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Wanted is by far one of the movies I have dreaded most to watch. I also have read the book and have no way of doing this in a biased way. Yes, I generally review things and ignore the book. But usually if they have the same name they at least have the same plot. This is not really true with Wanted the movie, way way different than the graphic novel.

After all, neither character looks anything like their comic version.

This movie is about a group of assassins. The comic is about super heroes and super villains. The main character is more or less the same. Some loser working in a corporation. Clearly a tool. This Wesley (James McAvoy) has a gift though. Genetically he can shoot good with a gun (what?). Again this is not really a superpower, because this is supposed to be considered normal. It is rare, just possible in the world. In the graphic novel of course it is easy to accept, because lots of people have powers.

Eventually he finds out about this gun thing, and got it from his dad, an assassin who is dead. Fox (Angelina Jolie, who is definitely not black), brings him to the organization to meet Sloan (Morgan Freeman, who is) and begins training to join the “family business”. The Fraternity which…kills people based on The Loom Of Fate. Which has a secret code which they use to find names of people to kill. Yeah. Not really well explained.

Some missions happen, he gets to go after the guy who killed his dad, other betrayal, lots of dying, long rage shots and curving bullets. Yeahh. Then some breaking of the 4th wall.

Pew pew pew.

Seriously though. This plot has nothing to do with the actual graphic novel and is actually way weirder. Who the hell would say “Lets have a Loom that tells people who to kill! Yess!” What? In the graphic novel, it is a world where the superheroes actually lost and no one believes in super powered people anymore (just tell the stories in comics. Hah). But they have this big organization. Tells of a war between all the different chapters, and search for his father.

This one of course has him go and take down the organization that trained him in a highly predictable pathline. No super powers! No other evil groups. Just…a Loom of fucking fate.

I really can’t get over the loom. I never saw that coming, just knew the one difference between the movie and graphic novel. The acting is dumb, special effects driven movie, and stupid stupid plot.

The 5th Quarter had a weird effect on me. I knew the basic story: guy dies, older brother of guy changes number, and also Wake Forest wins a lot of games, despite not being good on paper.

Alright, so cliche’d sports movie. Right? Wrong. Because this is horribly done.

It also apparently popularized something similar to the Nazi salute.

So yeah, Luke (Stefan Guy) is a high school kid. On the football team. From a pretty tight family. Kisses and acknowledgement of love at every greeting/goodbye. But his ride home is in question, and instead of calling his mom, he accepts a ride from a fellow high schooler. OH THE HUMANITY. Because that guy goes off road, and puts Luke in the hospital. Severe brain damage.

Eventually his brother Jon (Ryan Merriman) gets all mopey, and eventually rejoins the wake forest football team. Changes number to 5. And like I said, Wake Forest wins a lot. They call the 4th Quarter now the 5th Quarter for more inspiration I guess, to give them an end of the game edge. The parents constantly hold their hands up, to represent the five. Andie MacDowell and Aidan Quinn do a good job of staying sad the whole damn movie. Then they lose at the Orange Bowl. But hey, at least they made it?

But is Mr. “I’m Playing For Two!” happy?

So here is what bugged me about the movie. The first 35 minutes. It took awhile for the accident to happen, a while for the hospital stuff to happen, and a long time for pre football to happen. Most of it was in montage form. Video of people being sad with music playing over it. Also a long extra story about the dangers of teenage reckless driving, and organ donation.

Then another montage, of the brother training. Why does he need a trainer? I dont know, because as far as I can tell he was always on the football team. BUt for some reason he needs more training, and thus more images and music.

Then football happens. Most if not all of the scenes of the football games are actual footage. The only thing they did is showed the parents in the audience, doing that hand shit over and over. Also some made scenes to include Jons character talking with others. Eventually everyone does the hand thing.

But do I care? No. The movie makes it hard to care. They seem to be trying to do something just to make you sad, without substance. The amount of times in the movie where very little talking occurs and just a background song going on, I’d need to raise two hands.

They took a familiar story, and pretty much trashed it to try and make it a dedication to Luke instead of an actual good story. The people should be punished for making a poor movie of an actual good story. Captain Hindsight tells me that they should have done a documentary movie instead. I mean, this was in 2006. Can have the actual people talk about the experiences, talking about Luke, and a nice dramatic voice guy going over the game /win highlights.

But nope. Instead some filth. Filth I tell you!

