Month: June 2012

The Extra Man is one of those films I just threw in and said, “NOW ENTERTAIN ME MYSTERIOUS MOVIE!”. I tend to yell at inanimate things. Less feelings are hurt.

What I didn’t know was how weirdly unique everything about this movie would be. Hooray!

Take it all in. Slowly, while everything seems normal.

The movie begins with one Louis (Paul Dano) teaching at a small college literature. Kind of guy who loves the Great Gatsby, and novels from the 20s. Generally loves everything from that period, and wishes he could live there. Even wishes he had nonchalant narrators narrating his life, and often thinks of it. Well, due to downsizing he no longer has his job, and probably has nothing to do with the fact that he was trying on another professors bra.

So a guy has an urge to wear women clothing on occasion, surely that isn’t a big deal? He decides the need to find himself, he answers an add for a room with a cantankerous older gentleman, Henry Harrison (Kevin Kline) who is very proper and sophisticated. He also is an “Extra man”, or someone who accompanies older women on nights out on the town, like a prostitute, without the sex. Speaking of sex, no weird sex stuff goes on his place, it would not be appropriate. He also meets one of the neighbors, Gershon Gruen (John C. Reilly) who helps “lift things” and is very secretive.

Louis ends up getting a job working for an environmentalist magazine, pretending to be very green and environmentally friendly, thanks to the boss man (John Pankow), and is happy to find a very cute vegan coworker (Katie Holmes) who is seeing an activist. Damn it.

But during all this, Louis is learning the city through his roommate, and learning a lot more than he thought possible. He even dreams of one day also being an Extra Man, so that he can experience the lash and luxuries that he just seems so naturally suited for, including seducing one of the richest, Vivian (Marian Seldes) and meeting women of a similar position (Celia Weston).

So can he be a successful gentleman? Or will he continue to explore his fascination with lady garments? Or will he change himself completely for a VEGAN?

He is more human when he sings.

So a lot is going on in this movie, told from the point of view of Louis, despite being a book about the Henry. Hey, whatever, I don’t care ’bout no book.

I was finding it all incredibly interesting, despite not knowing what the heck was the end game. But I thought the film lost a bit of steam as it tried to end. Some plot lines dropped quickly, and I wanted them to be more explored more, damn it. Something about it, just made me a bit disappointed. If the ending was a bit better, it’d be a 3 for sure.

SPY MOVIES.

But this is not your James Bond type of Spy Movie. This is the more subtle, information based spy movie. Of course more secret government organizations. But it is also British, and with other European people. As a hardcore American, that is a negative to me. Because we are the best.

But honestly, I knew absolutely nothing about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy before I watched it, just that it was probably a book.

Reading is sooooo European.

The movie begins with Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) sent to Hungary by the head of the Circus (British Intelligence nickname?) (John Hurt) to meet a native to buy secrets! Too bad he gets shot and captured though. That is not the plan, so the head gets canned, and his aide, George Smiley (Gary Oldman) get into forced retirement, and the head dies soon after from being old.

They get replaced by Tinker (Toby Jones) and his new right hand man, Tailor (Colin Firth) and also Soldier (Ciaran Hinds) and Poorman (David Dencik ) also move up the ranks. Bet you thought that last code name would be Spy? Yeah, what teases. Spy would also be a poor code name.

Speaking of poor nicknames, they move up the ranks due to Witchcraft! Russian secret intelligence they have found and traded to the Americans for even more intelligence. Smiley is brought back out of retirement from Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy), as there are reports of a mole in the British government, someone who has been there for quite some time.

He has obvious suspects, but starts with those who left around the same time as him and works his way inward. He gets a team of people, including someone played by Benedict Cumberbatch, to do some secret espionage stuff to find out who the mole is, and if the initial outing of Smiley and others was all part of someones plan.

Other secrets to find out! Just what the mole was doing, the true purpose of the Hungary visit, and how jerky some peopl can be.

LOOK AT HIM. Not even an unrelated caption. Just do it.

In other news, this is efinitely not a movie I could watch again and again. It is a slower pace, obviously, and strictly feels like a very tame game of chess. The actors involved all do wonderful jobs, but personally I didn’t see a need to give Gary Oldman more props than the rest of the cast (Nominated for Best Actor for the film). When everyone does a fine job, I just find it harder to praise a single person.

