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
Saturday, May 28, 2011
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.
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
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
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.
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
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
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!
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
Thursday, May 19, 2011
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.
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
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
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.
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
Monday, May 16, 2011
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!
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
Friday, May 13, 2011
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.
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
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
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.
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
Saturday, May 7, 2011
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.
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.
"Scream 4" Review
Saturday, April 30, 2011
The biggest point of interest for me about Scream 4 (or Scre4m in l337 m0v13 sp33k) was that it was shot in the Detroit area. It wasn't even a movie I was planning on seeing theatrically but got stuck paying full price for when the showing of Fast Five we'd planned on catching with a free ticket was sold out. Drat. While it's not worth full price, it's not bad so I didn't feel too chapped.
Pretty much the whole gang that wasn't killed in previous chapters is here as Neve Campbell's Sydney is coming home to promote her book about surviving the other three movies. Courtney Cox and David Arquette are married (fun fact: their marriage was falling apart during the shoot) and he's the Sheriff of Whereverville these movies happen in. Of course, people start dying and the question is who is wearing the Ghostface mask this time.
The thing about the Scream series from the very beginning was that it was tweaking the conventions of the genre. It's hard to remember what a shock it was for Drew Barrymore's character to get whacked in the opening scene when she was prominently featured on the poster. As a decade has passed, the requirement for how Scream changed the format to be addressed is cleverly handled by series creator Kevin Williamson very meta script. From the very beginning Scre4m knows what it is and makes a running commentary about what it's doing and why. (Check out the trailer for a taste.)
You'll probably figure out the final twists since we're all so cynical and on guard for them in the first place, but director Wes Craven runs things fast enough that we don't have enough time to ponder what's coming. While not even evolutionary, Scream 4 manages to not be a Ghostface-come-lately cash-in. We didn't need this movie; but it's not something that should be killed and buried behind the garage. It's worth a rental, just as I'd planned all along.
Score: 7/10. Rent the DVD.
Weird detail: Marley Shelton, who plays a deputy and was the woman who Josh Hartnett killed in the beginning of Sin City, looks a LOT like Heather Graham; so much so that when a clip of Stab, the movie within the movie in Scream 2 (IIRC), is shown with Heather, we thought it was Marley again.
Pretty much the whole gang that wasn't killed in previous chapters is here as Neve Campbell's Sydney is coming home to promote her book about surviving the other three movies. Courtney Cox and David Arquette are married (fun fact: their marriage was falling apart during the shoot) and he's the Sheriff of Whereverville these movies happen in. Of course, people start dying and the question is who is wearing the Ghostface mask this time.
The thing about the Scream series from the very beginning was that it was tweaking the conventions of the genre. It's hard to remember what a shock it was for Drew Barrymore's character to get whacked in the opening scene when she was prominently featured on the poster. As a decade has passed, the requirement for how Scream changed the format to be addressed is cleverly handled by series creator Kevin Williamson very meta script. From the very beginning Scre4m knows what it is and makes a running commentary about what it's doing and why. (Check out the trailer for a taste.)
You'll probably figure out the final twists since we're all so cynical and on guard for them in the first place, but director Wes Craven runs things fast enough that we don't have enough time to ponder what's coming. While not even evolutionary, Scream 4 manages to not be a Ghostface-come-lately cash-in. We didn't need this movie; but it's not something that should be killed and buried behind the garage. It's worth a rental, just as I'd planned all along.
Score: 7/10. Rent the DVD.
Weird detail: Marley Shelton, who plays a deputy and was the woman who Josh Hartnett killed in the beginning of Sin City, looks a LOT like Heather Graham; so much so that when a clip of Stab, the movie within the movie in Scream 2 (IIRC), is shown with Heather, we thought it was Marley again.
"Middle Men" Review
Sunday, April 17, 2011
The origins of the online porn industry are flashily portrayed in Middle Men, a brisk and frequently amusing flick that bogs down somewhat in the middle before ultimately telling the viewer at the end that they've been wasting their time if they've been thinking they were learning something.
After a pair of drugged-out morons in L.A. develop a method to collect credit card payments for porn, they rapidly start rolling in dough (and drugs) and their lack of business acumen causes the business and their lives to be in danger. In steps clean-cut nice guy fixer Luke Wilson, a Houston family man who is so straight he wears a suit and tie almost all the time. He straightens up the business and comes up with a means to hide the nature of the charges on credit card statements so that wives don't know what smut their hubbies are blowing the grocery money on.
Of course, the good times can last forever, especially when you're dealing with a pair of idiots, a crooked lawyer, and Russian mobsters and the stakes rapidly rise to life-threatening levels. Also, his Luke's Boy Scout nature is tempted by an affair with the only porn star who doesn't do nudity - come on, Hollywood, it's like the starlets who don't take off their bra while having sex; cast actresses who are willing to give up the goods! - and when the Idiot Twins start their own side bunch of sites, the Feds close in.
