Mini-Reviews written just for you

I’ve been slacking on reviews lately, obsessing over finishing the next draft of my book. So, I thought I’d do a few mini-movie reviews on what I’ve seen lately. As an added bonus, I’ve attached a few trailer reviews of things that are coming out or are out but I haven’t bothered to watch yet. Onward we go!

Whiteout. My biggest complaint about this movie is how un-cold it feels. Seriously, it’s set in Antarctica where cold is rated in how far your external genitalia has retreated into your body, and I never once felt an empathetic shiver. The arctic base comes off as a nice winter getaway complete with randomly placed orchids. Second big gripe, the start of the movie has the lusty Beckinsale peeling down to her skivvies and then a steamy shower scene, giving all red blooded males hope. Through the rest of the movie she wears full arctic gear and oversized sweaters. That first scene, totally pointless. It was just there to entice us to sit through the rest of the hole ridden plot. Which leads me into gripe number three: the plot. It had potential, real potential but no, it’s based on compound idiocy. The thing people have been getting killed over are diamonds. It could have been anything, radioactive Woolly Mammoth fetuses, a Zombie virus, the Vodka of the Gods, anything and they choose diamonds. Don’t even get me started on the horrid flashbacks to Beckinsale’s torrid past. They were on par with Rain’s back story in Ninja Assassin, that’s how tedious they were.

The Good, The Bad, and The Weird. I hear angels play banjo’s whenever this movie is mentioned. It was brilliant. Even if you’re not a fan of Spaghetti Westerns this is one to buy popcorn for, even at the outrageous prices they sell it for. The Good is Woo-Sung Jung, a bounty hunter you expect spends his spare time drinking and playing cards with Boba Fett, Capt. Mal Reynolds and Spike Spiegel. That is just how cool he is. Not to mention freaking adorable and the only person I’ve ever seen able to pull off a dandy mustache with such manly panache. The Bad is Byung-Hun Lee, badest of the bad and he does it all with Emo hair. He’s the kinda of guy that hangs around on open-mic poetry night and then shoots everyone. Finally, The Weird is Kang-Ho Song from the equally brilliant The Host. He’s the guy you seen running around in a diver’s helmet in the trailer. This one is destined for my movie trunk and yes, I have a trunk full of movies. That’s just how I roll.

The Crazies. Let me just say that I like looking at Timothy Olyphant. He’s easy on the eyes and not just another shallow Hollywood pretty boy. Now that’s out of the way, this movie started out really good then degraded pretty fast into a cliché zombie flick. The biggest issue I had was with the “crazies” themselves. They were so inconsistent and poorly explained. They were caused by a huge ass military plane crashing into a river and the toxin it carried got into the water of the small town. We’re supposed to believe that no one saw this happen. Even in the middle of rural America this is damn near impossible. We’re talking about a country that puts churches fifty miles from the closest residence (I’m assuming in case you’re being chased by vampires). This movie also hardened my belief that the military’s greatest weakness is a bunch of drunk rednecks in a pickup truck. Really guys? This just proves that if Texas ever decides to succeed we should just let them. This movie did, however, give me an irrational fear of car washes. I haven’t cringed in my seat like that for a long time.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine. After watching this movie the following is recommended: 1. Find a wall. 2. Apply head liberally until consciousness is lost. 3. Regain consciousness. 4. Repeat. Ignoring the laughable CG claws and the totally defilement of Dead Pool there is nothing of interest in this movie. The plot is weak, the scripting is poor, the action lagging, and you spend half the time wondering why you wasted your money on this crap. When they decided to tell of Wolverine’s origins it was a huge deal for comic fans. I’m sorry, that needs to be rephrased. Ahem, IT WAS A GARGUANTAN FUCKING DEAL!!!!! Have a little respect for the source material. Screwing up the Phoenix Saga was one thing but this is the most beloved bastard of all time. Beloved even though he wears yellow spandex, that’s like liking someone from Jersey Shore or The Hills for their insight. Best line of the movie: Striker shows up and says to Logan, “You haven’t aged a day.” Uh, it’s been like 7 YEARS! Neither have you, douchebag.

Alright, let’s get to some trailers.



The Apocalypse is coming and it will turn all of our monuments blue. Little else to say other than, "FFFFFFUUUUUUUUU"



Paul Walker and Hayden Christensen on the silver screen together. There isn't enough sarcasm to put into the word, "Yay," for this situation. I expect this will be a horrible chimera of Heat and Oceans 11. And it is not going to be pretty.



Excuse me, I have to spin in a circle while squee-ing. Be back in ten.