This is a movie I have walked by about a jillion times, with no intention of rushing to watch it. Vanishing on 7th Street just sounds like a dumb title. I also couldn’t tell if it was a horror or a mystery (its the former).

But I did the craziest thing, and read some of the back. It takes place in Detroit, yess! WATCHING THAT SHIT IMMEDIATELY.

No horror can terrorize Detroit. They’d either take a punch to the face, or leave because its already terrorized.

Movie begins at the movies. Thats awesome, because this is a movie. John Leguizamo is some sort of maintenance guy, flirting with the ladies. But while he is in the back, (where it is already dark, so he is using his nice head flashlight thing), it gets darker and he hears a lot of screaming. What what?!

When he gets to where there is people, well, there isn’t people. There is a bunch of clothes on the ground, but no bodies. Some more screaming, but that is it. Turns out that whatever is happening takes the bodies when they are without a light source, in the darkness. Main power generators were all taken out, but anyone who had a lighter or flashlight or something at the time wasn’t taken.

Until their light goes out. Thankfully day still happens, but it is getting shorter and shorter. What ends up happening is his character, Hayden Christensen, Thandie Newton, and Jacob Latimore all end up meeting at a bar that has a generator and is making it a safe haven.

The rest of the movie is them trying to figure out how to escape the city, not sure if there is others out there, or if it is just affecting Detroit area. Mostly thing this because of the Lost Colony on Roanoke, and also claiming that the phrase “CROATAN” is mysterious, and not a very well known Indian tribe also in the area of Roanoke colony.

Oh noes! Look out for the darkness, John!

But the movie also feels like a huge let down. I feel like it didn’t tell a complete story. No you will not find out about the darkness. No, you won’t get any closer to what the hell is happening there. And you also really won’t get any [real] hope for the survivors. They tried to give hope, but that hope seems like bullshit.

And really, the comparison to that situation and the Lost Colony was stupid as shit. Colonists were told to leave where they were going carved in wood, and they did, “CROATAN” a neighboring island tribe. They may have been killed there or whatever. But for the character to say no one knows why they did that, or what it means it just dumb. And a horrible “possible movie plot point” to make.

I thought the movie was horribly slow, for no real payoff.

Hooray, CGI movies about cats and swords!

As you probably already know, Puss In Boots is a prequel to the Shrek tales, but has nothing to do with Shrek. Just…Puss In Boots and how he got those boots.

And you know, uhh…Other tales.

Antonio Banderas reprises his role as the sword swinging feline. He is wanted for petty crimes, but bitches can’t catch him. He wants to steal a big prize, but not from old people or children or anything. That is when they let him know about…the magic beans.

Jack and Jill (Billy Bob Thornton and Amy Sedaris) have found the beans and plan to plant them. Why? Because beanstalks, that’s fucking why! They want to go to the land of the giants, who are long dead, and get some of that golden goose/egg stuff.

But when he is about to steal them…another cat! Who I want to call Batcat but is apparently Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek). They have to fight over getting to the beans and both fail. Lots of fighting / dancing later, we also get to find Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis) an old character from [I don’t know how to grammatically say this right, and it feels awkward] Pusses past. He wont have any of it and storm off.

But eventually forgiveness happen, and the three set off to get the magic beans, go up the beanstalk, and become rich and help the poor!

This also tells the tale of creatures addicted to ‘Leche’

There are some other fairy tale things in here, but I don’t want to give them away. Overall, I could say it was a very decent movie. But I had some problems with it.

Flashbacks. Part of that word is flash, making me think at least it shouldn’t be a long thing. Well the flashbacks in the movie were incredibly long. We hear the whole story of his birth, meeting Humpty, becoming friends, and eventually not being friends. All in one ridiculously long flashback. Bah. It is already a prequel. Might as well tell that shit in a better order. Because that long portion was boring as crap.

I also felt a bit disappointed by the main story. I think they could have done something more epic than the search for magic beans / golden geese. Maybe the large desert portions also took away a bit from the nice CGI that went into the movie. When you have excellent CGI, you don’t want it to be a sexy desert.

Overall I thought it was decent, but man. A rollercoaster in terms of interesting plots.

The Mighty Macs is a sports movie! This time set in the 70s, and this time I will explain most of the plot before the first picture. Carla Gugino plays a woman who is finally getting to coach college basketball, at a Catholic school, for next to nothing. Very little supplies or support, and a ragtag group of girls. Her husband, David Boreanaz, or that guy from Angel/Bones who is also NOT Nick Lachey, is also an NBA ref or something.

