Gorgon Reviews

You know what movie everyone loved? My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Sure it played on stereotypes of 2nd and 3rd generation Greek Americans, but the cast all seemed to love it, it really seemed heartfelt, and if you didn’t like it, you were a scrooge. But the star of that movie, Nia Vardalos, was pretty much never seen from again. Just some smaller rolls, a tv show spinoff that (presumably) no one watched.

So she figured. Hell! I was famous before for doing a Greek based romantic comedy film. LET’S DO ANOTHER!

“And this time, my success will stay!”

My Life In Ruins is about Nia, being a tour guide in Greece. Once only being a temporary job until she can become a teacher, she has found herself stuck in the mud, trying to appease spoiled tourists. And by spoiled tourists, I mean of course a whole bunch of caricatures of people, that are pretty constant throughout the movie. The only non constants are Alexis Georgoulis, the hairy bus driver, and Richard Dreyfuss, the funny old guy.

Declaring this will be her final tour, she sets off on one last trek with her “lame group of people” around Greece. Of course they only care about souvenirs and fun, no history, so she eventually breaks. But on this trip, she also finds true love guys. And happiness. And sunshine. And forgiveness. And etc.

Also, Richard Dreyfuss might actually be Zeus in this movie. You can easily argue it, so I will!

Dreyfuss definitely has the looks down.

The bus driver dude seems to be super greek. His IMDB has only a few titles I can read, most of the others are foreign. The movie didn’t really give any “new” sort of humor to the tourist drama. Everyone was as you would expect them to be, and the ending was also quite expected. Despite some interesting moments, it wasn’t enough to carry the whole thing into “worth it” territory.

Also, in case you couldn’t tell, the movie’s title is about her muck of a life, AND the fact that Greece has a bunch of ruins. Get it? Get it?

A live action movie about The Smurfs? How can that smurfin’ work? That doesn’t make any smurf sense. But, by the end, it was definitely pretty smurfy.

Oh don’t worry, I am done doing that.

I won’t explain the back story of Smurfs. Should be pretty public knowledge. But in their magical world, before the Blue Moon festival, a few of the smurfs accidentally get transported, along with Azrael and Gargamel (Hank Azaria)! They must figure out how to return, and you know, not turn into magic juice.

Also! Neil Patrick Harris and Jayma Mays are expecting a baby, while NPH has to make a new ad design for the cosmetics company he works for and his boss Sofia Vergara (from Modern Family).

Which smurfs made the cut into reality? Of course Papa Smurf (Jonathan Winters) and Smurfette (Katy Perry). Without them, who would watch? We also got Brainy Smurf (Fred Armisen) for “problem solving”, Grumpy Smurf (George Lopez) for “lols”, and Clumsy Smurf (Anton Yelchin) for conflict building. I think Gutso Smurf (Alan Cumming) was created for the movie, but they needed a more kick ass smurf I guess. A lot more famous people for other smurfs, but those smurfs aren’t as smurf important.

This movie (or at least NPH) ask a lot of questions normal people wonder. Like if they are named after their major personality, do they get a name later in life, or born with that name. The movie answers the question, kinda.

In terms of CGI, it is pretty good. They fit the smurfs into the real world very well. Nothing (too) cheesy, and I was able to believe it.

What was pretty weird was the Guitar Hero scene, though. Guitar Hero is dead.

NPH and Jayma were fine. Azaria made a GREAT Gargamel. I was hoping for Danny DeVito to be him personally, just on looks. But Azaria just had it all going for him. Also, super cheesy. But you could hear the Moe Sizlack in his voice. Also interesting.

Story line was also interesting. I was entertained throughout, which is really all you can ask from a family centric movie. There was enough subtle jokes in there too for adults to enjoy as well.

I was going to watch this with “Smurf-O-Vision” too, as it was advertised. With an iPad/iPhone, you could download an app to go with the movie. It made it seem like if Smurfs would fly off of of screen, they’d fly onto the iPad, and other weird things. A new dimension of fun! But what really happens (I tried this for 5~ minutes, app took forever to load too) is a bunch of stupid things. Also it ruins the movie. In this version of the movie, the main smurf cast are also watching, and often the screen will shrink and you will see their reactions too. I was like “okay, as long as it doesn’t ruin the movie”. But then once it shrunk again and the director appeared and talked over dialogue, I was immediately done and calling it a failure. Just meant as a way to distract kids more so, I think.

Besides that, the movie is smurfy.

Below is a list of all the reviews done by fellow readers and guests of the site. I left it all up to them on how they wanted to present their review. Most people’s opinions are just as good as each others, so why not get some more out there?

