jack reacher

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0790724/

i paid 23 dollars for two tickets to see jack reacher.  this was my first reminder of why i do not go to the movies much anymore.  the movie itself served as my second reminder.

jack reacher is, like mission impossible 2, a film which exists entirely to try to make tom cruise look cool.  also like mission impossible 2, it ended up being so ridiculously bad that it only succeeded in making tom cruise look like the least incompetent participant in the whole mess.

i usually like to try to point out something positive about a bad movie, if only to provide a contrast for all the bad things i want to say, but i am coming up empty on this one.  i cannot even say it was short or that i got to watch it for cheap.  the writing was bad, the plot was tired and predictable, the acting was stilted (excepting richard jenkins,) and the scenery, music, and sound were all uninspiring.  also, the villain was the absolute worst villain i have ever seen.  he was missing eight fingers and an eye, for crying out loud.  and he was old.  he did not have superpowers of any kind, just a strong will to live.  i mean, really, i am not injecting hyperbole of any kind here.

i guess that if i were going to really reach for something positive to say, i could say that the bright spot in this constellation of ookery is that they say some pretty epic things about the titular character.  namely, that he 1) is not a hero, 2) only cares about what is right, 3) is a drifter with nothing to lose, and 4) will drink your blood from a boot.  if you watched the trailer, i guess you already knew most of that.

speaking of the trailer, the trailer is basically all the best parts of this movie, boiled down and polished up and with all the awkward bits removed.  in fact, i would go so far as to say that the trailer constitutes false advertising in that it suggests this is a movie worth watching, while the actual product is a turd sandwich with your least favorite kind of mustard and extra turds on the side.  also, the bread is made out of turds.  it is a turd wrapped in turds, sitting next to a heaping mound of more turds.

jack reacher gets one turd sandwich. with mustard.  your least favorite kind.

fast five

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596343/

fast five features guns, fast cars, and THE ROCK. and vin diesel!  and gal gadot!  that is like five things.  five *fast* things.

what is the definition of an epic fight?  i submit to you that it is vin diesel versus THE ROCK, filmed in shaky cam.  ok, actually i am just caught up in the excitement here.  it was a good fight, though.

there is just nothing that i did not love about this film.  highly improbably car/bank vault chase?  lovable.  blatant ripoff of ocean's eleven?  immensely endearing.  cheesy lines?  ooh yeah.  brilliant heist plot twist?  lolwut.

fast five gets four ROCKS.

premium rush

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1547234/

premium rush was basically an excuse to do bicycle tricks for 90 minutes.  the story made no sense and the acting was terrible, as usual.  most disappointing was that the stunts were so tame.  you can find far cooler stunts on youtube, where they usually do not even have wires or CG available.  have you heard of youtube?  it is this cool new website with videos on it.  you can watch them.  some of them have bicycle tricks.  it is pretty cool.

premium rush gets one wheelie.

blackjack

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126816/

john woo's blackjack features the dumbest heroic weakness ever: fear of the color white.  i mean, really?  white?  oh, but he is ok so long as he keeps his shades on.  it was all tied to his father, who was a vegas card-counter.  it was just one more thing in a string of things that did not make sense.  you know what else does not make sense?  me watching all these godawful movies.

blackjack gets an ace of diamonds.  you might think that is awesome because an ace is a high-ranking card, but i would remind you that there is another interpretation, which is that it is the "one" card.

super mario bros

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108255/

with any luck, this will be the last entry in this fever-induced series of bad judgement calls.

at 1:37 (that is minutes:seconds, not hours:minutes) into the movie, it went from bad to worse.  this is a new record.  the previous holder of this record was guyver: dark hero, at 4:30.

when a voiceover explains the premise of the film to you in the opening scene, it is a bad sign.  when the characters emphasize the plot in their opening scenes, it is a real bad sign.  as bad as the plot was, though, it had nothing on the sound, scenery, acting, and costumes.

i made a movie once with some friends when i was in high school.  actually, we made several movies.  they were awful.  what kind of production values do you expect from tenth graders?  super mario bros is essentially the movie we would have made if it had occurred to us to rip off video games instead of movies like raiders of the lost ark.  actually, there is one major advantage to the movies my friends and i made: they were much shorter.

super mario bros gets one goomba trooper.

