"Transformers: Dark of the Moon" Review

What can be said about Transformers: Dark of the Moon? It's proof that bigger doesn't always mean better.

Watch the trailer below for the plot: Shia LaBeef (sp?) has a new hot girlfriend (thus assuring this is a science fiction movie) and there are giant talking robots and bad robots blow the hell out of Chicago and blah-blah-woof-woof. Do we go to these things for plot? Who said yes? Get out of my blog, weirdo!

Here's what you need to know: Rosie Huntington-Whitley is hot and cute and less skanky than Megan Fox (which is why she's Jason Statham's girlfriend in real life and not Shia's). There are several funny nerd-meta jokes which riff off of Leonard Nimoy's voicing Sentinel Prime. Sam's goofy parents are back, but unlike most people, I like them. There are some new Autobots and Decepticons, but other than shorthand stereotyping like the new Ferrari one having a "It'sa me, Mario!" accent, they're just more metal. There is also some slightly clever writing explaining the true origins of the Space Race and how some have collaborated for decades with the Decepticons.

Not that you care about characters, but there's a smarmy boss of Rosie's played by Patrick Dempsey; a slumming Frances McDormand as a prickly NSA chief; and John Malkovich apparently deciding that he wants Christopher Walken's career in a schizophrenic role which starts of one way and then changes into something totally different for no explained reason. Ken Jeong also has a small bit part that he works hard for laughs.

But you don't go to Transformers movies for plot and characters; you go for the BAYHEM! As long as you see giant fighting robots tearing sh*t up (as my girlfriend stated as her bare minimum for satisfaction from the first film in 2007), it's all good, right? Normally I'd agree and while there are some truly epic action scenes here, it gets so crazy and chaotic for so long at the end, it starts turning into noise that you can't focus on anymore. Look at the last shot of the trailer before the title card goes up. Look at all the whirring rotating teeth and whatnot. The level of detail in the robots and environments is so minute - the 'bots have multiple gears in their eyes now, for instance - that there simply is no way to take it all in so it actually goes unnoticed.

The movie is also too damn long at over 2-1/2 hours. The distribution of action is also too backloaded. The finale involving several set pieces, each of which would be the grand finale of another action movie, runs nearly an hour and by the time it's over, you're just numb from sensory overload and I saw it in plain 2D on a big theater screen. They could've cut the end down to a half-hour, taking the other 20 minutes and spread them out over a sub-2 hour movie and been the better for it.

My first remark to the girlfriend afterwards was, "Well, I'm set for my fighting robot movies*. I don't need anymore."

Score: 7/10. Catch it on a huge screen at a matinee or dollar show.



* Not counting the upcoming Hugh Jackman movie, Real Steel, which was shot in Detroit and coincidentally, I was in one of the locations used today (as I write this review).

"Horrible Bosses" Review

First things first: No, Jennifer Aniston does not show off her boobs in Horrible Bosses. The rumors that she shot a scene topless - I think I know where that could've happened - but they didn't know if it was going to get used (yeah, right - who wants to see that?) as far as this version goes, are bogus. Drat.

Secondly, watch this, cuz why should I type out the plot when it's pretty much all here?



A bunch of the funny bits are blown here, but fortunately it doesn't give away all the goods as the profane and outrageous comedy Horrible Bosses does manage to build upon the PG-rated antics shown here. (Jamie Foxx's character is named after the 12-letter euphemism for Oedipus.) As circumstances spiral out of control, it gets predictably frantic, but there are a few twists and turns to keep you guessing. The ending is a bit of an abrupt letdown and deus ex machina and the final gags are flat, but overall it delivers a goodly amount of laughs.

The key to comedies success or failure (after the script and direction) is the performances and the cast is appropriately manic. Jason Bateman is...well, the same as he is in every movie; Jason Sudekis is in amped-up lunkhead mode; I'm not familiar with Charlie Day from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia but he gets a little shrill and, I'm sorry, as they comment on in the movie, being sexual harassed by someone like Aniston is something worth going to work for. (Yeah, she's crazy, but yo!)

On the villain side, Kevin Spacey is a weasel, but that's sleepwalking for him. No, the revelations are Colin Farrell, sporting a gross combover, fat gut, and enough sleazy lowlife antics to make it hard to remember his leading man days. (There are tons of improv outtakes in the credits with him from a scene not in the movie, so look for a packed video release.) While some may be surprised by the man-eating, potty-mouthed Aniston, anyone who's seen her oddball flick Management knows she can be game for some wild stuff. She's a hoot, even without showing her hooters.

In case you're desperate to know, you see about this much:



Jamie Foxx is also good as the "murder consultant." Hard to believe that between him and Spacey, there are three Oscars in this movie.

Score: 7.5/10. If you're gung-ho to see a show, pay matinee prices; otherwise you can wait for a rental and it'll probably have even more deleted/alternate material.

What Gossip Girl Has Taught Me. (Updated)

When I post Clicker updates as to what I'm watching, the ones that get the most snide replies from my Facebook friends are those relating to Gossip Girl, the soapy teen series following the lives and trials of vapid Upper East Side trust fund brats in expensive clothes. While I never watched much, if any, Beverly Hills 90210 or Melrose Place (either back in the day or their recent incarnation) and didn't really show much interest in the show for the same reasons, I blind-bought the first two seasons on DVD during Black Friday 2009 because they were cheap - only $13 apiece.

They sat unwatched for months and my girlfriend sneered at my purchases the same way she did when I started buying Buffy the Vampire Slayer seasons. Finally, we ran out of ways to avoid watching them and started in with her grousing about why we're watching this, but as she'd done then, she rapidly became hooked on these twits (mis)adventures and when we finished the 2nd season, she became agitated over the fact we didn't have the 3rd on hand and there were no good deals around until after Christmas.