Heck, even let them choose the rating. The only stipulation I added is there must be some pictures, and at least a couple potentially funny parts. Want to review a movie? Leave a comment or tweet or whatever letting me know.

[table id=1 /]

I know what you, the readers, are thinking. Friends With Benefits? But we just had No Strings Attached? Why Hollywood, Why?

This was supposed to be clever, showing them inside the Hollywood “O”. But it is too zoomed it.
MY BAD GUYS.

This tells the tale of Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. Despite normally against it, lets keep comparing it to NSA. Timberlake > Kutcher. Fact. Most people would say Portman > Kunis though, so I will go with that. Mila’s eyes scare me.

JT is a web designer and gets offered head art designer job at GQ Magazine in NYC (way different than LA!) by Kunis, who is a head hunter. They become great friends, which is great, because he doesn’t know anyone in NYC. They agree to be friends because he’d be lonely despite it. They both also have obvious relationship issues, stemming from their parents. But eventually, they say fuck it. Literally.

Just like Tennis, its just a physical thing, so they decide to have sex without baggage and emotions. Yay America!

The rest of this you can guess, eventually they do have feelings, but are afraid to admit them. We also get to explore both families, Mila’s promiscuous mom and JT’s divorced dad with Alzheimers. Also, flash mobs, cheesy movies, and Woody Harrelson as a fantastic gay man.

Twice they show clips from a fake “rom-com” movie, that stars Jason Segel and Rashida Jones, which is also pretty damn good.

A movie within a movie. You know that is serious business.

This movie was pretty damn funny though. Both did great in their roles, and now we know why Timberlake continues to be in movies. Because he is a decent actor. Damn weird phenomenon right there. You also get a nice rap. For those who watch Modern Family you will be able to see Luke in an important movie role for once.

In the final comparison of NSA and FWB, I think FWB is way funnier, and also more real. Just easier to create great/funny situations when it is friends having meaningless sex (FWB), versus non friends having meaningless sex (NSA).

Our Idiot Brother, or “that movie where Paul Rudd has a beard and long hair” can somewhat be compared to Hesher.

Why? Because the main characters both have long hair, when normally they don’t have long hair. Outside of the head situation, movies are quite different though.

Also, Rudd wears nifty sweaters, while “Hesher” doesn’t own shirts.

The movie begins with Paul Rudd being PUT IN JAIL! For selling pot. But he is a friendly guy. He got out of jail pretty early. See, he isn’t an “idiot”. He just assumes the best out of everyone. Why would people want to screw him over?

Enter his sisters. Liz (Emily Mortimer), the oldest, married to Steve Coogan, a documentary maker. Then there is Miranda (Elizabeth Banks, who looks way too much like Parker Posey), writer for some sort of magazine! Has a neighbor too, Adam Scott, and she is very bossy. And last he has Zooey Deschanel, hippy sexual sister, living with like, seven roommates and currently lesbianing it up with Rashida Jones (who is the “more successful stern” lesbian).

After being released from prison, he is kicked out of his old home, and lives with the different members of his family. Of course while he does, he “Accidentally screws everything up” by doing the right thing, trying to make everyone happy, and believing other people to honest / not so cynical. So more or less, he is just a good free spirit, who doesn’t think the world is out to get him.

And that’s the movie. By the end they all love each other and have their lives fixed (and in better standing) than before, and then they do a giant disco party.

Hah! No disco party. Sorry. But here is Zooey and Rashida.

It was an enjoyable movie, but I thought it could have been a lot better. Not sure if I will ever watch it again, but glad I got to see it at least once. Paul was great in this role, pretty different than his normally “ahhh everything so stressful!” roles. His character does crack near the end, and it was great. The sisters all had good chemistry with each other and him, and it actually felt like a family.

One Day is a British movie, based on the British book of the same name. Creative right? In fact, this book was apparently so good, it was made into a movie pretty damn quick from when it came out. But why is it called One Day?

Because it tells the story of a man and a woman. On one day of the year. For twenty years. July 15, 1989-2009, to be exact.

St. Swithun’s day and Eddie Griffin‘s birthday. But I am sure you knew that.

Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess play the main two roles, and thus are the only people that matter. It starts with them graduating from some UK college, and spending the night together. They decided to be friends, and over the next many years they end up working on their goals to be famous and be a writer. Also with different (sometimes plentiful) lovers, and at different times loving the other. Very unfortunate.

What is fortunate is that so much happened on July 15 between them. Pretty handy! It also has Patricia Clarkson, as the mother of Jim. I don’t think Anne’s parents are talked about at all.

