reviews

chungking express

2012-01-20T14:34:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-18T16:10:00.001-08:00

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.

captain america

2011-10-21T10:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458339/

i will watch almost anything with chris evans in it. i first saw him as jake wyler in not another teen movie, which was a great movie until i told my parents about it and they watched it. i also like him in push, but that might have been because of my complete lack of expectations for the film, coupled with my love of superpowers. he is just as watchable in captain america, a film which really has nothing going for it other than chris evans. i figured that would be the case, but i watched it anyway because i saw that captain america is supposed to be in the avengers movie and i know pretty much nothing about captain america.

here is what i learned: captain america is big and strong and has an interesting (not cool or exciting, just interesting) shield. something about absorbing vibrations? not sure i understood that. bullets hitting it still seemed to cause it to make sound, and energy bolts thrown at it made him go flying. also? if you were trying to shoot captain america, and you saw that he had a shield, why would you keep aiming at the shield? go for the legs, for chrissakes. also also? if you have awesome rifle things that disintegrate the guys you are shooting at, maybe think about passing those out to your faceless minions instead of giving them regular rifles.

drive

2011-09-27T13:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780504/

two things jumped out at me.

the first was that it starred the pretty boy from "the notebook," and that even though he was playing a completely different character, it was still largely the same part. that was a little weird.

the second thing that jumped out at me was that the first half of the movie set it up as a cool getaway driver film, then the second half took a sharp right turn into a bloody warzone. maybe there is some kind of philosophical statement or parallel to life in there, but i found it difficult to care. the characters who were getting killed at, including the main character, were not likable enough for me to feel one way or another on the topic of whether they should live or die. at least they avoided the cliched use of the femail love interest as a hostage.

hanna

2011-04-10T22:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0993842/

i read a review which compared hanna to the bourne identity. i think this is true in much the same way that my work commute is like the tour de france.

this film had a promising premise, but failed utterly to do anything with it. they made the kid a super-soldier, but then tried to treat that as if it were the same as being a super-agent. i am just being overly nitpicky here, but it bothers me because those two things are not interchangeable. it also bothers me that the super-agent father type who trained her apparently did not teach her how to have a normal conversation with another human being. even just himself! and while i am being nitpicky, let me just add that much of the violence was completely misplaced. it would have been better suited to a low-grade slasher instead of an action movie. not only was it jarring, but it also served to distract-via-anticipation for the whole rest of the movie.

blair witch 2: book of shadows

2011-04-03T20:25:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0229260/

i had the best of intentions. i was going to watch this in full daylight and then immediately go do a bunch of other stuff to drive it out of my mind. what actually happened is that i was busy all morning and afternoon and the rental was going to run out tonight, so i ended up watching it in the early evening. i know, i could have theoretically just not watched it, but schmolli does not roll like that.

so anyway, here i am, all alone, in the dark, hearing noises not just downstairs, but also upstairs. the silence on this floor is...anticipatory. whatever it is, it knows i will have to leave this room eventually. also, now i am hallucinating that something is peeking around the edge of the door at me. ever notice how the sound of cars on the freeway is kind of like people off in the distance screaming?

oh, the film itself was ok. not great, not terrible. probably not scary to a horror veteran, who presumably lacks the overactive imagination that is a key component of my current...situation.

great, a thump on the stairs. i needed that.

the mechanic

2011-04-03T00:24:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472399/

"desolate" is the only word i can think of to describe this film. it had the requisite action scenes and properly intricate assassinations of well-protected people. the conflict was predictable, though reasonably well-executed.

the ending did not play out anything like i thought it would, in both good and bad ways. on the one hand, i was pleased to not be handed yet another saccharine hollywood ending, but on the other hand, i was left baffled with regard to what i was supposed to take away from this movie. for example, the character development that i thought was happening turned out to not have actually happened. it was like a giant screw you sandwich. or sammich, as i believe the kids are calling it these days. anyway, i am pretty sure that the only thing which really transformed thoughout was that a bunch of people transformed into dead. i guess there was a great deal of property damage, too.

macgruber

2010-12-26T09:48:00.000-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1470023/

macgruber is a strong candidate for worst movie i have ever seen. i generally try to block out any memory of bad movies, so i am hard-pressed to think of its contemporaries. this film was so bad, my wife left me for my dog. you might better appreciate the badness if you also understand that i have neither a wife nor a dog. the movie was *so* bad, a wife and dog were *invented* just so the one could leave me for the other.

vampires suck

2010-12-26T09:46:00.000-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1666186/

vampires suck is a strong candidate for worst movie i have ever seen. i generally try to block out any memory of bad movies, so i am hard-pressed to think of its contemporaries. watching this film was sort of like when you are cleaning your bedroom and you discover that the cat has shit under the bed, except instead of it being cat shit under the bed, it is cancer.

meet the spartans

2010-12-26T09:27:00.002-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1073498/

meet the spartans is a strong candidate for worst movie i have ever seen. i generally try to block out any memory of bad movies, so i am hard-pressed to think of its contemporaries. this film was so bad, it temporarily rendered me impotent, probably because watching it makes a person realize that there is no hope for humanity, none.

atonement

2010-12-26T09:27:00.001-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0783233/

crap.

easy a

2010-12-24T08:37:00.000-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1282140/

easy a was surprisingly good, perhaps because of my extremely low expectations. most of the characters, including the protagonist, were unidimensional and completely lacking in meaningful character development, but that consistency, combined with the utter preposterousness of the plot, made it all work.

one thing that really surprised me was that lindsay lohan made a movie that i liked. however, as i discovered just a minute ago, i have once again confused emma stone with lindsay lohan. so that, at least, makes sense.

red

2010-11-25T19:03:00.000-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1245526/

the word "romp" applies here. at no point did anyone wink at the camera, (except maybe accidentally,) but there was a lot of implicit winking. some people will have you believe that there is something wrong with winking, but it is not so. winking is perfectly natural and provides an excellent vehicle for demonstrating your fine facial motor controls to MOTAS.

