The Hangover

The premise is classic.  Doug, played by Justin Bartha, is getting married.  So, three of his friends are taking him to Vegas for the classic bachelors last stand a couple of days before the wedding.   These guys have a night in Vegas that is for the record books.

But the story is told in a very unique manner.  We do not see the night, we see the aftermath.  The boys wake up in a trashed hotel suite.  The groom is missing, so is one of the guys’ pants and underwear.   But they do have a few additions including a live tiger in the toilet, a chicken and a baby in the bar.   What follows is one absurb hysterical situation after another as they try to unravel what happened and find the missing groom in time to get him home for his wedding the next day.

This is not a huge name cast, nor a big well known director.   And I’ve seen some of the stuffy critics reviews.   Don’t believe any of them, this movie is flat out funny and looks to be one of the largest comedies of all time.   Unfortunately it probably means we’re going to get a run of progressively worse and worse sequels, but hey, enjoy this first one it rocks!

Go see it, grab it on DVD for your collection.  I’m sure we have a uncut unrated version to look forward to.    This gets 5 stars, I can’t recommend it highly enough.   And be sure to stick around for the credits.

Ben Stiller stars and directs.  We were scared of that combo because we kept having Zoolander flashbacks.   This time he again goes over the top, but stops short of being nauseating.   This is at least partially thanks to being surrounded by other strong cast members who help dilute things.

Ben, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Brandon T. Jackson and Jay Baruchel play 4 actors starring in a Vietnam war film.   However, they end up in real combat with Vietnamese drug lords.   What makes this work is the mix of characters, each actor plays a stereotype of a different “problem” personality type.   Ben is the washed up action hero trying to prove he’s a real actor.   Jack Black is the druggy.   Jay Baruchel is the star struck unknown.   Jackson plays the rapper turned actor.  And the scene stealer is Robert Downey Jr. playing a blonde haired blue eyed Australian 5 time Oscar winner.   Who could they possibly be thinking of when they wrote that character?   Oh,  and by the way, he is such a character actor that he got his skin dyed to play a black man, and he of course refuses to slip out of character until “the DVD commentary is done”.

This makes for a funny funny combination with each of the characters having some really great memorable lines.   Tropic Thunder has potential to be one of those movies that guys quote from for years.   It may also be one of the most politically incorrect movies shot in a long time.   But so far not a lot of controversy even with Downey going “black face”.   The reason?   The movie is hysterical, it’s not offensive it’s just funny as heck.

Tropic Thunder is likely to end up being one of those late summer releases that does ok at the box office, but quickly goes to DVD and really mops up.    We give it a very strong 4 stars.   We laughed til our sides hurt.   And if nothing else, you have to see this one to see what has to be Tom Cruise’s best performance ever.   I wont spoil that, just go see for yourself.

Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay picks up right where the previous movie left off. And I mean literally. When we rejoin the boys we are treated to what happens after you eat 30 White Castles. And that pretty well sets the tone. If you thought the original was politically incorrect and risque, well let’s just say they really raised their game in the sequel. They pushed the R-rating hard with some downright raunchy moments.

So, the boys are back from White Castle, and now they’re off to Amsterdam to find Harold’s would-be girlfriend and of course partake in some legal weed. In today’s world, airline passengers get a little nervous when they see anyone who looks Arab on their flight. And Kumar just cant wait til they get to Amsterdam so he is caught trying to strike a high-tech bong which everyone thinks is a bomb. Next thing you know the boys find themselves in Guantanamo Bay and “hilarity ensues” as they try to escape and clear their names.

If you’re easily offended, stay home. And this is definitely not the movie you want to rent and show during the holidays with Grandma, Aunt Bertha and Uncle George. Otherwise you may find yourself being dragged to church by your ear. Also, there’s not many ethnic groups that aren’t made fun of at some point during the film. And oh, by the way, it’s freaking hilarious!

We’ve always said if you’re going to go over the top, you’ve REALLY got to go over the top. Ladies and Gentlemen, Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay went over the top, jumped back over and did it again. We saw it with a decent sized audience and the whole theater was laughing. Our sides were hurting by the time it was over.

This is a 5 star movie. We’ll watch it multiple times. We’ll have to because we keep missing lines because we’re busy laughing and wiping tears from our eyes. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you might even feel inclined to vomit. Go see it!

Andrew Clay’s career went downhill after the release of Ford Fairlane perhaps due to all of the controversy. It’s easy to forget just how funny this character is, and Ford Fairlane captures The Diceman at his most sexist, politically incorrect best. No nasty nursery rhymes here, but when Ford wakes up with two hotties who upon realizing what/who they’ve done proclaim “But Ford, we just wanted to be held!”, he quickly answers “You got the bonus plan!”. In fact, many of sexist pigs who are fans of his work can pull an insane nmber of quotes from this movie.

But is the movie any good? Critics hated it, still do. We love it. It captures that time between the excess of the 80’s and the beginning of the whiney depressing grunge era of the early 90’s. And it makes fun of the music industry as part of the story. The plotline is simple, Ford is a famous private investigator in Los Angeles specializing in the music industry, he’s known far and wide as “the rock and roll detective”. He gets involved in a case surrounding the death of a rockstar. This is not an edge of the seat thriller, this is pure comedy with a dash of action. The story exists as a platform for The Diceman to do his thing.

The Adventures of Ford Fairlane is one of those movies that you need to just check your brain at the door, sit back and enjoy. We give it a strong 4 stars. The studios were slow to release The Adventures of Ford Fairlane on DVD, but since they have, it has found a new life. It’s also typically a bargain, this one belongs in every guy movie collection.

Sex and Breakfast is a good example of the marketing tease, it would have been even better had the movie been unrated and had a red band trailed up on youtube. This is a 100% chick flick, and I’m honestly not sure what they hell kind of conversation you’d end up having with your date if you made the horrific mistake of watching this one together.

James (Macaulay Culkin) and Heather (Alexis Dziena) are having problems in the bedroom, basically Heather can’t get off. James blames himself, Heather gets frustrated and they end up going to a seminar for a therapist who suggests couples engage in group sex to help grow their relationships. It takes four to tango, so the other couple are Ellis (Kuno Becker) and Renee (Eliza Dushku) who are adventure seekers more than anything else, but they have their problems as well.