only the strong

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107750/

troubled kids: threat, or menace?  just kidding, this is an uplifting story about how martial arts can turn a troubled kid's life around.  usually they do it with karate or something like that, but "only the strong" harnesses the beat-driven power of capoeira.  other than flavour, you can really plug any kind of activity that requires discipline into a movie like this.  the plot is the same.

so anyway.  as far as martial arts films like this go, it had terrible acting, fighting, stunts, and morals.  interestingly, they went with the non-standard message that fighting is encouraged.  i imagine capoeira practitioners everywhere exercising one big, long, drawn-out wince that lasts the whole movie long.

only the strong gets one handstandy kick to the face.  it would be less, but the scale does not go any lower than that.  sorry.

armored

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0913354/

the fever-addled movie marathon continues.  armored is the story of an all-american hero who is down on his luck and associates with persons of relaxed morals.

if you are going to steal "a lot of money" and you have to split it more than one way, expect problems.  this is kind of a universal truth.  since this is so well-known, everything about this movie is completely predictable.  there were literally no surprises.  none.  like this review.

armored gets one dollar.

asylum

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804443/

i am out sick today, and i think the fever has made a mush out of my judgement because i would normally never watch a movie like this.  with good reason: they are uniformly terrible.  the formula: supernatural monster guy + handful of stereotypical college age kids + creepy setting = crap.  the math works out.

as usual, the weaknesses that the evil monster guy will exploit were prominently displayed in the first ten minutes, as well as every device that was needed to propel the story along.  dangerous catwalk leading to asylum area?  accessed.  weird and vaguely creepy groundskeeper?  guy with plot-furthering information.  strings guy?  death by strings.  slutty girl?  abused as a child, death by...i dunno, something superficially related to that.  the closest thing to a plot twist was that the jock douchebag was an ex-glutton (who died by being stabbed in the stomach or something like that.)

asylum gets one lobotomizing spike through the eye.  both eyes.  whatever.

bitten

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1249294/

ever wonder what jason mewes does when he is not playing jay and silent bob?  eesh.  wonder if you must, but do not bother looking through his film catalog.  the evidence before us suggests he has mastered the art of saying the fuck word and many of its variations, but actual acting remains beyond him.

bitten gets one bloody smear all over the floor.  it would be less, but there were vampires.  it would be more, but they were not very good vampires.

skyfall

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1074638/

this was a very exciting movie for me because i got to see it before the official release date.  legally!  what is even more exciting is that if i hurry up and post this, my review will be out before any regular people could *possibly* have seen it.  JUST LIKE A REAL MOVIE CRITIC!!!11ONE  oh, how i have waited for this day.

skyfall took bond in a direction i do not remember him going before.  old.  the whole movie was about how bond, and, to a lesser extend, M and the entire MI6 organization, is getting a bit long in the tooth.  presumably, this was inspired by their market research's findings on the age groups likely to be viewing the film.  while inevitable, i thought it was poorly played.  the whole magic of james bond is that he does *not* get old.  his skills are always in top shape, he handles everything with panache.  that is what james bond is.  not old.

also, fascinatingly, skyfall featured an openly bi-curious  villain, another thing i am also pretty sure i have not seen before.  that scene served as a great reminder to me that i am highly unlikely to hold up under torture.

skyfall gets two nonsensical descriptions of highly technical things.

the switch

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0889573/

jason bateman and jennifer aniston seem to just make the same movie over and over again.  i do not mean that in a bad way, really, because it is not a terrible movie.  it is just the same one you have already seen.  so if you have seen either of them in a movie, then you already know what you are in for.  there was also a cute kid.  i did not think he was that cute, but i am told that he was adorable.

the switch gets two viking helmets.

total recall

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1386703/

given the title and the number of references to familiar topics from the previous total recall movie, it is pretty much impossible to not make a comparison between the two.  including those things was a bad move on the part of this film's creators because the new version fares...poorly...against the old one.

they really did it to themselves.  total recall--both versions--is based on a short story by phillip k dick called "we can remember it for you wholesale."  i have read it.  it is pretty good.  both film versions deviate wildly from the short story in the details.  the only part which is really borrowed is the hook, wherein a person goes to have a fantasy implanted in his brain which corresponds to a previously unknown reality, causing all hell to break loose.

the first total recall movie went nuts with this idea, adding a colony on mars, mutants, a civil war kind of arrangement, and some alien artifacts.  i rather enjoyed it.  the second total recall deviated from the first movie much in the same way that the first movie deviated from the short story, but they deviated *in the wrong direction.*  mars?  gone.  mutants?  gone.  aliens?  gone.  civil war kind of thing?  kind of...

