Month: October 2011

This movie stars Ryan Reynolds and he is Buried in the ground, unsure why, and left with his phone and lighter.

You are now caught up with the synopsis.

There is also eventually a flashlight, some glow stick shit, instructions, and other stuff that happens. I feel like if I say any of it, I am spoiling part of the movie.

I can say that we thankfully get to hear other people talk, in his phone conversations. I figured this movie would be partially told through flash backs, like all those other things, but nope. We get Reynolds in a box. Just him! I like that. Flashbacks is the lazy way out.

This film is probably banking off of the success of 127 Hours, much like the horrible Wrecked tried to do.

There is one part near the end that bugged me. It showed the camera zoom out and I guess it did that to make him seem even more helpless, but then it made it look like there was no ceiling. When there obviously was a ceiling. So that was just dumb. He had barely any room over his head, not this 8 feet or so that it made it seem out of no where. They made that clear when he had to scrape his head in order to turn around.

What this movie does a good job of doing is make you hate people, assuming you didn’t already do that. You won’t be too mad at Ryan, as really, its hard to find faults with any of his actions. Aside from that previous pan out frame, it does a good job of making the viewer feel trapped in a box the whole time too. Normally I hate that feeling, but that is usually with boats. You are supposed to feel trapped in this movie.

“Why must people be so stupid!”

As a side note, his birthday is apparently March 23rd. One day before mine, cool! Also, it had a very wow ending.

I have found writing this review very hard. Not because I don’t have a lot to say, I have tons. I just…don’t know how to say it. So it will probably seem to be a dumb review overall, which is unfortunate for such a great movie.

The Illusionist should not be confused with the Edward Norton movie of the same name. It is an animated french film, that takes place in Scotland. Aside from being animated, 95% of the film is silent speaking wise, focusing more on music and pantomime. The speaking that does take place in the movie is French or Gibberish, or both. I am not entirely sure.

To call this a simple film is an understatement. The animation gives an old vibe to it, but it is beautiful at the same time. It is like the background of an old cartoon, where everything is kind of faded, but you know what is about to be interacted with as it has a different glow to it. Except in this movie, the background and people all seem to be the same.

Your face is all the same.

The story tells of an old Illusionist who is traveling across Scotland, performing simple parlor tricks for money just to travel on further. Eventually he meets a young girl at a Parlor, who believes his magic tricks to be real and follows him on his journey. She lives with him in some city while he gets an agent and a local gig at a theater. The relationship with the girl is like a father/daughter thing, not something creepy, jerks. The remainder of the story shows as he tries to make it through his life with magic, in a world that doesn’t seem to care anymore.

The film itself is pretty short, ending right under 80 minutes. To me it went by very quick, and I was surprised as it was about to end. The ending scenes were very sad, possibly depressing, but “real”. I had no idea I was going to, but I definitely shed tears, seemingly out of no where.

There is only a few characters, but it is interesting how they all change in such a simple animated movie. I went from confused about the girl, to upset, to angry, to confused. There is some other performers here too, a trio of acrobats, a ventriloquist, and an old clown. I cannot say I know anything about the original author of the movie, just that I know it is some 50 year old script that finally got produced. It was a pretty famous French dude.

Finally, the bunny. The Illusionist has a pet bunny, and from the animation style point, I think its the cutest bunny I have ever seen. The way it runs around, gets irritated. Every time it was in a scene, an instant “awww’ would just fill my head.

Look at him squirm. Don’t you just want to hug it? If I could, I would own a bunny like that. Too bad animations can’t exist in our 3D world. Yet.

I found this movie to be incredibly touching, and that is without knowing the probable dozens of hidden messages throughout, that the original script writer was probably trying to deduce. If you ever get a chance, you should just definitely give it a try. It went up against Toy Story 3 and How To Train Your Dragon for Best Animated Picture, and after seeing all three, I fully believe this should have won.

I have been trying to watch Chronicles of Narnia 3 for a long time. I kept putting it off, because I didn’t want to watch it until I bought it (as I assumed I would eventually) and only in Blu-Ray (because of the pretty colors!)