While Middle Men starts off with a lot of energy it sags in the middle before pulling it together in the end. The performances are good and it's pretty entertaining except none of it is real. While it's advertised as "inspired by true events" a card in the end credits reveals that while it's kinda sorta based on real events, all the characters, names, places and events have been fictionalized or composited from different people; in other words, it's a total work of fiction based on real events, like Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor. Way to waste the viewer's time, folks.
Entertaining, but not enlightening, Middle Men is an also-ran for anyone who was genuinely curious as to how the modern Internet was won.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.
After a pair of drugged-out morons in L.A. develop a method to collect credit card payments for porn, they rapidly start rolling in dough (and drugs) and their lack of business acumen causes the business and their lives to be in danger. In steps clean-cut nice guy fixer Luke Wilson, a Houston family man who is so straight he wears a suit and tie almost all the time. He straightens up the business and comes up with a means to hide the nature of the charges on credit card statements so that wives don't know what smut their hubbies are blowing the grocery money on.
Of course, the good times can last forever, especially when you're dealing with a pair of idiots, a crooked lawyer, and Russian mobsters and the stakes rapidly rise to life-threatening levels. Also, his Luke's Boy Scout nature is tempted by an affair with the only porn star who doesn't do nudity - come on, Hollywood, it's like the starlets who don't take off their bra while having sex; cast actresses who are willing to give up the goods! - and when the Idiot Twins start their own side bunch of sites, the Feds close in.
While Middle Men starts off with a lot of energy it sags in the middle before pulling it together in the end. The performances are good and it's pretty entertaining except none of it is real. While it's advertised as "inspired by true events" a card in the end credits reveals that while it's kinda sorta based on real events, all the characters, names, places and events have been fictionalized or composited from different people; in other words, it's a total work of fiction based on real events, like Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor. Way to waste the viewer's time, folks.
Entertaining, but not enlightening, Middle Men is an also-ran for anyone who was genuinely curious as to how the modern Internet was won.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.
"Hanna" Review
Rather than waste time recapping the plot of Hanna, watch the trailer for me, please:
If it looks like an artsy take on the Hit Girl character from last year's Kick-Ass, you'd be wrong for the most part because Saoirse Ronan's (The Lovely Bones, Atonement) Hanna is a polite girl whose father, Eric Bana, has raised in total isolation in the Arctic Circle with a single purpose: to kill Cate Blanchett, the CIA spook who killed her mother. I don't think she swears once.
When she sets off on her mission and escape, Hanna finds herself in a world she's only read about. She can speak fluent Arabic, but has never seen a TV. When she hooks up with a Australian family of pseudo-Bohos, her inexperience with basic social situations leads to some hilarious awkward moments. ("As opposed to what?!?" is the funniest line of the movie.)
With a taut score by the Chemical Brothers (who beat down the overrated Daft Punk and their TRON Legacy bloops and beeps), good performances all around including the poorly-dressed, creepy German bar owner/assassin Blanchett sets after Hanna, and a very European vibe and look that avoids the usual locations for spy movies, Hanna is a more cerebral take on the adolescent murder girl genre. Yeah, you'll be able to predict the last line of dialogue, but it's OK.
Score: 8/10. Catch a matinee.
If it looks like an artsy take on the Hit Girl character from last year's Kick-Ass, you'd be wrong for the most part because Saoirse Ronan's (The Lovely Bones, Atonement) Hanna is a polite girl whose father, Eric Bana, has raised in total isolation in the Arctic Circle with a single purpose: to kill Cate Blanchett, the CIA spook who killed her mother. I don't think she swears once.
When she sets off on her mission and escape, Hanna finds herself in a world she's only read about. She can speak fluent Arabic, but has never seen a TV. When she hooks up with a Australian family of pseudo-Bohos, her inexperience with basic social situations leads to some hilarious awkward moments. ("As opposed to what?!?" is the funniest line of the movie.)
With a taut score by the Chemical Brothers (who beat down the overrated Daft Punk and their TRON Legacy bloops and beeps), good performances all around including the poorly-dressed, creepy German bar owner/assassin Blanchett sets after Hanna, and a very European vibe and look that avoids the usual locations for spy movies, Hanna is a more cerebral take on the adolescent murder girl genre. Yeah, you'll be able to predict the last line of dialogue, but it's OK.
Score: 8/10. Catch a matinee.
"Death Race 2" Review
Saturday, April 16, 2011
OK, this movie sucked, so let's make quick work of it. Here's the trailer for this direct-to-video steamer:
Did you see the part about how the first half of the movie is spent with gladiator battles? How about how the charisma-free leading man who the producers thought would be an acceptable substitute for Jason Statham? Is it clear that it's a prequel even though the higher number would indicate sequel? OK, that it does, but who cares?