While we've been having a lot of fun with the show - other than the fact that Serena is a simpy twit who was only hot during the couple of episodes where she was bitchy to Blair at Yale - but some tropes have become unavoidable, thus requiring comment:

• The drinking age for rich kids in NYC appears to be 14. In pretty much every episode, everyone but the poor Humphrey ragamuffins is shown guzzling cocktails, sometimes at home (where their folks, if they happen to be around, never suggest having cocoa or a Pepsi), but frequently at bars, clubs, restaurants, etc. When Lindsay Lohan was blowing up as the star of Mean Girls and promptly started on her downward spiral, over and over she was spotted drinking in clubs under the legal age of 21 and I wondered who wasn't watching out for this. I'm always hearing about Detroit bars getting busted for serving underage customers, but in Gossip Girl's Gotham, membership in the upper class appears to have its privileges.
  
  UPDATE: In episode 3.7, Chuck's bar was shut down for having a fake liquor license. The cops came and grabbed the booze and shooed the patrons out the door. They didn't seem to notice all the sub-legal kids in the bar. This didn't happen when Rudy ran things!
• No one owns an iPhone. This is the real headscratcher for me. The iPhone came out in June 2007 and as of the 3rd season - we're watching on DVD and are a year behind - which began airing in Fall 2009, no one is using one. Apple has sold approximately eleventy gazillion units - they're so ubiquitous that almost anyone who wants one has one, no one is impressed by them anymore and it carries about as much cachet as saying you watch American Idol - but on the Upper East Side, the kids who take limos everywhere, wear expensive designer fashions and basically want for nothing are still using feature phones, some with T9 keyboards. What the hell?!? The producers slave to create this fantasy universe of privilege and then have people boarding private jets to Europe making calls on phones you get for free with a service contract. This year Blair got a Blackberry, which puts her on the cutting edge. Of 2007. I haven't noticed a pattern of models that would indicate a reality-destroying product placement deal, but something's wrong.
  
  UPDATE: In recent S4 episodes, there has been some really obvious Microsoft product placement in the form of people using Bing to search for things, WinMo phones, and laptops with monochrome Windows logos where the Dell or HP logo would be. (M$ doesn't make a branded computer in North America like this.) Still no sign of an iPhone with 2 episodes left, meaning that as of May 2011, the iPhone still hasn't taken Manhattan in any of its four guises.
  
  UPDATE #2: The iPhone finally arrived in Season 5! It was a little coy early in the season, but as of Spring 2012, the poor little rich kids of the Upper East Side are now current. With a couple of years ago.
• Money fixes everything. Self-explanatory. The greatest crime on the show, as in real life, is to be poor and the Golden Rule (i.e. he who has the gold makes the rules) is in full effect. Nate's family stories really put this across, but over and over, all trouble is swept aside with a spray of the money hose. Someone drown and a student needs expulsion from the school? How about a new library donation? (I wonder if this private academy looks at their upgrade wish list and then seeks out problem children to pimp for donations from concerned parents.)
• Never tell an easy truth when you can tell a hard lie that will always backfire on you. Over and over and over and OVER, these twits choose to baldly lie about EVERYTHING to each other. After the inevitable being caught out, the lied-to frowns and makes noises about never being able to trust the liar again, but they move on and rinse and repeat the same credibility-shredding behavior, over and over and OVER. When will they learn that everyone would be cool with whatever if you told the truth in the first place?
  
  Over time, we started noticing a corollary to this rule...
• When falsely accused of wrongdoing, never speak up in your own defense. If someone came up and accused you of doing something that could cost you your education, job or the trust of your friends, would you deny it and call out the slanderer or meekly act guilty and slink away. Maybe you'll eventually be exonerated, but in the meantime the damage will be done. What would you do? If you said, "Defend myself," then you're not on this show! Vanessa and Serena have both taken major hits in S4 because of this nonsense.
• You are supposed to follow your destiny at all costs until the writers suddenly forget all about it. This is specific to Baby J, but also applies to the other Humphrey boy. Jenny has been set up as a Brilliant Fashion Designer for the better part of two seasons. First as making stylish school clothes, Pretty In Pink style, then as an intern for Eleanor Waldorf's fashion house, saving the day with her great style acumen. She then quits and sets off on her own with a crazy model friend, ultimately staging a guerrilla fashion show that made her the toast of the town with people begging to put out her designs. Even her killjoy fuddy-duddy father allowed her to basically drop out of school to pursue this break until...well, nothing. Suddenly, she was back at Constance, playing the mean girl reindeer games and not a peep about her success was heard. Last night, we watched episode 3.8 and she appeared to throw away her precious sewing machine. WTFF?!? It doesn't help that Taylor Momsen got taller and skinnier over the hiatus, but now she looks like a junkie skank and is acting like a beyatch. Again, WTFF, writers?!?

I'll be adding to this post as more lessons reveal themselves. Feel free to chime in on the comments with suggestions as to what lessons we may have missed.

"Sucker Punch (Extended Cut)" Review

The extended cut of Zach Snyder's interesting mess Sucker Punch is online ahead of next week's Blu-ray release. Being an impatient fellow and wanting to see if it was a drastic enough change to warrant rushing out and buying it immediately, I checked it out. Does the additional 18 minutes make Sucker Punch a great movie? No, but they certainly do a lot to punch up the action and somewhat fix the bumps in the theatrical cut.

Rather than rehash the whole plot and review (which can be viewed here) I'm just going to run thru the major differences:

• The opening scene where Baby Doll accidentally kills her sister is clearer because she shoots TWICE; the second time winging her stepfather's arm making it more logical that she hit her sister.

• The "Love Is The Drug" number glimpsed in the end credits (it's still there, too) is shown as a splashy montage early on illustrating the operation of the club/brothel. We see bits of the other girls' dances (which was a glaring omission based on the press at its release) and it eases us into the milieu better.

• The WWI battle scenes are much longer, including cool shots of Jamie Chung's pink bunny mecha, Vanessa Hudgens wasting legions of steampunk soldiers, and much more brutal trench warfare. This was apparently cut to get a PG-13 rating, but it really beefs up the badass babe ratio and should've been left in.

