sasquatch film had faded a little bit, knowing that it wasn (ok.... firefox has been acting up on me today.. and now all of a sudden my apostrophe is a hot key for find. and its pissing me the fuck off) t going to be that good. but i watched it and i was kind of surprised. its atmosphere was strange. it wasn't cheesey but it wasn't scarey. it was weird. the acting sucked pretty bad, but it didn't pain me. the monster was pretty weak. the continuity (particularly with blood) was some of the worst i've seen. but the movie itself was strangely palatable. i wouldn't say i liked it necesarily, but i had a pleasant viewing experience. the story is like.. non existant. there's this crippled dude who is returning to a lodge up in the mountains where he and his wife had a rock climbing accident leaving him crippled and her dead. right next door are 5 hot girls who come up for the weekend. big bad hungry bigfoot comes to eat them. and really that's it. the guys crippledness has nothing to do with anything. the bigfoot has no motivations except that he wants to eat things. i dunno. its really weird. but again, strangely digestable. if yer in the mood for some bhorror and bigfoot, give it a spin. the very last shot is the fuckin shit too. you just laugh cause its so pointless but so bad ass and totally out of the blue.

Abominable
5.5/10

X-Men: The Last Stand

2006-12-02T12:10:00.000-08:00

X-Men: The Last Stand

Year: 2006
Directed by: Brett Ratner
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen, Anna Paquin, Kelsey Grammer, Patrick Stewart

i was really surprised by this film. i enjoyed the first film quite a lot. the second one, tho most people thought it was amazing i thought was kind of frustrating and thus thought less of it. this one i think came back full force and might be the best of the bunch. brett ratner has a very strange resume and i'm not sure how he got this job but he did a stellar job of it. there weren't any awkward or silly or out of place scenes or lines like you found in the first two. he was much more serious and straightforward and i think that made for a tighter more enjoyable film. also, is it wrong that a girl born in 87 is super hot? i think it might be. a little. i think it was really bad ass to make some drastic moves in the x-men world too with some of the characters that find themselves perished and some of the ones who lose their powers. the only thing i was kinda annoyed with is characters who serve no purpose like angel. i heard he was supposed to be something entirely different in the comics.. someone really important. and here he really exists for no purpose other than to give a bit of depth and contrast to a slightly more important yet still disposable character. aside from that it was awesome. and i thought the ending was cheating, but bad ass. anyway, yes, i think this might be, surprisingly, the strongest of the three... and i'm actually kinda bummed that its ending at a trilogy. after seeing this film i think they could have continued to do some more great films. but i guess it would be unfair to keep draggin it out, and you can't rope in all the amazing actors and actresses into these films forever.

X-Men: The Last Stand
8/10

Over the Hedge

2006-12-02T12:05:00.000-08:00

Over the Hedge

Year: 2006
Directed by: Tim Johnson, Karey Kirkpatrick
Starring: Bruce Willis, William Shatner, Nick Nolte

an animated film brought to you by some people who have done some good work. people involved with shrek and antz and other things.. i thought i wanted to see this. i dunno if i saw the trailer for it and thought it looked fun or what. turns out it was total crap. it wasn't funny. it wasn't interesting. it didn't even really look that good. a racoon who gets caught trying to steal from a bear has to replace all the food he ruined in a week so he tricks some local wildlife into trying to get food from people with him. the whole thing just fell very far short of being good. this is one of those animated films that you can cross off your list. not worth the time.

Over the Hedge
5/10

Kamikaze Girls

2006-12-02T10:41:00.000-08:00

Kamikaze Girls

Year: 2004
Directed by: Tetsuya Nakashima
Starring: Kyoko Fukada, Anna Tsuchiya

This film was directed by the man who did 2ldk which i thought was fantastic. this one again focuses on 2 girls who seemingly clash, but this time they find comfort in one another. the story here is a bit odd and really takes a back seat to the purely brilliant visual style and the imaginative editing. the story is about two young girls, one who is obsessed with classical french dress, the other who is a punk biker. the two go through some typical transformations of character and whatnot. the visuals were stunning. the film was bright and colorful and crisp and the cinematography and editing made it a surreal and unique viewing experience. the acting was really cool too. incredibly 'cute'. not a lot else to say about this one.

Kamikaze Girls
6.5/10

Scream

2006-12-02T10:10:00.000-08:00

Scream

Year: 1996
Directed by: Wes Craven
Starring: Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette, Skeet Ulrich, Rose McGowan, Matthew Lillard, Jamie Kennedy

believe it or not this was my very first time seeing this film. i know, right! i skipped out on 98% of the teeny bopper horror films of the 90's and i missed a couple good ones. this one was a lot of fun. i actually for some reason thought that i had heard the killer was one character.. so through the whole film i ws tryin to figure out how that was gonna work. haha turns out i remembered what i heard wrong and it was someone else. i was happy to find out matthew lillard was involved. i love matthew lillard!! what i enjoyed most about this was that it wasn't a spook film. it wasn't a slasher film. it was a satire on the whole thing. never say i'll be right back. never drink. never have sex. these are the keys to surviving a horror story! they almost got it. i dunno. i don't have a lot to say about this other than i rather enjoyed it.

Scream
7/10

Beowulf & Grendel

2006-12-02T09:54:00.000-08:00

Beowulf & Grendel

Year: 2005
Directed by: Sturla Gunnarsson
Starring: Gerard Butler, Ingvar Eggert Sigurosson, Stellan Skarsgard, Sarah Polley

This film was made in Canada and Iceland. I think they tried to beat robert zemekis to the punch cause he's doing a large scale adaptation of beowulf as well. i really hope he does a better job than these guys (and i'm sure he will). this one wasn't bad. certainly not. but it was just pretty tame and... nonactionized? yeah, it was slow. if you've seen the 13th warrior, then you don't need to see this. its basically identical except instead of the hundreds of crazy mountain bear men in 13th warrior you just have one really pissed off 'troll' (a really huge hairy guy who talks in grunts and growls). basically, the film is pretty good, but its just... like.. nothing really happens. there's like two stand offs between beowulf and grendel and people get killed and grendel pisses on their door and there's a witch that got raped and well.. yeah. i dunno. i think its worth watching if you are in the mood for a subtle norse film. but beware of falling asleep.

Beowulf & Grendel
5.5/10

Doctor Who - Genesis of the Daleks

2006-12-02T09:43:00.000-08:00

Doctor Who - Genesis of the Daleks

well this isn't a movie. its a 6 episode arc in the legendary Doctor Who television series. This one stars tom baker as the doctor. he is certainly the only doctor i remember (the series ran for 3 decades and used i think 8 doctors). tom baker was from 74-81 and i remember watching him on pbs some times after dinner when i was very young. i got these cause i remembered them being really trippy and interesting. this arc is supposed to be one of the finest of the series and it was very fantastic. its a very strange and nostalgic feeling when you fire up a show and the song for the opening sequence coming flooding out of your deep hidden memories and its something you haven't heard in probably 16 or 17 years. anyway, this particular story finds the good doctor teleported to some planet where there are two warring sides of humanoid races (they are humans... they just aren't from earth..) and on one side is this very strange looking creature who is relatively humanoid but is wheelchairbound and has no eyes and is rather gross looking.. this devious mastermind is in the process of creating the daleks. now i haven't seen the show since i was very young.. but upon reading about the show and whatnot, the daleks are these robots who basically destroy everything and have been a major enemy through many of the show's stories or episodes.. they keep popping up here and there i guess.. so the good doctor is sent back by the keepers of time to the moment of their creation to try to prevent that from happening. its a remarkably entertaining 6 episodes. the show was an old british production and has that very stripped down sterile british feel, but in a sci-fi setting. its really awesome and totally unique. i liked it so much that i immediately got 3 other dvds and have more queued up from netflix.

Doctor Who - Genesis of the Daleks
8/10

Star Wars I-VI

2006-11-29T13:52:00.000-08:00

Over turkey holocaust break i watched all 6 star wars films. i had been kinda havin the star wars itch for the week or two before cause its been a long time since i'd seen them, and i had never seen the newest one. so i watched the original 3 (theatrical non remastered versions) then the newest 3.

Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace
Directed by: George Lucas
Starring: Natalie Portman, Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor

i hadn't seen this since the travesty first hit. when i fired it up i was quite intrigued by the intro and i was like oh, maybe this wasn't as bad as i thought it was. then you meet little ani skywalker and it all goes to shit. real solid shit.

5.5/10

Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones
Directed by: George Lucas
Starring: Natalie Portman, Ewan McGregor, Christopher Lee, Samuel L Jackson

this is my second time seeing this one. it wasn't as bad as i remembered. natalie didn't piss me off as much. hayden (ani) was a bit more tollerable than i remember. but overall... still no magic. really.. just none. but more atmosphere than the first and a lot more and better action.

6/10

Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith
Directed by: George Lucas
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Samurel L Jackson, Natlie Portman

first time seein this one. it was certainly the best of the new ones. lots of actually good action. ewan mcgregor finally finds his own in the land of green screen and delivers a surprisingly (after his first two attempts) good performance. many more landscapes and environments in this one which kept it richer than the first two. lots of mayhem and destruction. still falls short of creating the star wars vibe of the original series tho. a trillion continuity errors plague this one, of course. but its all good. its still fun to see how they bring about all the characters for the original films.

7/10

Star Wars IV: A New Hope
Directed by: George Lucas
Starring: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness

the movie that started it all. a classic through and through. it slowly loses its charm for me with each watch. The ultimate question is always which is your favorite star wars film. and i think this is it.

8.5/10

Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
Directed by: Irvin Kershner
Starring: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher

this one follows very closely to the first in terms of enjoyment and entertainment. this one takes us to more lands and interesting creations that the film world has never really duplicated. i think the only thing that keeps this one below A New Hope is the ending is a bit lack luster and ends without much of a resolution. still, very good.

8/10

Star Wars VI: The Return of the Jedi
Directed by: Richard Marquand
Starring: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher

i've always had a problem with darth vader not being pure evil. kinda takes away from the whole thing. i dig a lot of elements of this film but it lacks the action and epicness of the other two. by the end of the film you feel a bit drained and aren't really paying much attention anymore. still, a great film.

7.5/10

Art School Confidential

2006-11-24T09:19:00.000-08:00

Art School Confidential

Year: 2006
Directed by: Terry Zwigoff
Starring: Max Minghella, Sophia Myles, John Malkovich, Jim Broadbent, Ethan Suplee

i couldn't tell if i loved this film, or if it was just good. i really can't tell. brought to you by the man begind ghost world, zwigoff serves up a similarly feeling film, but with a lot more happening. jerome platz is headed to art school to find a huge range or losers making shitty art, while all he wants to do is become the greatest artist of the 21st century... or is that really his motivation? even tho he makes great art, no one sees it as being great. the film is stuffed full of cliches and the sad way people view art, making fun of it all and showing you how sad it is of course. so jerome finally meets the model that attracted him to the school in the first place and his mission becomes clear. he must win this girl. oh, and there is also the strathom strangler to deal with. um. yeah, i dunno what else to tell you about the plot. its interesting. the characters are all crazy and weird in their own ways. the acting sometimes seems very immature and at other times seems really good. i dunno. this is a film you have to see for yourself. i get a feeling a lot of people wont like it. but if you liked ghost world you'd prolly like this just fine. its an interesting film, that much is for certain.

Art School Confidential
7/10 (good)

Nacho Libre

2006-11-24T09:15:00.000-08:00

Nacho Libre

Year: 2006
Directed by: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black

wow what a waste this was. i was in a jack black mood so it wasn't too bad, but really there is 0% substance to this film. jack black is a friar who gets no respect and makes shitty food for the kids. he decides to follow his passion of wrestling to earn money to make better food for the kids and he becomes nacho... and its really stupid. if you are really in a hardcore jack black mood, this isn't a terrible watch. but i'm sure there are other films that would scratch your itch better. really its not worth it.

Nacho Libre
4/10 (weak)

Joyeux Noel

2006-11-24T09:02:00.000-08:00

Joyeux Noel

Year: 2005
Directed by: Christian Carion
Starring: Benno Furmann, Guillaume Canet, Dany Boon, Diane Kruger

an elite international cast for an elite film. on christmas eve of 1914 during world war 1 the front lines of germans, scotts and french cease fire to celebrate christmas together. on the following day they must decide if they will fight each other, and face the consequences that fraternizing with the enemy might bring.

i can't remember the last time i saw a holiday film that became an instant classic. i don't think i've seen one since home alone. oh.. no.. nightmare before christmas. its too bad that this wont get into many homes because it is a foreign film, but i think for many who watch it it could become a yearly christmas event. that is saying a lot. the film is quiet and somber and really, not a lot transpires. but what does happen is powerful and amazing, and really makes you think about things from a different perspective. i dunno. i really think this was a brilliant film.