And I wish I haven’t bought it now. It is definitely the worst of the three Narnia movies (At this point), and it is not just because of a lack of Anna Popplewell. (I knew she wouldn’t be featured, but just saying, the author a long time ago is dumb).

Hey. You can have your weird crushes, and I will have mine.

Certain book plots do not carry over into movie form, like they do into the books. You can kill off all the characters in a book, and people will probably read it. The two older kids we were told wouldn’t return because they were getting old (and discovering SEX! Thus impure! Okay, that was in the book). So what we are left with is the two younger siblings (Georgie Henley and Skandar Keynes) and a new cousin character (Will Poulter).

Sure, the kid was an annoying asshole jerk. But for the other two kids to scoff at him for declaring himself intelligent is ridiculous. I assume they are laughing because he doesn’t believe in Narnia (a land of no proof) and doesn’t know how to sword fight and other bullshit. For shame other kids, you should be kicked out for being so mean.

The story at the start isn’t much of one. All of the sudden they are on a boat? Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes) is sailing around for some reason. The rat is back too. Doesn’t even know why, just kind of wants to go to the end of the world. So eventually they sail enough to find out that people are disappearing for a sacrifice? And that they need some swords for some reason? So they do those things, and then afterward reach the end of the world.

The cousin’s name is Eustice. I can’t tell if they were going for useless in similar spelling or not.

The CGI was mostly good. I thought some of the effects were cheesy. I am normally against sailing movies in general, because the only freeness you feel from it is when they land on other places. Just being cramped on a boat is annoying for me, as a viewer.

I also knew Aslan was supposed to be some Jesuslion the whole time, but holy crap did they smack that message in your face at the end of the movie. They did everything but say “Oh wait, so you are Jesus in the real world?” Gave some bullshit “you have to discover me yourselves over there”. But seriously, what? Lets learn some ways to be more subtle, please.

You know. More subtle than this.

So yeah. I really didn’t know what their purpose was for half this movie. I didn’t even know they had won out of no where. That was weird too.

Water For Elephants is based off of a book of the same name. In fact, a year ago I almost read that book! But when I realized that the only people I knew who read it were women, I decided to investigate more. Last thing I wanted to do was read a romance novel, yeuch! But by doing research, I found out that a movie was happening, so like a real American, I decided to watch the movie instead of read the book.

I thought the movie would be two hours of this. A sequel to African Cats.

Instead, much to my delight, this movie stars an older and more rugged Robert Pattison (or Edward Cullen). Seriously, the look he has almost reminds me of how Leonardo DiCaprio looks now, post Titanic. Dude might be a star yet.

In the movie, Edward Cullen just wants to be a Vet. Almost graduated from Cornell, but left college once both of his parents died. No longer wealthy (turns out the dad was scammin’), he runs away, and gets picked up by a circus! Starting out as hard laborer, once they find out about his college schooling, he becomes a vet for the horses and elephant. He also falls in love with Reese Witherspoon, who is married to the head honcho, Christoph Waltz.

So. The whole movie deals with life as a Carnie in the early 1900s. You get to see animal abuse, shady tactics, and a lot of people getting beat up. An absurd amount almost. I think my favorite role was Waltz as the owner. Really good acting there. Cullen still was kind of just the pretty boy savior role. There was also a small role for Paul Schneider at the beginning and end of the movie. Who, if you watch Parks and Rec, know he is the coolest guy around.

Mark Brendanawicz! Well. Cool until season 3+. We don’t talk about that though.

Overall, the story was very simple and pretty guessable. Some good acting, but mostly just normal expected stuff. I am watching the credits now, they are doing a very classic take on it, weirding me out. It was kind of good, kind of alright.

Have you heard of this movie? Crazy, Stupid, Love, it has tons of bigger names in it, and some lesser names that might be big one day! This non-R rated Comedy/Romance has a few stories in it, that are kind of connected. Not like the bullshit Valentine’s Day movie, much much less stories. I’d put a max of 3 stories for this one.