Low-rent and unnecessary - and not even willing to have decent gratuitous nudity to go with all the CGI bloodshed - and not much fun, Death Race 2 is one death race too many.
Score: 2/10. Skip it.
Did you see the part about how the first half of the movie is spent with gladiator battles? How about how the charisma-free leading man who the producers thought would be an acceptable substitute for Jason Statham? Is it clear that it's a prequel even though the higher number would indicate sequel? OK, that it does, but who cares?
Low-rent and unnecessary - and not even willing to have decent gratuitous nudity to go with all the CGI bloodshed - and not much fun, Death Race 2 is one death race too many.
Score: 2/10. Skip it.
"The Next Three Days" Review
Monday, April 11, 2011
The trailer tells the tale:
All that's missing is the details as to how Russell Crowe breaks Elizabeth Banks out of prison. Wrongly convicted - or was she? - of murdering her boss, Crowe reaches out to Liam Neeson (who escaped many prisons and wrote a book and is in exactly one scene) for advice and then plans how to get her out when her final appeal fails. When she is suddenly slated to be moved to another prison, he has only three days to execute his plan.
Written and directed by the most dishonest screenwriter in Hollyweird, Paul "Crash, In the Valley of Elah, Million Dollar Baby" Haggis (which is a gross Scottish dish), it manages to not be as revolting as those stories, but at the cost of being dull and ultimately forgettable. (I'm writing this review on June 24th and can barely remember what it was like.) Crowe is miscast as a desperate husband while Banks is good in a thinly written role. A hot single mom (Olivia Wilde) Crowe meets on his son's playground doesn't even act as a temptation, so why is she here at all? Seriously. I get being all loyal to your wife and baby mama, but she's going away for 20 years or more and OLIVIA WILDE IS RIGHT THERE AND AVAILABLE!! Dude!!!
Finally, without spoiling whether he breaks her out successfully - oh, come on; what do you think happens? - I have to say that getting into Canuckia is a hella lot harder than they show it here. Bah.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.
All that's missing is the details as to how Russell Crowe breaks Elizabeth Banks out of prison. Wrongly convicted - or was she? - of murdering her boss, Crowe reaches out to Liam Neeson (who escaped many prisons and wrote a book and is in exactly one scene) for advice and then plans how to get her out when her final appeal fails. When she is suddenly slated to be moved to another prison, he has only three days to execute his plan.
Written and directed by the most dishonest screenwriter in Hollyweird, Paul "Crash, In the Valley of Elah, Million Dollar Baby" Haggis (which is a gross Scottish dish), it manages to not be as revolting as those stories, but at the cost of being dull and ultimately forgettable. (I'm writing this review on June 24th and can barely remember what it was like.) Crowe is miscast as a desperate husband while Banks is good in a thinly written role. A hot single mom (Olivia Wilde) Crowe meets on his son's playground doesn't even act as a temptation, so why is she here at all? Seriously. I get being all loyal to your wife and baby mama, but she's going away for 20 years or more and OLIVIA WILDE IS RIGHT THERE AND AVAILABLE!! Dude!!!
Finally, without spoiling whether he breaks her out successfully - oh, come on; what do you think happens? - I have to say that getting into Canuckia is a hella lot harder than they show it here. Bah.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.
"Takers" Review
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Familiarity makes Takers an exercise in mehness. A slick gang of bank robbers gets a tip on a Big Score from a former crew member who got caught on a job and served five years in prison and is back out. Based on the armored truck robbery scheme from The Italian Job, they put together an audacious plan which works after a fashion until the inevitable double-crosses and bad breaks start to cause serious problems and blood loss.
The action scenes are OK and the story structure is a little different - the big heist is in the middle of the movie, hinting that there's more easy-to-guess plot to come - but it tries a little too hard to be stylish with dramatic lighting and color timing. Co-produced by co-star Tip "T.I." Harris, it's an old heist movie story dressed up in slick threads and a mostly minority cast - Matt Dillon, Paul Walker and Hayden Christensen are the only gringos in the top-billed stars - but all the polish can't make it shine.
Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable.
The action scenes are OK and the story structure is a little different - the big heist is in the middle of the movie, hinting that there's more easy-to-guess plot to come - but it tries a little too hard to be stylish with dramatic lighting and color timing. Co-produced by co-star Tip "T.I." Harris, it's an old heist movie story dressed up in slick threads and a mostly minority cast - Matt Dillon, Paul Walker and Hayden Christensen are the only gringos in the top-billed stars - but all the polish can't make it shine.
Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable.