anywho. the one thing i regretted about this film was watching the previews. they pretty much revealed all of the neat character things, like the little old lady being a total badass. i mean, they were all badasses, right, but you would expect the little old lady to be the badass communications expert or computer hacker, not the heavy weapons handler. spoilers notwithstanding, it was still enjoyable.

i rate this one four aged super agents.

the town

2010-11-25T18:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0840361/

i did not want to go see this film. however, people kept telling me that it was really good, and then it showed up in a budget theater at a time when i was bored and looking for a movie to go to. this is how i eventually went to see the town.

the town was essentially a remake of heat. if imdb can be believed, there are no connections between the stories, but nonetheless, the plot points are just about identical. the main difference was the accents, and that is, technically, not a plot point. perhaps it should be.

anyway, i am not claiming that heat and the town are in the same class, just that they are telling the same story. heat was way better, but both were definitely above average. if you were kidnapped by terrorists who were holed up in a seedy safehouse watching movies, and they demanded that you choose between heat and the town, pick heat. unless they are speaking with strong bostonian accents, in which case you should pick the town. the difference is not worth getting exploded over.

zatoichi: the festival of fire

2010-11-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0164982/

i think this is the third or fourth zatoichi movie i have seen, and i believe i can say at this point that i am pretty much done with the series. the idea of the blind swordsman is kind of a neat one, but it is not enough to sustain interest for more than two or three full-length movies. in festival of fire, they did seem to be trying to give zatoichi some additional dimensions, but ultimately, it always comes down to the mysterious anma swording down heaps of bad guys before emitting a moral lesson. and he always wins at cho-han. i am less clear on the moral lesson there, unless the moral lesson is that it is ok to cheat so long as you do not get caught or are in a position to sword everybody down in the event that you do get caught.

in conclusion, i can recommend watching one or two zatoichi movies, but no more than that, unless you have resilience to tedium. you could also check out the rutger hauer movie "blind fury" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096945/) which is more or less a usian zatoichi.

the expendables

2010-09-04T19:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1320253/

on the one hand, i want to make disparaging comments about the plot, dialog, and acting, but on the other hand, i have to acknowledge that none of those things should be considered relevant in an action movie.

the expendables set out to be the most epic action movie ever, and it more or less succeeded. you should feel free to argue about the specifics with your movie-nerd friends, though. the sheer number of headliners was staggering, but the resultant effect was pretty neat. usually in an action movie, the protagonist displays his particular brand of bad-assedness, and it gives the movie a certain feel. in *this* action movie, the protagonists all brought their own particular brands of bad-assedness, and it was like some kind of bad-ass potpourri.

on the negative side: it should not have been necessary to have a gun that explodulates the upper body of the person it shoots. thanks to the exploding body content in the expendables, i had to sit through previews for "similar" movies featuring torture-porn and exorcisms. not cool.

eden log

2010-08-25T12:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1087842/

what?

open your eyes

2010-08-24T16:36:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0125659/

i sure wish that there had been some sign earlier in the movie that something besides a murder case was going on. that part was not revealed until like 80% of the way through, by which point i had lost interest and fast forwarded through a lot of the details.

i think i heard that vanilla sky was based on this movie. if that is the case, then i can suddenly understand why people kept recommending vanilla sky while only describing it as a movie about a good-looking guy who gets disfigured. what are they going to do, give away the twist? giving away that there is a twist almost gives away the twist.

so anyway, i can understand the problem, but i disapprove of every member in the set of all possible solutions. it is like designing your own proprietary encryption scheme and then depending on secrecy to prevent it from being broken. mmm hmm. word.

scott pilgrim vs the world

2010-08-24T16:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446029/

scott pilgrim does for video games what sin city did for comic books. it was extremely cool from the perspective of seeing how they translated video game concepts like leveling up (character development) and progressively tougher bosses (that one was easy, they just got progressively tougher) into a movie. i think they did a great job of doing those translations, but i hasten to add that that does not mean i approve of doing them. the overall effect was entertaining since it is the first time i am seeing it, but it would become grating in a hurry.

i also learned a new word from this movie. "hasbien." you figure it out.

despicable me

2010-07-24T23:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1323594/

i laughed a few times and of course found the bobble-headed girl absolutely adorable. i am a huge unicorn fan myself, so there was another plus. steve carell was completely unrecognizable as steve carell, for yet another plus. i found the little yellow engineer minion things to be very sympathetic characters, plus one. there were really a lot of pluses here.

all those pluses add up to something, i am sure, but it is something empty and meaningless. you do not need to watch the movie to guess the plot. all of the characters, including the protagonist who goes through the requisite character development, are unidimensional. the humorous bits were delivered with a sort of monotonous regularity. i really need to start avoiding movies that are made for kids. i cannot even get the pleasure of writing a scathing review about them. what, am i going to complain that the movie caters to its audience?

maybe.

the punishment meted out to the villain was shockingly cruel. he was not much of a villain since it was clear that he was really just trying to impress his father. not very much different from the protagonist's attempts to impress his mother. and for his crime of seeking parental approval? sentenced to a slow death by asphyxiation on the moon. pretty gruesome for a kids' movie. get it? "gru"esome? i kill me.

also? you cannot just put the moon up in the sky and call it a day. the moon stays up in the sky because it is *in orbit* around the earth. if you rocket it up into the sky, then shut off the rocket, it will fall back down and kill us all. everybody knows this, even little kids who failed their fingerpainting class. in fact, some kids understand that even *with* the orbit properly set up, the moon might still fall down and kill us all, then feast upon our flesh.

sleep tight, kiddies. with one eye open.

murder on the orient express

2010-07-24T22:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071877/

really, i just want to brag about figuring out what was going on right about the time poirot was interviewing the second passenger. i was able to do this because my brain is *enormous*. happily, predicting the plot did not detract from my enjoyment of watching the rest of the film. twelve thumbs up.

rapid fire

2010-07-22T10:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105219/

the fight choreography was fabulous, very fluid and with none of the awkward pauses or positioning that plague most mainstream fighting movies. the dialog was terrible, though, like -2 stars terrible.