what did they keep, exactly?  only a few references to the first movie, really.  and they sort of stuck them in there, just to let you know that yeah, they saw it.  for example, why was there a girl with three boobs?  NO REASON.  other than that there was a girl with three boobs in the first movie.  there were no boobs at all in the short story.  arnold schwarzenegger was the innovator here.  surprise!

what did they add?  three things: bad science, terrible science, and shockingly bad science.  i mean, ok, there were some boggles in the first version, but there were *zero* tunnels through the middle of the earth.  i know because both bill clinton and i counted.  zero.

if i were looking for a bright spot, i would settle immediately upon kate beckinsale's performance.  she has come a long way from pearl harbor, and she now qualifies as a genuine bad ass.  it was really too bad that her character was so unidimensional, but that is not too surprising, especially if you have been keeping up with the underworld series.  if i were looking for another bright spot, i would look for a long time and then probably bring up either kate beckinsale or the girl with three boobs again.  i do not even like boobs that much.

i rate this flop a generous one robo-enforcer, primarily on the strength of kate beckinsale's performance.  save your time and money by reading the original short story instead.

knockout

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1691453/

did you know that stone cold steve austin starred in a karate kid ripoff?  which character do you think he played?  it turns out, stone cold steve austin is the biggest mr miyagi this world has ever seen.  except he was a wise janitor instead of a handyman.  and the coach of the antagonist was his son instead of some guy he had never heard of. and the protagonist's love interest was not the antagonist's love interest.  and it was boxing instead of karate.  the whole mess was so much worse than karate kid.  although, thinking back on how bad karate kid was, it was actually not much worse.

let me tell you what i learned about boxing from watching this movie.

the first thing is to punch the other guy in the face when he is not expecting it, like after they ring the bell or yell "stop."  this makes sense to me.  nothing bad ever happens to you when you are ready for it, but as soon as you let down your guard, POW.

another good idea i learned about is to isolate your opponent from their support network or from any impartial bystanders who might try to impose "fairness."  fairness is for losers.  winners hit hard, fast, and first.  and repeatedly.

finally, the main thing i learned about boxing is that i do not want to do it. i am far too pretty to risk being punched in the face, especially if it is hard, fast, first, repeatedly, and when i am not expecting it.

knockout gets one jab to the face.  stone cold steve austin garners two additional jabs to the face, purely for putting his guts into his role.  not because his fists are as big as my head.

guyver: dark hero

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109965/

i stopped this one at 4 minutes, 40 seconds.  it was that bad.  then i thought to myself, "really?  is it really that bad?"  so i unpaused it and watched an additional 46 seconds before my self-preservation instincts overpowered my driving need for completeness and stopped it again.

my self-preservation instincts are getting smarter, thank goodness.  time was, they would have tried to gouge my eyes out instead of simply pushing some variant of the "stop" button.  dark days, my friends. dark days.

i give dark guyver one half of a fight scene.

damage and recoil

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1314177/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1839591/

did you know that stone cold steve austin is in the movies?  quite a few of them, actually.  as far as i can tell, they are basically all john wayne movies.  the main difference is that john wayne always played a man's man, while stone cold steve austin plays a gigantic man mountain with massive meat hooks of steel and a heart of gold.

let us be honest.  these are not masterpieces by any stretch of the imagination.  you are sure to find yourself completely unsurprised, unsympathetic, unenthusiastic, and unimpressed with anything you see in one of these.  these are the kind of films you show to children to deaden them to the world and turn them into serial killers.  but who cares?  if you love america, apple pie, or your mother, then you should understand that it is your *duty* to watch stone cold steve austin wade through a few double handfuls of bad guys on his way to the denouement.  this is not a human law.  it is a natural law.  from science.

i give both damage and recoil the same score, which is two slices of apple pie.  (sorry, mom.)

the five year engagement

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1195478/

"this is really painful for me too," is the comment that my movie-watching cohort made to me.  that is a great summary for this avalanche of agony.  if you wanted to be more verbose, you could add that it was formulaic, predictable, and waaaaayyyy too long.  this film could have been one hour and with five fewer actors.  actually, 45 minutes, and five actors.

after giving it a little more consideration, i think it could have been 25 minutes and four actors.