"Ghost in the Shell 2.0" Blu-ray Review
Friday, April 8, 2011
There are certain anime movies and shows that every self-respecting beginning otaku (Japanese term used to refer to people with obsessive interests, particularly anime, manga, or video games) is expected to have seen: Akira, Cowboy Bebop, and 1995's Ghost in the Shell which was updated in 2008 by director Mamoru Oshii to Ghost in the Shell 2.0 - not to be confused with his 2004 sequel Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. Confused? Let me explain.
Oshii has gone back an redone several sequences with CGI animation meaning shots of helicopters and the city and computer screens and the Major's iconic strip-naked-turn-invisible-jump-off-building-kill-people scene are buffed in in 21st Century drag. The problem is that when we revert to the 1995 hand-drawn animation, it's jarring. Purists may hate it, but I liked it.
It's been ages since I've seen GitS and it was probably on VHS so I thought this new Blu-ray looked and sounded terrific. However, in looking up some info on it, I discovered there is some controversy involving the new footage, the color timing changes to make it look like the sequel (this I tend to agree with now that I've seen the comparison), and the voice cast. This guy's video review goes into quite a lot of depth with his criticism (do yourself a favor and skip to the 4:00 mark to get to the pertinent info; the intro is simply stupid and screams, "I'm a nerdgin!") and illustrates his beefs with the update.
It should be noted that the original cut is included on this disc, though it's apparently an uprezzed version of the DVD master and opinions are generally negative toward it. The above-linked video talks about how a proper BD of original version is available via import, but a glance at Amazon's Japan site shows it's about $125 for the three disc set! Pass!!
At the core of Ghost in the Shell is a story about the tenuous grip on humanity a person who is basically a cybernetic vessel encasing her spirit (or "ghost" as they call it) may have and how other A.I. constructs may feel about their existence. It frequently gets dully philosophical, but it's not as talky as the sequel was. For all of Innocence's striking beauty, it was mostly characters quoting philosophers at each other like college students one-upping each other.
Ghost in the Shell was never a flawless movie - though unlike Akira, it doesn't utterly fall apart in the end - and the updated visual bits don't change the ultimate story, but it should be seen by all seeking to have a well-rounded appreciation for disparate forms of entertainment. If you've never seen (or don't remember) GitS, then this 2.0 version is fine if you can rent it or get on sale someplace for $10 or less.
Score: 7/10. Buy it if you're a fan and can get it cheap.
Oshii has gone back an redone several sequences with CGI animation meaning shots of helicopters and the city and computer screens and the Major's iconic strip-naked-turn-invisible-jump-off-building-kill-people scene are buffed in in 21st Century drag. The problem is that when we revert to the 1995 hand-drawn animation, it's jarring. Purists may hate it, but I liked it.
It's been ages since I've seen GitS and it was probably on VHS so I thought this new Blu-ray looked and sounded terrific. However, in looking up some info on it, I discovered there is some controversy involving the new footage, the color timing changes to make it look like the sequel (this I tend to agree with now that I've seen the comparison), and the voice cast. This guy's video review goes into quite a lot of depth with his criticism (do yourself a favor and skip to the 4:00 mark to get to the pertinent info; the intro is simply stupid and screams, "I'm a nerdgin!") and illustrates his beefs with the update.
It should be noted that the original cut is included on this disc, though it's apparently an uprezzed version of the DVD master and opinions are generally negative toward it. The above-linked video talks about how a proper BD of original version is available via import, but a glance at Amazon's Japan site shows it's about $125 for the three disc set! Pass!!
At the core of Ghost in the Shell is a story about the tenuous grip on humanity a person who is basically a cybernetic vessel encasing her spirit (or "ghost" as they call it) may have and how other A.I. constructs may feel about their existence. It frequently gets dully philosophical, but it's not as talky as the sequel was. For all of Innocence's striking beauty, it was mostly characters quoting philosophers at each other like college students one-upping each other.
Ghost in the Shell was never a flawless movie - though unlike Akira, it doesn't utterly fall apart in the end - and the updated visual bits don't change the ultimate story, but it should be seen by all seeking to have a well-rounded appreciation for disparate forms of entertainment. If you've never seen (or don't remember) GitS, then this 2.0 version is fine if you can rent it or get on sale someplace for $10 or less.
Score: 7/10. Buy it if you're a fan and can get it cheap.
"Arthur (2011)" Review
Monday, April 4, 2011
When they announced the totally unnecessary remake of the classic 1981 comedy Arthur with Russell Brand taking over Dudley Moore's role, Helen Mirren as a gender-swapped Hobson (that won Sir John Gielgud an Oscar), and Greta Gerwig (me neither) blonding up the Liza Minnelli role, I had the same question as everyone else which is the same question that is asked when a beloved family member dies, a natural disaster occurs, or Michael Anthony is booted for Eddie's kid Wolfgang: WHY, GOD? WHY?!?