bad lieutenant: port of call: new orleans

2010-07-05T21:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1095217/

bad lieutenant was shot entirely with cell phone cameras on the emptied streets of new orleans, in the aftermath of hurricane katrina. they sneaked in extras under cover of darkness to act in various roles and run the cameras. other cost-cutting measures included hiring low-rent actors like nicholas cage and eva mendes to act as the leads and letting cage's kid do all the video editing on his imac.

the a team

2010-07-03T23:33:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0429493/

good clean fun, but a bit hollow. i remember laughing a few times and generally being entertained, but i cannot really remember why. they flew a tank, so i guess that should count for something.

point break

2010-07-03T23:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102685/

who would win in a fight: patrick swayze or keanu reeves? thanks to point break, we now know that the answer to this question is "patrick swayze, at first, but then keanu reeves, except he will then let patrick swayze go after his moby dick and ultimately win--in life." or death. whatever. it was implied.

the big question in my mind has to do with why netflix recommended this one to me. my working theory is that it noted that i liked the matrix and roadhouse, then concluded that the intersection of keanu reeves and patrick swayze would be something i would really blow my mind. it was right, just not in a good way.

hoodwinked

2010-07-02T00:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443536/

hoodwinked is a remake of kurosawa's classic, rashomon. it is about twenty times better than rashomon, which is saying a lot because rashomon was awesome. i am actually kind of prevaricating a little about the remake part, but i am confident that i can get away with it because most people will be too lazy to go look it up. i am doubly protected because most people do not know what "prevaricating" means. i guess that matters less nowadays because most people are smart enough to cut and paste words they do not know into a search box and get a quick definition. that is why i am petitioning the intarweb to cancel google and promote more walled gardens. bring back network segregation and petty fiefdoms! i figure if i can get about three and a half billion signatures, i will have a majority, and we will be able to make it happen.

aaaaanyway, hoodwinked was great.

what's eating gilbert grape

2010-06-27T22:11:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108550/

sadly, the answer to the titular question was not "a mountain lion, in scene two." nor was it "cannibals, in scene two." not even "a chipper/shredder, in scene two." man, where are those zombie strippers when you really need them?

knight and day

2010-06-27T14:40:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1013743/

i understand that "knight" was the tom cruise character's real name, but other than sounding catchy, the name "knight and day" makes no sense. they could have called it "tom cruise: the movie," and i think this would have been at least as accurate, while not revealing plot points. here are a few more names i came up with in case you guys are getting stuck for names to give movies like this:

mission: highly unlikely
super-agents and super-not-agents
lemme hear you say "huh?"
the battery
the girl without the dragon tattoo
planes, automobiles, trains, more automobiles, and a seaplane
skulldriver

note that you can further punch these titles up with tactics like changing all the "s" characters to "z" characters or turning all the "k" characters backwards. you could also replace one or more characters with an apostrophe.

i liked the way most of the crazy action happened off camera, and the super-agent's offhandedness about his stunts was, ah, charming. everything else was balls. (that is "balls" as in, "like the time my cow-orker dumped a box of plastic colored balls all over my desk," not as in "testicles.") cameron diaz should stop being in movies. peter sarsgaard should stop playing characters that are so amazingly lame.

step brothers

2010-06-18T22:35:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0838283/

i give this movie 15 games of solitaire, because that is how many i played--and won--while watching it. the jokes were not offensive enough to be shocking, and they were certainly not funny. the only part that was really likable was mary steenbergen's smile. ms steenbergen's smile also appeared in the proposal and marilyn hotchkiss' ballroom dancing and charm school, either of which i would recommend in place of this waste of time.

zombie strippers

2010-06-03T10:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0960890/

zombie strippers will always have a very special place in my heart. i give it three stars, one each for the zombies, the strippers, and the deep existential questions a film like this raises.

the informant

2010-05-31T22:10:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1130080/

i thought this was kind of a boring corporate espionage film until about halfway through, when i suddenly realized it was a remake of the talented mr ripley, just with less blood on screen. at that point, i became riveted to my seat in horror because i was pretty sure matt damon was going to snap and start killing people again.

it was really irresponsible of hollywood to put in him in this kind of psycho killing-people situation again, especially after he learned all those special killing-people skills in the bourne movies. i think there is a strong possibility that this time the violence could spread past the big screen. who would save us then? rambo? he's old. ditto for arnie and jackie chan. if gerard butler and christian bale teamed up, they might hold him back for a few milliseconds. but really, there would be no one who would stand a chance...except, perhaps, river tam.

ong bak 2: the beginning

2010-05-16T10:52:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0785035/

other than tony jaa and lots of fighting, ong bak 2 had nothing to do with ong bak 1. or with the other ong bak 2 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427954/). the plot was completely nonsensical, even by action movie standards. hell, the plot was nonsensical by *porno movie* standards. i think they were going for some kind of revenge thing? but instead of revenge, he got captured and tortured to death? and the guy who raised him and taught him all his fighting skillz turned out to hate him, except not really? and the girl from the dance skool who was as hung up on him as he was on her? i guess he was too busy not getting revenge to go sweep her off her feet. not that he would have had much luck with that because, hey, dancer.

ong bak 2 gets two stars for the extensive fight choreography, but understand that this is two stars mostly because of the sheer amount of effort they put into it, not because it was *good* fight choreography. kind of like how when the guy behind the counter gives you your change and you say "thank you," even though if he tried to keep the change you would probably deliver a flying knee into his face.

iron man 2

2010-05-16T09:02:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1228705/

meh. iron man 2 was entertaining in the tropical fish tank sense, but that was about it.

mickey rourke was awesome. he and the girl who played black widow seemed to be the only people who took their parts seriously. it worked out for blacklash since his character mostly worked with himself and also because mickey rourke has his own personal gravity field. black widow, on the other hand, ended up with nobody to play seriously off of. everybody else seemed to phone in their performances. ha ha, look at me, i am tony stark, i take nothing seriously. well save it, we already saw that one, it was called iron man.

