So I read online that they are casting Gael Garcia Bernal to play Zorro in the next reboot.  My first thought was who cares about a Zorro movie?  Zorro has always been kind of a dumb character in my book.  Like the Three Musketeers, he suffers from the fact that he looks like a ponce in his outfit and is fighting with a sword when any idiot could just shoot him with a black powder gun.

Then I read that they are considering making the new Zorro a futuristic post apocalyptic story and my second thought was how dumb.  Why mess with something that has worked for decades?  Does there really need to be a re-imagining of Zorro?

But then I combined those two thoughts and came up with my final thought on the matter, how freaking cool could this movie actually be?  I love post apocalyptic anything and this could possibly take care of a lot of the costume and sword issues that have plagued the story from the start.  I think this could possibly be one of the best Zorro movies ever.

This children are the future image was the closest I could find for a post apocalyptic image.  It comes from the funny t shirts Dave carries.

Interesting trivia: the Mask of Zorro was the movie Bruce Wayne was watching with his parents right before they got killed.  I suppose I could have pulled a Batman image pretty easily.  Oh well.

Jason

Scary Potter.

I actually saw this Saturday night and will say it was scary.  However, it is of the jack-in-the-box kind of scary where something jumps out at you, causing a minor adrenaline spike and the occasional need to change your undergarments.  It is not the kind of scary that builds up in the back of your mind like water balloon on a faucet that you forget is running.  The terror builds steadily until it finally burst and gets all over everything.  Instead it is Snakes on a Plane scary, where after the first 20 minutes, once you understand the nature of the villain, you begin to expect to see something horrible and predetermined scene locations and, for the most part, you are not disappointed.  (Jack in the Box image courtesy of the Funny T-Shirts category).

The film also makes the cardinal mistake of establishing early on that the one character you are destined to connect with, Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe-Harry Potter and not a whole lot else) is actually in no real danger from the ghost, as she has a thing for children.  Once you understood that tension in the scenes bleeds off like the aforementioned water balloon with fifty or so pin pricks in it.  Still scary, but not in the same sense of danger you get from a movie like Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, where you know the bad guys are actively looking to cause harm to the character you like the most.  Instead the danger is focused on a bunch of kids, which is bad in a very general sense, but since none of the kids have more than a couple minutes of screen time pre death you never connect with any of them.  Honestly, if some excuse had been found for a couple kids to hang out with Arthur so we could get to know them, then I might have cared when something horrible happened.

The other big mistake this movie makes is it fails to give us a real reason for Arthur to be doing anything besides running screaming into the night, along with any of the other characters.  I’m sorry, but if I am by myself in a big, creepy mansion and there is a rocking chair moving by itself after a day of seeing a ton of other creepy stuff I would be out of there so fast your eyes would spin, and by the way I’d be setting fire to the place on my way out the door.  The villagers are idiots too.  It is established early on that the local innkeeper had lost a child to the woman in black.  He then has another child that he keeps locked up for her own safety.  Why the hell didn’t he move to another town, along with anyone else who had a child?  Is parental instinct such a rarity these days?  Sometimes I think so, but if you live in a town with a local supernatural killer of children you might want to consider a different school district.

Anyway, the story.  Arthur Kipp is a widower with a young son (again, a great opportunity to connect with a potential victim squandered.  We meet him briefly at the beginning and again at the end) who is in danger of losing his job as a solicitor.  He has a job to go out into the countryside and sort out the final affairs and sell the old mansion of someone (???  To be honest I can’t tell you who died and left the house.  It might have been the woman in black, but it seemed to be implied that she had been dead for decades.  Also she didn’t appear to have ever lived there.  It might have been her unseen sister, but the sisters grave looked about 100 years old too.  The house itself looked as if no one had been there for a while as well.  If someone knows who’s affairs were being taken care of please post a comment).  His son he leaves with a shockingly hot nanny (Jessica Raine-Robin Hood, Call the Midwife, Elsewhere) but they plan to join him shortly in the creepiest village in English history (sorry to keep hitting you with these questions, but if Arthur was nigh bankrupt as is stated several times how can he afford a nanny and vacations and so on?  That kid should have had “latch-key” written on his underwear band).  He arrives in town to encounter the typical “we both have a deadly town secret and hate all outsiders” attitude from the local bumpkins.  Everyone seems unusually protective of the kids, but nothing is ever explained.

Anyway, the story is almost painfully linear.  Naturally no one wants Arthur around and do whatever they can to make his life uncomfortable, except for the local rich guy (magistrate?  Judge?  It seems to be implied that he has some kind of local power but it is never explored.  Played by Roger Allam-V for Vendetta, the Queen, Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides) and his insane wife (I can’t seem to find her credit.  Weird) who’s son died under mysterious circumstances.  He doesn’t believe in ghosts and puts up Arther, helping him along.  Arthur decides the best way to go through a bunch of old paperwork is by sitting up all night by himself in the the creepiest mansion in the history of the world instead of in a nice office or hotel room.  Naturally weird stuff starts happening, and kids in the village start dying.  The locals opt to blame Arthur instead of burning the mansion to the ground and/or just moving the hell away.  The backstory of the woman in black is spoon fed to us in the most painfully obvious manner; a monolog delivered in a woman’s voice as Arthur reads a bunch of old letters.

SPOILER ALERT: if you have a brain you might be able to infer some info about the ending from the next few lines, so maybe skip ahead a bit.  While the action had a number of creepy surprises, the actual story was about as linear and predictable as long distance train track.  Whatever tension the movie started with gets pretty much drained by the last 20 minutes.  Arthur pulls some Scooby Doo shenanigans in order to appease the ghost and takes a swim in muck.  Everyone in the movie make the dumbest choices possible (most of them being “Let’s hang out instead of making like a hockey player and getting the puck out of here”).  The depressing and predictable ending that had been looming over the story like a suspicious lump in your testicle sack is made manifest.

