The World’s Fastest Indian
June 29, 2007 | Leave a Comment
You live more in five minutes on a bike like this going flat out than some people live in a lifetime. – Burt Munro
This 2005 movie (DVD released 2006) is the true story of New Zealander Burt Munro, who, in the 1960s when he was in his 60s, set landspeed records at the Bonneville Salt Flats with his heavily modified 1924 Indian motorcycle.
His record still stands today, 200 MPH on a streamlined 1000 CC motorcycle.
This guy is sort of an aging MacGyver. He’s working on a shoestring budget. He makes his tires high-speed safe by cutting off the treads with a kitchen knife. His bike has a latch from his garden-gate on it.
Anthony Hopkins does an excellent job of capturing Burt Munro’s enthusiasm to do something nobody has ever done before, despite the danger.
This is a fun movie, but it’s also an inspirational movie. Despite a smattering of salty language, it’s good for young, and particularly old, alike. It’s a movie about following your dreams and never letting yourself be told you’re too old to do something. Yet it avoids being corny.
The DVD also contains the 1971 documentary about the real Burt Munro by the same director, Roger Donaldson
Popularity: 15% [?]
Ratatouille
June 29, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Pixar is usually good, but Brad Bird directing Pixar is better. Bird (THE IRON GIANT, THE INCREDIBLES) brings complex characters and a storyline that the animation serves, not the other way around.
Remy is a Paris rat who doesn’t want to be part of the rat pack. He dreams of being a French chef.
Linguini is a human working in a Paris restaurant who also wants to cook, but doesn’t have the talent for it.
The two team up, the rat hiding in the human’s chef’s hat and pulling his hair when he wants the human to add certain spices (because he can understand but not talk Humanspeak).
As one might expect, complications ensue for a rat who wants to be a gourmet cook in a fancy restaurant.
This is a fun movie, and, like much of Pixar’s stuff, enjoyable and appropriate for kids but written for adults.
With the plethora of computer-animated “pack of animals” movies lately (penguins dancing, penguins surfing, suburban animals thrust into the wilderness, wilderness animals thrust into the suburbs, zoo animals forced into the wild, wild animals forced into the zoo), that this one focuses on one character, and most resembles the 1996 Tony Shalhoub film BIG NIGHT about two brothers opening a fancy restaurant, may give some indication that this isn’t your usual computer-toon.
The action sequences are truly exciting, and aren’t played for laughs. When the rat is being swept down a storm sewer, or being menaced by an old lady with a shotgun, it’s not portrayed as a funny animal in peril, but as something that really is life-threatening.
The animation is good, and more complex than some computer-animated movies with robots or bugs. The rat fur and water effects are impressive.
The Paris scenery is gorgeous. This movie has a more realistic feel, less stylized, than some recent animated films.
And there’s a lot of good comedy.
And the food is tastefully (pun intended) presented. A movie that revolves around cooking should make you hungry, and this one did make me hungry.
In theaters, this film has a Pixar short before the film, LIFTED, about two aliens trying to abduct a farmer from his farmhouse in the middle of the night. This was nominated for a 2007 Oscar for Best Short Animated Film .
Popularity: 16% [?]
Live Free or Die Hard
June 29, 2007 | 1 Comment
John McLane (Willis) is up to his neck in terrorists all over again and the only difference is this time some of them are French??? French terrorists are a hard thing to believe because as sneaky as terrorists are, they are bold and we know that really isn’t a French trait so on that note I’ll move along.
In the previous 3 Die Hard movies all of them had the same basic plotline; Foreign invaders wreak havoc in the name of what is believed to be politics but ultimately it winds up being about money… Episode 4 is no different.
This time the main baddie is Thomas Gabriel (Olyphant), a former tech head that tried to save America by showing the joint chiefs we were vulnerable to a major techno attack that could bring the country to it’s knees, but of course we don’t listen and he finds another way to prove he was right… Run the exact scenario he told the government the terrorists would use and send us back to the stone-age. But wait before he can do this he has to hire a whole peck of geeks to design little pieces of code that he can use in different phases to make his prophecy a reality, and just like the main rule of assassination (eliminate the assassin when the job is done), Gabriel puts out contracts on his geek squad when they finish so they can’t un-do his master plan, if they decide to go to the cops. All in all a good plan, too bad John McLane never lets the bad guys have their cake and eat it too.
One particular target of Gabe’s is Matt Farrell (Long), a New Jersey based hacker that designs decryption algorithms and collects action figures. After a few high profile hackers start getting bumped off around the country the FBI sends out a request to bring Farrell in and have him tell them what’s going on. Enter John McLane the man who always gets the lucky task of saving the day… Again… and John always gets the job done.