I was sure that the emotional baggage would be the women in this movie, but nope, it’s the guys. Heather is the horny little devil that gets everything moving, while James is an utter pansy. Also, when Renee tells Ellis (I would have sworn his name was Alice until the credits told me otherwise) that she’d like to be with another woman and he could watch and he freaks out in a negative way… totally unrealistic. Totally and completely unrealistic.  I don’t discount that there’s some guys out there who actually wouldn’t want that to happen with their SO’s, but Ellis is into the group sex thing and has just expressed that he’d like to watch another couple doing it right in front of him when Renee speaks up. Nope, impossible for that to be a compatible mindset. “Oh sure hon, let’s go get a hotel room with this other couple so I can watch this guy bang you, but his wife better keep her hands off you!!” Puleeze.

OK, it’s not all bad. I do like indie/artsy flicks on occasion and can deal with a chick flick now and then, and keeping that mindset at the front of my mind the story had potential. The acting was ok, the setups were amusing and I was entertained on some level, and I knew going into this that it was gonna be a talkative movie. You just can’t have a movie that deals with a subject like this that doesn’t contain lots of people dealing with emotional issues. But dang, this thing makes a Tarantino movie seem like a silent film.

On an artsy/fartsy scale I’d rate this higher, but on our scale I’m gonna have to go to the bottom… 1 star. Guys, if your SO brings this home to watch with you on movie night.. let me know how that goes for ya.

When we catch up with Rambo he is still in Thailand just kind of living day to day. He has a boat which he uses to do things like round up cobras for the local shows. Meanwhile across the border in Burma there’s genocide going on with entire villages being wiped out in the most viscious manners possible. Enter some do-gooder missionaries who want to bring their religion and medicine to these villages. They need a boat ride and eventually talk John into taking them up there despite his warnings. Predictably, they get captured, and it’s up to Rambo to rescue them.

Ok, so the plot is pretty weak and predictable. The story exists only to setup one really large and long action sequence.

So, next question, can a 62 year old Stallone still pull off a believable John Rambo? Well, first off, Sly is in great shape for his age. And thanks to Grecian formula, he doesn’t look 60+ just yet. This incarnation of Rambo will use big guns when available and a bit of strategy instead of just gutting it out hand to hand against 100 men, but he can still outrun any explosion.

This is by far the most violent and graphic movie in the series. I believe Stallone intentionally went a little over the top, which is a smart business move as it keeps it from being just a lame sequel. Instead it’s a lame sequel with some of the most gruesome action shots you’ll ever see. Bodies explode as they step on mines, throats are ripped out and heads explode like ripe watermelons when shot with large caliber weapons.

We like a movie that knows exactly what it is and embraces it, that’s what is happening here. Even the radio advertising for Rambo is playing “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor”, and they do. People love a bad ass, and Rambo is still that. The audience we saw it with had quite a bit of clapping and cheering at the end. We give the movie 4 stars for being a good time. We’re glad they didn’t tone it down to a PG-13, the kids find their way in anyhow. And I confess to just sitting back enjoying myself thinking “uh oh, now you’ve pissed him off”, and then watching John Rambo do his thing.

Gretchen Mol has sex with a man who makes her believe in God.

Winona Ryder has an unnatural attraction to a ventriloquist’s dummy, and She’s Gotta Have It (Just in case you didn’t get enough puppet sex in TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE).

The protagonist dumps Famke Janssen for Jessica Alba, then begins to suspect he may have traded down too young when she chirps, “Will you buy me a pony?”

And there’s seven more stories as well. The connection to the commandments is tenuous at times, but it’s usually crude, often strange, and by and large funny.

There’s a strange animated sequence in the middle of the movie.

Pretty funny, weird stuff. 6 of the 10 commandments were hilarious…

About that opening sequence… the movie starts with a teenage hottie entering a dressing room and taking her top off. In a few minutes her girlfriend joins her and takes her top off (apparently teenage girls don’t wear bras, bless their hearts.) They proceed to have a conversation about bleaching their butt holes and then check to see if either of them needs to have that done. Yeah, this is a FINE way to get a guys attention. Then one of the girls decides to steal a blouse as she puts hers back on over the new one. As they leave the fitting room we follow them through a sequence of security camera shots where we see them get out of the store just in time, and get introduced to a few more characters in this story.

A cashier in the store is asking a manager for assistance with a customer return, and we see him squeezing her butt while he’s talking to the customers. They have a thing going on, but we soon learn she’s not the only girl he’s taking into the storeroom on a regular basis.

We get to watch a couple of guys who work the overnight shift at a gas station, one who wants to be a rock star and the other who just hangs out. We also see a routine traffic stop from the dashboard camera of a police vehicle that turns out to be anything but routine. Businessmen with secret lives, workers who getpranked constantly, security cameras on a bus, security cameras in a high school, nanny cams, and so forth.

What is so ingenious about Look is that you can completely believe you are watching real footage that has been pieced together to tell a story rather than watching a tightly written script that’s being expertly filmed and acted. Every person acting in Look is first rate, down to the people sitting in a mall food court trying to not be seen as a mother frantically looks for her daughter. It’s 100% believable, and it’s brilliant. And like real life security footage, this is just a snapshot in these peoples lives. Don’t expect every story to get wrapped up before the credits roll, life just doesn’t work that way. If I had one complaint it would be the lack of closure on a couple of the story lines, but it’s not bad enough to really bother me.

Look should make you think. When you get up and leave the theater, start noticing how many cameras have been watching you, and think about what would happen if a system were in place to link all those cameras together so that an individual could be tracked from place to place, day to day. There are seven cameras that I know for certain I pass by on my way to and from the office each day, how many are there that I don’t know about? A movie like this could make you paranoid if you let it, and maybe you should…

That’s pretty much the setup for Guy X, a 2005 movie directed by Saul Metzstein. The fact that the movie is only now making it to DVD should tell you a lot about the quality of it…or lack thereof. Another clue is that Metzstein’s only work since Guy X was an episode of a Discovery Channel docu-drama series. Yeah, it’s quality stuff.

