Movie Reviews @ The Temple

Babylon A.D. – Vin Diesel has never been in a good movie where he wasn’t named Riddick.  Fact.  This movie is really just a ripoff of Children of Men, but with less story, atmosphere, acting, moral, motivation, or dialogue.  But with 3 to 5 punches.  Not even good punches, not Riddick punches that’s for damn sure.  Not an overtly offense movie, just nothing.  Lame.

Drillbit Taylor – This is every bit the movie you imagine.  Some funniness, I laughed out loud a handful of times.  Standard nerds vs. bullies story.  Scalliwag to hero story.  Much like the last movie, not horrible, just barely worth even mentioning.

Shutter – Horror movie, I assume a remake of a japanese movie as they just happen to move to japan and get haunted by a japanese girl.  Nothing much to see here, the hook is “spirit photography” which is obviously stupid.  Somehow I’m more annoyed by a ghost that’s “detected” than just by a ghost beating people up.  The movie is fine, it’s not gory, mostly going for that creepy thing, a couple “action” scenes, but not really.  A fine trilogy of meh movies this week, each representing the height of mediocrity in their genres.

Gentleman’s Agreement – I like this movie!  It’s the last in my reporters series, this time from the 40s again.  The idea is a reporter is asked to write a big piece on anti-semitism.  It having been done to death, his angle is to go somewhere new and tell everyone there he is jewish.  To get a real-ish perspective on what it’s like.  Kinda corny, you might ask why not just send a jewish reporter, but then you might respond because the racists won’t listen to one, so it ends up being a very interesting decision.  The whole movie handles race (or religion, or both, depending on the perspective of those involved) surprisingly well.  At first it often seems overly simplified or over played.  But it’s honestly done extremely well.  Gregory Peck in particular, you can see the oppression on his face.  An oppression that is effective due to its nature, but also due to him being completely surprised he could be treated so badly.  Clearly not something he’s felt before, nor perhaps something that he’s understood for others before.  You see his discovery, his struggle, his confusion, it’s wonderful.  Maybe it was my own prejudice, but I did not expect an older movie to handle the issue so well.  Not that it says anything new, doubt it was even new then.  Also there was a lot of context I missed due to the time period, it’s just out of WW II, and it references people I have never heard of.  But it is just played out so real.  You might accuse it of being heavy handed, but I really don’t think so.  Sure, calling someone a kike is bad.  Not giving them a job because they are jewish is bad, duh.  But allowing the racist at the table to make his joke, who of us stands up against that in a business social situation?  Making “harmless” self-hating jokes is still so common.  Telling a the kid who is made fun of for being jewish “no, it’s okay, you aren’t a jew!” is a really fucked up and complicated situation.  Really good movie, I think at the top of my reporter movies and old timey movies.

One Missed Call – C’mon, this has 0% on RT!  I had to see it!!  Sadly, it’s not a 0% movie.  I know the RT system is kinda stupid, 0% just means no one thought it was 50%, which isn’t the same as a 0% movie, really.  It’s a weird aggregate math.  Anyway, it’s not a 0% movie.  Not that it’s good, obviously, the premise is about as asinine and derivative as you can imagine.  You get a voice mail of yourself dying, then you die.  It’s The Ring, sponsored by Nokia, pretty dumb.  Surprisingly the effects in the movie are kinda cool.  I mean not great or anything, but I like the style of phantasm, it was decently effective.  Nothing else to say about the movie, just a random horror movie with a worse than usual premise.

Spun – Weird ass drug movie.  Hyper reality style, lots of quick cuts and fast forward moments accompanied by loud noises.  I can kind of give the actors credit for doing the job of wackos pretty convincingly.  Not that I’m a big expert on methheads, or whateverthefuck they are, but they fit the preconcieved bill.  These sort of movies are hard to judge, because they don’t really have any requirements.  It doesn’t need good acting, they merely have to act crazy.  It doesn’t need great cinematography , as long as it’s sporadic.  It sure as hell doesn’t need any sensible plot.  For the first bit I was pretty sure I didn’t like it, just too random.  But it did find it’s groove, for me.  It managed to find (very few) moments of quiet, and it paced the hyperness in a way that didn’t overwhelm me.  There’s not great depth to the movie, it’s not philosophy, but I did like it, I was hooked by the end, the finale montage is effective, even if it doesn’t really say anything except this is where everyone happened to end up at the end of the last 2 hours.  It’s certainly not for everyone, it’s not even really for me, I don’t have much connection with drug movies.  But it did work, for whatever reason.