The stars.  Say what you will, the director (James Watkins-My Little Eye, The Descent Pt 2, Eden Lake) knows how to do creepy.  Everything in this film looks like it was rejected by Hellraiser for being a little over the top.  The problem is, of course, a lack of contrast actually makes the creepy stuff less creepy.  However, if creep is what you like, this movie has it in spades.  One star.  Daniel Radcliffe managed to deliver a pretty good performance while completely divorcing himself from his Harry Potter legacy.  Good script choice IMO.  One star.  The minimal special effects and camera work were really well done, helping to deliver on the tone the director was striving for.  One star.  There were some definite heart in your throat scary moments, so if you are looking for an adrenaline rush go for it.  One star.  Pacing and direction were pretty good.  One star.  Generally a fun movie to watch.  Two stars.  Total: seven stars.

The black holes.  Predictable.  One black hole.  Once you realized the ghost wasn’t going to kill Arthur due to the fact that he wasn’t a child the was a serious lessening of tension.  One black hole.  This movie I think would have actually benefited greatly from a couple more characters.  One black hole.  Total: three black holes.

A grand total of four stars.  This movie is actually better than that score indicates.  I think it worth seeing.  Definitely a good date movie, as your date should be gripping your arm nicely and not want to go back to her creepy, lonely apartment if you know what I mean.  However, if watching guys in movies make bad life decisions infuriates you, maybe you should give it a pass.

That’s it for this weekend’s movies.  I’ll try to get something watched this week, but have a couple other ideas to talk about soon.  Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu.  Thanks for reading.  Talk to you soon.

Dave

Things are looking really busy this weekend, with three new movies on my must see list.  I will see one a day for the next three days, and review each in turn the next morning.  I offer to you, my beloved readers, the chance to help determine what order I should see them in.  If there is a movie upcoming that you are interested in but would like my humble opinion early on speak now via comment here or Twitter.  Your choices are:

The Grey-Liam Neeson and a bunch of disposable heroes land in the frozen North and have to escape while being hunted by a pack of wolves.  I can only hope he is forced to eat his fellow passengers to survive.  My prediction is that there turns out to be some kind of external influence causing the wolves to be unusually aggressive.

Man on a Ledge-I consider it both an insult to my intelligence and a warning sign of incoming suck when the movie description (not a review) calls this movie “heart pounding”.   I have a feeling these descriptions are actually written by the marketing department for the film itself.  The more they hype it the more it probably needs hyping.  My prediction: so little heart pounding that I will be checking my pulse in order to make sure I haven’t accidentally passed away during the show.  Man stands on a ledge in order to distract from his friends trying to steal a $40MM diamond in order to prove his innocence.  Is it so much to ask that a movie premise make sense?  I mean, does every crime in a movie have to be for some noble purpose?  Would it not be enough to simply say “A guy stands on a ledge in order to distract from his friends stealing a $40MM diamond which they intend to sell and use the money to buy stuff”?  Seems to make a lot more sense to me.

One for the Money-if your intention is to screw with my head vote for this one.  A super hot girl is desperate for cash and decides to become Dog the Bounty Hunter.  Apparently she is going after her ex boyfriend.  My predictions: a lot of “girl too dainty to do anything all of a sudden kicks a guy in the balls and discovers she enjoys the feeling of power and regained self worth”; a highly improbably series of luck allows her to exceed the performance of one or more much more experienced bounty hunters; and finally she catches her ex only to discover she has feelings for him.  These feeling either motivate her to let him go, or he is able to exploit her feelings in order to trick her and get away in the last five minutes.  (Protect your Nuts image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category)

So make a comment here of hit me up on Twitter @NerdKungFu.  Given the actual number of responses I get from these things the first person to hit me up will probably be casting the deciding vote.  First review should be up tomorrow.  Thanks everyone for reading.  Have a great day

Dave

Here is a movie to make you wish human beings had never developed vocal cords.

And I’m not talking about the singing.  In fact, the music was one of the few redeeming qualities of this film.  I am not a real fan of Gospel, but can appreciate the sound and understand what a powerful tool it can be for the advancement of the Christian pantheon (I consider myself more agnostic than anything else, although if I were forced to choose a specific religion I think I would roll with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster).  No, it’s not the singing that made me want to stuff chewing gum in my ears.  It’s the freaking dialog.  If I have to hear Dolly Parton or Queen Latifah spout out another hillbilly, earthy country platitude (“If the jury is full of foxes than the chicken is always guilty”) I will be forced to go on a berserk chainsaw rampage.

The story is the unnatural offspring of Sister Act and Footloose, with lingering eye contact made with the Bad News Bears during conception.  The proud parents had their child and, because someone else had already used the name Glee, ran with Joyful Noise.  The weird thing is when you make a movie out of two mediocre movies you normally only take some elements from each and combine them into a crappier movie.  What director/writer Todd Graff (The Electric Company, the Abyss, Five Corners, Stranger Days) did was, with the exception of the gangsters trying to kill Whoopie Goldberg, take ALL the elements from those two movies and pile drive them into one script until the screen is bursting with badness like rancid corpse stuffed into a corset.  I mentioned Glee because that appears to be Mr. Graff’s favorite show, and honestly this movie reads like an entire season of bad TV compressed into 117 minutes with each episode creating yet another 5-10 minute subplot.

Fragmented doesn’t begin to describe this story.  It is even more fragmented that the horrible New Years Eve I reviewed last year, although at least all the characters in this film know each other.  The sub plots are legion.  There’s the “main” plot of the losing church choir winning the national Joyful Noise competition.  There’s the competition between Dolly Parton and Queen Latifah to be the choir director.  There’s Queen Latifah’s hot 16 year old daughter rebelling against her mother’s restrictive nature, as well as her romance with Dolly’s grandson.  There’s her Asperger brother trying to deal with being different from everyone else, learning to play the piano, and taking his sunglasses off.  There’s the small Georgia town suffering from economic collapse.  There’s the choir singer who’s father’s hardware store is closing.  There’s Dolly Parton dealing with the death of her husband by ignoring it completely.  There’s Queen Latifah’s husband joining the army to get away from her and the two kids.  There’s Latifah’s struggle to provide for her family.  There’s the grandson’s checkered juvenile past.  There’s another girl hooking up with a guy and killing him after the first night (that subplot resurfaces later and somehow hijacks the whole story at the end).  There’s the preacher who doesn’t want to spend money on the choir.  There’s the struggle that the grandson and Dolly have to update the choir with more than just traditional music in order to win the big contest (oh yeah, somehow winning the contest is integral to the survival of the town.  Still not sure what that was about).  There’s the preacher hating the new music and pulling out his support.  There’s the other kid who gets into a fight with the grandson over the daughter’s affection but later joins the choir as the worlds greatest guitar player or something.  The list goes on and on.