Let’s see, the movie begins with Julianne Moore telling Steve Carell that she wants a divorce. Why? Because she slept with her coworker, Kevin Bacon.

I am pretty sure most marriages nowadays have a “sleep with celebrity” clause in it though.

This causes some vehicular shenanigans, and going home early. Sure, their marriage is also in shambles out of boredom and apathy, but the Kevin Bacon part is more important. This makes their son mad, but the babysitter, Analeigh Tipton, glad, since the kid is totally being a creeper. She doesn’t like the divorce though, but goes back home to her family, where her dad is played by John Carroll Lynch, or that guy who played Drew Carrey’s brother.

At the same time, Emma Stone is having to turn down the advances of one suave ladies man Ryan Gosling, because she is dating Josh Groban at the law firm!

Man, that set up took a long time. So the movie tells of Carell meeting Gosling at the bar, and learning how to be a better man (and by better man, I mean pick up chicks and be exciting). All while Carell has to help teach his son that love is real, to pursue his dreams. I won’t get into any other complicated relationships that happen, because they are all awesome and spoil shit.

The movie goes at a much slower pace, but it is definitely worth it. Pretty much all of the characters that matter are dynamic and change throughout the film, so it is great to watch their transformation.

If I could, I would change the ending though. The big climatic ending takes place at the sons 8th Grade Graduation, which is lame on its own. I skipped mine because of the pointlessness of it. The speeches didn’t feel like they fit the rest of the film, especially since they would have been stopped in real life. Which the movie seems pretty real, up to that point.

It also kind of sweeps under the rug all the problems their marriage have, and I guess is willing to ignore them. Sure, he seemed to stop trying. But why should he have had to go crawling back because she cheated on him? Why does the guy always move out?

Not to mention the part right after the graduation where there’s some possible sex offender stuff going on.

Remember kids, not all sex offenders are creepy. But all creepy adults are sex offenders.

Overall, the movie is probably the perfect mix of cute and sexy.

Hooray! The long awaited sequel to Cars is Cars 2! And by long awaited, I mean both never expected in 2006 and also, since a couple days ago, when I reviewed Cars.

I say this in an exaggerated way obviously, but Cars 2 is nothing like Cars. Sure, both of them are still in some creepy ass world with only cars (and other transportation vehicles) being their own entities that are alive, but Cars is better than Cars 2. Cars is about slowing down, appreciating the finer things in life, and finding true happiness.

Cars 2 is just some big James Bond Spoof.

But unfortunately, when I think Cars + James Bond, I think KITT from Knight Rider. This was KITT-less.

Owen Wilson and his bad voicing habits are barely in this movie. This movie is all about Mater, the Tow Truck, voiced by Larry The Cable Guy. Yes. They changed leads and put the comic relief in the first film as the main character. Yes. This is as bad as it sounds.

The actual beginning of the movie I assumed was a “movie” in this car land. It was just nothing like the first film, with Michael Caine playing the James Bond like car, spying on an oil rig? Or something? But this film is “deeper” than that. It involves Lightning going on a world grand prix, and racing against a french car (voiced excellently by John Tuturro) sponsored by an alternative fuel source dude, voiced by Eddie Izzard. This is of course the only way Izzard can play someone who isn’t evil. Because if he had to show his face in a movie, you know he always is the evil dude. Yay voicing!

But yeah. There is some big conspiracy happening. This takes up most of the movie, and of course Mater ends up being mistaken for an American spy. Thanks to Bruce Campbell, who’s few minutes is the best in the movie, because he is Bruce Campbell.

“Voice a car? Boom boom boom. Sorry, I’m fighting deadites here. Can the car just be backfiring? Boom boom boomstick.”

It is stupid that this movie got a G rating, with all of its “violence”. But who knows what goes on in those rating meetings. The reason for all the bad cars is laughable too. They are a bunch of “lemons”, or cars that break down a bunch. Yes. I’d hope you read my first review, but in this world, cars are created and forced to live certain rules. You’d be pissed off too if you were made with defections and forced to just, live that life out while other cars never break down. You can only handle being stuck on the side of the road so many times before you’d snap too.