On the plus side, the acting is actually pretty decent. Jason Biggs is on hand as Rudy, a U.S. soldier on his way to Hawaii who, thanks to an army snafu, ends up the victim of mistaken identity as well as stuck in Greenland. After getting used to the slack, lazy lifestyle of his fellow defenders of Greenland, he develops a relationship with Sgt. Irene (Natascha McElhone) and then tries to unravel the mystery that is his commanding officer, Col. Woolwrap. Notorious B-movie villain, Michael Ironside, is on hand to deliver a surprisingly good performance as a horribly disfigured vet.

That’s about it for the good things I can say about this one, though. The film’s biggest problem, in my opinion, is that it’s built completely on a foundation of ignorance of what the army is really like as well as a general disregard for logic and normal human behavior / reactions. Many times I could be heard uttering, “That’s STUPID!” out loud and I could have done it more but I simply chose to just shake my head in disbelief. Take, for instance, the premise of the main character being stuck in Greenland:

He was mistaken for someone else and put on the plane to that god-forsaken place. How does this happen?!? Even if he was dog tired and not paying attention to where he was being routed, you’d think the icebergs and snow-covered tundra outside the windows of the airplane would have clued him in that he was NOT on his way to Hawaii. Then there’s the matter that he arrives with NO transfer orders (or ANY other paperwork, for that matter). That right there would have clued them in that he wasn’t supposed to be there. And how is it they thought his last name was Pederson when it was actually Spruance? Didn’t he have some kind of ID on him to show what his real name was? Of course not.

And why didn’t he try to get someone to listen to him about his plight? Every time he tried to explain that he WASN’T Cpl. Pederson, he would get interrupted and then he’d just shut up. I’m sorry, but I’d be yelling til I was blue in the face to someone until they investigated my plight. But not our ‘hero’. If he got his problem resolved quickly and left as soon as possible, then he wouldn’t be able to uncover the mysteries of Woolwrap. And thus is another of the movie’s many illogical turns for the sake of plot.

The final verdict: this is just a bad B-movie masquerading around as socially biting commentary on the army. This dog, however, can do little more than gum you to death. Two weak stars from me on this one.

Step 1: Cast some f&*$@#$ AWESOME actors in your movie! Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem prove they have the acting chops to hang with anyone at any time on any script. The performances they all give are fantastic with Bardem’s bordering on staggeringly good (and I love his weapon of choice). Even the second tier supporting characters are great with Woody Harrelson, Barry Corbin, and Stephen Root all turning in very solid efforts.

Step 2: Make sure the script is as well written as any other that came before it. Stuff it full of intense cat-and-mouse sequences that drive up your adrenalin levels by tortuously playing out in their own sweet time. Create dialogue for the characters that both crackles with subdued energy and smolders with relentless deliberation.

Step 3: Using mad skilz as a director, combine the actors and their talents with the aforementioned dialogue and have a camera rolling. Create an engulfing sense of the proverbial ‘irresistable force’ chasing after the ‘immovable object’.

Step 4: Once the audience is completely enthralled, start beating them over the head with not-so-subtle metaphors and allegorical dialogue about life, getting old, and the inevitability of fate.

Step 5: Execute major character changes and action sequences “off-screen” so that the audience is left wondering what the heck they just missed…and why. Make it obvious that the reason for this was so that you can see the events from the point of view of an interesting but otherwise inconsequential character in the story.

Step 6: You’re almost there! You’ve got the audience quite confused and mildly annoyed so now is the time to just abruptly END THE MOVIE! Yes, just end it. Don’t resolve anything. Just make sure to throw in a few more metaphors and allegorical bits at the very end before you cut the camera off.

Step 7 (optional): Go sit in a theater so you can witness the abject astonishment on the faces of the moviegoers as the lights come up. Lean back and enjoy how it rapidly turns to righteous anger as everyone begins to realize how they’ve been shortchanged.

I had these same emotions as the credits rolled (as did pretty much everyone in the theater) and, as I sit here hours later, I’m *still* royally pissed off. This was a full 5-star movie up through the 2nd act. They had near perfection in their freakin’ hands and decided to f&*$ it up with a completely BS ending. I just don’t understand all the praise being heaped upon this movie by my fellow movie reviewers. Either I’m just missing something at a very basic level with this movie…or everyone else has an unnatural love of symbolism and metaphor. Either way, I have to ask to to avoid this one unless you plan on leaving the theater for the last part of the movie.

As you’d expect the plot is merely a mechanism to set up the action. Timothy Olyphant stars as Agent 47. That’s his name. You see, these agents are selected as children by a group known only as “The Organization”, which trains and supplies assassin services to anyone who needs it. They are on no one’s side. The agents are trained to do one thing and do it well, and that is kill. And Agent 47 is the best.

But wouldn’t you know it, in typical video game fashion, things get all turned around and the hunter becomes the hunted. Agent 47 gets mad, and instead of just using some of our favorite cuss words from Deadwood, Olyphant lets bodies start hitting the floor. Oh, and to make things a bit more complicated, along the way he meets a girl played by Olga Kurylenko. And we’d like to express our thanks during this Thanksgiving release for the R-rating as we get to see Olga naked. We also find out that the going rate for buying enslaved Russian women in the sex trade is apparently $300 US. If they all look like this, we’ll take two.

As for the action, we get lots and lots of gun play, some brief hand to hand and even a little bit of sword play. It lacked the imagination and style of something like The Transporter, but the action was pretty much non-stop. And Agent 47’s cool calm attitude makes for some real dead pan humorous moments. The movie was also like a long Audi commercial, but we didn’t really get any car chase action at all. This would be one of our largest gripes. Don’t tease us with sweet rides and then just ride around in them.

Check your brain at the door. If you start thinking about things like how come it is so hard to track down a bunch of bald guys with bar codes tattoo’d on the back of their heads who refuse to wear disguises, you’ll just drive yourself nuts. Instead, sit back, relax and watch the brain and arterial matter explode onto their nice suits. We give Hitman 4 stars. It delivers exactly what it promises.