Eventually she gets an assistant coach, a real nun, played by, Marley Shelton, and they come together unexpectedly to kick ass at basketball and win multiple titles.

This could be a horror movie picture.

I think this whole movie HAS to be a joke. Honestly. First, the main two female leads, the coach and the nun. I am looking at their past movies and it just doesn’t fit from the religious stand point. Marley Shelton was in Scream 4 as random cop hottie, and in the Grindhouse movies. Carla Gugino was the main character in something called Elektra Luxx, an R rated movie about a Prostitute who becomes pregnant…and it also has Marley Shelton in it!

Outside of the glaringly mis-casted main stars, this film has applied every sports cliche it could think of. To be fair, it is set in the 70s, so maybe sports movie cliches are just based off of their season, and they now finally get a movie?

We have an outcast girl, who helps save the day. We have girl who goes through big tragedy, almost leaves, but stays and kicks ass (normally a death, this was just boyfriend breaking up with her). The Coach is doing it all for practically nothing and no support on supplies, or from her family. There is no support, because of course the school is going to close THAT YEAR unless something good happens.

The team doesn’t do good until they work together without the coaches help. The final rival defeats the team soundly earlier in the movie, but they get to meet again at the end. The rival team also has a personal connection to the coach. They are losing to the rival team until a nice halftime speech. Really, I could go on.

“Yay teamwork and friendship!

What bugged me is their outfits. They made a big deal about how “lame” their uniforms were, and they do look silly. Nothing like a normal basketball outfit. Yet in the credits it shows footage of their championship wins…and the outfits look normal.

I just don’t get why that would be exaggerated for the movie, if it was a lie. What the hell are you guys trying to pull?

From the start I think Tower Heist got a lot of bad publicity. Why initially? Because it planned on releasing itself for download only a month after going to theaters, before coming out on DVDs. Apparently a lot of theaters were mad about that, and were refusing to show it. So of course it backed down.

But then after that, people are generally “Ben Stiller? Gross, next.”

That is the face Ben Stiller makes every time someone walks away and calls him gross.

I think the trailer did a bad job of explaining the overall plot. So here we go. The Tower is actually some large sky scrapper building in NYC, that is basically just apartments. Large staff, super secure, and they don’t accept tips.

Ben Stiller is the overall manager, runs the day to day, keeps his staff in tip top shape and helps all of the top clients. Casey Affleck is his second in command. Matthew Broderick is a formerly rich guy getting evicted and divorced, Michael Pena plays an elevator operator, and Gabourey Sidibe is a Jamaican maid.

And they all get fucked over. The penthouse belongs to rich wall street investor Alan Alda. And he has just been arrested for stealing investments, and getting people trapped in Ponzi schemes. And he also handled everyone who works in the Tower’s pensions!

Stiller gets mad. And he takes it out on Alda’s apartment (as he is now stuck there for temporary house arrest), getting himself and other fired. He then takes the drunk advice of a special agent on the case, Tea Leoni, and decides that the old school method of pitchforks and mobs to storm the castle were appropriate. But instead of storming, they should rob him.

The amount of money he should own versus what they found didn’t match up, so it is likely that Alda is hiding a batch in his apartment, in a safe in a secret wall. Can his team get the maybe 20 million dollars in the safe, escape without jail time, and divide it up amongst the workers to get their money back? Not without a criminal. Thankfully Stiller “knows” a guy, Eddie Murphy, who steals shit!

Potted plants, cash, and scenes, mostly.

Seriously. Eddie Murphy is hilarious in this movie. This is best classified as an action/comedy, despite the action not being that much, and the comedy not being…that much. Oddly enough. There was only a few times I really had a good laugh, some of Eddie Murphy’s scenes, the thing about lesbians, and a few others. But I could just classify it as a “movie” and maybe that genre is specific enough.

But I really enjoyed it as a whole. When I saw the preview, I assumed it wasn’t an apartment, but just some big corporation in NYC. I assumed they were people who had lost their jobs due to budget cuts, and I assumed Stiller used to be a big fat cat, but got screwed over. But they really do a good job of making you feel for and root for them. There are many other workers at the building who aren’t part of the thievery, but they show enough of why their lives were affected by it.