You know what I don’t care about? Accents. To say someone from an area has the “wrong English accent” or a bad accent, or whatever, sounds completely stupid. All people from an area do not talk identical. It is based on how they hear a lot of their earlier words. Parents and shit. I will never care about someone’s accent, and if it is “real” enough or not, because technically, there isn’t a real accent at all. To do that would be stereotyping, people.

(There is also complaints that her accent changes throughout the movie. Which makes sense, as she moves around to different parts of Europe in the movie, and overtime, that shit changes.)

It was probably hard for them to find people who could look the ages of 22-42, or whatever the range may be. They change their hairstyles a bunch and do a pretty good job. They also make Anne look like the adult female version of Harry Potter at the beginning.

You’re welcome for that.

The story was interesting, and of course sad at a lot of parts. Sometimes the “date” that was flashed on the screen was hard to see, and I wouldn’t necessarily know it was a new year. They should have been less clever with that. It was an okay story. Probably rushed, compared to a novel. I think there definitely could have been more. Decent movie, but not the best. Also, there is some nakedness, which is shocking for a PG-13 movie, but not shocking for an Anne Hathaway movie.

Another Earth takes a simple concept movie, about guilt and redemption, and adds a second “Holy Shit What???” Sci-Fi ish component, to help ease all of the tension. Or make more tension. One of the two.

This would seriously fuck up the tide.

The movie begins with some people driving. They get into a car crash. BOOM.

Four years alter, Brit Marling is getting out of jail. I think she was underage at the time, like 17, but put in prison for those four years thanks to accidentally killing a whole family in the other vehicle, except for the dad, who was put in a coma. Brit feels horrible. I assume her whole four years in prison she had one of those dark rainy cartoon clouds following her.

Not to mention, that during her time in jail, scientists discovered “another earth”.

Right now, I will say that scientifically this movie doesn’t work. They give you tidbits throughout the movie, in terms of news on tv, and other radical discoveries. But apparently there is a second earth on the other side of the sun, in the same orbit, that has human life. First they question if it is some space mirror phenomenon, but after sending probes it is not. Weird shit starts to happen when they finally are able to send messages over there with responses. Why weird shit? Because the Dr Lady who sent the messages in Earth 1 was talking to some Dr Lady of the same name. Who did the same grocery shopping that day. Who has the same birthday.

What?

We are supposed to assume that the same chances and things that occurred on our Earth, occurred over there as well. If everyone has someone else who has had all the exact same experiences happen to them, they would make the same decisions. Also known as determinism.

So over time, for some reason, the planets are getting closer, and you can see it in the sky. I don’t know why there.

Back to plot. The guy gets out of the coma, William Mapother (Ethan from Lost). He can’t function the same way, his brain hurts a lot. Used to be a music professor, now lives at home in the muck. Brit, with her guilt, eventually finds him, and lies, pretending to be a free trial of a house cleaning business, to try and get to know him and help his life out.

All relationships of course that begin with lies eventually come out.

True for everything but Breaking Bad (so far!).

Brit also enters a contest to win a seat to the first spaceship to go to Earth2.

That is about all I can say. The movie, again, is about second chances, and unfortunately, the ending leaves way too many questions. I was shocked at what happened, and really, my mind can go all the different possible ways with what it shows.

It is an indie movie, with an obvious small cast and lesser camera work, but if you make it through, and ignore the scientifically impossibilities (in terms of the Earth getting closer and not screwing things up / wondering if it also had a moon / dinosaur meteorite?) then it should make you think. In the good way. I think I might have to watch it again, just to see what I might have missed!

When I saw The Art of Getting By was going to star Freddie Highmore, I guffawed out loud. That kid? The one from Spiderwick Chronicles and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?

Well, dude bro isn’t a kid anymore. Well. Kiddish. But he is a lot taller and way more mature.

Or at least Emma Roberts is super short.

The movie begins with George having to explain why he didn’t do his trigonometry homework. Why? Because he claims he realized his own mortality last night and everything else just seemed unimportant. So at that moment I figured this George guy was supposed to be very smart, but you know, an underachiever. What happens in this movie? Him accidentally befriending Emma Roberts. George falls in love with her, but has some social anxieties to go with the rest of his problems (including becoming poor?) so he flips a shit of course. It also turns out that by the end of the year, thanks to never doing any work (well, gradable work), he also will not graduate.

Alright, so my plot write up is kind of weak. It is hard to say what really happens in this movie without giving a lot of it away.

In fact, I had a hard time figuring out if I even liked it overall or not. I thought Freddie did a great job. The dialogue used I definitely loved, as he talked way too smart. There is a great scene where he calmly and rationally told his parents to leave him alone. Giving nice reasons and everything.