• The dragon castle sequence has more killing and trademark SnyderVision® (I just made that up!) camera speedramping, giving Rocket and Sweet Pea some good moments. All the extended battle stuff gives the other girls moments to shine; the theatrical cut was weaker for their removal.

• Finally, there is a scene with Jon Hamm's High Roller character which somewhat explains his reaction to what Baby Doll did as he did his work.

I noticed a few other odd bits and pieces of business, but nothing drastic.

The fundamental head-scratcher of the movie - what the heck happened and what was real? - isn't really resolved, but in the Cinefex magazine discussing the FX work of the film, such as this...



...being ENTIRELY CGI(!), Snyder mentions that the whole fantasy aspect is based on the structure of a short story I've never heard of called An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge in which a man imagines a whole life in the time it takes to be hanged. While it's interesting that he was using a conceit that's been used successfully before, I'd wager that 99.44% of the people who saw Sucker Punch had no knowledge of the story and the validity of a narrative based on a dying man's final imaginings, so they were left in the cold as far as comprehending what happened. Ironically, Snyder somewhat failed by OVERestimating the education of his audience, not by pandering or dumbing down his story. Too bad.

While the Extended Cut doesn't totally elevate Sucker Punch into unqualified success territory, it is an improvement and I'll be getting the Blu-ray with even more interest in the extras. This is the cut I'll be watching in the future.

Score: 8/10. At least rent the Blu-ray.

"Super 8" Review

I saw this one as a fluke. My pal McHatin and I were supposed to see an advance screening of Green Lantern and were within sight of the box office when they announced it was sold out. Unlike the disastrous preview of The Hangover Pt. 2 we'd been shut out of a few weeks back, the theater generously offered free admission to anything showing within the next hour. Since I was on a tight schedule, leaving for Toronto in the morning for NXNE, we chose the movie starting at the same time as our preview was supposed to: J.J. Abrams' homage to Spielberg, Super 8.

Set in 1979, it follows Joel Courtney (me neither), a 13-year-old boy whose mother was killed in a steel mill accident, leaving him alone with his distracted sheriff deputy father who can't relate to his kid's interest in filmmaking. Joel and his classmates are making a Super 8 zombie movie and Joel provides the makeup effects. (That he's not the director is a different angle than you'd expect.) When the director asks Elle Fanning, a classmate, to join the project as a love interest, a smitten Joel is agog. However, there is something regarding her drunken white trash father and his possible responsibility for Joel's mom's death hovering over them.

While filming a scene at a train station at night, they witness their high school science teacher cause a MASSIVE - it's like something from Transformers - train derailment, barely escaping harm. They can't understand why he did it, but when the military arrives in force and weird things, from people disappearing to cars engines on a sales lot going missing, lead them to guess that something escaped from the train. (They must've seen the trailer.) Is it the monster from Cloverfield or what?

Super 8 is two movies, one of which is very good and interesting; the other tacked on in such half-hearted fashion that it almost feels as if Abrams sabotages himself in self-loathing for having to put it in to satisfy modern studio demands for BIG ACTION. The part focusing on the kids is quiet and well-played. The look of Spielberg films of that era like Close Encounters and E.T. is aped well (with a dose of lens flare to get the Abrams-haters knickers in a twist), but it's the performances of young actors born over a quarter-century later that makes it work. (There are a lot of hideous sideburns on display. It looks more 1974 to me, but whatever.)

The monster stuff doesn't work as well. We never get a decent look at it until the end and the whole aspect of what it is and how the Evil Military is abusing the poor thing that just wants to steal enough junk and kill enough people to get home is hackneyed. The connection of the science teacher to the creature is laughable and handled in a clumsy voiceover that made McHatin chirp, "Message!" Remember when the U.S. military were portrayed as heroes in Spielberg movies? Apparently he doesn't. Lazy, stupid, and distracting. It's just that a small film about filmmaking kids is impossible to sell to summer audiences, but you can tell where Abrams heart was because it's called Super 8 and not Train Monster.

The breakout performance here is Elle Fanning, previously known best for being Dakota's little sister who played the younger versions of Dakota's characters. (Look at her IMDB page for yourself.) While Dakota has always been good, though throwing off a bit of a Jodie FosterBot 2.0 vibe, Elle made me think of Michelle Pfeiffer or Charlize Theron which for a girl who was only 12(!) when this movie was made is amazing. She's definitely one to watch.

While Super 8 is a bit of a muddle, the parts that work more than overpower the fluff that doesn't. Also, there's a nifty bonus movie during the end credits!

Score: 8/10. Catch a matinee.

"Source Code" Review

Part Groundhog Day, part The Matrix, part Quantum Leap, director Duncan Jones' (fka Zowie Bowie, David's son) follow-up to the underseen gem Moon (with an Oscar-overlooked performance by Sam Rockwell) is an occasionally provocative, though ultimately insubstantial and inconsistent if you really think of the logic it portrays.

Jake Gyllenhaal wakes up on a train and discovers he's in another man's body. While trying to figure out what's going on, the train explodes and wakes up strapped in what looks like a wrecked plane. He's an Army chopper pilot in Afghanistan, so what's going on. Vera Farmiga appears on a monitor and asks him about the explosion and then tells him he's going back and has 8 minutes to find the bomber so they can prevent a greater tragedy. The story then rinses and repeats.

The way they show Jake rapidly cutting through the early stages of each trip into the source code simulation is logical, but when you see who the bomber is, you realize that the premise has a logic gap you could drop a bomb-laden train car through. Without spoiling things, if it is possible to capture the residual memories of people after they've died, then the bomber shouldn't be present in the recreation since he's not dead at the scene, no matter what the found wallet implies. Also, the revelation about what Jake's condition is, while somewhat ballsy, falls apart when you actually see how he is; it's frankly medically impossible.

Then there's the pretty girl, played by Michelle Monaghan. Why is he smitten with a girl he never spends more than a couple of minutes with? Why save her? Because she's cute? What if she's a psycho hose beast and it only becomes obvious to everyone after they've endured her for 10 minutes? The final trip through the Matrix, er, source code also breaks the rules they've set up along the entire story. (Something similar happened with Minority Report and the leap didn't do that film any favors either.)

