Tag: 1 out of 4

One of the central plots in The Invention of Lying was that the main guy was a writer/actor whatever, and in their world, all they did was read about the past for their movie. He got assigned the shitty years apparently, and the only event he had to work with really was the Black Plague. As they constantly joked in that movie, you can’t make a good movie about the Black Death!

When I heard that I called BS. Who wouldn’t want a nice movie about the Black Death? Shit was crazy! Disease, dead people, more diseases, populations wiped out. No real war I guess…probably some accusations of black magic. Maybe that is it. But you know?

Looks like SOMETHING is about to happen.

So obviously this movie is about disease. And one village that is getting destroyed by it hears rumors of another village that has not been plagued. Sean Bean, all knightly, wants to go investigate. He gets a group of people, including the priest monk dude Eddie Redmayne.

The journey takes awhile and then eventually they find the village! Lead by a woman, Carice van Houten, who might be a necromancer? What? She has apparently brought someone back to life. Oh shit, they aren’t Christians!

And yeah. The plot is basically that. They try to figure out if the woman really has powers, are trying to find out why the village has had no plague, and you know, not get killed in the process. But that plan also goes poorly. People get locked up, and maybe sacrificed.

The movie had a lot more pretty brutal violence than I was expecting, almost reminded me of Saw levels, just in action movie form not horror. So that torture porn stuff might be relevant.

She’s a witch! Burn her!

And yeah. I think I know what the movie was overall going for. Closer to the end the themes were a bit better to pick up on, and what might have been occurring with the main characters. BUT. It just took way too long to get to that point. By then I could barely find myself interested in the movie. I was actually turned off by the amount of violence in this movie, if you can believe that. So it wasn’t really the type of experience I was hoping for a Black Plague movie. But then again, not sure what kind of experience I’d expect.

Uh oh guys. Look out. A movie that deals with racism and the civil rights movement!

How can you mess a movie up like that? Those are generally automatically good. Right? Name a bad one. Do it. Try. You can’t. Unless the movie isn’t actually about racism though. That is a way around it!

Because this movie is about Bees. And if I know anything about bees, they are the opposite of Racism.

The Secret Life Of Bees first looks like another movie where white people solve racism. It opens with Dakota Fanning watching an argument between her mom and her dad, Paul Bettany. Looks like he is abusing her? So she tries to save her and shoots a gun, hitting her mom instead. Errr.

So yeah. Awkward family home. Thankfully they still have some help in Jennifer Hudson so that Bettany doesn’t completely ruin her. On Hudson’s way to sign up to vote (new rights!) she gets attacked, and definitely didn’t try to avoid it. This made Fanning mad, helped bust her out of her hospital bed and they ran away!

Eventually they get to a house in another city, and crazy thing, it is owned by a black woman! And its big! Lots of acres. And they farm bees/honey? For profit? WHAT? Queen Latifah is the breadwinner and oldest sister, August. Then there is Alicia Keys as Celloist / Teacher June, and Sophie Okonedo as weird May.

SO YEAH. Some things happen more. Like the dad searching for the daughter. Truth about the mom. A possible lover being arrested (for yes, being black). Kidnapping, lynching, and suicide. Yet this isn’t really about racism.

Right! It is about honey!!

What this movie really is about is a little girl, coming to terms with being a woman, learning the truth of her past, and you know, normal coming of age stuff. Like love, and taxes.

But I think overall the acting wasn’t up to par with normal movies of this similar type of theme. I felt like it didn’t really give me anything new, despite the obviously unique story. Is that weird? Parts felt overly dramatic, and left me asking myself why that would happen next.

So yeah, I am giving the lower review thanks to it messing up what should be easy good movie points.

The Double is another surprise movie I didn’t know I was going to watch. But hey, apparently it was about to come out, so why not watch it. While watching it took me forever to figure it out.

I think it just refers to a Double Agent. Because one of the good or bad guys happens to be one. But which one??

This guy in jail looks pretty shady.

I have been told the trailer gives away one of the major plot points. After only about 30 minutes, you will already know about the killer.

