Categotry Archives: Movie Reviews

this movie is so great! i mean really great. let me list the two top contending reasons as to why it’s so great so you can understand (maybe)

i had NO idea it was three hours long.

and

ellie almost wet herself she was so excited.

and now let me explain.

i didn’t know going in it was three hours long. i sat thru the whole thing and at no point was i either bored or uninterested. it was only when it was over and i was leaving and ellie asked what time it was that i noticed three fucking hours had gone by. that’s amazing in my opinion. i mean, 3 hours is a damn long time really to have been so captivated by one movie. which means that the story is incredible, the acting is good (well daniel day-lewis, admittedly is better than just “good.” he’s stupendous), and the cinematography is compelling.

as to ellie leaking a little pee. near the end of the movie there’s this part where…someone…uh has a piece of shrapnel in them and pulls it out and the blood just goes WHOOSH onto the other person’s face and chest. and it was a little shocking and ellie went, “whoa!” pretty loudly in the semi-filled theatre, at which point everyone in the audience who didn’t already want to kill us for giggling at inappropriate tension release times, really wanted to lynch us. and she was so embarressed about having been loud that she couldn’t stop snickering, besides the fact that the blood thing was pretty funny (though realistic i’ll grant you that, mr. scorcese). anyway so it was great and good to watch and fun at the same time.

afterwards talking about it in the borders parking lot we were having to lean against walls we were laughing so hard and some 2.5 pocket linters started interrogating us about what was so funny. which was hella funny in itself and set us off again in fresh gales.

all in all a memorable evening at the theatres. plus being a truly great, semi-historically fudged epic film with the heros and the bloodshed and the triumphing and the moral uncertainity and the girl.

official page

I just wrote this huge thing for this movie and now its fucking lost it. argh!

so. dangerous lives of alter boys. i was expecting it to be bad, because marina said it was awful. but it’s actually quite good. and even though they don’t exactly follow the book, they hold true to the spirit of it and with the added inclusion of animated scenes by todd mcfarlane (blade/spawn guy), it’s actually rather impressive. and kieren culkin who i had written off as a shit child actor culkin can actually act. and do it well. and i found myself *liking* him. amazing. wonders. never ceasing. you get the picture.

for those of you who have not read the book/seen the movie. short plot with differences highlighted:

the movie follows the lives of 4 (5 in the book) catholic school boys (i’d say 10th grade maybe?) who are aspiring comic bok artists. and they make the comic which has lots of despicable things being done to the nun teachers, as well as lots of naked pretty girls. and themselves in their alter ego superhero characters (brakken, the muscle, major screw, and ass kicker.) 2 of the boys are really kind of superflous, as the story mainly centers aroung francis and tim. francis is in love with margie flynn. and tim kind of seems to be occasionally in love with francis. but anyway, it’s about them growing up and pulling crazy pranks, and drinking, and having rather horrible home lives (francis’ is much worse in the book as his father is constantly beating him. but tim’s is bad only in the movie as his parents are constantly screaming at one another. and he’s a very troubled teen because of it–which was true anyway, but mostly because of his over-educated status, the son of a university history professor who doesn’t seem to believe in god. but does believe in william blake.) they are mainly tyrannized over by sister assumpta, (played by jodie foster) who has a prosthetic leg. so they decide to capture this mountain lion from the wild animal habitat and release it in school to scare peg-leg and to get out of classes. in the meantime, shit is hitting the fan between francis and tim because of the girlfriend of francis and because of tim’s home life and whatnot. and we learn some disturbing things about margie and her brother. but the boys all come back together and go to get the cougar and during the rather ill-planned capture tim gets savaged by a second one and dies. and that’s the end of the book and the movie.

the truly inspired thing, in my opinion, was the animated sequences featuring the boy’s alter egos trying to rescue the kingdom of sorcerella (voiced by margie) from the evil peg leg. the action in the live and animated versions mesh perfectly and the interspersed animation provides a poignant counterpart to what is going on in the “real” lives of the boys. plus, as i said, the artwork is pretty damn great.

this movie is out on video now and i highly recommend the rental of it.

official page.

the book is by chriss fuhrman, and can be found here at amazon.

going�on the fact that most of you probably have no idea what the hell this movie is about, i am first going to give a short plot synopsis. and then some pictures. and then a very short review involving a lot of laughing.