However the plot I never really seemed to care for. Couldn’t relate to older British intelligence officers, go figure. I was just hoping the American’s wouldn’t get screwed over or made seem stupid in the movie. And well, it kind of happened. Whoops.

Decent movie, but just not my kind of film.

Pretty Bird is a story about what everyone dreams about and wants. A jet pack.

Or a Rocket Belt as they call it in this movie. Based kind of off of true events, where a Rocket Belt was invented in the mid 90s. Yes, we are going back to one of the scariest moments of US History. Post-Grunge.

But you could tell that from the fashion.

Curtis Prentiss (Billy Crudup) is an entrepreneur. And by that, I mean a guy with a plan and an idea, and someone who can talk really good like. He has a friend Kenny (David Hornsby, who is the Brother in Law to Zooey Deschanel) who is pretty wealthy and looking to invest in things. He also likes the idea of a rocket belt!

But their problem is you know, needing someone to make it. An idea and money isn’t always good enough, you need someone with those brain smarts. If they are into physics or rocketry, even better. Enter Rick Honeycutt (Paul Giamatti) who just got laid off from his job and has nothing to do. Perfect!

So they get to work, needing more and more money, having a lab, etc. Eventually they get a prototype that actually works, for about 30s at a time!

Then other stuff happens. All three men have clashing personalities, so they fight a lot. Other investors brought in. And eventually the rocket pack goes missing, never to be seen again. Also featuring Kristen Wiig as a secretary like person and potential love interest. Hollaaa.

That hand-vac really amps up the sex appeal.

This film is actually the directorial debut of Paul Schneider, or Mark Brendanawicz if you are cool. And really there is not much to say about it.

Guy gets idea, idea works, too much success to quickly, everyone flips a shit, history doesn’t change.

And I can’t tell how much of it is true and how much is exaggerated. But plot wise, it isn’t exciting at all, despite dealing with jet packs. I think I really enjoyed one scene, it had some yelling, and another was funny, but after that was a meh-fest. So didn’t see the point of telling the tale. Oh well.

A couple of days ago I asked an open question to some friends to try to get me some crazy, whacked out documentary to watch. Nothing unfortunately really matched the level I wanted, so I instead found Dear Zachary to watch, hearing it was at least powerful, and a bit fucked up.

But real life, fucked up, not the the made up conspiracy theories way.

Either this is really touching documentary, or a really creepy one.

Basic gist of the story:

Andrew is a guy who people apparently like. Went to Med School, was in training to be a doctor, meets with a Shirley Turner girl, who no one really knows about. Bit later, Andrew is dead, shot six times, while trying to break up with Shirley. She flees back to Newfoundland, and now claims to be pregnant with a baby from Andrew.

The documentary director/friend Kurt Kuenne originally sets off to gather all the information on Andrew that he can, through his old family video recordings (used to make fake movies) to interviews with all of his family and friends, so that someday, his son can learn about his passed father, and also more of the circumstances that lead to his demise. The piece also follows Andrew’s parents, as they move to Newfoundland to begin a long custody battle through the Canadian government to gain the rights to the son, from the woman who is slowly being convicted of killing the husband.

Sounds messed up, yeah? Because it is. And I can’t say more about it. Will ruin the story.

I liked the story a lot, in a “WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT” sort of way. Lot of real emotion in it, given the topic that was probably obvious. The only reason I don’t give it a 4 is just because of weird editing that kept bugging me throughout.

Mostly occurred at the beginning, when the documentary didn’t flow very well at all, not to mention a few times when they said they would get to something later and then barely touch on that topic later. This is the world of wikipedia damn it, we need more information!

Hooray! Review 500!

FIVE HUNDRED. That is actually significant. Kind of like the first review, or 100th. 500 is such a nice number, so I have to do my most speicalist review ever. I have to review the movie, that is a remake, of my websites name sake.

Clash Of The Titans came out in 2010, and was supposed to be a big event, after all, the original Clash of the Titans was still talked about at that point, and was a big event back then.

But even back then, everyone knew the original movie was kind of shitty. Bad special effects, plot, was just super silly. So of course the best idea ever would be to remake it with the SAME plot, but instead of bad special effects, we will very expensive bad CGI effects. WHAT A GREAT IDEA! Honestly, I thought the effects in the movie were so bad, I couldn’t tell the pictures between the two movies apart, so I might end up using some of the old one “accidentally”.