Bruce Willis is still cooler than the other side of the pillow as Sr. Detective John McLane so there was no way this movie could suck, and gratefully it didn’t. Supporting players, Olyphant and Long are quite good and so is the smoking hot Ninja babe Maggie Q. Kevin Smith shows up in a pretty funny role as Hacker Elite-Master Warlock… AKA Freddy. Throw in Winstead as the saucy daughter along with a half squirrell psycho for John to fight and you have a very cool action movie. Oh, I forgot the fact a jet chases him so toss that in too.
Yippy Ki Yay Mother F’ers John McLane is back and you should go check him out! Don’t go in expecting realism, go in expecting to be entertained – You’ll get your wish.
Popularity: 19% [?]
Ghost Rider
June 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Ghost Rider is another in a long line of Marvel characters to get their own feature film and just like the others, the first movie is more of an origin of the character than a movie starring the character… now that’s not to say it doesn’t have it’s moments. Nicolas Cage has been rumored to play multiple super heroes for the last few years (he named himself after one so what did you expect) so you knew sooner or later he’d get his wish, and according to Nic, GH was his favorite so it was only appropriate that he play him. Cage did a pretty good job – considering what he had to work with.
Let’s get the particulars out of the way so we can get back to what didn’t work. The movie starts out with a young daredevil (wrong movie) Johnny Blaze, and his stunt rider father Bart working the carny circuit. Johnny wants to leave this life behind to be with his sweetheart Roxanne and that’s what he plans to do. Johnny goes home to tell his dad and he finds him passed out. Johnny finds a note from his doctor confirming Bart is dying of cancer, which forces Johnny to look at his options. Leave dad and run away with the hotty, or stay and help dad in his last days… decisions, decisions. Well before Johnny can really make a choice, he’s approached by the devil himself, Mephistopheles (Fonda). He tells Johnny there’s no reason to choose he can have both. The devil tells him he will heal his father, so he can run away and all he has to do is agree to become his ‘Rider’, and surrender his soul. Johnny accepts and the next day his dad is completely healed… Yay! Not so fast, the devil always has a plan, and he kills Johnny’s dad anyway, as a sort of warning to Johnny that he’s not to have any attachments and he belongs to him now. So, Johnny no longer has his father and for fear of what he’s become, the girl he loves is left standing in the rain so he can ride off to fulfill his new destiny… As the devil’s bounty hunter, The Ghost Rider.
Jump about 20 years and Johnny (Cage) is THE top stunt jumper in the world, Roxanne (Mendez) is back in his life, the devil’s son Blackheart (Bentley) is on earth to collect on a debt owed the underworld. Mephistopheles comes back and turns Johnny into the rider to stop his son and collect the souls for him, and that about sums up the plot.
The effects in this movie are pretty good and it’s a good thing because the effects are the movie. The Ghost Rider transformation scenes are pretty cool and every scene that includes the bike looks great (especially on a big screen), but the Rider effects not so much. In fact at times they’re down right cheesy. I half expected the ghost teeth to start chattering like a cheap Halloween toy in a couple of scenes, they were so bad. The acting isn’t all that bad considering the dialog the actors have to work with… pretty crappy… There are some scenes that won’t be appropriate for children and the final fight has some pretty creepy elements to it, but all in all it’s a pretty good time at the movies. I’m not a fan of the character and I can honestly say I’ve never read a whole comic starring Ghost Rider, so it’s not fan boy hater-aide that lead to my rating. It was more like I had a good time but I doubt I’ll see it again kind of thing. But just like all comic book movies the door is left wide open to come back for more and hopefully by then the effects will improve and the cheesy element will be taken out all together.
Popularity: 15% [?]
Animaniacs: Volume 3
June 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment
My first exposure to the Animaniacs was a shock to my system. Before I saw any episodes, I had heard that Stephen Spielberg had his paws in this so my expectations were pretty low. Don’t get me wrong; the man has a lot of talent…but for cartoons?
All those reservations were blown apart after seeing the first few episodes, however. I thought that I was witnessing the second coming of Bugs Bunny! But then I saw Slappy Squirrel and knew that it was not to be.
For the uninitiated, each Animaniacs episode consisted of 2-3 segments featuring the Animaniac characters (Yakko, Wakko, and Dot) and one or two other recurring character sets (like Buttons and Mindy, the aforementioned Slappy Squirrel, and my personal faves Pinky and the Brain). Occasionally they would slip in a one-shot segment such as with the little travel trailer that was the bane of the tornados.
All in all, it’s very good stuff. As cartoons for kids, they’re just hyper enough to keep their attention and yet they also sneak in a LOT of references for adults that, thankfully, the kids just don’t get. The segments with Yakko, Wakko and Dot are usually quite good. The Pinky and the Brain segments are almost always excellent. However, most of the rest are hit and miss (at best). The Buttons and Mindy pieces are very inconsistent throughout the series and, while some have great moments, others just stink. Chicke Boo is just…well…weird. And Slappy Squirrel still sucks.