Joyeux Noel
8.5/10 (excellent. everyone should see it)

End of the Spear

2006-11-15T10:18:00.000-08:00

End of the Spear

Year: 2005
Directed by: Jim Hanon

this one is based on a true story about some white dudes who try to make contact with some jungle dudes and get killed. the white dudeses families decided to continue with the effort and come to live with the jungle dudes even tho they killed their man toys. why do they want to do this? to preach the gospel of course. fortunately that is a very minor part of the film. the main focus of the film is the jungle dudes and how they react to each other and the white peoples.

in general i dig jungle native type movies a lot. i liked this one but i thought it was a bit overly dramatic and unneccessary. i coulda done without all the white people and their really lousy of the top acting and just watched some of the internal conflicts among the murderous waodani people. it was a decent film tho if you're in the mood for something like this.

End of the Spear
6/10 (good. worth watching)

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

2006-11-14T09:42:00.000-08:00

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Year: 2005
Directed by: Doug Liman
Starring: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Vince Vaughn

well i've heard a lot of mixed reviews on this one. and i can see why. the film started out having a lot of charm. the atmosphere generated by pitt and jolie was awesome. they played off of each other really well. about halfway or two thirds of the way through the film though, when the two started to suspect each other of being not who they thought, things got a bit stupid, generic and watered down. too fancy and flashy. i dunno. like.. it was almost really damn good. but they got too carried away with turning it into a modern action film when it could have been a really funny simple action film. they had to go and bling it all up in the middle though and it just lost me. its worth watching i think. i really liked it. just got kinda bored with the direction they took. i'm like, ok.. you can stop fighting now. ok.. now you can stop fighting. ok maybe now. yeah.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith
6/10 (good. worth watching)

Domino

2006-11-12T20:28:00.000-08:00

Domino

Year: 2005
Directed by: Tony Scott
Starring: Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Edgar Ramirez with Lucy Liu, Tom Waits, Christopher Walken

this is a perfect example of a beautiful movie made with a story not worth telling. calling it a beautiful film is even a bit of a stretch. i'm not really sold on tony scott like a lot of people are. i like his style, but it can't make up for lousy scripts. and that's what this movie is. a lousy script. i found myself rather bored and dulled of my senses through the film until the man christopher walken showed up and gave life to an entire sequence of the film. unfortunately after the passing of that sequence the life slowly slipped away from the screen again, leaving the dulling sensation to take over. i don't care about telling you what this is about. its a heist gone wrong. just like any other action film. this one is watered down with style only to be punctuated by cool actors who can't deliver something they aren't given. actors without a script are nothing more than really cool and rich people. lucy liu sizzles, christopher walken breathes life into a dead corpse, mena suvari adds color, tom waits adds respect and of course mickey rourke adds a whole lot of power. keira knightley.. well.. she's nothing more than a hot body lost in hollywood. give her a script and put her in front of the camera. oh well. and then.. well.. then we have ian ziering and brian austin green.. washed up beverly hills actors. and jerry springer. and macy gray. and mo'nique. i mean.. come on. what is this crap?
anyway, yeah. all style no substance. sound familiar? welcome to hollywood.

Domino
5.5/10 (mediocre)

Turtles Can Fly

2006-11-11T09:45:00.000-08:00

Turtles Can Fly

Year: 2004
Directed by: Bahman Ghobadi

as you can see, i had to shake up the genres i was watching a little bit to try and get some good films in to stop the streak of mediocre films i was on. this was actually the first i watched, hoping a good foreign film would boost my ratio. i can almost always count on a foreign film to do that. then when this didn't really make me feel super awesome i tried out some dramas that were supposed to be really good (layer cake and cold mountain) so i think i'm doin alright for getting some good movies in. this one didn't make me feel awesome.. but it is a phenominal film.

the story takes place on the iraqi turkish border and follows a town that seems to be controlled more by the children than the adults. the main characters of course are the children. one boy, whom they call satellite, is the natural leader. there is also a boy with no arms, a girl and a young child of about 2 who can't see who have recently come to the village. the boy has no arms from collecting mines. the girl hates the child that can't see and wants to leave him behind. the kids earn money from day to day by collecting mines in the fields and selling them. the boy with no arms can apparently see things that will happen in the future. i'm giving kind of a confused synopsis here but its kind of a difficult story to summarize. basically the story follows the relationships that develop between these brave children and how they handle themselves among the time of war. the atmosphere is amazing. the children are amazing. and their real handicaps are quite humbling, particularly the kid with a destroyed leg that is basically rubber who can cruise on one crutch. thick magical atmosphere and a dark engaging realistic story that makes you look at things a lot differently.. beautiful film. this was one of those films that while watching i was somewhat antsy and unsatisfied, but upon finishing it was in awe of the filmwork i had just seen, and it sticks with you after the fact.

Turtles Can Fly
7.5/10

Layer Cake

2006-11-11T09:38:00.000-08:00

Layer Cake

Year: 2004
Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Daniel Craig, colm meaney, george harris

this was a quiet but action packed film on why the drug business is bad. a complete mind game. who can outwit who. who will survive. who will move to the top. starring the next james bond, daniel craig, the film is full of a lot of british actors, some of which i recognized (i love colm meaney, even though he was on star trek). be warned though. this is not a feel good movie. it became very obvious what was going to happen... to some degree. the film took a few turns that you didn't expect. but as soon as it did you knew what the next turn would be after that. and it was never for the better. but the film is dark and intense and moves full throttle through the whole story. not with lots of explosions and all that of the typical hollywood action film, but with face offs and mindfucks that get guys in and out of situations fast. this was a good one.

Layer Cake
7/10

Cold Mountain

2006-11-11T09:29:00.000-08:00

Cold Mountain

Year: 2003
Directed by: Anthony Minghella
Starring: Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger with Brendan Gleeson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Natalie Portman, Donald Sutherland and Giovanni Ribisi

i remember wanting to see this movie before it came out based on its cast, but i never got around to it. this movie really surprised me. i was expecting something a little more generic than this. instead i got transported directly into a dreary yet colorful world that i have never seen portrayed before in civil war era films. there was something very organic about this film that made it extremely captivating. the acting was phenominal, varied and interesting to watch. all the characters were very well made. i think that is what seperated it from most films of this genre. the characters are usually very generic and bland. this was much more interesting and story-like. Jude Law is a runaway soldier who wants nothing more than to get back to the girl he just fell in love with before he left (kidman). on his journey he stumbles across many strange adventures with a wide cast of characters. meanwhile kidman is back on the farm fending for herself after her father passes away. on the brink of starvation a hardworking do it yourself woman (zellweger) moves in with her and begins to turn things around. all in all i think this was a great film and if you are in the mood for a civil war era film with a colorful cast and fantastic stories than scope this one out.

Cold Mountain
7.5/10

yikes that's a lot of bad movies

2006-11-05T15:28:00.000-08:00

blargh. i've seen a lot of weak films lately. i've been dabbling a lot in the horror genre which hasn't yielded too many great results. aside from some of the classics of the early years of film and a few odd 80's classics, everything else has been pretty pale. the other films i've seen mixed in there have been relatively weak too. the few good ones i've seen recently haven't been good enough to make me go WOW THAT WAS AWESOME. so yeah. not good. i don't have much time at all for movies these days either and i have 6 films that i can watch for extra credit, 2 of which i've seen before, crash and american history x, which i've already refreshed on so i can write a response, and then a george clooney film which looks cool and then three films which look not so cool but i'm gonna watch them anyway for credit. so yeah, those are the ones i'll be watching next with maybe one or two others mixed in. this is kinda lame. i need some good ones. maybe i should rewatch a few favorites while i'm working or something. oh, and i watched most of What the Bleep Do We Know? in bs class. that was one of the worst films/documentaries i have ever seen. absolutely one of the worst. don't ever watch it. i'll give it a 1.5/10. yar. that is all for now.

The Creature Walks Among Us

2006-11-05T14:55:00.000-08:00

The Creature Walks Among Us

Year: 1956
Directed by: John Sherwood

the third film in the 'gill-man' series, this one is definitely the blandest of them so far. it gets into that weird experimental kind of stuff you start to see popping up in the 50's. it goes beyond the monster and goes into human interferance and manipulation, creating things that shouldn't be created. this one finds yet another creature (they all appear to die at the end of the film, yet they always capture another one in the next film)in the amazon, which quickly gets captured (they just keep getting better at nabbing this thing). this time they burned him, which started a biological process of changing his anatomy. he is half fish/reptilian whatever and half mammal. the burn triggers a change to the mammal side becoming its primary biology so they change him into an air breather, walking around above water and what not. this is all because of a real asshole scientist who wants to play around with him. and that's about the jist of the entire story. its pretty bland. the characters are shallow and there is none of the atmosphere found in the first two films. too bad. i was really enjoying this series.

The Creature Walks Among Us
5/10 (mediocre)

Monster House

2006-11-04T22:39:00.000-08:00

Monster House

Year: 2006
Directed by: Gil Kenan
Starring: (voice of) some kids with steve buscemi, maggie gyllenhall, jason lee

well, i had heard decent things about this. they were all wrong. i can see how a 6-12 year old might find this enjoyable. anyone other than that... not so much. this is too plain, too boring, too 6 year old to capture anyone else's attention. its just way too simple. synopsis: old man across street has reputation of taking everything that lands on his lawn. old man has heart attack while yelling at kid who's trying to get his ball back. house of old man starts acting weird. kid across street notices. kid across street decides to have his buddy come over so they can play detective. young girl gets caught in the middle. house becomes a monster. kids get trapped inside. old man comes back and tells them what the house really is. final battle against house. lame. don't watch this unless you are stuck entertaining your young cousins. or something.

Monster House
4/10 (weak)

Monrak Transistor

2006-11-04T22:20:00.000-08:00

Monrak Transistor

Year: 2001
Directed by: Pen-Ek Ratanaruang

the promo cover is about the gayest thing i've ever seen. the movie isn't half as gay as the cover would lead you to believe. i think its heavily influenced by bollywood.. this weird style i think is pretty common there. i actually watched this about a week ago.. i think. i forget. but i forgot to write about it.

This is the second film i've seen by Pen-Ek. the one i saw previously, which he filmed right after this one, i thought was one of the most fabulous films i had ever seen. that film was Last Life in the Universe. i didn't remember or realize that it was the same director when i watched this. had i, i might have been pretty let down. as it is i just felt a little underwhelmed by this one. the story is pretty simple, but being thai its gets a bit confused with itself. this is a phenomina that i've seen in a number of lesser developed film communities. they don't have the same clarity in story telling that other countries do. the stories are similar, but the continuity gets confusing, at least to foreigners. this one was just sort of ho-hum. its about a girl and a guy who get swept up together and everything seems wonderful until our lead gets drafted to go to war. while in service he abandons his position to try and become a professional singer. not able to return to his home for fear of being captured/arrested/killed for abandoning his duty, he can't return to his wife and newborn child. eventually she comes to see him, only to have his bad luck put him in all the wrong places at all the wrong times, resulting in her leaving him forever. from here we see him go through a quick decline and we find him sitting in a jail cell. and that's about as much as you need to know.

i think the only real cool thing i got out of this film was the music. it wasn't real good music. but i think its the first honest traditional thai pop music i've heard. this is pertinent because of my fondness for susumu hirasawa, a japanese musician who i read recently fell in love with thailand and writes about it in many of his lyrics. it became very clear very quickly that he also incorporates the thai pop style into his vocal melodies. something i thought was unique to susumu, having never heard thai music before. its unlike any other kind of music you've ever heard. anyway, the film was peppered with little song sequences.. almost like you might find in a bollywood film. so that was an interesting experience. but it couldn't bring the film up above the par mark.

check this one out if you are curious about cultures you have yet to experience and thailand is one of them. otherwise, you don't really need to see this one.

Monrak Transistor
5/10 (mediocre)

Revenge of the Creature

2006-11-01T11:56:00.000-08:00

Revenge of the Creature

Year: 1955
Directed by: Jack Arnold
Starring John Agar, Lori Nelson

a very fine sequel in the creature of the black lagoon series. this one has a team go into the amazon and capture the creature and they bring it back to a sealife bio lab to study it. they keep it chained in the pool and run intelligence tests on it until innevitably it escapes and they must track it down. this film doesn't have the great jungle lagoon atmosphere of the first one, but it is a great film none-the-less. its rated rather poorly at 5.2 on imdb which is too bad. its actually quite good. a bit slow perhaps if you are sitting there devoting your full attention to it, but i think it is a fine film. having the creature in captivity there isn't as much mystery or intensity of the first film, but its still a good classic 50's horror type of film. worth a watch if you enjoyed the first one.

Revenge of the Creature
6/10 (good. worth watching)

The Howling

2006-11-01T11:23:00.000-08:00

The Howling

Year: 1981
Directed by: Joe Dante
Starring: Dee Wallace, Belinda Balaski

directed by the amazing joe dante, the howling is a pretty decent werewolf film. its dark and serious and pretty violent. i get a bit tired with having horror films always play out the same. its hard when werewolf mythology and vampire mythology and all that are already pre-existing mythologies, cause no one ever really deviates from them. so everything ends up being very predictable and similar. you always know what you're going to get with a werewolf film, you know? but this one was pretty decent and had its moments of intensity. overall, the characters are pretty weak though so you never really cared about who might get killed or who wins. also the werewolves are pretty damn cool.. but one major transformation at the end takes way too long. its seriously at least 3 minutes of screen time for him to transform. that's a long time.. so basically there's nothing new in this one, but if you are after a werewolf film with that 80's horror flavor, then this one is a good place to start.