date night

2010-04-23T06:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1279935/

i was lured to see this one by the combined forces of tina fey, mark wahlberg, ray liotta, and, had i only known she was in it ahead of time, gal gadot. you may remember her from the most recent fast and furious movie, where she played the part of Totally Hot Girl. this is the same part she played in date night.

ummmm...anyway, date night unfortunately had steve carell in it, too, which is too bad because steve carell is totally lame. i assume that people find him funny because he plays the same character over and over, like a remix of jim carrey, pet detective. seen jim carrey in anything lately? no, of course not. BECAUSE HE IS STEVE CARELL! witness the truth revealed, only here, on schmolli's movie review blog thing.

the rainmaker

2010-04-23T06:33:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119978/

"MATT, baby. let me tell ya, ya gonna be the next TOM CREWS if you just do TWO THINGS for me. first, ya gotta do a LAWYER movie. second, ya gotta do a JET PILOT movie. i'm bringing a SCRIPT over to ya NOW."

this is what i imagine matt damon's agent said to him to get him to do this film. luckily for his career, he must have fired that agent.

franklyn

2010-04-23T06:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0893402/

this is one of those films where multiple story lines come together. they did a good job with it, the stories flowed together pretty well. i got a little lost on what the message was supposed to be with regard to something i should probably not mention if i do not want to give away important plot elements, but my understanding is that you are supposed to watch this one twice. an alternative to watching movies twice is to have a photographic memory. sadly, my memory is *pornographic*.

kick ass

2010-04-19T22:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1250777/

kick ass was the same movie as observe and report (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1197628/), in much the same way that snatch was the same as lock, stock, and two smoking barrels. and layer cake. and the other one that i can never remember. aside of the obvious plot parallels, the main thing both "kick ass" and "observe and report" had in common was a kind of darkness that lurked behind the scenes and bubbled up unexpectedly. i liked that, as a change of pace, but i hope it does not catch on because its main attraction is its fleetingness. you can only shock somebody so many times before they catch on. i guess you can tie them down and tape the probes on, too, but that usually does not happen in a movie theater kind of situation.

i am not sure what nicholas cage was doing in this film, but i was really happy to see him screaming as he burned alive. as for the "hit girl" character, foul-mouthed pre-teen kunoichis have never been cool. i wish people would stop making them. i can see the fascination--it is the same as when little abigail says "hi mrs marplebee! my daddy says you're fat and useless!"--but it is not a good kind of fascination. as for the main character, i can not really think of anything i want to call out about him, other than the absolute preposterousness of the idea that he would hook up with a girl.

with all that said, i enjoyed the overall film. it was comic book enough that i could overlook the absurdity, laugh at the jokes, and just sort of go along for the ride.

harley davidson and the marlboro man

2010-03-28T22:05:00.001-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102005/

this is the kind of 80s action film my legal guardians would have rented from the local grocery video store when i was a kid. they would have let me watch it, but every time there was a nekkid lady on the screen, they would have made me cover my eyes. at the time, i failed to understand that i was supposed to peek, and thereby gain forbidden knowledge. since they yelled at me every time they thought i was trying to peek, i think they also did not understand this. it was a pretty rough childhood, what with all the misunderstanding about which child care standards we were only supposed to pay lip service to.

trip down amnesia lane aside, there is not a lot to savor here. pretty much every attribute you would care to measure came in somewhere between "lame" and "mundane."

charlotte sometimes

2010-03-20T22:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0284478/

this was a pretty low-budget picture. i guess they call those "indies" these days. the camera work was a little weird. the script was a little weird. the pacing was a little weird. the plot was a little weird. i still do not understand why the one girl was talking to herself on a tape recorder. anyway, all those weirdnesses should have added up to a big fat failure, but somehow they made it perfect instead. it reminded me of last life in the universe, partly because of that perfection, but also because both of them embraced the total nonsensicalness that dominates my existence. without the tedium, i mean.

near dark

2010-03-13T23:23:00.000-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093605/

in watching this film, i have learned something important about the close personal friend who recommended it to me, which is that he hates me and is trying to ruin my life.

the machine girl

2010-03-12T13:44:00.000-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1050160/

this is the best movie that has ever existed.

the quality is on par with the kind of picture you would make if you filmed it with your cell phone's built-in video recorder, a cast made up of your coworkers, on a set constructed from cardboard boxes from the dumpster out in the back of a nearby apartment complex. the dumpster would also feature prominently in your film.

ninja

2010-03-11T10:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182921/

this film was not so great on the acting, dialogue, or plot fronts, but what do you expect, it is an american ninja movie. you might as well complain about the lack of plot and acting in a porno. people do not watch porn for the awesome acting and provokative plots, nor do they watch american ninja movies for anything other than AWESOME NINJA ACTION.

i am going to be honest with you. "ninja" is not that great of a movie. two stars, maybe. however, i am giving it an extra plus one star and an honorable mention because of the uncompromising ferocity with which they followed--nay, attacked--the way of the american ninja movie:
- white guy in ninja school
- "asian" bad guy who was kicked out of ninja school
- key dialogue spoken in japanese-with-mandatory-english subtitles
- ninja school's teacher killed by bad guy
- japanese heroine who needs to be saved from the bad guy

i could go on, but you know what kind of movie i am talking about here. they even scored a scene where the hero carries the heroine in his arms while she looks up at him adoringly. it was very john wayne, and i nearly cried. well. my eyes were watery because i have allergies, but there was some emotion there. probably.

gamer

2010-02-28T22:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034032/

like crank, but with marilyn manson soundtrack.

avatar

2010-02-21T12:40:00.000-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/

let me say right off that i did not see avatar, nor am i going to. so stop asking me to write a review of it. i read the screenplay a few years ago and found it to be a standard-issue underdog action flick with extra syrupy feel-goodness slathered on top. the most positive thing i have heard about it was that it was fun to look at, like a tropical fish tank. i cannot imagine being entertained by a tropical fish tank for three hours. the fish tank clocks in at five minutes, tops. you could make it six minutes by adding a big turtle, or a bunch of small ones.

