Eagle Eye – No news here, this movie isn’t very good. Interestingly, it’s produced pretty well. There’s no big effects, but what’s there is good, and there are some nice car chase explosioney type things. People act (and are written) adequately, nothing is super corny. THE BOOF is fine, though I just realized that it’s the boof, starring as the boof, played by the boof. He’s the same stuttering (no no no no no no no no no no! go go go go go go go go go!), in over his head, every-young-man kind of character as in transformers. It’s the fundamental premise of this movie that’s crap, and that’s no surprise. It’s like the matrix without the matrix or the effects, it’s like a spy movie without any real intrigue, it’s like enemy of the state without… no wait, it’s like enemy of the state. Hell, the computer actually says “enemy of the state” out loud twice, apparently lacking Irony version 2.0. These movies where some agency is so powerful, sees everything, controls everything – it’s not only silly and plays on paranoia and technofear, it’s also just dumb, cuz if you can see everthing, can hack any computer, can use any electronic, can make power lines snap with freakin’ technokinesis (I just invented that word, I’m pretty proud of it, I should figure out what technopathy would be), what the hell does it need with the boof and boofette? Silly movie.
Body of Lies – Funny I watched both of these on the same night. This one is obviously better, more of a Syriana + ….. oh I dunno any middle east spy movie in the past 5 years. Here’s the thing with intrigue movies, you have to be intrigued. And that can be not even the movie’s fault, you might just not feel intrigueable. I didn’t tonight, too distracted, too weary after eagle eye, dunno. Maybe the movie just didn’t do a good job of bringing me in, that’s certainly possible. It’s kind of tightly done, it gets from place to place quickly, probably too quickly. Feels kind of scattered and all over the place. Too much going on, too little cohesion. This movie isn’t bad at all, you just have to care to think it’s good, and I didn’t end up caring.
Australia – Blech. What a god awful movie. This movie lets you know right away that is going to be atrocious. In the first 10 minutes there’s a horrible cheesy bar fight scene with hugh jackman. And then the worst moment in the movie happens when nicole kidman sees something she doesn’t like and looks into the camera (away from what she should be shocked by and staring at) and makes the most over the top scandalized face I’ve seen in a movie. The movie had lost me by then, I should have turned it off, it had no chance. The rest of the movie isn’t as awful, but it’s still not good or even decent. The first half is, without exaggeration, City Slickers 2: The Quest for Curly’s Gold. Okay, some exaggeration, but not a lot, mostly that there’s no one named curly. The second half is just a trite melodrama, get your kid back, tame the wild husband, live in the crazy scenario, crap movie. The one bit of interest is I don’t know anything about the impact of WW II on Australia and its people, so that was interesting. But that was seriously 10 minutes of the whole thing. Crap movie.
Heat – Okay, so I really wanted to see this after Dark Knight cuz everyone said how they were similar and everyone always says how great Heat is. And finally I get to see it! And I’ve already seen it. Sigh. I really hate when I do this. I did still watch it, because someone else hadn’t seen it before, which was good because even though ever scene seemed familiar, I couldn’t tell you what was going to happen next. That’s why I write these things down, I’ve already forgotten what I thought of all the movies in the last batch. Anyway, Heat. Very good movie. Very cool cops & robbers dynamic, follow both stories, draw parallels between their lives. Big showdown between De Niro and Pacino is good (certainly better than Righteous Kill). The famous bank scene is good, though I’m not sure about the best evar. The ending is great, it is very much a batman thing, this opposed forces with a tinge of respect and mutual understanding. It’s an old movie, no one needs me to tell them this, but it is good.