The Howling
6/10 (good. worth watching)

Troll 2

2006-11-01T11:09:00.000-08:00

Troll 2

Year: 1990
Directed by: Claudio Fragasso

no connection to the first film at all. instead, there is a family going on vacation out in the woods. this spot just happens to be a home for a bunch of trolls who like to eat people. that's all the story i care to give you. cause it sucks.

this is THE single WORST film i have ever seen in terms of a lot of things. its not the single worst film i've ever seen. but a lot of the elements are the worst. i think the only reason its not the worst period is because it didn't make me ill. i've seen some films that made me feel gross. this didn't. but i was in absolute awe at the badness of it. the director HAD to have been making them act bad. i mean.. there's no other explanation. i'm serious.. you have NEVER seen acting this bad. EVER. not even in home-made films by crappy wannabe's. NEVER. this is as bad as it gets. and the dialog, i'm pretty sure, is the most atrocious dialog i have ever in my entire life even dreamed of hearing. its disgusting how bad it is. and that's all i care about saying about this film

Troll 2
1/10 (the worst)

Crying Fist

2006-10-29T21:34:00.000-08:00

Crying Fist

Year: 2005
Directed by: Seung-wan Ryoo
Starring: Min-sik Choi, Seung-beom Ryu

i actually watched this like 2 weeks ago but forgot to write about it.

well, i've seen what.. like 4 boxing movies? well, this one gets really close to being decent. but it just doesn't have any momentum at all. there are two stories playing at the same time that appear to have absolutely no connection. one is a young guy who gets put in jail for a bunch of crimes who finds redemption in boxing. the other is a former medal winner who is completely washed up and hopeless who lets people punch him for cash on the street. the two stories come close to being good, but ultimately just fall short. then, finally, when you think there's no hope that these two stories will ever come together, there is a match between the two of them. both fighting for redemption. its a good fight, but it just doesn't kick it up enough. basically, the whole film just doesn't quite pull it off. its good. its solid. but its just missing something. a big something that keeps you interesting or keeps your eyes open. the only thing that really kept me watching this was the amazing min-sik choi. i'll watch anything he does ever.

Crying Fist
5.5/10 (mediocre, but not a waste)

Flightplan

2006-10-28T23:31:00.000-07:00

Flightplan

Year: 2005
Directed by: Robert Schwentke
Starring: Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Sean Bean

(damn man... look at those eyes! yay digital manipulation!)

wow. everything about this movie was so anticliche it hurt.

SPOILER ALERT. BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER. THIS MOVIE SUCKED.

ok.. so you've seen the trailers. is she crazy? did she imagine the kid? somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 minutes into the film you know she isn't crazy... because they are making it so god damn obvious that she is, that she can't be... there just wouldn't be enough to make a whole movie. bing. sure enough. she's not. its a conspiracy kinda thing. but not entirely what you'd think. its a super far fetched plot by 2 individuals. and they fool everyone. except jodie foster! there's no fooling her!! cause she wants her god damn daughter. and she knows she isn't crazy! its so anticliche that they even put a middle eastern dude in there as a red herring. yup. as a red herring. he really isn't the bad guy. in fact he's quite nice. but then... why did she see him staring out a window the night before they flew? doesn't matter.. its just to sell the red herring. so lets just forget about it, ok? ok.
well, i'm done talking about this movie. its not at all what i thought it would be. the opening is very dark and sterile and jodie foster looks a lot like michael jackson in a few shots. i think they have the same nose now. her performance seemed a little forced too, like she was screaming, but while not entirely comfortable doing so.. so it doesn't come off as being a very believable performance. sean bean ruled though. so did peter sarsgaard.

flightplan
5/10 (mediocre)

Hamburger Hill

2006-10-28T23:22:00.000-07:00

Hamburger Hill

Year: 1987
Directed by: John Irvin
Starring: Don Cheadle, Dylan McDermott

if you've ever heard about hamburger hill you've heard that its 'real'. it has a reputation of being a very realistic depiction of vietnam. well that's just a crock of crap. if showing the fact that people got slaughtered in vietnam makes it a real depiction well shit.. they should make a nightmare on vietnam street and send freddy in there to kill some people. this movie seemed.. i dunno.. uninspired. watching it is kind of like flipping through a magazine and just looking at the pictures without reading anything. you can kinda see what's going on, but there's no context. there's no story. there's no information. its just pictures. that's what this movie felt like. pictures with no substance. nothing to follow. there was no power. no momentum. no heroism or defeat. no tragedy. it just kinda.. was. that to me is a boring film.

hamburger hill
5/10 (mediocre)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

2006-10-28T23:12:00.000-07:00

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Year: 1956
Directed by: Don Siegel
Starring: Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter

this movie was awesome!! this had the intensity of psycho and carnival of souls and those types of films with a whole new twist to it. this story plays off of a fear that can intensify like none-other, and it is a fear that is not utilized nearly often enough in stories. its like a claustrophobia times 20. its like claustrophobia meets the apocalypse basically. what happens when you are sane.. and everyone around you starts turning into something inhuman. but no one will believe you? only to have the same fate befall themselves. this film is intense! you find yourself on the edge of your seat going 'god dammit! just listen to him or yer gonna diiiieeee! only its not so much die, as have your soul swallowed into nothingness while your body becomes a host. this is probably one of the best psycho thrillers i've ever seen. this is a genre that i hollywood excelled in back in the days with no special effects. special effects gave rise to the gore factor and other gimmicks, while back in the day they had to rely on pure atmosphere and storytelling. basically, this movie friggin ruled.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
8/10 (excellent. everyone should see it)

101 Dalmations

2006-10-23T11:54:00.000-07:00

101 Dalmations

Year: 1961
Directed by: Clyde Geronimi

this is a rewatch of one of my favorite films of all time. i challenge you to find one or two legitamate criticisms about this film. the story is fantastic. the characters are absolutely timeless and fantastically brought to life. the songs are great. everything is just great. i think this one often gets overlooked among some of the more important disney films, which is a damn shame, because i really thing this one has some of the best qualities of any of them. not gonna go into it too much here though since its a rewatch and i'm way behind on posting.

101 Dalmations
9/10 (excellent. everyone should see it)

Practical Magic

2006-10-23T11:41:00.000-07:00

Practical Magic

Year: 1998
Directed by: Griffin Dunne
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman

the plotline for this film is interesting, and proves hopeful, but ultimately this film suffers from not being able to make up its mind what genre it is. the story goes, there is a family of women who are cursed from back in the day when one of them, a witch, cast a spell on herself to never love anyone. the spell turned into a curse and every woman down the line was struck with the curse where any man they came too close to would die. jump ahead a couple of generations and we find two sisters played by sandra bullock and nicole kidman who are dealing with the curse. so after the introduction we get hit with a real heavy serious drama focusing on bullock's character and her marriage that is doomed to die. from there the two sisters get reunited and it turns into playful witchy family comedy. insert investigator who is on the case of a murder that involves the two woman. now the film becomes straight chick flick. enter revelation of characters and we are back at witchy fun, only to finish off back on the chick flick channel. so what could have been a fun and playful family type witchy comedy ends up being a mix of all kinds of things that leave it on the chick flick end of the spectrum which prevents it from being really fun. i mean, i like a lot of chick flicks if they are good films, but it took away from what this film could have been otherwise. the acting is really great though by the two lead women and the atmosphere and environment is great. super young appearances by evan rachel wood and camilla belle too which was cool. all in all not a bad film, just a bit confused with itself with its own intentions. get rid of the chick flick romance and just give me some fun witchcraft.

Practical Magic
6/10 (good. worth watching)

Troll

2006-10-23T11:28:00.000-07:00

Troll

Year: 1986
Directed by: John Carl Buechler
Starring: Phil Fondacaro with small roles by Sonny Bono, julia louis-dreyfus, june lockhart

i can understand why this is rated a 3.2 on some levels. the whole thing gets rolling out of nowhere, for apparently absolutely no reason. the things that the troll does seems pretty stupid and pointless. and he never does anything really scary or morbid or anything. so its pretty weak. but there is a certain amount of fun to be had in watching this. a lot of the characters actually have quite a lot of charisma and the environment is actually pretty decent. its easy to make comparisons between this and critters 3, which i just watched, because both take place entirely in a shitty apartment complex. all the things that critters completely sucked at in this environment, troll actually pulled of with relative success. all in all though, the whole scenario is very weak and nothing really awesome happens in any sense. so a weak film. if you are looking for 80's fantasy type stuff, there are many others you should watch before this, even if you are looking for stupid funny horror.

Troll
4/10 (weak)

Better Off Dead

2006-10-23T11:22:00.000-07:00

Better Off Dead

Year: 1985
Directed by: Savage Steve Holland
Starring: John Cusack

well, even cusack can't always make a good one. this is rated a 7.1 on imdb even though i consider it to be probably the weakest of the 80's school drama comedies that i have seen. cusack gives a good classic cusack performance, but probably with one of his weakest characters. those around him are rather stale too and the plot is rather uninteresting. overall, the film just lacks the charm and classic vibe that most of the others of its era have. but still, its 80's comedy with one of the best and most interesting actors of the age. so its worth watching.

Better Off Dead
5.5/10 (mediocre, but not a waste)

Critters 3

2006-10-19T11:07:00.000-07:00

Critters 3

Year: 1991
Directed by: Kristine Peterson
Starring: Don Keith Opper, Leonardo DiCaprio

yeah, that's right. a super young leonardo makes an early appearance as one of the kids in this god awful chapter of the critters SAGA! yes, god awful. its like.. the first two are classics, loaded with critters charm. and then there is this heaping pile of shit with no charm, disgustingly bad acting, horrible characters, and lame scenarios. its like they showed the first two critters films to a highschool class and then told them to write a script for them. actually.. highschool kids probably would have been more imaginative than this. the ONLY positive thing about this was that they tried to give each individual critter more character.. but it played off as a piss poor attempt at copying gremlins 2 which came out the year before. not only that, but i mean.. there is NO explanation of where these particular critters came from, or what the hell happened to charlie's character. at the end of the second film he was left in charge of the police department.. then he pops up here hunting critters in a rediculous outfit. where'd this batch of critters come from? no explanation. i also like how the posters and covers show the critters by a big city scape.. like its critters invade nyc or something. no.. its like some gay little town like waterville maine or some shit. its just bad. bad bad bad. skip this one.

Critters 3
2/10 (awful)

V for Vendetta

2006-10-16T19:05:00.000-07:00

V for Vendetta

Year: 2005
Directed by: James McTeigue
Starring: Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Rea

this is my second viewing of this film, having seen it in the theater. obviously seeing it on the big screen was a more powerful experience.. i had rated it a 9 when i first saw it i believe. after my second viewing, often times resulting in a less powerful or entertaining experience, this film still blew me away. i really think this is one of the most amazing films of the genre in modern film-making. the pace is perfect. the characters are perfect. the scenario is perfect. the dialogue is astounding. a most remarkable adaptation from a remarkable book.. though they had to tame it a bit to fit the screen.. but they did it most eloquently. what bothers me the most is that alan moore's name is absent. completely absent. you wont find a single credit anywhere that says alan moore. this i do not understand. alan has a reputation for being a bit crazy. apparently he had problems with what was done to the film and disowned it.. at least i remember reading that before the film came out. because of that i actually thought the film was going to bomb. but it turns out its just brilliant. i'm not sure what alan's problem with it was. if he was going to disown a film it should have been 'from hell'. oh well. anyway, alan moore deserves a shit ton of credit for this one, for creating such an amazing story. and the wachowski brothers have gained back some respect, going back to their roots. they actually wrote a draft of the adaptation before they did the matrix. goes to show they really do know what they are doing.. they just got a little carried away and watered down with trying to take the matrix to a larger scale than it needed to be. they let james mcteigue take the official helm on the filming of this, after serving as their 1st assistant director on all the matrix projects. anyway.. enough of that.

the film is about as good as they get. its one of the most intelligent films i've seen in the action genre and its just superbly done. i feel like i could watch it every week and still be completely captivated by the performances. the scene at the end too.. the march on parliament, i think is one of the most powerful moments in recent film making, in all its simplicity. its just an amazing moment.

V for Vendetta
9.5/10

Flying Boys

2006-10-16T18:44:00.000-07:00

Flying Boys

Year: 2004
Directed by: Young-joo Byun
Starring: Gye-sang Yun, Min-jung kim

this was a decent film, but there wasn't a whole lot here i haven't seen before, and it lacked the power that other films have had in this genre. but it was still a really decent film. the main character is a boy who's mother has died and who's father is a pilot and is almost never home. one night he and a couple of his friends took his dad's car out, even though they had been drinking and didn't have a license. they happen upon a man who has been killed, and one of their teachers at the same time. the teacher, who is a ballet teacher, makes a deal with them. she wont report to the father that his son stole his car while drinking, in return for the three friends joining her ballet class. this triggers a whole series of dramatic story arcs with each of the three friends going through their own struggles, the boy who's father was killed, who happens to be in the same class as the three friends, a girl who is in the ballet class who is struggling with her own identity soon becomes entangled with one of the boys, and the adults who come to realize there's a whole lot going on with the kids they don't know about. so yeah, there's a lot going on, and its a good film. its upbeat and busy and all the characters are pretty interesting. but it lacks the overall impact and power that a lot of asian films of the genre have. definitely worth a watch. but pretty far down the list of korean teen dramas.

