I stopped posting on here about watching movies weekly, but it doesn’t mean I stopped watching things. In fact, the entire thing has evolved into a weekly double-feature with friends.

The first week was Crank and Crank 2. b and c-, respectively. The first one is almost worth watching, if you need a stupid, trendy, low-brow action movie. The second one hurt.

Last week was I’m Gonna Get You Sucka and Big Trouble in Little China. c and b-, respectively. Both are well past their sell-by dates, one more than the other.

Last night was The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. b+ for both of them. Both of these are fun films, for very different reasons. And out of the six movies, they are the ones I would most recommend.

Next week — High Noon and A Man Called Sledge.

Popularity: 1% [?]

viceland mocks Criterion for having Michael Bay movies in their collection. Yes, yes, welcome to 2002, everyone. We all know there are some turns buried in the collection. But the write-up about Wes Anderson is about as dead-on as it gets, for me:

Wes Anderson doesn

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tags: movies, reviews

This is old, but the fascination of myself and John with Friday the 13th continues. He sent this to me yesterday; I’m passing it on as a Halloween treat. The A.V. Club does a year-by-year with Friday The 13th

Sadly, because it’s old, it doesn’t include the newer film — but I’ll go so far as to say (again) see the new one and then part 10. Done and done.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I saw Paranormal Activity late in the day today because 1. Rachael was in class and 2. because I thought it was still only playing in a few select cities. (2. turns out to be totally false.)

How was it, you might ask?

Actually, firstly, you might ask ‘what is it?’
It’s a teeny tiny film made for 11k in a week in 2007 that Paramount/Spielberg bought (to remake) and have since decided to screen and show. It’s a horror film ala Blair Witch. The trailers for it are on the official site, but youtube, apple and all have them too.

OK, so it’s a freaky ‘demonic poltergeist/possession/haunted house’ movie. And how is it?

Well, considering the hype, considering April texted me last week saying it made her cry it was so scary, I expected big things. And it turned out to be good, not great. Well worth seeing, but not as freaky as I expected.

And I really don’t want to ruin anything, simply because it’s a pretty basic movie, plot-wise. So saying much would totally color your fun.

Worth seeing, even in the theater — which is high praise coming from me. A solid ‘B’ mainly because it reminded me just a little bit too much of the aforementioned Blair Witch…without offering too much new in the scares department.*

Just see it.

* Please note I’d say there are some exceptions to this. But no, I’m not going to say what they might be.

Popularity: 1% [?]

This is a movie I might have written, at some point in a parallel timestream: a British art student, who is completely fascinated with the female form, develops insomnia after breaking up with his girlfriend, gets a job in a supermarket, discovers he can stop time and falls for a girl who works there.

It’s a complete piece of shit and I would thank my alternate self to never ever make something like this.

Firstly (and most importantly): it totally and unabashadely rips off Nicholson Baker’s The Fermata. Which, fine ok, they can’t seem to make it into a movie which is a bummer, but holyfuckingshit, you aren’t allowed to take the basic premise and slap your own shitty movie on top of it as some sort of loser tribute. You aren’t Dan Brown, ok? I didn’t watch your movie so you could repeat Baker’s book back to me without all the cool shit. So you’re an art student who freezes time to take off women’s clothes to draw them. Oh, that’s much different than The Fermata, where he freezes time to take off women’s clothes to look at them. Asshat. (I realize this could be viewed as “coincidence.” But it isn’t. Watch the climax of the movie, realize he talks about bringing her into the frozen world, that he sits there for days, again between seconds and then go back and read the end of The Fermata. It’s a rip-off, plain and simple.)

Secondly, I am coming to the belief that there is a strain of man that loves women so earnestly and honestly that it pains them. Ok, fine. My rule is that you’re allowed exactly one (1) creative work telling the world how much you love the female species. This was yours. If you ever make something like this again, you deserve the label ‘no talent assclown’ and should be boycotted from creative works forever. This whole “women captivate me” thing is farm leagues and lazy. How do I know? Been there, done that. You used your free pass.