Donnie Brasco – Never saw this one, it’s pretty well known.  It’s the kind of movie that was very good, but didn’t blow me away.  It felt like it could have, but it didn’t quite click all the way.  It’s well done, it’s very dramatic, and interesting dynamic between the FBI undercover and his mafia friend/boss.  It made for a fantastic interaction between Depp and Pacino.  But, for some reason, I felt like it should have been great, and it was just very good.  Not really sure why.

What Happens In Vegas – Not much to say here, it’s everything you imagine and nothing more (wow I just reread all these reviews, typically written over the span of a week or two, and realized I said the exact same thing about drillbit taylor).  Average plot, acting, writing, and humor.  I have no love for Kutcher and an active dislike for Diaz as an actress (though I appreciate her political stuff), so there was nothing for me there.  Definitely a few laughs, that’s it.

Choke – Yikes, weird movie.  The premise is a guy in sexaholics anonymous (or whatever it’s called), and then he has a story.  It’s really weird, and in some ways pretty outrageous (rape fantasies, lots of titties & sex, other stuff).  But I actually found myself not being annoyed by that, which I definitely would be normally.  I don’t like shock value things, they usually aren’t funny, and they are annoying on top.  But this somehow didn’t come out that way, it was so subdued and casual in it’s activity, it made it seem halfway normal.  Not really, but kinda.  The movie takes some really weird turns, the whole twist/push at the end is really strange, so much so that you can’t even really criticize it because it’s surreal.  If the movie thinks its deep, then I don’t like it.  But if it’s just a weird and interesting movie, then I think I do.

Real Genius – Finally I knock one of my primary failings as a nerd off the list (another is Blade Runner, that’ll come soon!).  This movie is pretty cheesy, the acting, the setting, the ending, it’s all very corny, but it’s fun.  The science is pretty cool, it’s all about lasers and they know enough to at least sound smart.  Truth to tell, for the big final solution laser, I don’t know enough lasers to know if they were full of shit.  I mean, I know the actual product was stupid, but they used a lot of words in a row to describe the laser, and they were all pretty well placed in context.  But just because I understand the words and the context doesn’t mean I know how ridiculous the premise of the laser is, I’m assuming it’s silly goose.  But anyway, it’s a fun movie, glad to have finally seen it.

JK Wedding Dance

So I guess this is the big meme of the moment.  Big like huge like gigantic.  I’m normally pretty resistant to memes, to popular things in general (which is a personality flaw, to be honest), but this is pretty unavoidably adorable.  Reminds me kind of a funeral where everyone wore sunglasses and swayed to Ray Charles music that I might have been to once.

Bee tee dubs, the meme of the previous moment which I had heard about but never bothered to look up was an artist who watched as United banged up his guitar so he made a song about it.  Cute idea, not a very good song, but I love using the internet in these ways.

How it would be, if a house was dreaming.

Super duper cool.

Comic Book Reviews @ The Temple

Blankets – Huh, I was not expecting this.  I heard about this back around valentine’s day as it’s a kind of love story book.  But it’s a big book (though actually a very quick read), so I kept stalling, plus it just didn’t seem like it would be that good, despite all its praise.  But it’s really a beautiful book.  It’s about a guy, his life as a kid with his brother, his life as a teenager falling in love for the first time, and his life coming out of from under the weight of a christian upbringing.  None of these stories is that close to my life, but somehow the story hits solidly.  The book is half poem, half painting, which is a stupidly obvious thing to say about any comic books which are quite literally those two things, but this one does both so well.  The art is simple in one respect, the people don’t have a lot of detail, it’s kind of wistful.  But the fantasy he dreams up, his imagination, his drawings, depiction of love, or fear, are absolutely beautiful.  The writing is also simple, he’s just talking to you, saying what happened, but there are moments of introspection that are, if not revelatory, at least genuine and emotional.  It’s kind of a sad book, there’s bits of hope at the end, and a feeling that makes it all okay, because he’s okay with it.  It’s hard to describe.  But it’s a very heartfelt book, he captures emotion better than maybe any comic I’ve read, it’s really good.