While it's not as good as Moon, it's an OK rental for those with a decent tolerance level for inconsistency. Good performances, including the always awesome Jeffrey Wright, and a neat idea; too bad they don't stick the landing. Maybe next time. (Heh.)

Score: 6/10. Rent it.



In an inspired meta detail, Jake's father is played on the phone by none other than Scott Bakula. (Think about it. Hilarious, no?)

"Dance Flick (Unrated)" Blu-ray Review

23 minutes into this movie and I've laughed 2-1/2 times, one of which was a throwaway sight gag. Hit eject. Put in sell box. Review done. Next!

Score: DNF/10. Skip it.

No, I'm not going to look up the trailer to post here.

"Red Riding Hood" Review

The problem with Red Riding Hood isn't that it's so bad, but that it's so bland and uninvolving. It passes before your eyes and despite some lovely cinematography and compositions, it's a snooze.

Amanda Seyfried lives in a medieval village where she's in love with a poor woodsman, but here mother has arranged that she marry the blacksmith's boy. (Both of these vapid twits are typical 21st Century boy-men with no acting skill, better suited for a CW show.) The werewolf that has terrorized the town for generations has killed her sister, prompting them to summon werewolf-killing priest Gary Oldman, who is your go-to guy when you want some scenery mauled with dignity, not Nic Cage style.

Fr. Gary says the wolf is in the town, hiding amongst them and blah-blah-woof-woof. Amanda gets the titular garment and Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke tries to keep the mystery of who the wolf is going to the point of making the movie into Red Herring Hood. I just couldn't stay focused on the movie because I didn't care.

Score: 3/10. Catch it on cable.

"X-Men: First Class" Review

11 years later, it's easy to forget how seminal the original X-Men movie was. Comic book films were a joke. Batman & Robin had run that horse into the ground with camp, nipples, and a tubby Batgirl. Other than Blade, a third-string comic that I'd bet 99% of the audience didn't know was originally a comic, not much was going on with the genre.

But after Bryan Singer's film, everything exploded and a decade later, theaters are an embarrassment of riches with Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger (who will join Hulk and Iron Man for Joss Whedon's ultimate nerdgasm flick, The Avengers) representing Team Marvel and Green Lantern hoisting the DC banner until The Dark Night Rises and Man of Steel will arrive next year with the rebooted Tobey Maguire-free Amazing Spider-Man.

But I've always been partial to the X-Men movies; X2: X-Men United is my pick for the best comic book movie ever. I don't get the nerd rage against X3: The Last Stand. It wasn't as good as X2, but that's like saying Angelina Jolie in Wanted is a dog compared to the way she looked in Mr. & Mrs. Smith because she's too skinny. The Wolverine movie was a bit of a botch, but compared to Ang Lee's Hulk or Elektra, it was X-Men. The ironic connection between the maligned X3 and the new X-Men: First Class is that director Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass) was slated to direct the former before leaving the project, forcing the rushed job Brett Ratner did, and with one fell swoop, reinvigorates the franchise with verve and style.

Because it's after 3:30 4:10 am, I've got work in the morning, and the Duke Nukem Forever demo came out after 14 years of waiting, I'm gonna make this a short and sweet Q&A format review.

Is it any good? Absotively YES! It's easily the near-equal of the first two films.

How are the new stars? Uniformly good from top to bottom with few exceptions. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender don't make us forget the stellar Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen as Professor X and Magneto, but they don't make us miss them either. By setting the story in 1962, the age differences are mooted.

Jennifer Lawrence is going to be a huge star off of this, setting her up for mega-stardom when The Hunger Games hits next spring. She's got a ripe, voluptuous face and figure which may not match vintage Scarlett Johansson for sheer vavoom, but the fact she doesn't seem up her own fine ass with smugness counts for a lot. With ScarJo banging Sean Penn now - all together now....ICK!!! - after dumping Green Lantern, she's about to be less the object of nerd desire than she was when cast as Black Widow in Iron Man 2.

Kevin Bacon is a pimp here and he makes playing "6 Degrees" a hella lot easier now that he's in the same movie as Ray Wise, Michael Ironside and James Remar. The other mutants on each side get short shrift on screen time, but they make it count. Ironically, January Jones as curvy Emma Frost seems the flattest. She doesn't wreck things, but could've been livelier.

They were still shooting this thing about four months ago. How badly rushed does it look? It doesn't. The special effects look slick; the score is dialed in; perhaps a few tweaks in editing may've made it even better, but it doesn't look or feel slapped together. If anything, the hectic pace and locked-in release date may've worked in its favor since Vaughn didn't have time to Kubrbick out and shoot a zillion takes of people opening doors.

I hear they've messed with the comic book timeline. They do to a degree, but oh well. The biggest change from previous films is the prologue of X3 where a walking Charles and Erik go to meet a young Jean Grey has been retconned out of existence as we see how Charles got put in the wheelchair here.

How's the Stan Lee cameo? There isn't one, much to the nerd rage consternation of my sidekick, McHatin. However, a very crowd pleasing (and not really unexpected) cameo does occur. (Hint: Snikt! Snikt!) UPDATE: Reading around the Intartoobz, there appears to be a 2nd cameo from a familiar face, though I totally missed it for they aren't as recognizable as you'd think.

You want to play Duke Nukem, so what's the bottom line? It's really, really good. If the were selling Blu-rays at the popcorn stand on my way out, I would've bought one. I hope they make more along this line with Vaughn helming. X-Men: First Class is a first-class movie indeed.

Score: 9/10. Pay full price if you're an X-Men fan; do a matinee if you're casual.

"Resident Evil: Afterlife" Blu-ray Review

When it comes to dumb action movies, I'm pretty easy to please: I can cope with stupid as long as I'm not bored. But hack director Paul W.S. Anderson - not to be confused with self-absorbed twit Paul Thomas Anderson of Magnolia shame - manages to be both stupid, boring AND make his wife and baby mama Milla Jovovich come off as not-that-hot in Resident Evil: Afterlife.