Hopefully by now you realized that my logo of “Watching shitty movies so you don’t have to” and relating it to Gorgons, is that if you watch bad movies, you might turn to stone. And I am saying Clash of the Titans is a bad movie.

Just ask Liam Neeson as Zeus. That is him right?

Blah blah blah, Hades (Ralph Fiennes) is a bad guy in this movie, because for some reason the ruler of the Underworld means bad person. Of course he was also “tricked” into ruling the Underworld by Zeus and Poseidon, so really any anger he has in those context seems justified.

Either he accepted the Underworld and is a decent god like the rest, or he was tricked in to there by his dick brothers, and thus wants to fuck things up from time to time. I don’t see how either makes him a bad dude. But hey, maybe there is a secret reason he is pissed off.

“Jizz! Jizz everywhere! Ahhh!!!”

Anyways, Baby Perseus (Sam Worthington) is found floating in a river, very Moses-esque, and raised by a different family. Eventually said family village gets fucked up, thanks to people not believing in the gods. Hmm, also Moses-esque. So everyone dies besides him, and he goes to another kingdom. They hate the gods there and are like, whatever. Even saying their daughter Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) is the hottest bitch in town.

More god interruptions, and apparently the Kraken will be summoned if Andromeda isn’t sacrificed by the next solar eclipse.

Also Perseus is the son of Zeus.

I’m sure he was stoked to hear the news.

So of course he gets imprisoned, where he meets Io (Gemma Arterton) who is immortal after not sexing up Poseidon (what?) and is forced to watch over his life and protect him. Sweet deal. She tells him his mom was a Queen who died, after she was impregnanted by Zeus. The King Acrisius (Jason Flemyng) tried to war against the gods, and that is how they punished him, so he sent them to see. Also he turned into a legit monster.

“What a monstrosity! Why won’t he shave!?”

Eventually he is freed to go find a way to stop a Kraken with a small army. While Hades makes Calibos (that monster “dad”) stronger, to kill Perseus. But first he must face other trials! Apollo (Luke Evans) tries to give Perseus a cool sword and Pegasus to help fight, but he refuses. Then Calibos comes and fucks some shit up, so they run, and of course they run straight into a giant scorpion.

I mean, of course.

Some Djinn save them, and cure their poison. They also let them know the only way to stop the Kraken is with Medusa’s head, a Gorgon. Bitch turns anything of flesh into stone if they look at her. Including the Kraken! So they decide to go to the Underworld, because where the hell else would she be? Zeus tries to stop them and make Perseus a god, thinking he wont want to kill them all if he has the power too. He refuses. Of course.

At least he gets a coin as a consolation prize!

So they go to the Underworld! Find the lair! Io can’t go in because she is a woman! (What?). Most of the crew dies, but thankfully Perseus survives and cuts off her head in a very unapologetic fashion. Kind of rude if you ask me. Could have just asked her to help stop the Kraken.

This looks strangely familiar.

But after that, the monster dude comes back! He totally kills Io. Fuck. But he is able to slay him, with the help of that sword, and turn him back to his normal human form. Still dies though. Perseus realizes his fate and that he needs to stop being so selfish, accept help, and fuck shit up. So he hops on Perseus (who was also just hanging around) and heads to save the day! If only someone had told him he’d need these things earlier.

“Fuck you Perseus! Who turns down a gift?”

So Kraken is about to be summoned, and the gods are weaker because people still aren’t respectin’ them. BUT WAIT. Turns out Hades also gets stronger from fear, and the Kraken is a scary ass beast. Guess who is the strongest god now? Hades can totally take over Mt. Olympus. Way to fuck up Zeus. What do you have to say for yourself?

“Oh my bad. I’m actually trying to audition for Twilight. Got distracted.”

So he rushes to the Kraken, who is taking out everything, and trying to eat Andromeda. After all, the sacrifice still needs to happen, for some reason. Getting the head to Kraken proves to be difficult. I also assume his hunger is pretty insatiable, given his large mouth, and large dorment period.

Bitches love Krakens.

But yes. Perseus eventually shows the Kraken his head. Stone. Saved the day. Somehow everything is back to normal. Perseus still says no to godhood, and no to king hood (Turning down Andromeda). He instead gets Io revived, and wants to just run away and do whatever he wants.