Maintenance by Jim Massey & Robbi Rodriguez - What a funny little book!  It's a very short series, I don't know if by intention or if it just wasn't popular, but it only has 10 issues.  It's about these two maintenance guys working in some sort of evil comic book villain think tank or research center.  It's basically a comedy, it's pretty silly, but I laughed out loud at least a couple times an issue.  It's too bad it's so short, cuz it was really pretty good.

Wasteland by Antony Johnston & Christopher Mitten – The first issue of this book was so fantastic.  I was 100% on board with the world, with the guy, with the mystique, all of it.  I loved it.  But as the series went on I was really kind of disappointed.  The art style is cool, but is damn confusing when action starts happening.  It’s black and white, very shaded and cluttered.  The narrative jumps around a lot (which is neat), but that means i have to figure out who is talking now to whom and what they are doing meanwhile.  I really just got lost a bunch and it sucked.  The overall arc of the story didn’t really impress me much either.  I only read to issue 19, and it was okay, but it wasn’t what I wanted it to be.  With this story arc over, it might move to the more mystical stuff the seemed so cool, but I probably won’t find out, sadly, as I don’t think I’ll read anymore.

Serenity: Better Days by Joss Whedon – The second Firefly comic, it’s alright.  I don’t remember loving the first one either.  The truth is reading Joss Whedon isn’t nearly as fun as watching.  And without the really great cast to bring the characters out, witty dialogue is as often corny as it is clever.  It’s not bad, it’s still a good world, but it’s certainly not as good as an episode.  The art is good for the most part, I’m not a fan of the extra realistic cover and internal cover art.  I can’t stand when things are based on real people, they try too hard and either get them creepily close, or get them creepily way off, either way it’s no good.  But oh well, I own the rest of the firefly universe, might as well own this too!

Black Hole – What a weeeeird book.  The premise is there’s this disease, sexually transmitted, that gives you mutations.  It doesn’t kill you, or disable you, you just get weird bodily features.  A tail, a lumpy face, an extra mouth, just mutations like that.  So the people with this get outcast of course and the book follows a couple people who have or get the disease.  Minus the disease, it’s kind of just a teenage angsty comic, with an exaggerated reason to feel like an outsider.  I was into it for a while, but it seemed to me not to develop into enough.  It didn’t have enough feeling for me, the story arc wasn’t satisfying.  There were moments that were great or shocking, but overall the strength of the book didn’t hold up against the weirdness.

Movie Reviews @ The Temple

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.

Fallen Princesses

These are pretty cool, the plastic surgery one is off for me, it has no resonance, it’s just kinda gross.  But the rest are good.

Shoryuken!

Down, down-forward, forward + punch, baby.

Smooth Criminal in Rag Dog Kung Fu

This is pretty damn awesome.  Don’t go watch the original, though, it doesn’t really match up, it’s still cool though.

Chalk Art

Everyone loves chalk art!  This one is the coolest.