The story, such as it is, opens with an army of Alice clones (revealed at the end of Resident Evil: Extinction) attacking the underground headquarters of the Umbrella Corporation in Tokyo. After much slo-mo gun and sword play with shockingly poor split-screen effects - the SFX quality is all over the map in this movie - the complex, along with most of Tokyo is destroyed and Alice has been rendered merely human after the bad guy, who acts like a smarmy Val Kilmer, injects her with something that shuts down her superpowers.

Six months later she's a plane to Alaska, seeking a supposed safe haven only to find an empty beach with Ali Larter from the last movie attacking her, under the control of a huge ruby-and-metal spider thing attached to her chest that gives her amnesia. Alice frees her and the fly to L.A., spotting survivors on the roof of a prison surrounded by zombies and then there's a ship and a big guy with an axe the size of a Buick station wagon and a final fight ripped off from The Matrix about a decade too late and then it's over with a cliffhanger and a supposed shocking ending scene in the credits that's spoiled by the cast credits ahead of it.*

It's a testament to his hackitude that Anderson makes wet and dirty Milla and Ali kicking ass both not hot and not entertaining. When the red shirt characters get bumped off, it's handled so offhandedly, we don't even miss them as if we even cared whether they survived. The pacing is leaden, the performances stiff - though Milla's quiet despair in her video diaries is good - and the action flat and lifeless for a movie that showed in 3D. It's just a snore and a waste of a good B-movie franchise. Stick with the first and third installments.

While the movie blows, the Blu-ray's transfer is crisp and clean thanks to the sharp digital photography from the Pace/Cameron Fusion system (though not in 3D here) that was invented for Avatar. The soundtrack is booming, too. Too bad the movie doesn't merit making it a show-off-home-theater disc. The 45 minutes of featurettes are mostly EPK fluff full of happy joy talk about how awesome everyone thinks everyone is and makes me wish I could see the movie they thought they were making.

Score: 2/10. Skip it.




* SPOILER ALERT! In the cast, they have Sienna Guillory listed as Jill Valentine, the game character she played in 2004's previously worst-in-series Resident Evil: Apocalypse. I was scratching my head (figuratively) wondering where she had been in the movie? Then they show the interior of the incoming attack choppers and she's got one of the spider devices on her and she's leading the assault. She looks totally different - before she had short, brown hair; now it's long and blonde - and if she hadn't been listed 20 seconds earlier, I wouldn't have gotten the gag.

May 2011 Review Roundup

The pace slowed down this month, but not bad overall. Almost evenly split between home and theater.

May 7 - Thor (8/10)
May 10 - Catfish (8/10)
May 13 - Event Horizon (6/10)
May 16 - Fast Five (6/10)
May 18 - The Hangover (Unrated) (9/10)
May 19 - Urgh! A Music War (8/10)
May 24 - Pandorum (6/10)
May 25 - Attack the Block (7/10)
May 28 - The Roommate (3/10)

Month's Movies Watched: 9
Previously Unseen: 7
Theatrical: 4
Home: 5
=====
Year-To-Date: 51
YTD First-Timers: 41
YTD Theatrical: 13
YTD Home: 38

"The Roommate" Review

When's the last time you saw Single White Female? You know the movie: Jennifer Jason Leigh is a mousy woman who moves in with Bridget Fonda and, being a psycho hose beast, takes over her life and identity. It came out in 1992 and I don't think I've seen it all the way through since then, but the basic themes have been absorbed by the general culture and due to Hollywood's need to recycle the familiar rather than try to come up with something new, it's been prettied-up and dumbed-down as The Roommate for kids who watch the CW Network. (Seriously. Three stars are from CW shows and a fourth is married to Jensen Ackles from Supernatural.)

Minka Kelly is a girl from Iowa going to college in LA. (That she's 30 in real life is fun trivia.) Her roommate is Gossip Girl's Leighton Meester - which prompted me to snark that this was called Single Waldorf Female - who as we know from seeing the trailer is crrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaazeeeeeeee! She's clinging and possessive and...oh, watch the trailer, almost the whole movie minus a subplot involving Billy Zane as a lecherous professor is in there.

The best thing in Single Waldor...er, The Roommate is Meester's psycho hose beast performance. Yeah, it's predictable and poorly motivated - she's off her meds and had some obsession with a girl in high school - but she has fun with it, while not overplaying too much, and I hardly thought of Blair while watching her. (Bestest moment is how she deals with the earrings Minka lends her.) The others are blah, but there's nothing for them to really do and the pacing makes it feel longer than the 90 minutes it runs.

To refresh my memory, I looked up Single White Female at Wikipedia and the number of plot points cribbed should entitle SWF's writers some credit or perhaps a check and no association with this roommate.

Score: 3/10. Watch Single White Female again for the first time.

"Attack The Block" Review

Public Enemy said, "Don't believe the hype." Hype is a double-edge sword for while it can raise awareness and generate interest, it can also result in a big letdown when whatever was overpraised is given a lukewarm, "It was OK, but it wasn't all that." Shaun of the Dead, Little Miss Sunshine and even Fast Five could stood for a little less up-front praise. Now riding a heap of buzz from its Midnight screenings at SXSW comes the British inner city vs. outer space sci-fi/action/monster movie Attack the Block. It doesn't have a US release date yet - probably sometime this fall after an appearance at Comic-Con - but to capitalize on the SXSW bounce, screening were held tonight and once again, it was OK, but it wasn't all that.

I find it fascinating sometimes when pulling the trailers for these reviews to watch them to see how divorced from the movie they're advertising. Many times I've wished I could've seen the movie the trailer was selling because the actual film sucked. I've said that movie trailers are the highest form of false advertising, though I suppose political ads are worse. ("Call your Representative and ask them to stop drinking kitten blood while listening to Train.") To understand what most of the people lauding Attack the Block are conveniently leaving out, take a look at the trailer:



OK, it looks like sassy British kids with Jamaican-sounding patois (it's really, REALLY heavy in the movie, though not so bad as to need subtitles) fighting off monsters with pluck and fireworks. Did you notice the bit where the five mostly-minority kids are surrounding the white woman and robbing her at knifepoint, yanking her ring off her finger, etc.? No? Well, that's how the movie opens, by introducing the supposed heroes in a manner usually reserved for villains. While it sets the stage for the obvious redemption story arc, it's off-putting because we're not sure if we should be rooting for the thugs or the monsters trying to eat them.