Some jokes and situations, sure predictable. But not all of them, nor the ending really. I was surprised that I liked it that much.

Hoover. Sorry, had to rush that one out of there. The title of this movie teases you. You want it to be called J. Edgar Hoover, because that is how he was known. It is hard to stop the name at just J. Edgar, just like it is hard to stop a stream mid-piss.

“I assure you gentlemen, I can stop mid piss.” – J. Edg

As you know, the movie J. Edgar is a biographical movie about the life of J. Edgar Hoover (played by Leonardo DiCaprio, because that guy loves period pieces), directed by Clint Eastwood.

Plotwise well, it is about J. Edgar, the starting of the FBI, how he got his start, important points in his career, his budding relationships, and his death.

Uhh yeah. Sorry. Spoils if you didn’t know he dies at the end.

You sure do learn a lot about him though, assuming you had no real detailed knowledge about his life. Did you know he helped revolutionize the crime scene? Had people stop just messing shit up, start to wear gloves, and invented the idea of having fingerprints on file. He also tried to keep up to date on all the new sciences in order to stay ahead of crime (but that goes with the territory of finger printing). He also may have been gay?

He also apparently was bad with the ladies. He tried to marry Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts) who instead became his personal secretary for life (And is probably responsible for destroying all of his secret documents post death). But after that he hired Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), someone very unqualified for whatever Lawyer job, and he eventually became Hoover’s number two man of the FBI. They ate together, vacationed together, and did everything together. It was more than implied in the movie that they might have had something going on.

But that is about it. There was the main story in his dealing with the Charles Lindbergh case, his dealings with many presidents (including almost president Robert Kennedy, played by Jeffrey Donovan) and Martin Luther King Jr.

Here is Tolson and Hoover, both old, both played by the same actors above with make up, and both clearly hot for each other.

Now I could sit here and talk all day about what I learned about Hoover and tell you all about it but that ruins the movie. I also lied, no way I could talk all day. All I know about him is a 130 minute movie. Hell, this could have all been lies and I wouldn’t know. There is surely enough obvious “guesses” in the movie for you to realize that yourself.

But damn it, the acting is good. And the stories are interesting! The stuff is told out of order, flowing between different points in history. Thankfully it isn’t that hard to follow, like other movies. Just have to figure out how old DiCaprio (and Hammer) looks and go from there.

Hoover is one of the more awesome characters in American history and of the 1900s, and he wasn’t a president. Its hard to make the history books like that.

A historical drama and political thriller about the works of Shakespeare? Alright. Why the hell not.

That shit was like a rock show back then.

In case you didn’t know, Anonymous is a movie saying that William Shakespeare (Rafe Spall in the movie) did not write the works accredited to him. No, he was from a family of illiterates, and just an actor who was in the right place at the right time. No, instead it was Edward de Vere, an Earl of Oxford at the time who might have wrote them all! And he is played by Rhys Ifans.

Oh okay. Well why does it say that? Pretty much explains it over the whole movie.

According to the movie, play writes who got out of line back in the day got imprisoned. Nothing too raunchy, nothing against the crown, etc. Some guy named Ben Johnson (Sebastian Armesto) get arrested early on for being such a crude guy, I guess.

But the movie has an Earl doing all the writing, and in secret at that. Writing is also frowned upon for some reason. But he gives his plays to others to publish, under ‘Anonymous’, until Shakespeare takes credit after (Henry the VIII maybe?). Which he is fine with. Good, someone to “direct” all his works. Great.

Theres also the major plot about Queen Elizabeth 1 (Vanessa Redgrave) having sex with EVURRYBODYYY. And having secret children, even if its with people she was related to. Eventually this stuff leads to heir questions, possible revolts and mobs, and some war stuff. Beheadings too.

The movie also begins as if it was a play in front of a live theater, and ends that way too. But don’t worry, it turns into a real movie after the intro, and before the outtro.

“Your mother is an outtro.”

I can tell you I know very little about Shakespeare’s work. Never really cared. Also historically, I like ancient, but that means older than Renaissance. So any of that stuff wasn’t as interesting to me.

With all the sleeping around and fake babies, it just felt like a modern drama set in the past. I don’t even know how the movie explained that no one would be able to notice the Queen was pregnant all those times.