Movie Reviews @ The Temple

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen – Okay, here’s what’s wrong with the first transformers: THE BOOF; Megan Fox, who is hands down the least hot girl people consider hot these days; John Turturro playing the worst character in the history of cinema; horrendous shitty sitcom humor; somehow killing off the only “black” robot'; and generally far too much human and far too little transformer.  As for the second movie: even more too much BOOF, Megan Fox is still not hot, though she’s outdone in not-hot-ness by that nasty blonde chick; john turturro is actually halfway funny; humor almost as bad as the first except for the fortunate lack of a garden scene; replacing one offensive black robot with TWO offensive black robots (I think they were black, maybe white trash, either way stupid and not funny which is the most offensive part); and 30 minutes of humans for every 5 minutes of robots (seriously transformers, YOU are going to teach me both about love and father/son relationships?).  This is all what I was very critically and fuddy-dud-ily thinking until Optimus Prime wrecked the SHIT out of some decepticons, and I was sold.  To be clear, this movie is not good, it’s lame and stupid and you can barely suffer through any scene with a non-metallic based lifeform.  But for the 25 minutes (total) that the robots really show up in this movie, it is some fantastic ass kicking fun.  The CG is very good, I was amazed how well the robots blended into the live action.  The battles are pretty confusing, but pretty cool (minus a massively disappointing finale).  Whoever invented slow motion badassery in action movies (nearly perfected in 300) should win some kind of life time achievement oscar.  I don’t care how much they messed with transformers lore, it’s not like I remember.  I just wanted to see shit done get blown up, and it did.  If you made a 45 minute clip show of the first two movies combined, you’d have a great 45 minutes, that’s the best I can say for it.  Favorite part of the movie?  When optimus prime blasts some decepticon through a wall and a 10 year old boy in the row in front of me flings his hands toward the sky and yells “YES!”  I guess I can be content that they made this movie after all.

Up – I was kind of worried about this one.  The previews made it seem so normal, like just another typical adventure cartoon.  Not bad, just not special.  The movie did overcome this impression, though not entirely.  There is a lot of running around in the jungle with our friends dodging this danger and that, kind of normal.  Of course you can boil all of the pixar movies down to an adventure of a couple heroes, but something about jumping over logs and running from creatures seemed pretty standard.  However, the basis of the movie is very solid.  You really can’t deny its heart, or at least I couldn’t.  The opening was incredibly touching, reminded me a lot of this video I posted a bit ago.  The relationships were a bit standard, but charming nonetheless.  The end is very sweet and touching, of course.  It’s not the best pixar movie ever, I’m not sure where it ranks.  I think I was more charmed by ratatouille, definitely by Wall-E and the Incredibles.  Those first 10 minutes and the reprise later on are beautiful, the middle is just fun.

Heckler – This is a Jamie Kennedy movie (I guess?) about hecklers and critics.  It’s just interviews and footage of a bunch of comics talking about hecklers, which is pretty good.  No one likes hecklers, we all think they are assholes, done deal.  It’s funny to hear the way comics deal with it and some of the crazy stories.  The second half moves to critics and they lose me.  It becomes a bunch of comics and filmmakers whining and bitching about people making fun of them.  The irony of people who make a career of observing and more often than not making fun of the world complaining about being critiqued is lost on them, if not the viewer.  Filmmakers are slightly different, but they are still a bunch of baby bitches.  Aww, poor actor had some nasty person with a blog (ahem!) call him a baby bitch, awwwwww.  A couple claim that by nature of being a performer you are sensitive, have a thin skin, and therefore feel the criticism more.  That’s an interesting point.  But I still can’t summon any sympathy because a blogger said jamie kennedy should be stopped from making movies.  It’s true, he’s lame and unfunny and untalented, so it’s funny to say he should be stopped.  If you think that means I think also means are a fundamentally bad person, then you are stupid AND untalented.

Volver – Umm…. okay.  Kind of a weird movie.  Kind of a mix of a coverup caper and a ghost story and a family movie.  Not really either of the first two things, though.  I don’t think I really liked it.  Penelope Cruz was about as likable as I’ve ever seen her, she’s not my style.  The story of the story is really kinda silly.  I wasn’t enjoying myself.  Family movies have a tendency to come together in the end and make you feel good, and I suppose this one did that.  But I don’t think it’s enough to make up for an otherwise unimportant movie.