The Mist doesn’t take long to get started. During the opening credits a violent thunderstorm moves into a small Maine town, causing massive damage and sending most of the townsfolk shopping to get supplies. In the aftermath of the storm, a strange mist rolls in from the mountains. While getting groceries with his son and ornery neighbor, David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and a whole store full of people see a man running out of the mist, face bloodied screaming “there’s something in the mist!” While they don’t see anything, the mist is creepily thick and they lock the store doors after letting him in.

Due to the storm phones are working, the radio station is off the air, and there’s no TV. These people are 100% isolated from the outside world, and now they can’t see more than a couple feet past the plate glass windows that line the front of the store. You’re now 10 minutes into the movie, told ya it started quickly.

While looking for a blanket to cover up his son who got quite frightened by the screaming guy, David notices that the generator in the storeroom area is leaking exhaust into the store. He quickly shuts it off and is left in the dark, and hears something pushing up against the loading bay doors. Rushing back to the store he tells a few guys what he heard, and they think he’s just hearing things. Next, they do the logical thing.. put together a hasty plan to open the loading bay door enough for a stockboy to run out and remove whatever is blocking the exhaust so they can get the generator back on. Yeah, there really is something in the mist and they’re about to learn this the hard way.

What follows is a lesson in group dynamics, with the people branching off into 3 groups. The first group believes (and some know) that there’s something in the mist, the second group thinks it’s hogwash and are putting together a plan to leave, and the third (initially just one lady played brilliantly by Marcia Gay Harden) believes is the end of the world as told in the Bible. Eventually we get down to the 2 groups as it’s painfully obvious there are things in the mist, those who don’t know what the things are but just want to survive, and those who believe it’s the end of days and are trying to appease an angry God in hopes to saving their asses. The interplay between all of these people is brilliant, it’s not at all difficult to believe that this is how the situation could unfold if such a thing were to happen on this side of the screen. As the religious camp gets larger, their leader becomes more and more sure of herself and her position as that of a prophet, and some of her followers get fanatical while most just stand around and watch it happen while hoping for the best. Brilliant and accurate portrayal of human nature, sad as it might be.

While a good portion of this movie is a simple setting in a grocery store, the creature effects are quite good. Without going into detail so that I won’t ruin the surprise, it’s gonna hit on many peoples phobias. Any reader of Kings books will immediately recognize how accurately these creatures have been yanked from those pages, and Mr. King has one hell of an imagination when it comes to this sort of thing. If the whimpering guy sitting in the row in front of me is any indication, there are some seriously scary moments here.

For me however, the horror wasn’t with the creatures, or the blood, it was the story itself. The interplay between characters and the decisions that they found themselves forced to make, and the conclusions those decisions caused. Is this a 5 star movie because it just HAS to be seen on the big screen? No, but it is a 5 star movie based on the fact that if you manage to see it without someone giving you too many details, you will have experienced what a true master of horror is capable of.

Florentino Ariza, played by Javier Bardem (who plays the stone-cold killer in the new movie by the Coen Brothers, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN) is a lowly telegraph operator who falls for a rich man’s daughter, Fermina Daza (Giovanna Mezzogiorno). Forbidden to see each other, she instead marries a doctor. He meanwhile vows to pine for her until her husband dies. The tale of unconsummated love unwinds over the next fifty years.

But Florentino never took a vow of chastity. Over the next fifty years, despite his advancing years, he manages to bed more than 600 women, most of them beautiful and young (and often displaying their bare breasts).

I found this an interesting journey through another time and place. The period is meticulously reconstructed, and the age makeup on the two actors is convincing. This is a good date movie. Having never read the book, I’m not entirely sure what the point was; if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with, until you can be with the one you love, apparently. But it’s a funny, bittersweet film.

It’s all about expectations, I suppose. Had this been a movie starring, say, Mario Van Peebles and Don Johnson, I’d be ecstatic about being able to give it 4 stars. With Washington and Crowe, however, you almost have to expect a near perfect effort based on their stellar careers up to this point.

In American Gangster, they give us two very interesting characters: Frank Lucas (Washington), a career sidekick to Harlem crime boss Bumpy Johnson who had previously been known as a quiet and deferential guy but quickly turns that reputation on its ear as he reaches to become the dominant crime figure in all of New York, and Ritchie Roberts (Crowe), a soft-spoken but honest cop whose integrity gets him the choice job of trying to bring down the biggest crime bosses around.

Both characters are extremely interesting and are played out competently, but there is a certain level of depth missing from them. And, too, even though the movie was really quite long, I could have done with more exploration of how Lucas went from Mr. Nobody to Mr. Top Dog without so much as a whimper from his rivals or from the Italian mob figures. Likewise, I would like to have seen more of Roberts’ life and background, too. These areas, and a couple others, were just glossed over and I feel a bit cheated by that.

Additionally, I got the sense that, as good as his performance was, Washington got a bit lazy with regard to making this character truly unique and not just a rehash of previous people he’s played. As a for instance, Washington established Lucas’ trademark phrase as “My man!” Can you think of at least one other movie where he did that? *cough* *cough* *Training Day* *cough*

Another peeve was Crowe’s insistence upon making sure he adopted the REAL LIFE Roberts’ vocal traits and characteristics. That might normally be fine and dandy, but in this case it sucks because Roberts was apparently a mush-mouth mumbler and there were more than a few lines in the movie that I just didn’t catch or didn’t fully understand what was being said.

But enough complaining! Adjust your expectations and be confident that you’re getting your money’s worth as you walk into the theater. Expect a really good movie….just not a great one.

-Alex

The problem is quite simple to explain actually, Saw is just like Star Wars. Remember back when the original Star Wars came out? It was a single movie, and there was the Force.. a magical, mystical thing that surrounded all creation that some people could tap into to let them pull off amazing stuff. Well, it made money, so the trilogy was formed. Still, the Force was a magical, mystical thing. Problem is that they started with Episide IV, and when it came time to tell the back story Lucas struggled to make the new/old stuff mesh with the old/new stuff. The end result was a mess.. and the Force became nothing more than science.