So, likers of the first Cars movie would probably call this one worse. I am going to actually find a shark and throw it over the shark, to represent my point more. This movie is just a cash-grab for merchandise. But at least they called Bruce Campbell.

Trespass is one of those words that just looks misspelled to me always. Trespass. Treespas? Tresspass? Just all look wrong.

Trespass however tells the story of a nice rich family! The dad (Nick Cage) deals with diamonds, not the blood kind, the normal legal ones. His wife (Nicole Kidman) just loves that money, and their daughter is probably spoiled, but at least has good morals (Liana Liberato).

I heard she has less morals in Trust, but I haven’t reviewed it yet, so who knows.

Long story short, she sneaks out of the house to go to the party, and the parents get held up at gun point in their own home. FROM TRESPASSERS. Three men and a lady, guns, mask, all black. They’ve been working on this for months (expected the kid to be home) and need that sexy diamond money / diamonds. Cam Gigandet is one of those bad people, and he has been in a bunch of movies lately.

Longer story short, fuck Joel Schumacher.

I was generally interested in this movie. But after awhile, not only did I get bored, but aggravated. There is a twist limit. A few are good. But every couple minutes another “Twist” (coupled with more of the happy married couple getting beaten) did not entertain, just annoy. Because after a few twists, if they keep coming, you can no long accept the new twist as real. Then its just, “get to the fucking point already”. Because when you are on a rollercoaster of twists, you can just blank out and wait for the last one and be good.

I give it an okay rating, just because I was interested in the beginning. Some of Cage’s yelling scenes were good. This movie just goes to show (over and over and over again) that everyone lies.

Everyone.

Hey now. Cars is pretty old. 2006? Yes, it goes way outside of my range of movies I normally review. But because Cars 2 comes out soon and I am reviewing it, I figure I might as well throw up the first one as well (since I just saw it). Also because it is old, I can do a more satirical review of it. Boom boom.

To start, this movie is about cars. The main character, voiced by Owen Wilson, is a race car. Yes, in this car-world, there are no humans. All the cars are alive. If they crash, they can get repaired. But that is about it. No where in this movie is there a dead car. They also have lots of roads and towns where they sell car things.
The movie goes back and forth with gas. It seems to both me something to drink when they are thirsty, and like actual gas, they just need it to run. Hmmm.

What is also weird about this world is that cars on their own pretty much make a NASCAR like event. Which, if you compare everything they do to humans (which I will), is kind of weird. It’d be like having 3 hour races for humans, where they’d just keep running, and taking food/drink beaks. Massages probably in the pit stop.

Owen Wilson is terrrrrrribad in this movie. So bad.

But he is so hot right now.

He has about two emotions, which I am realizing is true with his real movies. He always seems to speak in a calm relaxed way. Even his anxious or afraid voice he just seems to not be aware of the severity of the situation, just coasting by everything. And that is how the car talked. Despite being lost in California or somewhere, and in jail, and working hard labor in a town, he just never seems to really be too upset. In the ending of the movie, when he makes his race, and all of his new friends show up to be his pit crew, he says something like “Hey, you guys came.”

Now read that in the most laid back way possible. That is how it was said. Like, he seemed almost indifferent. He was just stating a fact, wasn’t happy or excited. Just eh.

But let us get to the most important point of the movie. This movie teaches kids something very very bad.

What you will do for the rest of your life is determined when you are born. (I would also like to note that they never go into cars being born. There is no car factory that they speak of, where, I assume, either machines or cars make more cars. Can you imagine a baby making factory for humans? Kind of creepy. Kind of Matrix-y). Now at these car factories, if they make you a tank, guess what, you will be fighting in wars I assume. If they make you into a cop car, you are sure as heck going to be a cop when you are older.