Movie begins with Richard Gere at a little league game, even though he has no children playing in it. After a certain age (and are retired), that no longer is deemed creepy, but charming. But when he gets home, bam, Martin Sheen, head of the CIA is waiting for him. I pretended he was the POTUS for the film though. No idea why.

Turns out a senator got his throat slashed. This throat slashing imitates a bunch of killings that occurred 20 years prior! Gere claims that the killer, Cassius, is dead, and it is just a copycat. But Topher Grace, young FBI operate claims other wise! Dude wrote his thesis on the Cassius killer and knows everything possible about him. Well, except for motives.

Apparently the cuts are the same way. Aka start from the middle of the neck and work their way to the sides, not from one side to the other.

Early on Cassius is actually discovered, but bringing him down is another option. Why did Cassius do these killings? Why is Topher Graces wife (Odette Annable) so trusting and hot, while working at a library? Why does each operative want to bring him down? How many people could possibly have ulterior motives?

Is this the most efficient way to stand for them to talk?

Much like Trespass, this film falls into the hole of too many twists. Pretty much no one in the film is what you expect them to be. Knowing that you might think “Hey, that is exciting. I HATE trusting fictional characters anyways!” Well too bad. The very large plot holes are way more distracting than the pretty bad plot.

The ending feels like a cop out, and the last twists just don’t make any sense. So much so that when you watch the ending your only way of walking out from this will disappointment.

Dream House? I never saw a preview for this movie. Just new it was “thriller/horror” based, had james bond, and the poster involved two girls wearing outfits that looked like wall paper.

Alright. Sounds like nothing new, but lets see what happens!

Something religious, maybe?

Daniel Craig is a writer, but he is done with that shit! He wants to move with his wife (Rachel Weisz) and two kids to a non city area, and write! Oh yeah, he isn’t done with writing, just wants to help raise his family better. Suburbs are good for that. Write novels at home and stuff.

Well, his daughters start to see things. A man in a window? And there is someone they sometimes see outside? Turns out five years prior, a MURDER happened in their house. The wife and kids were killed by the dad who was taken to a mental institution. After further research, he was released not too long ago! He tries to get more information out his neighbors, Naomi Watts and her husband Marton Csokas, but they seem uneasy, and unwilling to help.

At this point have you figured the whole movie out yet?

Well yeah that is true. But then there is more. After all “Dream House”. The things that happen in the house, how much of it is real, and how much of it is fake? Thankfully every question is answered in the movie. Whether or not you accept the answers as good enough is the bigger question.

There goes the wallpaper clothes. Is that supposed to be scary? Just seems like they’re poor.

The movie is only about 90 minutes and can easily be broken up into about three parts. The first part is the boring set up, possible weird stuff going on, without anything actually being scary. Second part is the investigation and realization. Third part is the confusion of what is real, what is fake, and the wondering of why any of it matters. The ending of the movie is a complete mess. Confusion is what they were going for, but even when you should know what is going on, you will be confused because of poor design.

So what am I left with? A thriller that isn’t thrilling, and a lame conclusion / obvious plot line (that they try really hard to muck up). Blah.

I still refuse to read what most movies are about before watching them (Unless its super obvious like, Batman. Kind of hard to not know what Batman is.), yet somehow I am still surprised when a movie is not at all like how I thought it would be.

Case in point #3000, Wild Cherry. Look at that cover!

Okay, this is about either a woman’s football league. Or a woman joining a male football team. And Rob Schneider looks like a coach. Comedy, moving on!

Now if I actually studied the cover, I’d notice the 69 on the Shirt. Ah, must be a teen thing. The dark haired chick clearly looks fake. And wait, Rob Schneider is a dad, not a coach. Oh damn it, this a teen sex comedy.

Tania Raymonde, from LOST, plays the starlet, and she is a senior in high school. Not only has she never had sex, but she has never even masturbated. For shame. But she is going to have sex soon! If her dad would leave.

But wait. Her friends (Kristin Cavallari and Rumer Willis), while making a documentary about people’s first time, discovered a story about “the book”. The book is a pledge thing for the guys on the football team. They believe they cannot win the big game at the end of the year, unless they are all not virgins and take away someone elses virginity. The names are assigned to them (I think? Or randomly picked?) and thei job is to tap that, before the final game.