A Simple Curve – Random little indie family movie.  Father and son up in alaska, I think, who own a woodworking business.  Business is rough, trying to balance art and money.  Drama with another man in town, and with the son’s dating.  It’s a well enough done movie.  It feels real in a simple (no pun) straightforward way.  The script and acting is done honestly, so I appreciate it.  It also isn’t about a whole lot, so it’s easy to leave by the wayside, in my mind.  I can certainly imagine it having some resonance for the right audience.  It didn’t fail for me, it was perfectly adequate, it just didn’t have a special spark for me on top of that.

End of the Spear – Yech.  This movie didn’t have to be bad, it seemed like.  It’s about some missionaries and a tribe in some jungle somewhere.  It’s filmed really amateurey.  I mean, they used a good camera, but somehow you can just tell it’s a dude and a prosumer, not professional stuff.  I would never be the type to discount non-“professional” contributions, but it was distracting here.  The real problem is the ridiculous vantage of the movie.  First of all, it’s about missionaries who try to convert savages and get killed.  Science has not invented a scale small enough to measure the amount of sympathy I had for these jackfucks.  Second of all, it’s preachy and annoying and selfishly from the point of view of the missionaries.  It’s not blatantly offensive, I’m more annoyed in retrospect than I was while actually watching the movie, so I shouldn’t be so harsh.  But it is simply not a good movie, to me.  The showed some footage at the end of the documentary about this apparently real life story (woudln’t have believed it, seems too movie-ish, I’m going to guess they took some liberties) and it actually seemed moderately interesting.  It’s too bad this movie soured me on the subject, now I probably won’t watch the documentary.

American Teen – Yeeeesh.  I swear I heard this movie was good, I don’t know where, but I thought I did, but it’s really not.  I don’t even like teenagers, I pretty much want nothing to do with any of them I’m not related to.  Teenagers are dumb, that’s the whole point of being a teenager.  I was extra dumb as a teenager, why would I want to watch an hour and a half of other teenagers being dumb?  On top of that, they are unbelievably cliched.  You can’t say it’s fake, I guess, because it’s a documentary, so it’s real, so life really just is cliched.  But mostly its pretty annoying, drama is annoying, high school is annoying, reality tv is annoying, and seeing myself in this movie is pretty damn annoying.  I already know how i was and what I did and how stupid it all turned out to be, no movie was required to provide an education.  The only reason to see a movie like this is is to get some sort of insight into the kids, and I don’t feel it provided any of that.  Maybe I’m close enough to kid-dom still that it’s not interesting to see what goes on, maybe an older person would say “oh, that’s how it is nowadays”  I guess?  I can’t imagine that’s true, cuz I’m pretty far from high school at this point.  So if it doesn’t provide insight, what’s the point?  It’s the Real World: Indiana High School, so…… ok?  Annoying kids with standard lives living the same old story.  Not that I’m blaming the kids, I was just as annoying as any of them, it just doesn’t seem interesting if we all already know this stuff.

Punisher – It’s been like 2 weeks since I saw this, but it wasn’t really worth rushing to review.  It’s just a bloody action movie.  It’s gory as hell, like seriously extraordinarily nasty with gross ways to kill people.  Not really that cool of ways, certainly not interesting, just there.  Nothing interesting about the story, nothing captivating about the punisher’s motivation.  Moderately interesting revamp of Jigsaw’s origin, but besides that, super meh!

Pi – Faith in Chaos – Gah…. ok.  So this is a weird one.  Never saw it, even though it seems like the type of thing I’d see.  Darren Aranofsky, who did the Wrestler, which I looooove, but was nothing like this.  It’s more of a David Lynch film.  It’s black and white, has dischordant jarring sounds/music in the background.  All the shots are really tight on peoples’ faces who yell into the camera as often as talk.  It’s very aggressive, offputting, and weird.  It’s not bad, i guess, maybe if I was really really paying attention I’d have something to say.  Mostly it was just kinda weird, kinda interesting, mostly weird.  The math part of it doesn’t hold up in any realistic way.  It’s quickly diverges into weird numerology bull crap and jewish mysticism of all things.  So it’s not really cool in that way.  It’s mostly interesting the way Lynch is interesting, it’s freaking weird and you probably haven’t seen a movie that was weird in this particular way before.  Beyond that I can’t say much for it.