Flying Boys
6/10 (good. worth watching)

Fright Night

2006-10-15T19:19:00.000-07:00

Fright Night

Year: 1985
Directed by: Tom Holland
Starring: Chris Sarandon, Roddy Mcdowall, william ragsdale

ok.. for about the first half of the film this was one of the strangest film experiences i've ever had. somewhere around the 10 minute mark i started feeling a strange familiarity with the film. like.. the faces were stirring something in my memories. it was like 'wait, where have i seen him before'. and it wasn't like 'wait, i've seen this movie before'. it was a really strange feeling. it really felt like i had experienced this before.. but i hadn't. like i had absolutely no memory of it. but there was just something really nagging about it. its hard to explain the feeling i guess. about halfway through the film i realized that yes.. yes indeed, i actually had seen this movie before. but i literally had no memory of it whatsoever. i still don't. but i know for a fact that i had seen at least parts of it before. i don't know when or where or why or what parts. but i know i saw some of it. but it really was like watching it for the first time. anyway.. enough about the strange deja vu, aliens stole my brain thing. so back to the film itself. this was a really cool movie in some respects, and also really generic and off the mark in others. the really coolness of it comes from the characters. they are a lot of fun. genuinely interesting and well acted. very 80's :) what misses the mark is that its a very simple, straightforward vampire film with absolutely nothing new. the ONLY thing that really makes this movie worthwhile is the 80's factor. and that's not good enough to really cut it, you know? but for watching some silly 80's comedy horror this is a decent one. there are many to watch before you put this one in, but this one is worth getting around to. i guess that's about all.

Fright Night
6/10 (good. worth watching)

One Body Too Many

2006-10-14T16:34:00.000-07:00

One Body Too Many

Year: 1944
Directed by: Frank McDonald
Starring: Bela Lugosi

this was a funny little movie, as it is intended to be. its sorta like an agatha christie rip off.. a real who's done it kind of film, but with a silly little comedic twist to it. the film starts with a gathering of relatives and other important people as a will is being read. its a very honest will.. telling some they were good people, and others that he couldn't stand them. some would be getting up to 500,000 dollars, others $1.50 to pay for taxi money. his only demand would be that he would need to be placed in his observatory under the stars rather than buried. if he was buried or failed to be put under the stars, the will would be reveresed. of course, this causes turmoil among the people there. the people that were told he didn't like them obviously have a desire to see the will reversed. so who's going to try to prevent the body from being placed in its final resting spot? well.. enter an insurance salesman who shows up at the wrong time. he comes to try to sell the deceased some insurance not knowing he is dead. the butler, played by lugosi, mistakes him for the body guard they hired to watch the body over night. from this point on the insurance salesman finds himself in all the wrong situations as unknown individuals try to carry out their plans to prevent the body from seeing its final resting place so that the will might be reversed. its a simple and silly little film. the kind you'd leave on tv on a quite weekend afternoon that you may or may not end up giving all of your attention. its a rare occaision when someone might purposefully put it in their dvd player though.

One Body Too Many
5.5/10 (mediocre, but not a waste)

White Zombie

2006-10-14T16:21:00.000-07:00

White Zombie

Year: 1932
Directed by: Victor Halperin
Starring: Bela Lugosi

this is one of the higher rated generic horror flicks from the early 30's, i think probably mostly because it has wider recognition due to its name. this is the film that rob zombie got the idea from to dub his band 'white zombie'. as far as this sort of film goes, it is pretty good. one of the better generic ones, but not on par with the true classics. the story goes something along the lines of, a couple come to an island to get married. on their way to the mansion they encounter a group of zombies and their leader, played by bela lugosi. they aren't vicious or violent, they just kind of stand there. the man driving the buggy explains that zombies are the dead come back to life. the film treats them more as servants than bloodthirsty ghouls. anyway, so the couple get to the place and it turns out the guy who lives at the mansion wants the woman to himself so he sets up some kind of deal where the leader of the zombies will turn the woman into a zombie to prevent her from getting married and it just gets all messy. so yeah, since these aren't zombies as we know them today, there are ways to snap them out of it and what not. this type of zombie was seen a lot back in this era of film making, where zombie refers more to someone who is under a spell or trance than a blood craving corpse. so this one was pretty decent. but nothing spectacular.

White Zombie
5.5/10 (mediocre, but not a waste)

Vampire's Kiss

2006-10-14T16:02:00.000-07:00

Vampire's Kiss

Year: 1989
Directed by: Robert Bierman
Starring: Nicolas Cage

wow this movie sucked big time. i thought it would be relatively fun, being a silly vampire flick from the 80's starring cage.. what you get, instead, is one of the most disgustingly poor performances i've ever seen. yeah.. they wanted nicolas cage's character to be kind of a wack job.. well good god man. first of all.. he has some weird accent that i don't think even really exists.. and sometimes its there and sometimes its not. and it just sounds plain awful. secondly, he over acts every single line and movement to the point of being really damn annoying. i don't know if the director told him to act that way or what, but its really some of the worst acting i have ever seen in the 1500 or so movies i've seen. just plain awful. and the story is lame and everything about it is just pretty lame. the atmosphere isn't too bad so its not like its unbearable. but its just plain bad. one funny thing worth mentioning.. i recognized a cab driver in the film.. boris leskin.. he has had 6 little teenie tiny bit roles since 1989.. 16 years. he played one of the leads in the film i just watched, everything is illuminated. its weird where people turn up sometimes.

Vampire's Kiss
3.5/10 (Bad. Stay Away)

Critters 2

2006-10-13T18:24:00.000-07:00

Critters 2

Year: 1988
Directed by: Mick Garris
Starring: Terrence Mann, Don Keith Opper

chapter 2 in the critters story! the two bounty hunters and the town outcast that left with them are in space doing bounty hunting jobs when they get a call saying that traces of crites remain on the planet earth. they return, as does the young boy who's family suffered the first attack, a few years older, having left to the city after the incident. the town is still in denial of the existence of space creatures which doesn't help when they ignorantly find some 'easter eggs. of course.. the critters hatch and this time attack in huge numbers. will the bounty hunters get back to earth in time to save the planet?!

so this movie is fun. not unlike gremlins 2 this sequel takes on a more comedic approach. the monsters come in larger numbers and act sillier and get into all kinds of silly predicaments. there are also little tributes spread throughout the films, refrencing ghostbusters and nightmare on elm street. all in all its a fun movie with a few returning faces from the first film. i still find myself wondering how they filmed the critters. i wonder what they made the balls out of to get them to roll like that? anyway.. most excellent second chapter to a silly horror series.

Critters 2
5.5/10 (mediocre) *but you know the drill

Hellboy

2006-10-13T16:15:00.000-07:00

Hellboy

Year: 2004
Directed by: Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Ron Perlman, John Hurt, Selma Blair, Rupert Evans

Guillermo del Toro's name became a buzzword after his spanish film The Devil's Backbone. That, was in fact my introduction to him, despite his activity already in hollywood with the film 'mimic'. the devil's backbone promised to be del toro's true film-making face. so hollywood brought him back. to make blade 2. i saw blade 2 kicking and screaming, but gave in only because of del toro's name and a reasonable enjoyment of the first film. to my dismay, all my fears were correct and the film completely sucked. the next film del toro would do after that.. would be Hellboy. after seeing blade 2 i had no interest in another hollywood action hero flick by del toro. recently del toro has returned to his roots with Pan's Labyrinth. looking forward to this film, i am confident once again in del toro's abilities.. though i'm not sure why. but everything about it looks amazing. so.. with my recent moods to watch superhero-esque action films, and my hopes for del toro, i decided i'd give hellboy a chance.

much to my surprise, hellboy produced a great amount of charm and atmosphere. as expected.. the plot and story are far from unique. trite, predictable, and a lame attempt at having a villian, the story itself is plagued. the movie in fact would have been a huge success if only they took the characters and development among themselves, and instead of having a villain, just place them in some kind of normal circumstances. i mean, yeah, you're talking about freaks and mutants.. there's gotta be some crazy treacherous villain who wants to take over hell or whatever the hell it was about. but i disagree. i mean.. the incredibles lived in a realistic world. right? the villain was just another person. no demons. no hell. and yes, that's part of who hellboy is blah blah blah. my point is.. the characters were really cool. the development was really cool. the bad guys were really cool. the situations were really cool. but the book ends were a pointless villain with a pointless plot that was just really overdone and unneeded. overall though, i was surprised and entertained by this film.

Hellboy
6/10 (good. worth watching)

Critters

2006-10-13T09:06:00.000-07:00

Critters

Year: 1986
Directed by: Stephen Herek
Starring: don keith opper, terrence mann

yep. i told you i'd do it. i'm gonna watch all the critters films. although i don't have 3 so there might be a bit of a delay while i get it. you know, since i've come back down to nice sunny florida i lost all my halloween vibe that i got when i went back to maine. that makes me sad. i love the halloween vibe. i will try to generate it again though with the halloween classics as the date approaches though. i can't wait for garfield. i live for garfields halloween adventure. that and how the grinch stole christmas are basically the two halves of my being. anyhow.. critters. YES critters. its awesome. plain and simple. awesome. what's not to like????? two alien bounty hunters come to collect the escaped crites who run a rampage on a country home. just awesome. i dunno what else to say. i love this shit. does anyone else love this shit like i do? i'm not sure. i don't think so. i think i'm crazy. am i crazy? i love critters. plus, raphael goes to see it in the tmnt movie. come on! awesome.

Critters
5.5/10 (but god damn, is it entertaining)

The Hidden Blade

2006-10-13T08:56:00.000-07:00

The Hidden Blade

Year: 2004
Directed by: Yoji Yamada
Starring: Masatoshi Nagase, Takako Matsu

it had been quite some time since i had watched a period piece so i figured it was about time. this was a very good film, although it was basically a perfect replica of the twilight samurai with possibly a little more emotional attachment to the characters. it even had the same gimpy servant as twilight samurai. haha. its weird... cause its the same director. i'm not sure why a director would want to make the same movie twice.. but he did. i'm not really sure what to talk about with a film like this. its good. if you like period pieces of japan there's a lot to enjoy here. but don't expect an action film, that's for damn sure. if you've seen twilight samurai and liked it, watch this if you don't mind seeing the same story over again. if you haven't seen twilight samurai, i think this one is a bit stronger (plus it has nagase-san in it!) the climaxes never seem to be quite gripping enough. and the emotions are terribly powerful. but the movie is less about powerful moments and more about a quiet realism. a reflection on difficult times and situations and how an individual can find peace to overcome them. yep. that's all.

The Hidden Blade
7/10 (Good. worth watching)

Thelma & Louise

2006-10-13T08:47:00.000-07:00

Thelma & Louise

Year: 1991
Directed by: Ridley Scott
Starring: Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Brad Pitt, Harvey Keitel

you know, i really can't put my finger on ridley scott. alien. blade runner. legend. thelma & louise? gi jane? gladiator. hannibal? black hawk down. matchstick men. kingdom of heaven. now that is weird. the man is all over the place.

anyway. enough about ridley. thelma and louise disappointed me. it was slow and boring and completely unmotivated. it was really really off the mark until you find out much much later a little bit about louise's past that would make it seem somewhat understandable. but thelma's character is just wacked. the whole thing just seems a bit contrived and off the mark. i didn't care about any of the characters. i can't sympathize with the situation.. they were in the clear.. and it was cold blood that led to the killing that sends them on the run the rest of the film. i never care if they get caught or not. i never care what they are gonna do next. i never feel bad for anyone in particular. its just a bland story. but its not bad. just slow. its worth a watch. its widely regarded as a very good and important film. just don't expect to be blown away.

Thelma & Louise
6/10 (good. worth watching)

Capote

2006-10-13T08:40:00.000-07:00

Capote

Year: 2005
Directed by: Bennett Miller
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman

i have been a huge philip seymour hoffman fan for as long as i can remember. i don't think i've ever seen him in a role i didn't like. his performance in this film is mesmerizing. its absolutely brilliant. the film is dark and quiet and brooding and despite being a quiet and slow paced drama, it grips you and keeps you enthralled throughout the entire film. the film is about the true life story of truman capote, a writer who became obsessed with writing a book on a murder case that had just transpired. he spent 4 years meeting and talking with the killers, fighting to postpone their death sentences along the way. i feel like i should write more about this, being such a good film. but i'm not really sure what i would say. philip seymour hoffman, philip seymour hoffman, philip seymour hoffman!! brilliant film. if you are in the mood for a dark real life drama, pick this one up.

Capote
8.5/10 (excellent. everyone should see it)

We Were Soldiers

2006-10-11T13:33:00.000-07:00

We Were Soldiers

Year: 2002
Directed by: Randall Wallace
Starring: Mel Gibson, Sam Elliott, Barry Pepper, Madeleine Stowe, Greg Kinnear

a stacked cast and a great setting ends up being 2 hours of nothing but gunshots and carnage. i'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. it was brutal. and more realistic than most war films.. meaning that all the film was concerned about was the battle. not the people at home. not the politics. no heroes or villains. just soldiers and bullets. there were a lot of things they showed that hollywood got right for the first time. but in doing so the film was left feeling not so much like a movie. and more like an observation of a battle. while that holds some merit, it can also leave you a bit unsatisfied with a cinematic experience. so i'm not quite sure how i feel about this as a film. i liked it though. i like that they took a different approach.