actually, really thinking about it now, i could do it by myself in five minutes with a couple sock puppets, a party hat, and a bottle of cheap irish whiskey.

the five year engagement gets one sock puppet.

milf

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

the cabin in the woods

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1259521/

the cabin in the woods is a horror movie, but it is not the horror movie you think it is when you first start watching it.  this is made somewhat obvious by the opening moments, so i guess i am not giving a whole lot away here.  there was little enough gore that i could bear to watch it, anyway.  the dialogue and plot were classic whedon, which is another way of saying it is at least worth watching.

the most interesting part of the film is how the trailer ties into it.  if joss whedon were not involved, i would just assume that the people who made the trailers did so without regard for what they were giving away, but since whedon is in the mix, i have to wonder whether he did it on purpose, to further heighten the audience's sense of knowing what is going to happen...when in fact, the audience does *not* know what is going to happen, because, as mentioned earlier, the horror movie you think it is is not the horror movie it actually is.  i did not really spend too much time thinking about that because i am too pretty to have deep thoughts, but i am sure there is a thesis in there somewhere.

i give cabin in the woods four mermen.

it's complicated

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1230414/

it's complicated is a film about regrets.  you might ask whether i regret watching it.  well.  it's complicated.

i give it two chocolate croissants.

the expendables 2

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1764651/

given that the 80s happened, there are basically two ways to make an 80s action movie in the year 2012.  the first way is to make a standard 80s action movie, but with different actors, updated special effects, and in 3d or whatever.  the second way is to do all of that, but with a bunch of winking and self-referential lines.  the first expendables movie did it mostly the first way; the second expendables movie did it mostly the second way.  having seen both, i humbly submit to you that the first way is better.  the remainder of my comments are best presented in bullet point format:

• -1, not enough terry crews
• -1, too much dolph lundgren
• -1 *way* too much schwarzenegger dialogue
• +1 for getting what is surely a chuck norris fact into the film.
• scott adkins was wasted on this movie.  the man is a masterpiece who needs to be given free rein to bounce around the scenery as he wills, not cooped up into a simple bad guy role with a single fight scene.

the expendables 2 gets 2 expendables, primarily for the lines that were good and for delivering on the promise of explosions.

the bourne legacy

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1194173/

i was expecting the bourne legacy to suck balls, and so it was a pleasant surprise to find that i rather enjoyed it.  against all odds, edward norton refrained from being godawful, and jeremy renner, who had thus far escaped my wrathful eye, actually did a fine job of being a super agent.  with that said, this film did not add anything that we have not already seen, other than advancing the jason bourne storyline a bit more.

i am starting to be concerned that they may not produce a crappy bourne movie that we can all agree is the worst one.  this is an important point.  people come together around a film or set of films because of the goodness, but they unite because of the badness.  you need something to fill in the gaps in the conversation and the "yeah, but..." moments.  in a movie series, that is usually the second or third one, though there are exceptions, such as the fast and furious series, where it was the second *and* third one, and the underworld series, where it was every movie *starting* with the second one.  if you put it too late in the series, you run the risk of making the fans violently angry at the sudden, though admittedly inevitable, betrayal.  the exception to this "violently angry" rule is the case where a series starts good and then follows an easily observable trajectory in the downward direction.

anywho, the bourne legacy gets three blue pills.

legend of the red dragon

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110054/

legend of the red dragon is a fine piece of slapstick wherein jet li tells his son to kill with no mercy and other similar gems in the course of rearing him to be an upstanding young man.  this film had it all.  mother/daughter hustlers, shaolin kids, fake ghosts, an invincible man, a pit of boiling acid, and a transvestite monk.  what else can you even put in a movie?  jackie chan?  actually, that would have been pretty cool.

legend of the red dragon gets three steel spears.

the dark knight rises

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1345836/

this batman movie was basically the same as the last one.  except anne hathaway in a cat suit, it had that going for it.

i was immensely disappointed that the voice of bane was not actually max von sydow.

i rate it two (more) plot holes.

extract

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1225822/

funny, but not too engaging.  i was pleasantly surprised by the lack of extract- and ball-related jokes.  also pleasantly surprised by how much ben affleck did not suck.

extract gets three gigolos.