But that’s the beauty of this compilation…there are so many segments that you can happily skip forward through the ones you don’t like and still have plenty of great stuff to watch. If you have kids that need to be entertained along with yourself, then grab this DVD set as soon as you can.
Popularity: 16% [?]
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
June 17, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer picks up about 2 years after the first film and unlike Spidey and the X-Men, F4 are national heroes with tons of endorsements and cash, and everybody knows who they are. The fame associated to the afore mentioned hero-dom makes little things like raising a family or even getting married a media spectacle, and the story in the beginning focuses very heavily on this point; In fact it’s about 30 minutes before we see anything of consequence what so ever… Enter the Silver Surfer and business begins to pick up!
Reed Richards (Gruffudd) is contacted by the government to build some sort of tracking system that monitors energy signatures that they believe is responsible for creating big honking craters all over the planet. Sue is against this as it will surely ruin her big day… blah blah blah. Sue and Reed’s Wedding day comes along and it’s far from the way they’d envisioned it. The Surfer crashes the party and causes a big mini EMP which kills the city, a helicopter lands on the cake and Johnny ruins a DG tux, It’s all very tragic. I won’t spoil it for anyone when I tell you the trailer you’ve seen where Johnny (Evans) chases the Surfer is not exactly true to the film, so that sequence wasn’t completely ruined by seeing it in advance. So anyway back to it, the Government comes to the Four and asks for their help in determining the next location the Surfer will strike and if possible to stop him, which leads to the overall plot of the movie. Stop the Surfer, save the Day and rid the world of their old buddy Vic once and for all.
The story is OK, and the performances from Chiklis and Evans are pretty good, and if you ignore Alba’s acting and just concentrate on her lower opsiperal protuberance you’ll be fine. Fishburn lending his voice to the Surfer was cool and Seeing McMahon back as Doom made for a nice spin, but overall just an OK movie. The brightest spot of all was the effects, they were absolutely off the charts, factor in that I got to see it in full digital sound and picture made it all the better, but believe me it’s the highlight of this cookie, if you’re over the age of 12. It earned that PG rating honestly.
As far as sequels go it isn’t great but as far as a decent popcorn movie, it fits the bill perfectly. Lots of explosions, Alba in tight spandex, Cool chases, The Surfer, big gaping sink holes and a being that swallows worlds. Now that’s a summer eye candy extravaganza.
Popularity: 15% [?]
Hostel: Part II
June 11, 2007 | Leave a Comment
The original Hostel movie was unique and did something that’s more and more difficult for a horror movie to do, it sparked your imagination. You had to think to yourself, what if there were parts of the world where you could pay money to kill someone? What if there were a whole town of people who looked the other way, and in fact, sometimes assisted in the capture of the victims? There are some seedy corners on this planet, it’s not hard to conceive that this situation could actually happen. If on the other hand you thought to yourself, “I wonder how they get their clients?” or perhaps “how do they normally get the victims ready for their buyers?” then this is the Hostel for you. Welcome to Hostel Management 101!
Yep, this time around instead of just following the story of college kids chasing tail and getting slaughtered for the pleasure of some rich folk we get to see that PLUS the details on how the clients pick their victims. Hey, it’s theinternet! Just use your Blackberry and you too could win an auction for the head of a cute redhead. Literally.
Unfortunately this doesn’t work nearly as well as the original. Sure, it’s a little bit interesting to see Mr. Joe Average trek over to Europe with his rich buddy who just bought him the right to slaughter a cute coed. It’s a little bit interesting to see how the guy in charge of the whole operation keeps tabs on the village and keeps the young punks in line. It’s a little bit interesting to see how the rooms are prepped, how the girls are cleaned up, and how many damn guards there are in the place this time around. But all of that interest is fleeting and I found myself checking my watch many times. Not a good sign in a movie this short.
On the positive side we do see some interesting torture stuff, but it’s more background than anything else. There’s some decent blood stuff, but not a single scene made me flinch. And yes, there’s some nudity, but not as hot as it was in the first movie. It’s like the director decided what he really wanted to do was tell a complete story instead of just yanking the audience through a roller coaster ride.. but he didn’t quite know which story to tell.
Overall I was quite “meh” towards the movie. I wasn’t moved in a positive or negative way. Maybe they’ll make another one, Hostel III: Upper Management. That might be interesting.. if I were taking it for college credit.
If you’re in the mood for a horror movie and some blood letting then by all means head out and see this movie. It doesn’t totally suck, and it does have a nice twist at the end (and if you don’t see it coming then take one point off your man card.) Take a date if you want to get your arm squeezed up, but I doubt this will get her in the mood for anything other than a hot shower. Alone.
Popularity: 20% [?]
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