The need to remake everything regardless of whether it's needed re-doing or not has been a close second to sequels as a sign of Hollywood's fearful timidness and general disinterest in originality. You can imagine the pitch meeting for this thing: "Hey, let's remake Arthur with that annoying skinny English twit from Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him To The Greek. We'll get that GILF Helen Mirren to be the butler and it will be automatic win and profit! If only it were so simple.
If you've seen the original, you've pretty much seen this one. Arthur's a drunk man-child whose mother orders him to marry the daughter (Jennifer Garner) of a rough and tough, but very wealthy, contractor (Nick Nolte speaking in a worse voice than Batman) in order to provide stability and trust in the family business. He's dated her before, but dumped her because he didn't fancy her, something no other man had done to her before. When he tells Mother that he's not going to do it, she tells him he'll be cut off from his billion dollar trust fund if he doesn't close the deal. He meets a kooky, free-spirited, self-appointed tour guide (Gerwig) at Grand Central Station and is smitten by her. Will true love will out over money or will a tragic murder-suicide cap off this flick?
I'm not much of a fan of Brand's and it has nothing to do with his exclusive access to Katy Perry's glorious joy globes. He's struck me as an annoying one-trick pony and he doesn't disabuse me of that idea still, but he's not as terrible as I'd feared. As Arthur makes his inevitable arc into semi-maturity, Brand does OK. Mirren is as tart as could've been expected, but woefully underused. It feels as if they cast her and figured their work was done and didn't bother to write much for her. What a wasted opportunity.
This Gerwig person is one of those critic's darling babes that all the critics fawn over because she was in a movie you've probably never heard (think: Greta Scacchi), in this case Greenberg, the Ben Stiller blockbuster that grossed $4,234,170 domestically. She's sorta cute in an indie movie way, but feels underwritten. The weird standout is Garner who plays Susan, the arranged bride, as a craven shark with barely any veneer of romance; it's all about Arthur's Benjamins, baybee!
Are there laughs? Sure, but not as many as there should've been and in a far lower ratio than a typical well-done sitcom. (Really, why is it that TV shows can deliver more laughs in an average 22-minute episode for free than a 100-minute charges $10 for?) My girlfriend likes Brand (figures) and found the line he delivers during an AA meeting to be the funniest thing she's heard all year. There are some moments of sweet whimsy, like their first date. However, for most of the time during Arthur 2011: The Unnecessary Remake, I was wondering when a proper DVD release of the original would happen - it's never been released in widescreen format. This movie isn't evil, just irrelevant.
Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable.
The need to remake everything regardless of whether it's needed re-doing or not has been a close second to sequels as a sign of Hollywood's fearful timidness and general disinterest in originality. You can imagine the pitch meeting for this thing: "Hey, let's remake Arthur with that annoying skinny English twit from Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him To The Greek. We'll get that GILF Helen Mirren to be the butler and it will be automatic win and profit! If only it were so simple.
If you've seen the original, you've pretty much seen this one. Arthur's a drunk man-child whose mother orders him to marry the daughter (Jennifer Garner) of a rough and tough, but very wealthy, contractor (Nick Nolte speaking in a worse voice than Batman) in order to provide stability and trust in the family business. He's dated her before, but dumped her because he didn't fancy her, something no other man had done to her before. When he tells Mother that he's not going to do it, she tells him he'll be cut off from his billion dollar trust fund if he doesn't close the deal. He meets a kooky, free-spirited, self-appointed tour guide (Gerwig) at Grand Central Station and is smitten by her. Will true love will out over money or will a tragic murder-suicide cap off this flick?
I'm not much of a fan of Brand's and it has nothing to do with his exclusive access to Katy Perry's glorious joy globes. He's struck me as an annoying one-trick pony and he doesn't disabuse me of that idea still, but he's not as terrible as I'd feared. As Arthur makes his inevitable arc into semi-maturity, Brand does OK. Mirren is as tart as could've been expected, but woefully underused. It feels as if they cast her and figured their work was done and didn't bother to write much for her. What a wasted opportunity.
This Gerwig person is one of those critic's darling babes that all the critics fawn over because she was in a movie you've probably never heard (think: Greta Scacchi), in this case Greenberg, the Ben Stiller blockbuster that grossed $4,234,170 domestically. She's sorta cute in an indie movie way, but feels underwritten. The weird standout is Garner who plays Susan, the arranged bride, as a craven shark with barely any veneer of romance; it's all about Arthur's Benjamins, baybee!
Are there laughs? Sure, but not as many as there should've been and in a far lower ratio than a typical well-done sitcom. (Really, why is it that TV shows can deliver more laughs in an average 22-minute episode for free than a 100-minute charges $10 for?) My girlfriend likes Brand (figures) and found the line he delivers during an AA meeting to be the funniest thing she's heard all year. There are some moments of sweet whimsy, like their first date. However, for most of the time during Arthur 2011: The Unnecessary Remake, I was wondering when a proper DVD release of the original would happen - it's never been released in widescreen format. This movie isn't evil, just irrelevant.
Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable.
"Country Strong" Review
Sunday, April 3, 2011
It's easy to make fun of the title of Country Strong - which itself sounds like the Hulk titled it - with things like Country Wrong or Country Weak or Country Cheese and the idea of Hollywood blue blood and English resident (married to the singer of Radiohead Lite) Gwyneth Paltrow launching a side career as a country singer has gathered hoots, but the main problem the movie has is a scattered, trope-laden script that stumbles along aimlessly before doing something at the end which turned a mediocre movie into something epically terrible.
Since I'm going to have to spoil the living daylights about the plot, for those unwilling to heed my good advice and skip this movie, this is the end of the road for you. Gwynnie can sing; Garrett Hedlund is actually quite good acting and singing, a shock considering he was last seen utterly stinking up the Grid in TRON Legacy; Leighton Meester almost shakes her Gossip Girl image, but is much better singing; but, overall the movie is a mess before it veers into disaster.
Score: 3/10. Skip it.
OK, here's where the SPOILERS begin, so you've been warned. To understand what's wrong with Country Strong, you have to look at the trailer to see how it was sold:
OK, got that? It looks like a redemption story with All About Eve elements. Gwyneth overcomes scheming rookie Blair with the help of young country hunk Beau. Did you catch the part where Beau is the actual protagonist and Gwyneth KILLS HERSELF about a minute after telling Blair, "That's how it's done."? They show someone slumping to the floor - that would be Tim McGraw, real-life country star who isn't a musician here and is married in real life to Faith Hill whom Gwyneth is clearly patterned after - at the news of her death, but it comes from nowhere in the movie. Movies don't need to have happy endings, but this is so cheap and meaningless it just shows how slipshod the storytelling is.
Let's start from the beginning: It opens with Beau and his band playing for a smattering of oldsters at a honky tonk. He then goes to work and his clothes indicate he's some sort of orderly. He's told to stay away from Gwyneth, so of course we cut directly to him and her collaborating on a song, passing an acoustic back and forth during an obvious roll in the sack. What's their relationship? We don't know. Tim comes in and asks what's going on and announces that she's checking out. Beau protests that it's a month too early and he's her sponsor. OK, she's in rehab and he's her sponsor and apparently f*ck buddy. Moving on...
While Tim and Faith (heh) are driving out, we hear on the radio a news report that she was coming out of rehab after an incident in Dallas several months before in which she was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct while 5-1/2 months pregnant during a show. Hmmm, sounds bad. What happened to the baby? Tim addresses the media that she's ready to get back on the road. So he's her manager? OK.
Next thing, they're in bed together, but it's obviously chilly between them. Oh, he's her husband and manager. Happens all the time. She wants to talk about Dallas but he doesn't. I'm guessing she lost the baby - when someone gives her a "gift" of a box with a bloody doll inside with a note reading "BABY KILLER!" that seals it - but Tim says something about "putting him down" like they have a kid. What the heck is going on here?
We then see Tim checking out potential opener Beau and Blair at some Nashville bar. Blair is a former beauty queen prone to stage fright and she freezes until Beau bails her out. Tim offers them the opening slots on Faith's comeback tour. Huh? Some guy who appears to be banging your wife and a scared girl are the best you can get? After the doll incident, Faith freaks out on stage and starts crying, ending the show and she disappears on a second gig leaving the giant arena gig in Dallas on the line. Fortunately, Faith makes out with the promoter of the gig and it's back on? WTFF?!?
All along, there seem to be TWO triangles going on: Tim-Faith-Beau and Faith-Beau-Blair. There's an attraction between the kids and after a night of drinking - wait, wasn't he Faith's rehab sponsor?!? - they almost seal the deal, but Faith is floating around the perimeter and I found myself shopping for video games online during this long stretch of nothing.
Blah-blah-woof-woof and the Big Show goes down. Beau rocks the house, Blair doesn't freeze up in a packed arena only a few gigs after tanking at the honky tonk, Faith comes out and puts on a triumphant performance, and after the show, she goes to her dressing room and locks the door. Beau notices she's not at the party and goes to her isolated dressing room, kicks in the door and finds her unconscious from an overdose of pills. Wait, WHAT?!?!??!
At this moment Country Strong jumps the shark, nukes the fridge, and makes me wonder what the whole movie was about and how everyone involved in the movie thought this was a good idea? Why did we spend two hours watching this woman try to redeem her life only to take it? A: Because she's not the main character, Beau is. It's not about Faith getting her life together, but Beau getting his career in gear, just like the trailer DIDN'T show. The whole marketing campaign is a bait and switch.