prometheus

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1446714/

there was a lot to like about prometheus, which is why it is such a crime that they blew it by using outright stupid science.  all you spacefarers, here are a couple pro tips:  1) do not take your helmet off just because the air composition is "breathable."  2) hostile/nervous alien creature approaching?  kindly refrain from reaching out to pet it, especially if it looks like a snake that might try to crawl down your throat.  those of you who saw tales from the darkside will recall that this rule also applies to cats.

otherwise, pretty enjoyable.  i eagerly await the director's cut that will fix the mismatches between prometheus and alien.

snow white and the huntsman

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1735898/

...and the winner for all-time worst speech, ever (2012), goes to...kristen steward, for the all-time worst speech, ever, that she gave in SWATH.  this film also garnered a number of other awards, such as worst momentous statement (the blind dwarf,) worst use of charlize theron's talents (lucy bevan,) and most striking inability to count to seven (the writers.)  i am pretty sure that the dwarf they killed off was because they were sitting there filming when the director turned to his pet screenwriter and said,

DIRECTOR: "excuse me, you."
SCREENWRITER: "yes, director?"
DIRECTOR: "do you see anything wrong with this scene?"
SCREENWRITER: (not seeing anything, but knowing that the director would not ask if there were nothing to see--probably.) "n-n-no, director?"
DIRECTOR: "well, how many dwarfs would you say there were in 'snow white and the seven dwarfs?'"
SCREENWRITER: "s-s-seven?  director, sir?"
DIRECTOR: "s-s-seven?  or seven?"
SCREENWRITER: (gulps) "se-se-" (pauses) "seven, director."
DIRECTOR: "indeed." (turning away.) "how many dwarfs do you see in this scene?"
SCREENWRITER: (counting) "eight?"
DIRECTOR: "eight WHAT?"
SCREENWRITER: "eight, director!  sir!"
DIRECTOR: (nods, chuckling) "yes indeed.  kill one of them for me, would you?"

and this is how you get seven dwarfs and a movie called snow white and the huntsman.

american shaolin

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101327/

american shaolin was infantile and racist.  also, despite being made in the 90s, everybody had 80s hair.

they did a lot of moves that i am sure were meant to look fancy, but the flow was way off, which made it impossible to enjoy.  the protagonist saw the love interest for about 5 minutes during the whole movie, so i am unclear on how he managed to woo her.  what were those animated wooden kickboxing dummies, anyway?  also, at the end, he took a giant dump on the chest of all the things he supposedly spent the entire movie learning.

this heinousness gets a single kick to the jaw.  i would dearly love to kick it a few more times, but i am concerned that people might misconstrue the additional kicks as a higher rating.

the avengers

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0848228/

the avengers is pretty much what you would expect it to be: a lot of noise and flashing lights, tastefully arranged with humorous one-liners.  it does not aspire to greatness, which is why it does not fail.

many people express a certain amount of incredulity regarding the ability of regular (albeit highly-trained) humans like black widow or hawkeye to contribute meaningfully to a team that also contains gods and indestructible green monsters.  well, these people are idiots.  the storyteller is god, and they need to shut up and just enjoy the flashing lights.

the avengers gets a left, a right, and an uppercut.  body slam!

young adult

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1625346/

i love the way charlize theron plays emotional train wrecks.  in young adult, she plays the luckier and more socially privileged version of the character she played in monster.  so, less with the killing, and more with the harlotry.  the main downside was that i do not enjoy watching train wrecks; so while the film did a fine job of showing what it was trying to show, i had difficulty liking it.  also, every single character that was not charlize theron was pretty uni-dimensional.  that is smart-person talk for "one-dimensional."  did you know they have thesauruses online now?  a thesaurus is a reference book you can use to find synonyms and antonyms for words.  a synonym is a word that means more or less the same thing as the word it is a synonym for.  antonyms are the same, except opposite.

they have dictionaries online now, too.

anyway, young adult gets three little toy dogs left in a hotel room all by themselves.

kungfu cyborg: metallic attraction

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1494775/

kungfu cyborg is the story of a cyborg in love and the woman who loves him back, but does not know he is a cyborg.  and the other cyborg who loved the same woman when he was a human except then he got killed and the original cyborg rebuilt him out of his original dna and spare parts from a different cyborg.  and the human who also loves that same woman, but later falls for her sister instead.  her sister is like 16!

it all makes sense if you watch it from the beginning.  i give it two hearts not beating as one.

legendary assassin

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1236370/

legendary assassin does for fighting what pornos do for romance.  now imagine that it is one of those movies where the meager budget went into the storyline and special effects.  "mmm," you are thinking.  "that must be a really gripping and well-acted porno."  well, pull your mind out of the gutter and remember that we are talking about a fighting movie here.