In the credits (I read online.  I didn’t really stay for the credits.  I couldn’t get out of the theater fast enough) it is revealed that Todd Graff’s mother was in a choir, which makes a lot of sense.  This movie looks a lot like a self indulgent labor of love, and Graff wanted to stick every small town or choir story schtick he could find into it.  Next time I would suggest he make a list of his 20 best ideas and get a third party to whittle them down to like three.  Just because you have an idea doesn’t mean you need to execute it.

Before I go on I’d like to say a few words about Dolly Parton.  It seems pretty obvious that she is single handedly supporting the plastic surgery and hair care industries.  That being said, I can’t argue with the results.  She is 66 and looks at most 42-45ish.  She also seems to have a sense of humor about it too, and plastic surgery jokes come about in a scene with Queen Latifah that was one of two that I actually enjoyed.  Also, while she definitely is a lady throughout the film, her outfits seem designed to emphasis the assets she is known best for, if you know what I mean (her singing voice, obviously.  What were you perverts thinking of?)

The story reads like it was written by the second place winner of a 5th grade creative writing contest.  I don’t know if I need to get into it too much, as I seem to have covered it in the sub plot rehash.  The church choir director (Kris Kristofferson-Blade trilogy, Planet of the Apes(2001)) drops dead during a choir competition, leaving Queen Latifah (Bringing Down the House, Living Single, Taxi) and Dolly Parton (Sweet Home Alabama, Moulin Rouge, Transamerica) up for the gig.  Latifah gets it with the goal of winning the big Joyful Noise competition.  Dolly’s grandson Randy (Jeremy Jordan-not much of a filmography.  Looks like he was in Newsies on Broadway) shows up, falls in love with Latifah’s daughter (Keke Palmer-True Jackson, Cleaner, Akeelah and the Bee), who is a good church girl.  At that point the story more or less explodes into the aforementioned subplots like a watermelon with an M-80 stuck in it.  Church choir hijinks ensues.  No real conflict arises.  The story chugs along like a V8 with only three cylinders firing to the inevitable predictable conclusion.

The stars.  The music and singing were actually pretty good.  One star.  The actors, working within the limitations of a bad script and horrible dialog, managed to deliver a decent performance.  Kind of like winning a three legged race.  One star.  Queen Latifah is at her best when she is bitching someone out, and there were two scenes (one with Dolly in particular) that were entertaining that way.  One star.  Keke Palmer is super cute.  One star.  Total: four stars.

The black holes.  Dialog that made me want to never see another film again.  Two black holes.  1 kazillian subplots that went nowhere.  One black hole.  1 subplot in particular was especially cringe-worthy.  One black hole.  Pretty much all the rest of the subplots gave me an attitude that rhymed with “Eye Mont Bare”.  One black hole.  The pacing dragged like trying to pull a corpse to a shallow grave by yourself (not that I would no anything about that.  Where did I put that body image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category).  One black hole.  Glee ripoff.  One black hole.  Overall story seemed both pointless and dumb.  One black hole.  A movie that is supposed to be uplifting and heartwarming laced with death and sociopaths apparently not caring about it.  One black hole.  Two more black holes for generally wasting my time.  Total: eleven black holes.

So a grand total of seven black holes.  This is another one that was weird in that the audience around me seemed to be enjoying it and laughing.  However, I suspect a lot of them came to see it from some kind of church obligation and had to pretend to like it otherwise their friends might think they were not the good Christians they like to think they are.  A lot of the laughter sounded forced, like laughing at your bosses bad jokes.  Speaking as a creepy loner who couldn’t care less about what the people around me think (if you don’t believe me just look at how I dress every day) the only prayer I was making was for the credits to start rolling.  I don’t know.  Was it better than tripping and falling into a tree shredder?  In most ways yes.  Was it better than spending those two hours working on my Doom Fortress in Minecraft?  Absolutely not.  However, if you are dating a girl who is Christian this could be a good one to see, especially if you are willing to wait until your wedding night for sex.

I’m back to scraping the bottom of the barrel on movies.  Nothing to see tonight, but maybe I’ll see My Week With Marilyn.  No way there is anything in that film to annoy me.  Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu.  Thanks for reading.  Talk to you soon.

Dave

The sappiness dial on this movie goes up to 11.

Yes, this movie was sappy like Natalie Portman is hot or the general movie going population is dumb.  Does that hurt the movie?  In one sense yes.  However, if you saw any of the trailers and expected to be anything other than heartwarmed then your problems with perceptions run so deep you wouldn’t notice that your hair was on fire until someone shot you in the face with a fire extinguisher.  This movie will play your emotional heartstrings like a cheap ukelele, evoking sadness, happiness, cuteness, frustration and (in the case of Scarlett Johansson and, assuming you are into men, Matt Damon) horniness. (11 Dial image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category)

The story is, as the title subtlety implies, about a family that buys a zoo.  It starts off with the father (Matt Damon-Good Will Hunting, the whole Bourne series) and his kids dealing with the recent death of his wife (Stephanie Szostak-the Devil Wears Prada, Dinner for Schmucks).  His annoying 14 year old son (Colin Ford-Jack and the Beanstalk, Push) is dealing by acting out in passive aggressive ways and by drawing disturbing pictures all the time.  His daughter Rosie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones-Footloose) seems better adjusted but prone to telling strangers that her mommy died.