Err alright. So the girls find out, and think that is horrible. So they play some pranks on the guys and try to make the other girls not have sex with anyone at the same time.

Do I have to explain this picture?

Soo, yeah, that is the movie in the nutshell. She also plans to move to Paris after high school to live with her aunt, and there is a side story of her dad not wanting her to leave home. But the book didn’t even make sense to me. I couldn’t tell what the big game was for, or how they somehow had one of those every year. Plotholes. Didn’t seem like a “important rivalry game” either.

Most of it wasn’t that funny. I had no idea why Tia Carrere (Wayne’s World) was in here. She was some sort of teacher, that also was a sex freak? Not sure what she was teaching.

Apparently some people call this American Pie for girls. I just call it dumb.

Hooray! A children’s movie based off a book about a little girl who is “very imaginative”! That is something that hasn’t been done before!

Her hair remains that disheveled throughout the movie. CLEARLY SHE IS TOO COOL FOR IT!

Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer seems to apply some sort of new aged valley girl speak into the title and dialogue from the main character, Judy Moody, so that half of that time no one understands her. I like to imagine that at least, and everyone just responds assuming she said something else. She loves long sentences, and rhyming words in those sentences. I guess it comes with the name?

Judy Moody is played by Jordana Beatty, a natural ginger. She is possibly the only kid outside of myself at that age who actually hated summer. Because they are bummers for her. She normally has to go live with her grandmother, and old people are lame. But not this year. She has a plan. But her friends ruin that by going on better vacations, leaving her with the one lamer friend, played by Preston Bailey. Besides that, her parents are actually going somewhere “cool” (California) and leaving her with her Stinky younger brother (Parris Mosteller). And by that, I mean apparently he likes to be called Stink. Alright.

And they are being watched by their aunt who they never met, also known as Heather Graham. Heather plays her normal free spirited roll, and is a “guerrilla artist” who is bad at driving, and somehow doesn’t help Judy have a good summer.

So the movie is about how all of her plans fail, mostly because she chose to plan them and wants to stick as close as possible to her plans, regardless of what is actually going on. She is also super mean to her younger brother, who just wants to find Big Foot. I don’t see a good reason for her to actually hate him throughout the whole movie. Besides being a poster nazi child, he always seems so happy and focused. Nothings gonna stop this kid!

Not with his Blitzkrieg powers.

So I think the problem with this movie is that it only tries to capture a child audience, and give nothing to the poor parents who have to watch it with the kids. You think a whole bunch of themes will be touched, like real friendship and family, and finding out your life is actually pretty snazzy. But instead it just feels like actual kids just running around like asshats for 90 minutes.

You won’t like Judy, she is super selfish. Wants everything to go her way, and drags her friends through the mud to do so. Just wanna give her a nice punch in the face. I guess it is pretty cool that in her imagination though, she is a CGI character and not her normal self.

Taylor Lautner! Woo!

Finally what everyone has been hoping for. A movie where Lautner gets to try and carry the movie himself, and not be tied down with two other leads who are attempting to have babies and stuff. The Abduction trailer seemed to pop up in every movie I went to this summer, and every time I saw it I asked myself the same thing. “Why does he sound like he is whining the whole time?”

I think this is him whining at a basketball game too? Have you no shame Lautner?

I just found out that Lautner is only 19. That makes more sense. He looks like some 25 year old guy who would be playing high school roles. Because he is supposed to be 16 I think in the movie. So the whining is probably intentional and he is a fantastic actor for doing that. Also, early in the movie when he is boxing or something with his “dad” and he does a super cool spin kick movie. But you know, not with a stunt double, it is clearly him doing it the whole time. Apparently he was good at martial arts, and as a child voted best in his category, at some point, in some version. So that is how he became a werewolf!

Plot? Oh my bad.

He is on a (high school) sociology project with his neighbor, Lily Collins, about missing people. They find a site about what these kids may look like now, and he finds out that one of them looks like him, and he has a similar shirt from when he was a kid. So they call it up, and oddly enough they track his location. Ruh roh.