Now it may not have mattered if the movie managed to coherently tell its story, but it doesn't. We don't learn that Faith fell 10 feet off the stage in Dallas causing her to lose the baby until 80 minutes into the film. Why not mention that up front? How hard would it have been to have the radio report wrap all those details up in two sentences? "Not Faith Hill was released from rehab today, only months after an incident in Dallas in which an intoxicated, 5-1/2 month pregnant Not Faith Hill fell from the stage, causing a miscarriage." There, we're all up to speed and not scratching our heads.
There is also a subplot about an orphaned quail she finds on the facility's grounds that she's trying got nurture. Get it? The bird is her lost baby and need to be a mother. Except she takes the box it's in to the bar, gets drunk, and forgets it; something that we never see, is covered in dialogue and never factors into the story again. Again, huh? Did anyone look at a cut of the film before it was duped and sent to theaters? I'll bet I could recut the movie without any of that and it wouldn't be missed.
Because we are never clear about who is doing what and why, nothing ever gels. Hedlund is quite believable as Beau, with a strong baritone voice and charismatic manner and Gwyneth does what she can with the script and sings well, but it doesn't matter and the way she checks out is stupid. She could've slapped down Blair while walking offstage, gone to her dressing room, and had Tim come in to cheer her and say she's back and have her say, "No. I'm done. I'm retired and running off with Beau," or something to get her back in control of her life. Why suicide? Because it would've gotten Paltrow an Oscar nomination? That worked. Not.
Writer-director Shana Feste has no sense of how musicians actually think and act - lots of singing doesn't make it a musical - and the general confusion of the plot started at the script stage and didn't get better. As I detailed up top, we are thrown into a confusing set of relationships and have to unravel the facts as best we can. (This isn't Memento, dammit!)
Only waste your time on Country Strong if you want to see how NOT to tell a story.
Since I'm going to have to spoil the living daylights about the plot, for those unwilling to heed my good advice and skip this movie, this is the end of the road for you. Gwynnie can sing; Garrett Hedlund is actually quite good acting and singing, a shock considering he was last seen utterly stinking up the Grid in TRON Legacy; Leighton Meester almost shakes her Gossip Girl image, but is much better singing; but, overall the movie is a mess before it veers into disaster.
Score: 3/10. Skip it.
OK, here's where the SPOILERS begin, so you've been warned. To understand what's wrong with Country Strong, you have to look at the trailer to see how it was sold:
OK, got that? It looks like a redemption story with All About Eve elements. Gwyneth overcomes scheming rookie Blair with the help of young country hunk Beau. Did you catch the part where Beau is the actual protagonist and Gwyneth KILLS HERSELF about a minute after telling Blair, "That's how it's done."? They show someone slumping to the floor - that would be Tim McGraw, real-life country star who isn't a musician here and is married in real life to Faith Hill whom Gwyneth is clearly patterned after - at the news of her death, but it comes from nowhere in the movie. Movies don't need to have happy endings, but this is so cheap and meaningless it just shows how slipshod the storytelling is.
Let's start from the beginning: It opens with Beau and his band playing for a smattering of oldsters at a honky tonk. He then goes to work and his clothes indicate he's some sort of orderly. He's told to stay away from Gwyneth, so of course we cut directly to him and her collaborating on a song, passing an acoustic back and forth during an obvious roll in the sack. What's their relationship? We don't know. Tim comes in and asks what's going on and announces that she's checking out. Beau protests that it's a month too early and he's her sponsor. OK, she's in rehab and he's her sponsor and apparently f*ck buddy. Moving on...
While Tim and Faith (heh) are driving out, we hear on the radio a news report that she was coming out of rehab after an incident in Dallas several months before in which she was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct while 5-1/2 months pregnant during a show. Hmmm, sounds bad. What happened to the baby? Tim addresses the media that she's ready to get back on the road. So he's her manager? OK.
Next thing, they're in bed together, but it's obviously chilly between them. Oh, he's her husband and manager. Happens all the time. She wants to talk about Dallas but he doesn't. I'm guessing she lost the baby - when someone gives her a "gift" of a box with a bloody doll inside with a note reading "BABY KILLER!" that seals it - but Tim says something about "putting him down" like they have a kid. What the heck is going on here?
We then see Tim checking out potential opener Beau and Blair at some Nashville bar. Blair is a former beauty queen prone to stage fright and she freezes until Beau bails her out. Tim offers them the opening slots on Faith's comeback tour. Huh? Some guy who appears to be banging your wife and a scared girl are the best you can get? After the doll incident, Faith freaks out on stage and starts crying, ending the show and she disappears on a second gig leaving the giant arena gig in Dallas on the line. Fortunately, Faith makes out with the promoter of the gig and it's back on? WTFF?!?