Also, a lot of the characters looked alike in my head. Kind of like the six fingered man in The Princess Bride. At least half of them. That made it harder for me to just follow along with the plot, which was important, given all the characters. The play also took place over 4 different years, over about 35 or 45 years though. It was more confusing, because I didn’t know when it went super far in the past. The other years at least showed “Five Year prior!”. Maybe the super far in the past one did too. But I missed it.

Shouldn’t be hiding time cues like that!

But anyways. The movie looked pretty, but the plot seemed kind of silly.

I

am surprised it took me this long to review Leaves Of Grass. I generally have a stand against downloading movies on the internet, but I took exception for both this movie and The Joneses. Why? Because they took forever to go from being made and out, to being actually out on DVD. I wanted to buy both and watch them, but just could not. Since then, I have bought both movies at least. Woo guilt!

It also features one of my favorite movie tropes. One guy playing twins.

Yep. Movie starts off with Bill (Edward Norton), a professor at Brown teaching Latin. After a student tries to seduce him (which he definitely puts an end to), and a meeting with the board about Harvard/tenure, in walks Bolger (Tim Blake Nelson) with the news that his brother is dead!

But not really. His brother, Brady (Edward Norton. Twins I tell ya. But he has long hair, no worry) is actually having some trouble with the law. He grows all natural marijuana! But he isn’t trying to get rich from it, just does a small farm, small sales, no reason to expand his market. Even if he owes money to Richard Dreyfuss. Bill of course goes back to Tulsa to visit the funeral, but en route to his home, he is mistaken for his twin and beaten up. He awakes to find, well damn it, Brady isn’t dead.

But he is getting married (to Keri Russell) and is having a baby, so Bill is guilted into staying. Especially since he too really finds the soon to be wife attractive. But Brady convinces Bill to pretend to be Brady and take care of things at the home (and his wife!) while he goes to deal with Richard Dreyfuss. And thus, alibis can be falsely made. Hooray!

After that, things go from mild comedy to real dark comedy. Shit goes down. Excessive violence, death, and extremely unlikely scenarios. None of which involve Susan Sarandon, who plays the mom, but might involve Josh Pais, a failed orthodontist.

Way too much swag for two guys from Tulsa.

Tim Blake Nelson is more well known as Delmar from O Brother, Where Art Thou? and playing “dumb characters” but he actually graduated from both Brown and Julliard. Why do I mention this? Because he was also the director of the movie, and whenever you are a character in a movie you are directing, your character is generally pretty awesome. And it is true. That characters amazingness made me enjoy the movie that much more.

I was shocked by the end how violent it actually got, not expecting it with a Edward Norton twin comedy. Shit happens, and that shit sucks. My vague descriptions might be enough to convince you to watch it, but I figure just saying Edward Norton is in it is enough for the rest of you.

I try not to be too cryptic with my reviews. Because most of the time you just want to know if you should watch it and maybe what it is about. Well generally 3/4 is a definite watch, but technically 2 means hey, give it a go. Maybe. Just once.

Just to avoid any confusion, for My Own Love Song, I am suggesting you do not watch it.

This picture is a tad bit blurry. Let’s call that a metaphor.

Yeah. Well, here you are. Renee Zellweger is Jane, a paralyzed from the waste down folk or country singer. Her friend, Joey, Forest Whittaker likes angels or something. People might think he is crazy. Eventually he finds a note from her son, that for whatever reason she has had about zero contact with. So he convinces her to travel down to New Orleans, to see this other guy talk about Angels, but also so he can make her meet her son.

Road trip shenanigans happen like broken transportation and lost money. They also meet Madeline Zima who was married, but her husband “done R-U-N-N-O-F-T”. She also joins them. Nick Nolte is there for awhile, as another crazy guy who tries to help them get back their stolen car.

Eventually they get to the place. The conference isn’t as good as the guy had hoped. She finds her son and sings for him. All is well. Maybe they fall in love too. The end. Yeah, no spoilers tag on that one. Hah!

That’s what you get for trusting me, Forest.

This movie is incredibly boring, and has about 2 or 3 songs in it. The songs are slow. The scenes are slow. You never are really sure what the hell is up with Forest’s character. Who is he trying to bang? All the stuff that goes wrong also just seems annoying. Sure every road trip movie has events that go wrong, but generally at least people are at fault more than just random chance for all the events but one.

I’m not even sure what we are supposed to take from Forest’s little journey / angel fetish. It could be a slight against god or not. Really, no damn idea.

Pretty much my thoughts on the whole movie.

No damn idea.