Well, some people come to their house and kill his parents! Thankfully they don’t appear to be his real parents? Who would want to be related to Maria Bello anyways. So the CIA gets involved, or at least Alfred Molina does. But he cannot be trusted! Why? Because Sigourney Weaver, his therapist, intercepts him and tells him the truth. His dad was a CIA operative, and has a list of names of corrupt people, which includes that guy above.

Also, Serbian terrorists, lead by Michael Nyqvist, want that list so they can probably protect their spies / find new ones to abuse.

So they decide to try and find that list, to hand over to the CIA members who are not trying to get it to erase their name. But Nyqvist wants the list, meet in a public place (A Pirates baseball game, aka anything but public), and Lautner wants to try to kill him. CIA, CIA dad, lots of running are involved, until the day is over, and no one important got hurt! You know, except for the parents he had for most of his life. Thankfully Weaver will let him live with her. What a nice therapist.

I guess what I am really trying to say with the plot is that this movie has zero to do with Abduction.

If anything, I will give this movie credit for actually ending the story line. They didn’t leave hints of a possible sequel, or leave a plot unturned, or anything. Just made it seem like a one off story, and now he can go back to being a “normal” “kid”. But the acting was blah, and it seemed like they wanted to go for a Bourne like thing, but no where near the same, making it even more blah. I found the story / plot to be mostly boring. Like they tried to make that one moment of his life super crazy, instead of just slightly elevated crazy.

I will give you a do-over Lautner. Make your next movie better, or else.

This movie, Bucky Larson: Born To Be A Star, was a bad idea, and I am pretty sure everyone in America knows that. Even the actors. They got into a meeting and said “Lets make a bag of shit. And then drop a book on it so it splatters funnily. We will call this art, a Jackson Pollock.”

Or at least I hope so. Even this ad campaign that I just found out about was made, and it is horrible. There are a bunch of these videos, and they ran for a few days before it came out in theaters. But apparently they were pulled for being too damn sucky, a whole week before the movie came out.

Nick Swardson plays the title character and is from Idaho or something. He is an adult, living with his parents, and doesn’t even know what masturbation is until his friends teach him. But when they teach him and use a random old porno, they discover that it is Bucky’s parents as the lead couple. What?! (Bucky finds this news great. His parents were stars!).

So he decides to go to Hollywood and become a star, just like them. He meets Christina Ricci at a random diner, and she hooks him up with one of her friends who needs by roommate. The crazy roommate played by Kevin Nealon.

Eventually he finds a gig with a producer (Don Johnson) who used to know his parents, hoping there is a nostalgia audience out there for a quick buck. Turns out people love the movies he is in (because yes, he has a very small dick and it makes the women feel better about their men, and the men feel better about themselves). Can his new stardom take him out of Dick Shadow’s shadow (Stephen Dorff)?

Above: An Idea Thought To Be Good

This is probably the lowest IMDB rated movie I have reviewed thus far. Way lower than the Twilights and other “bad movies”. People hated it. Understandably so, because this movie is horrible.

But what are the positives? Kevin Nealon was hilarious. He was in maybe 5 scenes, where he was just bad/controlling/weird roommate to Bucky, like in the clip from above about grapes. And they were fantastic. Also Christina Ricci was super wasted in this movie. Bad news for her career. This movie is bad enough, but with Pan-Am getting cancelled, she has nothing now, which is a sad day for America.

But yeah. Dicks and tits are in this movie, as expected. And a lot of it is pretty gross.

When I saw the movie Beastly, I figured it was about what everything figured it’d be about. Some retelling of Beauty and the Beast, somehow. Probably modernized. Well. This is true. A modern live action retelling of that movie.

Hmm. I am fine with this as a concept. But depends on whether or not they execute it at all.

Also depends o- OH GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH HER?

Alex Pettyfer plays pretty bow awesome dude. His dad (Peter Krause) is a wealthy music executive or something who has always taught him that good looking people get farther in life, and he has made that his motto.