Yayyy.

So what is the problem with the movie besides its horrible special effects, its lame butchering of Greek Mythology, and its poor acting?

Which version of the Kraken is from the 80s? I have no fucking idea.

It is also super BORING. Gah. I hate boring movies. Well it depends. A drama that can be considered boring or slow usually has at least an emotional connection if you stick with it, or some character development. But Action movies that are boring? That pisses me off to no end. That is a special effects driven movie, and literally no effort seems to be put into any other aspect of it. It looks like an entire green screen explosion.

This movie makes the color green even look bad.

I have no idea what else to say, but thanks for reading the first 500, and here is to another 500!

Generally, most people will tell you they were disappointed with the original Ghost Rider movie. Ghost Rider himself is a cool concept, and a bad ass character, but for people to go home feeling bored? That isn’t good at all.

With most of the Marvel movie characters that they no longer own, such as Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Ghost Rider, there are contract stipulations that state they must use their movie rights or else they will go back to Marvel. From the looks at it, it looked like there wouldn’t be another Ghost Rider movie, and Marvel would actually get a character back! Hooray, even if its one they can’t use that much.

Then there was news that they wanted to do another movie anyways, regardless of how bad the first one was. A RUSHED movie. Well, no way Nick Cage could be involved. Wait what? Nick Cage signed on too?

That is pretty much the only constant between Ghost Rider and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, so the outcome should be different, right?

These eyes. Cry out every night. For you.

This film takes place in Romania, and yo\u do not need to see the first one to see the second. Every character is different, even kind of changed how he turned into Ghost Rider. Instead of Mephistopheles, it is Roarke (Ciarán Hinds), but still a generic Satan/Devil, just played by a different guy.

Moreau (Idris Elba), a drunken French priest is seen trying to warn a clergy that the Devil has sent men to capture a woman and a boy they are hiding, but they don’t believe him. And then they get fucked up, but thankfully the woman (Violante Placido) and the boy Danny (Fergus Riordan) get to escape, with Moreau’s help, but he loses them. So he finds out Johnny Blaze and asks for his help. He doesn’t want to, he just wants to be left alone. After all, he only hurts people anyways. But if he helps him, he is promised that they can undo his fiery curse. Sounds good.

So he catches up, right before the mercenaries lead by Ray (Johnny Whitworth) are capturing them. After killing a few he gets distracted, and wants to kill the kid sensing a great evil, but it is knocked unconscious and stopped. After escaping a hospital, he finds the woman and Moreau again, and they device a plan to find the kid and get him back. Eventually the find out the kid is actually the son of the devil, and Roarke is hoping on unlocking his full power (and those deep dark eyes!). Moreau wants to take him back to his church, lead by Methodius (Christopher Lambert) and freeing Blaze of his Rider curse.

But when everything inevitably goes wrong, can Johnny Blaze free the kid from his fate, after he has freed himself from his curse? Also, angels and spirits of justice?

Don’t even ask me about this moment.

Blahhh. Honestly, the plot doesn’t sound that bad on paper. Especially if I fully explain more of the curse, as it is figured out in the story. I am even fine with where the film ends. It just would be a much better ending for the first film, and not the second film.

He turns into Ghost Rider three times in the movie, and none of them really seem that important. The fact that in his first encounter he gets knocked out from a blast just seems silly, after what we see of him in the first encounter and first movie. The second fight is way too long, and the character does many pointless things when his goal should be to kill them all as quickly as possible. The third fight is more of the same, but with a powerful enemy to fight, who actually turns out to not be that special.

When you have a character who really can’t be stopped / killed, there is no fear for survival or suspense. Just kind of lame. Action was boring. Plot was confusing in that it made it seem like the first film never happened, despite maintaining the same main actor for the character. That is some shit. I hate ret-cons. Also lots of unexplained plot directions. Give it a pass, but the third film might be better.

I like this title. It makes me ask questions. And it makes me want to say it a lot.

We Need To Talk About Kevin! Clearly Kevin is up to something, and me and you refuse to talk about it. Like elephants. No one talks about elephants. AND NO ONE WANTS TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN.

I have also been substituting Kevin for other nouns. Just always seems appropriate. Can’t stop, talking about the need to talk about Kevin.