there’s this black kid (nick cannon) who plays the snare drum and he’s good but doesn’t follow orders well. he gets a full ride to some college. where he plays the drum well but doesn’t follow orders. then it comes out that he can’t read sheet music and he gets kicked off the marching band. orlando jones has a lot to say about “musicianship.” the girlfriend (zoe saldana) seems to see something in the kid that i really didn’t. then thru hard work and the help of the guy who ratted him out and some tapes from his estranged father, he writes some damn fine music and practices writing music and then gets back on orlando’s good side, though not back in the band. and they play his music at the annual hug marching band competition and then there’s a drumline showdown which he does get to play in. and that’s the end.

soooooo much time watching marching bands. so confused as to why pretty girl is interested in cocky, younger, smarmy guy. but some of the music is good. and basically if you can suspend your awareness that you’re watching a movie about marching band tribulations with some poor acting and horrible writing which harps on “musicianship” it’s pretty entertaining. also as a culture facet it’s fantastic. who knew people were so into marching while playing instruments? who knew they had drumline showdowns? who knew there were sexy dance routines that went along with the music? mostly though it was amusing that i watched this and like mike with marina while she was here and i had watched how high another time i was with her last, and we think it’s now a trend that we have to watch at least one really bad black comedy when we get together.

ha! little bow wow! ah shit dood. i think this is worth watching just for the commentary featuring the director, “bow”, and jonathan lipsinisskkkiiiwheee.

otherwise, it’s just Bad. not even good bad really.

lot of kids who can’t really act. lots of pro basketball players who can’t really act.

cheesy ending. SUPER cheesy with the added addition of 2 for 1 special orphan adoption.

bad writing. stupid direction. no interesting filming techniques. too much basketball games.

why did i watch this? why not i say. and also i blame it on marina. though…it was admittedly me who said, “let’s see like mike! hwee!” and her that said, “ah man.”

these two movies were practically the same movie which is why they are getting the same entry.

1) both set in manhattan

2) both with a really rich guy and a (relatively) poor woman

3) both women with “causes”

4) both movies featuring norah jones music (though two weeks notice actually had her cameoing)

5) both cheesy romances with really no redeeming qualities.

honestly i liked main in manhattan slightly more. it actually had more of a plot. sad, huh? and i don’t even really like jlo whereas i do like sandra bullock. heh.

so these movies primarily sucked based on the fact that they were kind of degrading to women. though 2 weeks was also not very shining the light positive on men either when the example was just hugh grant’s character (and his driver was pretty shitty too. being all with the speech about knowing how to work the women but then revealing that he still lived at home and was under his momma’s thumb). maid was a little better since jlo’s portrayal of a single mother was actually pretty good and her ability to cut ralph fiennes down on some racial issues was well delivered. and she had a job and was getting a promotion and kept and expanded the job even after marrying the rich guy so that was a little bit better at showing a positive role model i guess. 2 weeks on the other hand, even though bullock’s character went to harvard law, she constantly needed saving. there’s this one scene where she has to go to the bathroom (it’s dumb, disgusting, and unnecessary) and he carries her to this mobile home (they’re on the freeway) and convinces its occupants to let her use it. and then they lose thier car and he has to call for a helicopter to come pick them up.

the one thing i did like about 2 weeks (and this totally just makes me a romantic) was this one scene where they’re in a restaurant and first hugh grant spoons all the ice out of his water and into her cup, then she takes all the wierd crunchy stuff off the top of his salad and puts it on hers and he takes all the radishes off her salad and puts them on his. they do all of this without even thinking about it. it’s just something that has become ingrained because of how close they have become and it’s adorable. and it’s perfect. the timing is right on. and at the end her going, “radish! radish!” cause there’s one left on the plate and him removing it for her is just so cute. oh man.

the one last thing that is the same about the movies is that it’s the man who has to change for the woman. at the end of both, the men have screwed up thier chances for love (ralph fiennes for not accepting the maid when it’s revealed that she isn’t some high class society dame and hugh grant for going back on a promise not to destroy this landmark building) and the men have to find the woman again and grovel and be re-accepted. which….is all well and good i guess. except for how it’s so unlikely and also so trite. what, it’s always that the woman has some convictions or something and the man has to alter his perception of things to fall in line? or it just doesn’t really show either party to be realistic or well-adjusted. why doesn’t the guy just find some woman who hasn’t lied to him about their status in society or some other woman who isn’t so quirky and demanding? why don’t the women find men who automatically accept them no matter what or who don’t back out of promises or forget about trust?

romantic comedy, yes. fun, yes. good morals? noooooooo.

rentals. both of them. really.

midnight premiere. super-fiend fanatics all around. it’s the best way to see these things. now then what can i say?… seriously do not continue reading this if you don’t want spoilers, ok?

