ocean's 12

21/2/5 stars

Ocean's 12

George cloony, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Catherine Zeta Jones, Julia Roberts

11 was a better 12

There is always hype sourounding a sequel so let me get this out of the way: Ocean's 12 isnt as good as the original. sure its got gorgeous men and women running through eurpope uttering hilarious jokes but their characters just seem empty, thinly veiled ghosts of their original selves. the story takes just as many hits, it feels like a weak excuse for a global heist instead of a full fledged peice of work, and its painful to see at times(Catherine Zeta Jones's father is a wanted criminal, what?!). but that dosent mean its not worth a watch. The dialouge is witty and the cast is obviously having a ball.(as are the special guests and joke writers.) overall 12 is a fun friday night eye candy fest, hopefully this dosent become a yearly thing though.

The ring

2/5 stars

the ring

Nioammi Watts

Americanization=bad

A question for the writers of the Ring: what did you do to it? the original japaneze stoey was great: it was a fresh idea with amazing acting and well thought out writing. the american version is over written, over acted, and just not interesting. A reporter(Nioammie Watts) seeks to find out why so many people are dying. on the way she finds an evil videotape created by a creapy eight year old girl.(one of the best things this movie has going for it.) Along the way she has to deal with an old boyfriend and a kid who can predict the future. sure occasionaly a good plot point from the original ring pops up, a desprate father, a suicidal mother, and a bitter unhappy ending but these are all better(and cheeper) in the form of Ringu or the ever popular manga seires. The cinematographer should have saved his smooth camera angles and dark suburban feel for a much better movie.

The invisible man

He walks the crosswalk without a word,
But if he said anything would he even be heard?
He has no voice just empty words placed in his mouth,
He gets bumped by someone and doesn’t even look south.
He sits in a block and says what he’s been programmed too,
A meeting at a boardroom, nothing new.
He sits like deadwood floating adrift,
Like a guitar he plays the same rift,
As everyone else in the mountainous crowd,
If something different happened he would be wowed.
A pattern isn’t scientific but man’s prison,
These are the words that could be slapped under a petition,
By people who want to strike out and not be the same white shirted cliché,
To not be robotic, not respond to hey.
As I sit at my window I wonder with awe,
How many people I just saw.

the triplets of Bellville

4/5 stars
Triplets of Bellville


the mouse gets smacked...and its good
only older, hairier palmed people will get what the french writer(subtitle scared fans dont worry theres bearly any dialouge in this movie)was getting at. im not saying that kids wont find some gut busters: where else can find a bunch of grandmas making money off hitting a refrigerator with a drum stick or a bunch of people getting food by throwing a hand grenade into a frog pond? its just that they wont get the main idea: making a surreal disney parody. just listen to the story: a young boy is living with his grandma and is depressed about his parents death. the grandma feels for him and buys him a bike. 20 years latter he rides in the tour de' france, and is captured by a bunk of square Smiths(weirdest matrix reference i've ever seen.) and taken to the french underground. When the grandma catches wind of this it off to france and to the rescue. sure a couple jokes are repetetive(the whistle and the dog barking at trains.)but its general absurtity and hilaroius chase scene will have you laughing before you can even start to be bored. dont let its french backround fool you: Triplets is worthy.

the forgotten

21/2 stars
the forgotten
Julianne Morre
The copyright law is Forgotten
we've all had the dream. you know, the one where you wake up and your parents are gone without a trace. it's a genuinely scary dream and this movie packs it's suspense and scares but the fact is its not a dream and thats where this movie runs into problems. in the dream when you say "Oh my god!" you wake up in sweat, but you cant just say "Oh my god!" and then end the movie you have to make a story explaining why your family is gone. that must be tough seeing as how memory and pictures dissapear by the minute but the aliens, conspiracies, and N.S.A dont even come close. I sincerly doubt this is a movie, im pretty sure its just one big advertisement for X-Files: the movie. (seeing as how it also includes stupid dialouge and wacked out story archs.) still "Forgotten" is passsable entertainment. its a genuinly unsetteling movie(at least until all the abduction crap.) and Julianne Morre gives a beatiful performance. And if your a sci-fi maniac(like yours truly) heres your fix until "the final cut" shows up.