Saw was a low budget hit that was never intended to have a sequel, but it made so much money the studio had to have more. Saw II used the same formula but had a budget, and was a great movie.. but they didn’t know if it would be enough to continue the series. It made tons of money and they had to keep going, so to explain what was happening they started telling a bit of back story using flashbacks, and it sucked. Saw IV has that same problem, turned up to 11. Jigsaw is dead, no doubt at all about that, so they’re telling this story through the liberal use of flashbacks to let us know exactly why Jigsaw became who he was, and how others were recruited into his cause. The real problem here is their doing it by expanding on some scenes from earlier movies, to let us know what was “really” happening. But it doesn’t ring true. By trying to pull more out of the early movies than was actually there it just comes off as desperate, and is quite hard to follow at times. I’m 90% sure I got it all at the end, but it took lots of concentration and thought to figure it out, and that’s annoying in a horror movie. And, I could still be wrong.

Is it full of blood? Yep. How bout the traps, are they gruesome? Yep, of course, this is Saw after all. I did like some of the traps this time around. The wheelchair was nifty, and the classic “guy on an ice cube” had a nice twist to it. But the story was confusing, disjointed and annoying. I’m sure they’ll make Saw V since this one made so much money, I can only hope the new Jigsaw (and yes, stick around to the end and you’ll find out who it is) will go back to the formula from the first two movies and breathe some new/old life back into this series.

It was a fun movie, but the experience of watching it isn’t quite as fun as someone else telling you about the experience of watching the movie. Particularly if that person is Quentin Tarantino being interviewed.

The two films contained in GRINDHOUSE, DEATH PROOF and PLANET TERROR, were split up and released on separate DVDs. The theatrical version of DEATH PROOF was about 90 minutes long; this new version is 113 minutes. Some incidental dialogue, and two major scenes have been added (or put back in, as the case may be).

DEATH PROOF tells the tale of Stuntman Mike, a serial killer who targets women with an unusual weapon: his car. Kurt Russell does a great job of making him both charming and creepy.

The first half of the movie involves him terrorizing a group of women. The second half involves another group of women, who may get the opportunity to strike back.

One feature of many 1970s exploitation movies was that the audience gets to experience the action from both sides. They can be frightened as the victims run from evil baddies, but they also get to have the vicarious thrill of seeing through the eyes of the sadistic bad guy. And, in the end, the Bad Guy gets his come-uppance, thus assuaging any guilt the audience may have for enjoying the pillaging a little too much.

DEATH PROOF captures the feel of those 1970s movies better than PLANET TERROR. The pace of the movie is languid. This is a talky movie, and even more talky in this expanded version, with people spending a lot of time shooting the breeze in restaurants and in cars. In this case, it’s all women, but, lest this veer into chick flick, they like to talk dirty. How much you enjoy this probably depends on how much you enjoy other Tarantino movies during the chatty non-violent down-time parts.

But this movie is also something of a Shaggy Dog story. The first 3/4ths of the movie is a gradual setup to get you to buy into a completely preposterous but outstanding finale. I can’t say “one of the best car chases ever” with movies like THE ROAD WARRIOR in existence, but this is a pretty amazing chase. It also spectacularly displays the talents of stuntwoman Zoe Bell, who plays herself… sort of. At least, herself as seen through Quentin Tarantino’s eyes.

If you’ve seen the theatrical version, the major additional scenes are the lap-dance we didn’t get to see (”REEL MISSING”), and then a sequence in black-and-white. And lots of minor extra lines of dialogue here and there.

The movie tries to look like a film you’d see in a second-run theater by having the film scratched, with skips, as if it’s been broken and spliced many times.

This 2-disc DVD doesn’t have any commentary track, but the second DVD has a variety of Making Of documentaries.

Note also that this DVD set doesn’t contain any of the fake trailers from the theatrical version of GRINDHOUSE.

I strongly suspect that eventually a super-deluxe double DVD “Grindhouse” edition of DEATH PROOF and PLANET TERROR will be released, which will probably have commentary tracks and those missing fake trailers.

Katherine Winter (Hilary Swank) is a college professor at LSU who debunks miracles around the world. If you think you’ve spotted a bleeding Mary somewhere, call Katherine and she’ll prove it’s just science in action. When the town of Haven starts to experience strange things (assuming you call a river of blood “strange”) they send their brightest citizen to plead for her assistance in figuring out what’s happening.

At first it’s all just science to her as there’s obviously some chemical or bacteria causing the water to appear blood like, there has to be a rational explanation for the frogs falling from the sky… and the livestock that goes nuts must have drunk the water. Some of the townfolk discount the science, instead blaming everything on a 12-yr old girl who lives with her deadbeat mother on the outskirts of town. See, the girl ain’t quite right.. she’s EVIL and needs to be stopped. As things progress Katherine starts to doubt her own convictions.. perhaps the town is right?

Pretty typical stuff here, and the movie doesn’t stray far from the formula. For example, a white chick in a horror movie… do you think she’ll go into the woods alone, at night? (MINOR CHORD!) Her sidekick is a black guy, what do you think his odds are of seeing the final credits? (minor chord… HIGH STRINGS!) There’s also the annoyance of the soundtrack that insists on pointing out to you anytime something slightly jolting happens like someone tripping in the river (MINOR CHORD!) or the power going out. (MINOR CHORD!!) Yeah, it’s damned annoying.

When it comes down to it though, the movie doesn’t totally suck. If you’re into Biblical horror type movies and love the sound of Revelations being read by a priest, you’re gonna have a good time. For me it was just OK, but I enjoyed studying the commando factor and that kept me from being too bored. So I’m giving it a very weak 3 stars.

Yes, it’s the return of “the BIG western”, the one film genre that is more identified with Hollywood and American film making more than any other. As a huge fan, I’ve been more than a little annoyed that westerns have been out of fashion for many years. I guess our America-hating producers, directors and studio heads can’t stand the idea of being associated with movies that portray traditional values and inspire love for our country. But I digress…

Russell Crowe really stretches himself here as he plays Ben Wade, a violent, sociopathic leader of a gang of outlaws who royally screws up and allows himself to get caught by the local constabulary. Christian Bale is the poor rancher Dan Evans whom fate places right in the middle of the situation. Being rather desperate for a break, he uses the opportunity to try and turn his luck around and clear his debts by helping escort Wade to the town of Contention where he’ll be placed on a train (the 3:10 to Yuma, you reckon?), shipped out, and tried for a zillion murders.