When the mugging is interrupted by a meteor smashing into a nearby car, the woman flees and in the process of looting the wreckage, the leader Moses (no symbolism there), is clawed by something that scurries off into the night. The kids hunt it down and beat it to death and drag the carcass back to their council estate block. Later, more meteors land and legions of eyeless beasts that look and move like wolf-gorilla hybrids with rows of glowing neon teeth emerge, hunting the gang down. Hijinks ensue, though how eyeless monsters have interplanetary spaceships is never explained.

Once it gets past the misguided opening, Attack the Block is actually a respectable sci-fi/comedy/horror/action mashup with many good moments. The script is smart about setting up details that pay off later at crucial moments and the kids, once their crawl out of the sympathy sub-basement that writer-director Joe Cornish starts them in, are an appealing bunch. While the opening attack sets up the weird aspect of the gang and their victim crossing paths and changing their minds about each other - *SPOILER ALERT!* - they could've showed the hopeless dead-end lifestyles of the poor and unfortunate differently through some old-fashioned property violence and hooliganism, not tread into A Clockwork Orange territory.

As for the wild overpraise, if this movie was set in an American project block or ghetto, the same critics would be excoriating it as full of racist stereotypes, but because it's foreign, it's A-OK. (Look for 50 Cent to play Hi-Hatz and Allison Brie to play Sam in the inevitable remake with a bunch of Hispanic actors as the street thugs. Believe!)

Score: 7/10. Rent the DVD.

We were supposed to see The Hangover Pt. 2 two nights ago, but the screening was waaaaaay overbooked into a too small theater. This show was held at the Emagine Theater in Novi and I was decidedly unimpressed with the place. The Sony drones running the screening were only good for threatening the audience to not use their cell phones because when the movie started and was obviously out of focus - and I even called out, "How about focusing?" - nothing was fixed and the room full of sheeple sat and accepted the sub-standard presentation. Madness.

"Pandorum" Blu-ray Review

I've had Pandorum kicking around on DVD since Inception was new in theaters cuz I bought it from a closing Hollywood Video store for a buck. I'd heard it was similar to Event Horizon, but that it wasn't that hot. Needing a 5th title to get the 5/$20 Blu-ray sale at Blockbuster, I bought it again. Since I just watched Event Horizon last week, I figured it would be time to catch up on Pandorum.

It starts off with an interestingly: A giant spaceship is traveling the cosmos when they receive a message from Earth that seems to imply that the planet was about to be destroyed and the people on this ship are the last of the human race. Ben Foster (last seen being creepy in The Mechanic) awakes from his hypersleep chamber in a dark cold room. He doesn't remember who he is or where he is, relying on clues from his uniform for his name. He spots Dennis Quaid asleep in his pod and thaws him out. He's a lieutenant and believes he's part of Foster's flight crew, judging from the tattoo on Foster's arm, and takes command.

They're locked in the room, though, so Foster climbs thru the vents, seeking a way to get Quaid out and find out what's going in. He rapidly discovers things have gone seriously wrong as the ship is dark, grimy, and lousy with bizarre vampire mutant monsters, booby-trapped crewmen, a kick-ass chick (German actress Antje Traue*) with a great rack who doesn't want to play the Basil Exposition role, and other weirdos. What happened to the ship, the Elysium, which they eventually remember was being sent on a 123-year voyage to colonize an Earthlike Eden called Tanis?

Pandorum starts out well with a lot of building tension for the first half-hour. However, as the monsters appear along with survivors who either don't speak English or aren't interested in answering the simple question, "WHAT THE UNHOLY HECK IS GOING ON HERE?!?!?", it starts to get annoying and when it's over and you start to ponder the gaping logic holes of the movie, it really starts to deflate. The explanation for the monsters doesn't make sense, especially when the length of time that's supposed to have transpired; they should've starved.

I wasn't aware before watching, but it was produced by Paul W.S. Anderson and Jeremy Bolt who did...wait for it...Event Horizon. The attention to mood and production design clearly is evident, but they also brought the attitude that slick visuals will paper over the plot holes. Why go through all the trouble of creating a world and not telling a cohesive story in it?

While it ends up a mess, the performances are good - Quaid is turning into Harrison Ford a little - it has style and, for a while, some good tension.

Score: 6/10. Rent it.



* Hello there!

"Urgh! A Music War" Review

The seminal punk/New Wave concert film Urgh! A Music War has attained near mythic status because for decades, it's been almost totally unavailable for viewing and was never officially released on video. Bootlegs cobbled together from various tapes of the various versions can be had, but until recently, when a nearly-complete DVD was issued by Warner Bros. Warner Archives imprint, it was more the stuff of legend.

Collecting three dozen raw live performances filmed in 1980 in New York, LA, London and France, the line-up of Urgh! and be broken down into acts everyone knows (e.g. The Go-Go's, The Police, Devo, Oingo Boingo, Joan Jett); acts most people have at least heard of, if not actually heard (e.g. XTC, The Cramps, Dead Kennedys, Pere Ubu, Gang of Four); and then the acts that 99.44% of the general public have never even heard of like Athletico Spizz 80, John Otway, and Invisible Sex, whose only performance ever (if Wikipedia can be believed) is captured in the film. One after another they come in a tidal wave of music.

I think Urgh! will probably be most interesting to aging Gen Xers looking to reconnect with their high school years when bell-bottomed classic rock was supplanted by spikier hair and music to match. The sheer number and variety of performances starts to work against it after a while. Standout bits like Devo's surprisingly raucous "Uncontrollable Urge" (see below) or the pre-Kathy Valentine Go-Go's (with a really tubby Belinda Carlisle) "We Got The Beat" are shoulder to shoulder with weird artsy crap like Pere Ubu, but like Michigan weather, if you don't like something, give it a few minutes and it'll change.