Let me just go on an aside and talk a bit about Maggie Elizabeth Jones.  In this movie she is comprise of 100% pure weapons-grade cuteness.  I can’t stress that enough.  She is so cute your face will hurt from smiling every time she is on the screen or says something.  Until she turns into another annoying teenage actress she will probably have a lock on every super cute child role for the next six years, and deservedly so.  I am not really into other people’s kids, but was smiling every time she said something.

Anyway, the son Dylan gets booted out of school for stealing and the father Benjamin (who by the way, is being stalked by every hot woman in whatever town he lives in.  I guess being a hot single widower with super cute kids is quite the turn on for women) decides they need a new start.  He ends up buying the zoo based on his love of the house.  He opts to get the zoo running again and meets the staff, including the super hot zookeeper Kelly Foster (Scarlett Johansson-Match Point, Iron Man 2, the Prestige) who falls into the Hollywood pit of the amazing girl who dedicated her life to animals rather than dating and getting a life, as well as a host of flat, two dimensional stereotypes ( just imagine the kind of hippies who want to work on a zoo for no money and you will have them nailed down).  Her younger 13 year old sister Lilly (Elle Fanning-Super 8, Deja Vu, the Door in the Floor) lives there too and gains a crush for emo-Dylan.  At that point the story more or less follows the very typical family-business-struggling-in-the-face-of-adversity Hollywood script.  They are obstructed by a cartoonish antagonist in the form of USDA inspector Walter Ferris (John Micheal Higgins-Wag the Dog, Fun With Dick and Jane, Bad Teacher) who has to certify them before they open and a host of other incidental problems.

The stars.  The movie does what it set out to do, which is yank your emotions around like a fish on a line before landing you in the heartwarming boat.  One star.  Rosie was painfully cute.  One star.  Good dialog.  One star.  Good direction.  One star.  The main characters in the form of Benjamin and Kelly felt really real, although their on screen romance felt a little artificial.  One star.  Lots of cute animals to look at.  One star.  At the end of the film you feel good and don’t feel like your time and money were wasted.  Two stars.  Total: eight stars.

The black holes.  As real as Benjamin and Kelly felt, almost all the supporting characters felt really flat and artificial.  The supporting characters in the Muppets felt more real.  One black hole.  Pacing really seemed to drag at times.  One black hole.  The story was predictable enough to set your clock to.  One black hole.  Total: three black holes.

A grand total of five stars.  Not bad.  Worth seeing with the qualifier that you are not looking for any chases, fights, explosions, or surprises of any kind.  It really earns it’s PG rating.  I don’t think any of the scenes are of such cinematographic brilliance that they require a large screen, so NetFlix is fine.  On the other hand, this is a brilliant date movie, as your girl will love it and the little girl will have her thinking about a family for sure.

That’s it for now.  I am working on my Nerdy Awards and think I will start them over the weekend.  Nothing to see tonight, but I might actually do some nerd dating advice tomorrow.  Some things that happened over New Years kind of got me thinking about it again.  Look for that tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu.  Thanks for reading.  Talk to you soon.

Dave

There aren’t enough synonyms for “trite” in the English language to allow me to review this movie.

Actually, I kind of like to think of this movie as an experiment in alternative script writing methods that went horribly wrong and, like all bad science experiments is destined to rise up and destroy us all.  You see, most bad movies take a crappy story idea and run it into the ground.  What the writer of this bomb did (Katherine Fugate-Valentine’s Day, Room in Rome, the Prince and Me (grammar is optional in movie title writing, really)) was take ten bad stories, interweave them into a tapestry of horribleness,  and then drape it all over the screen like a death shroud.  The funny thing is each story in turn actually magnifies the bland horribleness of the previous one in an exponential manner, so that by the time you get to the 10th sub story you get horrible to the ninth degree.

The whole story chain is weird.  The system is a blatant vehicle to cram as many celebrities into one bad movie as possible.  The laundry list is endless.  Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert DeNiro, Zac Effron, Halle Barry, Alyssa Milano, Jessica Biel, Katherine Heigl, Seth Meyers, Ashton Kutcher, Jon Bon Jovi(?), and Sarah Jessica Parker to name a few.  In my mind’s eye I see this movie as the “rock soup” approach to film making.  Here’s how I think it works.  They get the first star, say Sarah Jessica Parker for example.  They write a crappy little drama about her and her daughter.  Then they approach the next on the list and say “Hey, we’ve got Sarah Jessica Parker”.  The next celebrity joins in and so they write a crappy drama for him or her.  Rinse and repeat, and at the end you have a crappy pot of soup made only with a rock!

Of course, with ten different stories in 118 minutes (was it really that long?  Felt more like four hours) none of the characters get to in any way develop, or give us any reason to connect with any of them, or for that matter in any way give a crap about anything that happens on the screen.  The crappyness of the script might have shot right past the thinking part of each of the actors brains, but it obviously lodged deep into the brain stem and and subconsciously inspired them each to phone in their performances.  The acting felt so much like a first or second rehearsal I kept looking to see if the stars actually had scripts in their hands they were reading from.  It looks like another draw for each of these people is the fact that they could probably film their respective parts in about a week.

The strange thing (and this is in no way an endorsement or encouragement of this movie) is if you are forced to watch this movie you actually get a little interested in the individual stories, if only to see which of them is going to end the most horribly (the Sarah Jessica Parker one IMO).  It’s like watching a leper marathon; you know it is going to be bad to watch and terrible things are going to happen, but you really can’t help but watch if only to see which participant has the most body parts fall off.

One last thing on the multiple story chains is I didn’t realize they had the hydra-like ability to spawn other story chains.  You finally get one of them concluded and somehow another one spontaneously germinates.  I’d say it grinds, but this whole movie was such a grind that by the time I got to that part most of my gears were stripped.