legendary assassin.  he dies in the end, after killing 500 guys in three minutes.  and saving the girl.  i give it two deadly powerful kicks to the midsection.

thursday

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0124901/

thursday is essentially a series of vignettes where thomas jane interacts with a variety of characters.  i still identify thomas jane as the punisher, so i am always sad when he makes a new movie that is neither the punisher nor as awesome as the punisher.  deep blue sea was the closest.  anyway, this film was no punisher.

i give thursday three bodies in the garage.

dragon tiger gate

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482930/

this review is for all the mothers out there.

dragon tiger gate is pretty clear on what it is about.  the acting is just good enough to justify fighting.  the plot is a device that moves the characters from fight to fight.  the scenery is built to be pulverized in fights.  the special effects are used to make cool-looking fighting techniques.

so it is a fighting vehicle, then.  you can relax and forget about who this "scaly" guy is or why he wants to fight everybody.  you can opt to not worry about how it is that dragon got so much better at fighting than tiger if he left the training hall at a young age, while tiger kept training.  you can even decide that the preposterous liability of a haircut worn by every single main fighting character is of no consequence.  just sit back and enjoy the fighting.

dragon tiger gate gets three flying knees to the face.  happy mother's day!

swedish auto

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0800228/

swedish auto is the kind of movie where, after about twenty minutes, you turn to the person next to you and say "so...want to make out?"  you would say this no matter who was sitting next to you, because the point of making out would not be to get jiggy with it, but rather to distract yourself from the horrible horrible things being shown to you by the moving pictures box.

i rate it one swedish fish, begrudgingly.  i do not like swedish fish.

the promotion

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0803057/

i made it about 20 minutes into this train wreck before i decided it would be a good idea to double-check the recommendation i had gotten for it.  as it turns out, the recommendation i had gotten was to avoid this movie at all costs.  "i rescind all previous potentially positive comments," quoth the cheerleader.  on the strength of the first 20 minutes, i wholeheartedly agree and give it one shopping cart.

chungking express

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109424/

to me, chungking express represents the ghost of netflix recommendations past. netflix recommendations have been responsible for causing me to watch a number of terrible movies, and i suppose it was foolish of me to think that i would be free of it just because i had cancelled my subscription. i should have remembered that the human brane is a mess of all the things you have ever heard or seen, which means i am warped for life.

anyway, netflix recommendations presumably pointed me at this one because of all the other terrible movies it tricked me into watching. i hated the story and all the characters, and was unable to tell which parts were dreaming and which were awake. they may all have been awake with characters merely saying that they felt they were dreaming. i also remain confused about why this was framed as two stories that were essentially disjoint. one story, i could have understood. three or more stories, i could also understand. but why two? two stories means both have to be long enough to be shortish movies in and of themselves. and if you go that far, why not just flesh them out and have two films? presumably, the writers had two disjoint stories and could not sell either, so they smashed them together to make something they could.

none of that really matters, but it is the kind of thing that i obsess over when trying to understand the overarching aspects of a film. all i really need is a guidebook. for life. even something as simple as annotations that say "there is something interesting here you should try to understand," or "this detail is not important," or "avoid the tuna salad, they left it out on the counter overnight." dysentery is no laughing matter, and neither was this movie.

see? that is how you connect two disjoint things together. with a circle.

shutter island

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1130884/

i wish i did not have to dislike leonardo dicaprio so much, because he is in so many otherwise-good films. i think i first saw him in the "the beach," which was terrible. then there was "what's eating gilbert grape," which i hated, but only because i cannot stand watching soft-hearted people get backed into corners. i started to watch "romeo + juliet", but had to turn it off because it was so godawful, so i am not sure whether to count that one. a buddy talked me into going to see "the aviator" at an actual theater, and let me just say that i have not seen this "buddy" since. "gangs of new york" was ok. "the departed" was pretty good, largely because i have a deep, abiding love for pretty much everyone in the cast who was not dicaprio. ("infernal affairs" was still better, though.) i went so far as to actually like "inception." finally, i watched "shutter island" and realized that leonardo dicaprio always plays a crazy person. how did i not notice this before? this new knowledge is sure to ruin every movie he is in from now on.

not counting leonardo dicaprio, shutter island was pretty ok.