If you are a race car, you are probably going to do races. You can even gain money and get more upgrades and be a better race car (one with lights. He doesn’t have any in the movie, because, race cars don’t do things beside race and there are lights in the arena). But wait! The girl car gave up her life to help the town! Yes. A more well off car can decide to not live up to its potential and do what you wan’t, but just like real life, someone who was born (or CREATED) as a lesser or specific vehicle can only do that. All the pit crews are fork lifts. Fork lifts can only do pit crew like things. It becomes even more fucked up if you remember they were created. Someone decided to give life to an individual, specifically with specialized abilities to limit their life and force them down a specific path.

What the fuck.

Outside of the car factories there may as well be this guy just standing there.

“You’re all doooomed. Doomed I say. Doooomed. You’re allll doooomed.”

Its an okay movie, with bad messages for the youth. I’d rather live in a world (well, one with Humans) where I can make my own destiny thank you very much.

I will admit, there is a definite reason I wanted to see this movie. In case you didn’t know, this movie is absolutely slathered with Anne Hathaway boobies. It seems she is naked for at least half the movie. Because her and Jake Gyllenhaal get it on, a lot. That is the Love part of Love and Other Drugs.

“Ohhh! Ohh ohh”

The story begins with Jake getting fired from the electronics store, for inappropriate sexy time at work. His whole family thinks he needs to get his act together, so he becomes trained to become a pharmaceutical rep. This move also takes place early 90s! His partner is Oliver Platt, and he wants them to do good so they can move up the chain and make the mad money in Chicago. But he just cannot sell his depression/anxiety medicine at all to anyone, no matter how many secretaries he flirts with!

But then something that changes the way we lived happens. Viagra. Selling Viagra, he becomes the hottest pharmaceutical rep, ever! Even doctors like Hank Azaria can’t get enough it. It makes them popular at parties. (Because women love that dick?). Oh yeah, and by this time his brother Josh Gad is living with him, unsuccessful and a loser.

He would later go on to be a successful Mormon missionary in Uganda though, so don’t worry.

Oh yeah, thanks to his job, he “accidentally” sees Anne Hathaway naked and they begin a very sexy relationship. Involving a lot of sex. Because they couldn’t have sex that much when they tried to the last movie they were in together, because Jake G was gay for Heath Ledger.

So, the movie is about their relationships, and him being successful, and her having Parkinson’s, and lots of stuff. But I loved it. The relationship felt very real between the two, and it was a realer relationship than most movies would present. The ending was sweet too. Not like sweet ass sweet, but awww sweet.

This is not a Hollywood original movie. I am flabbergasted at this notion. It is based off a French movie from the previous millennium in 1998. The Dinner Game. How dare you, Hollywood.

Okay that is fake anger. Dinner for Schmucks is the American version and therefore the better version, amirite?

This is the most American picture I could find.

Paul Rudd plays 6th floor Stock Broker or something like that. He keeps proposing to his woman, but she won’t accept it. He just wants to move up in his company. Thankfully, he gets his first opportunity, but the boss is a weirdo. Once a month he hosts a dinner party where everyone brings one amazing guest. And by Amazing, we mean weird. And the “weirdest” individual gets a trophy, and the person who found him gets bonuses.

Then Steve Carell comes crashing into his life! He then has to spend the next few days with Steve as he seems to ruin his life. Also featured in this movie are Zach Galifianakis, Lucy Punch (who was just in Bad Teacher), and Kristen Schaal. But more importantly, Jemaine Clement.

Jemaine is nothing like his normal New Zealander self (from Flight of the Conchords). He plays some other type of foreigner, has no glasses, long hair, and just continued to make me laugh.

He is an artist!

But yeah. Yes Steve is very annoying, but he plays the character well. Some scenes I felt were too long or unnecessary. The Brunch scene was too excessive. I am glad the whole movie wasn’t the dinner, only about the last 20 minutes. Definitely didn’t see it coming. But I did laugh. Despite half of the humor being pretty stupid. I did laugh.

I almost forgot! Chris O’Dowd is in this movie, and plays the great blind fencer. His roles are always way too good. I have to watch The IT Crowd now.