The screening I saw had something weird going on with the sound leaving half the acts with buried vocals. I can't believe it was mixed improperly, so it's probably a safe bet to pick it up. While there are rumors of even more material in the vaults, the same music licensing and rights issues that have kept it off the market all this time will likely preclude anything better.

Score: 8/10. Buy it.

"The Hangover (Unrated)" Blu-ray Review

I scored preview tickets to a screening of The Hangover Part 2 next Monday, so I decided to refresh my memory of the first film by watching the original. I haven't seen it since it was in theaters.

Is it still funny the second time around? Yes, but the neat mystery structure in which we share in the Wolf Pack's discovery of their bender's path is lost because we know what the mattress on the stahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giftue means and that a naked guy is in the trunk. *SPOILER ALERT!*

What's different in the Unrated version? I'm not sure. There's a web site with a list of differences, but despite the 8-minute longer run time, I didn't notice anything that stood out as new until looking at the linked site. Most of the changes are extended scenes. They didn't hurt the pacing, but were mostly extraneous. (The theatrical cut is also included.) The last of the camera photos - the ones in the elevator with Zach Galifinakakakakakakis (sp?)- are uncensored (i.e. not pixelated like the DVD was), but they were clear in the theater as well.

The Blu-ray's image quality is super sharp and clear. Audio isn't too impressive, but that's by design. I haven't watched the extras yet other than the start of the reel of Ken Jeong improvising like a maniac on his scenes. (Fun Fact: This guy was a doctor before Judd Apatow made him a comic star.) I'll update this section if/when I do.

Score: 9/10. Buy it.

"Fast Five" Review

The buzz going into Fast Five was that the series had reinvented itself as a heist caper flick, moving away from its "ricer porn" street/drift racing roots. Many reviews lauded this change, calling it the best of the series.

It isn't.

To be brief, it's too long with too much talky-talk and not enough zoomy-zoom. Paul Walker still can't act (was Running Scared a fluke?); all the lousy characters from 2 Fast, 2 Furious (the worst of the bunch) are included; and the presence of the Japanese dude who died in Tokyo Drift (but was in Fast & Furious; the 4th movie) means that this movie is set in between #4 and #3. Huh? (i.e. The chronological order of films is 1-2-4-5-3; the world ends with Tokyo.) M.Rod, who was foolishly killed of as an inciting incident is still gone. Or is she? (Tune in below.)

There are some crazy action sequences that defy fundamental physics and reality - that chase with the bank vault being dragged as wrecking ball through the streets of Rio goes on forever - but the biggest, baddest special effect is Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as the FBI specialist sent to catch Vin Diesel and his merry men. He is JACKED and when he and Vin throw down, it's like watching two slabs of beef brawl.

When it's not trying to be deep and just making a mess, Fast Five is decent popcorn fluff. However, if they plan on continuing in this vein, they'd better get over listening to the sound of their voices.

Score: 6/10. Catch it at a dollar show.



OK, slight spoiler/teaser time: In a mid-credits coda, Eva Mendes (who was in 2F2F) is shown bringing a dossier into The Rock's office. Inside are photos of someone who robbed a armored car in Germany. Who is it? M.Rod! They're going to bring her back from the presumed dead?! WTF? OK, I'm down. I missed her. Bring it!

"Event Horizon" Blu-ray Review

Since seeing it when it came out in 1997, but not since, I've remembered Event Horizon as a cheesy sci-fi horror flick with really excellent production design. Watching it again, not much has changed, though it did make me wonder why a giant spaceship in 2040 looks like a steampunk bondage dungeon with most of the technological workings being made of iron.

The titular ship disappeared without a trace and was the largest disaster in spacefaring history. Seven years later, in 2047, it has reappeared in low orbit over Neptune and a ship under the command of Laurence Fishburne has been dispatched to investigate, bringing along Sam Neill, the inventor of the gravity drive that powered the Event Horizon. When they arrive, spooky things start to happen. Hijinks ensue.

The production design still looks terrific with the use of elaborate practical sets. It has the gritty tactile appearance that made the Nostromo in Alien convincing, though there are more sharp edges than you'd think a safety-first spaceship should have. The smokey cinematography by the late Adrian Biddle (whose first film was Aliens) almost makes hack director (and Milla Jovovich's baby daddy) Paul W.S. Anderson's film into a film of minor significance, but the thin script - is the ship itself evil or just converting the crew's inner demons into physical reality, a la the planet in Solaris - and reliance on BOOM! loud noises to provide the shocks holds it back. While the sets and models look great, the primitive CGI effects really stand out now in their shiny plasticness.

As a haunted house in space flick - right down to lighting and thunder(!) in the exterior shots - Event Horizon could've been an effective psycho-thriller if only the script and direction were more competent. Why did Neill's wife kill herself? Did he cut corners in the design of the gravity drive? Why are some crew member's guilt manifesting as apparitions while others seem to be driven made or totally unaffected? We don't know.

After a scary few moments of the extremely grainy Paramount logo, the Blu-ray transfer is really great to look at with a clean image with lots of depth and detail, all the better to reveal how poor the CGI is. Grain isn't an issue, but they haven't scrubbed it with DNR to leave waxy skin textures. The surround audio isn't as impressive, but that's more by the audio design than technical problems.

On the extras front, I haven't listened to the commentary, but there's an making-of documentary that manages to stuff perhaps 40 minutes of information in a 1:45 package so slow and droning that I watched it over three or four nights, dozing off each time. The biggest takeaway is that the film was probably crippled by a ridiculously shortened post schedule.