there is a lot i could say about the length of movies, but it really all boils down to that if i am going to see it in the theater, it has to be short enough that my bladder does not explode. i like to stay hydrated, i do not like to stumble around in the dark and miss five minutes in the middle of the show. sure, i could miss less if i chose not to wash my hands, but that would be disgusting. ditto for the idea about peeing on the plants in the lobby instead of going all the way to the restroom. and the idea about using a catheter. using an empty water bottle is right out. anyway, the point is that avatar is too long.

timecrimes

2010-02-21T12:25:00.000-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480669/

it is hard to explain why i liked this one without giving away critical details, so i will just summarize by saying that this is a well-constructed time-travel movie. i really really want to say additional things about it, but i feel certain that if i did, i would be force to travel back in time to undo that decision.

i can do that, you know. travel back in time. because i am the great and powerful schmolli.

the big hit; also, vampires

2010-01-23T06:15:00.000-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120609/

is it supposed to be a comedy? an action film? a spoof? hell if i know. it felt like they were trying to be humorous, but none of the material was funny. they had guns and explosions, but the action was totally lame. the main character was so pathetic that i could not figure out how anyone could possibly like him. i mean, sure, it was mark wahlberg, but really.

enough about this crappy movie, i want to talk about something much more important: vampires.

there so many different versions of vampires. wikipedia even has a page full of vampire matrices to help decode the different versions. i never used to worry about vampires, until i read that page. there are so many different kinds, many with completely different vulnerabilities. i knew vampires were hard to kill already, but it has become painfully clear to me that i have been underestimating the difficulty in thinking i merely had to dodge razor sharp claws and teeth long enough to drive a stake into their hearts or kick them through a window and into daylight. no, now i know that there will be a phase to the operation where you have to figure out what *kind* of vampire you are dealing with, and only then can you put a plan into action for destroying the unholy beasts.

speaking of vampires, avoid "vampire$" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120877/) the movie. the book was awesome, though. in fact, read anything by john steakley.

shinobi: heart under blade

2010-01-02T22:15:00.000-08:00

the netflix summary compared this movie to romeo and juliet, which caused me to immediately expect it to suck. happily, this film differed quite a bit from that drek. the characters were not completely unlikable, they did not go on and on and on and on about how madly in love they were with each other, there was absolutely no singing until the credits, and for the most part, everybody who died did so relatively quickly and quietly, even the characters who had to deliver monologues before punching out. best of all, unlike shakespeare's tripe, just about everybody was a ninja! yeah! ninjas make every movie better.

however, one thing that they did have in common with romeo and juliet is that the two ninja clans had the age-old grudge match thing going on. i never understand inter-generational grudges. people should be smart enough to understand that once the origins of the grudge has been lost in time, it is time to give it up. i know that people do not really work that way, but...i want to believe. unicorns and santa claus have been taken from me already, so the idea that humans can overcome their baser natures is really all i have left now.

superior ninja action motivated by a reasonable plot and acting earns this film a solid four (throwing) stars.

sherlock holmes

2009-12-27T14:22:00.000-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0988045/

a cheerleader suggested that i should go see avatar. whatever, i read the screenplay a while back and was not too impressed. the trailers basically gave away the whole movie anyway. so i went to see sherlock holmes instead.

i am not what you would call a purist when it comes to the translation from book to movie, but i do think that you should maintain the core characteristics in such a translation, unless you change the names and all the characters so everybody realizes you have made a significant departure from the prior art. alas, such a departure has occurred in the new sherlock holmes film.

the movie itself is not bad, one of the better films i have seen in the theater lately. however, that is not saying a lot because the competition is chiefly from atrocities like gi joe and disappointments like 9. anyway, it is your basic action-adventure kind of film with good sets and costumes, a reasonable plot, and good chemistry between the characters. think indiana jones.

what this movie is *not* is a sherlock holmes movie. very little of the cool deductive technique that is the sherlock holmes trademark was present here, having been largely replaced with fist-fighting and explosions. i could overlook a triviality like sherlock plucking the violin instead of playing it, but making him and watson into action heros is much more of a significant shift. it actually seemed like the classic sherlock stuff was just a layer of paint over the top of the film proper. removing all that stuff, including the substory about watson and his fiancee, would have made this movie into a length more appropriate to its content.

also, sherlock's fighting style in this film is ridiculous. i daresay that a cheerleader could kick his ass, no contest.

the samurai princess

2009-12-26T17:06:00.000-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1412334/

this is the best movie that has ever existed.

this film is lacking in all of the classic criteria, such as plot (-1), acting (-1), special effects (-1), sound (-1), music (-1), dialogue (-1), character development (-1), and visuals (-1). you might be thinking to yourself that there is no way it could overcome such a deficit and rise above *every single other film* that exists. well, let me tell you how you are wrong.

the samurai princess includes all of the following:
- a scissors leg (+1)
- a chainsaw leg (+1)
- a detachable breast boomerang-like flying weapon thing (+1)
- cannibalism (+1)
- ninja/samurai cyborgs (+1)
- multiple off-camera mass dismemberments and piles of obviously-fake severed limbs (+1)
- a buddhist nun bent on revenge (+1)
- heavy metal and a guitar that can make windstorms (+1)
- a love triangle (+1)
- hot cyborg on cyborg action (+1)
- a chainsaw rocket (+1)
- staple gun first aid (+1)
- old friends turned bitter enemies (+1)
- a love rhombus (+2)
- samurai swords (+1)
- six different kinds of what the ??!? (+6)
- a cyborg penis that bites things off (+1)
- glowing ethereal sword-wielding arms (+1)

so you can see that that is like +24 from awesomeness, compared to the mere -8 from the classic criteria, for a grand total of +16. that is a lot, especially when you figure in that we are working on a five-point scale. it is simple math.

some people might contest the points for the love rhombus because it is arguably unclear whether the two cyborg hunters have any lesbian leanings. i say, whatever. you can find lesbians anywhere if you look hard enough, so just look harder.

some day, when i rule the world, i am going to dedicate entire countries to this movie. france for sure, unless they shape up and ship me another "banlieue 13." if they blow it and make another "cité des enfants perdus," then they are going straight onto the pile of obviously fake severed limbs, no second chances. i have not really decided on other countries yet, so i will probably pick them from a hat.

for those who are wondering, antarctica is safe from the chainsaws. penguin mistreatment is no laughing matter.

come see the paradise

2009-11-29T14:48:00.000-08:00

i only made it through the first hour of this film before deciding that if i had to hear dennis quaid say "lee-lee" one more time i was going to have to jump off the roof. since i do not have convenient access to my roof, i had to stop watching the movie.

assassination tango

2009-11-23T14:51:00.000-08:00

robert duvall is not convincing as either an assassin or as un tanguero. or as an assassin/tanguero.