Hard Times

So Ze Frank has been back for a little bit, in a limited capacity.  It’s not as good as having The Show back, but at least we get something.  This one’s pretty dang funny.

The Man With No Shadow

Super cool LED “sculpture”

Little Wheel

Pretty cute point and click, quick to play through.

Subtle Encouragement

I just got a spam email titled “Look here or get AIDs”.  Yep.

How to start a dance party

This should be stupid, but it’s kinda cute.

Sorry I’m Late

Another stop motion.  Kinda boring at first, but they do some cool things with the foreground that make it worthwhile.

Heroes jizz in their pants

Mostly funny cuz I haven’t heard the song in a while, but whatever, gigz.

Map the Fallen

Wow.  It’s not like I usually jump at the uber patriotic or emotionally manipulative stuff.  But this is a pretty amazing union of tech and honoring soldiers.

Movie Reviews @ The Temple

Terminator Salvation – Now that’s a good damn movie!  It was great!  I couldn’t help but spend the whole time comparing it to star trek.  I’ve been slightly annoyed that everyone loves star trek so much.  In retrospect, it really was a fun but soulless movie.  It didn’t have any interesting themes or structure, it was pure story.  Now that’s still a fun movie, but it is ultimately forgettable for me.  Terminator isn’t fun, I mean it’s action fun, but it’s not funny fun.  It’s not lighthearted, so you can’t really compare the two, but they do share that “remake”ness, and they both did it well.  Terminator had a number of nods to the first two (there were only two, ps!), almost all of which worked great.  Once they messed it up w/ cheesy music, and one thing they did one too many times, but besides that I liked them a lot.  But it really shared a common sensibility with especially the second movie.  More than just “that other guy used to say that line!” nods, it had a theme and some plot devices that perfectly echoed the older movies without being dorky.  There are only really minor annoyances with it, little bit of product placement, really bad CG when Marcus first gets to LA and middling CG with the T-800 (but fantastic CG everywhere else), some crappy acting from the extras, some really stupid tech/science things.  But those were 30 second annoyances.  Star Trek had movie-long annoyances when it came to 5th grade humor and permanent retinal damage via lens flare.  So instead of enjoying the rest of star trek (which is really good) as much as I should, I spent half the movie being annoyed.  Terminator didn’t annoy me, it was cool and actiony and a good summer movie.  The filmmaking is actually really good, the first half is done very quick and confusing, which normally I hate but it mostly fit.  They did overuse it a bit (I don’t need steadycam on john connor’s face, for instance).  But the helicopter scene (is it just me, or would I be scared of helicopters now if I were connor?) in the beginning was really cool.  The plot wasn’t anything surprising, but it did it’s job and we saw lots of cool terminators.  The humanoid terminators do still fight like morons, but they always did, whatchagonnado.  Overall I’d say this is the winner for the summer so far (I’m just assuming wolverine isn’t very good, I haven’t seen it yet).  Then again, rotten tomatoes would tell me star trek is 95% and terminator 34%, so clearly I’m smoking a whole different kind of crack than most people.

Donnie Darko – One of those classics/cults I never got around to seeing.  It’s a weird ass movie, on purpose.  I can’t think of anything intelligent to say about it.  I do know that I liked it, but I don’t know why.  It’s weird and random and doesn’t seem very cohesive.  The artifice of the movie doesn’t really hold up, for me.  It kind of wanders some and feels pointless, but then it seems to have a point by the time it gets to the end.  I’m not sure, I do like it, I just can’t exactly say why.  I don’t like time travel, so that’s a minus, but it’s not really time travel, it’s just a plot device.  It’s not a mechanism that I feel needs to be understood except in its most obvious form.  Good, I guess.