Jeez, I think we need to talk about the size of Kevin’s head.

Seriously, am I just making that up, or is his head really big right there? Clearly the best course of action involves zooming in to make it all pixelated and scary.

If you are reading this at night, I apologize.

Either way, something is up with Kevin. Kevin does something bad, but the movie doesn’t want you to know about it. The beginning is super weird, with the mother (Tilda Swanton) in what appears to be a giant tomato fight, like that giant tomato fight festival. Lots of red liquid in this movie. She is living alone, and people tend to dislike her. Kevin (Ezra Miller) is in prison now, for something, but what?!

At the beginning of the film, it is very disjointed. Scenes after the fact, before the birth, and during an event, all quickly stipulated together. Eventually it slows it the hell down, but definitely overwhelmed me at the beginning.

Kevin’s mom is married, with a Husband who works a lot (John C. Reilly) and dreams of being an author and traveler. They have a boy, Kevin, and she is originally left to raise him on her own. She can never seem to make him stop crying, and finds that other loud noises are a reprieve from his shrieks. But of course he is completely normal when the dad is around.

But when they are alone, as he grows, he takes forever to talk. He takes forever to get potty trained. To roll a ball, and enjoy life. Always staring with those damn dead eyes. Some abuse might be present, but it doesn’t last long, as he realizes the potential for black mail, and soon he seems to be running their lives, doing whatever he pleases, and she cannot stop him.

But soon they have another child, a daughter (Ashley Gerasimovich), and subconsciously he gets jealous. Then he gets all pissed off. And does a certain bad thing. The marriage also at that point was falling apart, divorce papers being filed.

The after math of the “incident” which I guess they try to keep secret, involves the mom living alone, in a community where no one wants to talk to her, and finding a cheap office job to make a salary, and try to get her life back on track.

I already explained a bit of this, but man, that beginning, did not like it at all. When it slowed down, and gave us longer scenes, before and after the event, I was able to enjoy the film a lot more. I don’t want to have to work too hard to understand it. Thankfully she has different hair styles before and after, so it isn’t hard to realize when in time we are.

The film is based off of a book, which is based off of a fictional event. But obviously based off certain real events, while taking its own unique and fucked up spin on it.

And I thought it was super powerful by the end. I kind of was told what the event was that occurred, but I didn’t see the “Extra events” coming by the end, and I was definitely shocked. Powerful acting, and a lot of big heads. Even John C. Reilly has one.

Not much information existed about the film Me Again before I watched it.

Here is that IMDB synopsis:

Things don’t go as expected when a disenchanted pastor wishes for a different life.

Well, alright. Could be interesting. And what’s that? Ali Lartner is in that? Hells yeah I will watch it!

I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?

Wait a minute. Ali Landry? Fuck, I was wrong already.

So we got this pastor, David A.R. White, who is down on the slumps. Something isn’t going right with his life, he is seeming miserably and giving bad speeches. Oh whats that, he is separated with his wife, Ali Landry, and three children? She wants a divorce? Something about him never finishing anything, and his mind being absent. He is all lame. But somehow, after prayer, and a bunch of other weird stuff involving this Big Earl commercial on tv (Bruce McGill), he wakes up and finds himself in a different room.

In a different body! Somehow or another, for a week, he finds himself changing bodies with people he knows and some he doesn’t. From wealthy business owner, to starving model (Logan White), to goldfish, to baby of a couple, to boyfriend of his daughter, to his own wife! He can’t explain it, and can’t stop. The only person he is able to contact during this is his best friend, Tommy Blaze, who eventually believes him, mostly when a model actually decides to talk to him. He can’t explain it either.

And then you know, happy endings, morals learned, marriages saved, other people become better.

Also the main guy looks like a weird clone of Aaron Eckhart. So there is that.

So uh, definitely didn’t go the way I was expecting. Body changing and all. During this whole time, his actual body is doing stuff, and existing, but being the same amount of lame he used to be. It isnt explained what happens to the people when he takes over their body at all, and does its best to ignore it.

The comedy is bad, and alll of the dialogue is bad. All of it. It was cringe worthy! It was almost horrifying.

Morals are all wrapped up nicely at the end, as he fixes up his life and at least 3 of the lives he visited. But it was a pretty lame movie overall.