9

2009-09-27T15:45:00.000-07:00

this picture purported a promising premise, but it was poorly paced and possessed plenty of preposterous plot points.

frailty

2009-09-19T15:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264616/

not terribly engaging, but the payoff made it worthwhile.

gi joe: the rise of cobra

2009-08-17T11:41:00.000-07:00

did you know:
- in the arctic, ice is so heavy that it sinks and can crush your underwater fortress?
- the only way to shoot down a missle is to chase it with a super-fast experimental jet that has been inexplicably parked nearby with the keys in the ignition?
- a person whose head is encased in red-hot iron would not die within seconds?
- marlon wayans is not the most annoying person in the world?

these lies and many other crimes against humanity were committed in the recently released film, "gi joe: the rise of cobra." by the way, those were all spoilers, not that it would be possible for me to ruin this movie any more than it already was.

anyway, gi joe is a horror film about two guys who are held hostage in a darkened movie theater with about 50 other people. they are forced to watch as horrible, horrible things are shown on a large screen at the front of the room. the tension mounts as their experience goes from bad to worse and their survival becomes more and more doubtful. the close of the film is especially chilling. we see the two protagonists leaving the theatre, discussing how horrible their experience was and how they will take care to steer clear of such travesties in the future. you are thinking that such a horrible movie as they have endured has been stopped in its tracks until, in a gruesome twist, we see another pair of friends walking out...talking about how much they enjoyed the action-packed film. ("...that was awesome, when the eiffel tower fell over." "yeah, and then that flying leap into the helicopter...") terrifying. i get chills just thinking about it.

this film packs quite a punch as yet another entry in the "torture porn" horror film genre, but is tremendously weakened by the banal qualities of the film-within-the-film, which is, for better or worse, shown almost completely, much in the same way that in "the ring," the complete contents of the videotape are shown in the course of telling the story. in "gi joe," the film-within-the-film is not a snippet or hodge-podge like in "the ring." rather, it is so complete that it can nearly stand as a film on its own, though it is so bad that it could not realistically be released in a real theater. if you are willing to suspend disbelief on that point, however, you have a terrifying torture experience.

in conclusion, gi joe is a relatively standard entry in the psychological-torture-porn horror genre. this would have been a stronger film if they had spent less time on graphic torture scenes and more time on background; for instance, what compelled the main characters to stay for the entire movie? i never felt like i understood their motivations, so i spent a lot of the movie wanting to yell "get out of the theater" at the characters on screen.

transformers 2: bigger, longer, more disappointing

2009-07-31T16:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1055369/

i went to see transformers 2 on a day when it was hot. really hot. i sat all the way through it primarily because the theater was air conditioned.

sometimes i wonder whether i am getting too old to enjoy modern action films. for example, the shaky camera thing. my tired old eyes just cannot follow anything that is happening on screen when they do that. perhaps it is time for me to invest in eyeglasses and suspenders and a perpetually bewildered facial expression. another thing that bothers me is the shift from treating femail leads as characters with dialogue that happen to be eye candy to treating them as characters that are eye candy and happen to have dialogue. would angie dickinson (aka, "feathers" in rio bravo, 1959) have put up with a role like megan fox did? no, of course not. angie dickinson had self-respect. megan fox probably has an agent who heard the term once and whose job it is to protect her from exposure to such things. i quite frankly think that they could have seamlessly replaced the femail lead in this film with porn kiosks in the theatre lobby. this would have had two positive effects: number one, a new business opportunity for some clever entrepreneur and number two, the movie would have lost about an hour of useless drivel.

where was i? right, transformers. they are giant robots, except for the small ones, that can turn into other stuff. except some of them do not turn into other stuff. i think. the camera was too shaky for me to really tell. anyway, you probably already knew all that. did you also know that transformers are overly dramatic and amazingly stupid? if i were a robot, i could rule them all simply by *refraining from doing obviously stupid things*. i mean, really. the decepticons did exactly one thing right, the entire movie, which was to compromise the human's communications. the humans, of course, should have remembered, from the first movie, that decepticons know how to break their communications systems and moved to more LOS-based comms and steganographic techniques, but sure, i get it, they have to move the plot along, and none of their good writers were in that day. or any other day.

also, how do you *forget* about having an extra piece of the matrix floating around? if i had a piece of this matrix thing, i would not give it to megan fox to hang onto for me. oh hell no. that shit stays on my person at all times. *all* times.

in conclusion, if you are thinking that you will go watch transformers 2, i recommend that you think twice and come to the opposite conclusion the second time.

wasabi

2009-07-18T15:46:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0281364/

lots of face-punching. otherwise kind of campy. god i love face-punching.

two lovers

2009-03-23T16:55:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1103275/

for those who were wondering, two lovers was pretty bad. there were three kinds of characters: plastic, unlikable, and one-dimensional. the plot's dramatic unveiling was not all that dramatic and did not carry any real surprises. i came close to being pissed off that the protagonist crumbled beneath his shortcomings instead of rising above them; this would have been less of an issue for me if he had not been unconditionally rewarded for being such a douche.