We Were Soldiers
7/10 (good. worth watching)

Night Shift

2006-10-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

Night Shift

Year: 1982
Directed by: Ron Howard
Starring Henry Winkler, Michael Keaton, Shelley Long

i just really like the 80's. this one wasn't quite up to par with a lot of the films from the 80's but it was of a bit different breed too. a man working at a morgue, who's life seems dull at best, has his world shaken up when he gets switched to the night shift at the morgue and meets the new guy.. who is completely out of control. the two start running the morgue as their pimp palace for all the local whores.. but not in your typical ways. its pretty entertaining. pretty straight forward. classic 80's material with a cast that you don't get to see as much as some of the more popular stars of the decade. directed by ron howard, its pretty well put together. i enjoyed it quite a bit.

Night Shift
6/10 (good. worth watching)

Fantastic Four

2006-10-10T13:51:00.000-07:00

Fantastic Four

Year: 2005
Directed by: Tim Story
Starring: Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis

surprisingly unbad.. but not really good either. a genre piece to watch if you are in the mood for a super hero flick that you haven't seen before. the story is really bogus and weak. a group of scientists go to space for... something.. and get exposed to... a cloud.. that makes one of them turn into fire and fly, one go invisible and use shields, one turn into a big rock dude, and one who is all rubbery and stretchy.. sound kinda familiar? yeah, the incredibles.. the characters in that were based on the original fantastic four characters. at least their abilities were. oh yeah.. and the bad guy is all metallic and full of electricity. um. so yeah.. its just about the 'fantastic four' quarrelling amongst themselves about how to get back to normal or if they even want to, while the 5th is off planning his evil plan. so yeah.. there's not much going on. but it was entertaining and rather interesting to watch. i was most definitely in a super hero mood and this was the first one i flipped to.. so it served its purpose. don't watch it expecting a good movie. but watch it if you are in the mood for a simple and unintelligent super hero flick.

Fantastic Four
5.5/10 (mediocre, but not a waste)

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

2006-10-10T13:41:00.000-07:00

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Year: 2005
Directed by: Shane Black
Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan

WOW! AWESOME! this movie really surprised me. a great commentary/spoof on how to make a mystery and how to make a movie. loaded with scenes that made me bust out laughing out loud. loaded with quick intelligent dialogue. loaded with FANTASTIC acting. loaded with unique and interesting film making. this is a movie, ladies and gentlemen. watch it!

a huge mixed up mystery.. its hard to give a synopsis.. but basically this guy (robert downey jr) gets mistaken for an actor and soon finds himself at a huge party rubbing elbows with important people only to find himself wrapped up in a huge murder case. hilarity and craziness ensues. i just can't say enough about downey's performance in this flick. its magic. val comes back strong with one of his better roles in a long time. michelle monaghan takes a risky first big role and comes through strong. the film, made on a tiny budget, is just awesome. i don't really know what to talk about in particulary. its just awesome. and after you watch it, watching it with the commentary. even more funny.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
8.5/10 (Excellent. everyone should see it)

Lord of War

2006-10-10T08:21:00.001-07:00

Lord of War

Year: 2005
Directed by: Andrew Niccol
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Ethan Hawke, Jared Leto

This was a pretty good movie. better than i expected. i was a bit surprised to see that it was basically a one man show though. i was hoping jared leto and ethan hawke would have larger roles, but they did not. the story is all about a gun runner and all his trials and tribulations. it was pretty good, and the ending wasn't what i would have expected from a hollywood film, so that was nice. for being an action film the movie had a surpringly calm tone with lots of narration. there wasn't a whole lot of intensity. i dunno. this was a good one.

Lord of War
7/10 (good. worth watching)

Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man

2006-10-10T08:12:00.000-07:00

Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man

Year: 1943
Directed by: Roy William Neill
Starring: Lon Chaney Jr, Bela Lugosi

chaney takes on duties as the wolf man again and bela this time steps in to play frankentein's monster. the wolf man wakes up in a tomb 4 years after his initial rampage and takes off to seek out maleva, the gypsy from the first film, to see if she can help him. she says she knows of only one person who may be able to help him. dr. frankenstein. unfortunately when they arrive they discover he was killed several years ago when he brought to life a monster... the wolf man goes snooping around the castle to find any records that might help him and finds the monster burried and frozen in a cave. the two soon unite, and the wolf man tries to get the monster to show him where the records he needs might be. the monster, however, is not so easily controlled. this film i thought was a bit richer than the first wolf man film. the sets were more elaborate and there was more monster action. bela turned the frankenstein monster into more of a zombie though.. you know.. walking with his arms out in front of him, and that kind of foolishness. i don't know if maybe this had already happened before this film. i have seen the first two frankenstein films, but i think there's another one or two prior to this one. anyhow, i really liked this movie. just as much as the first one.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
7/10 (good. worth watching)

The Wolf Man

2006-10-10T07:57:00.000-07:00

The Wolf Man

Year: 1941
Directed by: George Waggner
Starring: Lon Chaney Jr, Claude Rains, Bela Lugosi

This one i thought perhaps a bit weaker than its counterparts, but a fantastic classic film none the less. i think the thing that makes it just a little less powerful than the other classic 'horror' films is that there is very little actual monster action. and where there is, its very sympathetic. lon chaney jr delivers a great performance as the unfortunate who is doomed with turning into a werewolf. claude rains plays a small role as his father. its always cool to see familiar faces in these classics. bela lugosi makes a special appearance as the fortune teller who sets the whole thing rolling. the story is simple. its the werewolf film that set the standard for all others to come after. a woman is attacked by a werewolf and lon chaney kills it with a silver staff but is bitten while doing so. now he is accused of murder (as there is no evidence of a werewolf, since he turned back into his human form) and is doomed to be turned into a werewolf himself. its a good film. a classic in every sense with a thick atmosphere and attractive sets.

The Wolf Man
7/10 (good. worth watching)

Van Helsing

2006-10-09T09:59:00.000-07:00

Van Helsing

Year: 2004
Directed by: Stephen Sommers
Starring: Hugh Jackson, Kate Beckinsale

this movie suffers from a lot of things... being very obviously digital.. and kate beckinsale just sucking. the concept was a neat idea. they took basically all the creatures of horror they could think them and mashed them into the same world. the problem was the digital effects were pretty poor. so everything looked very fake and digital. i actually kinda liked hugh jackmans performance, but kate beckinsale was just over the top and poorly acted. she didn't have any of the charm that hugh's van helsing had. i didn't really care for some of the character designs either, particularly frankenstein. so yeah, this is one of those pure action masturbation flicks without any real substance. but the atmosphere was nice and its always fun to see the horror creatures in a new environment/story.

Van Helsing
5/10 (mediocre)

Kick the Moon

2006-10-09T09:49:00.000-07:00

Kick the Moon

Year: 2001
Directed by: Sang-jin Kim
Starring: Sung-jea Lee, Seung-won Cha, Hye-su Kim

This was a really fun movie. mobs (i'm not sure korean mobs have a name like yakuza or not.. but they act much the same way) meet highschool wannabees meet a beautiful woman who runs a noodle shop. two men come head to head over a number of things.. the two have history way back, to a legendary highschool fight years ago. now one is a teacher at school who tries his hardest to keep the kids at school straight and out of trouble, and the other is the boss of a mob.. the exact opposite roles they played when they were kids. the two of them, by happenstance, end up in another bosses office the same night and both threaten him for different reasons. a group of kids at the highschool want nothing more than to be part of a mob. the older sister of one of these kids runs a noodle shop. everyone gets all kinds of mixed up in everything and everyone else's business and boils over into a huge comedic battle at the end. this is a really simple and fun mob/highschool kids flick with tons of action, plenty of comedy, and some serious drama. not surprisingly, it is directed by the director of Attack the Gas Station, which had a similar vibe.

Kick the Moon
7/10 (good. worth watching)

Everything Is Illuminated

2006-10-09T09:37:00.000-07:00

Everything Is Illuminated

Year: 2005
Directed by: Liev Schreiber
Starring: Elijah Wood, Eugene Hutz

This movie embodied all the things about foreign (european) films that i've come to love. it is quiet, beautiful, thoughtful, provoking, subtle and emotional. the characters are all a bit awkward and hesitant. the environments are barren and beautiful. the relationships are careful but genuine. the difficulty in understanding one another as foreigners is difficult and trying, but intriguing and considerate. the story is a bit odd, as is usually the case with this kind of film. a young man (elijah wood) is a strange collector of sorts. he collects things about his family members and puts them in little zip lock bags and puts them on this huge wall. he travels to ukraine to find things/information on his grandfather, whom he has but 1 thing for. the journey leads him, and his guides on a strange and quiet journey that uncovers truths not only for the young man, but for his guides, a grandson and grandfather, as well. i didn't really like that the film ended up being about the holocaust. i mean, you expect it. you know that's what its a movie about. and usually holocaust films are powerful, but i just felt like the journey was powerful enough without being an unravelling of the truths of dead relatives due to the holocaust. for me, the most important part of the film was the journey and relationship between the journeyers. anyway.. good film.

Everything is Illuminated
7/10 (good. worth watching)

Along Came Polly

2006-10-09T09:32:00.000-07:00

Along Came Polly

Year: 2004
Directed by: John Hamburg
Starring: Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, Philip Symour Hoffman

i'm not sure why i watched this. was just in the mood for something light that didn't need much attention paying. and i was actually quite surprised by this one. Philip seymour hoffman stole the show whenever he was on screen as a disgusting bum who once played in a film as a kid and was so arrogant and above everyone else that he was a real asshole.. even though his life had completely fallen apart. ben stiller plays a little more straightforward than he usually does and jennifer aniston.. i don't think she's a good actress.. or maybe its just that she always plays really bad characters.. i'm not sure which. cause she does the characters really well.. but they are all characters i can't stand. so i dunno. at any rate, i rather enjoyed this one.

Along Came Polly
6/10 (Good. Worth Watching)

Bubba Ho-tep

2006-10-09T09:25:00.000-07:00

Bubba Ho-tep

Year: 2002
Directed by: Don Coscarelli
Starring: Bruce Campbell

wow. this was a strange and unusual film experience. bruce campbell plays elvis presley who is living in an elderly/special care home with a whole bunch of crazy people. a bus carrying the remains of a cursed mummy has gone off the road nearby and the mummy has come back to life, though no one knows that for quite a while. the mummy starts killing all the people, sucking their souls out of them. its up to the old and crippled elvis and another crazy man to defeat the zombie. wow. this one was weird. but it was strangely good. for reasons i can't quite explain. i think it was just the uniqueness of the environment and atmosphere and bruce campbell being friggin awesome.

Bubba Ho-Tep
6.5/10 (Good. Worth Watching)

Love Bakery

2006-10-09T09:11:00.000-07:00

Love Bakery

Year: 2000
Directed by: Hun-Su Park
Starring: Min-su Choi, Sin-Hye Hwang, Mi-yeon Lee, Kyun-dong Yeo

why would i watch a movie called love bakery? cause i know what asian films are capable of! this was a simple and quiet film about 2 married couples who end up criss crossed in a life-changing series of events. one family works as husband and wife at a bakery that they own, the husband doing the baking, the wife running the business. the other family is a man who is a washed up, unsuccessful writer and the wife sells insurance. each of them has a young child. the wife of the baker starts becoming very depressed. never saying anything. never smiling. always sighing. just staring out the windows. soon, the washed up writer starts coming into the bakery. he starts flirting with her and is amazed at the breads that are baked. he starts coming in every day. the wife of the baker becomes happier and happier and seems to come back to life. the husband notices the man and his affect on his wife. when following the man home one day he sees him being chased out of his home by his wife, the insurance seller. she beats him, telling him that he is spending all of their money on breads and snacks. soon enough the baker and the insurance seller are in their own affair. etc etc etc. the way it all comes together at the end is very satisfying.

this was just a really delightful and relaxing film with very simple and subtle performances, all filmed in the rich environment of a bakery and its surrounding small town. the music was excellent and note-worthy. a very fine film.

