Movie Reviews @ The Temple

Okay, I’ve been too busy and my computer has been too not-turning-on to keep up to date, so, speed round:

Funny People – Better than I thought. Adam Sandler’s attempt to be serious. Very inside baseball for comedians, which I feel some awareness of due to KATG. Not bad, way too damn long, but if it had been an hour and a half I’d say it was pretty good.

Ponyo – Cute movie. The ponyo sperm/fish/little girl thing is kind of creepy. But no one ever claimed Miyazaki put out totally normal not at all bat shit crazy movies. In the end it’s pretty charming, very weird, certainly unique. Has a surprising amount of american voice talent behind it, I actually watched it with dubbing on. Worth seeing if you are into that sort of thing.

Kick-Ass – Thought I would love this. But then again it’s so up it’s own ass because a 9 year old girl says cunt. Whoopteefuckindoo. I loved Millar’s Wanted, though the movie was clearly lacking. This is similarly anti social in many ways, though obviously it has a different intent. It gets a pass as the first of what seems like is going to be many stories about amateurs who want to be heroes. I did enjoy it, a lot of the over the top action was a lot of fun. The story itself isn’t really that interesting. Besides the failed super kid and the cuntmouth kid, it’s a fairly normal super hero story. Good enough, 3 start on netflix, but it didn’t rock my shit.

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard – Snore! 100% average movie with 100% average acting, writing, and jokes. I did laugh, there were plenty of mostly silly moments that made me giggle, but I don’t look back on it as a particularly hilarious movie. It’s kind of just a remake of Used Cars from the 80s, except not as good. Nothing about it is offensively bad, it’s just an extraordinarily vanilla experience.

The Unborn (American version) – Meh, whatevs. Kind of normal horror movie. Effects were nothing special, story was nothing special, suspense was nothing special. None of these movies have much going for them. It’s mostly about the hook. Girl who kills you after you watch a tape, that was original. Seeing things when you are blind, kind of. This is just a devil baby that was never born. Not that hook-ish. The infusion of jewish mysticism was an odd choice. In the end it had absolutely nothing to do with anything. Swap a cross for a star, a bible for a kabbalah, a priest for a rabbi, and latin for hebrew, and it plays out exactly the same way any christian based ghost would. It wasn’t bad, it was made well enough, I suppose. But I won’t remember anything about it later on.

The Unborn (Thai version) – Watched these within a couple days to compare. The sensibilities are certainly different, I guess. In the first place, the main character is very unlikable, maybe that’s a cultural thing, but I didn’t care if she got haunted. As we’ve come to expect, it’s more suspensey than horrorey. Not quite so much about the horrific visage of a demon than it is about an out of focus girl in the background behind a character. That effect, used often, was actually cool, you always noticed her in a mirror or on a stairwell or out a window. The girl seemed to really be haunting the movie. But at the end of the day, same meh as the other one. The hook isn’t much. Thai people didn’t get the message that ghost girls with long black hair are over. It’s kind of got more of a twist than the american version, not really a twist, just who’s the “bad guy.” The american version played it more mystical, demons invading our world and such. The thai version is more of a classic ghost getting revenge story. Again, not a bad movie, but nothing special.