Black Book – Hm, I was into this movie for at least half of it.  It’s another WWII movie (sure have seen a lot of those, and I’m pretty excited for Inglorious Bastards too).  It’s set in Holland, among the resistance and a jewish woman who (kind of) spies for them.  It’s fairly well done, acted and written and such.  And though it wasn’t exactly exciting or edge of my seat, it was a good movie for a lot of it.  It starts relying a little too much on coincidence though, becomes too melodramatic.  It’s got sort of a mystery to wrap up, so it has to twist and turn for that, which was completely unnecessary.  The whole last bit is pretty unnecessary.  She just experiences too much and just happens to get here and there and things happen to happen and it gets old.  The front half feels pretty honest about a really horrible situation (obviously) and her finding a place in it all.  But then it feels… I guess too Hollywoody, it gets cheesily structured, plot-wise, and becomes sort of ridiculous and it becomes a much lesser movie.  It’s still not bad, but it went from pretty good to kind of annoying in about 20 minutes.

Abel Raises Cain – Hulu had this on its front page and it’s really pretty cool.  It’s about this guy named Abel who made a career of tricking the media.  An unkind description would be a career as a prankster or hoaxster.  That’s a thing for me, cuz I don’t like pranks at all.  Whether its Punk’d, or a hidden camera show, I don’t like them, they are stupid and cheap.  You can trick anyone if you put enough effort into it, and anyone would be tricked, so it’s just stupid.  So this guy could be on my bad side, because once you give someone permission to be a trickster, it’s up to their own character whether they do it right or are dicks.  Kind of like how the daily show could be considered pranksters for giving interviews in character, when they are mocking their interviewee, but I love them.  I actually love this Abel guy.  The media is his target, his tricks reveal their laziness.  He creates fake protest organizations, or scandalous causes or groups, and the media buys it.  The film shows local news after local news after NATIONAL news report of his bullshit.  They don’t check into his story, they don’t do any research, they just put him on the air because people will watch a news story about an organization that wants to clothe indecent animals.  It’s really genius.  Some of his antics are childish, but they generally still reveal an idiocy of media.  When he goes on the talk shows is odd.  Of course jerry springer (well, the 70s equivalent) is stupid and scandalous and probably fake.  The movie claims that his fake talk show stories are what started the trend of them being so fake now.  That rather than expose their ridiculousness, it merely ushered them into an acceptance of “anything for ratings”  Don’t know if it’s true, hard to say.  That’s an interesting point, by the way, this whole movie could be fake!  I don’t believe it is, but it could be, and I’d be sitting here typing about it as if it were real, and it could be the biggest lie.  That’s why it’s hard to ever be on the side of a liar, he could be lying to you too.  Also interesting: this shit wouldn’t fly as well nowadays with the internet.  For all the tricksters there’s as many debunkers.  But I’m sure you could still pull it off, you’d just have to be better.  Anyway, it’s a very interesting movie about an interesting subject, and it’ll only cost you an hour and a half.

American Gun – This is a little indie type movie.  Made as a reaction to columbine type shootings, it’s about youth, mostly school, violence.  There are several stories, completely disconnected from each other.  The brother and mother of a school shooter, a girl who works in her grandpa’s gun shop, a principle of a high school, and a kid who works nights at a gas station in a bad neighborhood.  It’s four different perspectives on the issue.   Unfortunately the movie doesn’t really have a strong impact.  It’s got good actors in it, marcia gay harden, forest whitaker, a couple kids I recognize.  They do fine, but I’m missing some connection with this movie.  It might be that I’m uncomfortable with media coverage of the subject.  I suppose i ought to be more afraid, as someone who is close to a soon-to-be teacher, but I’m just more annoyed with the coverage.  school shootings are an incredibly rare way to die, it’s like being scared of terrorism, so coverage of it can’t help but feel exploitive or manipulative.  I can’t seriously say art shouldn’t be allowed to examine it, but I can say it doesn’t work for me.  The perspective of the brother/mother is certainly the most interesting, I don’t know how you keep living that life.  The grand daughter is uninteresting, the gas station kid is handled too lightly, the principle is interesting, but can only go one of a couple ways and nothing insightful happens, it’s just sad.  It’s the kind of movie that you probably read as an actor and say wow this is really powerful and interesting, I should do this.  But then it ends up kind of boring and simplified with a few good moments but mostly not getting where it was aiming.