Love Bakery
7/10 (Good. Worth Watching)

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

2006-10-09T08:59:00.000-07:00

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Year: 1975
Directed by: Jim Sharman
Starring: Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Richard O'brien

through the first half hour or so of this i was thinking this is the greatest movie ever. i was totally in love with it. the characters were entertaining to the n'th degree. the songs were awesome. richard o'brien, who wrote the original play, played riff raff who is the creepiest, coolest character of all time. HAHAHA meatloaf played eddie!! i didn't recognize him! much younger than i've ever seen him before! basically once rocky was brought to life it kinda went downhill. i guess i loved the set up.. the two people getting lost and finding this crazy castle full of dancing lunatics.. but where the story went was just a little bizarre and didn't make a whole lot of sense. it didn't do much for me. tim curry was fascinating. susan sarandon was a bit overshadowed, but wonderful. richard o'brien was the shit. so yeah, i really loved it for a while but then it just slowly died through the rest of the film.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show
6.5/10 (Good. Worth Watching)

Goin' South

2006-10-07T15:58:00.000-07:00

Goin' South

Year: 1978
Directed by: Jack Nicholson
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Mary Steenburgen, Christopher Lloyd, Danny Devito, John Belushi

This is one of those films that is just fun to watch. Jack Nicholson plays a thief who is to be hanged until a woman steps in and offers to marry him. she does so because she has inherited a mine and she has no one else to do the work. she needs work done soon because a train company wants to run a railway through her home so she needs money and fast. the film becomes a battle between jack and mary's characters and also jack's own personal struggle with being good or bad. the film is full of colorful characters and a fun plot. it never takes itself seriously and its never too goofy. its just a very pleasant, light hearted westerny kind of film.

Goin' South
6.5/10 (Good. Worth Watching)

Phenomena (aka Creepers)

2006-10-07T15:44:00.000-07:00

Phenomena (aka Creepers)

Year: 1985
Directed by: Dario Argento
Starring: Jennifer Connelly, Donald Pleasence

My jury is still out on Dario. his films make me uncomfortable and i never find them really entertaining. just intense and disgusting. but sometimes that can be fun. i only watched this one because it stars a young jennifer connelly. the only thing i've seen her in around this time period was labyrinth, so i was curious to see something else she had done around the same time.

Despite having seen only a couple of Dario films, this one felt very much like his style. They feel blank and sterile and empty with a black tension seeping through them. sealed underneath that sterility is a grotesqueness that often times you'd rather not watch, but its like a train wreck. you just sorta can't look away. these images of grotesqueness are very frequently found in organic matter. its not special effects that we are used to. its real organs. its real bugs. its real blood. its real skin. and that makes it repulsive. i saw one film made by one of dario's counterparts where there was a scene where this guys guts got pulled out of his mouth. and i swear to god they used real organs. probably an animals of some kind.. but those were no rubber guts. they were real. and it changes the.. someone shoot me for this one.. flavor of the whole film. looking directly at this film, there are several scenes of very disgusting and grotesque imagery. usually with bugs and maggots and real decaying matter.

the visuals and atmosphere aside, the story of this one is interesting. jennifer is the daughter of a famous actor who has been put in a boarding school while her father is off in another country doing a shoot. she soon finds out that there is some kind of murderer on the loose who has been killing young girls her age. jennifer has a strange affinity with bugs and insects and they swarm to her and never hurt her. she ends up speaking with professor john mcgregor played by the fantastic donald pleasence. the two soon uncover the secret of the murder through study of the maggots. soon it becomes up to jennifer to face the murderer one on one.

jennifer does a great job. the acting is a little rough here and there which is to be expected, particularly in this genre. but she did a great job. donald is always awesome too. i think this film improved my perspective on dario quite a bit. although i'm still very cautious about when i watch his movies. so yeah, this was a good one.

Phenomena (aka Creepers)
6/10 (Good. Worth Watching)

Hard Candy

2006-10-07T15:29:00.000-07:00

Hard Candy

Year: 2005
Directed by: David Slade
Starring: Patrick Wilson, Ellen Page

for some reason i was really attracted to this movie and i've been waiting for it to come out on dvd for several months. brief synopsis. 14 year old hayley meets much older photographer jeff online. they hook up for the first time and end up at jeff's place to maybe do some photography. starting the afternoon off with some drinks, jeff soon finds himself tied up to his chair. Hayley has some questions for him about a girl who was recently killed. and she'll stop at nothing until she gets the answers she wants to hear.

so what does that mean? well.. i can't really tell you. cause the whole meat of the film revolves around what she does.

from a critics standpoint, i'd say this movie doesn't hold any water. 98% of the film is just the two characters in 1 location.. a battle of wits. the 14 year girl completely houses this guy, often in very unrealistic, over elaborate methods that no 14 year girl would ever come up with. its unrealistic at best, and completely undesirable as a story that you'd like to just sit back and be told. so that doesn't leave it with much to stand on. to give it credit, for being just 2 people in 1 location, the film never slows down. never misses a beat. it is put together fantastically and has a great visual style about it. i think the story itself just fails.

from a casual viewer's standpoint, without worrying about realism and just wanting to enjoy a crazy insane story.. it still doesn't hold up well. its intense, there's no doubt about that. its entertaining, and keeps you wondering what'll happen next. but everything is just a little too far fetched. a little too out of control. a little too dark for its characters. there's a fine line that this film tried to tread. how do you put a 14 year girl in the drivers seat? do you make her a crazy insane bloodthirsty and/or evil ghostly kind of figure like you'd probably find in asian cinema, or do you make her a cute and clumsy young girl who's heart is in the right place like you'd find in hollywood a lot, or do you make her a slightly too mature girl who wont put up with any bullshit.. a real heroine, but who will do the wrong thing for her own benefit? well.. they tried to smash all that stuff together. she's mature but cute, intelligent but not curteous. and definitely somewhere directly between heroine and evil. this fine line they tried to put her on ended causing problems and just made an incredibly unbelievable and unimpressive character.

Hard Candy
5.5/10 (mediocre, but not a waste of time)

An American Werewolf in London

2006-10-07T15:18:00.000-07:00

An American Werewolf in London

Year: 1981
Directed by: John Landis
Starring: David Naughton, Jenny Agutter

i didn't really know anything about this film other than the fact that i had been hearing the title for as long as i can remember. so i finally took the time to pop it in. it was different than i expected. i guess i didn't really have any expectations. but i was surprised at the things this movie offered up. it certainly wasn't a horror film. i'm not sure i would call it comedy either tho. so i guess it fits into that gray area of british dark comedy. the film seemed very short. much shorter than the hour and a half that it is. the characters behaved in a different way than they usually do. particularly the lead character who is doomed to turn into a werewolf. i'm not sure i can really explain how he acted differently than the character would if the film was made today.. but his actions seemed more realistic and human like than a usually over-dramatized victim. the visual effects were very cool. cool suits and costumes. jenny agutter was hot. one of the things thrown at me that i wasn't expecting was the live corpse of his friend who would visit him periodically, continuously decaying. i wasn't expecting that kind of movie. i was thinking it would be more along the lines of you know.. just people getting attacked by a monster. it turned out to be quite different. and it was refresshing. brief synopsis time: two americans are vacationing and are hiking. they find a small village where they go in to warm up and they are greated very coldly. not following the warnings of the villagers the hikers go off the road and soon are attacked by a werewolf. the villagers come to the rescue, but not before jack is killed and david, the lead character, is wounded. david finds himself in a hospital unable to believe what had transpired. soon he is visited by his undead friend jack who tells him he's going to turn into a werewolf. david then battles with his newfound relationship for his nurse and the possibility that this werewolf stuff is for real.. or is he just going crazy?

anyway, not at all what i expected, but a very good watch.

An American Werewolf in London
7/10 (Good. Worth Watching)

My Boss, My Hero

2006-10-05T17:49:00.000-07:00

My Boss, My Hero

Year: 2001
Directed by: Je-gyun Yun
Starring: Jun-ho Jeong

I was expecting to get more of a comedy with this one. There was a bit of the comedy vibe going on through out, but it was eclipsed by the drama and action. toward the end the film actually got quite powerful, but fell just a little shy of being really moving.

A respected mob man is sent back to highschool by his gang to get his diploma. looking young for his age he fits in without too much questioning and soon finds out that the school is an even tougher battle ground than the streets, particuarly when the teachers start getting harrassed. the heads of the school are apparently running some shadey business, so when there is a revolt against a few of the teachers, the heads of the school come down hard and dismiss the teachers. then a student, who is trying her hardest to get a scholorship because she can't afford college, speaks out against the school, the headmaster beats her in class to the point of hospitalization. this is just about all the mob guy can handle and he revolts and calls his gang to come take control of the school. another gang who recognized him and had unfinished business with him show up on the scene as well.

i think the second mob showing up took away from the revolt to overthrow the school. it was getting pretty powerful until they showed up, and then it just turned into a fighting match between gang members instead of the fight to reclaim the school from the corrupt headmaster (who had a ring of bodyguards beating down students trying to speak out against him). all in all, its a good film, but falls just short of being really good.

My Boss, My Hero
6.5/10 (Good, worth watching)

Down in the Valley

2006-10-05T17:37:00.000-07:00

Down in the Valley

Year: 2005
Directed by: David Jacobson
Starring: Edward Norton, Evan Rachel Wood, David Morse, Rory Culkin

There are a few people you can still count on in hollywood to deliver, and Edward Norton is (usually) one of them. This movie thrives on superb performances by Norton and Morse, with wood and culkin providing great roles as a rebellious young girl and an out of place (and mind) young boy. the film is intense and heavy and you can never quite pin down norton's character. is he genuine? is he lying? his character's development is perfect and leaves you second guessing everyone through the whole film. but i don't want to make it out to sound like one of those tricky, twist at the end kinds of things. its not like that at all.

edward norton plays a very sincere character who lives as a modern day cowboy. when he by chance meets Tobe, played by Evan Rachel Wood, the two hit it off immediately. Unfortunately, Tobe comes from a very strict home and her father (Morse) will have absolutely none of this Harlan guy (Norton). so rebellion kicks in from Tobe. Harlan even starts taking care of her younger brother who seems like he's always out of place and in a daze (Culkin) and the two hit it off very well. As the three get closer and closer and start to form a little family, Wade (the father, morse) becomes more enraged and forbids his children from seeing harlan anymore, and forces him out at gunpoint. at this moment, harlan seems to become obsessed with the idea of taking the two kids and running away with them, to protect them from their abusive father.

so yeah, the film is heavy and intense, and it keeps you strapped in for the whole ride. great acting. great script. great movie.

Down in the Valley
7/10 (Good! Worth Watching)

Zeiram 2

2006-10-05T17:18:00.000-07:00

Zeiram 2

Year: 1994
Directed by: Keita Amemiya
Starring: Yuko Moriyama, Kunihiro Ida, Yukijiro Hotaru

Man in Suit! Man in Suit! not surprisingly, no one in this film has ever amounted to anything. no surprisingly it stars a man in a suit. surprisingly, this film is rated highly everywhere i look. why? probably because the only people in the world who have seen this movie are people who have seen the anime, and hold men in rubber suits in high regards.

this movie is terrifically awful. i think what drew me to it was A) its a live action adaptation to the anime series which had a very nostalgic 80's feel B) its a japanese sci-fi film, which you don't see very much of and C) being a sci fi film, with a big bad ass monster thing, you know yer gonna get a man in a rubber suit.

well, this is definitely a sequel film (the first one is long out of print and i can't find it anywhere... so i figured i'd watch this anyway). you can tell the budget is smaller. you can tell the script is weaker. you can tell everything is a bit sub par from whatever the first one offered up. this was one of those classic early 90's let milk as much as we can sequels that gets made for next to nothing and just tossed out there like a lollipop to kids.

the film is HIGHLY enjoyable. even though it really truly is terrible. the story is basically non-existant. i dont' know what happens in the first one.. but apparently now the Zeiram, which is supposed to be basically an immortal creature that wrecks house, is now a robot. this robot has an organic life form (Zeiram) put in it and thus has a 98% chance of going berserk.. gee.. sounds like a good idea to me. so the movie starts with Iria, the lead character, completing a mission she has been working on for a long time to obtain some weird antique device thing. she then heads to her next job where she gets ambushed by the guys she ripped off to get the thingy for her last job. for some unexplained reason Zeiram shows up to defend her and kills all of the ambushers.. then it goes berserk.. cause, you know.. it only has a 2% chance not to.. and teleports itself, iria, and 2 others into a 'zone'. now.. aparently a zone just like.. takes the environment you are in, replicates it, puts up a barrier around it, and generates it somewhere else.. like.. floating in space or something.. so now iria has to fight zieram. and that's the whole movie. the whole rest of the movie is fighting zeiram in this zone. and that starts maybe 15 minutes into it. so yeah.. no story. typical of a sequel like this. so all kinds of silly shenanigans go down between zeiram and the two characters joining iria. its silly. but it stinks of early 90's sci fi which is fun. and zeiram is a man in a rubber suit which is cool. so yeah, all in all, its fun if you like that sorta thing. but it is an awful movie. oh yeah, and the soundtrack was sweet!!

Zeiram 2
5/10 (mediocre) * unless you like men in rubber suits!!!