#1 bad things. (to get them out of the way.)

tedious fight scenes.

lots of walking

it was just like the boring-ness which is reading the middle book. well really all of the books. isn’t that fucking sad? i mean…maybe this is a good point to the die-hard fans who will be pissed at all the other liberties taken by this second movie. but maybe they would just be bored too. but maybe al the fighting scenes will call to mind things like world war II and freedom and liberty and things that tolkein was actually concerned about at the time. or maybe they’ll just be lots of headless things and ladders being flung and urukhai being all groany and hollery and really kind of funny in a hackneyed embarrassing sort of attempt at horror on what looked like a low budget at times. cheese dood. cheese.

it was like….the first one was GOOD, right? like…it was serious and magical and real and true. and this second one is more….cheese. like….serious cheese. as if they couldn’t quite hold together their subject matter and they became too interested in playing up certain characters to the detriment of others (ie unintentional humor employed by golum, intentional though…sometimes misplaced humor by sam, aragorn, gimli) as opposed to the seriousness of the quest and the battle for middle-earth. (don’t get me wrong i fucking enjoyed the humor, i’m just saying it didn’t quite fit in.) mainly what it did was bring the movie down to being a…parody sort of. a parody of tolkien’s work. like they thought, “now we have established ourselves with FOTR, now we can putz around a little and enjoy ourselves and have choppy editing and make some crude jokes and have some laughs at the expense of following up a really good movie with a not so good movie.” a damn shame is what it was.

the ents were too physically short (kristen pointed this one out as a flaw. but maybe it’s more of a personal vision flaw than a real flaw, because otherwise the ents were pretty great. well…ok i thought they would be fatter too. and maybe speak slower. and…have more screen time. but they were pretty boring when not stepping on evil minions so whatever.)

frodo and the ring (the main fucking character here people–the ring, not frodo. fuck frodo, cute though he may be. fucking hobbit. practically a midget.) was in the movie about maybe a total of 30 minutes. that’s kind of unacceptable. following the plot of the horse-lords, all well and good. the fucking touchy-feely bullshit with those 2 kids and their mom? totally unnecessary. i mean, they wanted me to be all in touch with their spirit or her maternal instinct or something but really i was just like, “who the fuck cares!? get off the screen!” maybe those ones were HIS (peter jackson) kids? i know they were both in there somewhere. their fighting tactics in the helm’s deep battle sequence? equally shitty. i mean, maybe that was in the books too and maybe i’ve forgotten how horribly they fought, but still. did they need to wait that long to shoot arrows? no. did they need to be such wussies about pushing the ladders off? no. did they need to have only like 15 people left at the very end out of the hundreds they started out with? no. it was silly. and the lack of what’s her name fighting? what’s up with that? she was supposed to fight some i thought. although i don’t think she did in the book….not yet at any rate.

not that i can pinpoint all that many examples but it seemed as if the liberties taken in this movie was far more gross than anything done in the first one. they cut out tons of shit, which fine, they had to make it shorter. and they added the stuff with arwen, which yeah is culled from the appendix/short story tolkien wrote about their doomed love, so fine whatever. but there was a lot of ent stuff cut out. and a lot of faramir stuff cut out. and some of the things they did with aragorn (fell off the cliff? did that really happen?) seemed faked.

but let’s be the honest the spirit of the books is still primarily maintained. and on to the good things.

fucking schizophrenic golum was BRILLIANT. at first i was like, “ah man. stupid cg effects. shitty face with those big eyeballs all gross and the comb over and ew butt crack.” but then later on when he does the first major scene by himself where he talks to the evil golum and says, “goes away and never comes back!” and the little face saying, “no.” and the bad face saying, “kills them! tricksy!” “master is our friends.” oh man. shit he was awesome. and it’s sad, as kristen commented, that the cg character stole the fucking show. but you know what, he was just GOOD. the acting was seamless. and the facial expressions grow on you like a foot disease blanket. splendid.