The Glory that is Kick-Ass

Kick-Ass Review

Resisting the urge to scream, “It Kicked Ass!” Because, truly, it did. There are so many ways this movie could have been screwed up. I have to give major kudos to director Matthew Vaughn for not taking the easy route and producing this movie independently. From what the Internet tells me (all praise the mighty Web of Knowledge) Vaughn turned down major production companies because they wanted him to change too much. Kick-Ass is utterly perfect they way it is. Any changes would have ruined it.

That being said, let’s go through all the ways this movie (which is perfect, I’m going to stress that until you hate me) could have been ruined by the “I’m planning a third Transformers movie,” big-wigs of Hollywood.

1. The Rating: This had to be an R movie. PG-13 simply would not have cut it. It, as Vaughn said in one interview, would have offended the audience base it was aiming for. We of the 90’s violent comic generation enjoy our blood and gore. We like our guns, our bazookas, our butterfly knives, and our overkill (which this movie has plenty of). Humans bleed, we gush fountains of the stuff when we’re shot or stabbed. This is something Hollywood sometimes likes to ignore.

2. Teenagers: There is just enough teen awkwardness and angst in this movie. Nicely juxtaposed beside that lovely R-rated gore we so love. Hollywood would have contorted and twisted these scenes, making them an agonizing focal point we’d have to endure. We do not need to be forced to relate to these characters. When they’re written and acted well we do so automatically. By highlighting their shortcomings until we’re nauseous doesn’t make us sympathetic to them, it just makes us hate them.

3. The Characters: Hit-Girl, played by the phenomenal Chloë Grace Moretz, would be horrible. They would have changed her age or made her remorseful, or some other moral crap, and she wouldn’t be Hit-Girl anymore. She’d be another Batgirl and we all remember how well that went down. Kick-Ass would have some secret instead of being the most average superhero ever. Removing the thing that defines him as Kick-Ass. Or they would have cast some cuite on loan from Disney to fill the role so expertly executed by Aaron Johnson. Nicholas Cage’s role as Big Daddy (the first role in a long time in which I didn’t want to cover him in bees) would have been made less insane and I can’t even imagine what bizarre take they would have on Red Mist, played by the wonderfully nerdy Christopher Mintz-Plasse.

4. Directing: This is the kind of movie they would have shoved Michael Bay’s way. He would have sqeezed this one out between salivating over the third Transformers movie and the “re-imagining” of A Nightmare on Elm Street. All the action would be painfully rendered CG and somehow he’d manage to shove a pair of robot testicles in there. Matthew Vaughn has respect for the material; you can see the love in every baton hit across the face. The words I have for Bay’s respect for anything can only be properly translated through the dead language of Cthulhu. And then the world would end in a horrific tentacle explosion.

I’m going to end here because, really, nothing quite beats a tentacle explosion. Go see Kick-Ass, drag your friends along, bring the dog too. Then buy the DVD and all the merchandise and maybe we can send a message to Hollywood that they don’t have to dumb everything down to their level.

Repo Men

There has been a lot of talk about how Repo Men rips off Repo! The Genetic Opera. Let’s just get it out of the way that I don’t care. I really, really don’t care. Usually I would but this is one of the rare times that Hollywood has produced something I like infinitely better than an independent studio. I contribute this to the fact that I have eyes and ears. So, those of you who squeal in utter delight at a heartfelt rendition of, “Don’t Poop in my Pool,” then stop reading now, please, and go away.

That being said, it must also be stated that Repo Men is not for everyone. If you gag at the sight of blood, have issues with watching someone have their liver sliced out, can’t stand the idea of Jude Law being anything other than a pretty boy, or are against healthcare reform then this movie is not for you. For you few action and gore geeks who like seeing someone get cut open without the protagonist singing about his love for a scalpel, check out Repo Men.

Jude Law and Forest Whitaker star in this gritty dystopian movie about a future where your shiny new spleen can be reposed if you don’t pay up in time. They shine, equal parts dysfunctional relationship, best friends, and gravedigger’s wit. They aren’t two guys I’d want on my tail if my pancreas payments were overdue. Their brilliant performances and hard edge fight scenes help plaster over the few plot holes and head scratcher moments. Like most sci-fi movies, there are a few things that make you scoff in disbelief and let you bask in your egotistical satisfaction that you know better than the scriptwriters.

The screenplay was, weirdly, based on a book that hadn’t been published yet. Repossession Mambo written by Eric Garcia, who also worked on the screenplay, hit bookstores in March of 2009. The book, as proven by Spooky Dan, takes more than a little from Repo! The Genetic Opera. This fact cannot be ignored but it’s up to you whether or not you’ll let it detract from Repo Men.

For me, this film will be going in my chest next to Doomsday and Slither as another blockbuster flop that I really liked.For Spooky Dan's comparison of the two go here.