The movie unfolds as a great “cat and mouse” game between the makeshift posse escorting this most deadly of outlaws…and his loyal, dedicated gang who are hell-bent on rescuing him. To that end, Ben Foster does an OUTSTANDING job as Wade’s right-hand psychopath, Charlie Prince, who reveals himself to be one seriously bad-ass mofo.

The action is top notch and the surrounding scenery is exquisitely shot, as is expected in “the BIG western”. More importantly, the acting is better than amazing. Crowe and Bale were perfectly cast and Peter Fonda is great as the grizzled old Pinkerton hired gun and, as already mentioned, Ben Foster rules the screen anytime he is on it.

All these positives aside, however, the movie has a serious flaw that I found to be aggravating enough to pull this down from a 5 star rating to 3 stars. Several times in the movie something would happen on screen that would cause me to wrinkle up my face and want to yell, “Bullshit!” Everything from characters acting WAY against their nature…or doing something WAY too stupid for their position…or just violating the laws of nature (such as a character that gets a really NASTY gunshot wound to the gut, loses a ton of blood, but suddenly seems good as new right after a bandage is placed around his belly).

These things were so glaring…and so UNNECESSARY! You could have easily written around all of these things without affecting the story in any way. But, no, they chose to be stupid and expect us, the audience, to be stupid as well. Sorry, but I ain’t buyin’ bushel of bat guano.

He received a post card in the mail from the Dolphin Hotel in New York City with “Don’t Visit 1408″ written on it, so of course he starts to investigate. Upon learning about the deaths that have occurred in that room he calls the hotel and inquires about booking a stay and is denied. No self respecting man would take an answer like that so he gets his publisher on the case, who gets their attorney on the case, who finds a law that requires the hotel to let him stay in the room if it’s not occupied. Off to New York!

When he arrives for his night of adventure the hotel manager (very well played by Samuel L. Jackson) does his best to change his mind, but in the end gives him access to the room. You know from the previews that weird things start to happen, and it’d be a strange horror movie if the worst thing he saw in the room was the cost of a can of beer nuts while viewing the Spectravision menu. Seems that nobody has ever lived more than an hour in that room, and even short exposure can cause problems.

First it’s little things, but it takes no time at all for the room to let Mike know this isn’t a drafty spot near a window.. this is the real deal. As Mr. Jackson said, this is an evil f!#ing room.

John Cusack does an amazing job in 1408, he really sells everything that’s happening. When he’s trying to calm himself down, when making little quips, all of it.. perfection. Seriously, you’ll buy into what he’s going through which is something you can’t say for most horror movies. The effects are also first rate, absolutely nothing looks cheap.

I saw this movie in the theaters but didn’t like it all that much due to the ending. However, this DVD has the uncut directors version with a different (and obviously the original) ending and it’s MUCH better. In addition to the ending there are a few longer scenes and some that were added back in. I’m guessing they changed the ending due to a dumb ass test audience, and trimmed out the scenes in the interest of time, both things were a mistake.

Even if you’ve already seen the movie, you haven’t seen THIS version of the movie. Highly recommended, 4 stars.

This is a chick flick, but it’s not a bad one.

Also, it has quite a bit of nudity, a half-dozen scenes or so. All fairly short, but things aren’t hidden in shadow.

It’s got funny moments, but there’s a little too much pain per capita for it to be a romantic comedy.

I noticed this movie features actresses that have been in the RIDDICK movies; Radha Mitchell from PITCH BLACK, and Alexa Davalos from THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK.

The special effects have been bumped up a bit for this episode and the action rolls along very smoothly. At no point did I find myself checking my watch or fidgeting in my seat so you have to give it some points for holding your attention. But that’s about where the good stuff ends.

Milla Jovovich is, of course, back again (and again..and again..and again) in the title role of Alice. As expected, she performed perfunctorily in the scenes where she wasn’t slaying zombies (and other critters that show up) and she was quite entertaining when she was in carnage mode. I honestly have no idea if she’s a good actress or not since I’ve never seen her cast in anything that would require her to actually *act* and the Resident Evil franchise is certainly not going to require anything of the sort.

Where the movie loses major points is in the structure. I used to be a major junkie for video games like Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Serious Sam, Half Life II, etc.. and I see a lot of parallels here to these and some other games I used to play. I felt like I was watching a computer screen where some anonymous person was controlling Alice and starting a new level. The goal of this level, by the way, is to protect a group of innocent people and travel to a big underground bunker where a nasty “boss” monster awaits. And, like any good video game, when you beat the boss, a new level starts. That’s fine and all…but do you *really* want to do the equivalent of watching someone else play a video game for 90 minutes? If so, save yourself the $10 and just go visit a friend that has one of the aforementioned games.

As well (and not unexpectedly) the ending just sucked if you are someone that likes to see something resolved. In this case, NOTHING gets resolved. NOTHING is paid off (not even a side story that would affect nothing in the inevitable sequel). Again, it felt like an episode was over and we get to wait 2+ years for the next one…which still won’t resolve anything.

Personally speaking, I resolve never to go see another one of these movies.

The movie starts out with a very graphic attack on a housing compound of an oil company in Saudi Arabia, by a terrorist cell. The group infiltrates the high security compound and detonate a bomb during a company softball game killing a couple of dozen people. The news wire lights up and the feds send out their field agents to investigate, along with other first responders (fire, police, emt), which spawns the second assault that kills hundreds. Among the dead is highly decorated agent of the FBI, and best friend of Lead Investigator Ronald Fleury (Foxx). The attack on what some consider sovereign American soil demands governmental intervention, and that happens to be Fleury’s teams specialty.

Certain agency figures that seem to be more concerned with insulting the Saudi’s rather than finding the killers, refuse to send an American presence this close to the attack and leave the investigation to the local Saudi police. Fleury finds a creative way to interject himself and before long he gets the green light to go in and ‘assist’ in the investigation but he’s told in very clear terms he’s not to interfere. Now we all know that’s not going to last and it’s that part of the film that makes it worth seeing.