the boys were in fine form with their little jokes and their battle counts and legolas got all the good special effect moves, the jumping on the horse while it was running, the sliding down a stairway on a shield while shooting like 10 urukhai. he was amazing. now if only he didn’t have that hair…. aragorn’s sly smile was a sight to see after the aloof unapproachable he played in the first one. apparently the human love interest is good to him. though i still like arwen a damn lot.

gandalf seemed sadly lacking in the screen time, but acquitted himself well whenever he was there.

watching ents squish people and bang their heads together and kick them like footballs was fun.

elijah wood’s acting, i thought, was GREAT. but i know not everybody thinks that.

the sweeping vista scenes are still gorgeous, though getting a little old at this point and tiresome like the walking. oh man i slipped back into bad. so i think it’s time to conclude.

the two towers is not as good, in my opinion, as the fellowship. i have high hopes though that the return of the king will out surpass them both. since really let’s be honest the only actually good part about reading the books is the last 15 pages of the third one and you know what that means…the third movie will have the best last hour out of all three. i am impatient to see more of gondor, more of frodo, more of mordor, more of legolas, more of golum, and more of osgiliath. i think that the two towers is GOOD. technically it doesn’t seem as proficient, the propensity for battle scenes in place of more story was disappointing, but overall it’s good. the humor moments offset the darkness well. the acting is superb on all parts, (although gimli was a little overplayed at times.) i will probably see it at least one more time while it’s in the theatres. and i am soooo happy that i went and saw it at midnight because it’s always so much fun to see it first. and it made me all happy and now we shall see how long that happiness last. i give myself till about 7pm before i pass out. =)

another review.

a really good review.

official site.

andy serkis’ (who plays golum) webpage.

picture of merry and pippin at the premiere. ha ha!

ho-ho-oh. hello mr orlando bloom/legolas.

this weekend…,well just sunday, i watched an entire anime series called fruits basket. yes. fruits basket. not sure why. well i know why it’s called that (and trust me the reason is perhaps dumber than the name itself), i am not, however, sure why i watched 26 episodes in one fucking day. or why near the end i started talking to myself, the cat, the television. exhaustion. lack of food. lack of sleep. it wasn’t pretty. what WAS pretty were the anime boys. ha! you knew i was going to get to them and my new fervent crushes on each one of the little emotionally scarred 2-d cuties. cutiiieesss….

it was all in all a relatively good show actually. i mean. the plot was well thought out. oh god. i just said that. let me explain something here. the plot was based around this household of three men who, when they are hugged by a girl, turn into one of the 12 animals of the zodiac calender. you can imagine the amount of times the girl had to accidentally trip in order to provide some humorous gag moments. because of course it was a secret from other people. and they would have to cover up really quickly the fact that there was a pile of clothes on the floor and a mouse running across the parquet.

the girl was kind of dim really but always had these holy moments where she would impart some sage wisdom and the males would begin to accept themselves instead of loathing their demon zodiac curse. there were girls cursed too and they had to hug boys to turn. there was a moment with the mailman… anyway. but basically it was a semi-love triangle (undeclared and undecisive) between the main (non-cursed) girl and two of the cursed boys. it was cute. it was sweet. sometimes sappily. but still. and i enjoyed it, i did.

the artwork was standard, though they did some interpsersions of rough sketches which were interesting along with some tv wave patterns every so often to give mystical height or notice. and once there was a scene where there was a train with real people getting off and 4 anime characters in their midst which looked cool. and althogh i know this makes me a dork. in a couple of episodes there were moments when the animation continuity was imterrupted by a misplaced cell. so there would be a fraction of a second where a different image would flash by and with the technological wonder of dvd i could pause fast forward to check and look at how the image was moved slightly to the left so that part of the previous cell was included on one side and the new one on the majority of the screen creating a juxtaposition that lurked at the corners of the eye if you were watching normal speed very closely. in one of these. the characters switched sides entirely and there was this fucking scary shadow figure in the trees on the right side. i stopped pause ffwarding after that.

the reason i found this wacky series in the first place was because i was searching on news of the licensing of ‘one piece’ (jacob). they are both distributed by the same company (funimation. cause it’s so fun.) and although one piece isn’t out yet, soon maybe. i know you wanted to see more of it. wacky stretchy pirates. i also got all of FLCL which maybe i will watch today. (it’s only 6 episodes.) but i am so fucking excited. it’s by GAINAX who did neon genesis evangelion and also kare kano. both exceptional artwork and story. and FLCL is fucking brilliant and frenetic. (or at least the first 4 episodes which i have seen are.)