they might be setting up for the sequel, zero lovers, where the douchebag's wife finds out about what went on in the first movie and goes postal. i could see that as having some real promise; perhaps she could replace her arm with a series of weapons, such as chainsaws and machine guns, that could be used to fight the ninja badasses protecting whatshisface from her wrath. at the climax of the film, she could battle the douchebag, who would be armed with some kind of flying guillotine weapon. we could make this movie ourselves, right here on campus, possibly with our cellphones, operating in video-recorder mode.

pretty persuasion

2009-01-10T15:51:00.000-08:00

the first half was like a failure of a two star comedy, but then it suddenly turned into a creepy horror movie that was actually pretty good.

throne of blood

2009-01-02T15:50:00.000-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050613/

just as bad as "ran", but thankfully shorter.

stranger than fiction

2008-12-10T16:06:00.000-08:00

will ferrell played a serious character and did not suck. weirder things have happened, i guess.

a river runs through it

2008-11-25T16:07:00.000-08:00

/me has robert redford's children.

memoirs of a geisha

2008-10-15T16:08:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0397535/

this is the movie that inspired me to give up a life of crime and study to become a geisha.

i am just kidding, of course. i did not give up the live of crime.

my best friend's girl

2008-09-27T15:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1046163/

predictable, but it made me laugh. i like laughing.

traitor

2008-08-31T15:52:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0988047/

fairly predictable, though it keeps moving and the delivery is reasonably performed. not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but the script reads like it came straight from a republican think tank.

the wackness

2008-08-08T16:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1082886/

the wackness is a film about something. it has certain qualities. most of them are bad. doc brown says it has angst going for it. i think that is true, i am feeling very angsty now. actually, antsy. he turned off his laptop, so i cannot ask him if that was what he meant to say.

the key events in this movie:
- the build broke and was fixed.
- doc brown showed me an interesting website.
- i learned that there are some olympics going on, in beijing.

i used to watch the olympics. i think it was mostly because everybody else was watching it. i am not really planning to watch this one. those of you who like to watch other people run and jump should have a ball, though.

bananas are good. i like bananas. they are yellow.

anyway, this concludes my review of the whatever. i give it five mangoes. i do not like mangoes.

wanted

2008-07-29T16:49:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493464/

i just want to say that you should consider quenching your curiosity about this film. it was bad, so bad. very very bad. the only thing it really had going for it was the special effects, and let me tell you, they were covered throughly by the trailers. watching the matrix (the first one) would give you better special effects, better story, and better acting. yes, really. better acting.

watching "wanted" was a nearly heartbreaking experience. they had so much potential for coolness, and they squandered it all, probably with the expectation that the movie could live on coolness alone. alas, crazy driving stunts and funny-shaped bullets are not enough to make a movie good. or even watchable.

i give "wanted" two thumbs, one for each of the eyes that it made me want to gouge out. note that i am going to guide the trajectories of these thumbs with MY MIND.

the dark knight

2008-07-21T16:47:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/

i gave it 4/5 stars. it was on par with the previous one. dark knight was basically an entertaining thrill ride, but it was also too long and tried to push too many messages about morals. it was not so egregious that i am unwilling to overlook it. if you ignore the messages about morals, you are left with a pretty highly polished action flick.

in other words, if you do not think about it too much, it is pretty enjoyable. the amount of thinking i did about it in order to write this quickie review has caused me to spot internal inconsistencies and weaknesses in the character portrayals that make me downgrade it to 3/5 stars.

daisies

2008-05-08T16:09:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060959/

another chapter in the ongoing saga "how netflix recommendations screwed me like a bitch." the only bright spots about this atrocity are 1) that it is short and 2) there is a marvelous technology called "fast forward" which you can use to make it even shorter.

conspiracy theory

2008-01-25T16:10:00.000-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118883/

spoiler warning: mel gibson is a looney. oh wait.

an officer and a gentleman

2008-01-18T16:11:00.000-08:00

the primary value of watching this film comes from being able to understand pop culture references. top gun was better and did not have richard gere in it.

the 40-year-old virgin

2007-11-06T16:12:00.000-08:00

in a wild divergence from the standard, this film merely filled me with homicidal urges directed towards all persons who have ever uttered the words "love," "virgin," or "sex."

the virgin suicides

2007-10-28T16:13:00.000-07:00

this film could have been much shorter and more enjoyable if everyone--not just the girls--had committed suicide at the beginning instead of waiting until the end.

inland empire: an audience in trouble

2007-10-27T16:39:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460829/

one of the classes i hated most way back when i was in high skool was english. not because i did not like reading (i thoroughly enjoy reading a good yarn) or could not figure out TEH GRAMAR (i was pretty decent at it,) but because so much of the required material involved pulling things out of your ass to explain why some terrible piece of writing was actually awesome. and so it is with david lynch's work.

the synopsis of a david lynch movie is as follows: weird shit happens, the end. the end of the movie, that is. *after* the film has ended, the english majors of the world, the ones who are still trying to figure out how to justify their choice of major instead of getting on with their lives, all engage in this big delusional effort where they pull things out of their asses, polish them to a high sheen, and then use them as "evidence" that the latest piece of lynch's tripe is a masterpiece.

we see this happen yet again with the recent film "inland empires." i sat through a bit over an hour of this three-hour excruciation, becoming less and less attached the entire time, before finally walking out. i was one of the lucky ones. i shudder to think that of the half-dozen or so people i left behind, some or all of them walked out thinking to themselves that they enjoyed the experience.

ostensibly, the overlying story is that an actress is playing the lead in a movie that is cursed or some shit like that. she has an attractive, womanizing lead playing opposite her and a jealous husband. it is a david lynch movie, so there are going to be some weird things where you go in a door and then go back out and you are somewhere else. also, something will happen in a dream that may or may not be real when you wake up, you will not be able to tell because the world is going to be just as insane as your dreams. there will also be some cutscenes that seem tangentially related to the rest of the story that are probably happening just inside one of the
characters' heads or something lame like that. omfg, perhaps your whole life is a dream. there will be some weird characters that know some things, but always speak in riddles. in this movie, they can tell the future, even. whee.