sky captain and shuan of the dead

sky captain and the world of
3/5 stars
What did you expect?
sky captain is a near plotless summer junk fest. now that thats out of the way you can properly enjoy this movie, an adrenaline rush that dosent take itself seriously. right off the bat your bombarded with beatiful scenery, beautiful acting, and amazing specail effects that look their best when they are porposely trying to look retro. the plot is just as dated, a loner captain teams up with a gorgeous news reporter to fight an evil scientist who unleashs evil "iron giant" wannabbes on the world. fortunatly the scriptwriters recognize this and have fun with it whenever they get the chance. nifty sight parodies including apollo 13, jurassic park, and the matrix(soon to replace dude where's my car? as the most ripped off movie in america.) will provide plenty of cheep laughs whenever you start to steam at the plot, and each actor has atleast one hilarious line("you really think there's going to be something more exciting than every animal being loaded onto a rocketship?" asks sky captain to Polly.) if you have an hour or two to kill watch sky captain you may be pleasently suprised.

Shaun of the Dead
4/5 stars
the most hilarious movie of the year in the most unlikly place
imagine americans writing a zombie comedy, Aston Kutcher stars as a work-a-day man who must hord of a bunch of zombies for no good reason, a couple of stupid drug jokes latter end of movie. i sure wouldnt watch that and no body else would either and thats why the dead are better left to the british. its hard to find any trip in "Shaun's" step. predictability? try predicting shaun's ex-girlfriend fighting off a zombie with a plastic toddler chair, or 3 people wacking a zombie to the beat of Queen. stereotypes? of course, but everone of them is used to further promote this wacked out comedy. pacing? try whiplash effficency and smart endings. boring score lame camera work? how do randomly input horror music and awesome sight gags from dawn of the dead. "Shaun" is random weell written fun that Americans will never be able to mimic.

the incredibles

31/2/5
the incredibles
sameul L. jackson, jason lee
reconstruction in progress
there comes a time in every studios life when they must change or die trying. that time is now for pixar a studio thats been making hit or miss movies for what seems ever. Thankfully pixar doesent abhor change and seeing that the kids who atended "Nemo" are now 9 and are ready for a "real" movie Pixar has crafted a flick thats not PG-13 dark nor G cuddly. tired of frustrating lawsuits of people who say they didnt "want" to be rescued the superhereos are forced to hang up their spandex's and live a normal life. now Mr. Incredible(Brad bird) is living in a Dilbert-esque work enviornment and couldnt be more debressed. Meanwhile the former Elastagirl(Holly Hunter) is playing mom to kids Dash and Violet(who looks like samara but dosent even say ring. Darn.). when these tired superheroes finally get to use their powers again they jump at the chance but soon find themselves twisted in the evil plot of Syndrome( a hilarious Jason Lee). as always pixar adds in some clever family values and the animation redefines beautiful but not everything is "incredible". this movie could use several more movie refrences and Pixar really needs to spend some more time on the workaday jokes, not even half the potetial is being used here. A nice first try im eager to see what you guys come up with next.

waking life

5/5 stars
waking life


Think
watch this movie. find out how spacey Linklater is, be baffled by its cruel ending and feel incredibly empty. Rewatch it determiened that you missed the point, and suddenly find out just how much. "Life" is a jigsaw puzzle filled with plenty of realistic dialouge and wild humor, but dont make the mistake of writing the plot of as some frat boy's dream, this story has a purpose. A purpose that can only be found through listening to every conversation and registering every sentence of every bit of zaney dialouge. for those who dont put "Life" together and just want to have a good old time know this: this movie has some of the weirdest humor imaginable and has a cast of unforgetable characters(like Speed who "on sundays goes salsa dancing with his confusion). Dont get me wrong waking Life is an insane hit or miss movie- 2 out of 5 people come out of the theater saying WTH but its still(at least to me) a trip well worth taking, your dreams will never be the same again.