Anyway, I can’t really get to into the story without submitting the entire script, so I will just recap each of the stories that stuck in my head enough to talk about it.  Robert DeNiro is in a hospital dying of cancer (and while his performance was far sub par of what I would expect from him, at least he looked like he was dying) and Halle Barry is his nurse, who also has a husband in the military overseas.  Michelle Pfeiffer is a mousy spinster secretary who quits her job in a huff and bribes Zac Effron to make her bucket list come true in the next ten hours.  Jessica Biel is pregnant and her wimpy husband Seth Meyers wants her to give birth right after midnight to win some cash prize but are in competition with some other couple.  Katherine Heigl is a caterer who is contracted to do food for a huge music industry party, and her ex boyfriend rockstar “Jensen” (played by an almost lifelike Jon Bon Jovi robot of some kind), who is the uber-prosaic music entertainment for the party and the Times Square deal, wants to win her back with emotionless dialog.  One of “Jensen’s” background singers, Lea Michelle, gets stuck in an elevator with loser hipster comic book artist Grinch Ashton Kutcher (loser hipster is not much of an acting stretch for him, IMO) and proceeds to teach him something important about the true meaning of New Years Eve.  Sara Jessica Parker reprises her Sex and the City roll with a 15 year old daughter, who wants to run around unsupervised through New York.  Meanwhile, her long lost love interest Josh Duhamel plays one of the music company owners and apparently the hottest thing in NYC until he decides to meet Sarah at midnight.  That’s most of what I can remember.  Oh, yeah.  Hillary Swank plays the woman in charge of the ball dropping who has to deal with an edge-of-the-seat situation when a fuse in the ball goes out, and then turns out to be the estranged daughter of Robert DiNero.

Honestly, that’s it for story.  There is no actual conflict in any of these stories except for the whole “giant ball fuse” business.  No one does any one thing remotely interesting.  It was like watching 10 bad after school specials all edited together.

The stars.  Honestly, I would normally give one for a guys like Robert DiNero, but he didn’t exactly light up the screen.  I would also do one for some of the hot women in this, but for the most part they were bundled up for December in NYC and not that good looking.  Also, I don’t know what this movie was doing with a PG-13 rating.  It was so tame it was almost a G in my opinion.  The only time any one of the characters even implied that sex ever occurred between humans was at the end when Katherine Heigl said something about it with the Bon Jovi-bot, and that image is going to take some drinking to get rid of.  I’ve never not given any stars to a movie before.  I guess I could give them one for the morbid curiosity the movie generated when I wanted to see which ending would suck the most.  Kind of like how you don’t want to look at a car wreck when you drive by but cant help yourself.  Total:  one star.

The black holes.  I’ll give 1/2 a black hole for each stupid sub plot, and call the extra ones spawned at the end a wash.  Five black holes.  The dialog was god awful.  Two black holes.  In addition to the dialog from the main characters sucking, the writers felt compelled to inject background dialog that made me want to murder puppies (I would never actually hurt a dog, BTW).  One more black hole.  A movie with no protagonist, antagonist, conflict, story, or point.  Two black holes.  Acting reminiscent of the Robin Hood play I had a bit part in back in second grade (I was guard #3.  My one line was “I don’t like the forest”.  Why can I remember that but not my social security number?).  One black hole.  Opening the movie with the odious Ryan Seacrest and having him resurface later like a flush that didn’t quite go all the way down.  One black hole.  Having two different musical numbers coalesce out of the ether like a torpedo launched from an underwater submarine.  One black hole.  Creating a fictional super star (“Jensen”) in a movie flush with real celebrities acting as themselves.  One black hole.  Pat endings so sugary sweet they could possibly kill every diabetic in the world.  One black hole.  The dumbest, slowest car crash in the history of movie making.  One black hole.  Total: 16 black holes.

So, a whopping 15 black holes, possibly the worst I have given this year.  Was it really that awful?  Yes.  Yes it was.  Can some enjoyment be had from it?  Maybe, if you are stupid.  Or perhaps have a serious case of ADHD.  Good date movie?  Sure, if your date is stupid or has a serious case of ADHD.  Honestly, this movie should not only never be seen again by another human, but the 500+ stars of the film should band together with pitchforks and torches and burn the windmill in which the mad scientist/director Gary Marshal has set up his lab with his assistant/writer Katherine (Igor) Fugate.  (A.D.D. image courtesy of the funny t-shirt category)

Wow.  This isn’t my longest review, but it definitely took the longest to write.  I wish I could just write “It Sucks” and hit the publish button.  Oh, well.  More movies this weekend.  Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu.  Thanks for reading.  Don’t see this movie.

Dave

House of Confusion.

This movie was bitterly disappointing for me.  Not because I was expecting something great.  I went into it expecting it to suck.  It disappointed me because I could see elements of a great movie in here that failed to surface.  It’s like the ship the U.S.S. Bad Script sailed to within sight of the Port of Good Movie only to run aground on Fumble Reef. (Titanic image courtesy of the funny t shirts category)

The best way to describe this movie is confused, in that it shifts gears several times.  It started off as kind of a really interesting psycho drama, then alternates back and forth between a haunted house and whodunit with a miserably predictable ending.  It looked great as a psychodrama, decent as a ghost movie, and painfully stupid as a whodunit.  I can almost feel the inexorable hand of the studio pulling the puppet strings to cause the tonal shifts.

The other weird thing about this film was the two stars, Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz, met and fell in love in real life while working on the movie yet the on screen chemistry seemed a little off.  I think the problem is they acted like a new couple, which in real life they were, but in the movie they had been married for at least seven years.

Anyway, the movie.  Daniel Craig quits his job as an editor in NYC to move to his new house in the burbs.  His hot wife Libby (Rachel Weisz – the Mummy, the Mummy Returns, the Constant Gardener, the Fountain) and two super cute daughters (Taylor Geare – the little girl from Inception and Clair Geare, the younger little girl from Inception) are glad he is going to stay home.  Things seem idyllic but there is some guy running around outside, and some teenagers holding Black Mass in the basement.  Turns out the family that lived there before were all killed by the father.

