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.