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

2006-10-04T12:47:00.000-07:00

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Year: 1977
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Richard Dreyfuss

For those of you wondering, or need reminding, spielberg had an ability to ruin his own films back in his early days too. I had seen this movie once several years ago and i remembered feeling like it was sort of empty. like nothing happened. about halfway through the movie i was like, oh yeah.. i remember that feeling now. this doesn't bode well. the first half.. well.. maybe first third.. i thought was fantastic. it was intense. there was a magic being created. the atmosphere was heavy. they dreyfuss's character started becoming obsessed.. that takes place through the 2nd third of the film. this part dragged on for too long and we don't see anything else through this whole section. only dreyfuss. no alien action. no military action like there was in the beginning. then the last third dreyfuss shows up at the military post where they are going to meet the aliens and just about nothing happens for the rest of the film. its pretty piss poor if you ask me. so, what began as something really interesting and captivating just slowly smothered itself into a moment of boredom. The beginning is interesting enough to keep you watching the whole way through and its a decent film, but watch it when you are really really in the mood for some early spielberg/sci fi otherwise you'll find yourself turning it off from boredom.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind
6/10 (Good. Worth Watching)

Gremlins 2

2006-10-04T12:28:00.000-07:00

Gremlins 2

Year: 1990
Directed by: Joe Dante
Starring: Zach Gilligan, Phoebe Cates, Christopher Lee

Well, it doesn't really star Christopher Lee, but he's got a cool little part that made me smile every time he hit the screen. He is the man.

I remembered this one a little more than the first, having seen it a bit later and also seeing a bit of it on cable a few years back. This one plays out much more like a comedy and actually had me laughing out loud several times. "ACID: Do Not Throw in Face" ... hesitation ... evil cackle. *toss* the comedy was just pure gold in this film. i watched the deleted scenes with editor commentary too and they had to cut out some really great stuff due to time constraints.

so, this one is slightly less magical feeling. it doesn't have the atmosphere that joe dante created in the first one with sets and lighting and colors. but it has soooo much more gremlin action. gremlins everywhere. gremlins doing all kinds of crazy things. gremlins of all types. i've said it a trillion times. they just don't make stuff like they used to. someone should petition for a gremlins 3. i'd sign that shit.

anyhow, we get our two leads back in action, having moved into the city to work and live together. they both work for the same huge (and silly) corporation where everything is self automated and fancy hi tech. gizmo, by chance, ends up in the building and billy finds him and of course gizmo gets wet by some freak accident and sets the whole thing in motion. i can't say weather or not i like this one or the first one better. they are kinda two totally different films. the first one is a classy, atmospheric drama while this one is a silly, full of laughs comedy. so its hard to compare. i think if you're gonna watch one, you're gonna watch them both, and you'll dig em both equally. i'm kind of surprised to see how they are rated on imdb. maybe its just nostalgia for the films.. but i really honestly think they are fantastic. so to see the second one rated below six... i dunno. i'm not sure how that happened. anyway... i'm in love with gremlins.

Gremlins 2
7/10 (Good. Worth Watching)

2 Month Recap! 75 Movies!!

2006-10-02T08:19:00.000-07:00

yes yes, it has been nearly 2 months since i have arrived down in florida and i have reviewed 76 movies now! that's.... pretty rediculous! so here is a recap, listed by rating of the movies i have watched! *'s mean it was highly entertaining despite the low score. also, i have adjusted some scores as they have had time to settle in my brain.

Bounce Ko Gals 9
My Sassy Girl 8.5
Ferris Bueller's Day Off 8.5
A Millionaire's First Love 8
Love Letter 8
Lady in the Water 8
The Windmill Palm Grove 8
Grosse Pointe Blank 8
North Country 8
The Eel 8
Gremlins 7.5
Singles 7.5
The Proposition 7.5
Creature from Black Lagoon 7.5
Attack the Gas Station 7
The Hulk 7
The Mummy 7
Tokyo Rampage 7
Spygirl 7
Nanny McPhee 7
Missing in America 7
Escape From New York 7
Stand By Me 7
Dracula 7
The Man Who Knew Too Little 6.5
The Frighteners 6.5
Zathura 6.5
Flatliners 6.5
Cat People 6.5
A Man Who Went to Mars 6.5
My Cousin Vinny 6.5
The Hobbit 6.5
Spies Like Us 6.5
Hell Comes to Frogtown 6.5
Carnival of Souls 6.5
Still Crazy 6.5
Stray Dog 6
The Wizard 6
Shall We Dance 6
Three Amigos 6
The Bow 6
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow 6
The Squid and the Whale 6
Crying out Love... 6
Woman of Water 6
Valley of Gwangi 6
Romeo + Juliet 6
Anna Magdalena 6
The Relic 6
The Hills Have Eyes 6
Jason and the Argonauts 6
Return of the King 6
Lord of the Rings 6
Fried Dragon Fish 6
Old School 5.5
Final Destination 2 5.5
Sky High 5.5
Vital 5.5
Gone Fishin' 5.5
16 Blocks 5.5
Kinsey 5.5
The Adventures of Priscilla 5.5
Time Bandits 5.5
Mystery Train 5
The Pacifier 5
Jason X 5*
Critters 4 5*
Escape From LA 5
Vulgar 5
Tristan and Isolde 4.5
Red Sonja 4.5
Jarhead 4.5
When a Stranger Calls 4
Bottle Rocket 4
The Cave 4
Hellraiser 3
See You After School 2.5

Jason X

2006-10-02T06:55:00.000-07:00

Jason X

Year: 2001
Directed by: James Isaac
Starring: nobody in particular

yes.. YES... JASON IN SPACE! how can you loose?! look... you don't watch these things to see a good movie.. come on now. you watch these things to see how silly they've gotten with the 10th film in a series. i'll tell you how silly they've gotten! there are so many things wrong with this film i stopped counting after i said to myself 'wow! i need to write about that in my review' about 5 times. there were so many noteworthy mistakes that i've forgotten them all. but were they mistakes? not really... i can just see the writers and director putting this shit together and just looking at each other with big grins and just shrugging their shoulders like as if to say 'hehe they'll forgive us'. and i do.. i do...

this movie SUCKED. but in an awesome way. i mean.. come on.. you take a cryo frozen jason and a mistakenly cryo frozen hot doctor chick who was in the process of dying when she was frozen.. find them 500 years later when earth is dead and they are picked up by a salvage team looking for antiques to sell.. well.. there's not much else to say other than jason thaws out and kills everyone. you know.. really.. its the mistakes that makes this movie fun. like... the big one.. the big huge mistake.. near the end of the film.. see.. they have this technology where they can mend humans by putting them in this machine and these weird ant things (i can't tell if they are mechanical or organic...) just put you back together.. pretty much no matter how bad they damage.. well ok.. so at the end this android lays waste to jason.. blows him apart, limbs and head with a super gun. its like a shot gun but its slugs are like baseballs. so she explodes his head. now.. problem.. earlier in the film the surviving doctor chick they picked up with jason tells them about how they had him in custody and they tried everything they could to kill him. firing squad. hanging. gas. everything. well.. if they tried a firing squad they didn't try very hard, cause that android chick just exploded him. they could have just severed all his limbs and decapped him or burned him to ash.. so... i guess they didn't try very hard. huge script mistake there in my opinion. so now.. when the android chick (who.. for some reason they didn't get a hot chick to play even tho they have her all badassed out in skin tight leather) explodes him to bits, he happens to fall against one of these rejovobooths that puts you back together.. for some reason the crew didn't notice this. granted. it exploded and all that. but still.. after all they had been through you'd think they'd have made sure he was toast for good. so anyway, there is a malfunction of course and all the little ants come out and have an orgy inside jason's exploded head. now.. here's the interesting thing. when the ant buggies put back together all the other people they did a super good job... you know.. they replaced skin with skin. well.. for some reason, when they put exploded jason back together they decide to turn him into metal. go figure, right? so now half of him is metal and his hockey mask is a solid plate of impenatrable shit. so that i don't get. but hey.. that was one of those moments where the director was saying 'they'll forgive us'. and i do.. i do.. the next part is pretty awful too... he chases down the remaining crew who are trying to escape. the android is like.. um.. shit.. walks up to him and with one swing her head is rolling on the ground. now.... he's about to smash face on another dude when a chick steps in and blocks his punch..... right.. after he decapped an android. then jason proceeds to punch them to hell.. without causing any real damage. no squashed faces. no ripped off limbs. apparently he used up all his jason juice decapping the android. i dunno.

anyway.. that's a good example of what's wrong with this film. but like i said.. its the mistakes that make it fun. i'm not gonna say good. i'm gonna say fun. well, i've written enough about this. i'm not gonna recommend this... if you like to be entertained by the sillyness of a horror series gone too far... this is among the best. this is like.. critters 4 times 10!

Jason X
5/10.....

Spygirl

2006-10-02T06:35:00.000-07:00

Spygirl

Year: 2004
Directed by: Han-chun Park
Starring: Jeong-hwa Kim, Yu Kong, Sang-mi Nam

rated a surprisingly low 5.7 on imdb i almost didn't really feel like trying this one. but something drew me to it anyway. usually asian films are a bit inflated on imdb. this one, i think for some reason i don't know, is under rated. There are moments i'll admit that are a bit over the top silly that the american audience wouldn't enjoy. asian over the top comedy is a bit strange.. but it wasn't bothersome for me. and other than those few moments i thought the rest of the film was brilliantly entertaining. the film is a comedy about a north korean spy who just happens to be a super hot young girl. she ends up working at burger king right across the street from the school and immediately becomes the school's new 'angel'. some kids run a website with all the hottest girls of the school and the one they deem the hottest is the 'angel'. this publicity obviously is not good for a spy... in order to get the pictures off the web she agrees to go out with one of their friends who has a crush on her.. he's the other main character whom we've already seen a lot of.. but the events of his story are rather unimportant up until this point. so the film progresses through all kinds of funny and silly events as the spy tries to keep her indentiy hidden, the rather slow and stupid boy battles with his feelings for her, the former angel plots to over throw the newcomer, the family of spies that the girl meets up with as a contact constantly reflect on the good old days of poisonous soups and mushrooms, and other silly things. there were many moments where i found myself laughing out loud, as the comedic timing was just gold in some moments. then at the end, in the last 15 minutes, all the comedy dropped out and fell into a serious drama to resolve all of the situations. which was a weird transition, but it still worked fantastically. very good film.

Spygirl
7/10 (Good. Worth Watching)

The Windmill Palm Grove

2006-10-01T18:02:00.000-07:00

The Windmill Palm Grove

Year: 2005
Directed by: Sang-wook Yu
Starring: Eun-sook Cho, Min-jong Kim, Yu-mi Kim

this is a good one. a story within a story within a story. a man who is chased down by a business woman who got drunk with him the night before recalls a story for her about his experience on an island 4 years ago that has left him rather somber. within that story is a grandmother who tells a story of her past. so.. i guess you could say its a story containing a story containing a story. this is just one of those really pleasant, very comfortable films to watch. its a great story that just kinda swallows you up and takes you to a different place. plus it feels like you are watching something from an older era but you know its modern because of the current settings of the man and woman on the bus and the story the grandmother tells obviously was just a few decades earlier.. but she lived in poverty in a small fishing area, so things there were still very traditional. so.. here's what happens: the guy on the bus tells this story: he was sent to an island where there is a big welding company as a lawyer to investigate and protect them on pattent (spelling??) infringement. he meets this woman who works there (not a very frequent thing for a woman to be working there) and starts falling for her very quickly, though their relationship is awkward and rocky with the two having such different life styles. one night she gets drunk and he carries her home where he meets her grandmother. the grandmother insists on him staying the night so she tells him the story of their past. here's what she tells: she was forced to marry this asshole fisherman who has a somewhat retarded daughter. she was incredibly upset about it but the daughter, who was only 2 years younger than her, was very nice to her and the two became best friends almost immediately. they struggle with being poor and taking abuse from the father/husband until eventually, without telling his wife, he sells his daughter. this leaves the wife (grandmother, for those of you losing track) very heartbroken, losing her only friend and coping mechanism. eventually, some time later, she catches word of where her 'daughter' has been sold and she runs away to find her. the two are reunited in a fantastic scene, but can not stay together. after a while the daughter is kicked out of her forced marraige and returns home which drives the father crazy and he disappears on his boat and never returns. the two women then grew up together until one day a boat had to put anchor in by their home and the captain falls for the slightly retarded daughter. when he leaves a few days later he promises to return to marry the girl. he never does.. but he managed to impregnate her. this girl, of course, is the one who the man on the bus was telling the story of. so then as the stories within the stories are wrapping up we find outselves back with the man and woman on the bus, but they have arrived at the destination of the man.. a school, where he will give a lecture. and it all ends in a very satisfying manner. yep yep.

its an interesting film, like i said with the historical/traditional feel mixed with the modern. the 3 stories weaving through each other. everything about it is just captivating.

so yeah, it was a great story and a great film and i was incredibly satisfied. once again, korea is just proving that it is a growing force in the entertainment industry.. i might have to put korean on my list of things to study so i can go work in some studios over there for a year or two. kick ass.

The Windmill Palm Grove
8/10 (Very Good! Don't Miss It)

Final Destination 2

2006-09-30T15:25:00.000-07:00

Final Destination 2

Year: 2003
Directed by: David R Ellis
Starring: Ali Larter, AJ Cook, Michael Landes

I actually watched this last week and forgot to write about it. saw it on cable my last night in maine. i was a fan of the first film but i never really expected much out of this one. so i was pretty surprised to find that i was pretty entertained by it. I don't necessarily think that this is a good film, but i think its entertaining. and its not as teeny bopper as it looked when it first came out. its a little more mature than that. its just one of those things where its funny to see how each character bites the dust when you know its only a matter of time. and its not the screeching highschool kids bickering with each other, but adults who struggle with whether or not they believe something like this could be real. anyway, i found it pretty enjoyable.