But really, that is all I probably really liked. The ending wasn’t at all original. The side story involving the artist Andrew Levitas wasn’t anything special either. The only great parts involved George and his interactions with his family and new friends. The story might not appeal to everyone. In fact, it is just one of those “privileged white people problems” movies. I think that is why the critics hated it so much.

Sometimes people like those kind of movies though.

But because Freddie just did so gosh darn good, I have to give it an okay rating.

Sometimes you look at a movie or title and think that it can only be ridiculous. This, more often than not, is probably true. Thankfully for Tucker & Dale vs Evil, this is the good kind of ridiculous.

Bloody ridiculous.

This movie is about misunderstandings. It also is about playing on a lot of horror tropes. Movie begins with a group of college students going to the woods for camping or something. But they realize they forgot the beer! OH NOES! So they go to a “Creepy” looking gas station to stock up. They also meet Alan Tudyk (Tucker) and Tyler Labine (Dale), where Dale finds the college girls attractive and just wants to talk to them. But his nervousness is creepy.

And oh noes! Katrina Bowden, still from 30 Rock, gets injured so they take her into the cabin to help her out, because for “some reason”, her friends all run away from the hillbillies. I am doing a horrible plot description.

From the young college kids point of view, they thing Tucker & Dale are dangerous hillbillies trying to kill them all, and want to save Katrina Bowden! Tucker & Dale have no idea that these kids are just being judgmental, and think they are running around killing themselves like a suicide cult.

Hilarious!

So this is a parody on horror movies more or less, and it does a fantastic job. I thought it was going to go a lot further, given the location of their vacation home and the opening scene, but maybe they are leaving that stuff up to future. The evil, in this movie, is of course Xebophobia.

And Xenophobia can lead to horrible consequences.

Overall, I thought it was a very clever film. Tudyk and Labine have great chemistry together, and the only thing I wish is that they had more even screen time. Labine was the star of the movie, and got more of it about him as a result. The ending had some cheese factor that was maybe a bit too much, but hey, the whole movie is ridiculous. Here is hoping another one happens in the future!

Piranha! A movie in no way taking itself seriously, relying on CGI “3D” effects for a better experience, and a lot of naked womens. Okay, technically that could fall under a lot of different Horror movies, but this one still has a more obvious comedic element to it. In fact, the first scene involves Richard Dreyfuss being the first to die, which is an obvious shout out.

Obvious shout out, sure. But to what?!

Earthquake opens up a chasm to an underground lake that has been sealed off for thousands of years. What is in it? A larger more dangerous form of Piranha!

“Wait!” you say. “Sealed off for thousands of year? How could they survive!”. Apparently cannibalism. So they still have large numbers somehow despite that.

At the same time as this small earthquake, Spring Break is happening on the lake of this local sunny town. Ving Rhames is the Sheriff of the town, and he hates it, with his Lieutenant being Elisabeth Shue. Her son is local boy, Steven R. McQueen, who instead of watching his little siblings, accidentally gets a job showing a pornographer the cool hot spots of the lake. Jerry O’Connell is the drug and sex crazed filmmaker, and really shows that Jerry will do anything they ask of him.

Also involved? Jessica Szohr, his friend who is talked into coming along, and Kelly Brook, a way too hot porn actress. Anyone else in this movie? Of course!

Christopher Lloyd plays retired paleobiologist like dude, who recognizes the species that was thought to be extinct (somehow). Also, Adam Scott, a GEOLOGIST, who leads a team to check out the opening to the lake.

So, most of the film is a couple of random small deaths out of no where, and teases of deaths. Also, lots of hot college kids partying it up, and the “famous” underwater naked scene involving Kelly and random porn actress. That scene was /very/ long, and had opera music in the background. An example of mocking itself, I guess. But once they finally attack the boat / the spring breakers, it is just way way way too long.

Its weird enough to see the local cops firing their shot guns into the water to try and kill all the fish. But it just seemed like so many minutes of watching people, more or less, die the same way, in a gruesome light. The “dude trying to escape on a motor boat and run over people along the way” scene was also horrid. Ving Rhames deserved his Oscar for what he did in the movie though. It made the most sense out of all the cop actions (didn’t make sense. Just made the most sense.)

Only a bad ass geologist would think to jump on a jet ski to drive around and shoot fish in the ocean.

I was going to give it a 2/4 just because of including a Geologist hero, and so I did it anyways. I almost made it lower because of a silly grudge, but fixed that. Just now. There is a planned sequel, Piranha 3DD (get it?), and it is starring that plant chick from Sky High, and a water park.