Planes, Trains, & Automobiles – I’d never seen this little bit of the 80s!  Supposed to be one of those great movies, maybe if I saw it growing up I’d agree, it was just okay.  It had funny parts, a few out loud laughs, but I wasn’t rolling.  It’s no Uncle Buck, or Parenthood, just a kinda fun, in the end sweet 80s movie.  Nothing much else to say.

Stranger Than Fiction – This movie was surprisingly charming.  It has a style - the narration, and the diagrams, and will farrell’s purposefully bland acting - that could easily have annoyed me, and I kept wondering when it would.  But it didn’t, it stayed charming and heartfelt.  Love stories can be cheesy or feel right, and this one was the latter.  I didn’t like the lady playing the author, but that’s ok.  Will Farrell did a good job, he can be non-manic, though he did go to the opposite extreme, hard to say if he could safely act the middle ground.  But it’s a sweet and likable movie, worth it’s time.

Ikiru – This is one of those old timey foreign movies that does not hold up for me.  It’s very strange, likely due to its age and its culture, and doesn’t work.  It’s a Japanese movie about a man who finds out he’s going to die, and tries to find a way to make his life satisfactory with the time he has left.  Pretty simple moral, but it works.  The first I’d say half of the movie is monotonous, purposefully (I think) plodding and tedious.  It’s really boring to watch.  That and the fact that it has subtitles and I was tired basically was putting me to sleep.  The acting from the main dude is horrendous, he just makes this pained, drawn, bug eyed groaning face for the whole movie and i hated it.  It wasn’t subtle, it didn’t make you feel for him, it didn’t make you connect with him, it was just ugh.  Maybe that’s a culture thing, hard to say.  With 45 min or so the movie starts to get good.  After the big event it jumps back and forth in time a bit in a really effective way.  It’s mostly at this point about bureaucracy and people being assholes and it does it well.  Unfortunately even this is far too drawn out and beaten to death, and it gets old and frustrating again.  The end works really really well, it bring the moral back to the forefront, instead of the red tape stuff.  The last 5 minutes, at least for me, are pretty touching.  But it’s really not worth it to go all that way, it was just too long a journey for maybe a total of 25 minutes worth of goodness.

The Ruins – So I forgot to talk about this (and the next two) for a week, I’m not sure how much I’ll remember (the whole point of these damn things is to make me remember).  I remember thinking it was surprisingly decent.  Nothing amazing, but I liked the different kind of enemy (I also liked that the podunk brown people were NOT really the enemy and actually smarter than the dipshits).  The flow of the movie is pretty good, though it gets all rushed at the end.  I wish the cast wasn’t so standard, two white couples, and their European friend.  BORING!  But it was a halfway decent way to watch a scary type movie, if yer into it.

Lakeview Terrace – Meh.  I didn’t really expect it to be anything, but it was kinda standard.  Samuel Jackson is unsurprisingly a good intimidating asshole.  The race issue was neither effective nor particularly obtrusive, just there.  It’s one of those annoying stories cuz you are tempted to say what would I do, but it’s also out there enough that there’s no satisfying answer to the question.  Overall very average, nothing much to say.

Let The Right One In – This one gets super points for being different.  I guess it’s been a while since I saw a vampire movie, I realized as I watched this.  30 Days of Night was the last, unless you count I Am Legend.  And I’m not part of the true blood / twilight / vampire chronicles revolution because it all looks silly goose.  But this was more the solo vampire, interaction with a person type movie, not the monster action movie.  More Interview with a Vampire than Blade.  It’s swedish, so it’s kinda strange.  Swedish people are kinda creepy.  Blonde haired skinny little swedish boys are very creepy.  It’s a cool take on it, though.  I wouldn’t say it’s an amazing movie, just that it was an interesting way to go about it.  Somewhat uncomfortable in a few parts, but worth watching for its differentness.

Crush the Castle

What?  Yeah I’m at work, so what?  I’m copying files!  There’s lots of them and it takes a long time!  I’ve got to do SOMEthing while I wait!