The supporting cast of Garner, Cooper, Bateman and Jeremy Piven as the representative of the US embassy (stooge), are all really good but my favorite character was played by Ashraf Barhom. Barhom plays Colonel Al-Ghazi the police officer charged with protecting Fleury’s team, but his real orders are to protect the Prince from losing face. The two orders are the key to a social and ethical dilemma that makes him choose between his job and doing what he knows is the right thing to do, regardless of faith or politics. Overall the movie is kind of like a 2 hour episode of CSI: Baghdad with a lesson, but the acting, direction and story make it well worth the 10 bucks you’ll be shelling out to see it.

I will warn you the last 20 minutes are extremely intense, and the way Berg is able to bring the emotional rollercoaster you’re gonna feel to life is nothing short of amazing. I saw the film with a packed house and there wasn’t a person in the entire auditorium that wasn’t speechless. The movie carries a very powerful message, and the ending will drive home an opinion that some people will hate, while others will stand up and cheer.

He’s moved on to thrillers, but they still have that Cronenberg touch. Within the first few minutes of this film, we see a throat cut, someone else hemorrhaging, and a baby covered in placenta.

The director teams up again with Viggo Mortensen (A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE). This time it’s a tale of Russian gangsters in London.

A teenage junkie dies in childbirth, leaving a baby. A hospital’s midwife (Naomi Watts) tries to find how to get the baby to her relatives. This leads her to a Russian restaurant, whose kindly owner may be a Russian gangster. Viggo Mortensen is his chauffeur, but seems conflicted about the life of crime he’s locked into.

Unfortunately, the midwife soon knows too much about the crime family, putting her and her family at risk.

The depiction of Russian gangsters is pretty much like every other movie depicting Russian gangsters. They’re more viscious than the Corleones. And they like bathhouses. But Cronenberg makes it distinctive.

Since this comes on the heels of SHOOT ‘EM UP, another movie about dangerous men and a baby, it should be pointed out that this is not a nonstop actionfest. This is a movie of violence waiting to happen. And it’s got Cronenberg’s desire to make violence realistic. There’s a showdown in a Russian bathhouse that puts the viscera in visceral.

It’s a good taut thriller, wrapped around showing people who are aliens in another land. And the finale goes in direction I wasn’t expecting.

The movie starts with “Mr. Smith” (Owen) sitting on a bench minding his own goddamned business when a VERY pregnant lady runs by while moaning in pain and holding her stomach. Smith, however, is a reluctant hero and continues to sit and wait for the bus. Moments later, however, some bad dude in a vintage Smokey and the Bandit Trans Am turns the corner and slams into another car. The drive gets out and yells toward the corner where the girl had just disappeared, “You’re dead, bitch!”

After the dude has gone past, Mr. Smith decides that he better help the lady. He finds her and manages to dispatch the bad dude when she suddenly goes into labor. As the baby is popping out, however, about twenty more bad guys show up. The baby is born but the mom is killed…and thus starts off what is almost an 80 minute long action sequence of extreme fun and excitement with a massive body count.

Giamatti is one of my favorite actors and here he plays a former FBI profiler nerd-turned-mercenary leader. Like all his roles, he dives into this one with gusto and makes a GREAT villain. Monica Bellucci is HAWT…and lactating which makes her the perfect person to take the baby to.

The plot, such as it is, unrolls slowly during brief pauses in the action but its very nearly irrelevent to whats happening on-screen. Davis walks a fine line with this film and he manages to keep it from becoming a parody of its genre while still allowing for scenes that are incredibly fun and satisfying. While Davis and his actors certainly take their jobs here VERY seriously, no one watching the end result could ever say the the film takes itself seriously at all.

All in all, it’s one of the most fun movies I’ve seen in years. If it had managed a bit more nudity and couple extra good one-liners, it might have been absolutely perfect. Make sure to put this one at the top of your list to see!

Well, the movie puts them on opposite sides. Jet Li plays a highly skilled and mysterious assassin named Rogue who works for the Japanese yakuza. Statham is an FBI agent, named Crawford, in San Francisco specializing in Asian organized crime operations in the area. So what do you do in these type of movies to really make these guys arch enemies? You have Rogue kill Crawford’s partner of course!

The movie has all of the ingredients. There’s any type of action you want scattered through out including gun fights, sword play and of course some martial arts. We also get a couple of good chase sequences in San Francisco, though we would’ve loved to see a modern chase down one of the hill sides with a lot of hang time. They merely teased us with that part. However, they didn’t tease us with nudity. You wont see much of Devon Aoki, but there are classic scenes featuring a yakuza entertainment establishment that turned our yellow fever into yellow plague.

But have you ever had someone who is a really good cook give you a recipe for one of your favorite dishes and then tried to cook it yourself only to find it’s a little bland or just doesn’t quite meet expectations? Well, that’s what happens with this movie. All the pieces are there. We want to like it. But at the end of the movie, I’m certainly not thinking I want to see it again, and I doubt I’ll even buy the DVD. It somehow just doesn’t click.

We give War 3 stars. It’s not that it’s a bad movie, it just didn’t quite meet the expectations we had for a Jet Li and Jason Statham showdown. What should’ve been an instant contender for slobber knocker of the year with lots of creative choreography was just an ok fight. Not bad, but not really memorable or special in anyway. If you’re a fan of Statham, Li or both, this is worth a DVD rental at least, but we’re going to stop well short of calling it a must-see otherwise.

Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis, the brains behind ATHF as well as some of the voices, did a rather good job of extending a 10-12 minute TV show into a (barely) full length feature. It definitely is the ATHF that we’ve all come to know and love (with the addition of the ‘F’ word and other kinds of profanity), but I think that’s actually the core of the problem. That’s what it is but that’s *all* that it is.

Let’s take a moment to look at other TV series which made (or tried to make) the jump to the big screen. Star Trek is a great example. Were the Trek movies just 2 hour versions of their TV episodes? No way! The action, the suspense, the special effects were ALL jacked way up…and they were awesome! Well, we’ll forget about #5 for the sake of this argument. ATHF:MFFT did not ratchet things up.