But then something crazy happens. He makes fun of Mary-Kate Olsen too many times and she casts a spell on him! (Let that be a lesson for all you Olsen haters). She turns him into a freak, more or less. Tattoos, bald, piercings, and these weird scars that don’t make any sense. All over his body.

In order to save himself, he must find true love in a year (and have someone say they love him) or else he will stay like that forever. It freaks out his dad, who lets him stay in a house outside of the city, telling him he will go there too, but never making that trek. (Ashamed of his ugly).

He has to live alone with his housekeeper, Lisa Gay Hamilton, who hasn’t seen her children in decades, and eventually Neil Patrick Harris, a blind tutor.

Eventually he actively tries to find love, with Vanessa Hudgens who (through a series of moves) has to stay at his seemingly empty mansion. Can he make her love him in time? (Oh yeah, and if he does, NPH gets his sight back and his housekeeper will be able to find her children).

Seriously. Do the scars make any sense? The bloodyness look of them always?

Anyways, I liked the overall plot of the movie, but two certain things bugged me.

One, the love between the two leads. Nothing about it seemed real at all. It all seemed fake and forced. At the end one is left wondering how the hell she came to love him. What, they read some poetry? It was pretty bad acting and distracted me from everything else.

Second, the “lesson”. I am not sure what he learned, after it all. I know this is also a problem with beauty and the beast…but what was it? That ugly people find love? Based off of how the movie was set up, it would make more sense for him to find true love in a less attractive person, the people he made fun of. Yet somehow, he was an asshole all his life (okay raised that way), and he is rewarded with an attractive on the outside woman too?

This is probably just a Hollywood problem, because they love doing “ugly/mediocre guy” with hot woman, and never the other way around. There was no “Gaston” character in the movie either. Aka, someone who was like Beast before transformation, who gets killed, without getting the chance to have his own year to reconsider his lifestyle.

I don’t know, the bad lead acting and the message just bug me a lot in the movie. If they at least made their love seem like it was real, and not this BS love that happened, I would have enjoyed it. But the latter problem would never have been fixable.

Without looking, I am going to assume that Yogi Bear probably failed at gaining really any profit. Its goal is to make a live action version of an old cartoon, one kids nowadays do not watch. So it wants to be a kids movie, but appeals to a non-kids audience. So adults going to it will be disappointed in it because it is a kids movie only, while kids won’t want to go to it because they don’t know about it.

Bad strategy. Recreating old cartoons into live action movies is stupid. You will lose money probably.

And not having any money is what this movie is about.

Yogi (Dan Aykroyd) and Boo-Boo (Justin Timberlake) are doing what they normally do. Being talking bears. Ranger Smith is played by Tom Cavanagh (Bad choice) and his assistant Ranger is T.J. Miller, the only two rangers in Jellystone. But, yeah. The city was going bankrupt, unless the mayor could do something. So he wants to rezone the park into a non park and sell the land to logging companies, giving the town and everyone money, yay!

So it is up to Yogi, Boo-Boo, Ranger Smith (who doesn’t care about their help, no matter how many people would love to see a talking bear) and Anna Faris (As a crazy documentary nature person) to try and save Jellystone!

HOORAY!

Here is the problems with the movie though.

1) There is not enough Yogi Bear/Boo-Boo in it. I think the ranger gets more screen time. Fuck that. We don’t want to see more Ranger Smith than Yogi, especially if he never wears the damn hat.

2) Their way of saving Jellystone involves a law that protects it. Unfortunately it is one of the dumbest and least successful laws ever, normally meant to screw people out of their homes.

3) They do save the park, but don’t bring in additional revenue for the city. So, presumably, the city DOES go bankrupt, people lose their jobs, and somehow that makes more people want to go to the park? They somehow get business at the end, but must be from out of towners, because that city is probably a ghost town.

I enjoyed the first half of the movie more than the second half. Or at least just the Yogi Bear scenes. All the other scenes were stupid. I had laughed on more than one occasion because of the good bear commentary. But there wasn’t enough. That is an obvious problem someone making this movie would have observed. It’d be like making a transformers movie and having it be about a human instead. Oh wait.