All along, there seem to be TWO triangles going on: Tim-Faith-Beau and Faith-Beau-Blair. There's an attraction between the kids and after a night of drinking - wait, wasn't he Faith's rehab sponsor?!? - they almost seal the deal, but Faith is floating around the perimeter and I found myself shopping for video games online during this long stretch of nothing.
Blah-blah-woof-woof and the Big Show goes down. Beau rocks the house, Blair doesn't freeze up in a packed arena only a few gigs after tanking at the honky tonk, Faith comes out and puts on a triumphant performance, and after the show, she goes to her dressing room and locks the door. Beau notices she's not at the party and goes to her isolated dressing room, kicks in the door and finds her unconscious from an overdose of pills. Wait, WHAT?!?!??!
At this moment Country Strong jumps the shark, nukes the fridge, and makes me wonder what the whole movie was about and how everyone involved in the movie thought this was a good idea? Why did we spend two hours watching this woman try to redeem her life only to take it? A: Because she's not the main character, Beau is. It's not about Faith getting her life together, but Beau getting his career in gear, just like the trailer DIDN'T show. The whole marketing campaign is a bait and switch.
Now it may not have mattered if the movie managed to coherently tell its story, but it doesn't. We don't learn that Faith fell 10 feet off the stage in Dallas causing her to lose the baby until 80 minutes into the film. Why not mention that up front? How hard would it have been to have the radio report wrap all those details up in two sentences? "Not Faith Hill was released from rehab today, only months after an incident in Dallas in which an intoxicated, 5-1/2 month pregnant Not Faith Hill fell from the stage, causing a miscarriage." There, we're all up to speed and not scratching our heads.
There is also a subplot about an orphaned quail she finds on the facility's grounds that she's trying got nurture. Get it? The bird is her lost baby and need to be a mother. Except she takes the box it's in to the bar, gets drunk, and forgets it; something that we never see, is covered in dialogue and never factors into the story again. Again, huh? Did anyone look at a cut of the film before it was duped and sent to theaters? I'll bet I could recut the movie without any of that and it wouldn't be missed.
Because we are never clear about who is doing what and why, nothing ever gels. Hedlund is quite believable as Beau, with a strong baritone voice and charismatic manner and Gwyneth does what she can with the script and sings well, but it doesn't matter and the way she checks out is stupid. She could've slapped down Blair while walking offstage, gone to her dressing room, and had Tim come in to cheer her and say she's back and have her say, "No. I'm done. I'm retired and running off with Beau," or something to get her back in control of her life. Why suicide? Because it would've gotten Paltrow an Oscar nomination? That worked. Not.
Writer-director Shana Feste has no sense of how musicians actually think and act - lots of singing doesn't make it a musical - and the general confusion of the plot started at the script stage and didn't get better. As I detailed up top, we are thrown into a confusing set of relationships and have to unravel the facts as best we can. (This isn't Memento, dammit!)
Only waste your time on Country Strong if you want to see how NOT to tell a story.
March 2011 Review Roundup
Thursday, March 31, 2011
After stumbling in February, we picked up the pace substantially, doubling the year's total in a month and hitting the theater four times.
3/2 - True Grit (7/10)
3/6 - The Adjustment Bureau (9/10)
3/7 - The Mechanic (4/10)
3/9 - Memento Blu-ray (9/10)
3/11 - Lemmy (5/10)
3/12 - Vanishing On 7th Street (3/10)
3/13 - Battle: Los Angeles (8/10); Morning Glory (4/10)
3/14 - Paranormal Activity 2 (4/10)
3/24 - Sucker Punch (7.5/10)
3/27 - Limitless (9/10); Due Date (6/10)
3/28 - Love and Other Drugs (2/10)
3/31 - Run Lola Run (7/10)
Month's Movies Watched: 14
Previously Unseen: 13
Theatrical: 4
Home: 10
=====
Year-To-Date: 28
YTD First-Timers: 23
YTD Theatrical: 5
YTD Home: 23
3/2 - True Grit (7/10)
3/6 - The Adjustment Bureau (9/10)
3/7 - The Mechanic (4/10)
3/9 - Memento Blu-ray (9/10)
3/11 - Lemmy (5/10)
3/12 - Vanishing On 7th Street (3/10)
3/13 - Battle: Los Angeles (8/10); Morning Glory (4/10)
3/14 - Paranormal Activity 2 (4/10)
3/24 - Sucker Punch (7.5/10)
3/27 - Limitless (9/10); Due Date (6/10)
3/28 - Love and Other Drugs (2/10)
3/31 - Run Lola Run (7/10)
Month's Movies Watched: 14
Previously Unseen: 13
Theatrical: 4
Home: 10
=====
Year-To-Date: 28
YTD First-Timers: 23
YTD Theatrical: 5
YTD Home: 23
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