Final Destination 2
6/10 (Good. Worth Watching)

Hellraiser

2006-09-30T15:07:00.000-07:00

Hellraiser

Year: 1987
Directed by: Clive Barker
Starring: Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins

wow CRAP. this movie SUCKED. can you believe they've made 8 hellraiser films? 8! that's incredible. you know, i've been very fond of most of the 80's horror i've been catching up on. and this is just not one of them. its boring. its unmotivated. it makes no sense. there is no explanation for anything. the acting is pretty shitty. the music sucks. the ONLY redeeming factor this film has is the visual effects are just plain gross. really all this is, is an S&M nightmare that leaves a bitter taste in your mouth when you wake up, but you can't really remember a thing about it. blargh. suck. i really don't understand how pinhead came to be such an icon. his role is minimal at best and he doesn't do a god damn thing. he isn't even scary. he's just kinda chillin. he prolly has 5 minutes of screen time. i don't get it.

Hellraiser
3/10 (Bad. Stay Away)

Gremlins

2006-09-30T05:29:00.000-07:00

Gremlins

Year: 1984
Directed by: Joe Dante
Starring: Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Corey Feldman

I haven't really watched this all the way through since it scared the shizer out of me when i was a little kid. man, they don't make movies like they did in the 80's. there's just so much magic and color and awesomeness. needless to say, the film didn't scare me this time. it was really fun. also needless to say, phoebe cates is hot. (especially if you've seen fast times at ridgemont high). also, gremlins are bad ass. i don't remember it being so easy to dispatch them though. they had a relatively easy time of it. the mom put down the first 4 herself! and dammit, what ever happened to corey feldman. he must really suck at acting to not get any good jobs. oh (after reading his bio on imdb) looks like he got messed up with drugs. that's too bad. anyway.. gremlins is awesome.

Gremlins
7/10 (Good. Worth Watching)

Flatliners

2006-09-30T05:20:00.000-07:00

Flatliners

Year: 1990
Directed by: Joel Schumacher
Starring: Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, Julia Roberts, Oliver Platt, William Baldwin

star studded, action packed. medical students letting themselves die so others can bring them back to life to try and see if something lays beyond death. this movie was perfect for the kind of film i want to watch right now. dark and eerie and a little off kilter. kiefer is the man when it comes to creepiness. errrr.... i guess i don't have a whole lot to say about it, other than i really enjoyed it. i'm half brain dead cause i feel like i got the crap beat out of me with a baseball bat. i'm that sick. good movie though. i was slightly disappointed with the resolution being all they had to do was atone.. but whatever... annnnd... i don't think baldwin ever atoned(??) so does that mean he's screwed? everyone else did. anyway. don't let medical students do this to you.

Flatliners
6.5/10 (Good. Worth Watching)

The Relic

2006-09-29T08:20:00.000-07:00

The Relic

Year: 1997
Directed by: Peter Hyams
Starring: Tom Sizemore, Penelope Ann Miller

This is one of the most formulaic films i've seen in a long time. especially for the genre. there were a lot of films like this coming out in the mid 90's. for some reason though, the formula really works in this film and it ended up being a surpringly good watch. penelope plays a biologist in a lab/museum who gets her hands on some seemingly empty crates sent from a partner in brazil. there is a relic and a bunch of leaves. she notices on the leaves some seed like things.. fungus stuff and starts analyzing it. at the same time people start dying. decapitated and brain pulled out. yum yum! enter tom sizemore, a very superstitious detective who takes his job very seriously.

the film is pretty dark and the murders are pretty exciting. there's also a woman who looks just like the old woman in the incredibles who makes the suits. heh i was a little disappointed with the actual beast itself. the animation and digital work is pretty weak, but i've seen worse. he just wasn't really very scary.

overall, tom sizemore keeps this film enjoyable and the atmosphere is pretty good. a good watch.

The Relic
6/10 (Good. Worth Watching)

Cat People

2006-09-29T08:13:00.000-07:00

Cat People

Year: 1982
Directed by: Paul Schrader
Starring: nastassja kinski, john heard, annette o'toole

this movie was surprisingly entertaining. it starts out very mysteriously and magically in a strange world with red sand and skulls and david bowie. yes david bowie. (just the music tho) the story is a bit awkward. basically there are these two people living in modern times who are actually black panthers. but they can transform. they are supposedly brother and sister, but the only way they can survive is to breed together. the male is crazy and unstable and eats people. the female (played by the super hot russian nastassja) tries to hide herself and cope better but has trouble with the relationship with the male and the people she finds herself around. she ends up developing a relationship with a zoo employee (how convenient) but when they want to.. do it.. she can't.. cause she'd transform and probably eat him by accident. so it all gets pretty crazy. ultimately, its a pretty dark film and highly entertaining. heavy dark drama with lots of 80's fantasy flavor. enjoyable if you like that kind of thing. plus there is lots of nudity. :)

Cat People
6.5/10 (Good. Worth Watching)

My Cousin Vinny

2006-09-23T12:38:00.000-07:00

My Cousin Vinny

Year: 1992
Directed by: Jonathan Lynn
Starring: Joe Pesci, Marisa Tomei, Ralph Macchio

I had seen this once a long long time ago so i didn't really remember it at all, but as i watched it it all seemed very familiar. I think this is the only other place i've seen ralph macchio aside from the karate kid film, but i'd have to look him up to be sure. joe pesci and marisa tomei deliver memorable performances (i think tomei won an award for this one) and the secondary cast which is littered with familiar faces does a great job. i think probably all of you are familiar with the synopsis. two kids headed to college stop at a convenience store and get picked up a little while later as suspects in the murder of the worker of the convenience store. due to a miscommunication (of epic proportions) the kids agree to the charges against them. since they are broke and can't afford an attorney they call in vinny, a cousin. little do they know that he has never defended anything other than personal injury and that he failed his bar exam 6 times. it makes for a fun and entertaining films, driven by the performances of pesci, tomei and the surrounding cast.

My Cousin Vinny
6.5/10 (Good. Worth Watching)

The Pacifier

2006-09-23T12:26:00.000-07:00

The Pacifier

Year: 2005
Directed by: Adam Shankman
Starring: Vin Diesel and a bunch of kids

well, i've never liked vin diesel much. the first time i saw him was in pitch black, which i really liked, but i could tell that he was a stiff performer there and he has never really gotten much better. i think the only other role i like by him is from boiler room which i enjoy. on top of that, taking a movie about a bad ass military guy and putting him in charge of a family of kids.. well.. how good can it be? you pretty much know what you're going to get. big guy comes in all hot and bothered and tries to lay the kids in line. kids rebel but over time come to really like him. he eventually softens his hard exoskeleton and starts really liking the kids. that's how these always work. and this one is right on par. the problems with this one: first, the opening action sequence is just awful. if adam shankman ever directs an action film it will be just bad. second, vin diesel. in what could be a relatively charming role, he just comes off as rock hard and stiff and rather unmotivated. third, the story revolves around a pretty obsurd mechanism that never really feels like a threat or problem or anything. instead of vin really being a body guard he really is just a babysitter. that's all you're going to get from this movie. being babysat for an hour and a half. so yeah, this is another made for kids film that just doesn't have enough brains in it to get through to the older market. stale and unimaginative.

The Pacifier
5/10 (mediocre)

Sky High

2006-09-23T08:28:00.000-07:00

Sky High

Year: 2005
Directed by: Mike Mitchell
Starring: a bunch of kids and kurt russell

happened to catch this on cable. i had seen the box for it in rental stores and was sure this was a total bomb of a film. it actually wasn't that bad. the setup was actually pretty good and it looked like it would turn out to be a pretty fun film. unfortunately it very quickly turned into a highschool romantic blunder full of he said she said bullshit. as that plundered on the unveiling of the villain was a very silly event and led to a pretty childish ending. kurt russells few moments in the film were pretty spectacular though and even made me laugh a couple of times. so yeah, made for kids? definitely. appeals to older watchers? not that much. it wasn't a waste of time though if you ever get in the mood for a silly kids kind of film.

Sky High
5.5/10 (mediocre, but not a waste of time)

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

2006-09-23T08:11:00.000-07:00

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Year: 1979
Directed by: Henning Schellerup
Starring: Jeff Goldblum

This film was made for TV back in 1979 and stars a young and unaccomplished Jeff Goldblum. If you had never read the story of sleepy hollow or had not seen the disney animated version as a kid, i'm not sure this film would really captivate you at all. but if you are a fan of the story itself, this is a nice version of it, particularly if you enjoy jeff goldblum. made in 1979 and for tv, there are no special effects or anything of the sort. ghosts are owls or people riding around with hoods on their heads and things of the sort. the film is very easy going and pleasant to watch but falls apart a bit toward the end when it hits the chaotic mark of everyone running around chasing or being chased by assorted ghosts. the film stays closer to the original story than perhaps the disney film does. no throwing flaming pumpkins or anything like that. the quality of the film itself is rather poor, obviously. but like i said, if you are a fan of the story its a fun watch during the fall season.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
6/10 (good. worth watching)

The Proposition

2006-09-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

The Proposition

Year: 2005
Directed by: John Hillcoat
Starring: Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone, Emily Watson

For being one of hollywoods hottest actors a few years ago, Guy pretty much disappeared, doing just 2 roles between 2002 (the year he starred in the count of monte cristo and the time machine) and 2006 (which will bring 3 guy pearce films). One of those 2 roles was the lead for australian film The Proposition. The Proposition feels like a western, though its Australian. interestingly, the film is written by Nick Cave, as in Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.

The film is dark and gritty and powerful. never have i seen a film so heavily loaded with sound and music that would shape the feel of a scene. i found myself noticing it to the point of watching a scene and imagining what other music could be in its place and how it might change the film drastically. the soundtrack is deep and ominous and raw, filled with earthy, untraditional sounds that gave rich, terrible life to the scenes. the visuals are grungy. flies litter every single frame and stick to people like honey. their buzzing becomes a part of the soundtrack.

the synopsis: a band of 3 brothers are dispicable criminals who recently have been accused of a horrible crime that has the local village in an uproar. the two younger brothers have left their older, more insane brother and got caught by an officer. the office give the middle brother a proposition. he'll have 9 days to find and kill his older brother or he will hang his younger brother. it seems that he has no problem with this proposition at all, as the two younger brothers apparently left the older because they had no love for lives as criminals and did not care for the acts of their eldest. the villagers care not. while the middle brother is away they bring out the youngest for flogging. after a grave adventure to find the eldest, the two return to break out the youngest and end up in a heated battle.

nearly everything you see written about this film tosses out the names eastwood, leone, and names like that. i'd be a little hesitant to place it next to those names, but the more the performances sink in, this film may find itself in that list. guy pearce was amazing and those around him put on fantastic performances as well. fantastic film.

The Proposition
7.5/10 (Very Good. Worth Watching)

Critters 4

2006-09-22T18:00:00.000-07:00

Critters 4

Year: 1991
Directed by: Rupert Harvey
Starring: Brad Dourif, Angela Bassett, Terrence Mann, Don Keith Opper

Well this was interesting. I've seen the original critters and i think i've seen parts of the 3rd.. although it may have been the 2nd. that was years ago. and man did they scare me. then i saw the first critters again in my teenage years and found it to be remarkably entertaining. not in the least bit scary. its amazing how those things can frighten you as a child when your imagination is the most active. i remember the box covers in the local store scared the crap out of me whenever we went down to pick up pizza. haha anyhow, i noticed critters 4 was on cable the other day at my parents so i put it on. through the first 45 minutes there was not a single critter spotting and yet... somehow... i was strangely entertained. then the critters came and it kicked it up a silly notch. then i had to step out and i missed a meaty 25 minutes of the middle but made it back for the conclusion. the critters series is really interesting and i think this halloween season i'm going to do a critters binge and watch all 4 in a row. the 80's came up with some amazing stuff in nearly every genre. horror was one of them. another interesting thing about the series is that 4 films were released in 5 years, 3 and 4 coming in the same year (91). barry opper wrote the 3rd and 4th and he happens to be the brother of one of the 2 recurring characters over the 4 films. i knew i recognized the two characters from my viewing of the first film several years ago so i looked them up and sure enough they are in all 4 films. in the first film they are the hero aliens who come to earth to eliminate the critters. i'm curious to watch all the films because as they are now in the last film, one is in an escape pod with critter eggs (found by a salvage ship which is the host for the film, taking place in space), and the other is a captain of some sort of space team that come to catch the critters which they have 'lost'. it looks as if the two characters are at odds with one another after being partners in the first film so i'm curious how their characters changed over the series.

anyway, so yeah, this was surprisingly entertaining despite a relatively small amount of actual critter action (probably due to expenses). early performance by brad dourif which was entertaining. typical breakdown of characters. some greedy. some homesick. some just jerks and backstabbers. so yeah, the crew breaks down and makes it more difficult on themselves. typical character blunders end up in being food for critters. but its still a fun watch. if you like the crazy unique horror that only the 80's could offer, start with critters 1 and if it strikes a chord, go through the whole series. i'm gonna, and i know i'm gonna be entertained.

Critters 4
5.5/10 (medicore, but not a waste of time)