Max Payne – So Max Payne the game had two things going for it – noir style and slow motion. This movie does an okay job with slow motion (well, in one scene it’s cool anyway), the rest is pretty average. It’s just too late, slow motion isn’t cool anymore, it’s either the Matrix, 300, or boring. Meanwhile the movie for some reason completely forsakes the noir thing. Maybe they thought it would be too corny, I can kind of get that, it might have been. But I’d like to think it was possible, and it would have been cooler. Instead they have this silly demon crap that I don’t understand the purpose of. It’s not like Max Payne is so interesting of a character, he’s kinda just punisher with less guns and more slowness, so I don’t care to watch him for 2 hours, you have to give me more, and spooky demons aren’t going to cut it. On the other hand, it’s not that badly produced of a movie. It’s horribly acted, Mark Whalberg is doing his horrible bland half yelling acting the whole movie. No one else is any good. But the action and effects are all pretty well done. As just a vanilla action movie, it’s not really that bad. And the style they did choose to go with, this sort of dark, constantly-snowy, bleak city thing, is pretty good. So, see this movie on cinemax cuz it’s an action movie and you are bored. Do not see it because you played the game.
Midnight Meat Train – What a horrible piece of shit! It’s just an normal horror movie, there’s a bad guy, there’s a good guy, there’s lots of blood. The good guy is a little more of a go getter, which is good I guess, somewhat different. In fact by the end he becomes quite a scrapper, which is the only cool thing about the movie. Cuz the whole point of a movie like this is of course the gore. And the gore is horrendous. It is the shittiest CG I’ve seen in a this-was-actually-in-the-theaters movie in a long time. Horrible glossy digital blood (300 had this problem, but it was droplets, as opposed to the pools of it here), crappy CG parts flying out of people, shitty body contortion effects, crap. The physical effects (when they deign to use them) aren’t interesting, because they are left for only the plain stuff, none of the “big” effects. Just a useless movie. I won’t “spoil” the end bits, but I don’t need to be specific, the point is just that they think they are putting in a clever twist that, I guess?, introduces some sort of moral ambiguity. Mostly it introduces more stupidness.
House Bunny – Wow, okay. Yeah, yeah, I know, I only rented this cuz of pretty girls. Kinda true, kinda I just have to know how bad some things are. I rented Midnight Meat Train, after all, and that had nil boobies. As is usually the case with “hot” girl movies, they aren’t really hot. I think I remember Anna Farris being hot, back in those parody movie days when she was a brunette, not so skinny, not so tan, not so collagen. She’s not now, though, not even a little. Didn’t really like anyone in this movie, except that red head girl. Besides the fact that I do think she’s super hot, she had a pretty funny character. She had this dorky cute thing going on that was remarkably genuine for such a fake movie. It was forced, to be sure, but I really enjoyed her most of her nerd phase. Admittedly, when she tried to be nerdy it failed as often or not, because non-nerds just can’t write good nerd jokes. This is a thing of mine, in fact. I never liked any of the nerd shows, Freaks and Geeks I found unauthentic, Napoleon Dynamite I found obnoxious, others I can’t remember I’m sure. That’s why I looooove Big Bang Theory so much. It is absolutely written by nerds, they have nerd toys, they reference nerd things (not JUST star wars or star trek), they dress, talk, act like nerds. And their nerdness isn’t forced, it’s honest. And the jokes aren’t forced, they are actually kind of subtle jokes you have to get to find funny. Not in an obnoxious elitist way, just in a nod in your direction kinda way. Wait, I’m not talking about this shitty movie anymore. I dunno, it’s shitty, move along.
Mildred Pierce – Been a while since an old timey movie, but I watched all three netflixes this weekend. So this is about a married woman w/ kids whose husband leaves and she has to make her way, by herself, in the 40s, with a vagina. Well, the actual framework is someone gets murdered, let’s figure out how via long flashbacks, but that wasn’t really the point for me. The first half of the movie is pretty cool, she has to find a way to take care of her kids, eventually becoming a business woman and being successful, I liked that part, it was interesting, not an easy road, easier than it would be in real life, she didn’t exactly dig ditches, but still interesting. The second half is about her relationship with her brat of a daughter and how she’ll do anything for her. This half is horrendous, not because it is horrendously done, but because I hate all the characters, including the main one for her patheticness, and it was just annoying to watch. I appreciate the value in watching people make mistakes and finding meaning in it. And no doubt for a parent, especially a mother, especially one who has had a trouble child, this movie will have more resonance. But for us blessed childless few – :) – you just want to kick the kid in the head and be done with her. So the movie lost me, not badly done, just not made for me, I suppose.
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