Apples and oranges, you say? Ok, let’s look at comedy vs. comedy: The Brady Bunch Movie. “Ah-ha!” you might say, “The Brady Bunch characters were all just like they were on TV!” Well, yes, Timmy, they were. But they were picked up right out of the ’70s and plopped right down into the middle of the ’90s and were quickly shown as the naive, out of touch goody-two-shoes people they were. This was definitely NOT your Brady Bunch TV episode.

With countless examples of both failures and successes regarding TV franchises that attempted the jump to the big screen, Matt and Dave should have taken some notes.

There is a plot…but just barely. It involves the trio of Frylock, Master Shake and Meatwad venturing out to discover their origins. Sort of. It’s quite complicated to explain but it’s too boring to be worth the attempt so I’ll leave it at that. Hardcore ATHF fans will likely enjoy the movie but I suspect that even they, too, will be left with a feeling that an opportunity was missed.

All this negativity aside, there were some genuinely funny moments in the movie (just as there are in the TV episodes). Things get started off with a bang with Matt and Dave’s take on the whole dancing candy and popcorn characters singing to you about getting food from the lobby. I really wish theaters would play this bit at the beginning of all their movies!

Longtime fans will also be happy to know that all the old favorite characters make appearances including Carl, Ignignokt, Err, Emory, Oglethorpe, Cybernetic Ghost, Satan, Dr. Weird & Steve, and even MC Pee Pants. Plus there’s a cameo from another favorite Cartoon Network personality, Space Ghost!

But the funny moments, such as they are, and the character lineup cannot compensate for the rest of this ho-hum fare. The bottom line is that ATHF:MFFT doesn’t go above or beyond its TV show origins…and that makes for a less than thrilling movie experience.

Every single frame of 300 is like a Boris Vallejo painting. Like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, 300 was shot entirely on a soundstage and all the background terrain and scenery is computer generated. And, damn!, these computers sure know how to paint! Every hill, every cloud, every stalk of wheat is idealized and the result is a very intoxicating visual experience.

The casting director, however, must have been on the verge of a nervous breakdown before all was said and done. The only thing asked of him seems to have been, “Every woman must have the body of a porn star, every guy must look like Mr. Universe, and no one can be afraid to show off their bodies…oh, and they still have to be able to act, too.” And as anyone who has ever watched a porn film can tell you, that latter requirement is always lacking. But not in this case. Gerard Butler and Lena Headey give fantastic performances as the iconic King Leonidas and Queen Gorgo of Sparta. Likewise, Rodrigo Santoro does well as the Persian God-King Xerxes. Most of the rest of the cast are character actors and newcomers, but they all do their parts well enough. And if I may put in a side note here, Kelly Craig plays the part of the Oracle and she is the hottest thing I’ve seen on screen in a LONG time. Kelly, if you’re reading this, how about dinner sometime? I promise I won’t leer…much.

It is established early on that if you’re from Sparta, you are a bad-ass. They don’t allow anyone else into their ranks and that includes the women. I daresay that if you send a 12 year old Spartan boy into a Crips hangout in south-central LA with instructions to kill all the gang-bangers, that’s just about an even money bet.

As we’ve seen from the trailers, the story is very straight-forward: 300 Spartans march to the sea to do battle with the million+ strong army of the Persian Empire. That’s it. It’s so simple that you can’t really spoil the movie for anyone. You could describe everything from beginning to end and it still wouldn’t matter. There are obviously no big twists and, historically speaking, we already know who wins the fight. But it’s this simplicity that allows the makers to indulge their artistic creativity in every scene. All that matters is the perfection of every frame – a perfection that not only stimulates your vision, but also that stirs you from within. By the time it was over, I was wanting to stand up and hurl a spear at the mighty Xerxes myself…but I opted instead to go eat a couple pounds of beef for dinner…raw (rare), bloody beef. It’s a good thing I didn’t bump into any Persians along the way.

Although this is a movie based on a historical battle, this is a pure fantasy of the highest order. And this is a GOOD thing even despite my normal loathing for movies that take liberties with historical fact. The difference here is that there is no pretense of accuracy. There is no feeling that the makers are hoping you don’t notice the difference. Instead we are delivered a pure testosterone choked orgy of violence and sex that just happens to use a historical setting.

All in all, this is the best movie I’ve seen since V for Vendetta and I will be going to see it on the big screen again…and again…and maybe again, too. Make plans for a couple viewings yourself!

Brotherhood of the Wolf has no idea what it wants to be. Is it just an artsy fartsy film like most of the foreign fare? No. Is it drama? Action? Horror? Actually it’s all of the above and then some. We opted to call it a horror movie as the central theme here most closely resembles a booger movie. However, in addition to a wolf like monster, we also get religion, aristocracy, martial arts, the occult, sword play, gun play and even some really freaky sex. The movie defies classification and changes many times as the story unfolds.

Supposedly this is based on the true story of the Beast of Gevaudan. In 1764, this remote part of the countryside of France was terrorized by a wolf-like animal which they simply called “The Beast”. A man named Gregoire de Fronsac, played by some French guy we’ve never heard of, arrives to help solve the mystery. He is called a “naturalist”, but is accompanied by a Native American and has obviously been taught much about animals, hunting and fighting by his friend. Did you know Native Americans are well versed in martial arts? Neither did I, but this one carries around a 12 pack of whoop ass. He’s quite capable of fighting off crowds of up to a dozen men. But then again, one American versus a dozen French guys isn’t exactly a fair fight, you need more Frenchmen. At any rate, we follow them in their quest for The Beast.

The movie looks great on the big screen, and the fight scenes are wonderfully choreographed. In fact they remind me of something one might ordinarily expect to find in a movie filmed in Hong Kong. However, in addition to the inherent problem of trying to enjoy the movie while reading subtitles, this movie is about 20-30 minutes longer than it should’ve been. Toward the end it starts to feel long and really begins to drag just a bit. For most of us, I think it might be best to wait on the DVD and see if they offer a English audio track. If so, then this movie is worth watching. Otherwise, avoid it unless really in the mood for something totally different.