I don’t want to get too into the story, as this is a mystery and a spoiler would definitely detract from your enjoyment of it.  Mystery/ghost movie/psycho drama hijinks ensue in almost equal portions.  The story kind of plods along, and the whole mixing genres manages to take 90% of the horror out of the film, especially at the end.  There are a few startling moments, but nothing that really shocked anyone.

The stars.  Daniel Craig.  No one does intense like him.  One star.  Overall the acting from all parties was really solid.  One star.  Some decent camera work to reflect the shifts in tone needed for the psychodrama shifts.  One star.  Dialog was decent, and most of the relationships on screen seemed solid.  One star.  Total:  Four stars.

The black holes.  The movie couldn’t decide what kind of film it wanted to be when it grew up.  The genre shift was really annoying, especially at the end.  One black hole.  The police acted unlike any police I have ever seen or heard of.  One black hole.  The movie kind of trudged along.  Pacing was really slow.  One star.  The ending had a funny smell on it from being pulled out of the scriptwriters ass.  One black hole.  A suspense film with little to no suspense and a thriller with no thrills.  One black hole.  Total: five black holes.

So a total of one black hole.  Kind of a neutral score, which reflects how I felt coming out of the theater.  Not really dissatisfied, but not really satisfied.  Is it worth seeing?  Not at full price.  Is it worth $5 on a Sunday?  Sure, if there is nothing else playing.  Honestly, if you are looking for scary seen Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.  More thrilling Real Steel. Better drama 50/50.  I think the biggest problem this movie faces is that there are a bunch of other, better movies out at the moment.

Thanks for reading.  Sorry about the short review but when a movie doesn’t really grab me or annoy me I find it hard to write about.  Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu.  I might do a list tomorrow, or another Star Trek retrospective.  I’m up to Insurrection, which means I am almost at the worst of the dross.  Oh, well.

Dave

Not as idiotic as I thought it would be

I’m not saying this movie is great.  It is not a milestone in road of cinema history.  It is not even a cobblestone.  On the other hand, it’s not a washed out bridge either.  I think the best way to describe this film is with “in-” words.  Inoffensive.  Pleasantly innocuous.  This movie is like watching two dogs play in a park.  Fun to watch, but except for a warm, pleasant feeling you won’t gain a lot from it.  It sets out to make you feel good, and accomplishes that goal.

I’ll say this has been a lesson for me in the “you can’t judge a book by it’s cover” vein, although in this case it’s you can’t judge a movie by it’s poster.  I never saw a trailer but when I saw the poster said to myself “There is no way this cannot suck”.  I really thought this was another load of excrement dumped into the sewer of bad rated R comedies I have been drowning in all summer.  Wrong.  It was really not bad.  I left the theater feeling OK about the universe.

Not that the movie doesn’t have it’s faults, which I will get into shortly in excruciating detail.  I also have a couple of personal issues with the premise, the first being that I have moments of absolute contempt for the whole hippy movement.  I grew up in the 80′s, and there was very little that annoyed me more than aging hippies telling me how great the free love was back in the 60′s and 70′s.  Sorry, but I couldn’t even talk to a girl without tripping on my tongue back then and the whole free love thing had been replaced by leg warmers and big hair.  Listening to some long haired smelly old pot head drone on about it is the equivalent of a rich man going to a Greyhound station and telling everyone how great it is to live in a mansion.  Screw you, hippy!  (South Park image courtesy of the funny t shirt category).

The other thing about this movie is I have two sisters, and have been called the idiot brother myself.  That being said, I don’t think my interaction was ever this weird with my sisters.

Anyway, the movie.  Ned (Paul Rudd, who until now has mostly had supporting roles in movies like Knocked Up, the 40 Year Old Virgin, and Dinner for Schmucks) is a Jesus looking smelly (I assume.  None that I have known were renowned for their hygiene) hippy who gets busted for selling pot to a uniformed cop.  This sounds like the dumbest move ever, and actually threw up a warning flag for me early on, but as you get to know Ned you kind of get where he was coming from.  Anyway, he spends eight months in jail and comes out to find that his girlfriend is kicking him out and keeping his dog, Willie Nelson.  I mention this because the dog is pretty much the only motivation Ned has to do anything during the entirety of the film.  Anyway, he heads into New York city to couch surf with his three dysfunctional sisters: a bitchy, bossy high strung magazine writer (Elizabeth Banks-the 40 Year Old Virgin, Spiderman), a bisexual girl with no apparent job who can’t control her libido (Zooey (Zoo-ey?  How do you pronounce that?) Deschanel-Almost Famous, Your Highness, a bunch of other stuff I never heard of), and a downtrodden housewife married to a complete lame, pretentious intelligentsia filmmaker who is working on making some dumb documentary and raising the wimpiest kid in human history (Emily Mortimer-Shutter Island, Lars and the Real Girl, 30 Rock, and a bunch of other movies I never heard of.  Her husband is Steve Coogan, from Tropic Thunder and the horrible Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief) who also can’t control his libido (relationship betrayal is something of a theme for this movie).  Anyway, Ned is a loose cannon in all of their lives, seemingly wrecking them all, but the truth is he is more exposing the hypocrisy they all had riding under the surface.  He didn’t cause any of the people with relationships to get into cheating situation.  Just exposed it all.  Throughout the film he bumbles along with a faith in people and an innocent belief that if you trust each other you won’t get burned.  It is kind of annoying at first but by the end I was kind of buying into the vibe (time to go download some Grateful Dead songs, I guess).

Anyway, sibling hijinks ensues.  All three sisters have their lives turned upside down and then somehow set back upright again.  Ned gets his dog back.