Directors are contractually allowed 10 weeks to make their first cut, but Anderson waived it to six weeks and then lost two of those while shooting 2nd unit material. With only four weeks to slam together an FX-laden film and crippled by a poor mix, the first test screening was a disaster. Slashing out hunks of the film, the 2nd screening went better, but they ran out of time, so what we have now is pretty much the 2nd or 3rd cut. Because this slightly pre-dated DVD, apparently no one thought to keep the extra footage, so there are few deleted scenes on the disc and no hope for a proper director's cut. The first Star Trek picture suffered the same short-post/botched mix situation and when it was released on DVD, the fixed that up somewhat.

Score: 6/10. It's cheap enough to buy if you think you'll watch it twice, otherwise Netflix it.

"Catfish" Review

There has been a glut of fake "documentaries" lately. I don't mean liberal propaganda pieces that dishonest folks - excuse me, fat lying bastards - like Michael Moore or Al Gore make and win Oscars for, permanently damaging the genre for REAL documentary makers in the process. I'm referring to movies like the Paranormal Activity series or the upcoming (and reportedly awful) Apollo 18 which comprise the "found footage" genre in which the audience is supposed to accept that what they're seeing really happened. (Or at least go along with the setup because, as Johnny Carson noted, "You buy the premise, you buy the bit.")

I've been avoiding watching Catfish because I haven't been in the mood for a fake shock doc which is sort of implied by the trailer and was leery of the "real Facebook movie" hype it has around it, playing off The Social Network. I may've totally given it the miss if my girlfriend hadn't watched it, told me it was good, and then started nagging me to watch it so we could discuss it. Persistently nagged, as in when we spoke on the phone earlier tonight and I was mulling my entertainment options, she said, "Why don't you watch Catfish? It's only 86 minutes long. I instead played a videogame until I realized I was sucking at it and gave into the movie.

It's impossible to discuss the events of the movie without spoiling the surprises, so all I will say is that you're not going to totally guess where it's going and that no one gets their heart ripped out. Literally. Figuratively, though...

Catfish follows co-director Ariel Schulman's brother Nev as he strikes up a relationship with a young girl, Abby, from Ishpeming, MI (pop. ~6700). An artistic prodigy, she paints renditions of his photographs and sends them to him in New York City. Nev speaks on the phone with her mother, Angela, and gets into a Facebook romance with Abby's sister Megan, a hottie with really good photos on her profile page. They talk on the phone, send hundreds of sexy texts messages and really seem to be falling for each other. Then Nev starts discovering that big chunks of Megan's story aren't passing the smell test, confusing him. Something is clearly screwy and looking to get to the bottom of the story, Nev decides to pay the family a visit in their remote Upper Peninsula town with the cameras in tow. What he finds is fascinating even though it's expected; he just didn't know how far down the rabbit hole went.

What makes Catfish odd is that it's like the Oscar-nominated fake documentary Exit Through The Gift Shop - I'm in the camp that believes the whole thing, including Mr. Brainwash, is an elaborate long con by real artists Banksy and Shepard Fairey - in that there's enough tugging around the edges to make it seem fake, but by the end it seems really hard for it to be anything but real, because if it turns out to be even a semi-hoax, there are some other issues with what's shown that should be addressed.

The opaque title is explained (somewhat) at the end, but what sticks is what the film says about relationships, connections with people who are supposedly our "friends," and the lengths some people will go to make these connections. I haven't read around yet to see what's supposed to be true or false about the movie, but I did see an IMDB thread that goes into heavy psychological analysis of the architect of this all and I think they're over-thinking it. (Write me after you see it and I'll tell you what I'm talking about.)

Sorry if this review leaves some basic elements out, but like EARLY M. Night Shyamalan movies, the less you know going in the more effective it will be. Suffice to say that this Catfish is worth catching (ouch!) and that if you mull over what it subtly implies, you'll probably want to stay in "meatspace" for companionship.

Score: 8/10. Rent the DVD.

"Thor" Review

The journey down the path to Marvel's The Avengers movie next year takes another step with the arrival of Thor, director Kenneth Brannagh's - yes, the Shakespeare movie guy - big operatic take on the Norse God of Thunder. While generally epic in scale, it's held back by some thin writing on the Earthly side of the ledger.

Chris Hemsworth - best known until now as Kirk's ill-fated father in the prologue of J.J. Abrams' 2009 Star Trek reboot - is Thor. A brash, arrogant young god, he angers his father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins rocking Christopher Plummer's metal eye patch from Star Trek VI), after he leads an attack on the Frost Giants world after a sneak attack on the day he was to be made King of Asgard. Stripped of his powers and hammer, he's cast down to New Mexico until he learns some humility and become worthy of the power of Thor.

I don't know why the trailers downplay the Asgard side of things because those are the best parts. Brannagh manages to take material that could go waaaaaaaay over the top and keep it appropriately over the top with more bacon than ham in the performances. Hemsworth is really good, playing the fish out of water/humbled god arc well, and Tom Hiddleston is interesting as half-brother (and full villain) Loki. Some reviews have claimed he almost seems sympathetic, but I don't see him that way. Yeah, he's got daddy issues and a case of ingratitude, but how hard has his life really been? Twit. And as the traditional post-credits scene indicates, he'll be back as the Avengers villain.

Where the film runs flatter is the Earthly portions with the wasted Natalie Portman as Jane Foster, upgraded from a nurse in the comics to an astrophysicist of some sort. (The way they dispose of the Dr. Don Blake facet of the original comics is a neat touch.) Her research isn't given any greater significance and while she's more plausible as a scientist than Liv Tyler was in The Incredible Hulk, it's a nothingburger of a part. Kat Dennings as her tart, slacker assistant is cute (though why cover up that body?) and delivers much of the comic relief. While on the subject of women, look for Jaimie Alexander, who is Sif, Thor's kickass warrior chick pal, to become a major nerd icon as she looks like a cross between Missi Pyle (Galaxy Quest) and Lucy Lawless, which leads to the largest LOL in the whole movie.

Overall, Thor, is entertaining and slick to look at with above-average performances. It's just that it feels like it could've been longer and punchier with more for Portman to do.

Score: 8/10. See on the big screen at a matinee. Don't bother with 3D; it's dark and fast-moving.

This trailer is rather mediocre in selling the spectacle.