Thirdly, your movie doesn’t have to be every single little thing you’ve ever thought. I realize that every little bit I described up there in the first paragraph doesn’t actually make much of a movie. You know what else doesn’t work? Cramming 4 different plots and moods into 1 film just because you can’t come up with a compelling plot. Heartbreak? Ok. Working night shifts in a grocery? Fine. Stopping time? Uh. And then a movie about how you have always loved women? Get the fuck out of here.

I actually stopped this movie about 15 minutes before it was over. I don’t know that I’ll finish it, which, for me, is unusual. You know the crap I will watch (see: the film club stuff. Also: the Halloween movies, Barbarella [more than once], Transformers, Battlefield Earth). And this? This was an hour and a half of uninspired (or perhaps, maybe, overly inspired) drivial.

d-

It’s also currently streaming on Netflix, in case you feel like hating on on a badly written movie.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tomorrow Museum links to another review of the Bond film with the following pull-quote:

Freed from the constraints of any trace of Fleming storylines, the new Bond film, though reviewed as mediodre, is an accelerated hyphenate, with a devious avoidance of the absurd gaudiness of the previous two decades worth of Brosnan/Dalton stupidity. Reviewers seem to flaw the film as being incomprehensible, but that’s just their inabilty to keep up with the pace.

They blink. Though not better than the Guy Hamilton/Lewis Gilbert days of early Bond, this is the best of the modern era (post 80′) including the previous Casino Royale. Flaws abound in the echoey/prediction cutting that seems to try to give the Bourne films a run for their money, and the staginess of a Port Au Prince dock setting is regrettable, but the film is rife with ruthless deaths, slimy North Americans (the CIA lounges like duchys at black tie fundraisers unaware, or worse, uncaring that they are being played), a perversely clever air battle that reveals darkened sinkholes that hides the core secret (a visual and aural node to Dune), and flowy, evervescent information graphics of MI6 that subtitle plot mechanics.

This is interesting to me because it’s the first mention I have seen describing the movie as I did back in November:

The interactions between the characters matter more — and, in fact, we jump often from one item to another without a logical connection visually. You are left to fill in the blanks. And it works.

It’s refreshing and most certainly a product of it’s time. If you need more reassurance, look to the opening credits and (over-)designed sub-titles each time Bond jumps to a new city. All are good, but reinforce that this is a product of 2008.

I’m going to have to rent it and watch it again; high art it isn’t but it’s a damn good example of where modern story-telling seems to sit.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Here’s the easy part: B+

Now, you might have seen the movie and are already dismissing me with a gentle handwave. But give me 2 minutes to explain myself and let’s see if we can’t reconcile our relationship, ok?

This movie was awesome, top to bottom. The reason it is getting middling reviews? The direction during the action scenes was shite. Grade A shite. And that’s a shame. It’s obvious from the opening scene; you simply can’t tell what is happening.

A directors job is to tell a story, visually. And Mr. Forster totally dropped the ball here. Never have I been in a movie wishing to read the script over watching the projection in front of me. Until this evening. This movie is, perfectly, all you could want from a James Bond movie in 2008. Except for the action scenes.

I doubt many of you who read my writings regularly are comic book nerds like me. But go with me for a moment: this movie follows, in a surprising way, what Grant Morrison is currently doing in DC’s “Final Crisis.” In “FC,” Morrison is writing the line-wide crossover event as a serious of events, glossing over the action to focus on character moments.* Morrison is writing an excellent cross-over event where the focus isn’t on splash pages of people knocking each other silly, but on the moments inbetween.

It’s as if he decided, “We all know that the heroes are going to win. The fights don’t matter; those are just the silly details. What matters are the interactions between the fights; the reasons for the fights and the aftermaths.”

This is true and it appears in “Quantum of Solace” as well. The interactions between the characters matter more — and, in fact, we jump often from one item to another without a logical connection visually. You are left to fill in the blanks. And it works.

It’s refreshing and most certainly a product of it’s time. If you need more reassurance, look to the opening credits and (over-)designed sub-titles each time Bond jumps to a new city. All are good, but reinforce that this is a product of 2008.

I stick with my b+.

* I would like to provide you links with reviews saying such and more, but I can’t find them. Sigh.

Popularity: 1% [?]