The stars.  I felt kind of good watching this movie.  I can’t put my finger on why, but I left with a warm feeling in my cold, dark heart.  Two stars.  All the acting was really good.  One star.  The dialog felt like brothers and sisters arguing.  One star.  All the sisters were pretty easy on the eyes, especially Elizabeth Banks, and they had a bunch of other hot sophisticated New York women, particularly my future wife Janet Montgomery (the casting person obviously shared my preferences, as there was not a blond to be seen).  One star.  There was a supporting hippy character that was actually really funny, and his sisters lesbian girlfriend was pretty cool too (Rashida Jones, whom I fell in love with in the Office).  Also his parole officer was cool and added to the film.  One star.  The dog was really a cool looking dog (a beautiful Golden Retriever).  One star.  They didn’t try to shove a love story into the film for Ned.  One star.  Ned’s nephew was in training by is overprotective parents to be a victim for life but kind of turned out cool.  One star.  Overall a pleasant movie going experience.  Two stars.  Total: eleven stars.

The black holes.  Hippies.  One black hole.  The love interest for the bitchy magazine sister kind of bugged me.  One black hole.  The three sisters, in spite of having completely different lives, were kind of interchangeable to the point that I had to struggle to keep track of which one was which.  The only one that stood out was the housewife, and that was only because she was the only non-brunette.  One black hole.  While Ned’s innocence and trust was refreshing, I found myself wanting to reach into the movie and shake him for being such a dope.  One black hole.  The filmmaker character kind of bugged me too.  He was sleazy from the get go and gave the film a greasy feeling every time he was on screen, to it’s detriment (greasy film?  Me so funny!).  One black hole.  Total: five black holes.

Total of six stars, a great score for a Rated R comedy.  I was honestly surprised at how much I enjoyed the experience, and this film is a candidate for best feel good film of the year when I get around to doing my end of the year awards (probably some time in June, given how I keep up on these things).  Definitely worth watching, definitely a good date film.  It won’t stick in your brain and you won’t be quoting it, however.  Nothing in this requires a big screen, so if you want to wait for NetFlix that is cool.  Thanks again, and don’t forget to sign up for the RSS feed and follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu.  Talk to you soon.

I am sick, so I should have time to finish these off pretty quick.  Tonight I saw the Order of the Phoenix.  I quite enjoyed it, although I found the lady in pink from the Ministry really annoying.  However, if by now Harry hasn’t figured out that whoever takes the position of Professor of Defense Against Dark Magic has ill intents towards him, he must have suffered brain damage when he picked up that nifty scar.  The movies have gotten really formulaic in that regards, and it seems obvious that J.K. Rowling has enough love for the other professors to not make any of them the bad guys, so I guess it will continue.

I did enjoy this movie, and magic duel at the end between Voldemort and Dumbledore was pretty damned cool.  Not sure what the whole prophesy was all about, but most of the movie seemed pretty cool.  I am disappointed that Cedric showed up as a flashback, as I don’t want to see Robert Pattinson gain any more in his so called career, but other than that pretty good.  At least there wasn’t any of Dumbledore thrusting his students into dragons mouths or whatever, and he actually managed to act like he cared about Harry for a few minutes.

Of course, I have questions from this movie (Just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I don’t understand image courtesy of the funny t shirt category).

First off, what is up with wands?  Is a wizard incapable of casting a spell without one?  Seems like a wand should be something to help you focus your inner power to aid in a spell and not necessarily be totally required for a spell.  The actual magic must come from the caster, implying that they might be able to cast some simple spells and cantrips without a wand.  They don’t use wands to pull up their brooms or fly them.  Why, then, do they all act like a fish out of water as soon as they get it knocked out of their hands?  Also, if I were a wizard fighting another wizard and managed to knock the wand out of his or her hand, why just leave it lying there on the ground for your enemy to pick up and blast you with.  I think as soon as that wand was on the ground I would use another spell to set fire to it.  Also, if you lose your wand the first movie seemed to imply you could just buy another.  It’s not like you are bound to it for life.  So if someone burns up your wand could you just pick up a stick off the ground, or a handy No. 2 pencil?  They don’t look like they weigh a lot.  If I were going into battle I think I would have like eight on me.  That way, when the bad (or good, depending on which side of the room you are on) guy blasts it out of my hand I’d be like “Oh, you have disarmed me!  I am helpless before your might”.  Then, when they look somewhere else, pull out wand number 2 and blammo!  How about a wand in each hand?

Second, are there no rules regarding corporal and/or cruel and unusual punishment at Hogwarts?  Is the only thing keeping the professors from torturing the students for screwing up Dumbledore’s morality?  Snape seems to have a dark bent.  If someone pissed him off could he concoct some kind of horrible pain potion, once Dumbledore had been replaced by the bitch in fuchsia?  If there are no rules regarding corporal punishment delivered onto the kids bodies that seems like the first step in other kinds of inappropriate contact.  Sounds like the happy hunting ground for sexual predators.

Is Sirius Black dead, or what?  I have had a couple friends tell me what a great character he is, but to be honest he hasn’t had a lot of screen time.  I suspect he was banished or something and may well resurface later on.

What is the deal with the Order of the Phoenix, or all the other stuff everyone seems to be perfectly aware of except for Harry and me.  It’s almost like J.K. Rowlings keeps coming up with things she thinks is cool, and injecting it into the next book but expecting us to believe it was there all the time.  It’s like if I painted my living room green but then when people came over and commented on it was like “What are you talking about?  It’s always been green.”  Last movie it was the Tri Wizard Tournament, the one before that the Dementors.  This is actually one of the big failings in the whole Star Wars prequel series, in that Lucas keeps expecting the audience to accept things that we are both told and not told but never shown.  You know, I think it’s OK to have something appear in a movie that is actually a new deal and introduce everyone to it.  Like if Dumbledore had formed the Order of the Phoenix during the summer while Harry was getting beat up by his big dumb cousin.

You know, I have pretty clear recollections of my horrible life at age 14 (usually at night, waking up in a cold sweat), and I can say that if there is one thing I and all of my friends would never do is name an illicit group we were all part of after the principal of our high school. There is no way we would have called it Krembes’s Kommandos.  So what part of Dumbledore’s Army sound even remotely cool to a 14 year old?  Odds are they would have come up with something cooler or possibly sexual, like the Hogwarts Hunters or the Portland Protective Association (tell me where that’s from, kids).  It seems an extremely obvious ploy to allow Dumbledore to take the fall when they get discovered.