that pretty much covers it. anything else you hear is going to be mindless frippery added by someone who is trying to justify liking the film. the tragedy there is going to be that they did *not* like the film, they just cannot bear the thought that they blew three hours of their life on a piece of crap like this.

i have heard it said that laura dern gave an amazing performance in this film. i have no idea how you would be able to tell that. all she has to do is to say her lines without looking completely bewildered. presumably, the reason lynch was campaigning for her to get an award of some kind for the job is that he was happy that she put up with his crap. i say, nominate her for sainthood, but for chrissakes do not encourage her to support lynch.

someday, when humanity is dust and alien archaeologists are dusting off our remains to determine what kind of people we were, i just know they are going to come across a work like inland empires and say to themselves, "this represents the pinnacle of the slimy human race's work." that is the real tragedy.

the forgotten

2007-10-27T16:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356618/

aliens? ALIENS? jesus christ.

sunshine

2007-08-31T16:25:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448134/

summary: our fate is in the hands of eight abysmally stupid people.

transformers

2007-07-28T16:27:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418279/

everyone who liked this movie is wrong.

little miss sunshine

2007-07-04T16:28:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0449059/

utterly predictable and pretty lame. i laughed once. i forget why.

borat

2006-11-11T16:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443453/

borat = michael moore + bigotry

most comedies do not leave me with such an intellectual deficit. fluff pieces like "out cold" or "dodgeball" come wrapped in enough ridiculousness that it is impossible to do anything other than to leave your brain in neutral for the duration. the contrived nature of borat, however, had the effect of repeatedly popping the clutch and then slamming on the brakes. the end result was an alternation of forced laughter and an almost tearful horror at the realization that i could find any enjoyment to the film at all.

one thing i will say is that this movie is very powerful. powerful in the sense that it forces me to stop and reexamine my opinions on the viability of the human race as a whole, and on my reasons for bothering to get out of bed in the morning.

see you guys monday...maybe.

snakes on a plane

2006-09-17T16:29:00.000-07:00

this film is a very clear indicator of hollywood's opinion of the movie-going population. let me just add that this opinion does not include anything positive.

the girl in the cafe

2006-09-13T16:30:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443518/

this film had the opportunity to be great, like "before sunrise". they unfortunately blew a bunch of little things, thus sinking it to mediocrity.

ray

2006-09-09T16:31:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0350258/

i would agree that fox does a great job of playing ray charles, but i disagree that this makes it a good movie.

crank

2006-09-04T16:33:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0479884/

i am not even sure what to say about this horrible pile of crap. even as just an action flick -- explosions, guns, fast cars, maybe a little gratuitous booty -- it was bad. and not in a good way.

your time would be better spent by shooting heroin directly into your aqueous humor and it would have about the same effect.

please. if you keep putting money towards these films, hollywood will keep making them.

ninja scroll

2005-06-09T18:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107692/

WARNING: CONTAINS UBER-NINJAS! make sure you're seeing the uncut subtitled version.

i think this was probably the first bit of anime i ever saw, so i will always have a soft spot in my otherwise cold and unfeeling heart for it. anyway, i just love super-ninjas.

sin city

2005-06-09T16:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401792/

they managed to put a comic book on the screen, to the extent that even though there was not a single line in the movie that was *not* corny, it nonetheless worked. awesome.

hellboy

2004-04-03T18:31:00.000-08:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167190/

i just got back from the theatre. i went there to see hellboy. it was lame with a capital f. whatever you do, don't go see it. yea, though ye be hounded on all sides by advocates of hellboy, see it not. here it is as a two act play.

ACT I

[ during WW II ]
soldier: why are we here?
doctor guy: look, bad guys!
bad guys: grah! w3 w1LL 0p3n d00r 2 h3LL!
evil sorceror: grah! 1 0p3n d00r 2 h3LL! h4w!
soldiers: hoo-ray, we win!
doctor guy: look, a little demon boy, i will take him home and raise him as my own.
[ present day ]
fbi guy: hi, i'm new here, whoa, look at all the freaks!
doctor guy: hi, there are a lot of freaks here but they are good freaks and by the way i am going to die, don't tell hellboy
hellboy: grah! i am big and tuff! let's go to the museum and fight tentacle things!
tentacle thing: blub blub
hellboy: h4w! 1 k1LL j00!
tentacle thing: blub blub
hellboy: n0! 1T R355UR3CT! 1 K1LL J00 H4RD3R!
tentacle thing: 0h n0, 1 d13
hellboy: h4w! 1 w1N!
doctor guy: oh no, tentacle thing laid eggs and will resurrect as two of them! also, i magically know that the evil sorceror is behind it!

ACT II
doctor guy: lets go back to the train station to look for eggs
hellboy: oh no, i see someone running off, i go on a wild goose chase while the bad guys kill the agents i'm protecting
tentacle thing 1: blub blub
tentacle thing 2: blub blub
hellboy: h4w! 1 k1LL tentacle thing 1!
tentacle thing 3: blub blub
tentacle thing 4: blub blub
hellboy: oh no the agents are dead!
fbi boss guy: hellboy, you are reckless.
doctor guy: i will now inspect this strange cyborg enemy who mysteriously died
cyborg: grah! 1 4m n0t r34lly d34d! 1 k1LL j00! 4nd 1 l34v3 4 clu3!
hellboy: look, a clue! let's go to russia. don't split up.
fbi guy: oh no! we got split up! let's explore this labyrinth before we get killed.
hellboy: i make friends with fbi boss guy and kill cyborg. grah! now 1 k1LL m0r3 t3nt4cl3 th1ng5! 0h n0! th3r3 4r3 2 m4ny!
pyro chick: h4w! 1 s3t f1r3 2 th3m 4LL! 4nd th31r 3gg5!
bad guys: h4w! w3 g3t j00 4nyw4y!
hellboy: h4w! 1 r3s1st j00 3v3n 1f j00 k1LL pyr0 ch1ck!
evil sorceror: 0h n0, 1 d13! but n0w 1 turn 1nt0 hug3 t3nt4cl3 th1ng!
hellboy: blah blah blah, 1 k1LL j00 4g41n!

THE END