That’s pretty much it.  I am going to take a very hot shower in hopes it clears my sinuses and go to bed.  Lots of movies coming out this weekend, so look for something new tomorrow.  See you soon.

So I had planned to see this opening night and pretend I was a real movie critic by coming out with a review close to the opening weekend, but it turned out my girlfriend really wanted to see it and made me wait until last night.  She is really into vampires, which is something of a mixed blessing as it sometimes lets me see great films and sometimes has me watching pretty boy vampires sparkle in the daylight while I look for a spoon to gouge my eyes out.  (Twilight sucks.  Sparkle vampire image courtesy of the novelty t shirt category).

So, Priest, in 3D (not really by choice, but it was my only option).  This is not one of the great vampire movies, but it is also not eye-gougingly bad either.  It sits, like 99.9999% of the movies I have reviewed since Paul, right on average.  It’s like all of Hollywood has hitched up to the mediocrity train and is steaming towards Bland Junction.

The Priest story comes to us from a Korean graphic novel by Hyung Min-woo.  It’s good to know their geek culture encompasses something besides Starcraft.  The movie Priest, however, comes to us from the Road Warrior, Blade Runner, Dark City, Blade II, and a Fist Full of Dollars with a sprinkling of Star Wars for flavor.  It borrows unabashedly from these and about 1,000 other movies and forces them into a arguably decent rehash, or perhaps new to younger kids.

Speaking of younger kids, let me tangent off a bit here and bitch about the fact that the family in front on us had a little boy with them who was somewhere between 2 and 3 years old.  The movie was rated PG-13 for a good reason and at times drifted close to R in terms of gore and violence.  The vampires would have given me nightmares at 12, to say nothing of 2.  My dad took us all to see Orca the Killer Whale at the drive in when I was 8 and that pretty much ruined the ocean for me for the next five years.  Seems like most parents I wouldn’t trust with a pet rock, much less a child.

OK, off my parenting soap box and onto my movie reviewing soap box.  Priest is set in an alternative world (every other reviewer or whatever likes to say post-Apocalyptic, but the opening credits clearly showed both Medieval and WWI humans fighting vampire armies, so I refuse to imagine this is set in our world.  Also, our world has some terrain) that is apparently flat and featureless as a billiard ball wherein humans and vampires have fought for thousands of years and more or less destroyed the planet, except for a Blade Runner-esque steam punk city where everyone dresses like an escapee from the Great Hot Topic Massacre.  The city has for some reason purposely blocked out the sunlight, which is established as the humans only real defense against vampires (???).  Paul Bettany plays a Priest, a Catholic Church super ninja who had his Ash Wednesday cross tattooed onto his face.  His brother, who appears to be living on a farm that literally produces dust, is mortally wounded by a vampire attack and his niece is kidnapped.  Priest needs to go back out into the wilds to rescue her and kill the vampires, but the head of the church, who I will refer to as Monseigneur Stupid, decides that, in spite of the fact that vampires were not killed off completely but reside peacefully on reservations (sucking on rat blood, I guess) and he loses absolutely nothing by letting Priest go off and get himself killed, there is no way the attack could have been vampires and forbids Priest to go.  He goes anyway on his super ninja electric/solar motorcycle that can exceed 200mph on dirt and hooks up with the local sheriff who told him about the vamp attack.

Anyway, some other Priests are sent after him for no real reason except for the insult the first Priest gave unto the Church, including the new love of my life, Maggie Q.  A bad guy in Western drag named Black Hat (possibly for some article of clothing he was wearing, but I can’t be sure) is involved.  Vampire hunter hijinks ensues.  Vampires and innocent humans get killed.  Stuff blows up.  Deep dark secrets are revealed.  The fuze is lit for a sequel.

Anyway, the stars.  The animated opening credits were really cool.  One star.  In spite of the limited material handed them by the dialogue, all the main characters delivered a pretty good performance.  Paul Bettany was especially good.  One star.  The steam punk city and Gothic costumes were pretty cool.  One star.  The action sequences were decent and made sense (obviously they hired a fight choreography).  One star.  Except for the attitude of Monseigneur Stupid, the story was reasonably linear and more or less didn’t strain my brain.  One star.  The CGI was well done but not over used.  One star.  Overall the visuals were good.  One star.  Total: Seven stars.

Now the black hole.  The dialogue was limited.  One black hole.  The whole movie was extremely derivative.  One black hole.  Some of the action sequences strained my suspension of disbelief enough to give it a hernia (sorry, but no one can survive jumping off a motorcycle at 200+mph).  One black hole.  After 10 minutes in a cool, semi modern dark Gothic city, they then spent the rest of the movie in a much cheaper to shoot open flat wasteland with NO TERRAIN FEATURES WHATSOEVER.  It was like they filmed most of the movie in a giant parking lot.  One black hole.  During the course of the movie they kept hinting at some kind of character development that never surfaced.  I can’t help but feel they could have added a lot to the film by exploring deeper the relationship between Priest and Black Hat, or even Priest and the female Priest.  One black hole.  Total: five black holes.

Also, like I did in my Fast Five review, I have a few things that bugged me but really aren’t worthy of a black hole.  First off, the movie was only 88 minutes.  I don’t feel like the pacing really suffered for being short, which is why this doesn’t get them a black hole,  but if I am going to pay $10 for a movie ticket I want to feel I am getting a decent value.  Remember all that missing character development I gave you a black hole for?  Maybe sticking a few minutes of that into this movie might have made my wallet feel better.  Also, I can honestly say I feel ripped off for paying an extra $4 for 3D.  The 3D did absolutely nothing to enhance the film and was hardly noticeable, at least until my usual 3D headache started to kick in.

So, a total of 2 stars.  Not bad, not great.  If you are a fan of Blade style action see it on a big screen.  Don’t waste your money on 3D.  I think overall it’s worth seeing in a theater, as a lot of the visuals and action may suffer on a smaller screen.

That’s it.  I have an idea for something funny for tomorrow so check back.  Have a great day.